Remarks as prepared
Thanks to all who joined us today to honor some of our most accomplished faculty members. Congratulations to all we recognize today for your well-earned honors.
Dreamers and doers
Michigan State faculty and academic staff are dreamers and doers. They are world-class researchers and educators who discover and share knowledge and drive our university’s global reputation.
And thanks once more to all those whose vision and generosity endow these positions to support the excellence that sustains this remarkable university.
I’m reminded of alumnus Eli Broad, a major benefactor of our highly respected college of business and our stunning art museum.
Eli Broad was a visionary entrepreneur who made his fortune bringing affordable homes to rapidly developing suburban markets. An exacting leader, he proudly described his mindset as “unreasonable.” He took his inspiration from playwright George Bernard Shaw’s observation that reasonable people adapt to the world — while unreasonable people adapt the world to themselves, and, thus, are the actual drivers of our progress.
In academia, we rightly honor rationality and reason. But in 1931, having changed our understanding of the universe, Albert Einstein wrote that:
“At times I feel certain I am right, while not knowing the reason.... For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress (and) giving birth to evolution.”
Imagine if
We talked earlier this morning about our comprehensive campaign pillar of “synergies imagined” and the power of interdisciplinary collaboration.
A lot of you in this room have probably been asked, if you could do something groundbreaking, what would you do? In other words, “imagine if.”
For example, in my area of research — sport-related concussion, I’ve been asked countless times, “How can we prevent them? And surely, we can develop a concussion-proof helmet.”
The challenge is both protecting the skull from fracture — which helmets do really well — and protecting the fragile interior, the brain, from a jarring injury.
So, while today the material needed to both prevent skull fractures and protect the sloshing of the brain inside the skull may best be referred to as "inobtainium.” Imagine if Michigan State University — perhaps through collaborations at our new Leinweber Center for Engineering and Digital Innovation — can change that narrative and develop the material capable of both the hard shell protection and the softer, more “bubble wrap-like” protection needed to cushion the brain on impact.
We should all have an “imagine if” aimed at solving a grand challenge.
Our university was conceived more than 170 years ago by forward-thinking founders who, being broadly curious and well-read, also dared to imagine something new.
Imagine if an institution of higher learning could bring the most cutting-edge knowledge to everyday people as well as to the elite.
Imagine if a place could develop generations of leaders equipped with such knowledge and the will to lead their communities forward to compete with the best in the world.
As our first president, Joseph Williams, acknowledged to his board, it was something new — an experiment. And over the generations, its success would rise or fall on the excellence of its faculty.
Looking back, we can see how this institution has been blessed with a long line of impactful scholars leading its academic programs, its research enterprise and its outreach efforts to this day.
Pursuing innovation
I can point to another scholar we’ve recognized on this stage before: President Emerita and MSU Research Foundation Professor Teresa Woodruff. Dr. Woodruff is this year’s recipient of the Society for the Study of Reproduction’s highest honor.
Dr. Woodruff leads a national consortium aiming to change how medications are developed and prescribed for women — what she has imagined as a “moon shot” for women’s health.
With a new, multiyear NIH award of nearly $13 million, her team aims to build advanced computer models to predict how women’s natural hormonal changes affect how medicines act within the body. Their work promises stronger research studies and better real-world outcomes for women.
Dr. Woodruff, by the way, was also recently elected to the oldest learned society in the United States, the American Philosophical Society, and to the prestigious Fellowship of the Royal Society.
This brings to mind another Royal Society fellow, Issac Newton, who in 1675 modestly explained that if he saw farther than others, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. And so it remains in the present day, one innovation built on another’s discovery and the power of “synergies imagined.”
Spartans recall the discovery of the cancer-fighting properties of cisplatin by biophysicist Barnett Rosenberg and his interdisciplinary science team in the 1960s. It remains a gold-standard therapy to this day.
But cancer is a stubborn, even crafty disease, sometimes altering its internal structure to confound chemotherapy. Now, a College of Human Medicine team has identified the protein that allows cancer cells to stabilize their internal scaffolding. And so, imagine if that knowledge allows them to innovate new strategies to take that protein out of the equation to restore cancer’s vulnerability to chemotherapy.
I had the pleasure of joining the MSU Research Foundation board recently to celebrate its new headquarters, which is so appropriately named for Dr. Rosenberg.
Moving from medicine to information technology, here’s another example illustrating how continuous innovation might solve one of our society’s greatest current challenges.
Great Lakes Crystal Technologies is a startup company built on Michigan State science, with offices in East Lansing and manufacturing in Lansing. It’s working to address the limitations of silicon in electronics through innovations in diamond manufacturing.
Diamond dissipates heat better and promises exceptional stability in extreme conditions — making it an attractive prospect for high-power electronics and emerging quantum technologies.
So, imagine if such technology could expand the physical limits constraining advances in such areas as computing, energy, aerospace, defense and sensing.
It takes many people working as one team to sustain an innovation ecosystem. The MSU Research Foundation played a key role in helping launch the company through its entrepreneurship and venture support network, and the MSU Innovation Center continues to support Great Lakes through licensing and commercialization services.
Diamond-based technologies are also part of what’s behind a new facility designed to accelerate development and testing of advanced electronics for extreme environments in space. With a new $20 million National Science Foundation grant, the program connects the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, the MSU Space Electronics Initiative and the Fraunhofer USA Center Midwest in this innovative expansion of our microchip testing capabilities.
I want to add that our faculty’s research activities are a big part of the university’s educational excellence, and I want to thank our faculty for all the opportunities they offer for student research.
Our success in discovery and innovation translates into success in the classroom and across our educational mission. For example, FRIB attracts the best students to study nuclear and accelerator science, cryogenic engineering and radiochemistry. MSU awards 15% of U.S. nuclear physics Ph.D.s, and these students train for areas of critical workforce need and national competitiveness.
And having mentioned information technology, I want to thank all those engaged in our university’s efforts to both deliver on the beneficial promises of artificial intelligence and manage its many challenges.
These efforts include our Green and White Council, whose work spurred a grants challenge to our faculty and academic staff through the AI Ready Spartans Initiative to speed the integration of generative AI into teaching and learning.
I’ll just repeat what I said at the Board of Trustees’ stakeholder engagement forum this month, after considering a strong thread running through our conversations: We know AI is here to stay, but at MSU, we must always keep it human (and people) centered. Our faculty will be vital to that effort.
I’m sure we’ll also hear more about the impact of artificial intelligence on another key information industry at this evening’s presentation by New York Times Publisher and Chairman A.G. Sulzberger. The free program is right here in the Pasant Theatre at 6 p.m. and is part of our Presidential Speaker Series. I hope you can join us.
Supporting researchers
Understanding the importance of these distinguished chairs and professorships in recruiting and retaining the world’s best faculty, I want to salute Provost Laura Lee McIntyre’s work toward expanding our John A. Hannah Distinguished Professorships. I look forward to celebrating a new, larger cohort of colleagues in this theater next year.
We’re thinking about other ways to support our faculty, too.
Imagine if we could give faculty members more time to do what they do best — advancing their scholarship and innovation — while easing their burdens of research compliance and at the same time enhancing MSU’s external funding competitiveness.
And imagine if we had a place for all our faculty to showcase their research and engage with companies seeking expertise to solve their challenges. Imagine if an infrastructure brokering such university and industry relationships created a powerful innovation hub right here in mid-Michigan. Under Vice President for Research and Innovation Shashank Priya, we’re doing it.
Together, we've thought about how to improve opportunities for our graduate students and postdoctoral scholars — who are critical to advancing our research enterprise. So, I’m pleased that we are working to better support recent Ph.D. graduates and overall health-related grant competitiveness through our MSU Research Foundation Postdoctoral Scholars Program. Imagine how training the next generation of brilliant investigators could be improved by providing rigorous postdoctoral training within established, high-performing research environments.
We’re again this year also soliciting funding proposals to support graduate students nearing degree completion and to faculty who are experiencing disruptions in research funding due to federal actions. For the second year, we’re making up to $5 million available through our Jenison Fund, with the application deadline closing Nov. 9. I’m also pleased to announce additional support for graduate student research as part of this commitment.
The challenges our society faces require us to think creatively, work across disciplines and identify and pursue leadership opportunities.
Another initiative led by our Office of Research and Innovation, our National Security Initiative, seeks to gather expertise in areas ranging from food, mobility, energy and public health to cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, critical infrastructure and autonomous systems.
Imagine if, by connecting and collaborating in this space, we can better accelerate discovery and ensure national security.
Michigan State’s education and research aren’t confined to our campus, of course. I launched our semiannual Spartan Bus Tour to help our faculty expand their vision by viewing in person the many ways and places our colleagues are making a difference in the communities Spartans call home.
A particularly memorable moment for me came during our trip last spring, when we learned about MSU’s 25-year lake sturgeon conservation program and partnerships. I helped release two tagged sturgeon into the Saginaw River. And thanks to decades of work, our researchers recently concluded that these resilient, prehistoric creatures can live well upwards of 200 years. Let’s capture some of those genes and that good living!
Next month, I look forward to joining colleagues for the next leg of the Spartan Bus Tour, traversing the state’s southern reaches.
Sharing our vision
Our willingness to reach across disciplines and departments to make a difference for our students and state was one of the things that first attracted me to Michigan State.
And as I reflected this past summer on how and where I might continue to make a difference, it was one of the things that influenced my decision to stay here and continue pursuing our dreams together. I saw momentum and bright promise, and so much movement toward greater access to this amazing institution, multiplying our impact and creating opportunities for even more people.
The moments Amy and I shared with students and their families during fall move-in and in other events early this semester remind me how great it is to be here at this time and place, and how much we have appreciated the positive sentiments sent our way over the past several months.
And I continue to listen closely to the concerns of our university community. I’m currently in the middle of my One Team Engagement Tour, where I’m once again visiting our colleges and major administrative units, hearing the aspirations and concerns of our faculty, staff and leadership. And I always like to say to my colleagues on these visits, “imagine if.”
We’re on a great trajectory. Through initiatives including a long-overdue modernization of our general education curriculum — spearheaded by our amazing faculty — and the support of external partners such as those on our Green and White Council, we will become an even greater talent attractor and activator for the state of Michigan, and beyond.
Behind this year’s strong enrollment of nearly 51,000 students, we remain the No. 1 choice for in-state students and “Michigan’s state university.”
There is no doubt in my mind that the strength of our academic programs and the quality of our faculty are decisive components of our popularity and the success of our students. Among our rankings I’m most proud of is our place in the Times Higher Education top 10 public universities for graduate employability.
As we imagine ways to fulfill our land-grant mission better and enhance our impact and reputation, we can take encouragement that others share our vision and confidence.
Even amid heightened uncertainty around federal regulations and funding, we are closing in on our 2030 strategic goal of reaching $1 billion in annual research expenditures three years earlier than targeted.
Simply put, we are on a great trajectory, alongside our outstanding faculty and researchers; our dedicated staff; some of the country’s most accomplished coaches; and let us never forget why we all come together — to serve our ambitious and curious Spartan students.
Speaking of outstanding Spartans, how about our alumni and friends, who have also shown their enthusiasm for our vision through our Uncommon Will, Far Better World campaign?
In the last fiscal year, nearly 64,000 donors contributed a record-breaking $736 million, bringing the total to $1.94 billion toward our $4 billion goal. I believe the campaign’s core pillars, including “synergies imagined,” have captured the imaginations of many people.
We also enjoyed unprecedented private and public support for our new Leinweber Center for Engineering and Digital Innovation, which is well underway. We secured a $60 million investment from the state of Michigan and our largest private gift for an academic facility — $50 million — from the Leinweber Foundation, along with several other substantial gifts.
The Leinweber Center is the manifestation of a bold vision encompassing multiple disciplines and colleges to train the broadly curious and knowledgeable technologists fit for dynamic careers in the 21st century.
At our construction celebration just a couple of weeks ago, Larry Leinweber told some of his inspirational story. Coming from a modest, rural background, Larry worked his way through Michigan State in the early 1960s, even hitchhiking across the country to start his MSU career. A few years later, with an MSU degree in hand, he imagined great possibilities at the infancy of the software industry.
I was reminded of the power of storytelling, and I encourage all of us here to tell our stories — and the university’s stories — to our students, alumni, donors and any others who might find inspiration there.
Gratitude to MSU staff
Today we’ve focused on faculty excellence and imagining the roles we all can play in a better future. I want to close, now, with gratitude to another group of Spartans, without whom we simply couldn’t go any further than “imagining if.”
I’m talking about our dedicated support staff, including those who, over the last 10 days, rose to the challenge of an unprecedented power interruption affecting our campus.
So my thanks to everyone in Infrastructure Planning and Facilities and to the emergency crews, residence and dining hall staffs and the many others who stepped forward to support our campus community, especially our students. And thanks to the faculty members who pivoted their courses and offered accommodations to mitigate the academic impacts on students that the situation created.
It’s a great reminder that, at Michigan State, we are all One Team — one that is Spartan strong and resilient. Spartans will!
Thank you all once again for joining us for today’s programs.
