Imagine nearly 2,000 undergraduate students all moving into their residence halls in just one day.

You don't have to imagine it, because that’s what the University of Montana's ‘Move In Day’ is all about; getting between 1,500 and 2,000 students moved into their residence halls by the end of the day on Monday.

We spoke to UM’s Director of Strategic Communications Dave Kuntz just before lunchtime for an update on the annual event.

“It is chaos,” began Kuntz. “Between eight o'clock this morning and five o'clock this evening we’re moving in approximately 2,000 students to the University of Montana residence halls. This is something we've been doing for three or four years now where we do it all in one day, so it's all hands on deck. We’ve got hundreds of volunteers, lots of students here helping us and we're going to get everybody moved in by the end of today so that these first-year students can begin their orientation and get ready for the start of school next week.”

Get our free mobile app

Volunteer Tatum Egan, a sophomore from Billings, spoke to us about her experience as a volunteer helping students move into their residence halls.

“So it's Welcome Week and today is Move In Day, and it's been going really well so far,” said Egan. “We got up pretty early this morning to set up for everybody coming in because there are I believe 1,500 students coming in today so we're just helping unload all their cars and get all their stuff up in their residence rooms, and it's been going really well.”

Egan said the majority of students who are moving in today are freshmen unfamiliar with the campus.

“So the biggest group would be the first-year students,” she said. “So that involves freshmen and then transfer students and everybody else who needs to be moving in today. We are moving them into their residence halls including Elrod, Craig, and Panzer; all over the place. It's going really well. It's been smooth running so far and everybody's super cool and excited to move in. So it's a great atmosphere to be in.”

Kuntz said that once moving day is over, all incoming students are invited to participate in a UM tradition.

“As part of new student orientation we have our Big Sky Experience, which is how we get students embedded into the community with different service projects,” said Kuntz. “This is something that we're really seeing is helping to increase the retention rate of students as they are getting to the finish line for graduation. We also close the week out with what we call the Freshmen Float. So students will hop in the river en masse over in East Missoula and float back to campus to kind of close out the week of orientation as we get ready for the start of school next Monday.”

Kuntz said there are no official numbers for enrollment for the fall semester, however, they will be compiled and released after the first few weeks of school are completed.

Get to Know Missoula A to Z

All about Missoula, Montana.

The 14 Best Places in Missoula to Take Visitors From Out of Town

We asked locals where they like to bring visitors when they take a trip out to Missoula - and here's what they came up with.

14 Destinations to Visit With Direct Flights From Missoula

Here’s a list of places to visit (and things to do while you're there) with nonstop flights out of the Missoula Montana Airport.