BOZEMAN, Mont. - For decades it was joked about as Moo U. Later, it adopted a more hip nickname, Trout U.

And now, Montana State University is upping it a notch, calling itself the University of the Yellowstone.

MSU is so intent on getting exclusive use of that moniker, it has applied to the federal government for a trademark.

What's in a name? Marketing, for one - a way to put MSU on the map and attract out-of-state students who may not be exactly sure where Montana is.

It also could be much more - enhancing fundraising, attracting top-notch scientists and boosting MSU's reputation in the world of science.

"It's a very powerful designation," MSU President Geoff Gamble said recently. "It's not just a new slogan. We are the largest researchers in the Yellowstone ecosystem in grants, publications and presentations at scientific conferences. So using the phrase is simply recognition of all the work we're doing."

Another reason for adopting the name, Gamble said, is "to capture our vision of what the Big Sky Institute will become."

MSU is trying to raise millions of dollars to begin building a science and teaching center at the nearby Big Sky resort focused on researching and teaching about the greater Yellowstone National Park ecosystem and the Rocky Mountain environment.

John Varley, who worked in the park for 33 years as a fisheries biologist, research chief and founding director of the Yellowstone Center for Resources, is in charge of figuring out just what the University of the Yellowstone might be. MSU Provost Dave Dooley coaxed him out of retirement to lead the Big Sky Institute.

When he was last working in the park, about 130 national and international universities were doing research there, Varley said, "and MSU is the biggest player - the most researchers, the most money spent."

Sitting in his Big Sky Institute office on the Bozeman campus, Varley, 65, said there's already a big basket of ideas of what the University of the Yellowstone could be.

"Can it be a great recruiting tool? Well, sure," Varley said. "Yellowstone has worldwide name recognition. One-third of all Americans have been there."

Yellowstone also has a strong emotional pull. He's constantly surprised by the people who say Yellowstone has been significant in their lives - as a fabulous childhood memory, a honeymoon destination and the like.

For many decades, Varley said, MSU ignored Yellowstone, just a 90-minute drive from the Boze- man campus.

Founded as a land-grant college, MSU's original mission was to help Montana's farmers and instruct mechanics, and later to educate engineers, nurses and teachers.

It wasn't until Bill Tietz's tenure as MSU president, from 1977 to 1990, that the Bozeman campus began paying attention to Yellowstone's scientific potential, Varley said.

When Gary Strobel, 68, professor emeritus of plant science, was a young scientist at MSU in the 1960s, a professor across the hall, Ken Temple, was doing basic taxonomy, naming and classifying organisms that lived in Yellowstone's thermal pots.

"I thought it was boring," Strobel said. "I remained aloof."

He now says that was a "terrible mistake."

Temple gave a scientific journal a paper about organisms that grow in super-hot water. The paper was declined.

Later, however, an Indiana scientist used Temple's information to do further research and write a paper on the organisms, which was published.

"I got him started," said Temple, now 89.

Then, in 1985, California scientist Kary Mullis used an enzyme from that discovery in Yellowstone to invent a breakthrough technique for making millions of copies from a small DNA sample. His invention, the polymerase chain reaction technique, later sold for $300 million and in 1993 won Mullis the Nobel Prize for science.

Strobel said Temple never received the recognition or scientific support he deserved.

"This had absolutely off-the- scale, worldwide, world-shaking implications. That could have been a Montana discovery," he said.

MSU can't be accused of ignoring Yellowstone today.

It's one of four universities in the nation, including MIT and Caltech, sharing a $6 million grant from NASA to study the origins of life on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets.

Part of the money will go to MSU's Thermal Biology Institute, which focuses on the strange organisms in Yellowstone's hot pots that can thrive in the equivalent of boiling battery acid.

Yellowstone is "the highest quality natural laboratory" and "the largest intact natural ecosystem in the lower 48," said Dave Roberts, head of MSU's ecology department. "It's brought really top-notch faculty to this university."

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