This being our first meeting of 2025, I want to wish everyone a happy new year and, for those in our community who celebrate it, a happy lunar new year.
Inclusive campus
Our international students and scholars bring with them such diverse traditions and add so much to our cultural tapestry here at Michigan State.
Very importantly, our diverse and cosmopolitan university community offers us lived experiences and perspectives that are essential to being a leading, global — and proudly public — research university.
Just yesterday, we honored recipients of our Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Awards, so congratulations to all those making such commendable efforts to make this campus the best it can be for all our community members.
As I’ve underscored since day one, our university remains committed to our inclusive values. I enjoyed our conversation yesterday with members of the Black Student Alliance, where we listened, conversed and talked about solutions to improve the experience of our minoritized students on our campus. I want to thank those students for engaging in that way with my leadership team and members of our board.
Simply put, we must forge a community that is welcoming, safe and inclusive so that all our students may not merely persist but will thrive here.
I can’t think of a more concrete example of our determination to live our values than the new Multicultural Center we will officially open this afternoon.
There, we will have spaces and programs that will advance multicultural education, spark intellectual curiosity, promote shared experiences and support strategic goals, including raising graduation rates while better preparing graduates for the diverse and interconnected world they will enter.
I know the changing federal landscape has created uncertainty for many of us here at Michigan State University and its impacts on students, faculty and staff have caused concern among many Spartans.
So, I want to stress here that our commitment to our mission remains unshakeable. Our values remain unchanged and we are committed to an inclusive and welcoming campus community — to educating and uplifting our students, to conducting innovative research that advances the common good and to serving and strengthening communities across Michigan, from Monroe up to Keweenaw.
As I’ve shared in several community messages, we will continue to pay close attention to these changes at the federal level.
That includes already mobilizing Rapid Response Teams of leaders and experts here on campus and in Washington, D.C., to analyze potential impacts on:
campus life,
international students and scholars,
research & teaching, and
finance and tax policy implications.
Please know that we’ll continue to keep Spartans updated as the situation evolves. I’ll be sending another campus message out early next week with information about how the community can receive these updates on a regular basis.
Health care highlights
Despite these challenges, we’re starting our spring semester with great momentum, and I want to briefly mention some highlights.
We’re working toward our strategic goal of $1 billion in annual research expenditures — we are well on our way with over $930 million this past year. And while that dollar amount sounds nice, it’s about the impact that work has on society.
I want to offer a shout-out to my predecessor and our former provost, Teresa Woodruff. Last month, Dr. Woodruff became the first Spartan to be honored with the National Medal of Science.
Her pioneering research in the emerging field of oncofertility — combining oncology and reproductive health — is now gaining distinction for Michigan State as she works in her role as an MSU Research Foundation professor.
Medicine and health care offer Michigan State a great opportunity to grow our research and education programs, together with our service to people across Michigan and beyond.
That’s why I’m looking forward to today’s research presentation by Howard Crawford of Henry Ford Health and Assistant Professor Jennifer Klomp from our College of Human Medicine.
They are colleagues now in the battle against pancreatic cancer, the third most fatal form of the disease in the United States. This is a great example of how our relationship with Henry Ford Health is adding new dimensions to our research, and we’ll hear from these researchers shortly.
And with the master services agreement we’ve now signed with Henry Ford Health, we’re moving forward with the level of clinical service integration we envisioned in our original 30-year partnership agreement signed in 2021.
This integration will include things like joint recruiting for medical specialists, collective contract negotiation and collaborative patient care.
Meanwhile, our Health Sciences Council has been working with me to develop our vision for a novel approach to medical education and service more fully — to leverage our unique situation of hosting two world-class medical colleges, an evolving College of Nursing and an amazing College of Veterinary Medicine to build on our research, teaching and clinical excellence aimed at a one health, one team approach to training the very best health care providers in the nation.
Two weeks ago, I hosted several Michigan health care leaders at Cowles House to discuss how MSU can be more impactful in health care. We talked about applying new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to telehealth, drug discovery, novel patient care models and, most importantly, given our unique situation of housing two medical colleges, the opportunity to possibly rewrite the playbook for interprofessional medical education that will reframe the way we train physicians and health care providers for the future.
It was a very enlightening gathering of these leaders from across the state and let me just say to stay tuned — we’re about to do something really special and MSU will be a change agent in health care.
Talent activator for Michigan
You’ve heard me talk about MSU serving as a talent activator for the state of Michigan, and get used to hearing this because that will be a consistent theme as we move forward. We place more college graduates into jobs and careers here in the state than any other university. We are committed to serving as a talent activator for the state of Michigan.
Just last week at a leadership retreat, it was nice to hear our recent top-10 ranking among public universities for the employability of our graduates applauded by our colleagues in the University Innovation Alliance. You’ll recall that Michigan State was a founding member of this group of peer institutions dedicated to sharing best practices in supporting student success.
And this week we announced the structure and leadership of our Green and White Council, which I’d announced at my presidential investiture in September. This will be a group of approximately 16 leaders and executives who will launch a set of initiatives to amplify MSU’s role as Michigan’s state university and help shape the state’s workforce and economy.
I’m charging the council with pursuing initiatives that are bold and impact-driven, feasible and sustainable, and, most importantly, are uniquely MSU.
Reflections on Feb. 12 and 13
To provide an environment where each member of the university community can achieve their highest success, each of us must feel safe here.
We’re working to instill this sense of safety by means such as our ongoing work to prevent and respond to relationship violence and sexual misconduct.
To help guide our work, we will again survey the campus after spring break with our third Know More survey, so I encourage people to look for it and participate.
And, as we approach the second-year mark of the violence our campus experienced two years ago, on Feb. 13, I’m aware of how such a traumatic event continues to affect members of this community.
As we remember those students we lost, those injured and all those impacted, we’ve been reaching out to remind students and employees about this year’s commemoration and the supportive resources we’ve put in place. Most classes won’t meet on Feb. 13, but the university will otherwise remain open.
We have a detailed list of events for that date on the Spartans Together website.
I do want to take this opportunity to acknowledge an approaching milestone for the university: the 170th anniversary of our founding on Feb. 12, 1855.
Through the years, Spartans have celebrated our triumphs and mourned our tragedies together, and we move forward together, resolved to make this a better world for our families, communities and the world we live in.
Among the people who have been so important in helping us do that is Thomas Glasmacher, who joins us today for his last meeting as executive vice president for administration.
I want to offer my thanks to Dr. Glasmacher, who has served in the interim EVP capacity for the last 14 months.
At the same time, he has retained his role as director of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, and when Vennie Gore steps into the EVP position on March 3, Dr. Glasmacher will be able to focus once again on further advancing MSU’s excellence in nuclear physics. We’re grateful for Dr. Glasmacher’s service in this role.
With that, let’s turn now to the next item on today’s agenda.