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Good morning, and congratulations once again to our 2025 newly endowed professors.
Your excellence truly elevates the capacity of our university to drive our work toward achieving our aspirations as a leading, global, public research university.
Thanks to all my Spartan colleagues joining us today, including several of our trustees.
One year ago — almost to the day - at my presidential investiture here at Wharton Center, I shared a vision for Michigan State University — not just my own, but one shaped by conversations and collaborations with so many across campus.
Together, we outlined big goals:
Making Michigan State University the most inclusive, welcoming, and safe environment it can be.
Tackling grand societal challenges head-on.
And transforming Michigan State University into a truly next-generation university.
We also launched several leadership initiatives aimed at achieving those goals.
Today, I’m excited to share the progress we’ve made — and a glimpse of what’s ahead.
Let’s start with some great news, and there is much to celebrate.
What’s new
First, we entered the new academic year enrolling more undergraduate students than ever before. It’s clear that students and families place their trust in us to provide an education that is practical, exceptional and accessible.
Students come to us from 139 countries, all 50 states and all 83 Michigan counties.
We remain the top choice for in-state students, with over 8,200 Michiganders as part of this new class.
And over 600 highly achieving incoming students joined the Honors College, 30 of whom represent our inaugural class of Williams Scholars.
Second, the new U.S. News rankings just placed six of our undergraduate programs among the nation’s top-25, two more than last year.
Supply Chain Management: #1 for 15 years running
Service Learning and Education Abroad: #1 among public universities
Learning Communities: #2 nationally
I want to offer a huge congratulations to the faculty and staff who make these programs shine!
However, not all developments this past year have been easy. Federal policy changes have disrupted our operations and impacted our core mission of teaching, research and outreach.
But Spartans don’t back down.
We’ve mobilized teams to respond swiftly, protect our research, support our people, and continue serving the public — as we always have. I’ve taken our message to Washington, D.C. and invited lawmakers here to see firsthand the value we provide through research, education and outreach.
We’re also taking action at home. Through the Jenison Trust, we’re investing $5 million per year for three years to support affected research.
Just last week, we notified 37 recipients of this funding. Their work is nothing short of inspiring:
Agricultural economist Kajal Gulati will be able to pivot from her international work in food safety and security toward applications in the United States, including examining lead testing policies on children’s health and educational outcomes.
The history department’s Professor Walter Hawthorne can complete data integration supporting scholarly and public access to the names and stories of more than 33,000 historically enslaved individuals on the unique MSU-based Enslaved.org platform.
And graduate student Mylena Ortiz can continue preparing for a career in cancer research.
Jenison funding will support 24 graduate students and restore four fellowships, allowing our continued education of the next generation of scholars and leaders.
This is what it means to live our mission — to invest in people, knowledge and purpose.
I want to thank all those in the offices and on the rapid response teams analyzing each new mandate and recommending ways to mitigate the disruption to our operations and our people. We will stay true to our Spartan mission and our Spartan values.
Not all our challenges stem from external factors, and I acknowledge the anxiety around our internal budget adjustments. I want to salute the careful work our colleges and administrative units have done to help build a secure, sustainable future for MSU.
Together — as One Team we’ve taken steps to ensure our financial health for the long term.
Let me be clear, as I said earlier this year: MSU is not in a financial crisis — but we are navigating a complex landscape, and making tough, proactive decisions now to stay strong.
Thanks to our community’s hard work, we’ve:
Maintained the lowest tuition increase among Michigan’s public universities over the past decade.
Increased university-funded financial aid.
And protected essential programs while aligning resources with strategic priorities.
And we’re not slowing down. We’re moving forward — together — as One Team with a clearer understanding of who we are and who we can become.
So, Let’s talk apples.
Yes, it’s harvest season — and Michigan is the nation’s second-largest apple producer. That matters, because it connects directly to our roots and our role in supporting Michigan’s economy and agriculture.
Spartan Bus Tour
I look back at our visit to the Martinez farm in Conklin during our inaugural Spartan Bus Tour last fall and am proud to know that Michigan’s 775 family-run apple farms have a reliable partner in Michigan State University.
The training in agricultural and management practices we offer to farmers such as Paulino Martinez and his team provide the knowledge to ensure Michigan leads the way in apple production.
The Spartan Bus Tour was one of the leadership initiatives I announced last year.
In addition to central and western Michigan last October, we’ve traveled to Detroit in May to visit places our students call home and where Michigan State is making a difference through our education, research and outreach.
And this fall — October 19-21, we’re hitting the road again, this time to the Upper Peninsula, visiting communities, listening, learning and building connections.
Comprehensive campaign
And keeping with the Apple theme: We began sowing new seeds for Michigan State’s future excellence and impact with the launch in March of our ambitious, $4 billion comprehensive campaign: Uncommon Will, Far Better World.
This isn’t just about raising funds. It’s about fueling purpose.
Already, 128,000 donors have given nearly $1.3 billion — including a record-breaking $380 million last fiscal year.
This philanthropic support is transforming lives, and there are many great examples I could share, but just to name a few:
It’s opening doors to education abroad and experiential learning.
It’s helping us build the future Engineering and Digital Innovation Center, a powerhouse of cross-disciplinary talent that will expand frontiers in high-demand fields and blend academic disciplines across six colleges.
It’s strengthening our top-ranked School of Packaging, which is the only one in the country offering a Ph.D. Thanks to a recent commitment, our School of Packaging will build upon its foundation as the largest and best program in the country, continuing to be a key partner for regional and national industries for decades to come.
Every dollar is an investment in our people, our progress, and our potential.
Our comprehensive campaign is a call to action for every Spartan, who will continue to give, to lead and to believe. But we must do our part by creating the amazing stories that emerge from this magical place we have come to love — stories based on the work of our world class faculty, dedicated staff and curious students.
Because with uncommon will and unwavering optimism, we can — and will — push boundaries, take bold action and rise to meet today’s challenges to shape a brighter tomorrow.
Refreshed strategic plan
One of our most important accomplishments of the past year was the re-imagining and reframing of our 2030 strategic plan to adjust for changing conditions and apply lessons learned since its 2021 adoption.
The refreshed, reaffirmed strategic plan ensures responsiveness and relevance to current and anticipated conditions, and my thanks go out to the many people who contributed to this important update to the university’s roadmap to the future.
More oriented now toward broader impact and bold action, the plan leans into collaboration and connection to achieve our goals, echoing our one-team approach at MSU.
It also maintains grounding in our public land-grant mission and reaffirms Michigan State’s commitment to our strategic priorities and core values, while integrating new cross-cutting themes that can spur innovation and synergy in key areas.
Growing talent
One of our broadest cross-cutting themes, “Growing talent for Michigan and beyond,” encompasses our strategic priorities of student success; access, opportunity and excellence; sustainable health; and discovery and innovation.
We are creating new pathways to maintain our proud standing as an accessible institution, where students thrive.
Among our signature leadership initiatives I announced last year, this fall we welcomed our inaugural 30 Williams Scholars, the university’s first full-ride scholarship with experiential learning opportunity support. They are an impressive group of talented and curious first-year students who demonstrate the importance of such programs as we recruit the best and brightest scholars to Michigan State.
We expanded Spartan Tuition Advantage eligibility to Native American students in the United States and Canada, and we’re smoothing the path for transfer students through our partnership with Lansing Community College and our Transfer Student Success Center, and our First-Gen Center anticipates a full opening within the next year.
And to reinforce our ability to prepare students for the workforce of today and tomorrow, I appointed our Green and White Council. I want to thank those Michigan business and civic leaders who answered the call with their wealth of talent and knowledge to help us better produce career-connected Spartans.
With their guidance, we will prepare, connect and catalyze talent for in-demand jobs with the skills of the future by connecting Spartans to the best Michigan companies and career opportunities across the country and leveraging our cutting-edge research and intellectual property to propel Michigan’s economy.
One of our Green and White Council members, former U.S. senator and proud double-Spartan Debbie Stabenow, points out that Michigan doesn’t have an economy if we don’t grow things and make things. A vital component of activating talent for those imperatives is Michigan State’s research, innovation and outreach.
Our Global Impact Initiative, buttressing our activity in promising areas of research, is an institutional success now in its second phase. An additional 20 faculty positions were added in disciplines such as space electronics, computational biology and health services research. This long-term investment will help reach our strategic goal of $1 billion in annual research expenditures by 2030, an objective we remain optimistic in achieving.
The outcomes of talent attraction and talent activation are no more evident than through our ability to deliver groundbreaking research and innovations such as the breakthrough drug cisplatin to the world’s arsenal of cancer treatments. This is a story we often tell to illustrate the importance of the federal and university research ecosystem.
It’s also a personal one for me, as a very close college friend from the Philadelphia area — is just about to complete a series of treatments using such a platinum compound to successfully eradicate his stomach cancer.
Earlier this month, in fact, the American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded cisplatin its 2025 Golden Goose Award, highlighting the drug’s stunning success in saving the lives of millions and underscoring the value of fundamental research.
Another unique Michigan State contribution to science in partnership with the federal government, the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, continues to activate talent through robust student training, workforce development and research opportunities.
FRIB, under the direction of Director Thomas Glasmacher, trains experts in fields of national priority like nuclear science, cryogenic engineering, radiochemistry and accelerator science and engineering. And, more than 85% of undergraduates engaged with FRIB remain in Michigan for further education or careers, which strengthens the state’s 21st century workforce pipeline.
MSU is pushing boundaries — not only in the lab but also in the orchard.
Earlier, I mentioned apple season, and apples are a great way to illustrate how Michigan State supports Michigan’s agricultural economy from the lab bench to the dining table.
Apples have been part of MSU’s story since the beginning. The pioneer farm that became our first campus in 1855 came with 75 “choice fruit trees,” and a new apple orchard was an early priority for our inaugural president, Joseph Williams.
Today’s fruit growers’ challenges include increasingly volatile weather, and our MSU Extension specialists offer crop maturity reports and a variety of other information to support their success.
Research, too, plays an important role. Dr. Steve van Nocker, a plant geneticist in our College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, has located a once-common native species here in Michigan, a more frost-tolerant, late-blooming variety holding new promise for growers coping with spring frosts following early blooms. Another USDA-funded R&D program supported MSU faculty members in developing an artificial intelligence-equipped robotic picker.
So, safe to say, we’re making powerful advances in research and innovation — from the FRIB training pipeline in nuclear science and cryogenic engineering to our next-gen work in AI, robotics, and plant genetics.
Continuing with our reimagined strategic plan, we are committed to driving health transformation.
Transforming health
Michigan State today is also pushing medical boundaries through our research and a vision for leveraging our academic, research and clinical synergies to maximize our impact on health care. There are many examples of how we are leading.
Earlier this month, Provost McIntyre and I had a conversation in Washington, D.C., with Sen. Gary Peters. Sen. Peters enthusiastically described work we’re doing to treat brain cancer he’d learned about during a recent tour of our Institute for Quantitative Health Sciences and Engineering.
Last week we celebrated the 15- year anniversary of our Secchia Center and our valued partnership with organizations like Corewell Health and the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids to overcome medical challenges like maternal health, cancer and autism, while making a commitment to training the next generation of Spartan doctors dedicated to caring for the people of Michigan and beyond.
Earlier this year, we entered the fifth year of our 30-year partnership with Henry Ford Health and continued the integration of research and clinical operations to improve access to health care here and across Michigan. We celebrated the construction of our joint medical research facility in Detroit, which will promote synergies between our combined medical research teams to confront cancer and other diseases.
Focused as we are on activating talent, we can all be proud that our College of Osteopathic Medicine was recently named the first osteopathic medical school in the country in the prestigious NIH Medical Scientist Training Program. This recognizes our Physician-Scientist Training Program as one of the top dual-degree programs in the U.S. and elevates our influence in the biomedical research community.
Michigan State brings a unique mix of assets to human, animal and plant health, and that’s one of the factors driving our ongoing study of integrating these assets into a One Health concept. Announced last February, this program grew out of a seven-month assessment of our organizational structure by our Health Sciences Council, and I’m grateful for their work.
What we’re calling One Team, One Health is catalyzing new opportunities for students, faculty, researchers and staff in ways that will elevate our capacity and our reputation as a leading global public research university. And by creating forward-thinking medical education and research programs, we have an opportunity to address health care workforce shortages and equip the next generation of providers to meet society’s evolving needs and provide the highest quality care.
The One Health Council today continues to collect input from our university community and investigate how we innovate and best prepare our graduates to lead in research and clinical care. We look forward to receiving its recommendations on the big, bold ideas that were proposed last winter.
Next-generation organization
I mentioned earlier that maintaining a status quo institution is not our mission. Any sustainable enterprise must improve, and we are resolved to model next-generation operations and organization. That means systematic implementation of principles and tools enhancing performance and creating a culture of continuous improvement.
As a result, we are launching an Innovation Lab to generate ideas, products and services to create breakthroughs and deliver transformative outcomes that will modernize and improve our daily operations.
And to help balance today’s economic, social and environmental priorities while protecting those resources for the future, our Office of Sustainability has launched the Sustainability Systems Think Tank. This cross-functional team will provide thought leadership leading to a comprehensive university sustainability framework.
Building community together
Building Community Together, another cross-cutting theme in our strategic planning, means building a foundation for success both among our diverse and inclusive campus community members as well as stakeholders locally and across Michigan.
At my presidential investiture last year, I committed to deepening our partnerships with our local community and to be more intentional in how we collaborate. Today, I am proud this work is evolving to where we will soon launch our inaugural Community Partnership Roadmaps, which put that promise into action.
These roadmaps will guide how MSU aligns its research, teaching and outreach with regional priorities. They will reflect our responsibility not only to be a global research leader but also to serve as a trusted anchor for mid-Michigan’s prosperity by building a stronger, more resilient region.
Enroll for the future
Our community building extends beyond our local region, of course, something we’re doing in Detroit with our Apple Developer Academy and now, an Apple Manufacturing academy. These partnerships, activating talent beyond our campus boundaries and traditional student body, also illustrate our final cross-cutting strategic theme, Enroll for the Future.
In conclusion, I believe in an MSU future built together, with a great roadmap to get us to our destination.
To paraphrase what I said at my investiture a year ago: Michigan State University offers one of the best returns on investment in higher education today. For students. For families. For Michigan. And for the world.
A Michigan State University degree is a lifelong asset. And giving back — through service, support, or advocacy — amplifies its impact even further.
With uncommon will and unshakable purpose, we are moving forward — together — as one Spartan team.
And speaking of teams ... we’ve also enjoyed an exciting start to our year thanks to the way our athletic teams have represented us in competition. It’s great to have our new director of athletics, J Batt, with us as our sports seasons get underway, and best wishes for all our teams.
And I’ll just wrap up by noting that today is Michigan Apple Day at MSU — and yes, apples are on the menu. From cider to pie to harvest smoothies, we’re celebrating the incredible bounty and beauty of our state.
I want to give a heartfelt thank-you to Stacey Dawson and our Culinary Services team for crafting today’s delicious offerings — featuring apples from a sixth-generation family farm in Sparta, Michigan.
Please join us at the reception as we toast to the season and to all that we are accomplishing together.
Spartans to the core.
Thank you for joining us today. And as always…GO GREEN!