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Lucky alumnus shares good fortune with Montana State University
August 07, 2006 -- By Tracy Ellig, MSU News Service
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| After a successful career in construction engineering, JTL Group founder Joel Long recently gave Montana State University's civil engineering department $1 million for student scholarships and program enhancement. (Photo by Jay Thane MSU) |
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Bozeman - Joel T. Long spent more than 30 years in engineering, built one of Montana's largest construction companies and made himself into a multi-millionaire.
"I've always maintained that I was just plain lucky," said Long, 65. "I feel like I've been very blessed to be at the right place at the right time."
Lucky maybe. Modest certainly. Hard working and generous undoubtedly. On Monday, Long finalized a $1 million gift to Montana State University's civil engineering department to establish the Joel T. Long Professorship of Civil Engineering.
"The primary purpose of this gift is program support, including scholarships for Montana students who show promise as undergraduates in civil engineering and construction engineering technology," said Brett Gunnink, civil engineering department head. "Joel has been so kind as to enable us to use the gift for a range of other needs, such as student stipends, curriculum development and research, and faculty and student enrichment."
A Billings native, Long earned an undergraduate degree in physics from MSU in 1965 and a master's in engineering in 1967.
"I've always felt you should give what you can. This gift will give forever. It might help kids who wouldn't go into engineering otherwise," Long said, adding with a wry grin, "This is a thank you to MSU for putting up with me. I was a very average student."
Long's first experience with higher education did not go well. He dropped out of Iowa State University's engineering program after one year.
"I took longer to learn than most, especially spelling," Long said. "English was always quite a challenge for me."
He spent a year at Eastern Montana College --- now Montana State University-Billings -- sweating over reading, writing and spelling.
"Now that I have grandchildren, I tell them there are three things they must learn: reading, writing and arithmetic," Long said. "Reading and writing is so important. I've always remembered one of my teachers saying 'Reading makes a perfect man; writing makes an exact man.' I really believe that."
As a kid, he had grown up building radios, oscilloscopes and even color televisions from kits. That early interest in electronics steered him into physics, which, much to his surprise, was in the College of Letters and Science, not in the College of Engineering.
"It was heavy on the letters," Long said. "I took things totally new to me: philosophy, history and psychology. I got what today would be called a liberal arts education."
He's never regretted it.
"The best advice I can give an engineer is to take an extra year and study the humanities," Long said. "Engineers are good at math and science, but we need more engineers engaged in the community, more engineers willing to enter politics. Some background in the liberal arts can help with that."
After physics, Long earned a master's degree in engineering. He had been an ROTC cadet and after his master's degree owed the Army Corps of Engineers two years of service at Vicksburg, Miss. In 1969, he returned to Billings to work for his father's company, United Industry.
He did financial management and development for the company. He taught himself accounting and wrote most of the accounting code for the company's early computer system.
After his father died, Long took every penny he had -- and many more he borrowed -- and bought a portion of the family business. He turned it into his own construction firm: JTL Group. In the next nine years he tripled the number of employees and tripled the annual revenues.
He sold the company in 1999 to Montana-Dakota Utilities. The company still exists as JTL Group and Long's oldest son, Malcolm, is the current president. Long has three sons - Malcolm, Joel, and Ralph.
He considers starting his own company his greatest risk and his greatest piece of luck.
"In 1990, Montana's economy was at a low point," Long said. "But from then on it just grew and grew and so did JTL. If the economy hadn't grown, I would have lost everything."
He never considered himself a workaholic, but "my life was the company," he said. "Running JTL Group was fun. I enjoyed spending my time there."
In his retirement, he's had to find new ways to spend his time. He's learned to ski and golf. He's spending time with his family and is a home-theatre enthusiast. But he's also found time for significant acts of philanthropy. In addition to his gift to MSU, he and his wife Andrea have donated to St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings, the Billings YMCA, Billings Family Services, Boys and Girls Club, Billings Symphony, Tumbleweed (Billings), and Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch.
"If everyone gets a little involved," Long said. "We can hold our community together."
Contact: Linda Wyckoff at (406) 994-2223 or lwyckoff@coe.montana.edu
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| [View or Download] | 1. | After a successful career in construction engineering, JTL Group founder Joel Long recently gave Montana State University’s civil engineering department $1 million for student scholarships and program enhancement. (Photo by Jay Thane MSU) |
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