Dear Spartan community,
Our green campus — even more verdant after recent rains — is quieter this season but still active. In addition to classes and the year-round work of keeping a global public research university moving forward, we’ve been welcoming guests to sports camps, Beaumont Tower carillon concerts, programs in Beal Botanical Garden and, for the 62nd season, Summer Circle Theatre.
Many of us remain busy with preparations for the fall semester, which starts for most students on Aug. 26. I’m personally looking forward to greeting students and families at fall move-in. I’m grateful to the many campus leaders who are proactively working to ensure a safe and welcoming campus environment for all members of our community. I will be communicating more about this in the coming weeks.
Summer highlights
Like many Michiganders, when I can get away, I’m thoroughly enjoying summer in a state so richly blessed by nature and more. I’ve recently enjoyed visiting Lake Michigan, the Detroit area and will shortly connect with alums and stakeholders in northern Michigan. This fall, we’ll hit the road in a big way: I’m leading a motor coach filled with faculty members on our inaugural Spartan Bus Tour, bringing us closer to our Michigan communities and each other.
Speaking of travel, the MSU Board of Trustees and I spent several informative days in Flint last month at the board’s planning retreat and business meeting, held annually in cities around the state. We met with Dr. Mona Hanna and other public health program leaders and partners, including in the trailblazing Rx Kids program supporting moms-to-be and their babies, as well as the Flint Registry, which connects those exposed to lead through drinking water to resources and services. And we visited with our partners at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, with which MSU has maintained an impactful relationship supporting the Flint community for generations.
We also reviewed the past year at Michigan State and laid the financial groundwork for the next academic year. While cognizant of the necessity of maintaining our affordability and again increasing our level of student financial assistance, we also bear in mind that a Spartan education is a valuable and ever-appreciating asset. On that score, it was great to see Money magazine recently underlining the value of a Michigan State degree with a very high rating.
I’m a pretty dedicated runner and sports fan, so another highlight for me this season will be the Summer Olympics in Paris, with Spartans competing in track and field and basketball. I’ll be looking for Shay Colley representing Canada in women’s basketball and, representing the United States,Tori Franklin in the triple jump — her second Olympics — and Michigan State record holder Heath Baldwin in the decathlon. Go Green!
Here’s another upcoming sports highlight for fall: The induction of the next class into the Michigan State Athletics Hall of Fame. We’ll honor six individuals plus the trailblazing national champion football teams of 1965 and 1966 — the first teams to be inducted — so congratulations to the hall’s class of 2024.
Listening and learning
I’m now well past my first 100 days as Michigan State’s president, a period made all the busier by my 52-plus-stop listening and learning tour of colleges and administrative units. It’s a big job processing all I’ve taken in during my visits around campus and the state, but I’ve come away highly impressed by the transformative power of MSU’s teaching, research and outreach. I’m also struck by the dedication of our students, faculty, staff and alums to MSU and to one another — our bonds are strong.
Everywhere I went during my tour, I saw Spartan faculty, staff and leaders working to be strategic, bold and — always — student-focused. I’m thinking now about faculty members on the College of Natural Science’s educational research team and their success in moving students through redesigned STEM gateway courses. And the precollege and summer career exploration programs offered by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. And the College of Communication Arts and Sciences’ Ignite the Future programs focused on success for first-generation and underrepresented groups. These are the sorts of research-based reforms and access- and career-oriented initiatives being developed across the university.
I also saw the dedication of our colleges and units to a most crucial underpinning to our commitment to success for all students and employees — fostering an inclusive culture where everyone feels safe, welcome and valued. Additionally, Spartans can be proud of the research and scholarship, the innovation and the engagement and service I’ve seen around our commitment to address the grand challenges facing our communities, state and world. These range from understanding the impacts of climate change on our agricultural stakeholders in Michigan and beyond to leaning into the arts to illuminate paths to knowledge and understanding.
I saw many examples of what I like to call “synergy unleashed” through stakeholder collaborations and joint research activities, such as those we see at work every day in our laboratories and in places like Flint and Grand Rapids. Along those lines, in Detroit, we celebrated the graduation of the third class of Michigan State’s Apple Developer Academy and the groundbreaking for a new joint medical research facility with Henry Ford Health + MSU Health Sciences. Michigan State makes a $6.8 billion impact annually across the state of Michigan, and I’m firmly convinced we have what it takes to do even better while preparing students for careers that will surely include jobs that don’t yet exist.
I learned about concerns across our colleges and units as well. Securing the resources to support our expectations and aspirations is always a challenge, and we will need to be creative stewards of all our assets. And even as we lay plans for new teaching and research facilities equal to the challenges in front of us, we will need to address existing buildings showing their age.
Committed to our missions
After this intensive introduction to the university, I am more convinced than ever that the headline of Michigan State’s most important story is Spartans’ ongoing and passionate commitment to our interlocking missions of education, research and outreach. I’ll be talking more about this in the months ahead, but for now, I wish you a pleasant summer.
Sincerely,
Kevin M. Guskiewicz, Ph.D.
(pronounced GUS-ka-wits)
President
Professor, Department of Kinesiology