Dear Michigan State University neighbor,
Summer is still a busy season at Michigan State, hosting as we do a wide variety of events from youth camps to Beaumont Tower carillon performances, all while holding summer session classes and preparing for the next academic year. I hope you’ve been able to join us to stroll our gardens, attend an exhibition or visit our award-winning MSU Dairy Store for its famous ice cream.
Activity is picking up around campus and the surrounding community now as we welcome new and returning students. Some 16,000 are moving into our university residence halls and apartments alone. Most move onto campus between Aug. 19 and 21 this year, and most fall courses start Monday, Aug. 25.
Fall sports on campus
You might hear the notes and cadences of the Spartan Marching Band heralding the start of the fall season, meaning football is just around the corner. Traffic rises on home football days, and we start the season with three straight home games. For your reference, here are this year’s dates:
Friday, Aug. 29, 7 p.m. vs. Western Michigan
Saturday, Sept. 6, 7:30 p.m. vs. Boston College
Saturday, Sept. 13, 3:30 p.m. vs. Youngstown State
Saturday, Oct. 11, noon vs. UCLA (homecoming)
Saturday, Oct. 25, time TBA vs. Michigan
Saturday, Nov. 15, time TBA vs. Penn State
For real-time game-day information about safety, potential game delays, parking, traffic and more from MSU’s Department of Police and Public Safety, text Spartanfb25 to 888777.
The university’s homecoming week is Oct. 6–11. With an estimated 10,000-plus attendees each year, our 104th homecoming parade steps off in East Lansing at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10. I hope you can join us!
Among other fall sports you may want to attend, women’s soccer and field hockey teams play at home starting Aug. 17, while volleyball starts play at home Aug. 30. Men’s soccer is underway, and ice hockey opens at home Oct. 3. Cross country begins hosting competitions at Forest Akers Golf Courses Sept. 12.
Speaking of sport, the Red Cedar River through campus is now open for catch-and-release fishing — with a state license — thanks to action from our Board of Trustees last spring. The board changed a long-standing ban on angling here to promote environmental stewardship and public enjoyment of this cherished natural resource.
Last year, we teamed up with the East Lansing Rotary Club to add a new seasonal kayak and canoe launch near Jenison Field House. Our Landscape Services crews also added a safe portage landing for boat traffic to navigate around the weir just south of the Hannah Administration Building. Learn more about the river and our stewardship, which includes our next semiannual river cleanup on Oct. 18.
We’re a green school in so many ways, and we’re proud of our gold sustainability rating and other accolades. You may have seen recent national news coverage of our research tracking the troubling decline in butterfly populations, and we take pride in our designation as a pollinator-friendly campus.
Arts and culture
At Michigan State, art is all around us. A great place to track what’s happening in arts and culture is our Arts MSU website, something well worth bookmarking.
Beal Botanical Garden, next to our Main Library, is free and regularly hosts garden tours, arboretum walks and other family-friendly programs. Join us from 4–7 p.m. Sept. 12 for BealFest, a celebration of re-wilding our campus with activities, performances and fun ways to reconnect with our local ecosystem.
The MSU Broad Art Museum is free and open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m., with three floors of rotating exhibitions. Those include The CORE, which explores 5,000 years of history through over 300 works of art from our collection. Family Days are scheduled on the first Saturday of the month, and we invite you to the museum’s fall opening party Sept. 12 from 6–10 p.m. to explore new exhibitions, enjoy food and music and engage in artmaking activities.
The MSU Museum, which is undergoing an 18-month renovation project, expects to reopen in January. It continues to host free exhibitions on the sixth floor of the MSUFCU building (at 311 Abbot Road) Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Please join us there for our newest exhibition’s opening reception from 4–6 p.m. Sept. 4. “Physical Spells [The Wor(l)d in the Atom]” features MSUFCU Arts Power Up artist-in-residence Violeta López López, who spent last fall embedded at our Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. This interactive installation will explore how the world of words and the world of atoms intersect through a deep dive into physics from the perspective of linguistics.
The Wharton Center for Performing Arts brings the best of Broadway and performing arts to our campus, this season including blockbuster shows like “Beauty and the Beast” and “& Juliet,” family favorites like “The Nutcracker,” National Geographic Live and more. There’s still time to subscribe for this season, and you can be the first to know about single ticket sales, special offers and season announcements by joining the e-Club for free.
MSU’s College of Music hosts hundreds of performances each year from individuals and ensembles composed of faculty, emerging student musicians and guest artists. Many are free — visit the college's website for more information.
And don’t miss exhibitions at the many free galleries operated by the Department of Art, Art History and Design in the College of Arts and Letters. This includes galleries inside the Kresge Art Center, the MSU Union and downtown East Lansing in (SCENE) Metrospace. Discover what’s on view next on their website.
Campus update
In addition to the ongoing renovation of the MSU Museum, we have many building projects underway and planned to keep pace with our program and community needs.
At the Abbot Road entrance to our campus, I’m looking forward to helping cut the ribbon Sept. 12 for the renovated Campbell Hall, which will house Honors College students. The scenic collegiate gothic residence hall dates to 1939 and has been upgraded for safety and accessibility, mechanical and electrical systems and features such as windows.
Our Student Recreation and Wellness Center, rising along South Harrison Road at Shaw Lane, will replace our IM West with new gymnasiums, courts, a turf arena, indoor running track, recreational pool, strength and fitness studios, classrooms and more. It’s planned to open to students in May 2026.
In Lansing, we continue our work on MSU’s Child Development Lab expansion to Michigan Avenue, bringing our nationally recognized early childhood education programs to a new state-of-the-art facility there. Building on our existing locations in East Lansing and Haslett, the CDL will be operated by our Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Social Science to offer high-quality early childhood education and provide critical training for students. We expect to occupy the new CDL location, which received state and federal funding, in January.
As the university looks forward to another exciting year, our actions going forward will be guided by our recently refreshed and reaffirmed MSU 2030 strategic plan. The plan maintains its grounding in our public land-grant mission and reasserts Michigan State’s commitment to our central strategic priorities and core values, while integrating new cross-cutting themes that will spur innovation and synergy.
Like other leading global research universities around the country, Michigan State faces a fast-changing operating environment, and the MSU 2030 plan serves as a north star to maintain our orientation. Several new, key leaders will also help us meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
This month, we welcomed Laura Lee McIntyre as our new provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. Dr. McIntyre shares our one-team approach to embracing our rich land-grant traditions while becoming a more contemporary and bold institution, cementing MSU’s place as what I like to call “Michigan’s state university.”
Helping lead our work to make our campus a welcoming and supportive environment for all students, we also welcomed James Hintz as our new vice president for Student Affairs. Dr. Hintz is an experienced leader with a deep commitment to student success, inclusion and well-being.
And on Sept. 11, I’m looking forward to leading a conversation with our new director of athletics, J Batt, before the Lansing Economic Club. Intercollegiate athletics operates in an exceptionally dynamic environment today, and J has the experience and drive to help elevate Spartan Athletics to the next level.
Before I close, I want to touch briefly on some of the leadership initiatives I’ve launched in the last year that are drawing us closer to community partners, including Lansing schools.
I view MSU’s mission as one of attracting and activating talent for the state of Michigan. Earlier this month, we recognized and welcomed 40 incoming students as the inaugural cohort of our Lansing Spartan Scholars Program. These local students will have access to high-impact experiences such as first-year seminars, internships and service-learning engagements — all with a Lansing-centric focus.
Michigan State is committed to being a transfer-friendly university, and students who transfer into MSU graduate at very high rates. An agreement with Lansing Community College renewed and expanded our commitment to Envision Green, which smooths the pathway for LCC students to transfer to MSU. At our Transfer Student Success Center, staff and faculty are working to expand credit for prior learning and accelerate transfer credit evaluation as we create equitable pathways to bachelor’s degree completion for transfer students.
Conclusion
Michigan State and our surrounding community are knit closely together through countless social, civic and economic ties. In Ingham County alone, we employ some 7,500 residents, spend close to $214 million with local businesses and create an overall annual economic impact of $3.4 billion. I’m grateful for the many areas of collaboration we enjoy with local governments, employers and residents on behalf of this wonderful regional community.
There is so much more I could write about, but you can learn more by visiting our MSUToday website.
I want to thank all our campus community neighbors for your partnership in making ours such a great area in which to live, work and play. I’m sure you can find much to enjoy on our campus, and I hope to see you here.
Sincerely,
Kevin M. Guskiewicz, Ph.D.
(pronounced GUS-ka-wits)
President
Professor, Department of Kinesiology