MSU Today with Russ White: Recent Episodes
Russ White
MSU Today is a lively look at Michigan State University-related people, places, events and attitudes put into focus by Russ White. The show airs Saturdays at 5 P.M. and Sundays at 5 A.M. on 102.3 FM and AM 870 WKAR, and 8 P.M. on AM 760 WJR.
Michigan State University’s chapter of the Society of Women Engineers is celebrating its 50th anniversary of recruiting, supporting, and retaining women in the engineering profession.
Three Spartan Engineers discuss the evolution of women in engineering, challenges and opportunities ahead in the next 50 years, and share their advice for young women interested in STEM fields. The panel discussion includes Dayana Villagran, ’21 alum, General Motors mechanical engineer; Dr. Laura Genik, Applied Engineering Sciences Director/alum and Sara Purdue, mechanical engineering senior, actively involved in Women in Engineering.
Conversation Highlights:
(6:05) – “I think the Society of Women Engineers has done a lot to advance the community of women in engineering.”
(7:54) – “Representation is a huge thing. And if you see somebody like you, or someone who has a similar background, it can spark that possibility that you can also get there.”
(8:47) – “I think you come into an engineering program expecting to be surrounded by men.”
(10:24) – “One of the main things that has always stuck in the back of my head is that everyone has these expectations for you being a woman in engineering. If someone asks me what I’m majoring in and I say mechanical engineering, they say ‘Wow, that’s really impressive. That’s awesome of you.’ And although it comes from a good place, they’re often shocked and don’t expect it. So be prepared for that reaction but be proud of what you’re doing.”
(11:46) – “I would say the biggest thing is not to be afraid.”
(13:38) – “It has to start in the K-12 realm where you’re not discouraging women and girls from staying active in math and science.”
(15:12) – “You have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable in a situation. And when you look at engineering, sometimes you can feel like a square peg in a round hole. But the mechanical engineering solution to that is to get a bigger hammer. The square peg is going to deform, but so is the round hole. But they’re still going to come together to work.”
(16:39) – “I like to speak on my story a lot. I don’t necessarily feel like it’s my duty. I have a need to share what I’ve been through to show those people who are going through something similar that it doesn’t matter where you come from or from where you start as long as you have a passion to do something, and you’re dedicated to doing it. You are more than capable of doing that.”
(17:47) – “I think there still needs to be, unfortunately, a revolution in thinking that has to be societal.”
(19:07) – “Try to pull someone with you…I feel like if you bring somebody with you, you’ve made a difference because it’s not just you now. You have somebody beside you who you’ve helped along the way.”
(19:58) – “There is still just this overall kind of thinking that women aren’t going to be as successful in certain paths as men may be. At the end of the day, you have to be proud of where you’re at.”
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Michigan State University Interim President Teresa K. Woodruff elaborates on topics she covers in her August 2023 Spartan Community Letter, which you can read by clicking on the communications tab at president.msu.edu.
Conversation Highlights:
(1:22) – “It’s an exciting time. I was at a meeting this summer, and someone was saying they’re despairing for the future. And I said I’m not because of our MSU students and their energy, drive, and determination.”
(2:19) – “The Beal Garden is my favorite place on campus. It’s a wonderful living, learning laboratory in a beautiful spot of reflection and healing.”
(4:06) – “We have been opening our doors as wide as we can to the broadest diversity of entrants to this university since its inception.”
(5:38) – “This is a place of learning and of sport. That says something about the breadth and the value and the opportunity that we have at Michigan State University.”
(6:55) – “It’s very important to me that we are ensuring a safe and enjoyable environment in celebration of athletics for those who don’t drink as well.”
(9:26) – “This is really a moment for leadership in the area of athletics to ensure that we don’t tip into a place where we’ve lost the student-athletes’ value proposition.”
(11:08) – We really want to make that message clear that the value proposition of an MSU degree is high. And the dollars you put into your degree when you complete really never amortize. They only grow.”
(12:22) – “Michigan State is really making a difference, just as our founders said, in the practical sciences and arts.”
(13:20) – “What I want people to know is that the research we do has practical implication in the lives we live.”
(14:57) – “We are an ecosystem of innovation.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.
Molly Brennan is 2023 MSU Homecoming Grand Marshal for Michigan State University
Molly is a Spartan with both academic and athletic legacies. She was the engineering group manager for the Truck and Bus Division of General Motors Corporation, where she won the first World Solar Challenge, setting four solar and electric land speed records in the Guinness Book of World Records. Beyond her illustrious career in engineering, she also made significant achievements as a track athlete, scholar, and philanthropist.
Brennan shares some favorite MSU memories and talks about her accomplishments in life. She talks about challenges she has overcome and shares her advice for young women interested in STEM careers.
Conversation Highlights:
(1:59) – “I didn’t really have a hard class.”
(5:56) – “The deciding factor was when I stepped foot on campus, and it felt like home.”
(9:57) – “I made the very hard decision to stay home with my kids. And as a result, my kids are my proudest accomplishment.”
(10:37) – “I would say the biggest challenge was being female.”
(14:00) – “We want you to drive a solar car in Australia.”
(16:33) – “Just like Kennedy sparking space exploration, we hope we sparked an interest in kids.”
(17:29) – “I hope we get it right because our planet is burning. My generation has not been good stewards of the planet.”
(19:30) – “I love MSU. And I totally understand the transformative opportunities it gave me. And I want to give students here that same opportunity.”
(21:22) – “I’m hoping that as grand marshal, I’m able to unite our student body and faculty and especially our alumni to reconnect back with Michigan State. Hopefully, they feel the same sense of gratitude that I do.”
Brennan is working with the MSU Alumni Office to identify campus fund initiatives for Homecoming that are meaningful to her and have transformed her life while on campus. One of the great things about MSU is Spartans can give back to the areas they are most passionate about. To learn more about Molly’s selected giving initiatives, visit giving.msu.edu.
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.
Michigan State University has a newly renovated School of Packaging building, following a fundraising campaign that raised more than $10 million.
Upgrades to the facility, which was last updated in 1986, will help MSU remain a leader in the packaging field. The School of Packaging Building renovation helps to modernize teaching and learning by adding flexible classrooms that seamlessly integrate technology. Collaboration-friendly spaces invite industry partners to engage with students, and the modernized facilities will attract faculty by providing the proper space and tools to conduct world-class research.
The Lansmont Corporation extended its investment in packaging durability testing and research by donating test and measurement technologies for the Lansmont/PPT Group Laboratory. Their in-kind equipment donations include a TruMotion Acceleration Sled system, updated data acquisition system, vibration table controller and software, shock table and controller, as well as next generation SAVER units.
Matt Daum is the director of MSU’s School of Packaging. And MSU alumnus Eric Joneson is vice president of technology for Lansmont. They talk about what makes MSU’s School of Packaging the leader in packaging education. They discuss the packaging building renovations and how they will enhance that educational experience. They talk about challenges and opportunities ahead for the packaging industry, too, and give reasons why young people should consider careers in packaging.
Conversation Highlights:
(0:46) – “Most people have not heard of packaging or don’t know that you can actually get a degree in packaging.”
(5:09) – “The people at the Naval Post Graduate School got in communication with Dr. James Goff here at Michigan State and wondered if this whole methodology or approach that works for testing and building better or more robust communications equipment and electronics for military applications, why wouldn’t it work for commercial, off the shelf products?”
(7:21) – “We really felt it was important for us to update our facilities to enhance the way that we teach and to be a focal center point and something our alumni can be proud of.”
(11:12) – “This is a very pivotal time in the history of packaging and in particular this field of distribution packaging.”
(14:02) – “It’s important to know about each of those three things: product, environment, and packaging. The three of those have to work together and complement one another to deliver products of quality to consumers.”
(18:27) – “There’s a little bit of science. There’s a little bit of art. There’s a little bit of communications. There’s a little bit of business. For those who have curious minds and like to connect different ideas and disciplines together, we offer that in our program.”
(20:47) – “It’s not atypical to be in Brazil, Korea, China, Japan, The Netherlands and walk by a cubicle and see a green “S.” I’ve probably said Go Green Go White on six or seven continents. It’s pretty cool.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.
Throughout the summer months, work on expanding Michigan State University’s safety and security network has continued. MSU stands committed to making sure its campus is a safe place for all Spartans – students, faculty, staff, and visitors alike.
MSU Vice President and Chief Safety Officer Marlon Lynch updates the progress of the work that has been completed over the summer.
Conversation Highlights:
(1:45) – “The process of centralizing security systems and creating additional layers of security through staff and technology has been underway for about a year and a half.”
(3:18) – “We have an initiative we’re working on now to utilize outdoor speakers. And we’re going to go to a tone that we’ll have to educate our community on. It’s like the monthly tornado sirens that we hear, but it will be distinctly different.”
(4:30) – “We are about 60 percent complete with the door lock installations.”
(11:39) – “The implementation of the security technology is a force multiplier. It allows us to see this huge campus and provide additional opportunities to see what’s going on, both visually through cameras and electronically through security systems, and then respond accordingly with the tools that are necessary for both the immediate response and the investigative component.”
(12:46) – “What was consistent was that they did not see an increase in alcohol-related incidents at the stadium.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.
Michigan State University’s renowned W. J. Beal Botanical Garden and Campus Arboretum is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2023.
Established in 1873, the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden is the oldest, continuously operated university botanical garden in the United States and illuminates the interconnectedness between people, plants, and place. This living laboratory encourages learning and exploration of the natural world. With a collection of over 2,000 plants from around the globe situated in the heart of MSU's campus along the Red Cedar River, this lovely natural landscape is perfect for collaborative programming to advance research, teaching, wellbeing, and public engagement.
Alan Prather is the garden’s interim director. Maeve Bassett is education director. And Loren Campbell is a student and Beal Scholar. They join me to talk about the garden’s history, present, and sustainable future.
Conversation Highlights:
(1:43) – “My goal is that anyone who walks into the garden, whether they’re a math major or a cold war assassination specialist, I can find some way to get them interested in plants.”
(3:01) – “Being in the Provost’s office, and in University Arts and Collections specifically, has given us a stronger focus on academics. Now we have a tighter, richer role with scholarship and learning on campus.”
(3:29) – “One of my goals has been to broaden the scope of who feels welcome and who wants to come to programming at the garden.”
(4:30) – “What I’m doing is looking at the plants that are in the garden already and in the pollinator garden and seeing how much they’re visited by native pollinators.”
(5:27) – “One of the fantastic things about the history of the garden is the fact that it’s tied so tightly to the history of campus.”
(6:25) – “When Beal established the garden on the south side of the Circle where the main garden is now, he did it expressly to provide a place where native plants could be honored, maintained, and grown for educational and enjoyment purposes.”
(7:33) – “We wanted to create an event that represented all the different ways that people engage with the garden.”
(10:45) – “Anything we do we want to make sure has a foundation in science and research.”
(12:13) – “We illuminate the interconnectedness of the people, plants, and place.”
(12:33) – “We’re hoping that, for instance, when we model sustainable practices, that will actually turn into inspiration for people to take our practices and put them out and make the world a better place.”
(13:40) – “You can’t have flowers without them being pollinated at times by insects, and insects and plants have a close relationship. They sort of depend on each other.”
(16:34) – “The first time I found the botanical garden I was just amazed; I’d never seen anything like it.”
(18:03) – “I always joke that my favorite audience member is the boy friend who’s been dragged along and has no interest in plants whatsoever. If I can get them leaving the tour saying, ‘That was so cool and exciting,’ then I feel like I’ve won.”
(20:06) – “The garden doesn’t have to be a place where you’re dragged by a class. We want this to be a place of joy, relaxation, and wellbeing.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.
Michigan State University has named Judd Herzer as the director of MSU Mobility to help amplify and focus the university’s vast research activities in the smart-vehicle landscape.
Mobility is among MSU’s principal areas of research and innovation, and MSU Mobility and its partners will benefit from having a dedicated leader to guide and promote the university’s commitment to advancing its extensive mobility-focused efforts.
In his new role, Herzer will lead university-wide initiatives under the MSU Mobility umbrella to advance knowledge and practice around next-generation transportation technologies.
Conversation highlights:
(2:50) – “These new technologies will change not just the mobility industry, but our society as a whole.”
(4:57) – “Thoughtfully encapsulating all the perspectives is important and should guide our work at MSU.”
(5:55) – “One of the biggest roles for me will be coordinating our mobility work across six different colleges because, again, mobility is more than just the next vehicle that’s coming out. It’s really going to change our society holistically.”
(6:20) – “MSU’s mobility team is incredibly strong, from the university and college leadership through researchers and students on down and is committed to making it a cornerstone of the university.”
(7:26) – “MSU is currently transforming its 5,200-acre campus into a live and connected mobility ecosystem of 8.1 square miles of contiguous urban, suburban, industrial, and rural areas…it makes MSU truly an ideal, one-of-a-kind location for research and testing and deploying mobility technologies in a real-world scenario with the ability to do so in all four seasons.”
(9:06) – “Our short-term goal is that we want to do more. And the long-term goal after that is to do even more on top of that.”
(9:21) – “Challenges and opportunities I look at as one in the same. A singular answer is pace.”
(12:23) – “It happens here for a reason. MSU is a great place for new, innovative ideas and transformational research that is really going to define what the future of mobility is, not just for Michigan and our automotive industry, but for our society at large and for our global community.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.
This month’s State of the State podcast from Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research has Matt Grossmann and Arnold Weinfeld from the institute and emeritus economics professor Charley Ballard discussing the state of the national and Michigan economies, UAW contract talks with the Big 3 automakers, the impact of unions in today’s America, Michigan’s new state budget, population loss, and the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action.
Conversation Highlights:
(1:25) – “The economy continues to roll along. Whereas a few months ago I would have said a mild recession is more likely than not. Right now, I would say it’s more likely than not that we kind of skirt the edges of a recession.”
(5:57) – “People are still pretty dour about the economy…”
(10:11) – “A part of it is that our economy is doing pretty well. And that means revenue is coming in reasonably well. That’s the remarkable resilience of the American economy.”
(11:29) “There is an effect of full Democratic control on state spending, but it’s actually a lot smaller than you might expect and much smaller than the year-to-year differences due to the overall state of the economy and share of federal money that gets sent.”
(12:09) – “The actual effect is more often the reverse. The more that state governments are able to pass legislation and move the agenda in their direction, the more likely that in the next election they will lose ground rather than gain ground.”
(14:27) – “Many prognosticators on the national scene have listed Gretchen Whitmer as a potential presidential candidate, and I’m pretty sure she’s aware of that.”
(15:17) – “In policy, this has been a very large shift on the scale of state government year-to-year shifts. That is what you’d expect after a prolonged period of lack of control from a party.”
(16:35) – “Michigan is three percent of the national population and two and a half percent of the national economy. We’re in this little life raft floating upon a gigantic ocean of the worldwide economy. And if those waves are big, they’re going to affect our boat.”
(18:55) – “The population of Michigan hasn’t been dropping steadily in this century, it’s just been astonishingly flat.”
(21:03) – “The overall picture is actually we don’t have a higher rate of college graduates leaving the state. After graduating, what we have is a lower rate of college graduates from elsewhere deciding to move into the state. And that is part of a broader pattern where our issues are not as much from the perspective of young people moving away as we hear in the political debate as we have young people not being attracted to Michigan to move from elsewhere.”
(25:20) – “For one thing, the Supreme Court was more in line with public opinion this term than they were the previous term.”
(27:50) – “Some universities have abandoned legacy admissions. That might, I think in the long run, have more of an effect.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
John Ambrose is executive director of admissions at MSU. Dani Vincent and Ndi Sibanda are MSU students. Dani and Ndi are also tour guides for MSU Admissions.
Ambrose assesses the state of higher education admissions and challenges and opportunities ahead. And the group describes the top stressors for students and parents in the process of preparing their college applications.
They talk about important deadlines in the process and about the importance of parental involvement. And the students talk about why they chose to attend MSU and what they like about being tour guides on campus.
Conversation Highlights:
(2:50) – “Ultimately, it’s a place where you can make mistakes and get up from them. And they don’t hurt as much as when you’re not in college and you make the same mistakes.”
(4:40) – “The landscape is so fraught with pressures right now for my peers and myself when it comes to thinking about the college admissions world.”
(7:33) – “Sometimes I think it’s families’ expectations that are unreasonable.”
(10:43) – “It always comes down to the classes that are offered and what your interests are and, more importantly, the campus.”
(12:30) – “There were so many different factors that played into me deciding to come to MSU.”
(14:59) – “A big stressor for me was applying during the pandemic.”
(24:21) – “Most college applications will begin opening in early August, and a good date to have all of your applications complete by is November 1.”
(26:06) – “One of the key things to pay attention to is the admit rate.”
(27:16) – “It’s critically important that parents be involved in the process.”
(34:18) – “It’s so critically important to be authentically you in the application…utilize the personal statement area to tell us something we don’t know about you. That’s the one thing that really stands out in all applications.”
(40:28) – “The professors at Michigan State are here to not only guide but help correct and be a counselor and a listening ear. But you can’t bring your high school self. You have to bring the young adult self that you want to be and approach them as a young adult. They want you to engage.
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Laura Rugless is Michigan State University’s inaugural vice president for civil rights and Title IX education and compliance.
In this newly elevated role, which was transitioned from an associate vice president to a vice president position, Rugless will be responsible for leading the institution’s civil rights and Title IX compliance, serving as the university’s Title IX coordinator and building upon MSU’s efforts to cultivate a university community free of discrimination and harassment. The position will oversee the Office of Institutional Equity; the Prevention, Outreach and Education Department; the Resolution Office; the Office of Support and Equity; the equity review officer; and the Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator.
Conversation Highlights:
(1:02) – “During the recruiting process I learned about what’s been happening with the development of the program here over the past several years. And that was really astounding to me. I was really drawn in by that. As I met leadership and members of the OCR team, I really felt like this is the place I should come and help galvanize the approach to civil rights, including Title IX. MSU is doing some really incredible things and yet we know there’s more to do and we can learn how to do it better.”
(3:01) – “We grapple with anything that pertains to civil rights, and we do it through a lens of prevention, and then when there is an incident reported to our office, response and resolution through our processes.”
(6:15) – “We’ve had some really promising results in the Know More survey, which has demonstrated that there is a reduction in the prevalence of relationship violence and sexual misconduct that our university community is reporting through that survey, and that’s exciting. Knowing exactly what we may be doing to help drive those results will be really important.”
(8:33) – “We want our students to know that there are a lot of resources available to them here both to prevent – and should they experience any sort of incident – and to support them through that.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Michigan State University alumnus Frank Tramble is Duke University’s inaugural vice president for Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs.
Tramble describes his career path from MSU telemarketer going on “anthropological excursions” to stops at Georgetown and Howard on his way to Duke. He talks about why he chose MSU for college. And he shares his goals in his new position to meet the challenges and opportunities facing an “under attack” higher education system.
Conversation Highlights:
(3:52) – “And it was from that moment on I realized I gotta be a Spartan.”
(4:33) – “I started here as an MSU telemarketer, and I can say I have the skills to sell gutters to someone who doesn’t own a home. But I have to be connected to the mission.”
(5:24) – “Early on, there was a divide at many universities where marketing was something very separate, or you may not have even done marketing and you really just worried about media. For me, that’s an intertwined world.”
(8:49) – “Higher education is in an interesting space now. It’s more under attack than you’d ever think, especially for an industry that just serves to educate.”
(12:33) – “I spend a lot of my time trying to welcome people into the problem, having that Spartan mentality that the more people in the room means we’ll find the right answer together.”
(16:55) – “You just have to stay calm. It’s when you panic and forget your training and why you’re doing what you’re doing and keeping that at the forefront of your mind that you make mistakes. While we can’t be perfect, staying calm and being able to manage under pressure is probably the most important piece of advice I could ever give.”
(17:35) – “The people on this campus I owe so much to for who I am today, why I do the things I do, how hard I go after the things I want – also the moral value I put into what I do.”
(19:31) – “I think the hardest thing for this generation is understanding you still have to pay your dues. The one thing you have to do is be comfortable being uncomfortable.”
(21:39) – “This place can create a future for you if you let it and embrace it.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
For creating technologies that have the potential to change the world and providing opportunities for future inventors, Muhammad Rabnawaz, an associate professor and Faculty Laureate in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University, was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors as a senior member on June 26.
The NAI senior member program was established to highlight academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that hold the promise of making a tangible impact on the public’s quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society. Election to NAI senior member status is an elite professional distinction extended solely to academic inventors.
Rabnawaz is being recognized for his research career developing energy-efficient strategies for recycling commonly used plastics, such as polyethylene terephthalate (recycling code 1) and polystyrene (recycling code 2). He also has created novel coating materials for water and oil-repellent paper to replace single-use plastic and polyfluoroalkyl substances of PFAS-free self-cleaning surfaces for packaging and nonpackaging applications. These inventions have led to 45 patents and counting.
The NAI’s application process is rigorous; not only do nominees need to demonstrate success creating multiple inventions, but they also need to demonstrate a commitment to providing opportunities for future inventors and inventions.
Conversation Highlights:
(0:59) – “When I visited the School of Packaging, I realized there’s an amazing potential for people who want to do something that will benefit the planet.”
(4:27) – “Another factor when they review the nomination packages is that they’re looking for, besides the development of the innovations and technologies themselves, are we preparing the next generation of innovators and scientists.”
(6:17) – “Primarily this recognition came because of our work to make zero-waste packaging for the world.”
(6:54) – “I realized that when you’re in the packaging discipline, it’s so fulfilling in that whatever you do is going to change the world.”
(8:43) – “I think the biggest challenge in the packaging industry is sustainability.”
(11:58) – “If you’re that person with a creative and innovative spirit, packaging is an amazing field.”
(13:03) – “The biggest misconception is that packaging is just about making boxes.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Michigan State University Interim President Teresa K. Woodruff elaborates on topics she covers in her June 2023 Spartan Community Letter, which you can read by clicking on the communications tab at president.msu.edu.
“The campus has a different rhythm in the summer, but we've got a lot going on as we kind of round out the end of summer session one and move into summer session two. And I'm really excited about that. And we really do have a great foundation for success, and we do appreciate the Board of Trustees engagement and approval this month of our budget. And that budget really does prioritize compensation.
“For me, the administration, and the Board of Trustees, our employees really are our most important asset and underlie all our strategic aims, particularly in student success. And so we did prioritize the compensation. That is a very important and welcomed part of this budget. The other thing I would just highlight is that the Board has approved the new recreation center. It's going to be on Shaw Lane, kind of between Birch and Harrison.
“And we still have recreational facilities right now. Students and folks can still be in IM West and other places on campus. But when this is completed in a couple of years, that's going to really be a great first in class space. And that truly is about student success. Ensuring that our students have those kinds of places that they can recreate and relax and take care of their health and wellbeing, that represents a really important asset and something that we're delighted to work on. What is important that that budget has been approved and we're moving forward.”
And the budget also includes $8 million in new investments in campus safety initiatives that Vice President Lynch is leading.
“He's been doing a great job, and he's been talking with a lot of folks around the community. We've had a lot of community input. One of the things we've done is to work in partnership with Ingham County, and we now have a lot of outdoor signals that will now be co-opted to use for emergency settings like we had this last semester. We've got more green light emergency phones that include cameras. We're putting new door locks across campus, and that's happening daily. And we are going to be opening our campus security operations center, which really is an integrated system security that allows for a lot of real time monitoring. That's critical.
“I want everyone to know how grateful we are to the community for the outpouring of support through the Spartan Strong Fund. We closed that fund after raising $2 million from about 4,200 donors. That really is an extraordinary outpouring of support for our students, faculty, and staff. And I just want to give, as a proxy for all those individuals, a great big thank you for their support. And about 300,000 of those dollars is going to go towards a memorial.”
Speaking of the Board, you recently gave them your second annual strategic plan update. I know you live and breathe that strategic plan every day. What is some of the progress you'd like to highlight today as the plan indeed evolves?
“We prioritized and funded advising last year. This is allowing us to add more advisors to our ranks and to develop professional opportunities for those advisors. And that's exciting. It allows for students to have more access to those individuals who can help them along their journey. We also, of course, wanted to highlight our employees in our strategic plan through our honorifics. And this includes university distinguished professors and the various honors and awards that we provide to our staff. But we're really making a concerted effort to ensure that everyone is recognized in ways that, for our humble folks around here, Russ, as you know, they often just do the great work and say, ‘Well, don't shine that light on me.’ We want to make sure that excellence of our employees is recognized.
“We also have a goal, which I think some people were surprised by, of a billion dollars in annual research expenditures by 2030. And we are going in that direction. We're now at $759 million, and that's important for all of us. We have our sustainability goals. We're at number two in the Times Higher Ed for the whole United States. We're number two in the entire U.S. for sustainability. And our DEI goals are ones that we continue to build year on year. This includes in our healthcare colleges, where we've increased our number of students of color by more than 10 percent.
Around the state, you visited our extensive footprint in Grand Rapids. You announced an investment in the iconic Fisher Building in Detroit and highlighted our role in Lansing's regional community at an address at the Lansing Economic Club.
“We're building in all the places and spaces that are relevant to our educational mission. This includes our investment office’s purchase of majority ownership in the Fisher Building in downtown Detroit, part of the New Center of Detroit. It’s also right adjacent to our collaborative partners, the Henry Ford Health Care system, as well as the Pistons. And this partnership is really going to help us toward our commitment of reducing health disparities, particularly in Detroit, by using our research acumen to build better care for every zip code across the state of Michigan.
“I also have been working in Lansing. We have an annual economic impact across the Lansing regional area that's just remarkable. And we've just announced a community initiative called BELIEVE. I believe in Lansing, and many people do as well. It’s co-chaired by April Clobes from the MSUFCU. We're going to bring excellence to Lansing through investment, empowerment, vision, and energy. That's BELIEVE. Bringing Excellence to Lansing through Investment, Empowerment, Vision, and Energy. And later this summer, I'm going to be on some dairy farms and out in some fields. I'm going to be at a cheese factory. We really have a great deal of wonderful activity across all 83 counties of Michigan, and I'm excited to be a part of that.”
Final thoughts?
“It's summer, and it is thought that these are slower, more serene days on campus. And I think they are in some ways, but there are also great things that are happening as everyone gets ready for this next fall season of education. And I’m just so thrilled to be able to elevate to our community some of these great things that are happening at Michigan State.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
MSU alumni Chris Solari and Matt Charboneau cover Spartan sports for the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, respectively. They join me on MSU Today to talk about their backgrounds in journalism, why they chose MSU for college, and how their time at MSU prepared them for their field.
The talk about the state and future of sports journalism and intercollegiate athletics and the challenges and opportunities ahead for both. And they preview the coming seasons for MSU football and men’s basketball.
Conversation Highlights:
(9:25) – “This place had the largest college newspaper in the country. That meant something. Being the editor in chief of the State News isn’t something a lot of people get to do. And at that level and in that time of my life and where the newspaper industry was, that meant a lot.”
(14:59) – “The bad thing about our job is that it takes the sports fan out of you.”
(17:43) – “You get more of a connection with the people as opposed to an institution or a team.”
(18:15) – “Being an alum and having come through and having the background the journalism program provided us make you want to be sure you’re doing things the right way. And you want your alma mater to be doing things the right way, and you sometimes want to hold them to a higher standard.”
(22:41) – “It has changed so dramatically or substantially in the sense that the idea of writing for tomorrow doesn’t exist anymore. Everything is immediate.”
(28:23) – “That was the moment I realized things had changed. We can now compete in the immediacy realm with television and radio, which we never could before that.”
(34:04) – “Journalism is not dying. It takes money to do good, deep investigative journalism. You either pay for journalism being an important part of society or you don’t. Someone must.”
(37:16) – “There’s so little regulation over what’s happening that you feel it can’t possibly keep going like this.”
(39:30) – “I think there’s a fatigue right now with the number of changes in such a short window of time that has really staggered the fan bases in a lot of schools and disillusioned them.”
(43:00) – “You cannot afford to not be working every single day. The toughest thing coaches are doing now is recruiting their own roster.”
(49:43) – “A school like Michigan State being ahead of it and trying to in some ways shape it is a good thing. But it’s hard to say how much that’s going to matter in two or three years with how wildly it has fluctuated now.”
(51:30) – “Until you can get a better idea of how much money is flowing and all the things that are lacking guard rails, I don’t know how you could say that Michigan State or any other school will be better or worse positioned.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Michigan’s bottle and can redemption rate has fallen to around 75 percent since the start of the pandemic, according to state data. Prior to 2020, the Michigan Department of Treasury’s bottle deposit information shows the state’s redemption rate was close to 90 percent.
Tom Emmerich is chief operating officer for Schupan & Sons, Inc. and president of Schupan Recycling.
Conversation highlights:
(3:08) – “It really is a very popular piece of legislation. And if you poll Michiganders today, our bottle deposit law still regularly comes in with over a 90 percent favorability rating.”
(4:53) – “Ease and convenience are so important to any recycling effort. And if that gets disrupted, it makes it easier for folks to change their behavior.”
(5:37) – “You’re talking about going from 90 plus percent to 75 percent. That’s roughly $100 million of unclaimed dimes that go to the state.”
(6:40) – “One of the beauties of our deposit system is that it creates the cleanest recycling material for the beverage industry to make new cans and bottles. When Michigan’s rate drops, that’s really impactful for the entire industry nationally in making new aluminum cans.”
(11:53) – “The best systems are ones that have good curbside programs and good deposit systems. You can have both and accomplish the goals we’re all trying to achieve.”
(13:00) – Emmerich shares his 4 E’s of a successful recycling program: Education, Ease, Efficient logistics, and Economically viable markets.
(15:05) – “We like the slogan ‘Take ‘Em Back.’ We want that to be a reminder for everyone in Michigan to take their containers back to the nearest local retailer because it’s the right thing to do. I like this phrase too: ‘It’s your lakes. It’s your roads. It’s your beaches. And it’s your dime.’ So, ‘Take ‘Em Back.’ It’s the right thing for you. It’s the right thing for the state. And it’s the right thing for the environment.”
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The trio talks about how the new maps from the redistricting process “significantly” impacted the results. And they talk about the issues that motivated voters most. They look ahead to 2023 in the Michigan Legislature and to the already-underway 2024 presidential election. The group reflects on whether President Biden will and should run for re-election in 2024.
Ballard looks ahead to the prospects for Michigan’s economy in 2023, and the group discusses Governor Whitmer’s potential national political future.
Conversation highlights:
1:18 – “The national House popular vote moved from about three percentage points in favor of Democrats to about three percentage points in favor of Republicans, which is a little less than normal for a midterm election.”
6:24 – “Certainly abortion is the top candidate for why Michigan performed differently than other states.”
7:43 – “Wherever abortion was on the ballot, Democrats did well.”
8:59 – “The economy is not in great shape, but are we in a recession? No. We are definitely not in a recession. Could we be in a recession six months from now? Maybe. I think avoiding a recession is a little bit less than 50/50, but it’s not zero.”
13:11 – “Candidates endorsed by Donald Trump performed about six points worse in House and Senate elections where he endorsed less experienced and more extreme candidates, and he made the election less of a referendum on President Biden and more of a choice between Biden-preferred and Trump-preferred candidates. That does seem to have made a difference. Trump endorsed a lot of people in winnable seats who lost.”
22:01 – “You can’t beat somebody with nobody. There would have to be consolidation around an alternative, and the same people who don’t want Joe Biden to be the nominee don’t necessarily want Kamala Harris to be the nominee, who would be the most likely alternative. We might wish for different, but we still might see Biden vs. Trump again.”
23:05 – “Certainly a Midwest governor winning by a large amount who already had some national profile is going to continue to be mentioned regularly. And she has an argument.”
24:35 – “We were the strongest economy in the world in the middle decades of the 20th Century. Then with the decline of manufacturing in general and autos in particular, we have struggled for decades.”
30:14 – “On average across the states, if you look at the ideal party position of the Republican Party versus the ideal position of the Democratic Party, we expect each year of full control by one party to move the state policy about one percent in their direction.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Schram is retiring as executive director and general manager of Michigan Radio after an influential 47-year career in Michigan’s radio industry.
Schram reflects on his rewarding career and describes how he fell in love with radio as a 10-year-old boy thanks to listening to Top 40 radio while visiting a cousin in New Jersey in 1963. And Steve tells of a wonderful circle of life moment about when he got the chance to tour his favorite radio station – WKNR Keener 13 – as a young boy. On the tour, Steve met the WKNR station manager, who asked Steve what he thought he might want to do in the radio business. Steve replied that “Someday I’d like to sit in your chair.
“And here’s the magic behind that. Twenty-seven years later, I became the general manager of WNIC, the successor station to WKNR. In that same building, that same office became my office, and it was the exact same desk that I sat behind.”
Schram talks about challenges and opportunities facing the constantly evolving radio industry. He describes the generational differences in how people consume media. And he talks about why he chose to attend college at MSU and how that experience impacted him. And he shares his advice for today’s Spartans studying communications.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Emmerich talks about the “tremendous growth” Schupan has experienced in the last five years, growing from about 400 employees to 650.
“In a nutshell, we’re an aluminum scrap processer and marketer of materials, and we’re an aluminum and plastics manufacturer and distributor. We’re family-owned and over 50 years old and headquartered in Kalamazoo. We’re now doing business in over 25 countries. Our footprint has expanded tremendously, and our future is bright.”
He talks about the challenges and opportunities facing Schupan and Michigan’s recycling industry. And he discusses the state and evolution of Michigan’s popular bottle deposit law.
Emmerich shares his 4 E’s of a successful recycling program: Education, Ease, Efficient logistics and operations, and Economically viable markets for the materials.
“If you are not taking your containers back today, please reconsider. We need to get those containers back into the system. My intent is to maintain the country’s most efficient bottle deposit law and the success we’ve had as a state with a program we should all be really proud of.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Woodruff reflects on this “heavy moment for the institution,” President Stanley’s legacy, and her new role guiding MSU.
“Being president is not something that I sought and, right up until the last minute, didn't expect in many ways. There have been a series of abrupt changes at MSU. I also appreciate that for many within Spartan nation, this seems like something that has a little bit of familiarity to it.
“I want to reassure everyone that we really are writing a new chapter. I used a word this week, Russ. It’s ‘stagility.’ I hope we’re moving to a time of stability and stabilizing the core of the institution. But we still need to be agile and be able to work ahead. That agility and stability is enabled by what President Stanley has done in providing for all of us a living strategic plan. It is enabling the campus. We have an inspiring faculty and academic staff, and I think they'll be able to do their good work as we move forward.
“My hope is that as we move into this new era, we'll also be able to maintain our health, the health of others, the health of the planet, and all the while open the door as wide as possible to the broadest community possible. This is part of the university strategic plan. Part of President Stanley's extraordinary legacy is to have built three strategic plans for this institution, including the RVSM and DEI plans.
“As remarkable as all of this is to the foundation for the future, he also led us through the first several years of the Covid pandemic, and his training in infectious diseases was critical. None of us could have foreseen that would've been as timely as that was. And that was particularly true prior to the therapeutics and vaccines that are really part of our arsenal today.
“The most salient part of the work led by President Stanley is that these are not his plans. And he would say that to all of us. He has said on many occasion that it's not the Stanley plan; it is the strategic vision of the campus for its future. I know that as we live out our shared plan that was the product of a visionary and principled leader that we are so grateful for what he did in enabling our ability to move forward.”
Why did you want to be interim president?
“I said when I came to MSU two years ago that I wanted to be a transformative leader in a time of transition. I saw excellence in abundance at this institution. The fundamentals of MSU are unchanged. I also knew then and now that policy and practice need to be aligned in order for folks to do their best work. This is a campus of extraordinarily principled and ethical people from our faculty to our staff. We continue to work toward a more perfect and just way to relate to each other. Leadership opportunities abound. I think people are called to leadership moments. And so that is what buoys me every day. I'm really pleased to come in and provide my own leadership together with a lot of other folks who are on this journey. Together we'll move Michigan State forward.”
What do you want Spartan Nation to know as your presidency begins, and what are some of your immediate priorities?
“I remain honored and humbled to be in this role, and I can say I was honored and humbled to be in the provost role. I will serve this institution to the best of my capabilities. I want people to know that I'm honored to have been adopted into Spartan Nation, and I feel like I'm really, really a part of the family, as does my husband, Tom O'Halloran.” O’Halloran is a Michigan State University Foundation Professor of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics and Chemistry.
“I really want Spartan Nation to know just how extraordinary our entire staff is. They are the ones who enable this living learning campus environment, who keep our buildings in excellent shape, who support grant submissions and who create the context in which this academic success is possible. The people who make this university great are our fundamentals. I'd love for Spartan Nation to know that.”
Talk about culture, community, and communication and how you'll emphasize building trust, affirming transparency, and advancing strategic initiatives.
“I want to be out and about introducing myself, listening, hearing, and really communicating in ways that are bidirectional so that I can really be part of every day of this campus. And I think as much as we communicate, we can build the community. There have been some of the parts of the fabric that have been pulled apart. Some of the threads are a little thread bear, and we want to knit that back together and really come together around community.
“And then culture. There is a special way in which everyone within the Michigan State environment really loves this organization. Last week, a lot of people were telling me to hang in there. Everybody's telling me they bleed green. To really communicate effectively and to build that community and leave the institution in a culture that feels stable and supported and enabled to do their best work, we have to really focus on building trust. We want people to know that we are trusted partners on both sides. We need to really make sure folks know they can trust us by having information.
“In a trusting relationship, I am committed to providing as much information as I can, to gathering as much evidence from as many sources I can, and then acting in the best and most principled way on behalf of the university. And if people can believe in that, then I think we're going to be able to advance our strategic initiatives.”
Summarize some takeaways and what you mean when you say you're all in for MSU.
“I'm all in for MSU. We’re planning today for tomorrow's future. We all have to be in to be part of the solution. We all have to be on board. We don't have time for people to fall prey to cynicism. I can understand how that may happen, but we have to be all in for MSU. This is an exciting time. We're on an upward trajectory. Don't be on the sidelines. We're really moving.”
Keep up with MSU Interim President Woodruff at president.msu.edu and on Instagram @MSU_Pres.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
This was done through several projects including the establishment of the MSU Operations Center — a facility that will centralize the university’s security systems and technology through MSU’s Department of Police and Public Safety which is expected to be largely operational by the end of the year. The goal is to ensure a more comprehensive and robust safety and security portfolio for campus.
President Stanley and MSU Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police Marlon Lynch talk about the center and its mission. The center — which will feature a fully integrated security system for access control, intrusion prevention and video security — will be housed within the MSU DPPS building.
Stanley and Lynch also talk about how the East Lansing Police Department and the MSU Department of Police and Public Safety have partnered to form the Proactive Engagement and Community Enhancement Team, or PEACE, which will focus on stopping criminal activity before it happens, while also providing education and promoting community safety and crime prevention.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The center, which launched in June 2022, is housed within the MSU College of Education and the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education. The center's co-directors and other personnel work with individuals and partner with researchers, service providers, employers, and policy makers to provide and efficiently disseminate evidence-based practices of support.
Connie Sung is an associate professor of rehabilitation counseling at Michigan State University and one of the co-directors of the MSU STRIDE Center. Marisa Fisher is an associate professor of special education at MSU and the other co-director of the STRIDE Center.
“I have always been passionate about supporting adolescents and young adults with disabilities,” says Fisher. “It probably comes from my experience as a sibling of an individual with an intellectual disability. He's older than I am, so I saw his entire school-to-work transition and saw where the struggles were and saw what the successes were. I was really interested in it, and I want to help other people as well.”
“I'm passionate about the work because my mother has a medicine background,” says Sung. “I was trained in occupational therapy and psychology. I've worked with people ranging in age from the really young to toddler age and all the way to the elderly.”
STRIDE is an acronym for the MSU Center for Services, Training and Research for Independence and Desired Employment.
“I have to give credit to Marisa because she came up with the name and each of the letters,” continues Sung. “S stands for the services we provide. T is for training. As part of the land grant mission, we want to provide training for our students, but also for people who are now in service training. And then R is for research. As a faculty at MSU, research is a big part of our role, and we want to make sure all the service and training that we provide is research-based and the best practices for assisting the community. I is for independence and helping people live an independent life. The D and E stand for our desire to see people achieving desired employment because employment is not just about a paycheck. They can have a social network and a routine. Employment is a very important factor leading to positive mental health.”
“STRIDE is a dream come true for Connie and me,” Fisher adds. “We have been working together for 9 or 10 years on various projects. And through those projects we really saw the need for comprehensive services within the community. We spoke with several different community organizations and community members and saw where the needs were and what was missing. And we said, ‘Okay. How can we help fill those gaps?’ And we brought our heads together and said, ‘We need a center, a center that just focuses on all of this.’ And we took that idea to our dean and chair and said ‘This is our vision.’ And they said, ‘Okay. Let's see how we can support that.’”
How does the STRIDE Center define disabilities?
“People may have different understandings of disabilities,” Sung continues. “For us, we really look at disability across the board, including physical disabilities, mobility challenges, and mental illness. Our primary focus is on the intellectual and developmental disabilities because we have expertise and previous experience running programs and projects. We serve people with a variety of disabilities.”
Research will be a key component of the STRIDE Center's land-grant mission.
“As faculty members, our main goal is to conduct research and translate that research into practice,” Sung says. “We want to make sure we are relying on research and evidence to achieve the outcome that we expect to achieve. The work that we do, the service that we deliver, and the training that we provide are all research based. We want to fulfill the land grant mission of MSU to work with the community. We are not just in a lab. We’re doing what we think are the right things to do and getting input from our community stakeholders. We are not just producing research for the purpose of archiving it in the library database, but it's really being used in the real world by our community partners.”
“In the research that we do, as Connie said, we're not just asking questions to ask questions,” Fisher continues. “We're not collecting data just to write journal articles that then go into the library and are only read by other academics. We are conducting research to really support those who need support. Everything that we do is community engaged. We are working with individuals, with service agencies, and with other providers to not only find out what they need, but to find the best way to provide it and train others to also provide it. We're not saying, ‘This is our intervention and we're going to deliver it.’ We want to say, ‘Here's a great intervention, who else can deliver it? Let us help you learn how to do it and then you can provide it to others so that it's reaching the full community.’”
“We are open to the community coming to us to tell us what else we need to develop,” adds Sung. “Then we can hand off these resources and supports so others don't have to reinvent the wheels. We have the capacity and the expertise. We are really aiming to collaborate with communities to find out what the needs are and how can we fulfill the gaps and meet the needs of the disability community. One more thing that we want to really stress is we know sometimes people may get nervous about university faculty coming in and doing all this work. But our main mission is not trying to compete or to replace anyone in a community. We really want to collaborate with what is already in place and work together to improve the resources and support for people with disabilities because we believe we all share a common goal in better utilizing what we have to develop more new things to meet the needs. If our community partners need training, we are more than happy to provide it so organizations can take the programming or the interventions back to their organizations to benefit even more people with disabilities.”
Sung and Fisher describe the first services the center is offering. One is Assistive Soft Skills and Employment Training (ASSET), and the other is Employment Preparation and Skills Support (EPASS).
Who is the STRIDE Center for? Who should contact you for assistance?
“A lot of times people may have a misperception that we only work with people with disabilities,” continues Sung. “In order to have people with disabilities truly integrated into the community, we need to also work with other people around them. The goal is not just to deliver services to individuals with disabilities, but to really become a center of excellence in independence and employment and transition so that people can utilize the resources and support that we develop here. We would like everybody to know we are here. The main purpose of the center is to provide support and assistance to promote independence and employment and enhance quality of life for people with disabilities.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get yours shows.
Did pandemic school shutdowns put Michigan's students behind? If so, are our children catching back up? This month, Matt Grossmann, Arnold Weinfeld, and Charles Ballard from MSU's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research try to get to the bottom of those questions with Tara Kilbride, assistant director for research at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at MSU. EPIC has just released a new report covering that topic which can be found on their website www.EpicedPolicy.org
In the first half of the conversation, our podcasters discuss and make a few predictions about the upcoming November elections.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find "MSU Today with Russ White" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Comparoni talks about why he chose MSU after growing up in northern Oakland County and how the university impacted him. He says he was attracted to MSU’s journalism program and wasn’t concerned about MSU’s size. And he describes how his friend and roommate just happened to pick up an application to work at the State News.
“The size of the university didn’t bury me. It brought me along. I’m not sure where I’d be today without that internship at the State News.”
He talks about his career path to finding his mentor Stu Coman, who founded Spartan Magazine in 1991, and then meeting the Stafford family, who bought Spartan Magazine in 1995.
“I kind of arranged an ownership change.” Comparoni then bought Spartan Magazine from the Staffords around 2001.
Comparoni describes the transition from Spartan Magazine to SpartanMag.com and the epiphany he had at the 1997 Aloha Bowl about his publication’s inevitable evolution into an internet daily.
“I needed to reallocate our limited manpower and resources to the internet because that’s where the competition and the growth was. The magazine was still profitable, but the print process was extremely time consuming. Doing the magazine was like experiencing finals week once a month. I still miss the magazine sometimes, but it was time to close it down.”
Jim shares his thoughts on the state and future of college athletics and says what he likes and doesn’t like about Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and the transfer portal. He says he’s glad college athletes can capitalize on their own name, image, and likeness but is concerned that “the moral compass has changed a bit” as recruits’ first question on visits is now often about NIL. And he thinks the transfer portal teaches college athletes “if times get tough, quit. Transfer. That’s the message.”
Comparoni shares his views on the state and future of sports journalism and says “SpartanMag.com is a premium website covering Michigan State sports, primarily football and men’s basketball and recruiting. We have a message board there called the Underground Bunker that I refer to as the daily narrative on Michigan State sports. It’s a community. They don’t always agree with one another,” but they’re unified around MSU sports.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find MSU Today with Russ White on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“These have been challenging weeks for me personally. I made the extraordinarily difficult decision to submit a 90-day notice of resignation to the Board of Trustees. And this is really because I felt that the Board was taking some actions that would make it difficult for me to really fulfill my responsibilities as president. The fundamentals at Michigan State remain extraordinarily strong. I will cooperate with the transition to an interim president that the board will select. I have nothing but great memories about the time I've spent with Michigan State University faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends during these three years.”
We have been celebrating new spaces and programs and have much to be proud of as we advance the university's priorities of growing its excellence and impact. This month we celebrated several new facilities, like the $5.5 million gift from the MSU Federal Credit Union that will support programs helping integrate the arts into STEM disciplines.
“MSUFCU has been an extraordinary partner for Michigan State University and has given more than $30 million over time to the university. And what's particularly great about them is they really do tailor things to meet the needs of the university. They think about and talk about what are things we need? And one of the things we really wanted to be able to do was really to reemphasize the arts at Michigan State University and a major arts initiative. The arts are so important in so many different levels; they inform and enrich our lives in so many ways.”
President Stanley also talks about the new home for College of Engineering registered student organizations, the William A. Demmer Engineering Center, that allows for new space for team projects and hands on learning. He talks about the new Spartan Greens artificial turf fields open on Service Road. And he describes the new facilities at Munn Ice Arena.
“Spartan Greens is just the beginning of our efforts to improve student recreation opportunities on campus. Our facilities folks and student life and engagement group did a great job getting this done on such a fast pace and making sure it was available now for students in the fall. This state-of-the-art facility is going to really support health and wellness programs for Spartans.”
Stanley talks about the Space Electronics Center and the Student Veterans Resource Center, and he encourages all Spartans to make their plan to vote in the November 8 election. He also advises flu shots and Covid-19 boosters.
“I continue to try and stay in touch with what's happening in this field. And it's become clear to me that the new Bivalent Covid-19 boosters are better than the initial shots in terms of protecting you from the new Omicron variants. I encourage anybody who has not had this shot yet to receive it. And I encourage you to receive your influenza shot as well. We're seeing an increase in influenza cases, at least in some parts of the country. And influenza can be a very serious disease as well. And so I encourage you to do both. I have done both. And here I am to tell the tale. I felt fine afterwards. And again, I encourage people to do this at their earliest opportunity.
“Again, what an extraordinary opportunity I've had at Michigan State University. This is one of the great universities in the country. And what makes it really special are the Spartans and their commitment to the university and to their community. That’s what makes MSU unique. I've been in a number of universities. I've been really proud to be associated with each of them. But there's something very special about how Spartans feel about their university and their drive and commitment. And I see it in our faculty and staff and their commitment to the institution. I see it in our students who really become very quickly a part of this community and family. And then I see it in this community around us, where people who may not have attended Michigan State University still take pride in being part of this university and part of our community. And so again, my thanks to everyone who's extended such a warm welcome to me over this time, and I’ll always remember fondly my time at Michigan State.
“We now have 40 programs within the top 25 of graduate or undergraduate programs in U.S. News and World Report. That shows you the depth of and breadth of the scholarship at Michigan State University. We have continued to grow in terms of our enrollment, and we're doing it while maintaining quality. And that's incredibly exciting.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Today, I have four distinguished Spartans with me to discuss Hispanic Heritage.
Deyanira Nevarez Martinez is assistant professor in the Urban and Regional Planning Program in the School of Planning, Design and Construction. Francisco Villarruel is interim director of the Julian Samora Research Institute and professor of Human Development and Family Studies. María Isabel Ayala is director of Chicano/Latino Studies in the College of Social Science and associate professor in the Department of Sociology. And Luis Alonzo Garcia directs Migrant Student Services.
What does Hispanic heritage mean to you? What do you want us to be more aware of by celebrating it?
“It’s about the contributions that we have made to this country,” says Martinez. “It's so important to make sure that we acknowledge that we have been here for a long time. In many cases, we've all heard that saying ‘We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us.’ We've been in this place. We are from this place and so acknowledging that I think is really important.”
“Hispanic Heritage Month is really a special time,” adds Garcia. “We've been part of the machine that's been feeding America and people just quite don't understand that. We've only started. I think you will have great things to see in years to come.”
“Hispanic Heritage Month is about celebration,” Ayala says. “It's about celebrating the contributions of Latinx folks throughout the United States, and it’s a very diverse group. Oftentimes I think we think of Hispanics or Latinx folks in terms of music and food but what this allows us to do, especially this month, but hopefully throughout the year, is recognize that we have folks contributing in science, in the arts, in politics, in government, and in higher education. In programs like mine, Chicano/ Latino studies, what we intend to do is offer the curriculum that speaks to this contribution so that students feel and see themselves represented and reflected not only when they turn on MTV or Spotify, but they see themselves in the science that they learn and in the communities that they engage with and feel proud.”
“For me this is a month where we begin to write the right history,” says Villarruel. “That may sound like an odd term, but I want to exemplify what everybody has said. There are STEM initiatives right now that are really trying to bring Latinos into science and technology. When I say it's the time for us to write the right history, it's an opportunity for us to claim not only our indigeneity, but also to recognize the contributions of multiple people. Go to the Detroit Institute of Arts and look at the Diego Rivera murals. That was a century ago and yet is still prophetic to today. But we undervalue those contributions of some of our Latino relatives.”
“Oftentimes I get asked where I’m from,” says Garcia. “I say I’m from Texas. Then I get asked ‘No, but where are you really from?’ I'm from the Mexican territories which is now the state of Texas. I'm always intrigued by how people define their history because it's convenient oftentimes to forget other people's history and what America is today. I think that this time of the year, it provides us an option to talk about these things and recognize that we have been here before other people got into this country. We're not foreigners; we are part of the landscape.”
Can you explain the similarities and the differences between Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, and Latinx?
“It's very important to recognize that identity is multi-level and that we have multiple identities,” Ayala says. “The part of the reason why we really focus sometimes on Hispanic is because it was a term developed in the 1980s because of the growth of the population that was speaking Spanish. The government was very interested in trying to begin measuring some of the social demographic changes that were happening. Hispanic is really a term that was imposed by the government at the time that really focused on the Spaniard heritage for folks that spoke Spanish. The problem was that this was not something that really resonated with a lot of folks, especially from Latin America ancestry especially because of coloniality. It was resisted in that it was not inclusive enough. Especially we know that in some countries in Latin America or the Caribbean, not everybody speaks Spanish.
“There was a grassroots movement for Latino, and Latino intended to recognize that Latin American heritage and tried to be more inclusive of those folks who did not speak Spanish. The problem with Latino is that it is very male centered, and you had Latinas, females, push against that Latino term. However, there are also different voices that are unaccounted for in this dichotomy. Now with Latinx, what we're intending to do is to be more inclusive of those non-gender binary identities that are within the group of Latinx folks. So what is the correct term? It depends who you ask. Some folks will self-identify as Latinas and Latinx. Some folks, especially those who have a history of political activism, will self-identify as Chicano and Latino. It's a matter of asking. It's a matter of recognizing what drives people to self-identify in different ways and recognize that it's not something that is very static. It changes through time.”
“It depends on who you ask, but then also it could depend on the day,” says Martinez. “I mostly always identify myself as a Chicana depending on what rooms I'm in. If I'm with other Latinos and because I see Latino and Latinx also as a term of ethnic solidarity, I am a Latina. Those things can be true at the same time. It can be very fluid within each person.”
“It’s really about respecting where people are and how they want to be identified,” says Garcia.
“If a person says they're Chicano, they're telling you something about their history and what's important,” adds Villarruel. “If they're telling you their Mexicano, they're telling you something that's important about their history. If they're telling you they're Mexican American, they're giving you some insight about them. The self-expression of identity and the terms that are used are fluent and fluid, but they're also rooted in history that we need to understand to better serve the communities that we serve across the state and that nation.”
“Oftentimes when we think about identity, we self-identify just as our parents or grandparents did,” continues Ayala. “That's why it's so important to have access to curriculum that addresses these histories and allows people an exposure to the different origins. Oftentimes we think because we’re Latinx or Mexicana or Latina we know everything there is to know about the group. There's so much intragroup diversity and just as there is privilege and marginalization outside of the group, there's privilege and marginalization within the group. That can materialize not only in color but also whether people speak Spanish or not, whether they're considered authentic Latinos or not because of how they see themselves. I think not only in terms of Hispanic heritage but in terms of curriculum and interacting with other folks. We need to recognize and value those differences.”
“And I think our students are sometimes grappling with some of these issues, too,” continues Martinez. “As a young person growing up on the U.S. Mexico border for the majority of my life, I identified myself as Mexican, not Mexican American, not Chicana. As I came into college and gained my own academic identity and learned more about our history in the United States, I realized that I am a Chicana and that's what I choose to call myself. It's also a journey that we go on as we're trying to figure out who we are and what our identity is and where we fit in this place. So, I think our students also grapple with some of these questions on what do I call myself and who am I?”
“Oftentimes in our conversation we've talked about representation, and seeing students reflected in faculty and staff I think is crucial. But it's also very important to recognize that we come with knowledge that hasn't been part of the fabric of the universities,” explains Ayala. “So, what happens when you have not only faculty and staff in these positions across the university in leadership positions is not only that students see themselves reflected, which is a very big part. It's also the questions that we bring, the knowledge that we bring, the questions that haven't really been asked by other folks because they don't have that knowledge and that history. Oftentimes in higher education we view knowledge as something that is only acquired through formal education.
“The reality is that there's knowledge all around us. There's a certain knowledge that is acquired through formal education, but that also complements and builds upon the knowledge that has been acquired through lived experiences. That is very important. Understanding these lived experiences as critical is not only shared among Latinx faculty and staff, but other groups like Asian Americans and Native Americans. That's why it's so important to really have an institutional commitment because everyone at this table and a lot of folks outside of this space are doing a lot of that invisible service that involves addressing some of the unique needs of these populations and yet continues to be not recognized or acknowledged. It's wonderful that we have people truly committed to making that change and advancing other folks of color, but we need the support of institutions. We have this structures in place, but they also need the support of the institution to not only make it but really thrive and continue to do wonderful work.”
“I would like to add that every time the university changes leadership, I get nervous because I'm wondering whether the next leader is going to understand and be supportive,” says Garcia. “We are fortunate to have President Stanley, who has been very supportive of diverse communities and is willing to take the heat as we cultivate a further understanding of the broader community and of the contributions that these communities have had and will continue to have. For our future existence, they will be a vital component.”
“I would add to what Luis has said,” Villarruel says. “It's not only the president, but it's also Provost Woodruff and Vice President Bennett. In the 35 years that Luis and I have been here I can comfortably say that we have leadership now that is not going to help just sustain, but is committed to investing, promoting, and enhancing what we have at this institution, not only for the institutional sake, but for the communities across the state in the Midwest and more importantly, for student success.”
“This time of year is an opportunity to make sure that we are doing the work to make sure that Latinx students know that they belong here,” says Martinez. “My goal for this month and every month of the year is trying to make sure that our community knows that they belong here.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“We are advocates for the university,” says Wilbur. “We have a federal operation in Washington DC. Those two or three people work with Congress and the administration and the various departments and agencies. In Michigan, Katie and I work the state legislature. That's where we receive our largest sum of money on an annual basis for operational dollars to run the university. But it's not just budgetary. We respond and react to legislation that's introduced that could impact anybody on this campus. There are a lot of interesting voices that we have to make sure we hear from.
“We are very engaged in our local community, too. We have a community representative who works with the cities of Lansing and East Lansing and Meridian Township, the Lansing Regional Chamber, and groups like LEAP (Lansing Economic Area Partnership) and CAPCOG (Capital Area Council of Governments). Then we have our Spartan Advocate program, which really has been a very significant grassroots effort to allow us to have other people advocate with us. People know what Katie is going to say when they see her darken their door. They know what I'm going to say. They know what Sarah's going to say in Washington DC. It can be more impactful if you have an advocate who is calling or writing in from Roscommon, Michigan, for example, who understands the value of other voices being heard to legislators and policymakers about the impact MSU has on the entire state. That's a very key effort led by Jeremy Reuter. He's doing a great job. We have about 3,000 advocates, but we're always trying to grow that number.”
“Government Relations isn’t the most visible office at the university,” adds John. “Sometimes people don't know we exist. Or if they do, they're maybe a little confused about what we do. We are indeed advocates for the overall mission of the university, but we also can help facilitate relationships. If you need help finding the proper contact at MDOT, chances are someone in our office will have a contact who can help put you in touch with the right person or help facilitate a meeting. A lot of our job focuses on relationships and trying to have a network that is beneficial to the university.”
“To Katie's point, I don't want people to think that's just true at MSU that many people don't necessarily think of government relations or know we exist,” continues Wilbur. “I worked with Katie while she was at Western. I was at Central Michigan for close to 16 years. It’s the very same attitude there. It's not the people’s business to wake up and think about government relations or about who we have a relationship with or where we get our money from. We understand that, but we can be very useful to people. Katie's absolutely right. We are facilitators and advocates. We want people to know that. Take advantage of us.”
Wilbur and John recap the current state of the budget and state support and say it was “a great year.” They talk about the establishment of the Michigan Achievement Scholarship Program.
“This was a huge bipartisan effort,” John says. “Both the governor and the legislature really came together to negotiate a huge lift for students. It's $250 million for the graduating class of '23. They will be eligible, depending on their family contribution, for up to $5,500 per student to further their higher education career. It’s nice to see that even in these strenuous political times when elections are taking place across our state, that still in Lansing they can get the work done when they put their heads together. We were really pleased.”
“It’s a big lift because it really makes a different statement,” adds Wilbur. “This really is a very significant statement. We hope it continues, but we're working with a term-limited legislature. Many of the folks who voted for this are leaving as of December 31. We hope we can continue the advocacy and convince folks of the validity and the importance of programs like this.”
Wilbur and John talk about redistricting and the coming election and how it might impact MSU. And they describe the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research’s Legislative Leadership Program (LLP) that invites new members of Michigan’s House of Representatives and Michigan Senate to engage in interactive small-group sessions with university faculty in the brief time between election and their first legislative sessions.
“Coming to work at an institution like MSU every day, you see how it impacts people's lives,” continues John. “It's easy to advocate for an institution like that. But frankly sometimes, I think especially downtown in Lansing, we have an uphill battle. I don't think that everyone fully understands higher ed and its impact. They may draw conclusions or have assumptions that aren't 100 percent accurate. We have an opportunity with a large incoming class of legislators to really demonstrate that value and to dispute some of those myths that are out there about higher ed.”
“What we're experiencing, not just in Michigan but across the country, is more of a questioning of the value of higher education in general,” adds Wilbur. “Katie talks about it with our legislators, which is true. We have many legislators who have not themselves attended college. They're saying, ‘Look, I got myself elected to the Michigan State Senate and didn't need a degree to do this.’ And they don't. They are hearing that from some of their constituents as well. ‘Boy, a college education is expensive. What's the real value for my kids Susie or Harry? Why are we doing this?’ That is a question higher ed has to ask itself.
“That is something that we really have to try to answer and respond to and have great examples. There are no better advocates than our own students who come in with varied backgrounds who can walk into Legislator X's office and say, ‘This is why I went to school. This is what I am finding of such value. By the way, I have a job all lined up. I don't graduate for another nine months, but I'm set.’ It's those kinds of cases that we have to be always aware of and making.”
“Again, we always encourage people to reach out,” adds John. “We are there to help. We're always happy to hear from faculty, staff, and students. If you have an issue or think we could assist, please reach out.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Coach Bibbs coached track and field at MSU from 1968 through 1995. His deep commitment to youth and passion for the sport has gained the respect of countless colleagues, athletes, parents, and friends nationwide.
The theme for MSU Homecoming 2022 is Spartans Bring the Magic.
“Being grand marshal might be the greatest honor I’ve received, and I’ve received quite a few honors. I’m proud to be the grand marshal for a great institution like Michigan State.”
Bibbs says he was coaching in his hometown of Ecorse, Michigan when MSU Athletic Director Biggie Munn called to ask if he’d like to coach at Michigan State and says it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. He talks about the mentor who inspired him to go into teaching and coaching.
He also talks about how both the sport of track and field and student-athletes have evolved over the years. And he recalls some of his favorite memories from his legendary Spartan career.
“The greatest memory I have of Michigan State is one of the relays we hosted when Herb Washington broke the world record in the 60-yard dash and Marshall Dill broke the world record in the 300-yard dash. Then our sprint medley relay team that included Washington and Dill missed setting the world record by, I think, two tenths of a second.”
Bibbs says he doesn’t concern himself about his legacy because “that’s something that other people decide.”
If there was one thing you want to pass on to future generations, what would it be? What advice or lesson would you give them?
“Take school seriously. If you make it, school is plan B. But if you don’t make it, it becomes plan A. But even if you make it in athletics, usually you’re doing it with your body. And unless you’re LeBron James, your career is usually over in your mid 30’s. You better have something to last you for the rest of your life. And when I say school, it can be college or a trade, but find something that can help you be gainfully employed and support your family.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
A new semester and academic year are well underway as MSU welcomed more than 9,800 incoming students to campus, our largest and one of our most diverse incoming groups ever.
“We also had 1,400 transfer students coming in, which is also the largest. There are a lot of new individuals coming to the campus and I know people have reached out and made sure they felt welcome and they're hitting their stride. We're already actually a quarter of the way through the semester. They're already getting exposed to what college life is like. I think they're enjoying themselves at Michigan State University from every account that I can see.
“One of the things I've enjoyed the most is the chance to speak individually with students and their parents and talk to them about what made them choose MSU. I hear a lot about the breadth of the programs we offer that few places can match and our beautiful campus itself, which I think has been looking spectacular these past few days. All of that has created an environment where people want to come and learn. That explains our record application numbers and explains the continued growth we're having. I think that's a great thing because I think the world needs more Spartans. I'm glad we're admitting more to come.”
Stanley talks about meeting the 2022 inductees into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame and about honoring the Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel on the institute's 30th anniversary. Forty MSU programs ranked in the Top 25 of the latest U.S. News and World Report.
“That's our highest score in seven years. We're very pleased about that, and I think that reflects the progress we've been making. Peer reputation was really one of the categories that raised us up. Our peers are recognizing the exciting things we're doing at MSU. We need to keep those 40 there, and we need to add more because I think we have the capacity for our scope and scale to have outstanding programs in multiple disciplines. We're going to continue to push that. My congratulations to the 40 who are there. And to those who are just below, let us know what you need so we can push you up and get you in that territory of the top 25 as well.”
Stanley reflects on the addition of 40 new electric vehicles to the university fleet and about MSU’s work in our mobility future, which was highlighted at the recent Detroit Auto Show. He urges Spartans to get their flu shots and COVID boosters and to make plans on how they’ll vote in the November 8 election. Stanley addresses his contract talks with the Board of Trustees.
“There's been a lot of uncertainty and concern about contract negotiations and discussions between the board and me. But I just want to make it very clear that I greatly appreciate all the expressions of support I've had from so many different people and groups on campus. I'm grateful for that. I can't tell you how much it means to me. But I'm also very proud of what we've accomplished together, particularly including advancing my overarching priority of building a university that is safe, welcoming, and supportive of all its people.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
On this month’s State of the State Podcast, Institute for Public Policy and Social Research Assistant Director Arnold Weinfeld, along with Institute Director, Dr. Matt Grossmann and Economist Dr. Charles Ballard discuss the current state of the economy including the impact of the continued rates hikes by the Federal Reserve on the economy and the upcoming election.
The guest this month is Dr. Debra Horner, with the University of Michigan Ford School's Center for Local, State and Urban Policy where she serves as senior program manager on the Michigan Public Policy Survey program. The program surveys local government officials across the state of Michigan and just released findings on the attitudes of local election officials when it comes to confidence in election security.
This podcast comes to you from the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and WKAR.”
In this new role, Henderson oversees student-facing areas associated with health, mental and physical wellness, and student athlete engagement. He oversees many of the areas that support student athletes beyond their sport-specific training. This means athletic training, academic support, career development, nutrition, and strength and conditioning with a holistic approach.
Henderson tells why he chose MSU to pursue his college football career. And he talks about his career path leading up to taking this new position at MSU. Henderson played for both John L. Smith and Mark Dantonio; he compares the two.
“I'm passionate about this work; this is my calling. I really feel this is why I was born, to help serve and help young men and women have an unbelievable experience at the best institution that there is known to man. Every day I wake up fulfilled, passion driven, and fueled knowing that I'm walking to my purpose and I'm in alignment with my vision. And I know that same energy is infectious, and our student athletes feel that, our coaches feel that, and our internal stakeholders, donors and supporters feel that. What you put out into the world is what you get back. I truly believe that, and that's what I bring to the table every day.”
What are championship resources?
“Under the auspices of the championship resources umbrella, you'll find athletic training and Spartan's Fuel, which is our nutrition program for the entire athletic ecosystem. You’ll find our athletic performance unit, which most would call strength and conditioning, which is critical and important to the student athlete experience. I'm immensely happy and proud of our new revamped mental health program; that falls into the auspices of championship resources as well.
“Then you have sports science, which is new. It’s an unbelievable area where I'm learning every day about how those modalities and opportunities really activate and help our student athletes gain competitive advantages through scientific-based research and evidence-based research. Also, I have the privilege to champion our name, image, and likeness strategy along with a team of 10 other individuals and our entire department on what we do to educate our student athletes in that capacity. I work together with our Spartan for Life student athlete development and Varsity S programs. And I'm the sports administrator for women's basketball.”
What is your assessment of the state of mental and physical wellness with student athletes at MSU and across the country?
“There is often a stigma attached to treating your mental health, like you must have something wrong with you to see a mental health counselor. I see a mental health counselor every month to help keep me sane as well as to de-stigmatize and let folks know it is okay. But it's not okay to not be okay.”
Henderson talks more about what he and his team are doing to help improve student-athletes’ mental and physical wellness. And he talks about the The Gregory H. Montgomery Jr. Foundation for Ultimate Growth and its mission.
“It's important for us to have a pulse on what's going on. So, for me, it's getting into the training room and getting into spaces where student athletes reside. It's easy to just stay at your desk and emails will inundate you. But for me, I make it a priority to get around and talk to student athletes and connect with them to understand their experience, who their families are, what's their why, and what drives them.
“There is a genuine pulse and understanding of where our student athletes are, which I'm grateful for, and that comes with building authentic relationships and asking the right questions, not just saying, ‘Hey you good? I'm good. You good? Let's keep walking.’ No, we must have a meaningful conversation saying, ‘Hey, how are you doing today? And what has been a challenge in your day?’ Those are the questions we must start asking to get folks more feeling connected to us instead of the real quick hitters where you're never going to get the right and real answer because they know you don't have time to talk to them.”
Henderson says MSU’s name, image, and likeness plan “is the most comprehensive, most thought out educational platform program in the country. We are providing the utmost quality care and first-class experience to our student athletes to the best of our abilities. We do that in a cornucopia of different ways, and I'm committed to doing that and to being on the ground. It’s a competitive advantage.”
As a Spartan Football player, Henderson may be best known for returning a blocked punt for a touchdown in MSU's 35-point comeback win over Northwestern in 2006, the biggest comeback in FBS history.
“Russ, October 21 defined my life for me; I knew that day that anything is possible. Never give up. Our team never gave up that day. I've never had that many text messages in my life. And that's a moment my parents have captured on DVD. We watch it sometimes during the holidays, and it's something that's truly special.”
(audio courtesy of Scott Moore; George Blaha on the Spartan Sports Network)
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
WKAR Public Media is celebrating a century of service as AM 870 went on the air in August of 1922. Wharton Center for Performing Arts is celebrating 40 years of providing a wide array of world class arts and entertainment for mid-Michigan and beyond. And the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum opened its doors 10 years ago. The three leaders of these MSU institutions join the program today. Shawn Turner is the interim director of broadcasting at MSU and general manager of WKAR Public Media. Eric Olmscheid is executive director of Wharton Center, and Steven Bridges is interim director of the Broad Art Museum.
“You don't get to stick around for 100 years without doing something right,” says Turner. “WKAR went on the air on August 18 of 1922. When we originally went on the air, WKAR was about providing agricultural information to local farmers and quickly evolved to providing additional programming to the local community. If you look at what's happened over the past hundred years, WKAR has been a leader in innovation when it comes to providing news and information and entertainment to the community. We've come from providing those very direct and limited broadcasts to providing programing and education.
“Today we have one of the most popular classical radio stations in all of Michigan. And when we look to the future of WKAR, our viewers and listeners are going to see additional content that's really going to connect with this community. Our evolution has been one of responding to people in the community, responding to our listeners and our viewers, and making sure that at every turn we're doing the right things to support them and their needs.”
“Wharton Center is coming up on its 40th anniversary on the 25th of September,” says Olmscheid. “On September 25, 1982, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened Wharton Center with a grand affair, and it's been nonstop since then. It has been nonstop in the sense of that commitment to the community and to mid-Michigan and world class performing arts and educational opportunities. The organization continues to think about what's next. We're celebrating 40 years, but we're excited about how we fit into this greater MSU 2030 Strategic Plan, the Arts Plan, and how our units collectively work more together to amplify what's happening from an arts and culture standpoint on this campus. We are continuing to evolve and thinking about how we engage and support what's happening here on campus and how are we connect with the community to be a leader in education, both in university and K-12.
“It's truly just beginning, and there are so many more things ahead. As we look at developing our own strategic plan, I think of it as more of a roadmap. Where do we really want to go? And how do we want to connect with our community? People love the Wharton Center for great Broadway programming and amazing concerts, and we’re home to traditional and contemporary performing arts. All of that's going to stay, but I think how we package it and how we connect to our audiences and how we get new audiences in the door is our next chapter and our next focus.”
“In the past 10 years, there's been a lot of great work, and I think we've accomplished a lot and made a lot of inroads, both in our community and as a campus leader in arts education,” says Bridges. “We’ve been a strong collaborator and partner to many different disciplines throughout those 10 years. We recently celebrated a major opening of a Zaha Hadid exhibition, which is the largest, most major retrospective of her design work to date. To have Zaha Hadid's design work placed within the architecture of her building is a truly unique and unparalleled experience. I'm very proud of that exhibition, and for us, it also signals an important shift for us looking forward into the future.
“If we look back at the Broads and Hadid, they were important figures for us as an institution. Looking at the ways that they carried themselves and that they invested and provided opportunities for growth and development within their spheres of influence, there's a lot of inspiration to be taken there. Zaha Hadid famously said, ‘I think there should be no end to experimentation,’ and that's something that we take whole heartedly at the museum.”
WKAR, Wharton Center, and the Broad are all part of a comprehensive campus-wide strategy called University Arts and Collections, which supports units across campus that hold significant cultural and intellectual collections that serve the research, scholarship, and outreach missions of MSU. What is it? Why now, and what are its goals and mission?
“Let me start out by saying that I think this is a really amazing collaboration for the community,” continues Turner. “The fact that the three of us are here talking about our organizations and our collaborations and our willingness to work together, and that you have this broader collaboration that will really bring a level of intensity in the arts to this community that we've never seen before, is something that we're all very excited about. This is an opportunity for us to recognize that in the time that we've been a part of this community, we all have touched different parts of this community. We all have different audiences and different followings and different supporters, but those interests that this community has all converge at some point, and what we recognize is that that point is the arts. We're going to work together across the campus to make sure that these collections and these collaborations not only bring us together as organization, but those collaborations then create new and interesting opportunities for this community to engage with the arts.”
“Michigan State is such a large organization that if we don't have the intentional connectivity, it's easy for us to all drift into our own focus,” adds Olmscheid. “We all have our own priorities and strategies that roll up into this greater university plan, which I think is critically important as far as setting direction and intention and shared goals. But if we don't have that intentionality of collaboration, it's easy for us to all be in our own lane not even focused on the greater good. I think that's great. It’s really about access, and this idea that the community can come together is important as we think about our next stage and step in evolution and what we do because that's such a critical piece to our human condition. The arts are that fabric that brings us together. The weaving of the human condition is really through the arts. The arts are such a core piece of who we are and how its evolved in our day-to-day lives is very different today, but I think it's important to remember that.”
“These anniversary years weren’t planned, but what a great moment to seize that opportunity and recognize the opportunities that lie before us,” Bridges says. “Culture isn't just something that kind of happens to us. It's something that we create, and we create it together. We all work in the service of this university, the student body, and the faculty and staff and researchers here. But we work for the greater community of mid-Michigan, Lansing and beyond.
“Moving forward we want to create more porousness, if you will, between our organizations, but also with the communities that we serve. We want feedback from them directly about what they want to see from us and meet them where they are to create a greater sense of belonging and collectiveness that I think will be more important in terms of ingraining the value of arts and culture within our communities and within our lives.”
“Eric talked about access. And when we think about access over at WKAR, part of that for us is going out into the community and finding out what the community wants and what the community needs to feel supported by WKAR,” says Turner. “What is the community interested in with regards to the arts? This is a collaboration, not only between us, but between these organizations in the community. This is an interactive relationship, and so I hope that people feel as excited about this as we do because you're going to have an opportunity to shape the future of these organizations and shape the future of the arts in this community.”
“The arts have this really important place in us as human beings, and they connects us,” Olmscheid says. “It's a natural connection, a connective tissue. Here at MSU, the arts have that same kind of connective tissue across campus and across our organizations. What are our plans as we look at connecting to the research endeavor and to looking at academic connections and many other tentacles into the campus community that are beyond just the arts and cultural components? That's the piece that I think is the chapter that is yet to be written. How are we continuing to evolve in that way across the campus and really infusing the arts to be a valuable tool across every piece of MSU?”
“That resonates with the values of the museum and the University,” adds Bridges. “It has a large part to do with creating vibrant, welcoming communities and the next generation of arts leaders and stewards of culture within this country and region. The place of the arts as a generative force within our communities and the understanding that a creative approach to thinking and knowledge production are applicable far beyond the arts and into all disciplines. The integration of the arts across campus and into our daily lives is critical to creating exactly that kind of community.
“There's a great opportunity to always see and experience and know things differently through the arts, and I think there's a real educational value, but also an expansion of your mind and awareness, which allows you to engage with different cultures, lived experiences and perspectives. That creates more well-rounded individuals and therefore better communities and better societies.”
“We're all living at a time when there are a lot of stresses,” concludes Turner. “There's a lot going on in our environment that can make us feel anxious. And as we sit around the table here today, I think about the ability of these organizations to not only help people be well informed about their world, but to Eric's point, it's an opportunity for people to go to a place where we can let the stress go, and we can let the anxiousness go, and we can experience the arts in ways that help us all feel rejuvenated and help us all refresh and help us come back to our world with a new perspective. As I sit here with these gentlemen, and as I think about the collaborations that are to come, that excites me, especially at a time when I think that's something that we all need.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
She's also open about being sober and how her ongoing recovery has transformed her life from, as she says, a stark soul-sick place to one rich with friends and activities she loves to do like reading by the lake on a Michigan summer day, supporting working women in any way she can, and connecting with college students and young adults who have courageously found their way to recovery.
Susan was both Homecoming Grand Marshal and an MSU Commencement speaker in 2019. She has bachelor’s and master's degrees in advertising and public relations from MSU. She's also a prolific author, and her latest book is titled The Little Book of College Sobriety.
Susan tells why she chose MSU for college and describes how MSU prepared her for her career. And she talks about going from writing questionnaires to working at HBO then on to helping create some of America’s most-watched television channels. And she talks about her own path to sobriety.
“I'm one of those people who never had any real consequences from my alcohol use, but I was at a place of horrible loneliness and just feeling utterly alone. And it made no sense because I was happily married, starting a family, and had a great job. I didn't understand it.
“But what helped to numb it was many glasses of wine every night when I got home. I was in high stress roles. Alcohol really helped with that up until the point where it didn't anymore, it just stopped working. And then it was a very dark place and I realized that I needed to do something to help myself. And while I was at HGTV, I started that sort of slow, painful walk toward recovery.
“The book is called The Little Book of College Sobriety: Living, Happy, Healthy, and Free. There are 12 stories in the book, and they're from all over the country. I do have four or five MSU stories, but then I have stories from Colorado and Texas and Virginia and Ohio. The students helped me with everything from the title of the book to their stories themselves, which they put in there.
“And their stories are about their journey from despair and addiction into this hope-rich place of recovery. And their stories were so tremendously inspiring to me. I have written two books, so I know how to write a book. I thought I could capture their stories. And I put my story in there, too. This as a book that students who might be questioning whether they should be experiencing college sober could pick up, and maybe they could learn something from it.”
You're very involved with MSU's Collegiate Recovery Community. Why is it important to you to talk about substance use disorder and recovery with college students?
“It's important to me because I remember when I was a college student and I felt something was wrong with me because I drank so much and abused drugs. And yet, I was in the Honors College. There was just something that was completely disjointed about that. If I had known the questions to ask myself back then and if there had been a Collegiate Recovery Community for me to walk into a lounge and to see people who were happy and who were experiencing college sober, maybe my whole experience of college would've been very different. And maybe it wouldn't have taken me two more decades to get to that place of recovery.”
And what do you get from being involved with college students?
“Oh, I get so much. It's all about the students. They inspire me every day. They'll send me little notes, and I'll send them notes congratulating them on a sobriety date. They'll tell me about their trips. I feel like I'm sort of the aunt. I'm not anybody's mom. I'm not really related to anybody. They're more open with me than they might be with others who are family. And they've become very dear to me, all of them. And they inspire me. They helped me with my sobriety and my recovery.”
Why is the transparent discussing of recovery important?
“It's important because mental health is just a part of who we are. We basically are our physical selves, our mental selves, and our social selves. And we try to take care of our physical selves. I mean, not all of us do, but we know about taking care of our physical selves. We know about taking care of our social well-being, especially after COVID, and the importance of being interconnected. But when it comes to our mental health, no one wants to own it or talk about it. It's our culture and I think it's ridiculous. Our mental health is just one part of who we are and it's not even the most important part unless you don't care for it, then it may become the most important part with a lot of negative consequences. I try to model for others that you can live a life of recovery, and you can talk about mental health. I think that hopefully some people will listen and maybe it'll open them up a little bit.”
When you think back, what do you imagine the college version of you would've done with the content of the book?
“I would have been steadier. I would've had better peace of mind. I would've had more friends, real friends, safe friends. College for me, I mean, it was fun. I would always use that word if anybody asked me, yes, it was fun. But it was also an emotional struggle for me in large part because of the drugs and alcohol.”
What would you say are some key takeaways from the book that you'd like people to have and your advice for anyone struggling with substance use disorder?
“I personally believe that substance use disorder is a disease of disconnectedness. I believe that an individual just feels completely apart and utterly alone. The antidote to that is finding a community. One of the reasons I wrote the book is only 5 percent of universities around the country have these communities like Michigan State has. All the proceeds from the book are going to a national organization that will grow these recovery communities. You just need to find people who you can feel comfortable and safe with. And after that, recovery is a beautiful, hope-rich way to live.”
And what message, Susan, do you have for alumni interested in getting involved with Michigan State University students and initiatives of all kinds?
“It starts with what's your passion. Let's say you're a veteran and you want to have some sort of engagement with the vets who are on campus. You can do that. Let's say you love music or you're a musician and you want to have some connection with the musicians at the music school on campus. You can do that. It really depends. I love the students. It may be that certain individuals would prefer to teach a class, or suggest some curriculum, or make donations. There are all kinds of ways you can get involved. For me, though, it begins and ends with the students.”
I have one other question on your TV career before I let you go. We hear about cord cutters and how many are paying more for apps than they were for cable. Where is this crazy world of TV and media consumption going in your view?
“I feel like we're going in a cyclical way. We're going back to the way it was. Yeah, there are a lot of cord cutters and people are just buying individual networks like Netflix and Amazon Prime and others. That sounds to me a whole lot like Cable TV was 10 or 20 years ago. I believe that we'll have more ability to choose what we want, but there will be a price point issue just like there always has been. And a network like Netflix is now looking at an ad-supported option. When we built cable networks HGTV and CNBC, we had two sources of revenue. They have only always had one source of revenue, which is subscribers. So now they're looking at, ‘Oh my God, how do I grow more revenue?’ And this may work for certain people. They might be okay with it for a lesser price point. I feel like it's so much of the same, only being repackaged and called something different.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
As the chief continues to reorganize the department, today we’re focusing on the Police Services Bureau. We have with us today Captain Sherief Fadley. He leads the Patrol Division inside the Police Services Bureau. And Captain Dan Munford oversees the Community Engagement Unit.
“The Community Engagement Unit is a team comprised of four sergeants and me,” says Munford. “We're spread out throughout the different neighborhoods on campus, and our goal is just to reach out and be a contact and liaison for our students, faculty and staff within the residential neighborhoods.”
“I'm entrusted by the VP to run our Patrol Division, our K-9 Unit, and our IRSRT, which is our tactical team,” says Fadley. “Our Patrol Division is a fully functional; we're a police service. We're vested with the authority as police officers sworn in the state of Michigan. We also are deputized in Ingham County because we have property all over Ingham County, and sometimes we're called for mutual aid assists. We have a 24/7 365-day operation. We provide police services to the community ranging from anything from bike larcenies to domestics, narcotics calls, drug calls, and active shooters if there's that type of call. We respond essentially from mild to wild, Russ.”
And Chief, why did you reorganize in this way?
“It’s about evolving to meet the needs of the campus and how we engage with our community,” says Lynch. “It’s having a specific unit that spends time engaging with the housing staff and with the student affairs staff on a regular basis as often as possible.
“A good example is Dan's office is in the main library. These offices have existed for years within various buildings within the campus. It’s a philosophy of continuous engagement. It's trying to be proactive with the comfort level with our community and how they become more comfortable with us and the roles that we play, specifically from a community engagement piece. And that will continue to evolve.
“We also looked at what types of calls are most common for us. We have a number of officers on patrol, and as we talk to Deputy Chief Andrea Munford and Community Support, we have started also to invest in supporting mental health issues and sexual assault investigations. We try to balance our manpower to meet the needs of the community.”
Lynch explains the difference between community service and community support. And we learn more about the “very popular” K-9 unit and the versatility of MSU’s officers from Fadley.
“I believe an MSU police officer can go anywhere in policing,” continues Fadley. “I don't believe just anyone can come to MSU and police.” Fadley shares a story of MSU officers wrangling 40 beef cattle in the middle of the night.
“We're here 24/7,” says Munford. “We are highly trained. Don't be afraid to talk to us. We love talking to people, especially in my role. If you ever see me out, that's what we do. We're dedicated to this university, we're dedicated to this job, to the students, faculty, staff, and their safety. It's a great place to work.”
“The addition of the comfort K-9s is something else that we see that our community values and needs,” Lynch adds. “K-9s want to help to soothe and help with stress for those of our community, that's part of it as well. And we are starting a Citizens Police Academy and it will go through the semester. We have 20 participants. There's been a lot of interest from our community members for it. And it's an opportunity to be transparent on how the department operates and why things are done in a certain manner. And it's beginning of fall semester, so there are lots of things going on. Everything from the move-in to the beginning of football season and everything in between.”
“Please remember what Captain Mumford said, we're very approachable,” says Fadley. “Come meet and know your MSU police and public safety officers. We're that resource, we're there for them. We don't pick and choose our calls. When the call comes in, we answer them. We want the community to be comfortable knowing that it's a partnership. We're here to serve with a second to none type of response and everybody's behind that. You'll see it in the interactions between our department and the community members. I'm very pleased with that.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sunday at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
McPherson’s wife Joanne, who as First Lady of Michigan State University founded Safe Place, the first shelter at a university to provide support for victims of domestic violence and stalking, died in June.
“She was so dedicated to Safe Place and so committed to having it work. Of course, now after all these decades really, it's worked very well. She always had an idea, like when we got here, Beaumont Tower’s bells weren't ringing, and they hadn't rung for about a year. She said, ‘What's this? The Beaumont Tower bells need to ring.’ In short time, the bells were ringing, and they've rung ever since. Safe Place and the Beaumont Tower bells, and the signs at campus entrances were a couple of her accomplishments.
“When we got here, for whatever reason, the signs entering campus were a set of wire structures and they looked pretty bad. Joanne never wanted things to look bad. They're now stone and permanent, and they look really good. They've been that way since about 1994, and that was Joanne saying ‘What's this?’"
McPherson talks about growing up in West Michigan and always knowing he would attend MSU, just like all his siblings did. And he says “MSU opened up the world to me.” Then a stint in the Peace Corps inspired his lifetime of work on international issues. He describes working in both the Ford and Reagan White Houses. He was working for Bank of America in San Francisco after the Reagan years, and that’s when the MSU presidency opened.
“Running Michigan State was a dream I never really expected to even have an opportunity to do. You can imagine what my seven brothers and sisters living in West Michigan thought. By that time, unfortunately, my father and mother had passed away. I think often, and certainly did back then, how sad it was that they weren't around because, for my father especially, this would have been special.”
McPherson talks about a couple of his accomplishment he’s most proud of like bringing the Detroit College of Law to MSU and beginning the conversations that led to MSU’s presence on Grand Rapids’ Medical Mile.
“The leader of this effort was Judge Dick Suhrheinrich. Without Dick Suhrheinrich we wouldn't have a law school. He is really a grand man with enormous capability. We did put that law school together. First, there was some thought it might be in Detroit, which wasn't optimal. There were some issues and ultimately it came here as an independent school.
“They had some real self-identity that they were intent to protect, which I thought was reasonable. The agreement that I had with them was I would never push for there to be a closer affiliation. They may decide they wanted it, and that may be appropriate at some time, but it's not going to be MSU that pushes a closer affiliation. Before I left, they came to me and said, ‘We want a closer affiliation,’ and now, after several years, it's called the Michigan State University College of Law.
“The medical school idea came together in the years after I left. In my mind, the key decision and key meeting - there were several; anything like this has several key meetings - was a meeting I had with Rich DeVos in the hanger in the Grand Rapids airport where I laid out how we wanted to do this. Basically, DeVos said, ‘It's a good idea.’ and it wouldn't have happened without DeVos' important key intervention in the years afterwards it unfolded.”
Talk about APLU and its mission.
“We’re very aggressive and active in Washington on appropriations for universities, and we have a deep commitment to student degree completion, to equity, and to minority students having the same percentages of graduation rates as majority students. I'm pleased that current MSU President Stanley is on the APLU board.
“Sam is a guy who we at APLU have always seen as a guy we could go to to get things done. During the pandemic, his medical expertise was invaluable. The presidents of this organization from around the country get together, and Sam was a person who could serve with real expertise and talk about the problems we were all having. Sam has always been a go-to guy. For him to come to Michigan State was just outstanding for Michigan State and for him.”
What concerns you about higher education's future? What are you hopeful about? What keeps you up at night? What are some challenges and opportunities moving forward?
“We need to continue to increase our graduation rates and decrease the time it takes to earn a degree. We've got to have more students graduate and do so in less time. Of course, there are cost considerations. Legislatures provide a substantially lower percentage of the cost than they once did. The Pell Grant money is helpful, and we've pushed hard for more Pell money.
“There's this whole set of equity, graduation, and cost issues that, of course, I could spend all your program on because I'm so immersed in them that are of deep concern. On the other hand, there are some successes. I looked at ALPU numbers over the last 10 years under Department of Education data, and our Hispanic students over the last 10 years have grown 70 percent. The numbers for Black students haven't moved that much. The Hispanic student population has grown.
“These are the kinds of issues we need to continue to really grapple with and make progress on now. We know how to graduate students better than we did. We've got the technology. I know these are important issues for Michigan State. Graduation rates here are quite high, but I know there's a commitment to make them higher.”
What do you hope your legacy is as president of MSU, or do you not even worry about that kind of thing?
“Well, I think if you worry about it too much, it's a mistake. There were certainly some key things that I'm very proud of. To me, ultimately, what a university presidency needs to be about is what kind of education students get. Michigan State happily and successfully educates many students, so I start there.
“The law school is important, and so is beginning the work on the medical school in Grand Rapids. This place is so complex. There are so many things that I learned and was part of. As I've said several times, every project has many fathers and mothers and many contributors, so I was proud to lead Michigan State for those years.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your show.
“On November 10 the museum will turn 10 years old. When the museum opened and was founded in 2012, there was a great outpouring and show of support and excitement," says Bridges. "That’s continued through the years, and we’ve softened some of the hard angles, if you will, of the museum to bring in a better diversity of audiences and build a sense of inclusivity. The museum is on this campus in service to MSU and to the broader mid-Michigan region that we serve. We offer a wide range of exhibitions, and we promote faculty and student engagement with the museum. But these are also areas I think we can really lean into further and develop more. We want to bring out the collection formally known as the Kresge Art Museum Collection and make sure that it's a pivotal hallmark piece of who we are as an institution.”
Bridges discusses the September 17 (B)road to Ten fundraising event benefitting the new Open Storage Center—a project designed to bring major parts of the collection out of private, offsite storage and into the museum for public enjoyment. And he highlights other exhibits and events at the museum.
“There’s a great opportunity for us to continue to embed ourselves and integrate ourselves across campus. We're a part of the university arts and culture and collections unit on campus now. And this integration of arts across campus is really important. While we hope that people always come and visit us, I want to make a concerted effort to get the arts into classrooms and into other areas of campus and make those connections to make sure that all students and all faculty understand the importance of working arts into the curriculum and into the experience more generally at the university.
“Where we’re located on campus is a huge benefit to us being at the gateway between the university campus and our greater communities, but there's a lot more campus that sits to the south of us and all around us. Breaking down some of those barriers, shortening those distances, and making sure that people understand that we exist here for them and in the service of them is important to me. That takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of outreach, a lot of communication, and a lot of relationship building. It’s an opportunity to work with a wide range of people. Asserting the role of the arts on campus and the importance of arts as a tool for research within a research context is a way for the artist to think about things differently. That is something that I'm passionate about, and I hope to bring others into the fold.
“Ten years have been incredible. These anniversary years are always great moments for reflection, but it's also about the future. We've set a great groundwork for this institution in the past 10 years, but the next 10 years are going to be even more exciting. We have new projects and new ideas coming forward. Our strategic planning will open new ideas and room for growth and expansion. And most importantly, we want to make sure that everyone understands that we exist for them. We are free. We are now open Wednesday through Sunday. Whether you're interested in contemporary art or ancient art and antiquities or looking for family day programs or other kinds of educational opportunities, the museum has so much to offer. We hope that you come for one thing and you experience so much more.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
I had the pleasure and privilege of talking with Dr. Potchen in the summer of 2007 in his beautiful Radiology Healing Gardens. He was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the MSU/WJR partnership. This is an encore presentation of that conversation.
“My job as I see it is the development of human capital,” he says. “I’m trying to enhance other people’s opportunity to lead a useful life. If you add value to others, revenue will flow.
“Management is the art and science of getting the job done, but leadership is the art and science of getting the job done with and through people. Everybody around us can teach us something.”
In our conversation, he talks about the origin and mission of the Department of Radiology and technology’s impact on the practice of medicine. And he says the key issues in healthcare are “cost and accessibility.”
He describes the evolution of medical education and his role as the faculty’s representative to the Board and administration. And he shares his thoughts on the issues in higher education that concern him.
“The biggest thing about higher education that is at issue today is the failure of society to realize the tremendous need for ultimately having economic development derive from the advantage of having better human capital. What universities do is improve the value of people to society. And we have been remiss in keeping it funded well.”
Dr. Potchen shares some of his “Potchen-isms” like “The world is full of unmet friends” and “Knowledge is something you can give away and still keep.”
Rest in peace, Dr. Potchen!
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
There’s a buzz in the air as fall semester gets underway.
“I'm incredibly excited. And I think if we were to measure my resting heart rate right now, we'd find that it's higher than it normally is because this is an exciting time for us. And as we start the new year, we're anticipating perhaps our largest entering class ever in the first-year class, and we have one of our largest transfer student numbers as well. We're excited that people want to come to MSU and that they're very interested in learning and living here. To all the students and parents, I look forward to seeing you on move-in day. It's going to be exciting, and we're going to have a great semester.”
President Stanley explains the university’s holistic approach to student success and shares its approach to COVID this year.
“The most important part of our approach is always vaccination, and we know that the vaccines help prevent hospitalizations and deaths. They can help mitigate transmission to some degree, and they really are the key to keeping our campus safe. We're asking that all faculty, staff, and students receive a vaccine and at least one booster; that requirement continues. And we had great compliance with the incoming class. Mask wearing is optional now except in some special facilities involving healthcare.
“But for the rest of the time you have discretion when to wear a mask. And the only other exception I would say is if you know you have COVID, and you're isolating because of that, we will ask you to wear a mask for the first five days, according to CDC regulations. We want to make sure people have access to testing so they can know if they have any of the symptoms of COVID so they're not exposing others needlessly. But what I'm really looking forward to is coming back together again.”
President Stanley welcomes University Physician Michael Brown to his new post and talks about seven MSU programs being in the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s 2022 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects Top 25, including Education at No. 2 and Communication at No. 3. And he talks about points he made in a recent The Hill piece on doubling the size of Pell Grants.
“Pell Grants are a remarkable development by the federal government that provide dollars that go directly to students and their families to support their education. And it really makes a difference to economically disadvantaged students. The Pell Grants are based on family income and levels that really creep up into what we would call middle class now because college expenses have increased. And so it's a wonderful program, but it doesn't cover enough. As the years have gone by, tuition has gone up. The Pell grant doesn't go as far as it once did. It used to cover about 80 percent of costs; that number is now closer to 30 or 40 percent. By doubling Pell, we'd bring it much more in line with the cost of tuition these days and remove one very important barrier to people going to college for the opportunity to reach their full potential.”
Stanley reflects on being on hand with Governor Whitmer and President Biden (virtually) for the signing of the CHIPS and Science ACT and being named to the Executive Committee for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. He talks about WKAR Public Media’s Century of Service and thanks alumni and donors for a record year of giving back.
“I'm so grateful to those who've invested in Michigan State University, particularly our alumni, who are up 26.6 percent in terms of percentage of people who gave, which is incredible. More than 9,700 individuals contributed for the first time. So that's fantastic. We had almost 10,000 people joining us for the first time. And to hit a record when you're not in a campaign or towards the end of the campaign is impressive. My hat also goes out to our Advancement team for the work they're doing and all the deans, department chairs, faculty, and everyone who helps contribute to the fundraising effort. Everybody did very, very well.”
And you're recently back from a trip to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the home of Tom Izzo. Your thoughts on your trip there and what you took away about MSU's impact. And you've got a new contract ready for the Board to approve for Tom Izzo that makes him a Spartan for Life.
“You can't talk about the Upper Peninsula and our mission there without mentioning Tom. I'm so glad that he's with us as a Spartan for life now. This contract is certainly well deserved and is going to keep him here and keep him working with the university when he finishes his basketball coaching, which I hope is not anytime soon. At that point in time, though, he's going to be associated with Advancement and the university to do work as an ambassador for us. And I can't think of a better one. But it was a great opportunity for me to get up to the U.P. And it took three years, which was way too long. It's beautiful driving along Route 2 looking at both Lake Michigan during my drive and Lake Superior - incredible vistas. And then I had the chance to visit some of the places where MSU is having an impact. We've been in the U.P. for more than 100 years.
“Let's all stay safe. Let's stay focused. It's going to be wonderful to be back together again. It doesn't seem like so long since we were coming together last year, and I look forward to a really productive and successful semester.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The guest this month is Johannes Bauer, Director of the Quello Center at Michigan State University discussing the new MOON-Light project.
Spearheaded by MSU and funded by a $10.5 million federal Broadband Infrastructure Program grant through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the Michigan Open Optical Network – Leveraging Innovation to Get High-Speed Technology (MOON-Light) will lead to equal and open access to broadband services to all Michiganders and can be leveraged to deliver education, healthcare, and employment services.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“When the opportunity came around to consider this position, it was a no brainer for me,” says Olmscheid. “It was a great opportunity. I think Michigan is a beautiful state. My home state is Minnesota and it’s similar. Michigan is uniquely different in its own way. There are so many parallels to Minnesota and Michigan that I loved. But more importantly, what attracted me is Wharton Center’s commitment to excellence and its commitment to the work that it's done over the last 40 years here in the Lansing community. And the connection to the university is unparalleled.”
What are some of your goals?
“In the immediate future, we have to look at how we live in a pandemic world. We're kind of living in this COVID moment, but also how do we emerge from that and what does that look like? Our habits have changed as consumers and buyers. Likely, you are not going to as many events or you might stream more on your television set at home. We're asking questions around what that looks like for us. Because we know foundationally, we can't replace the live performance experience.
“There's something about sharing the space, time and physical air with folks and artists on stage. That shared experience is so critical to the core of what we do, and we know we can't replace that. It's a matter of figuring out what the experiences are that communities and audiences long for now and what will drive them to come to the center. All our habits have changed and shifted because of the pandemic. We know that we have to shift with it, and the pathway forward is a little unknown.
“One of the goals is to figure out how we define that and how we define success in the future. And what does the future of our industry look like? Because of that shifting landscape, there are so many new opportunities that are yet to be written, and I think we have to be openhearted to what that looks like and not just be traditionalists.”
What are some challenges and opportunities ahead?
“The demographics of our audiences are continuing to change so we have to answer questions around who our audience is and what do they want. One of the best things that we can do as a center is listen to what people want and what people will respond to. More importantly, being on Michigan State University's campus, what are the students desiring and how are we connected to them? I think that's the future of how we build audiences and that's the future of how we have arts engagement. It has to be beyond what we currently do in finding audiences to backfill audiences or fill the seats of those events. But it's more importantly finding more pathways and more connectivity and more relevance to audiences who are not currently engaged with who we are.
“That's a huge task. That's multiple many years in the making to pull that off. But it's really about starting the conversation of what will engage people and how will we get them in the door. We know once they're engaged, we can bring them along the journey. It's that first invitation, that first bit of relevant experience that will drive them to who we are.
“It's important to remember how the arts play such an important part of each of our lives. Art is around us everywhere. It doesn’t need to be formal or on a stage or in a museum. It's important for us to remember that arts are such an important piece of who we are and how we connect with each other as human beings and build our empathy. It’s important to find ways you can engage arts in your world every day and be open-hearted and open-minded.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Dan Gould has recently retired as director of the institute. He’s a professor of kinesiology and the emeritus Gwendolyn Norrell Professor of Youth Sport and Student Athlete Well Being. Karin Pfeiffer is also a professor of kinesiology and is assuming the role of director from Dan.
Gould talks about the institute being born out of the state legislature in 1978.
“The Institute for the Study of Youth Sports was started by the state legislature,” says Gould. “Our mission is to scientifically study sport for children and youth and then to disseminate that information to the larger sporting public to make sports better for kids.”
Pfeiffer is an exercise physiologist.
“My research has focused on two major lines,” Pfeiffer says. “One is how we assess how physically active people are, and the other is interventions to increase physical activity. Most of my work has been done with children and adolescents.”
“A lot of my research is in the area of sports psychology and the psychology of coaching,” Gould continues. “I have done a lot of programmatic work on what makes an effective coach. We've really focused on life skills like psychosocial skills and characteristics like teamwork, goal setting, and work ethic that kids can learn through sport and then hopefully - they're called life skills - transfer those skills to other aspects of their life. I was a wrestler through high school and college, and I learned to work hard. Did that transfer to other avenues like being a professor?”
What are some of the key and current topics that the institute grapples with?
“One is the equity issue,” says Gould. “There are really two youth sports in America. There are the middle-class youth sports where the kids go to sports camps or they're on travel teams and pay for play, and then there's either rural kids or urban kids who have fewer opportunities. How do we bridge that divide? That's one. How do we further increase quality coaching? I think that's a big one that we want to work on going forward. Youth sports has become very professionalized. Ninety percent of kids are never going to play in college. How do we have them fall in love with physical activity?”
“Even though we could view sports as a means to achieve physical activity recommendations, we don't always have the best-case scenario in terms of what's happening at practice,” Pfeiffer says. “And I think we have a couple of issues going on where parents are dropping children off at practice thinking, ‘Okay, they're going to get a lot of physical activity during this time,’ and most people would think ‘Yep, that's what's going to happen.’ But in the end, if you examine what's occurring during some of these practices, there's a fair amount of standing around.
“We've lost that notion of free play, which is also a very important element of development. And I think the other is just what is happening in these practices, not just with are they getting enough physical activity while they're there. But then the skill development piece of that as well, and are they really getting the skills they need to develop fully as an athlete? Whatever happened to intramural sports? Why is it that we have to be the cream of the crop or you just drop out of sport? Why can't we have this whole piece of sports for fun? Maybe you're not the best one out there but you just want to play. People often fall out of love with sport after they don't make an elite team, and that's not how it should be. Everybody should be playing for fun. Fun is the reason why people do a lot of things, including physical activity including sports.”
What’s your advice for parents and coaches?
“We know people do things because it's fun,” says Gould. “And people do things when they feel competent. If you don't feel competent, you're highly likely to drop out. Now, competent doesn't mean that I play on the MSU football team. Competence means I swam today for fitness. Well, I can swim. I can do the strokes. If you couldn't do that, it's not going to be very much fun. We want to create an enjoyable atmosphere of fun, but it's not just an unorganized rolling out of the ball and laughing. We're also teaching kids fundamental skills.
“How do we develop kids’ competence relative to their own abilities so they can go out and have fun doing it? And then also it's not just the physical side. It's a coach who's having fun and being supportive and encouraging.”
“I think sometimes what happens, not necessarily in the older age groups but in some of the younger age groups, you just have a parent who, thank goodness, does volunteer but doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of background in coaching,” Pfeiffer continues. “And that's okay, but it would be great if we can help that parent a little bit by teaching them some of these kinds of characteristics of having fun and developing skills.”
“It doesn't have to be really complicated if you're a parent or a youth coach,” Gould says. “There's something called self-determination theory. All people and all kids have three basic needs. One is relatedness; you want to belong to something. Another is competence; you want to feel like you're getting better. And the other is autonomy or choice. I’d like to get every coach to go to a practice and say, ‘What did I do today to make the kids have better relatedness? What can I do to increase competence by having each kid set a goal? What can I do for autonomy?’
“Our colleague Jim Pivarnik studied exercise in pregnancy, and I always remember some of the research his students did that showed that physically active pregnant women have kids who are more physically active later in life. Be physically active with your kids. Have some balls in the backyard or a little swimming pool. Do things with your kids outdoors. Buy balls and bats and your kids will more likely develop these skills if they have an environment that breeds that.”
“There is a lot of optimism just with the interest in sport and how many people are into it and want to participate, and I think that's good, and I think we can foster that even better than what we do now,” Pfeiffer adds. “Mental health has really risen to the top as an important issue for us to address. Safety always needs to be at the top of our minds. We need to pull ourselves back from this almost professionalization of youth sport. We need a little bit of a reset in terms of that. I don't know how we're going to do it, but we need to.”
“As I retire, I'm excited about how much more we know,” says Gould. “I was going through some old materials when I cleaned my office and there were hardly any books. Now, there's so much information coming out that we know a lot more about how to help people in these endeavors than we did when we started out; that's a real positive.
“Concerns? The U.S. has fallen behind other countries in the world because we have no government agency that looks after sport - a research dissemination system to get parents information funded by the government. Here, we have to backdoor it through other agencies. Now, that's my concern. The good thing is Health and Human Services, Karin's been involved in some of this, are trying to get more involved and do some things.
“The Safe Sport Act is a good example. The government passed that but didn't fund it enough so they can't keep up with all the cases. I'm not a huge fan of big government, but at the same time, our government probably needs to get involved. We need a policy on youth in general and on youth sport. To me, there's opportunity there. But it's a concern.
“The quality of coaching is so important. You don’t gain all the life skills sports can teach from just being in sports. You catch it from having a really good coach who is intentional about what she's teaching and talks about teamwork and then talks about how that would transfer to the classroom or work environment.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The W. M. Keck Foundation has awarded Michigan State University’s Marcos Dantus and Elad Harel $1.3 million to start a new revolution in the way we use optical microscopes to understand the living world.
The philanthropic grant is one of six awarded nationally by the Keck Foundation in 2022 for science and engineering. This also marks the first time that scientists at MSU have claimed the award.
This also marks the first time that scientists at MSU have claimed the award. The Keck Foundation encourages creativity by rewarding transformative projects that other funding agencies might see as too ambitious or risky.
“This is a really remarkable achievement,” says Douglas Gage, MSU's vice president for research and innovation. “The Keck Foundation is a funder of scientific research, and they value one thing, I think, over anything else, and that's transformative innovation. They do not want to fund research that can be funded by any other agency.
“One of the things that it does for MSU is that it really validates the innovation that we have going on at the university. And we know that, but it's great to have a national organization really validate what we know about MSU. We're very grateful for this proposal and that it was funded. I'm convinced that the work that Elad and Marcos will do will indeed be transformational. If they can do the imaging of living systems at the resolution that they propose, that will be remarkable, and it will be indeed transformational. The innovation here comes from two very independently innovative scientists bringing together their ideas in really a novel way. I think that's often the seed that leads to innovation. We try to promote that at MSU, so we're looking forward to the outcome of this research. I think it's going to be something to watch.”
“Our key goal here is to see if we can see the machinery of life in action with a resolution of nanometers,” says Dantus. “And that would be thousandths of millionths of a meter. It's really tiny length scales. In most of the cases, our microscope will not look at a space much larger than the width of a hair. Most of the time, we're going to be way, way below that. So, our main goal is resolution in the nanometer scale and time resolution. If we get there, we both will be so excited. We will be jumping up and down. And I think a lot of our colleagues will be equally excited.”
“The challenge has been, as Marcos described, that we tend to think that we can see these molecular machines in motion,” Harel adds. “And the truth is we can't. What we can see are these kinds of static snapshots. And we infer; we're very good at inferring what happens from those static snapshots. It's like if you see a picture, you can infer a lot of maybe what's going on in the picture. But if you see a picture only every hour, you're really missing a lot of the details of what's happening in between. How are people communicating? What's the social structure? What's happening in that scene? And that's kind of where we are. We're very good at inferring, and enormous ingenuity has gone into figuring out the mechanisms of various biological processes. But it's a very, very slow discovery process because every kind of science that one does is only revealing a very small, narrow window into that process. By combining enough little snapshots of information, we can form a hypothesis of what's happening.
“That's really different than being able to observe it directly at the time scales that matter. There are different technologies for getting those snapshots. The technology that does not exist now and what's specifically addressed in this Keck Foundation grant is how do we make these movies at the requisite time and spatial resolution to see directly what's happening and to accelerate that discovery process? Because we are, after all, very visual. Human beings are just visual. We understand things through how we see them. That's still a very large missing piece.
“It's not just that we'll be excited to see better resolution. There's always a goal of improving resolution, but it's really to help aid our fundamental understanding of these complex processes so that we can advance science in general in ways just like microscopy advanced science 100 years ago. The advent of microscopy accelerated the knowledge of the microscopic world. That's the same kind of goal here. Just like astronomy where the more powerful telescopes are accelerating the discovery of the planets and the evolution of the cosmos, we would like to apply that to the nanoscopic world, the world in which molecules and proteins and cells live.”
“The biggest challenge is that we intend to use visible light,” continues Dantus. “Visible light has a certain wavelength, which is about half a micron, and so there is the so-called defraction limit that tells that you cannot resolve elements that are smaller than half of the wavelength. That's the number one challenge. We're going to be using ideas that are borrowed from magnetic resonance imaging, but that's the first challenge. It's like, who do we think we are that we can break the fraction limit?
“We think we have a new idea on how to do this, and if we are successful, we are predicting that our method will be less detrimental to molecules and will allow us to image with a very high-speed entire movies so that we can see this biology of life in motion. That's the biggest challenge that I see.”
“We have to kind of start with the most basic premise of the entire proposal, which is just distinguishing two things, two objects that are really close by to one another, closer than what the traditional limits impose,” Harel adds. “And then the question is, how do you extrapolate from that to, say, two dimensions or three dimensions or more complicated imaging scenarios? We really have to do some really basic research in terms of just showing what the limits are. The first MRI experiments were distinguishing two tubes of water. That's not terribly interesting. But someone said, ‘Wait a second. The brain is just a bunch of compartments of water, so can we extrapolate to that? What kind of contrast would we see in the brain or in the body, and under what circumstances do we need to enhance that contrast, or what kind of different pulse sequences can we use to see one feature and not another?’
“There were decades and decades of work to get to where we are today where that can be used as a diagnostic tool and as a routine tool that doctors who are not specialists in the technology of MRI can use to make medical decisions. That's going to be the same thing here where we have to prove that these techniques are going to give information that's useful and not distorted in some way, or at least that we know what the distortions are so that we can expect them and account for them. There's a lot of work just to be done in the verification step because we don't know what we're going to see exactly, which is what makes it exciting, but also, we have to appreciate that fact.”
“The first experiments will be on very small particles that are in the earth and static,” says Dantus. “But as soon as we can demonstrate that this approach works in one dimension, we already know exactly how to take it to two dimensions, and it will already have a huge impact. Our brains are now focused on getting that first step done.”
“As scientists, we're always greatly appreciative of the fact that external philanthropic sources appreciate the challenges that we have to face as scientists and the infrastructure and resources that we need to really test new ideas,” Harel says. “It's very gratifying and we're extremely appreciative of the fact that we're given that opportunity and that the Keck Foundation knows and understands the kind of challenges and the kind of risks that one has to take sometimes in order to make breakthrough discoveries.
“We're incredibly fortunate that we get to have that chance. That doesn't come along terribly often. We believe that something really good is going to come out of this and it's going to push science forward in one way or another. We really do thank the Keck Foundation, and we thank MSU as well for really being supportive of us and of the application and of the process to put forward the best application we could and to really be highly competitive with many, many other universities and very strong groups applying for this as well.”
“We’re proposing something that has never been proposed so it’s a high risk, but high reward,” says Dantus. “It's wonderful that there are institutions like the Keck Foundation that are saying, ‘If some scientists convince us that there is a possibility to achieve results that have never been observed before that could have a tremendous impact in science, we would like to facilitate that.’ That's really fantastic, and to be on the receiving end is just incredible. It's just a wonderful opportunity and one that we want to do the most for.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Jackson describes his background and talks about what attracted him to MSU.
“Michigan State really is the prototype for what land grants were built on, and to be at the epicenter for the commitment to the roles and functions that a state should give to its citizens from a post-secondary education opportunity just seemed very opportune. I was also attracted to the hardworking spirit of Michigan State. It’s in the DNA. And MSU works hard on access to its excellence.”
Jackson describes some of the excellent and highly ranked programs and curricula in the College of Education at MSU - from kinesiology to teacher education and from K-12 policy to foci on STEM education and the global nature of education. And he talks about his own research interests in hiring practices in higher education that have “looked at what we think of as organizational disparities broadly in the sense that inherently most organizations, not all, do find themselves to have consistent sets of disparities that groups have been subjected to across decades.”
Dean Jackson talks about the strategic planning going on at the college that is “taking stock of where we are. Let’s anchor the important pieces and optimize opportunities to reinforce the other emerging areas in our college. And then dream. Are there spaces where we can be first that will prepare this college for the next 50 years or more?”
Jackson shares some thoughts on challenges and opportunities ahead around issues like handling race issues in schools to finding the right hybrid arrangements for remote learning.
“We must be able to show parents and the community that we’re addressing these issues. We have amazing faculty, staff, and students in the college. We attract students from a full spectrum of backgrounds and experiences. MSU’s College of Education is a significant crown jewel that deserves the recognition and support it has warranted locally and across the state, nation, and globe. We're thinking very responsibly about the future with a keen eye toward the beneficiaries being our graduates, and the state, and the localities that count on the College of Education to be a strong partner with them.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“Strategic communication is one of those terms that we hear thrown around a lot in the communication field. And what we're talking about with strategic communication really is the idea that we all communicate with each other daily, in organizations, interpersonally, with family and friends. And that communication is designed to relay a message between you and me right now to achieve some objective. When we talk about strategic communication, we're really talking about looking at a vision, objective, or goal for an organization and developing the communication that will help us achieve those objectives or those goals over time.
“It's a field that's evolved over the years and one that I really enjoy working in because it involves not only helping organizations get from where they are today to where they want to go. But it also involves elements of crisis communication, issue communication, and a range of other things that organizations are dealing with daily. I still enjoy teaching and helping the next generation of communicators.”
What made you want to take on the assignment?
“When I got to know the team here at WKAR, what I found was just a great group of people who come to work every day with this idea that there's a community out there that needs information, a community out there that needs support, a community out there that relies on this station and the people at this station to keep them informed. And while it's very different than the type of service that I spent my career engaged in, it's still service to people who need your support. And so, I felt this natural kinship with the folks here. When this opportunity came along, I will tell you the only thing that gave me pause was the fact that Susi Elkins was such a phenomenal general manager here and has done such great work that I think you have to stop and think about following in the footsteps of someone like that.
“The members of the WKAR team know what they're doing, and they don't need me to tell them what to do or how to do it. What they needed was someone to step in and be a leader and provide the space for them to continue to serve this community and to continue to do the things that they've been doing for so long and so well in this community. And so I said, ‘Yeah. I'll take this opportunity to do that.’"
What do you see as some of the challenges facing WKAR and the opportunities inherent in some of those challenges, and what are some of your goals to meet those along the way?
“We're at a sort of inflection point in public media where the days of simply turning on your television or turning on your radio and reaching your audience over the air are quickly going to be behind us. Now, to be clear, there will always be people who want to receive their news and information by turning on the television and getting it that way. And we are never going to abandon those people. We'll always be there for them. But what we've found is that there is an increasing number of people out there who want to receive their news and information on different platforms and through different digital means at different times. Sometimes they want it on demand and sometimes they want it live. And as I said, they want it from many different sources. And we must respond to that.
“It's one of the reasons why during my time as interim, I'm very focused on a digital transformation that looks across our enterprise and makes sure that all the information that we are distributing and providing to the community is getting out through multiple digital platforms. We've got to make some adjustments. We've got to change. Every time I see a challenge, I see an opportunity. This is a really great opportunity for us to not only do better for our listeners and for our viewers, but to also be leaders in the public media space with the approach that we take.”
What is the Century of Service?
“WKAR will celebrate 100 years of service this year on August 18. WKAR Radio will be 100 years old that day. It is an unbelievable milestone that we are going to celebrate. WKAR Radio started out 100 years ago providing agricultural information to farmers in the Greater Lansing area. And over the years, we have been innovators at every turn with the support of MSU. We were an early adopter of television, and WKAR was one of the founding members of NPR and of PBS. There's an amazing amount of history and a great legacy here at this station.
“When I think about things that excite me in the digital transformation, there's an opportunity to grow our audience. Public media tends to have an older audience. We tend to have people who are less entrenched in all things digital. But here's where it gets interesting. When you look at the content that's being developed here at WKAR and you look at the content that's being developed by PBS across the enterprise, that content speaks to a diverse cross section of audiences. It speaks to different communities across the country. We know that we have content that will appeal to people who may not be traditional public broadcasting consumers. The challenge for us is to figure out how to get that content to them.
“We know that once we get it to them, they engage with it. We know that they like it, and we know that they'll keep coming back for more. I see this as a real opportunity for us to expand the audience of public media. I also see this as a way to serve the community. We like to refer to this as super serving the community, that is to give them more than what they expect and constantly exceed their expectations.
“WKAR has been serving this community for 100 years, and we are going to continue to serve the Greater Lansing community, not only over the air, but out in the community. In order to stay connected with you, we have to be where you are. We have to get information into the channels that you want us to communicate through in order to reach you. Our objective is to provide news and information that gives our audience a view of the world that they might not get in other places. We are here to serve the community and to be a part of the community, and we're going to continue to make that our priority.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get yours shows.
The academy in Detroit is the first in the United States, launched as part of Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. The free program offers students an opportunity to become entrepreneurs and app developers by learning the fundamentals of coding, design, marketing, and project management — with an emphasis on inclusivity and making a positive impact in local communities.
HEAR the ceremony HERE:
(00:00) Sarah Gretter, PhD – Director of the Apple Developer Academy
(:55) – “Supa” Mario Crippen, Academy graduate
(3:48) - MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.
(6:57) – Raven Scott, Academy graduate
(7:45) - James Feagin, Director of Economic Mobility for the Gilbert Family Foundation
(12:13) – Detroit Mayor Michael Duggan
(15:18) - Team Powerhouse BiteSight presentation
(21:14) – The Crew Expose presentation
(26:49) – BeAware presentation
(34:04) - Lisa Jackson, Apple’s Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives
(42:33) – Raven Scott’s final comments
For more information on the programs and ways to get involved, visit the Apple Developer Academy.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
You're in Detroit this week to congratulate the inaugural class of graduates of the Apple Developer Academy. Remind us of the academy's evolution and mission.
“The academy is a groundbreaking opportunity for individuals in Detroit and all of Michigan. And this is the first Apple Developer Academy in the United States. It's an opportunity for individuals 18 and above to learn how to code and develop apps for the Apple operating system. When students finish, they're well prepared to code for Apple apps and maybe even start their own companies.”
Back on campus, we're preparing for the coming academic year already. The MSU Board of Trustees last week laid the financial groundwork for the university's new fiscal year with approval of a $3.2 billion budget that supports goals outlined in our MSU Strategic Plan 2030. What are some areas of the budget you'd like to highlight for Spartans?
“Student success remains a critical element. A lot of the spending that we're doing going forward, and new spending particularly, is devoted to student success, particularly economically disadvantaged first-generation students and others to help them successfully matriculate and earn degrees at Michigan State University. Our goal is to keep Michigan State University accessible to excellence.”
Talk about the grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that lets MSU continue our long legacy of service to the people of Michigan by working with Merit Network to expend high speed internet to areas of Michigan with limited or no broadband service.
“This grant is going to make a huge difference to people in rural areas who don't have access to internet or have inadequate internet to do the things they need to do. Something we take for granted here in East Lansing is something that many don't have, or they don't have in a way that works as well as it could.”
For the second time, MSU has earned a gold rating for sustainability achievements from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
“Our goal is to get to platinum before 2030; that's part of our strategic plan. We don't want to rest on gold. This is an issue that's so important for our students, faculty and staff, and our community. It's one which we take very seriously.”
President Stanley welcomes two new leaders to Spartan Athletics in softball coach Sharonda McDonald-Kelly and men’s tennis coach Harry Jadun. He shares his reflections on MSU’s Juneteenth celebration, too. And he reflects on the passing of former MSU first lady Joanne McPherson. She might best be remembered as the guiding spirit behind the creation of the MSU Safe Place in 1994, the first university-based shelter where students, staff, faculty, and their partners experiencing abusive relationships can find refuge and support.
President Stanley, any final thoughts as we settle into summer but already look forward to the fall?
“It's going to be exciting this year. Get ready to feel a crowd. We're looking at, perhaps, a record enrollment for this coming year. MSU has been a place that many students want to attend, and we're very happy about that. Vennie Gore is getting ready for the onslaught of the dorms, and the provost is getting the faculty and staff ready. We're adding advisors and more faculty and staff to help deal with the increase in students. And we're going to make sure that the quality of what we're doing is not hurt at all by the number of students. Instead, we'll have more outstanding individuals getting an MSU education and more opportunities for our current students to meet people from around the world and get to know what a great university is first-hand.”
You can read the president's June 2022 Spartan Community Letter that we've been discussing by clicking on the communications tab at president.msu.edu, and follow along on Instagram too, @msupresstanley.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“Our overall goal at MSU Sports Medicine is to be a single location for patients and athletes alike to come when they're having pain, ailments, or even just looking for advice on how to get active and stay active,” says Nate Fitton, a team physician at the MSU Health Care Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center. “Our ultimate goal for all patients is to lead a fulfilling, active life. We see a wide variety of acute injuries, chronic injuries, as well as people just looking to get active and talk about nutrition, weightlifting regimens, and things like that. And so our mission is to provide that service to the community and be a nationally recognized location for patients to come and have access to world renowned providers. We really strive to be a destination for sports medicine and preventative care.”
“We treat everyone,” says Jill Moschelli, a team physician at the MSU Health Care Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center. “All ages and backgrounds are welcome. You do not need to be an elite athlete to come to the Sports Medicine office. That's a question we always get. Do I need to be an athlete to come and see you? The answer is no. We will see everyone and treat everyone similarly. We just want to keep people active and doing what they love.”
I didn't really realize that proactive mission either. That's really cool that you'd rather have people not have to see you, frankly.
“We get that a lot, where patients come in and they're worried that we're going to tell them to stop running or walking,” continues Fitton. “That's not our goal at all. Our goal is to be creative but keep you moving. Maybe running isn't the best thing for you but riding a bike or doing the elliptical absolutely can be. It's not that we would totally eliminate things, it's really about being creative and keeping you going. That's really our ultimate goal. I tell patients regularly, yes, if you hurt because you run too much and you've got poor form, well, continuing to do that is not what we want for you. But at the same time, we want to keep you active. We look for ways to help you stay active. Sure, if you just stopped running for four weeks, it would get better, but you're going to have other issues from not running. We want to find ways to keep you going, keep you moving.”
Are there new treatments on the horizon that have you excited about treating patients better?
“We are all really involved in sports medicine and are at the cutting edge of what's happening in the field of sports medicine,” Moschelli continues. “Many of us are presenting at national conferences and are really involved on a national level with different societies and committees, and so we are really trying to bring that into our office. We really are offering availability to all of the cutting-edge opportunities or treatments.”
“This is where we separate ourselves in that we have the power of a research university behind us,” says Fitton. “We regularly collaborate with PhD candidates and researchers on campus who are looking to advance the delivery of healthcare. That's another thing patients can look forward to when they come see us is that we have ongoing research projects. We're looking at things like osteopathic manipulative medicine and recovery from concussions to see if we can enhance or speed up the recovery by adding that treatment modality. Over in the Department of Kinesiology, they're doing a tremendous amount of ongoing research that is at the leading edge of what next-level care is going to look like. With us being involved in that, we can also provide that to our patients. I think that's really exciting.”
Increasingly, more women are getting involved in sports medicine.
“Historically, sports medicine has maybe not been as inclusive,” Moschelli says. “But I am very honored to be a part of the group at MSU Sports Medicine. Dr. Sheeba Joseph and I are two female providers there, and we're both team physicians for MSU athletes. There are a lot of female athletes at MSU, and they have their own set of challenges that you need to think about when treating them.”
What would be some tips for the weekend warriors, or even regular exercisers, to not have to come and see you guys?
“It's about moderation and approach,” says Fitton. “When you decide you’re going to start running or working out, we are in full support of that. Because the healthier you are, the less you're going to need us. Our goal is for healthy, active people.
“We regularly encourage diversity in what you do. Don't run seven days a week. Run three days a week; cycle a couple days a week; try to get some swimming in or incorporate some strength training. We know that through activity and interactions that the body can start to have some overuse injuries. The best way to avoid those is through diversity of your activities. That diversity promotes full body wellness and health and strength.”
“And find something you like,” Moschelli says. “Find something you enjoy doing because that's going to hopefully lead to further success in being active if you find something you enjoy. It’s good to get your joints moving in a variety of directions. We can help you be creative with your exercise and nutrition plan.”
“The team approach to your delivery of care is how we're going to interact,” says Fitton. “We’re not only going to evaluate and manage and make recommendations. If we need to draw upon skills from other providers within our office offer, we're going to do so and vice versa. Additionally, we'll take it one step further. If you need to see physical therapy or another specialist, we're going to help coordinate that. And we're going to coordinate your care with your physical therapist and make sure that everyone's on the same page, and we collaborate and work together to getting you back. Rarely do we get someone in the door and say, ‘You know what? We've got nothing for you.’ That's a failure on our end. We want to always have an option to help you get better. If it's me, if it's my partners, or someone else within MSU Health Care, we're going to do that.”
The MSU Health Care Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center is in the Eyde Building on South Hagadorn Road. You can call (517) 884-6100 or go to healthcare.msu.edu.
“We have availability to see people now,” says Moschelli. “If you need to be seen for any particular injury, pain, or question about your plan, we have openings now.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
This year's keynote speaker is College of Arts and Letters English professor Julian Chambliss, who has a focus on popular culture, comics, and digital humanities, and his research explores race, identity, and power in urban spaces. His address is titled “Not Only Darkness: The Legacy and Future of Black Speculative Practice.” Chambliss' keynote will focus on Afrofuturism, what it is, and its impact on society today. His keynote will also examine the relationship between Afrofuturism and speculative practice, which refers to the exploration of new ideas and pathways that will ultimately lead to liberation.
What is Afrofuturism and what has been its impact on society?
“Afrofuturism is the intersection between speculation and liberation born of African diasporic experiences. It often touches on science, technology, and knowledge production and how we do that and what are our aims are for that. Ultimately, Afrofuturism is really rooted in a set of concerns that are connected to the Black experience, and it’s theorized by people who are concerned with hierarchies and control and oppression looking through ways to create a system that's less hierarchical, less oppressive, more equitable, and safer. Ultimately, the impact of that is that there is a group of people, regardless of discipline, who are committed to the idea of trying to create a more equitable and safe society. That is the thing that makes Afrofuturism so appealing.”
What is speculative practice and what is its relationship with Afrofuturism?
“Afrofuturism is a term that's really describing Black speculative practice. Afrofuturism was really important when it was coined in 1994 because it captured a set of practices that Black people were having. But in a hierarchical system, Black people's contributions, actions, and perspectives get erased. And so, what the term does is it calls attention to Black people who have had to speculate around liberation over and over again because the system they've been involved in is unequal. They're thinking about ways to make it more equal. It's very difficult for us to think about the United States today without the context of African Americans. In moments good and ill. Slavery is an ill. The good is its coming to an end. African Americans have been a part of this country from the beginning and their contributions in every one of those stages is something that we can't really deny.”
What is the significance of Juneteenth and how has commemorating it evolved?
“Juneteenth is a particularly complex holiday in part because it has come to the center of public awareness at a time when African Americans are increasingly articulating a set of understandings about the nature of a coercive society and a systemic anti-Blackness in a new way. I think one of the things that's interesting about Juneteenth is that there is an idea of commemoration within it that is celebrating the triumphs of African Americans in a very particular context and it's celebrating that context unapologetically, I would argue. This is a holiday or a commemoration that's very well known within the Black community, but it only recently became a federal holiday. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we had a Black president; so, celebrating Blackness is okay.
“At some very basic level, Juneteenth represents the celebration of the end of a horrible system. For people of African descent and their allies, that's a very important thing. It was a horrible thing. Let's celebrate its end. That has not necessarily been the case in the public square for decades upon decades. It makes a lot of sense to say, hey, let's celebrate this thing and celebrate its perspective on the American experience.”
How do Juneteenth and Afrofuturism fit together and complement each other?
“With Afrofuturism, there's an element of going back to recover the reality, the knowledge, the production, and the contributions of people of color. There's also a shifting from a Eurocentric perspective to a more open, diverse one. A more open and diverse society celebrates a major milestone related to African American freedom and its contributions to the broader American context. One of the benefits of African American speculation around liberation is really a more liberal society, a more equal society for everybody. And that is also something that we can all as Americans agree on and understand.”
What are some key messages you hope to convey in your talk at MSU's Juneteenth celebration?
“I'm going to try to define Afrofuturism and try to define what it is and try to make clear this transformation, this shift in perspectives, that is represented by it and how Juneteenth and commemoration and memory from an African American or African diasporic perspective is different. But in that difference is a kind of affirmation of the ideology of liberation that's very important to the United States. There's an element here where the Black experience is American history, too. Commemoration around the Black experience is an American commemoration. It is not unreasonable for every American to celebrate their fellow Americans' feeling of pleasure about the end of a great evil. I think that's one of the things about Juneteenth that's particularly interesting because the story of Juneteenth is very particular in the sense that it's not exactly celebrating emancipation. It's celebrating the moment that people in Texas find out about emancipation. And so in an era of viral messaging and instant transfer of ideas, both good and bad, you have to stop and think. In January of 1865, they passed the 13th Amendment. It's not until June that the people in Texas know that they're free. The question I always ask is are you free if you don't know you're free?
“With Juneteenth, we're seeing literally the end of an oppressive system crystallize in a particular moment. The news reaches these people. These are the farthest reaches of the Confederacy. That's when it's over. When everybody knows, that's when it's over. The idea that there's a kind of element of truth made real by a particular moment when information arises, when the order is made and said out loud. That's the moment. That's the clarion call that rung the bell. That's the end of the evil. And you can point to it. From a historical standpoint, there are moments where things don’t have a definitive stop. It just doesn't seem as bad anymore. I think about the pandemic. Is the pandemic over? No. But this is one of those things that's a great human suffering and we can point to its end. Like, this is the moment. And I think that resonates with people in a very particular way.
“The American experience is integrated into the Black experience and the Black experience integrated into American experience. The nature of those integrations, though, when you tell it from the Black perspective, it is this speculation around liberation. Then you have a more liberal society. You have a more open society. Black history is American history and a history that tells a struggle and a strife, but that struggle and strife gets you a better world. I think, if we thought about it that way, then we have a better sense of why Black history or Chicano history, all the histories of the people on the margins, matter. Because those are the people who have to ideate around what it means to be free. Because they're at the bottom; they're on the outside. What does it mean to be free in a system where my lived experience has told me I'm not free? That becomes the real trauma. And, of course, it plays itself out every day now.
“It is not unreasonable to make a connection between the kind of zeal and explosion of interest in Afrofuturism with the kind of reactionary feelings that you see in politics. In part because with those voices taking up space in the public sphere, this question of what the truth for the American experience is being asked and you have to process that. The good thing about this is that we have places like MSU where people process things. Our job is to process things and make it easier for people. So, hopefully, people will come away with a better sense of clarity.
“I appreciate the committee's decision to pursue Afrofuturism as a theme for the Juneteenth celebration. I think it's very appropriate for an institution like MSU where our job is to think through complex issues and try to make knowledge accessible to the public. That's our mission. It's a great opportunity for the implications of Black speculative practice or the implications of what does it mean to speculate on our liberation to be brought to people in a variety of forms. Hopefully, people will come away from this with the opportunity to think more about Afrofuturism and think more about the ways that that speculation around liberation has a positive impact in their world. I think ultimately every American can see the benefits of people on the margins speculating about what makes the world a more liberatory system.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your show.
Read President Stanley's May 2022 Spartan Community letter here.
MSU brought a very successful academic year to a close this month with graduation ceremonies honoring 6,917 undergraduate degree earners and 2,684 advanced degree recipients. What struck you and will stay with you about this spring’s ceremonies?
“It was wonderful to be in person. We had the opportunity because of low COVID transmission to be without masks for people who didn't want a mask, and so that was great. There was really a sense of being together that we haven't had in prior ceremonies. That made it very exciting, and the turnout was phenomenal.
“Steve Smith gave a remarkable speech where he talked about how much Michigan State University has meant to him. He talked about his relationship with his mother and the transformational gifts he's given to the university to help student athletes. Even though Steve played against people like Michael Jordan, he said it's not about beating others so much; it's about pushing yourself to be the best you can be. That was a great message for our graduates.”
In addition to celebrating our graduates' accomplishments, you helped honor outstanding faculty and academic staff this month at the annual All-University Awards Convocation and support staff in the annual Jack Breslin Distinguished Staff and Ruth Jameson Above and Beyond Awards presentations. You always say MSU's people are the heart and soul of the university.
“Faculty and staff achievement and development are key to us; we want our faculty and staff to reach their full potential. And then recognizing the extraordinary work they do is an important part of our strategic plan. These ceremonies are our chance to say thank you and recognize people who are doing exemplary work for the university, and it's a wonderful honor for me to be a part of that. I love the spring semester at Michigan State University because it’s the time to acknowledge and recognize the key people who help make this university work.”
The U.S. Senate approved President Joe Biden's nomination of MSU economist and professor Lisa Cook to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She's the first Black woman to sit on the board, which sets monetary policy for the nation's central bank.
“I've had a chance to talk to her several times during this process. And she's an extraordinary person in addition to being an extremely qualified candidate for the Federal Reserve Board. Her background and scholarly activity make her a unique choice.”
Another distinguished Spartan you'll be honored to introduce at an upcoming recognition event is Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Teresa K. Woodruff, named a Distinguished Woman in Higher Education Leadership by the American Council of Education Michigan Women's Network.
“Provost Woodruff is extraordinarily accomplished. She's a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a member of the National Academy of Inventors. And she's a champion for our university and our academic mission and a champion for students and faculty and staff. It's wonderful for her to be acknowledged in this way. She is a leader in higher education. She is a leader in Michigan. We're very fortunate that she's working at Michigan State University.”
And Provost Woodruff welcomed you into the membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Congratulations!
“It's remarkable. And I'm still humbled by this award and very appreciative to those who elected me to this very prestigious society. When you're in a society that contains Thomas Jefferson and others, it's remarkable. And this is a group that really puts as its goal bringing together the talent from the United States and the world to bear on critical issues for our society.
“It's not just an honorary society, but rather publishes reports, investigates, does research on critical issues facing the nation, and uses the expertise of its members to do that. I look forward not just to being a member and being surrounded by so many very accomplished people, but also the opportunity to give back and to do work with the Academy on issues that are important, including things like global pandemics, which are an area of interest for me, and, of course, higher education and the impact we can have on these global challenges.”
This year's Times Higher Education Impact rankings, which assesses progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, ranked MSU number 33 in the world and number two in the nation among participating universities.
“This is wonderful. And the sustainable development goals or SDGs really span several areas, including things like food security, where Michigan State University has very powerful research efforts. From food to poverty, this really reflects the breadth of our efforts in MSU and helps us achieve one of our strategic plan goals. Now we must continue to maintain it and sustain it, no pun intended, but we're very proud of this work we do.”
We achieved another major milestone this month with the opening for user operations of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.
“Someday when I look back at my career at MSU, one of the highlights will be that I had the opportunity to cut the ribbon for FRIB. This has been an incredible effort for not just Michigan State University, but the state of Michigan and the people who came together to make this possible. This event came 13 years after the Department of Energy Office of Science awarded the project to MSU and eight years after we broke ground for the $730 billion facility. It's already had a significant economic impact from the jobs it created in Michigan, but it's going to have more going forward.
“MSU has the number one nuclear physics graduate program in the country. This facility helps ensure that we can keep that ranking. We generate 10 percent of the nuclear scientists graduated every year; that's amazing for MSU. And this is going to help us keep that lofty status and continue to have an impact on nuclear physics here and around the world.”
There are some new Spartan leaders on their way to campus. Jerlando Jackson will be the new dean for MSU's world renowned College of Education. At Wharton Center, Eric Olmscheid has been selected to succeed Mike Brand as executive director. And Spartan hockey has a new head coach in alumnus Adam Nightingale. Your thoughts on these additions to the MSU family?
“Professor Jackson is going to be outstanding as the dean of the MSU College of Education. He's going to also hold the title of Chief Foundation Professor of Education. Eric Olmscheid comes to us from Des Moines. He led a significant programmatic expansion there, built a comprehensive education program, and expanded community partnerships, all of which are things we want to see continue at Wharton Center. And Adam Nightingale has had a lot of experience working with young athletes. He brings roots and connections to the Green and White, but also experience in the National Hockey League coaching some of the most talented young hockey players in the country.”
And two long-time Spartan coaches are retiring. MSU's winningest men's tennis coach Gene Orlando is retiring after completing his 31st season and recording 361 victories. In addition, women's softball coach Jacquie Joseph announced her retirement from coaching after 29 seasons and 753 wins here.
“I play tennis. So, I've gotten to know Coach Orlando. He's been a legend here. His dedication to MSU is extraordinary. It's amazing to be at a place for that number of years and to have the success he's had. Everyone, including me, wishes him all the best as he goes forward. Jacquie Joseph is also a legend. She's going to remain with the athletics department in an administrative role. She's really been an advocate for women in sports, and she is going to continue to push us to make sure that we're living up to the promise of Title IX and giving women every opportunity to succeed and student-athletes to succeed in women's sports.”
What are you watching for throughout this year's state appropriations process and what is the Spartan Advocate Program?
“We're really working to get at least modest increases in funding. We would like to see that go to our base funding. Certainly, we’ll take some one-time money as that's available as well, but we're really interested in increasing the base funding going forward. And both the executive budget and the Senate budget do have increases, significant increases, built into the budgets. The House budget unfortunately does not do that. The House budget provides some money for other capital projects but doesn't really raise the state allocation.
“Higher education is so critical for Michigan's future and competitiveness. We have a Spartan Advocate Program in the Office of Government Relations that allows people to get engaged and reach out to their elected officials to tell them how important Michigan State is and how much it's meant to them or their families and the lives they lead. It's amazing that people don't always recognize the value of higher education. It's somewhat disappointing to me that we spend a lot of time trying to convince people that the return on investment from tax dollars that comes in to support Michigan State University or other institutions of higher education in Michigan is incredible. People's lifetime earnings go up and their health improves with a college degree. It really makes a difference to so many facets of people's lives.
“I encourage people to consider joining the Advocate Program. We need all the help we can get here. And your voices often are heard more loudly than mine. People see me as advocating for the institution as part of my job. When you do it when it’s not your job to do so but rather because it’s something you care about, that's very important to elected officials.”
Any final thoughts as we head into the summer?
“I've told students and faculty and staff to find time for yourselves this summer. People have been under so much stress the last two years. The opportunity to take some time and relax is important. I plan to do some of that for sure. And I've encouraged all the people who work with me at Michigan State University to do the same. And for our students, it's okay to take some summer courses; it's good to get ahead. But try and find some time to relax and recharge, particularly for those of you coming back because we'll have an exciting fall and a big class coming in.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“The scope of Title IX extends well beyond athletics,” says Dr. Ashely Baker, chief diversity officer for Spartan Athletics. “Title IX legislation was really focused broadly on access to education and access to opportunities for women, and sport has been a space where we've really been able to see that more tangibly than in other places. When you think about the root and the focus of what this initial legislation was about, it was looking at what was happening in education and employment and areas that weren't covered under the Civil Rights Act that women were wanting to have access to. We're talking about admissions, recruitment, housing, financial aid, and making sure that there was no discrimination against women when these resources or opportunities were allocated or becoming available and that women weren't excluded from that.”
Baker talks about the significance of the “Godmother of Title IX” Bernice Sandler and discusses how Title IX has evolved.
“We have certainly made progress. There is no doubt about the fact that women and girls have been afforded more opportunity. But when you start to really look at the details and the climate of where we are in sports and across society, we're not as far along as we tend to say we are. We've seen an increase in the number of girls participating in sport at all levels and access to more careers. So, we've opened this door, and there are more women like me who have opportunities we're able to pursue, but we're still faced with several barriers. We still encounter challenges because the bias still exists. Maybe not the overt discrimination, as, ‘Hey, go home and have kids and be in the kitchen.’ But it can still be difficult to really thrive and persist in some areas.”
How would you like to see Title IX evolve in its next 50 years and what are both some challenges and opportunities ahead?
“There are three areas that we must think about of how this legislation needs to be updated to be more reflective of where we are in society and even consider other factors that in the 1960s and 1970s weren't necessarily a priority at that time. We have the intersection of race and gender, we have the impact on the experiences of LGBTQ+ young people who are participating in sport or accessing education, and then we have young people with disabilities.
“While this legislation has certainly impacted women, it failed to and now still fails to look at the intersection of what happens to women of color and what happens to Black women in these spaces where we've opened opportunity. And it doesn't consider what has been coined intersectionality. I have the barrier of being a woman, but I also have the barrier of being a Black person in spaces that maybe aren't as accepting or have continued to create barriers for people like me. I think this legislation needs to be expanded to consider that there are so many other identities that are impacted when we're talking about discrimination.”
Baker describes her role as chief diversity officer for Spartan Athletics. And she talks about the DEI Roadmap for Spartan Athletics and its areas of impact like culture and environment; education and awareness; and recruitment, retention, and advancement. And she talks about the importance of Spartan Athletics being deeply involved in the community.
“We are truly committed to being better and always pushing ourselves to do the right thing to value our staff and the people on the campus and in our community. And we want to be a model for what this looks like. Our student athletes are going to thrive. And when they thrive, we win. When they thrive, they graduate. When they thrive, they go on to become positive members of our society. And all that starts with what our culture and our environment is here and how we treat one another.
“We really love people being champions for Spartan Athletics and supporting what we do and challenging us to be better. Sometimes the feedback is a little tough, but it continues to give us the perspective of individuals who may be outside of our spaces. Are we at our best? How can we be better? What challenges exist and how can we better meet the needs of those around us, who again, support us usually without waver?”
What are your reflections on the 50th anniversary of Title IX?
“We still have a long way to go, but we have really made progress. We must celebrate and acknowledge it, and we will do that in Spartan Athletics over the next year. There will be several events that are centered on celebrating the trailblazers specifically within our athletics department. There have been some incredible women who have had a wide variety of experiences who have challenged this institution, that have pushed this institution, and have also shown up and been role models for the young women we have on our teams now and the women who work in our department.
“You will see over this next year our commitment to celebrating those women because that is extremely important. The work that they did, many of us would not be where we are right now without it. We know the impact of the first 50 years of Title IX. How are we going to impact the next 50? What will we do differently? What have we learned? How do we push ourselves to move forward to make sure that future generations can say some of the same things about us that we say about the women and men and leaders who have come before us who have impacted these spaces and made them better for us to operate in?
“That's my hope, and that's what I'd like to see, not just over the next year, but continuing into the future. This is a monumental moment in terms of this legislation being 50 years old and it gives us a reality check of where we are and some hopes and dreams of where we could go from here.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately as you can probably imagine because I truly have grown up here. I started at WKAR as a student in their student employment program and never looked back. I love WKAR and MSU. This whole community has just been a wonderful place to be. I learned everything I know through the staff at WKAR.”
What are some key accomplishments you're proud of the station has made under your leadership?
“It's probably our education services. We often say we're so much more than a TV and radio station even though that's so cool that we are those things. But there's so much work that goes on behind the scenes in support of the community. I think the education piece is key.
“My first full-time job here was working with faculty on distance education courses and helping them make sure they could reach students wherever they were in the country or in the world. It was so cool, and the faculty were so innovative. It inspired me to get a master’s in educational technology because I could see what technology can do as a tool for education.
“During that time, I moved over to the public broadcasting side and really wanted to use my degree and expertise to help kids and families and teachers. I started producing QuizBusters working with high school kids and their families. Curious Crew is another accomplishment that I'm proud of. A theme for me has been to use my abilities to build capacity around others who really can change the world. Rob Stephenson is a person who approaches science education for kids in a cool way. Rob wants the kids to be the focus in their own understanding of science. There are nine kids that host the show with him, and they have become family for us. These kids are such incredible students. We've touched so many lives. It's broadcast in markets around the country, and that's something I'm proud of.
“Our innovation work with the Next Gen Media Innovation Lab is another piece that I've been proud of. Our whole team just said ‘We don't really know what the future holds, but we want to have a part in creating something exciting for our community, and our industry, and for the university. So, let's create this lab and study what broadcasting will be in the near future.’ That's exciting.
“And I’ve had the opportunity to work at the national level and be elected to America's Public Television Stations and PBS boards. The work that they're doing on the national level for the citizens of this country is just amazing. To have been a part of that is something I'll never forget.”
How have broadcasting and WKAR's missions evolved over the years? Where do you see them going?
“The amazing part is that we're coming up on 100 years of broadcasting at WKAR, and I don't think our mission has changed. It's always been to take the power of our learnings from the university and the power of education and bring it to the people, all the people. That's what public media is about. It needs to be free and over-the-air and educate and inspire literally everyone.
“There's no other organization that has a mission like that. I've been thinking about this, I've had people say to me, ‘Is public media even needed anymore?’ There's so much content out there. We can learn about anything. It's at our fingertips. It’s wonderful that there's so much content out there. I am a creator. It just reinforces the whole reason that public broadcasting was created in the first place. There is still no one who is going to create this for free without influence and provide it to every citizen in this country. In rural areas where there aren't large populations, it just doesn't make sense. You're not going to make a lot of revenue. There's no reason to do it if revenue is your core base mission. It isn't for us.
“We push through all the noise of all the content and make sure that the local person at the local level has the information they need to, for instance, vote for the person that they want to be in leadership. We really cut through all the noise to reach those individuals who need us to be there for them. It's exciting that our mission really hasn't changed. We've just had to evolve. Certainly, society has changed. Technology has changed. We've changed to make sure we can accomplish that mission, but it really hasn't changed much.”
What are some challenges and opportunities you see ahead for your successor?
“There's no shortage of challenges, that's for sure, but there's also no shortage of opportunity. I think we're in a moment where we're constantly having to re-evaluate what's the best way to meet the moment. I can certainly talk about all the challenges there are and will continue to be around funding and resources, but I think those are challenges that anyone is facing in any industry anywhere. Those are always going to be challenges.
“What I'm more interested in are the challenges and opportunities around the work that we do. We're in the business of bringing people together when there are so many forces pulling people apart. We have to really think about what this means for us now. If we are here to bring people together around conversation, how can we best do that given what's happening nationally and globally? We have to work differently in order to accomplish those goals.
“We're in the business of supporting teachers and families, and the role of education and educators is in flex at this point. It used to be that was a no brainer. Now, they're really challenged. We have to be there for them even more than ever. I think we are as public broadcasters, but our role in education becomes increasingly important and that's a challenge. But it's also an opportunity.
“Also, the role of journalism has changed significantly. We want to hold leaders accountable. We want to provide context. That becomes a challenge when facts aren't agreed upon as they may have been in the past. Really adding that context and going deeper is so much more important now than it's ever been because of all these other forces at work. To me, those are the real challenges. How do you make good on this mission? How do you make good on the whole reason for being for this organization when so many things are in flux and the societal norms are shifting so rapidly? You need to still make sure you're there for folks. It just looks different and feels different, and that's certainly a challenge.”
What attracted you to this new position you're taking as chief community development officer at the Michigan State University Federal Credit Union?
“So many things attracted me to this position, and it would have to be that attractive to pull me from WKAR. As you can hear, I'm very passionate about the work of the station and the work of the university. There are only two organizations in this community that I've been a member of for 30 years, and that would be WKAR and MSUFCU. We're both very oriented toward community and want to make sure that our members are supported and have the most innovate products and services.
“I see that at MSUFCU. I've seen it for decades and have been inspired by it. I want to be a part of what they're doing, and it allows me to stretch myself creatively and professionally. I'm able to do that at WKAR and have for years, which is why I've always stayed. I see the ability to continue to do that, but there are just some challenges that I want to approach for myself personally that this role will allow me to do. I will be thinking through philanthropically what the community needs and how I can support that work. We have been a beneficiary at the station of the power that MSUFCU has to really help people achieve their dreams within the community. That's extremely exciting to me.
“The innovative work that they're doing around their products and services and the role that work can play for smaller credit unions in communities is very similar to how I think about public broadcasters and how the system is only secure when the smallest station has access to resources within their community. I think the credit union plays that role in supporting smaller credit unions who need to stay strong for their community members. They play an active role here in this community but also nationally to make sure that all citizens have access to the funds that they need to make their lives better. It's just inspiring and exciting to me.”
Say some more about what your role will be at MSUFCU.
“I will have a significant portfolio that I'm excited about. It will include marketing, which means I will support a lot happening in a lot of different areas across the credit union. We have an excellent marketing team there. I'll learn a lot from them, but I think I'll be able to help provide an umbrella for all the various subsidiaries and for the foundation and make sure that we're all leveraging resources across the entire credit union.
“That also means that I'll have connection to the university, to MSU, which is exciting to me. Campus to Career will also be part of my portfolio. That is connecting students to internships, and we would really like to build an infrastructure where students are increasingly able to have more responsibilities as they move through their internships and into job placement. I'm obviously a product of the work that WKAR does to support students. So, being able to do that work for the credit union is exciting to me. I see constantly through social media and everywhere how much every single person, no matter what job they have at the credit union, loves their job and they talk about that a lot. I think that speaks a lot to the leadership team and to April Clobes’ leadership. The growth that's happened since she's taken over is just phenomenal, and it makes me want to be a part of it to see what I can do.
“There are so many people that I want to thank as I leave WKAR, and it's impossible to name all the names. Because of their hard work and because the station is in such a fantastic space right now and we have such a phenomenal leadership team, I feel in good conscience I can go and explore opportunities that are exciting to me and know that the station is in such solid hands.
“I want to thank everybody not only for helping me to learn and grow but for nurturing my own professional career and for seeing in themselves what I see in them and rising to the occasion and supporting our members and our community. It's just been such a phenomenal ride, and I just want to thank all our staff past and present, all our members, all our partners, our national partners, and my peers.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Good afternoon! Go Green!
President Stanley, Provost Woodruff, and the Board of Trustees:
Thank you for inviting me back home.
To the administration, faculty,
and staff —
to the proud families and friends who traveled here to celebrate
your loved ones —
to my forever dorm-mates from Wonders Hall —
and to each and every one of you in the resilient, inspiring Class of 2022: I am so proud to be your fellow Michigan State alum. Congratulations!
I am deeply honored that you have let me be a part of your special day. And I am so grateful for this honorary degree.
We all came to Michigan State for different reasons. I came for two: Magic Johnson, and my mama, Clara Bell Smith.
I wanted to be on this campus because I wanted to stay close to family.
By the time I graduated, the people I met here had become family. To this day, they still are.
They’re my closest friends. They were my groomsmen. They’re the people who call me when things are going well and who show up for me when the going gets tough.
Above all else, graduates, I hope that many years from now, you will still feel as close to one another as you do today.
Even through the long, lonely months that kept so many of us apart, you went through this once-in-a-lifetime chapter together. And these Spartans will always be there for you.
Now, maybe you didn’t choose Michigan State because of Magic or because of your mama. But in coming here, you chose to surround yourselves with good and giving people: your roommates and friends, your classmates and teammates, your professors and T.A.s.
You’ve chosen to surround yourself with smart and supportive Spartans.
Spartans who stand up for what’s right and who speak out against what’s wrong.
Spartans who are courageous and effective, and who deserve credit for pushing the school to be more multicultural and more inclusive — and to take nice words about diversity in a strategic plan and make sure they’re made real.
And as you walk together this weekend — in the same way that you’ve stuck by each other through an extraordinary and exhausting experience — you are fulfilling my favorite proverb:
“They who walk with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.”
In choosing to come to this campus, you chose to walk with the wise.
When you cross the stage and take hold of your diplomas, you’ll be doing it one more time. And when you stay in each other’s lives in the years ahead, you’ll grow even wiser thanks to one another.
But once you go out into the wider world, how can you make sure you’re still surrounding yourself with good, giving, grounded people? How do you even figure out who is wise — and who to walk with?
Here’s one thing I know for sure: you can’t tell that by someone’s age, race, or gender. You can’t tell it by their degrees, their title, or the car that they drive. You certainly can’t tell it by the number of followers they have.
One thing I know for sure is that while it sometimes feels easier to walk with people who look and think like you, that’s not the wisest way.
The equity and inclusion we value has many dimensions: race, nationality, gender, wealth, education. At its heart, it’s about giving everyone an opportunity. Everyone.
So as you leave Michigan State and go on to great things, I hope you’ll find a way to give an opportunity to someone who doesn’t look like you.
Another thing I’ve come to realize about the people I want to be around — and the person I want to be — is something I learned from my coaches, including Johnny Goston, Jud Heathcote, and Coach Izzo, who made me his first recruit 35 years ago. It’s something that I found myself learning all over again from the kids I’ve coached, covered, and cheered for, including my sons. And it’s what I want to talk with you about today.
President Stanley[1] was kind enough to recall that when I graduated, I held Michigan State’s all-time scoring record.
I can remember the intensity growing as I got closer and closer to that number. A teammate told me how many points I’d need to average my senior year.
Reporters noticed when I was 200 points away, and then 100, and then when I was in striking distance.
And then the big moment came. [pause]
Usually, this would be the part of the story where I tell you about the feeling of breaking the record.
How it felt to charge down the lane, lose my defender with a half-spin move, and see the ball swish through the net.
But here’s the honest truth:
To this day, I don’t know if it was a free throw, a floater, or a three from downtown.
I don’t know if it happened in the first half or the second. I truly don’t remember the shot.
And maybe that sounds surprising. But here’s what I do remember:
My mind immediately flashed back to playing in my backyard on Detroit’s East Side. My dad Donald Smith, had poured concrete behind our house and put up a hoop.
On that little court, I learned to dunk by jumping off milk crates and learned how to pivot and dribble around the cracks in the concrete.
That’s where my mind went at the end: it went to the beginning. To my fifth-grade championship at Courville Elementary. To the pickup games, the Hawthorne Rec Center scrimmages, the high school tournaments playing for Pershing, and to the practice drills.
All of those baskets were part of this record — even if they weren’t recorded anywhere but in my heart.
People like to celebrate the shots you make in the last game of a season, or the closing seconds of a game, or in the final moment as you mark a milestone. But what I remember, more than those last shots, are the thousands upon thousands I took at the start.
The reason, I think, is this: there’s a difference between achievement and fulfillment. People like to collect accolades and polish trophies. And yes, gold medals might be valuable. But that’s not what makes them meaningful.
The work is what makes the achievement feel fulfilling. And loving the journey is what makes us happy.
The truth is, I wasn’t ever trying to break anyone’s record. I was only pushing myself to see how high I could climb while doing what I love.
So when I think about walking with the wise, I think about walking with people who know these two truths:
First: the joy is in the journey — not in the result.
And second: you should only compete against yourself — not against anyone else.
Watching people who love their work, respect the process, and find joy in the journey is one of the reasons I love covering college basketball as a broadcaster and coaching youth teams.
A few weeks ago I was covering March Madness – and I noticed a certain look in so many of the players’ eyes. Some of them knew they were playing in their last game ever. They were playing for the pure joy of it.
Years ago, when I coached my sons Brayden and Davis’s teams, I saw the same look.
Kids who were living in the now and giving it their all — not in pursuit of any trophy or title, just enjoying the journey of getting better.
As I watched them learn what they were capable of, I learned something, too — and it’s this lesson:
The thing about most achievements is that someone else created them, and someone else is doing the counting.
So if you’re asking, “Who is the best at this?” or “Who is the most successful at that?” you also have to ask, “Who decides what those measures even mean?”
When we define ourselves by someone else’s goals, we might miss out on the experiences that matter the most to us as individuals.
But when we write our own definition of success and compete against our own limits, we can’t lose. We can only grow.
What stuck with me most about breaking the scoring record wasn’t the experience of getting to the top — it was the experience of going to the top. And the moment I broke it, I started thinking about what I could top next. Not because I wanted another achievement, but because I needed a new journey.
The reality is that anyone can work really hard at something and still not reach the top.
You might study really hard, research really hard, practice really hard — and still not be the best, fastest, or greatest.
In fact, by definition, only one of us will be the best at something.
So how do you still find the drive to push yourself? How do you still sustain excellence?
That’s the second trait I’ve found in the people I consider wise: They make sure that the person they’re competing against the hardest is themselves.
A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that in the NBA, practice was harder than games. That’s because it was just about the work, the work, the work. There’s no score, no fans, no cameras. It was just us versus us.
I tried to keep that mentality when it mattered.
One year, in the NBA playoffs, I was matched up against Michael Jordan for an entire series. Sports Illustrated called it my “week of hell.”
But that’s not how I felt about it. The only way I could play my best against Michael was to not think of it as competing against him at all. The competition was to see if I could be the best I could be.
Every night, I walked out onto the court and said, “Today, I’m better.” And on the nights when Michael got the best of me, I didn’t let that change my mind.
No matter what, I always said to myself: This is the year, this is the day, this is the game, this is the play, this is the moment. And thanks to that competition with myself, I did have my moments – it’s just that Michael had a few more.
I used Michael to push me. But I didn’t let him define me.
You can set high standards and use them to motivate you, too. But they’re only useful if they focusyou, not if they distract you.
It’s good to set goals.
But Class of 2022, I’m asking you to remember that it’s more fulfilling to find purpose in the process — and in that process, to know that you are your most important competitor.
There are a lot of mountaintops we won’t reach.
We can strive to be selfless, but we can always do more.
We can dream of being a perfect person, but we will always find flaws.
We can fight for a more equal society, but we will always have more work to do.
Perfection isn’t a realistic goal.
But growth? Growth is always a worthy one.
Achievements shouldn’t be our only measures of success.
But fulfillment? Fulfillment is undefeated.
When you find fulfillment, you’re more likely to find wisdom — and, in the end, you’ll be the kind of person who others want to walk with, too.
Congratulations, graduates, and good luck!
Do you have any experience with either MSU or the state of Michigan?
“Growing up on the north shores of Lake Superior, I would drive through the great state of Michigan many times on the way to my grandmother's house in Sarnia, Ontario on the other side of the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron. And my first college football game was in Spartan Stadium in 1992. My dad was a huge Spartans fan. He brought the whole family down, and I was just shell shocked on what a great experience it was to see all the people and Spartans fans; that just blew me away. And then a few years later, my second game was here, and it was 10/10/1998. I was with my fiancé at the time, who is now my husband of 23 years. It was Michigan State versus Indiana. The game went into overtime and Michigan State won. It was very exciting and very loud and just a lot of energy and excitement. That left an impression on me.”
What’s your background?
“I've just come off 7,060 days at Colorado State. I’ve been working and living in Colorado for the last 19 years and four months. And it's been a wonderful journey. I've done many different things working at Colorado State University advancing from working in two different colleges to working centrally and ultimately becoming the vice president of Advancement. Prior to that, I worked at two Canadian universities, and that's where I got my fundraising start. And before that, I worked in the arts; my undergraduate degree is in arts management. The beginning of my career was working with the Toronto International Film Festival and the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum.”
What got you interested in higher education fundraising originally? And why do you love the work?
“My background is in arts management. Revenue generation is of utmost importance in the arts. That was interesting to learn about, but I really started working in cultural programming on campus at my alma mater, the University of Toronto. And then I was recruited by the executive director of development. At the time, the university was in a billion-dollar campaign. And they asked me if I'd join the team and the Great Minds for a Great Future Campaign. My boss assured me he'd teach me everything he knew about advancement and development. And then two weeks later, he promptly quit and went back to the private sector. So, it was a sink or swim moment. And I've always been a swimmer, Russ. So, I dove into the deep end and swam and have continued that career. Passion and leadership have been predisposed in me almost from birth. I've had great sponsors and mentors along the way who have helped me learn and grow, and now it culminates in this great experience at Michigan State and being a Spartan.”
What attracted you to MSU at this time to lead Advancement here?
“You mean beyond Sparty? I love Sparty! What a great mascot program. I was attracted to the caliber of the programs, research, creativity, artistry, and AAU status at MSU. I think Michigan State has it all. Obviously, the athletics program and being a part of the Big Ten is exciting. I love the land grant mission. That speaks to me and my family and my values. I think I can parlay some of those experiences and that real commitment and passion to the land grant institution and mission that I was introduced to in Colorado at Michigan State, being the original land grant. I really feel privileged to be here as part of that history.”
What's the mission of University Advancement?
“We work to advance the institution by connecting alumni and donors to the institution, whether it be through time, talent, treasure, or testimony. We work with folks to keep them connected and engaged in the great work happening at MSU to advance the mission, whether it's alumni, parents, grandparents, or community members. It's the difference between good and great. And at MSU the mission is defined as advancing MSU's excellence and enriching its future. Who doesn't want to be part of that?”
Why is raising private dollars so important for maintaining and expanding MSU's excellence and impact?
“I just mentioned that private dollars are the difference makers between good and great. This is a fine institution where just being good wouldn't allow us to realize our full potential. Philanthropy allows us to endow funds for students and to attract the brightest minds to the campus, whether it's faculty, students, or facilities - all those aspects that really allow us to reach those heights of excellence and create a margin of excellence for an institution.”
How have advancement activities evolved over the years?
“The real change I've seen over the years is the focus on donor relations and stewardship. And I feel strongly about that. There's a moral and ethical imperative to engage our alumni and donors and to have a level of accountability and transparency in what we do at the institution in what we are doing with their funding. For a lot of people, once they make a gift, that's when the relationship really starts. Previously, there wasn't as much attention given post gift. And that's really important. We really owe that to our contributors, our investors, and the people who believe in us.
“Additionally, women have always been engaged in philanthropy, but a lot of times in the past it was more behind the scenes. There's a real movement to see women in philanthropy engage outwardly in the whole process. And as institutions, we’re thinking about how we engage women and families in different ways. And I'm really excited to know that there's a Women in Philanthropy program here at Michigan State. MSU is ahead of the curve on that. I also think technology, automation, data management, privacy and topics like diversity, equity, and inclusion are being embraced as a nation.”
How would you describe your fundraising philosophy?
“I see philanthropy as an opportunity to build authentic relationships based on mutual respect. I once worked with a dean who was a philosopher and he said to his faculty, ‘If you don't respect the person giving you a gift, then you shouldn't accept the gift.’ It really is at the heart of things that there must be a mutual interest and values alignment and interest in the work. Philanthropy is an optimistic act. There’s a core of optimism in supporting disease eradication or giving somebody an opportunity they wouldn't otherwise have. We need to think about that and remember that people believe in us to make the world a better place and to really inspire them with what we're doing that will change the world in a way that they want to see that aligns with the work we're doing.”
What are some of your short and long-term goals for MSU University Advancement?
“We have a lot of work to do, and a lot of great work has already happened here. People are ready to move forward. Our next campaign is the big opportunity out there. And how do we align with the university's strategic plan and create a strategic plan for the division that is for the long term? We're building the forever future for Spartans and for this university. There is a lot of planning to do, and I’m excited to get going to ignite what will come after that.”
What are challenges and opportunities ahead?
“Right now, my biggest challenge is time, Russ. I just need more hours in my day. People want to move quickly; they're ready. But we also need to spend time listening and thinking and reflecting on what has happened before us. In balancing those two things, I think there's a great opportunity as people are able to come back to campus. As we reemerge from the last two years, there’s nothing like coming to campus for Homecoming and other events. And yet, we've also learned the upside to offering virtual programming for our alumni and donors who live abroad or nationwide who want to participate. I look forward to working with the team to create a strategy that accomplishes and meets the needs of all people in all different ways to really continue to advance Michigan State University.
“What a great opportunity to be here today. I just feel like this is an absolute honor to work in the advancement world. I'm at the nexus between a great institution and wonderful people who care and want to make a difference. I take that as a real honor and privilege and look forward to serving alongside everybody else who's been here before me and all those who will join us along the way. With that, Go Green!”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Michigan State University’s Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a user facility for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, opened its doors to discovery with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on 2 May. U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm and MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D., cut the ribbon to officially mark the start of FRIB’s scientific mission.
HEAR the speakers’ comments HERE:
· FRIB Lab Director Thomas Glasmacher (:00)
· MSU President Stanley (2:25)
· Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (6:40)
· MSU Board of Trustees Chair Dianne Byrum (17:20)
· U.S. Representative Tim Walberg (21:03)
· U.S. Representative Brenda L. Lawrence (26:15)
· U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin (31:03)
· U.S. Senator Gary Peters (35:09)
· U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (41:32)
· Secretary Granholm (47:56)
About 900 guests attended the ribbon-cutting to celebrate FRIB officially opening for scientific research. FRIB was completed in January, ahead of schedule and on budget. FRIB’s first scientific-user experiments start on 9 May.
Michigan State University is furthering its investment in a greener future, announcing a commitment to converting 369 internal combustion engine vehicles in its fleet to fully electric vehicles over the next decade.
MSU also is investing in two DC fast chargers for public use through the PowerMIFleet program; the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy’s ChargeUp Michigan program; and Capital Area Transportation Authority. The chargers will be available for public use at the Capital Area Multimodal Gateway on Harrison Road this fall.
The addition of new electric vehicles on MSU’s campus adds to the growing list of sustainability efforts over the past several years designed to make campus greener.
In this conversation, I discuss the project and the future of electric vehicles with Adam Lawver, director of campus services in Infrastructure Planning and Facilities at MSU; Jeff Myrom, director of electric vehicle customer products for Consumers Energy; and Brad Funkhouser, chief executive officer for the Capital Area Transportation Authority.
Conversation highlights:
(4:50) - “We've been a partner with Michigan State University for pushing 20 years now. And recently there's been a big push in the region to look at zero emissions. And that's been a priority for both the university and CATA independently. We want to test this technology as it unfolds. There are a lot of agencies that are testing electric buses right now. We want to make sure that the battery life is adequate because ultimately what we're trying to do is put out great service while we improve sustainability. It's important because we spend a lot of money on fuel by design; we have diesel and unleaded buses. You have 30 percent of the fossil fuels in Michigan greenhouse gas emissions coming from public transit.”
(6:28) - “We do want people to charge overnight. Absolutely. People may not realize it but at night, especially in the residential sector and frankly probably even at universities, when most of those people go home or they're sleeping, they are not using a lot of electricity.”
(9:12) - “Electrification really is the way of the future. And that's why Michigan State is such a great partner because this is an institution very interested in the success of the future and what's groundbreaking, what's new, and what can we learn?”
(10:37) - “I think it’s awesome when you have multiple entities that are similarly aligned strategically. As we look at trying to reduce our overall carbon footprint that Michigan State generates and reduce our greenhouse gases, one of the components of that is the solar carports. The university fleet is another element that we can really look at. This project will learn from these initial 40 vehicles. But over the next nine years to 10 years, we really expect to replace at least 370 vehicles across our fleet. As the economics change and as electric vehicle pricing becomes cheaper in the future and the technologies become better, then we'll probably continue to increase that quantity of vehicles over the next decade.”
(15:45) - “Michigan State University wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. This project of converting our fleet from internal combustion engines vehicles to electric vehicles aligns in support of that.”
(17:10) - “Transportation and clean energy are an excellent pair. When you look at emissions and potential pollution from the transportation and utility sectors using fossil fuels, that's about 50 percent of the greenhouse gases in the United States. If we can get to clean energy and then battery electric vehicles that are being powered by that clean energy, we're taking half the greenhouse gas pollution off the table within our generation, which is a huge win.”
(18:37) - “My advice is to get behind the wheel. I'm six feet five. I fit in that thing just fine. It kind of shocked me. But when you have a smaller motor and you don't have that transmission and all the extra parts that run through the center of the vehicle, you open the cabin quite a bit.”
(19:20) - “The other thing that surprised me was the instant torque. It's not like a little four cylinder; this thing took off and it's fast. That performance tends to shock people in addition to just kind of the creature comfort of being inside. And then another thing that really impressed me was you get in highway speeds, and you don't realize how much wind and car noise there is. But when you're in an electric vehicle, it's quiet. And so, you can hear all these things that you can't normally hear. And you're like, wow, this is just a really different experience and it's much more relaxing.”
(19:55) - “Get behind one. I think people will be impressed. I understand its new technology and you have to get used to it. And yes, there's getting used to charging being different, but most people find that when they can charge overnight, they wake up in the morning and have a full fuel tank. That's a significant benefit. And in the wintertime, one of the things I absolutely love about EVs is there's instant torque and there's instant heat. So, I'm not waiting for this thing to warm up and that little blue light to go off before I can accelerate. And the cars tend to be heavier with that battery, so you get better grip in the snow. So, there are a lot of benefits to being in a northern state too and driving an EV that don't often come across when people hear about electric vehicles.”
(21:32) - “They require less maintenance. You need brakes less because a cool feature of electric vehicles is what's called regenerative braking. You can set up the vehicle so that when you take your foot off the gas, the vehicle automatically starts breaking. But it's by the motor essentially running in reverse, which is charging the battery rather than energy coming from the battery. This is called one-pedal driving. Once you get used to one pedal driving, you only need to hit the brakes in an emergency or when you have to stop quickly during rush hour. But I know people who've driven a hundred thousand miles in their EV and never replaced the brakes. I don't know anybody who's done that in a combustion vehicle.”
(25:02) – What is a frunk?
(25:35) - “One of the things that I'm most proud of and I feel is most important about this project is it's a partnership. These things don't happen in a silo. Without the financial partnership of Consumers Energy and CATA, these projects wouldn't have happened.”
(27:07) - “Price parity is going to happen even without government subsidies, and we're seeing experts predict that right around 2025. Auto manufacturers will have over a million EV production capacity per year by 2025. We're looking at a rapid transformation here.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and 8 p.m. Sundays on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Charleston describes his background and what attracted him to MSU. He talks about how a person knows whether they have a headache or facial pain they can treat themselves or whether they need to schedule a headache specialty visit. He talks about stigmas surrounding headaches and discusses current research underway and treatments on the horizon that may aid in treating headaches and facial pain.
Conversation highlights:
(:43) – “I’m from Detroit Michigan, and I decided I wanted to be a neurosurgeon when I wrote my fifth-grade career research paper.”
(2:12) – “Michigan State University is a great institution. We can add tremendous value to our community and the region with exceptional headache care and research. We’re working toward becoming the premier headache destination in the Midwest.”
(4:07) “If headaches are not responding to treatment and are incapacitating or debilitating or you’re taking a lot of different medications to treat your pain, that may be the time to seek medical attention.”
(5:31) – “Migraines are the most common headaches that people seek medical attention for. Tension headaches are the most prevalent, but a lot of people don’t seek medical attention for these.”
(5:50) – Dr. Charleston describes the stigmas surrounding headaches.
(9:07) – Dr. Charleston describes the difference between headaches and facial pain. “Your face is part of your head.”
(10:35) – What is a headache specialty visit? “History is king when it comes to headache medicine as there are more than 300 headache diagnoses, and the treatment will vary from headache to headache.”
(13:37) – Is there exciting research on the horizon that has you excited about treating headaches and facial pain? “Migraines are the second most disabling neurological disorder in the world.”
(15:22) – What are challenges and opportunities ahead for treating headaches and facial pain? “There needs to be more awareness and greater funding of research. When we look at federally funded research dollars and the impact headaches have on so many people and their quality of life, headache research should be funded 10 times more than it is now.”
(18:30) – “We’re always learning. We always want people to have hope. A lot of people who come to see me have lost hope. If we don’t have hope, we don’t have anything. Headache disorders don’t define a person. We don’t have a cure, but we strive to make things manageable.”
Dr. Charleston’s practice is in MSU’s Clinical Center on Service Road. For more information, call 517-353-8122 or visit healthcare.msu.edu.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Classes are wrapping up, final exams are next week and Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. is eagerly anticipating graduation ceremonies for some 9,000 soon-to-be Spartan alumni.
He talks about feeling like a proud father to all the graduates preparing to go out and make the world a better place. And President Stanley congratulates the 179 students who have maintained 4.0 grade point averages in their time at MSU and have now been named Board of Trustees Scholars.
“As we prepare to say goodbye to most students for the summer, we’re already welcoming new ones for the fall. More than 7,000 prospective students and family members joined us this month to visit colleges and attend the Green and White football game and a Breslin Center pep rally during Admitted Student Day. Admitted students visited from 37 states and 11 countries — as far as India.”
Last week we celebrated Earth Day, following a month of events reminding us how MSU has made strong commitments and progress in sustainability through cutting-edge research, experiential learning, community engagement and improved operations.
“Our strategic plan commits us to climate neutrality by 2050 and several more near-term goals through our four-pillar sustainability framework of campus, curriculum, community and culture. Last week we also hosted Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and other special visitors for a roundtable event focused on public/private partnerships supporting Michigan’s leadership in electric vehicles and advanced mobility and MSU’s great work in this field.”
Stanley talks about key leadership changes at MSU.
Kim Tobin will become our next vice president for advancement on May 1. Pero G. Dagbovie, who served as an associate dean in the Graduate School and is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of History, was confirmed as associate provost for graduate and postdoctoral studies and dean of the Graduate School. After ably serving the College of Human Medicine as interim dean, Dr. Aron Sousa’s appointment as deanwas also confirmed by the Board this month. The Board also endorsed the selection of Christina K. Brogdon for vice president of human resources and chief human resources officer. Starting June 1, she will be a key player in the university’s efforts to attract, retain and develop the best people possible to help us pursue the university’s mission.
“With the appointment of Kim Tobin, this month we say goodbye to Vice President for Advancement Marti Heil, retiring after a 45-year career of accomplishment across three universities. I also want to acknowledge the pending retirement of University Physician David Weismantel May 16. Dr. Weismantel has served MSU with great dedication in a variety of capacities for the past 23 years, including the last challenging couple of years through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m thrilled to congratulate a highly accomplished faculty member in our College of Engineering who retires after 57 years and eight months as MSU’s longest-serving faculty member. Professor Martin Hawley was appointed as an assistant professor of chemical engineering in 1964 and was a Spartan even before that, earning his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from MSU.
“Dr. Hawley has served in numerous key capacities over his tenure, and the college estimates Professor Hawley has educated at least 80% of MSU chemical engineering students. Last year, an alumnus endowed a chair in the college in his honor. Thank you, Professor Hawley!
“Congratulations are also in order for Vashti Sawtelle, associate professor of physics in Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. She is among three professors named 2022 Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year by the Michigan Association of State Universities, which represents Michigan’s 15 public universities. Dr. Sawtelle is noted for her scholarly focus on inclusivity in teaching of physics and is a wonderful example of MSU faculty members’ engagement in the success of all of our students.”
President Stanley says great educational programs deserve great facilities. Last week, MSU celebrated the groundbreaking for the School of Packaging’s building expansion after a fundraising campaign that raised more than $10 million. This project, with a new endowed professorship, will help the school maintain its leadership in packaging education.
Also last week, the university broke ground for its Service Road recreation turf fields, which is our first construction project applying proceeds of the student recreational facility fee. This new facility, which will be ready in the fall, will serve more than 8,500 intramural sport participants, more than 550 club sport participants, plus youth camps, tournaments and other uses, supporting MSU’s priority of student health and well-being.
And on May 2, years of planning, construction and testing will be capped with the opening of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams on our campus. Through FRIB, MSU will build its position as a destination for scientists from around the world, a training ground for the next generation of researchers and a valuable asset for the region’s economy. I’m excited to see how FRIB contributes to new scientific discoveries as well as practical applications that improve people’s lives.
“April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and we are in the final stages of collecting responses to the Know More Campus Survey, which was emailed to campus community members on March 16. If you received the survey link and haven’t taken the survey, I strongly urge you to do so to assist those planning MSU’s programs of prevention and response.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
RCPD is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
“We've been working busily over the past five decades to help people maximize ability and opportunity,” says Hudson. “We began back in the 1971/72 academic year with a simple goal of helping people with disabilities realize the power of education to change their lives and to promote careers and lives of distinction. Our resource center is intent on maximizing ability and opportunity and helping students as they arrive at the university realize their challenge is simply that - a challenge - and not a blockade to where they want to go with education.”
Hudson leads a team of about 20 professionals who work “to receive students as they arrive here at campus to figure out what they need to be successful in the way of accommodations, adjustments, and pathways around campus. Then we go to work helping students solve those problems. We identify the challenge, identify a path forward and work to deliver things what will help them be effective.”
About how many people does RCPD help?
“Our office works with approximately 3000 students today. If you do the math, that's about six percent of the university population identifying with our program. And disabilities today have really broadened. When I got started in the work, we worked with about one percent of the student population, about 420 when I started here in 1992. And that one percent really consisted of the classic disabilities like the mobility challenges, chronic health, visual, and hearing. And as time went on, the population broadened, and we started to understand the dynamic of learning disabilities and how some people learn differently or need different tools to really make the most of a reading situation or a writing situation.
“And then we worked and learned about autism spectrum disorders and how people sometimes have different social interaction capabilities and how we could support those students. The area of invisible disabilities now includes mental health challenges. We work with people who experience anxiety, depression, and other dynamics that make higher education challenging. So, there’s a very broad audience now that is calling on our program for assistance.”
Hudson talks about how he became involved in the program and what motivates his work in this field.
“My own experience with a disability informed me about the way situations can be hoisted upon us in a way that we don't expect it. We don't welcome it generally, but it's all about how we can learn to adapt to it that really turns out a success story in the end. In my world, I knew that I needed to keep adapting as my vision changed and my disability evolved, and that education was going to be imperative for me. My experience and my investment in this program is really centered on helping other people embrace the challenges they've been given, a disability, and to figure out how education can help them build a life success story and how we can help education be more available and accessible to people who are really hungry to learn. They're ambitious students who need a little something to make this place all it can be.
“When I think about what it means to acquire or to have a disability, one of the first things that comes to mind is most people just receive one without asking; it's something that comes. It just lands on you. So how do we embrace the situation at hand? It's probably nothing anybody's going to look forward to having. But when it happens, can you build a network and partnerships that help normalize it and help people realize there is a path forward, even in dire situations? How we deal with the surprise of a disability is one of the things that education's good at helping navigate, taking a challenge and not making it a blockade.
“As we look at our next 50 years, I think we're looking at understanding the ways disabilities may continue to evolve. As technology happens, we find ourselves in new dynamics, many of the physical barriers break down for people. When you can Zoom or Microsoft Teams your way to a location, you no longer have to think of about some of the transportation dynamics or the mobility identity. So, for people with mobility challenges, I think redefining how accessibility works in the future will be on our mind. If you came into the program today, you'd probably look around you and say, ‘I don't know who has a disability here and who doesn't.’ It's not like it's always going to be visible. It's continuing to recognize that disabilities affect people in different ways that may not always be immediately visible. And how do we work to understand those dynamics and to understand the needs those students have and to really make sure those hidden identities don't become the reason people can't succeed?
“As we reflect on our 50 years of progress at Michigan State University, we realize that our institution has worked for a long time to be inclusive and to welcome people with all sorts of backgrounds. And I'm so happy to say that disabilities have been a part of our fabric and work so well with the university's mission. And I hope that our next 50 years will be as rich as the past 50 years in helping people see the potential that comes from pursuing higher education.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Heil has a career spanning 45 years across three universities raising critical funds, tirelessly promoting the value of philanthropy and expanding alumni engagement efforts.
She came out of retirement in October of 2018, returning to MSU, where she has now spent more than 33 years in advancement. Marti was born and raised in Lansing, Michigan and is a 1976 graduate of MSU's College of Communication Arts and Sciences with a bachelor's degree in advertising.
“It has been my absolute pleasure and honor to serve Michigan State University and a privilege to do what I have done for 45 years. And it’s been even a greater privilege to have done it at my alma mater.”
What originally attracted you to advancement work? What do you love about it? Why do you do what you do?
“When I got started in fundraising, it was not something that you sought. You mostly fell into the career. I started in public relations. That's what I always wanted to do. And someone that I worked with said, ‘You'd be good as a fundraiser.’ And I thought, ‘Well, how would I ever do that?’ And it truly has been my passion, and it has been a privilege to be able to serve in this capacity as a fundraiser for so many years.
“I like to refer to it as making magic. It's that goosebump moment when you're bringing together passionate donors and alumni who have a desire to make a difference and to make a positive impact in the life of a university. And they're visionary because they see a need and they have financial resources.
“And our job as fundraisers is to be able to match those visionary donors and alumni with visionary faculty who are making a difference through their research. It's matching them with students who will also make a difference in the world and make the world better. And to watch a donor get joy from seeing their financial resources put to good use to make a difference in a student's life or to make a difference in a faculty member’s research discovery is magic.”
What attracted you back in 2018 when your alma mater needed you and called you back?
“It was special to be able to serve MSU for 30 years as I grew my career, and it was special to be able to take that experience and apply it at two other institutions. But to cap off a career by being asked to come back and serve in a leadership role was a dream come true. It felt like more than a duty. It was a respect for the institution and having a sense that I could make positive impact at a time that MSU was going through a lot of changes.”
How has advancement work evolved over the years?
“Our donors continue to become more and more sophisticated. And that has been an absolute joy to be able to be part of teaching our alumni how important private philanthropy is to an institution, a public institution in particular. I started at Michigan State in 1980. And I think at that time, our entire staff, including gift processing, including our receptionist, including the vice president, our total staff might have been 20 people. And I remember that first year we were raising around $12 million.
“I remember we had a champagne toast for our first million-dollar gift. Fast forward and we now have around 320 staff in University Advancement. And we're raising currently $224 million with three months to go (in the fiscal year). That's quite a significant growth. And so, credit to our very devoted alumni and our extraordinarily generous donors. It takes a village. We have an incredibly talented staff. And the university has embraced alumni engagement and fundraising to the point where everyone on campus understands the value, the importance, and the impact that private philanthropy can make.”
Why is the private fundraising so important to a place like MSU?
“Well, it would appear as though we have a huge budget, and we do have a huge budget. Most of it is earmarked. And so private philanthropy provides that margin of excellence to be able to attract outstanding faculty from across the country because there are endowed chairs affiliated with the positions. Most faculty when they're researching and they're teaching and they're providing service, they are also obligated to raise money to help with the research.
“And what often makes the difference in attracting those outstanding faculty and retaining the superstar faculty is having an endowed chair that pays for the margin of excellence so that they don't have to spend time going out and raising funds to do their research. They have a pool from that endowed fund that helps them. And scholarships often make a difference in whether a student can attend school. And that student may become a brilliant doctor or policymaker in government or a social worker or educator who will change the world.”
What are some challenges and opportunities ahead for higher education advancement in general and particularly for MSU?
“There are always challenges. Part of the challenge for Michigan State is that comparatively speaking our sister institutions in the Big Ten have all been raising money for many years longer than Michigan State has. We didn't start private philanthropy as an active strategic department until the late '60s. And most of the other Big Ten institutions started raising money in the early 1920s or 1930s. We have some catching up to do in educating our alumni about why private philanthropy is so important.
“We also were categorized early on in Michigan State's history as being a state-supported institution. And we really are no longer state-supported. We certainly are state-assisted, and we depend heavily on the state of Michigan for much needed funding. But in terms of our total budget, it is more and more imperative that private philanthropy helps make up the difference.”
Your successor is Kim Tobin. She will take over as vice president for University Advancement. Obviously, you don't want to tell her what to do, but do you have some advice for Kim as she comes in?
“I have had the privilege of meeting with Kim several times since her appointment. She's someone who I am very excited about. It makes a difference when you've put as much time and years and effort into an organization. I have no qualms handing the leadership over to Kim. I think she's going to be terrific. I think the staff is going to respond to her as a leader. I know our alumni and our donors are going to embrace her.
“The best piece of advice I would give Kim is to embrace being a Spartan and to be a sponge and learn as much as she can about Michigan State and the culture of Michigan State and our alums. One of the first things we've all tried repeatedly to say to her, and it's become a joke with us, is that when someone says, ‘Go Green,’ what do you say back? And she very quickly learned that saying ‘Go White’ is the proper response.
“So, I'm just so excited about Kim. It's a great opportunity for her. She's bringing 20 years of experience to the table. She's doubling her staff. She's doubling the amount that she's responsible for raising. She'll be able to bring that talent to Michigan State and be able to build upon the foundation that the team and I have put into place and take it to the next level. I will be her biggest cheerleader and the staff's biggest cheerleader.
“Once a Spartan, always a Spartan. Being born and raised in Lansing, there was never any question where I was going to go to school, and I'm not going anywhere. I will always be around as a donor. I will always be around as an alum. And whatever I can do to assist in the transition, I'll be there because being a Spartan is very, very special.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Russ King, ’70, saw his first college football game at MSU and has been attracted to the campus ever since. “I just absolutely loved the environment and the physical surroundings. I just felt like I was in a paradise—even in the winter, because it can be very beautiful then, too,” he says.
“Michigan State really fit my personality because it focused on people who maybe would never have a chance to go to school. And they personify that by going back to the community. We can apply our knowledge and help people who are living there right now.”
That love for the MSU, and for helping others led King to donate his time, talent and treasure to help make the university even better. He also credits his Christian faith for encouraging his dedication to service. King is particularly active among MSU Extension’s Detroit Partnership for Food, Learning and Innovation, which centers around urban food research and seeks to develop solutions to economic and nutritional challengers unique to urban environments. Since 2014, King has generously supported DPFLI’s mission to transform how people and communities interact with their local food systems.
He’s even advanced his own knowledge in the subject. King is a graduate of MSU Extension’s Master Gardener Program, which he joined to further his then-elementary knowledge of plants.
It stems from a love of nature that has followed King his entire life.
“I did a lot of lawn mowing when I was growing up, and I just had a great appreciation for God’s creation,” he says. “But I didn’t know anything about it.”
King grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and graduated from MSU in 1970 with a business degree. After starting his work life selling copiers, he transitioned into the investment industry where he established a successful career and went on to open his own firm—White Pine Investment Co.—in 1997.
He says that name was intentional; it was an important part of starting the business. “I wanted to find a name that represented the values and the culture that we were hoping to build. White Pine is the Michigan state tree. It’s a fast-growing tree. When there’s a storm, there might be a branch or two that gets torn off, but that gives it more character. It withstands an awful lot of turmoil, which you must do in this business.”
Resilience and generosity, the latter of which has been part of his character for as long as he can remember, are what continue to drive King today.
“When I was growing up, I had a paper route and three or four jobs until I graduated from high school,” he says. “I paid for college myself. During that time, I would buy gifts for my siblings. I got a lot more joy out of it than they did. It was just fun to do, and so I sort of got used to that.”
It’s clear that King’s greatest joys come not from what he’s done himself, but from discovering what he can do for others.
“If it’s all about you,” he says, “then boy, you’re not going to have a whole lot of impact on anybody.”
We're joined by Inspector Chris Rozman, who's public information officer and Dana Whyte, who's a new communications manager at MSU Police and Public Safety.
“We have officially launched our community engagement unit,” says Lynch. “What that means is we have officers who are now assigned full time to community engagement. So, when they work, they are spending times with our students in residence halls, with our students at the Union, with fraternities and sororities at their events, and with registered student organizations and others. Their areas of responsibility are primarily based in residential and education housing services and the residence hall neighborhoods.
“There is a sergeant assigned to each neighborhood. We also have a sergeant in the Union and a lieutenant with overall responsibility for the unit. They are actively engaged meeting and working with students and integrating themselves within the housing professional staff and our student life staff. And so coming up on a first full month, we've already seen some very positive results. For our students who live in residence halls, if you're out and about and you want to get to know your community engagement officer or sergeant, they should be easy to find because they're there just about every day.
“Communication in general is extremely important. It’s the ability to communicate effectively and establish that two-way communication to tell our story. How do we prepare our community to understand what and why and how we operate? Most importantly, the communication should be frequent. And knowing who within the department has that responsibility is a key component. Establishing a public information officer allows us to operate at a higher level. And then by having a communications manager allows us to effectively communicate, not only just through a public information officer perspective, but from a written communication and overall strategic communications plan and through social media. We had to enhance that area. We've been fortunate enough to find internally someone with the skillset to be our public information officer in Chris Rozman. And Dana Whyte brings to us her professional experience in both print and TV media.”
“Traditionally public information has really been more reactive and about responding to daily requests from external news sources,” says Rozman. “In my role what I realized early on was that we need to be a lot better and more proactive in telling our story because we do so many good things behind the scenes every day. Sometimes we fail at communicating that or sharing that information with the community. It's very important as we move forward with telling our story in an authentic and genuine way for the purpose of building genuine trust with the community, which is something that we're focused on. Communication plays right into that. It's just a key and crucial component.”
“I just started January 10, so I'm a couple months in,” adds Whyte. “I noticed right away there is a lot that police departments do that I wasn’t aware of because I've never been inside of a police department. And now that I am, I want people to know these things. Being able to tell our story and put it out there on our website and social media gives people a better perspective on what we do to better connect with the community.”
“We have to be proactive and communicate regularly because we're part of the community,” Lynch continues. “We should not just be a tool that is utilized when there's a crisis or there's something wrong. Because we are part of the community, it makes us more effective and better able to serve our community. We’re more familiar with our community, and our community is more familiar with us. Having that level of transparency and communicating regularly and telling our story of how we add to the community helps everything in that overall capacity.”
Chris and Dana, what are some of both the challenges and opportunities in your roles communicating about MSU Police and Public Safety?
“Some of the challenges are just the speed at which information moves these days,” Rozman continues. “If something does happen, gone are the days of waiting until the next newspaper is printed. We recognize that we must be communicating information immediately in any situation that occurs. There's a timeliness to our messaging. We recognize that we need to leverage a lot of different communication platforms. We make ourselves available for in-person and phone interviews. But at the same time, we leverage our social media pages and networks to amplify our message. And that can be a message about something that just occurred, or that can be telling our story about something that's very important that we want to share with the community. The mechanism to communicate is very important, and it's ever changing. And that's what's so beneficial about having Dana here to tap into a lot more of those platforms and communicate more frequently and tell those stories.”
“It’s important for our community to know that we are taking steps inside and trying to be better,” Whyte adds. “And we have such a large and diverse audience. We have older people, we have parents, and we have students. We work to find which platforms work for each different community and adapt towards that.”
“We don’t want the community to look at us just as a heavy-handed law enforcement agency because that's not our approach,” Rozman adds. “Our approach is to provide a very high level of service and a lot of supportive services as well that some people may not associate with a law enforcement agency. We really want to let people know all the services that we offer and that we are here to help. We are a resource for our community, and we want to make sure that message gets conveyed in a very genuine way.
“The biggest thing from our perspective is just to really help people. And like Dana said, our community reaches far off campus. We understand that our community is not just students and faculty and staff but visitors who come here to see performances, who come here to attend events, and parents who may be in different states or sometimes in different countries. We have an obligation to connect with that community member where they may be in a different region of the state or a different area of the country. Our communication efforts really need to stretch beyond just the borders of campus.”
“We're ambassadors for MSU,” adds Lynch. “And sometimes we are the first point of contact for something as simple as where do I park or how do I get to the specific locations? Then we can be a first point of contact when you need assistance and maybe you're the victim of a crime. That's a different set of responsibilities.”
“I love being able to highlight some of the things that go unseen,” continues Rozman. “It's often hard for our officers and our employees to showcase what they've done. And what I mean by that is some of our employees are so humble in what they do. We go to them to try to highlight that, and they don't want recognition for it. We try to find those stories within our department that may go untold otherwise and showcase some of the genuine spirit and humility that most of our employees have that go unnoticed.”
“The most rewarding thing for me is that community connection,” says Whyte. “Being able to make a difference in people's lives is what originally drew me to reporting, and Police and Public Safety does that every day. And like Chris said, a lot of the officers don't want recognition for it. Working to get those stories out there and connect with our community is a big thing for me.”
“Telling the good is just as important as highlighting areas where we can improve,” concludes Lynch. “We want the feedback from our community on how we can do that. Creating the SafeMSU app came directly from our communications area. We’ve created an internal newsletter so that we communicate better internally and we’re using social media platforms so that we are communicating externally. It's a very important component. We're fortunate to have both Chris and Dana in that role with their abilities to do that.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“I really like brands,” says Austin. “When you look at the Michigan State brand, it's not just a local brand. It's regional, it's national, and it's international. Sparty the mascot is very well known; I felt like the equity in the brand is here. There are always things that we can do to further the equity in the brand. But the brand, the school, the academic programs, and MSU’s reputation itself drew me to come here.”
What is university licensing? And what does it mean at Michigan State?
“University licensing really is three prongs. We're here to promote the brand so that we can generate revenue that then can be sent over to the general scholarship fund and other university programs. We are here to support the students. Every time someone buys licensed merchandise, a portion of the royalties goes back to the general scholarship fund. The general student body benefits from those funds through scholarships. And the merchandise programs that we develop garner revenue and royalties that then come them back to the university.
“And then the second part really is protecting the brand. We want to make sure that people aren't infringing on our brand. And I don't think of us as the logo cops or the no police. Our stance is more that if you want to use the university brand, you can, but just go through the proper processes and procedures and become a licensee and do it the correct way. By protecting the brand, we're adding equity into the brand. You have the promotion piece, you have the profit piece, and then you have the protection piece. And it’s looking at our trademarks portfolio. That doesn’t just mean our logos. It also means our wordmarks. Even the name, Michigan State University, and Go Green Go White, and some of our taglines are protected as well.
“And we have great licensees and partners that want to work with us to develop great merchandise. We want to make sure we have merchandise that is diverse that meets all sizes, all identities, and all genders. Of course, we have some things that we don't license, like tobacco. But our primary goal is to make sure our brand is out there. And if people want product with Michigan State's logos on it, we want them to be able to find it and get it.”
Austin emphasizes the importance of purchasing officially licensed product.
“Also, we do a lot of work with the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium. We make sure that the product is being produced in reputable factories and not sweat shops. With the infringed and the non-licensed product, we can't guarantee where that product is being produced. I can't guarantee the quality and the customer service behind that product if it's infringed product.”
How can someone tell if a product is officially licensed?
“The easiest way is to look for the hologram sticker. We make it a requirement that all our licensees have to include the hologram sticker on all of the product. And when you look at the product and you see the Spartan head, does it have a circle R behind it? Or is that little identifier missing? Is there a small TM after some of our marks? Or is that missing? That's the easiest way to tell. The hologram sticker also has an identifying mark on it; it has a code on it. If I see the number on the hologram sticker, I can even tell you which licensee made that product, and then I can tell you if it's not a licensee.”
As you get started as the director of university licensing at MSU, what are some of your goals?
“I want to learn this campus and the campus community. I want to know from the academic side who are our top departments, clubs, and organizations? What fundraising do we do? What cause marketing do we do? Because all of that information will generate marketing campaigns that we can then tie merchandise to. So learning the campus community is my number one goal right now. And then just trying to figure out who is doing the buying, what are they buying, what are they missing, and what opportunities are out there? That's definitely my number one goal. I would say second is learning who our key retailers are and where they’re located. Where are our alumni?
How do we get product to states that may not be selling it now?
“I want to make sure that we have healthy e-commerce retailers. We do, but I want to be sure that they're getting the merchandise that they need. With COVID and everything you're hearing in the news, we are as well dealing with supply chain issues and our licensees are dealing with supply chain issues. And then through COVID when a lot of the stores were closed, the product was just sitting on shelves in the stores. A lot of the product that's in the stores is a year old, and those retailers aren't really looking to buy new product because they have to sell the product they have.
“And then my favorite part of the business is the business development part. I want to get started on developing some marketing campaigns where we can include merchandise with them, whether that's with Athletics, with the Alumni Office, or with the general student body and organizations. How can we help further their brand?”
Austin talks about how NIL (name, image, and likeness) and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) will impact university licensing in the months and years ahead.
“This upcoming athletic season will be interesting to see the availability of custom jerseys with student athletes’ names and numbers on them. How are we going to handle that? And that will translate from football into basketball. And what does the product selection look like for the fans? And are they really interested in custom jerseys? We don't know yet. This will be a real test year for NIL. We’re still trying to figure out the value of NFTs. And how do we work with the NFT companies to make sure our brand is still gaining equity and being protected in that space? If I sell an NFT to somebody, can they then take it and do something to it that goes against our brand? Those are the unknowns right now. I do think a lot of the NIL opportunities are going to mirror what's being done in the professional sports.”
Austin is impressed with diversity, equity, and especially inclusion initiatives at MSU.
“I don't think I've ever worked at any place where inclusion has been at the forefront of the mission statement. And being a minority myself, it's very refreshing to come. One of the first questions that I was asked during the interview process was how I support inclusion. That was so important to me. I have gotten positions because I'm a minority so the diversity box or the equity box could be checked. But I think what has always been missing in my experience is the inclusion. And it means a lot to me that MSU is really focusing on the inclusion part.
“I'm focusing on the inclusion part when it comes my licensing portfolio and our portfolio of licensees in retailers. I'm starting to look at who are the minority-owned businesses? Who are the woman-owned businesses? Who are the smaller mom and pop businesses that we can either license, or if they aren't in the financial area to be able to acquire the license, can they work with one of our current licensees and get the education behind it? I have heard from a lot of small individual entrepreneurs that are interested in entering the world of licensing, but they might not know how or have the resources.
“And so how can our current licensing family help them and teach them the roles of licensing and how to get started? Are there some diverse printing companies that are local that maybe some of our larger licensees can work with to print the merchandise and get it into our retail locations? I want to continue the great work that MSU has done with inclusion and make sure that I am also paying attention to inclusion as well.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The hope is that this effort will allow all Spartans, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members to shape future physical investments in support of our teaching, research, and outreach mission. Guided by the university's strategic plan, this planning process provides an opportunity to advance equity, bolster community health, and enhance support systems for students, faculty, staff, alumni, and visitors through the physical environment of MSU's land and facilities.
The resulting framework plan will provide the university with a roadmap to guide MSU's future campus composition for the next generation. Barbara Kranz is assistant provost for Institutional Space Planning and Management, and Stephen Troost is a campus planner in Infrastructure Planning and Facilities. They're leading this project.
“The plan is rooted in the university's strategic plan,” Troost says. “That is where we get guidance from. The second tenet is it's a decision-making tool, and it's really guided by overarching timeless planning principles that help us look at every project moving through the system and how it supports the vision for the campus. Third, it's a flexible framework, and that's an important concept to remember. It guides the highest and best use of our land and our facilities. It doesn't dictate growth. It doesn't say things will happen, but it stays flexible because one thing we know for certain in higher education is we will always have changing dynamics to deal with. The fourth tenet is it enhances safety, and it does that through the optimal organization of campus systems and operations. The final tenet deals with process. I really think that sometimes the process is more important than the product. Campus plans allow the entire Spartan Nation to give voice to what they think the campus of the future should be. Everyone's passionate about campus.”
“If we think about our DEI plan and the strategic plan and the values within them, how do we think about and incorporate those principles from those plans and think about community engagement, social engagement, transportation mobility, social mobility, health and wellness, and a whole range of things,” asks Kranz? How do we leverage our campus? We have a beautiful campus. We hope to retain the arboretum around teaching and learning, but it also contributes to health and wellness, both mental and physical. MSU is very interested in weaving the role of the arts in and across both, not only our curriculum, but research and everyday activity of our students, faculty, staff, and students. There's a whole component around sustainability in the plan, too. That's not just buildings, but financial sustainability and evolving cultural changes for all of us coming to campus.”
Input and feedback from Spartan Nation are being sought. Details on how to share your views are at campusplan.msu.edu.
“Where's your special place? Where are places you think need to be fixed? What's your route through campus? Are there areas of concern that you want to make sure get addressed in the plan? And we're looking to get quite a bit of input from faculty, staff, students, and alumni, as well as community members who come here as visitors,’ continues Troost. “We want to understand how we can enhance the physical campus of composition through that map on the My Campus website. It'll be open through April 22nd, and then there will be opportunities throughout the planning process to go to that website, campusplan.msu.edu, and offer your input or ideas on things that you're hearing or seeing. We'll also have some extensive town hall meetings coming up in the fall when folks are back on campus and have a chance to settle down and get into the new semester. And then we'll be able to look at some of those scenarios and alternatives and get input on what people think about those.”
“The plan is a 10 to 20+ year look ahead,” Kranz says. “Whatever we build and develop will be here for many generations. If staff and faculty are here three days a week, for example, what kinds of engagements are important to have to both build community and relationships within the work environment to accomplish our work and to be efficient and supportive? How do we be thoughtful about that to make sure our students experience our topnotch university, and our faculty staff are supported as well so that we have a vibrant and sustainable community.”
“Through the listening sessions we've conducted to date, Barb and I are hearing that the value-added proposition of why you'd come back to campuses is that people want to collaborate,” says Troost. “Now, you can do your work from home. And there are aspects of that that are fine. But when people do come to campus, they want to have small seminar rooms and open atrium spaces for a cup of coffee, just areas where they can get together and collaborate. There are a lot of ways you can learn, and you can continually learn throughout your life, but you come to campus to be with people. And that's why we have campuses. And that's the most important aspect to me. The elephant in the room is how we blend that hybrid work, teaching, learning, research environment with the very high touch environment we need when we're on campus.
“The key to the plan is its flexibility. The plan will not tell us where we're going because the beauty of higher education is that top research institutions are continually evolving and changing, and we're a land grant or a world grant if you will. And so, we're constantly evolving and looking at what it is we can be doing as the state's institution. And that's going to continually give us challenges in the future for how we grow and how we develop the campus. That flexible framework gives us the guiding principles of what we want it to be. And then as every project folds into it, we continually assess how it can expand upon and allow for successful completion of those planning principles.”
“We have MSU Extension and AgBioResearch,” says Kranz. “We have over 20,000 acres across the state, and we're in every county in the state. While a big piece of the plan focuses on the physical assets in East Lansing, we are all over Michigan. We're national and international, too. How do we plan going forward to acknowledge all of that?”
“I would add, too, that one of the things to remember is we often go back to maybe the 2020 plan 20 years ago, or we go back to the founding of the institution in 1855. But our legacy goes farther back than that. We occupy ancestral ends of the Anishinaabeg and the three tribes. We need to remember those decisions when we make land-use decisions,“ concludes Troost.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
MSU Strategic Plan 2030 identifies goals within six key themes: student success; staff and faculty success; discovery, creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact; sustainable health; stewardship and sustainability; and diversity, equity and inclusion. On this edition of MSU Today, we'll be focusing on the diversity, equity and inclusion theme of the plan with its executive sponsor, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Jabbar Bennett.
“I’m really pleased you’ll be talking with our very distinguished CDO Jabbar Bennett today about DEI and its role in the strategic plan,” says Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. “Even though we have a separate plan for diversity, equity and inclusion, everybody who was involved in this process felt it was important that it be in included as a pillar in the strategic plan as well. It cuts across so many aspects of our campus and it’s so important to us going forward. I've talked many times about the need to have a place where people feel welcome and where people feel that they're a part of this university and are welcomed at this university. And that's what DEI is about. It's providing opportunity, it's providing support and it's providing ways in which we can continue to help people reach their full potential.”
How does MSU Strategic Plan 2030 define diversity, equity and inclusion?
“It's important for all of us to recognize that diversity, equity and inclusion are three different things with their own definitions and application that work together and complement each other,” says Bennett. “And all three are foundational principles and practices that we must embrace as Spartans if we really want to get where it is we say we want to go.
“Diversity represents our very collective and individual identities and differences, and we recognize that diversity is a central component of inclusive excellence in research, teaching, service and outreach and engagement. We are committed to engaging, understanding, promoting and fostering a variety of perspectives and affirm our similarities and value our differences.
“Equity is the ability to, or actions taken, to ensure access to resources that promote success and address past and present educational and professional disparities. Equity goes beyond fair treatment, opportunity and access to information and resources for all. Equity can only be achieved in an environment built on respect and dignity that acknowledges historic and contemporary injustices.
“Inclusion is the act or practice of including and accommodating people who have historically been excluded. Inclusion actively invites all to contribute and participate. We strive to create balance. Every person's voice is valuable and no one person is expected to represent an entire community. Here at MSU, we're committed to an open environment and campus where students, faculty, staff, alumni and community voices are equally respected and contribute to the overall institutional mission.”
And one of the boldest and clearest desired outcomes stated in the strategic plan is the complete elimination of race and ethnicity opportunity gaps across all subgroups of students by 2030. Bennett talks about how MSU will get there.
“A goal mentioned in the strategic plan calls for ensuring equity and eliminating disparities on our campus and beyond. MSU has long been invested in student success and that is evident. For the sixth straight year, MSU saw a record high graduation rate of 82 percent for first-time, full-time undergraduate students. Graduation rates for students who identify as American Indian, Alaskan Native, Asian American, Black or African American, Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander and Hispanic or Latinx, all increased as well. However, Black and African American undergraduate students continue to have slightly lower graduation rates of around 65 percent. MSU 2030 has a goal of guaranteeing an 86 percent graduation rate for the entering 2024 class that will require persistence enabled by the student success initiative, which aims to support the success of all Spartans.
“Equity, inclusion, diversity and global competency are integrated into every aspect of the undergraduate experience. Utilizing a lens of racial equity in teaching and educational outcomes is central to understanding, naming and working to proactively tackle those issues to further eliminate educational opportunity gaps. Closing opportunity gaps requires a focus on ensuring our faculty and staff are also able to succeed.”
MSU has a whole plan dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Bennett describes how that plan relates to and complements the DEI theme in the strategic plan and how they fit together. And he talks about how MSU will look different by 2030 and what we will have achieved if we’re successful in implementing the plan.
“I'd like to underscore that the plan was developed by members of this community: students, faculty, staff and alumni. It'll take every member of this community to recognize their role and the work that they and we must do to make this work successful. We all have a responsibility, and there are ways that we can contribute to advancing these efforts within our local circles and communities as well as collectively when we work with groups and partner with colleagues in different units.”
On this edition of MSU Today, we've been talking about the diversity, equity and inclusion theme of MSU's Strategic Plan 2030: Empowering Excellence, Advancing Equity, Expanding Impact with the executive sponsor of the theme, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Jabbar Bennett.
Read and learn more about MSU Strategic Plan 2030 at strategicplan.msu.edu.
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
In September of 2021, MSU cut the ribbon on its state-of-the art and now multiple award-winning STEM Teaching and Learning Facility. Stephen and Julie talk about MSU's evolving STEM curriculum and about some of the things that go on inside the STEM building.
The goal for the position for a STEM dean at MSU initially wasn’t thought of to be for two people.
“So, if you read the job ad for the position, it's a very complex position,” Libarkin says. “Stephen and I were talking about it, and we both said that alone, neither one of us could do that job. But we realized that together, we really are sides of a multi-faceted die, and we have different communities we engage with. We have different strengths, and we collaborate well together. We've co-taught, we've had grants together, and we've created curriculum together. And so, we decided to ask if we could apply as a team. And they said we could, and we did. And I think they saw what we saw.”
We know that STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. Why have we heard so much about STEM in the last decade or so? Why is it so important to focus more in this area?
“There are multiple reasons,” Thomas says. “I think a lot of times when people talk about career preparation, a lot of the jobs that are available plug into those disciplines or those skill sets that those disciplines will train. And I think there's also a link to this desire for innovation. I feel like societally, we really are always focusing on this idea of innovation, and we see STEM as a pathway to getting that type of innovation.”
“I take a very expansive view of what STEM is,” continues Libarkin. “To me, it's this systematic investigation of solving of problems and understanding the world around us. That includes people and all the things that people do. The other thing that's really of value for thinking about innovating in STEM is really recognizing that STEM is happening in the arts. STEM is happening in the humanities. STEM is happening in business and communication. And if you look across our campus, there are people who teach STEM-focused courses and people who do research in STEM education housed everywhere on this campus. So, it's important, I think because it's integrated in how humans live in the world.”
What about adding the A, which we often do, for arts to make STEAM?
“Adding the A has some interesting roots and discussion around that,” continues Thomas. “So, if you talk to various communities, there's a discussion about why just the arts? There's also a role for humanities and the social sciences. Medical health education is sometimes left off STEM or not seen as being included in that depending on who you ask. With STEAM, we think about it more inclusively.
“How do we have more communication and dialogue between these disciplines? Historically, when we've seen STEAM, there's been this bringing in of the arts to make STEM more entertaining. But there hasn't been this more, maybe robust discussion about how their ways of knowing can inform each other and improve the process for both.
“And so, how do we not just take from the arts, but also participate and have a richer engagement between those communities? We’re passionate about having these conversations and dialogues. The ones that we've been having on campus are just fascinating. How do you get people engaged in science who may not view themselves as scientists? That's one of the hopes that we're seeing for the STEM building; that if we have these relationships with other disciplines, that it will allow others to come into STEM spaces and view themselves as able to engage with that work.”
How is the STEM or STEAM curriculum evolving at MSU?
“I think we're at a cusp of potential growth,” says Libarkin. “And this really is an ideal time for the building to have the ribbon cutting ceremony, and it's ready for use; because now we have a place, and it's a building. It’s turning into a place where people want to be, where students want to be, and where faculty want to teach. People want to understand and be part of a particular place, and that gives us an opportunity to grow the community in unforeseen directions. You must get a lot of voices around a table. I really want to build community among anyone who thinks of themselves in any way, shape, or form as trying to understand learning in STEM, writ large, and build a community and have us work together to elevate the entire community.
“Honestly, I think the best part of this job has been having the space and the opportunity to connect with people and just hear what people are doing, from undergraduates through upper administrators, learning how the institution functions at many levels. Reach out if you want to share, if you have ideas, or if you have needs.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It was nice to be included,” says Lupien. “I recognized a lot of names on there and some folks whose work I've been following for years.
“Mass Timber is an umbrella term for a variety of engineered wood building construction materials. And typically, these are panelized materials and they're really large. Imagine a big beam made of layers of 2x4s laminated together in the shape of a steel I-beam so that you could use that instead of a steel I-beam in a large building. Or imagine a large panel, like a wall or a floor that's made of layers of 2x4s or 2x6s in opposing layers, stacked in layers that are in the opposite direction of one another. That's called cross-laminated timber. And you can drop that in to create a wall or a floor. So, these are big materials that are typically used in larger buildings.”
Why is Mass Timber a good fit for construction, like at the MSU STEM Teaching and Learning Facility that uses it extensively and has won many awards?
“The Michigan State University STEM Teaching and Learning facility opened in July, and it's the first building in Michigan to use mass timber for its structural system. The STEM Facility uses two types of mass timber. One is glue-laminated timber. Those are typically beams and columns. People who like buildings and know buildings will know that glue-laminated timber columns and beams aren't really new. They've been in use for a few decades here in the United States. And the building also uses cross-laminated timber, which are those big panels that I was talking about. And that's a newer technology that's just starting to emerge in North America.
“People are excited about mass timber for a variety of reasons, but the main driver behind the interest is the sustainability benefits of building with big wood in combination in hybrid models like we did in the STEM Facility with materials like steel or concrete, which are more historically or typically used in large buildings.
“Mass timber is great because to produce mass timber and transport mass timber typically emits less carbon than other types of building materials. Wood is a renewable material; it's a renewable resource. You're not using a finite resource. So, that's a more sustainable way of building as well. But the thing that I think is powerful about mass timber in addition to those features is how trees work. In a forest, trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. They take in that carbon dioxide. As we know, they emit oxygen, which we breathe. But they take in that carbon dioxide as gas and then they store it in their trunks, in their branches, in their roots, and ultimately, in the soil as carbon.
“While that carbon is stored in the trees, it's not being emitted into the atmosphere. We know that carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere warms the atmosphere contributing to global climate change. There are many other types of greenhouse gases that also contribute to climate change. Methane being one that we hear a lot about as well. And methane is admitted by trees when they are dying and decomposing in the forest. So, when you have trees storing carbon in the forest, that's a very important benefit of forests. It helps to contain that carbon by either delaying it or preventing it from going back in the atmosphere at a rapid pace, which is what we want to avoid to curb climate emissions.
“When you cut a tree and you use it in a long-lived durable product like mass timber, which can last for 50, 100, 150 years in a building, you're storing a significant amount of carbon that tree in the forest has sequestered, absorbed, and stored. You're storing that carbon in the building, further delaying the amount of time before that carbon would go into the atmosphere. So, you're really helping your buildings to become centers of carbon storage. And other materials such as steel and concrete, of course, don't store carbon. They don't have a carbon storage capacity.”
Lupien talks about how MSU is leading in the research and application of mass timber and about how a growing and evolving mass timber industry can impact Michigan’s economy.
“Mass Timber@MSU is funded in large part by Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. Both of those agencies are very interested in advancing mass timber in Michigan in large part because they see significant potential opportunities for rural-forested communities to revive some forest economies that have been a little bit tired for many reasons in recent years, maybe creating some new opportunities in milling, some new opportunities in kilning, and, of course, new opportunities in manufacture of mass timber. On the construction side, there's also the opportunity to train new types of builders. This is a different way of building. We can perhaps develop new types of construction jobs. So, there's a lot of potential economic development opportunities associated with this.
“On the manufacturing side, it's important to note that most mass timber in North America is coming from the Pacific Northwest or the Pacific Coast of Canada. Some is coming from Quebec. For example, the mass timber that you'll see if you visit our STEM Teaching and Learning Facility is from black spruce from Quebec. And then some is starting to come from the Southeast United States using yellow pine. The reason for that is that all the mass timber technologies currently certified for use in North America are made from soft wood species like spruce, pine, and fur.
“In Michigan, we have about 20 percent soft wood in our forest but about 80 percent hardwood. That's an interesting opportunity for Michigan to think about. How can we use hardwoods in mass timber in North America? Europe has been using hardwoods in mass timber. Can we do it here? From an engineering and structural standpoint, the answer is yes. It just is a matter of doing the research, development, and product certification to make that happen. Our friends at Michigan Tech University have been doing some exciting research along those lines, developing cross-laminated timber using hardwoods. So, we're watching that very carefully.
“I think it's exciting to see mass timber in person. We have the first example of mass timber construction right here on MSU's campus. For those interested in visiting the STEM Facility here on MSU's campus, please feel free to reach out to me, Sandra Lupien. My email address is lupiensa@msu.edu. And I will be happy to find a time when you or perhaps a group of your colleagues can come and see the building, or we can do an introduction to mass timber presentation. When people see it, they really understand ‘Oh, this is how it works.’ And in addition to the benefits that I mentioned, it's also just very beautiful; it's a nice feeling to be in a building made from wood that's exposed. People love that. The students are really enjoying the building. I think we're going to see more mass timber buildings in Michigan in the coming months and years. And I hope that we'll also realize mass timber manufacturing in Michigan before too long.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The sixth annual Give Green Day was on March 15th. This year, more than $1.34 million was raised from over 7,000 gifts for causes including alumni club scholarships, the MSU Center for Survivors Survivor Emergency Fund, and several college-based funds supporting Spartan students of today and tomorrow. That's an increase over last year's $1.2 million raised.
“It really is impressive how people came together. The number of people who are contributing continues to grow every year,” Stanley says. “I'm impressed by our incredible alumni. I'm also impressed by our faculty and staff who gave during this time. Obviously, they give so much to the university daily, and it means a lot to me to see them kicking in afterwards as well and parting with some of their well-earned treasure to support the university.
“We still want people to give when it's not Give Green Day. But the day is a way in which the campus comes together, and we can see the support and the tremendous affection and investment people are willing to make in MSU.”
A person who will help lead giving in the future is Kim Tobin, who you recently selected to be our next vice president for University Advancement. She arrives on May 1st.
“Kim was an outstanding candidate who was a very powerful choice of the select search committee that worked on this search. She comes from Colorado State University, which is another land grant university where she's led them to several very successful campaigns and has been raising in the $150 million range and above during her time at CSU, which is a smaller institution than Michigan State University.
“If you spend any time in her presence, she's incredibly enthusiastic about what she does, and she really cares about the institution where she's been, CSU. And now she's learning a lot about MSU and learning to care about it as well. Her enthusiasm, energy, and knowledge and sophistication in terms of fundraising are going to serve us very well. I'm looking forward to great things. I do want to say how much I've appreciated all the work that Marti Heil has done. She's been amazing. Marti is leading us to a great year this year.
“We're doing very well. We're ahead of where we want to be. Everybody should keep giving, but we're ahead of where we want to be. But it's really going to be good to have Kim on board. She'll bring some new perspectives and energy to the position.”
Financial stewardship is an ongoing imperative for MSU and an element of MSU's Strategic Plan 2030. We recently issued $500 million in century bonds, which mature in 100 years.
“Century bonds were things I wasn't familiar with until I came to Michigan State University, but our chief financial officer and vice president Lisa Frace had some experience with century bonds. Basically, it's a vehicle by which you can borrow money and pay it back at the end of 100 years. We're borrowing $500 million. In a hundred years, we'll have to pay that $500 million back. In the meantime, we pay interest on the outcoming balance during that hundred-year period. 2122 is when this becomes due.
“It's an opportunity for us to get dollars for capital projects at a very good price right now. Interest rates remain near historic lows. We have money that we can utilize. The idea is to create a replenishing fund with this $500 million and use it for projects that will have some type of return on investment. That could be a parking garage. That could be a laboratory. There are a lot of things we can do with this, but the idea is to keep the fund going so we'll have a continuous fund for capital projects that have some return on investment and use that money for a very long period.”
You attended the ribbon cutting of McLaren Health Care's new health campus in the University Health Park on the south end of campus. The $600 million facility includes a new 240 bed hospital, a multi-specialty outpatient healthcare center, and a Karmanos Cancer Center in partnership with MSU Health Care. It offers new facilities for MSU's education, research, and service to our regional community in collaboration with McLaren.
“It’s the beginning of an even closer collaboration with McLaren. They're a very outstanding health care provider, and this is another step forward in building closer collaborations. We have collaborations with them. We have collaborations with Spectrum. We have collaborations with Sparrow. And we have our Henry Ford affiliation, which is a deep-set partnership as well. We're going to continue to work with people to improve health throughout the state, but it’s nice to be able to do something major right in our own backyard.”
On March 16th, we launched the second Know More campus survey to follow up on the first one conducted in 2019 to measure the culture, perceptions, and policies associated with relationship violence and sexual misconduct.
“It's so important that we understand what our campus culture and climate are like and what people are experiencing on campus. Really the only way to do this is by this kind of very confidential survey so we can get information and people can feel comfortable telling us what's happening on campus. We're hoping things have improved since we did the survey in 2019. But if they haven't, or even if they've not improved that much, we need to find ways to do things better.
“But without knowing what the problems are, we can't come up with the solutions. We had about 15,000 individuals fill out this survey before. That's a great total for the university. We're a little behind schedule in terms of people filling out right now. I think St. Patrick's Day and the NCAA Tournament may have had something to do with that. I encourage people to fill it out and complete it.
“It's so important to help guide what we do in relationship violence and sexual misconduct, and to look at how we treat each other on the campus. Civility and other issues are addressed by this survey. Please fill it out students, faculty and staff. It really does make a difference for us.”
You recently had the fun opportunity to honor an amazing faculty member and teacher by announcing this year's President's Distinguished Teaching Award in a surprise classroom visit. College of Social Science Associate professor john Waller is an exemplary scholar and teacher well deserving of the award. His scholarship, enthusiasm, and mentorship are highly admirable and a great example of the world class education and support for student success at MSU.
“Our faculty are amazing, and this is always a fun thing. This is now I think the third time I've done this. Last time I did it, I broke into a Zoom meeting. But this time I was able to come in person, which was much better. Professor Waller was very funny. As we walked into the room – I was there, the provost was there, and the dean of his college, Mary Finn, was there. He looked at one of the students and said in a whisper, ‘I think I'm being fired.’ Of course, it was exactly the opposite. We were there to congratulate him for his excellence in teaching.
“We can't say enough about the quality of education that one can receive at MSU. Faculty and staff and graduate students who have teaching roles are all critical in getting this done. We very much appreciate their efforts, and it's nice to be able to thank them. My thanks to the donors who provide this kind of support for these awards because it really does make a difference in our ability to recognize and retain these great faculty.”
Can you reflect a bit on March was Women's History Month and Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Heritage Month?
“These reflections are so important. We get caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life, but it's important to be reminded of the things that are happening around us and the things that have happened in history that really matter. Women's History Month is very important. During Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Heritage Month, there'll be several celebrations. You learn about culture and history that adds to the experience of being at MSU. One of the advantages of being at a university is taking time to celebrate these events and recognize and look back and forward at the same. I encourage everybody to be a part of it.”
President Stanley, around these parts, we read a calendar January, February, Izzo, April, May, etc.
“I had a chance to go to Greenville and see the team play those two games. What I told the people I talked to there was we can't take this for granted. It's 24 years in a row now we've gone to the NCAA Tournament, and it's easy to take that for granted. But please don't. I was at Stony Brook University before I came here, and I had the opportunity to preside over the first time Stony Brook University had been to the Division I NCAA tournament. Our campus came together and enjoyed it in a very big way.
“To have that opportunity every year for 24 years in a row is spectacular. We've got to enjoy it. I thought the first-round game was a thriller against Davidson. So wonderful to win. We had Duke on the ropes, but they wiggled away and ended up winning the game. But it was a great game. People were not considering us serious contenders in that game, and we showed that we absolutely were. You can never discount a Tom Izzo team, particularly in March. We'll be back. You can count on that. Tom will continue to bring us back. Maintaining that level of excellence speaks volumes about his leadership in the program and, of course, the student athletes who've elected to participate with us.
“It's been a very good semester. We're in a good place right now. If you haven't been boosted, get your booster shot because that's important for keeping the campus safe. Overall, I'm very pleased with where we're going as we work towards about six weeks to go to complete spring semester.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
AAAS at MSU was initially founded as a PhD granting program in 2002. On July 1, 2019, AAAS became a department. In Spring 2020, MSU appointed Brown the inaugural chair.
“We insist that Black studies uncovers and creates technologies of living for Black people and Black futures,” says Brown. “And when we say Black people, we mean all Black people. And when we say Black futures, we mean beyond survival into wellness. We are continuing to build and expand with the addition of new faculty hires and new courses.”
Brown says that students can major in African American and African Studies at MSU. And she describes how the department is evolving. The department is getting exciting new physical space in Kedzie in time for fall semester that will include wellness and social rooms.
“That was a resounding message that I heard from the students is that they want opportunities to be together, certainly for our triple AAAS majors, but for all students who feel connected to our curriculum and are excited about the vision in Black feminisms, Black genders, and Black sexualities studies.”
Brown talks about the accomplished and passionate additions to the department’s faculty. Dill talks about her background and what attracted her to AAAS at MSU.
“What attracted me to AAAS was the centering, the unapologetic centering of Black feminisms, which is unique and rare and nuanced, particularly in Black studies, but also across disciplines in the academy,” says Dill. “It was this calling and shouting out that Black feminisms are the center. It's not an elective, it's not an afterthought; it's the center for everything they do. And so, much like I've lived my life and grounded my scholarship in that, that attracted me.
“I sometimes describe myself as a unicorn. Having this horn sticking out, this mythical character. But I specifically came here to AAAS because I realized that there were other unicorns. There was a whole department of unicorns, knocking through doors with our magic horn. But also landing safely and sometimes softly here at MSU that is welcoming us. Being here is not the disruption. We're realizing that the other dreams that we have and are still manifesting might be the disruption.
“I am focused on Black girl wellness. I'm trained in public health, so a lot of my public health training has been thinking about not just illness and not just disease, but wellness, thriving, and resilience. And I love that part of AAAS's mission and vision of beyond survival into wellness. I'm excited here at AAAS to think even more broadly around wellness.”
Dill talks about how poetry goes hand in hand with her scholarly work and how it perhaps even informs it.
“I've been a poet longer than I've been a scholar. I've been writing poetry since I was in elementary school. I developed more of my poetic techniques as a high school student, using it as my own coping mechanism, running to my journals, but also running to Black poets either on my mom's bookshelf or in the bookstores that I found in my community who were sometimes reflecting my life, sometimes imagining lives that I hadn't even imagined, but also running to the pin to get out some things that I couldn't always articulate in words or out loud.”
Dill shares her poem Testimony and talks about some of her responsibilities in AAAS. She also describes the importance of mindfulness and meditation. Brown describes the “creative intention” that permeates AAAS and shares the poem Study by Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz.
“We have a tremendous amount of gratitude for our MSU colleagues for being there and welcoming us at every step of the way,” Brown says. “They have served on committees and shared their generosity and ideas. It has made a world of difference in terms of us being able to do our best work. We are indebted to the sacrifice and receive well the responsibility to carry forward the dreams of generations, and we are acting with great hope and with great enthusiasm for the generations yet to come. So, to the alumni, please keep sending students to us. We look forward to actively working and building with you all. And to all those administrators who are noticing what we're doing, who are creating the space and providing the resources for us to do our best work, we are in partnership, and I like to think we are just getting started.”
MSU Today airs Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 5 a.m. on WKAR News/Talk and Sundays at 8 p.m. on 760 WJR. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It’s rightfully been on everyone’s minds,” said Ben Cabanaw, state refugee coordinator in the state’s Office of Global Michigan, and special guest during the Institute’s monthly broadcast. “There’s a lot of details still not known as this time.”
Estimates are that more than 3.6 million people have fled Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s attack on its neighboring country.
This month’s podcast features Host Arnold Weinfeld, IPPSR associate director, IPPSR Director Dr. Matt Grossmann and MSU economist Charles Ballard. Podcasts predicted the conflict in Ukraine will likely have lingering economic effects and traced legal questions about redistricting as statewide candidates file for 2022 elections.
“We can always find that Michigan is quite connected to events that occur all over the world,” Grossmann said.
Michigan is a welcoming state, Cabanaw said, and his office within the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity works with local health, education and nonprofit agencies to resettle refugees into new housing, schools, and employment.
Between last fall and this spring, his office helped Michigan to welcome about 1,800 refugees from Afghanistan and provides ongoing support services to about 3,000 people each year, he said.
Public and media interest ebbs and flows with each international crisis posing, a challenge for continuing refugee support, Cabanaw said. “We try to use this moment to educate and advocate. Michigan is traditionally a welcoming state and provides a lot of support for the programming that we do,” he said.
Michigan’s Legislature is also settling the state’s budget with tax cut proposals as a better-than-expected economy and federal pandemic relief funds yield surplus state finances.
“The recession caused by COVID turned out not to be as severe as many of us feared,” Ballard said. He cautioned the state will still need to pay its bills should tax cuts be too generous. “Once you cut a tax, it’s hard to bring it back,” he said.
With balanced budgets required in nearly every state, states have funds to cut taxes and increase spending at the same time, Grossmann said. “They’re good times to be a state legislator or governor. You have lots of goodies to give out, some from the federal government and some from unexpected surpluses.”
Candidates for variety of statewide offices are filing now for upcoming political party conventions and primary votes under new election districts. While state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court are now ruling on legal redistricting challenges, Michigan’s early filings indicate candidates expect to run under the new district boundaries, Grossmann said.
MSU Strategic Plan 2030 identifies goals within six key themes: student success; staff and faculty success; discovery, creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact; sustainable health; stewardship and sustainability; and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
On this edition of MSU Today, we'll be focusing on the sustainable health theme of the plan with its executive sponsor, Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Norman J. Beauchamp Jr.
“Sustainable health is a particularly important component of the strategic plan,” says Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. “Some of the things we’ve done recently like our partnership with Henry Ford Health impact the state of health across the state of Michigan. We need to end health disparities in urban and rural areas in Michigan. Michigan State University can play a critical role in helping to do that.”
How does the plan define sustainable health?
“It’s about hope, health, and healing for all people,” says Beauchamp. “It’s consistent with our land grant mission. All people deserve the opportunity to improve their health and wellness.”
Conversation Highlights:
“To be sustainable we must train the next generation of individuals who are going to bring health, hope, and healing to all,” continues Beauchamp. “An ethos of health and wellness must permeate the entire campus. It’s about how we enable those who want to improve the health and wellness of others and then how we accomplish that in a sustainable way, day after day for generations to come.”
Innovations that make MSU a leader in sustainable health include the College of Human Medicine’s competency-based education, the College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Street Care program, and the College of Nursing’s simulation training.
Beauchamp explains how the county one is born in can dramatically impact a person’s health and wellness. And he describes curricular pathways into health for students to serve all of Michigan’s communities. “MSU is unique in its breadth of these opportunities.”
He elaborates on MSU’s collaborative ethos “to seek first to understand and bring value.” He cites MSU’s work in Flint and the Flint Registry as an example. “What are the challenges the community is working with us to solve? It’s an asset-based community approach. The strength of addressing any challenge exists in the community. Our job is to learn from the community about the ways they believe we can be helpful to them.”
Advancing equity is a critical focus of the strategic plan. Beauchamp paraphrases Martin Luther King Jr. who said, ‘Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.’
“The color of your skin should not determine your likelihood of survival from cancer and negatively affect health outcomes or the length of your life for up to a decade,” Beauchamp says. “That’s inhuman and unacceptable. Those who can address that challenge must accept that challenge as an imperative.”
Partly through MSU’s presence in every one of Michigan’s counties through MSU Extension, Beauchamp says “MSU is uniquely poised to reach out to rural and urban Michigan, offer advice, have it accepted, and then evaluate if it’s working.” He also comments on the deficiencies in access people of color have to clinical trials for cancer and their impacts.
Beauchamp says the secret sauce that can lead to more funding for sustainable health initiatives is “our ability to collaborate internally, to partner with institutions that have similar values of improving health and the ability to find win-wins with those partners, and it’s absolutely being focused on the needs of the community in a way that resonates with them.”
He weighs in on the significance of the year 2030 in the title of the plan. “For things that matter, there must be a sense of urgency.”
On this edition of MSU Today, we've been talking about the sustainable health theme of MSU's Strategic Plan 2030, Empowering Excellence, Advancing Equity, and Expanding Impact with the executive sponsor of the theme, Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Norman J. Beauchamp Jr.
Read and learn more about MSU Strategic Plan 2030 at strategicplan.msu.edu.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
MSU's Strategic Plan 2030 identifies goals within six key themes: student success, staff and faculty success, discovery; creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact; sustainable health; stewardship and sustainability; and diverse, equity, and inclusion.
On this edition of MSU Today, we'll be focusing on the stewardship and sustainability theme of the plan with its executive sponsors: Executive Vice President for Administration and Chief Information Officer Melissa Woo and Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Lisa Frace.
Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. says Spartans care deeply about Planet Earth and about MSU's financial sustainability.
“Stewardship and Sustainability is the fifth pillar of the strategic plan and one of the most important,” says Stanley. “Our students, faculty, and staff care deeply about the planet and climate change. This is incredibly important to them, and the concept of sustainability and being stewards of our environment and our financial situation here at MSU is important to everyone on the campus. We're a leader in this area. We're among the top-ranked college campuses in what we're doing, and the goal of the strategic plan is to continue that leadership and put us in the forefront of people who are making a difference in this area.
“We've already been making changes in our financial stewardship. Our financial situation has improved significantly over the past couple years. Despite COVID, we've been able to improve our balance sheets, and we're going to continue to work to make sure that our budget is aligned with our strategic goals to make sure that we're using the dollars we have at MSU in a way that furthers the strategic goals and the strategic plan and makes a difference.”
Michigan State is working toward climate neutrality by mid-century. Why is it critical MSU take this step, and what are some of our key action plans?
“It's just one of the pieces of a total holistic institutional sustainability and climate action plan, which is going to be based on a four-pillar framework focused on four C's: campus, curriculum, community, and culture,” says Woo.
“As we continue to move forward in meeting energy goals and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we'll also be looking at taking systemic, sustainable actions and adopting a culture that enables the institution to reach those goals. Some of the other things that we're working on will be to foster resource stewardship through application of leadership and environmental design. We’re organically managing land and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing sustainable source purchases, increasing campus-grown and locally sourced food, and reducing the transportation carbon footprint.
“Another place we're really focusing on is expanding sustainability teaching and learning opportunities through formal courses and co-curricular activities. And of course, we can't forget research. We also want to expand sustainability research and innovation through inter- and intra-institutional partnerships to address climate solutions. And finally, because we also can't forget outreach, we want to make sure we enhance sustainability outreach and engagement by expanding volunteer opportunities for our faculty, staff, and students in support of local, state, regional, national, and global partnerships.”
“Sustainability also refers to a sustainable model for financial and other types of resources. We are looking at transforming the university's budgeting process as part of that,” adds Frace.
Are there some other plans for us to be a greener campus?
“We want to achieve platinum ranking in what's known as the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System, STARS for short, by 2030 if we can,” continues Woo. “We also really want to achieve the Top 100 Times Higher Education global impact ranking by 2030.
“Another thing we're looking at is reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent from our 2010 baseline. And ultimately, we want to ensure that faculty, staff, and students can live, work, and learn in buildings and spaces that promote health and wellness, have access to proximal green space, and enjoy pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly design.”
Sustainability also refers to sustainability of financial and other types of resources. MSU will be adapting a new long-term, comprehensive financial model and budget process to align with and support strategic priorities. Can you talk about this model and the process to develop it and the timeline?
“When we talk about the university budget process, the first thing we'll start to do is to develop an all-funds budget approach to provide a holistic financial management framework that will allow us to better address strategic priorities,” Frace says. “We're laying the groundwork this year through developing budget and forecasting systems so that we have the tools and processes in place to be able to support a change in budget model and allow all units to be successful when we get to that.
“Once we have developed those tools, we will engage the campus in a comprehensive redesign, but that won't likely be for at least another 18 months because we really do need to develop the systems, tools, processes, and reports to enable that success. And it's going to be critically important that we take the time to get it right so that we understand and can address any unintended consequences before we launch into a new model.
“We have proposed and sold century bonds that are repayable in 100 years. And those proceeds from those bonds will help us to create a revolving fund that will allow us to invest in perpetuity in projects that support the strategic plan, and that's critically important. It creates a stewardship tool for not only this generation but for generations to come.”
The university master plan is referenced in this section of the strategic plan. I understand that planning work has begun and that it has an emphasis on embedding priorities like diversity, equity, and inclusion; faculty, staff, and student success; and sustainable health in the physical and space planning. Talk about how that's done and how it will strengthen outcomes at MSU. What's the goal of the plan?
“This is really exciting,” Woo says. “In the past, this has been known as the Land Use Master Plan, which only focused on the East Lansing campus. However, we have so many activities all over the state. We have great things happening in Flint and Detroit and Grand Rapids and a presence in every county in the state because of MSU Extension. How this plan differs from the old land use master plans is it really looks at all 26,000 acres of land that we hold and the facilities on them. The way we're going through this is that we're really looking at a comprehensive and strategic framework for guiding future decisions regarding land use, which is why we want to be all inclusive. It should support the institution's three mutually reinforcing strategic plans and the academic strategic plan implementation.
“Our goal is to complete this plan by the end of 2022, and we are going to be incorporating multiple perspectives into the planning process, including consideration of the history of the land MSU occupies, tribal consultation around archeological sites, and environmental impact reviews. We want to have a very broad group of stakeholders, including our surrounding communities, to make sure that we are truly inclusive of people's concerns and their thoughts and brainstorm around how we can best utilize our land, our buildings, and our facilities.
“What we're really hoping to do is to incorporate campus district plans to encourage collaboration and innovation. We’re also planning for construction and renovation of high priority facilities that support MSU-articulated priorities and values. So for example, I think you've heard about the Multicultural Center. We're also improving our recreational sports facilities, and we have goals for improving our greenhouses and an engineering facility.
“We also want to make sure we ensure wayfinding is accessible for all users. And what's exciting is that we want to enhance public art on the campus and ensure it includes multiple modalities and diverse perspectives.”
Let's talk about the reference to developing a sustainable information technology strategic plan to power the academic enterprise. What will be some of the key things that plan addresses, and what are some of the challenges and opportunities?
“We have four key things that the plan addresses,” Woo continues. “The first is to improve and enhance IT services and infrastructure to improve access and reliability and enable greater avenues for innovation in teaching, research, and scholarly activity.
“Another key thing that the plan will address is to expand access to technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and augmented and virtual reality to enhance learning, research, community engagement, and MSU's reach throughout our communities. Another key thing is to provide operational excellence by leveraging technology to provide informed decision-making, reduce operating costs, and optimize the capabilities of our teams. And finally, another key thing that the plan will address is to ensure faculty, staff, and students have the tools and network connectivity needed to succeed in remote, virtual, and hybrid modalities.
“As far as challenges and opportunities go, this is an excellent opportunity to ensure that technology services are delivered in alignment with supporting MSU's research, education, and outreach mission. Technology should support and enable people’s excellent work in support of our mission.
“In being able to truly understand stakeholder goals and needs in order to deliver technologies that support their work in alignment with MSU's mission, we're really going to be looking across the board for a lot of stakeholder input.”
“I agree with Melissa's evaluation that this is really going to be transformative, but I also think that in terms of the operational savings that she mentioned, it's not only about operational savings,” Frace says. “It's about providing better data for better decision-making so that we can continue to innovate not only on the academic and research side but really on the operational side of the house, too.”
Engaged alumni, donors, and friends are vital to MSU's long-term sustainability. MSU is fortunate. We have more than 1 million alumni, friends, corporations, foundations, and organizations connected with the institution. How does their engagement play a role in the success of achievement of key initiatives within this theme, and how can they best engage?
“Their engagement is vital to staying at the forefront of excellence, and it's really crucial in advancing Michigan State University's reputation for excellence and innovation,” Frace continues. “There are a few ways that we can think about engaging with them. Public-private partnerships is one. And the role of a private-public partnership is that there are opportunities for corporations, foundations, and others to engage with MSU to bring certain sorts of financial structures to the table. That might be building buildings for us or doing a ground lease or working with them on research innovation.
“What it allows us to do is to attract other types of activity to the campus. Think about Grand Rapids, where we have the medical innovation happening. Think of the Apple Academy. Those are good examples of activities we've already undertaken. And there are other good examples of institutions that have gone down this path. The University of Illinois has a good tech innovation campus. Georgia Tech has a well-known one. Arizona State has a well-known set of P3 activities. All of those are good exemplars for us to be able then to choose the best and build our own design.
“We also look to establish reciprocal opportunities for partnering with businesses and community organizations, like the work we've done with McLaren on the hospital that's been built adjacent to our campus. They work very collaboratively with our colleges of medicine in terms of providing residencies and other opportunities for learning.
“We also have the TechSmith project being built on our campus, a fundamental project that the MSU Foundation has brought forward. Melissa's the president of the MSU Foundation, and it has really been a critical set of work that she's done.”
“The MSU Foundation exists to support MSU,” says Woo. “Something that's fantastic about the foundation is the foundation board has incredible talent. It includes alumni and friends of MSU, and this is a pool of talent that we absolutely need to engage. We have so many talented alumni with great business acumen and talents and knowledge and connections that MSU should and can focus on and engage with. Alumni are so important to us.”
“As executive sponsors of this theme of the plan, Melissa and I work very closely together,” Frace says. “We will engage with one another, our teams, and with the campus community to really allow this to move forward and evolve. And as those things evolve, we'll develop ways to consistently communicate the progress with the campus community and to update the whole strategic plan implementation.”
“The way I look at stewardship is that we have to be good stewards of university resources,” Woo says. “This doesn't necessarily mean we have to be cheap. We do need to look at value versus cost of resources because what we really want to do is to make sure we provide sufficient value to the university. And sometimes, being the most efficient is not the best or high value way to do that. So, what we really want to look at is effectiveness and weigh that value versus cost. That is part of being a good steward of university resources.”
“I agree with that,” concludes Frace. “The way I would characterize it is we need to take all of the information that we have available to us and bring that all together to make the best decisions that support the long-term viability of the institution from an academic, research, and operational standpoint so that as students come to MSU and ultimately graduate, they see that the value of the degree that they've earned continues to increase.”
On this edition of MSU Today, we've been talking about the stewardship and sustainability theme of MSU's Strategic Plan 2030: Empowering Excellence, Advancing Equity, and Expanding Impact with the executive sponsors of the theme: Executive Vice President for Administration and Chief Information Officer Melissa Woo and Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Lisa Frace.
Read and learn more about MSU's Strategic Plan 2030 at strategicplan.msu.edu.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday nights at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows. Please share this conversation if you’re so inclined.
It will be open to all MSU students, faculty, and staff, and will assess perceptions of the university culture related to sexual misconduct, relationship violence, and workplace incivility. Feedback from the MSU community is valued and necessary to continue the work-improving policies, programming, and services that create a culture that seeks to eliminate discrimination, harassment, sexual misconduct, and relationship violence.
“Know More is a survey that we did for the first time in 2019, and we’re repeating it this spring,” says Carrie Moylan, associate professor in MSU’s School of Social Work, member of the RVSM Expert Advisory Group, and lead on the Know More Campus Survey project. “It's an opportunity for MSU to learn about how members of our campus - students, staff, and faculty - think about how the university is doing related to relationship violence, sexual misconduct, and stalking. The survey is designed to gather perceptions of the university, perceptions of the climate and culture here at MSU, and a sense of the experiences that student, staff, and faculty are having related to RVSM.”
Is Know More related to the Support More initiative?
“The name Know More came first, and it was an opportunity for us to have more information to help us think about how to improve programs, policies, services, and support for survivors,” continues Moylan. “Then as we started working on the strategic plan and the Support More initiative, we thought it's a nice way to say when you know more then you can as a campus do more. And if we're doing more, then we'll do a better job at supporting survivors. It seemed a nice way to sort of tie it all together and to think about the work that we've been engaged in as a university and as a community in the past five years to really look at what we're doing to improve our response to survivors and to make sure our policies are appropriate and doing what we need them to do. Know More, Do More, and Support More tie together and feed into each other.”
What is the goal of the survey itself?
“There are really two goals,” continues Moylan. “One goal is to get an understanding of how our campus is feeling about MSU’s culture and climate and the experiences they've had over the past year or so. It's good for our campus to do that every few years to understand the pulse at any given moment. Because we also did the survey in 2019, this is a chance to see if anything has changed. Have we improved anything? We have a strategic plan, and we've started some different programs, and there have been some policy changes. It's an opportunity to see any of the impact of that work that we've been doing. Because we can now compare from 2019 to 2022.
What are some things you found in 2019 that have informed the survey for 2022?
“We found that LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and faculty experienced higher rates of sexual harassment and sexual assault than their non LGBTQIA+ peers. We made sure that the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center was a resource that students could go to with some sense of privacy to be able to seek support. They've gotten some training, and so we hope to be able to see some of the effectiveness of making changes like that.
“We've added the Sexual Assault Healthcare Program that provides some additional services on campus that are convenient and easy to access for our community members. There've been some policy changes around sanctions for RVSM. We hope to be able to get a sense of how that might be impacting community members' perceptions and experiences here at the university.”
Who would you like to take this and how would they take it?
“It's a survey designed for all students, staff, and faculty,” Moylan says. “That’s undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. All staff and all faculty will be invited to take the survey. It's really important that we hear from as many of our community members as possible. The more responses that we get and the more people we hear from, the better sense we have that we're getting a clear and complete picture of the climate and the culture here at MSU. We really hope that everyone will, when they get that email, click on the link and take the survey.”
“That email will be coming to all students, faculty, and staff on March 16, which is the Wednesday after spring break, from knowmore.msu@rti.org,” says Jacob Nason, a PhD student in social work who is helping with the survey as Moylan’s graduate assistant.
“Everyone will get their own email, and in that email will be an access code,” Moylan continues. “When you click on the link, you have a personalized access code. There's no need to forward it to a friend because your friend should already get their own email and access code. It'll be very easy to click on the link and then just stick that access code in and you'll get right to the survey.
“We noticed a few things in 2019, including for example, that staff and faculty and students who are Black or from other marginalized racial and ethnic groups experience some higher rates of RVSM. But we also noticed that we had some lower rates of participation among some of those communities. We really want to encourage everyone to share their experiences so we can have a clear and complete picture of their thoughts about our campus climate and culture and the experiences that they've had.
“We encourage everybody to consider taking the survey. The survey is administered by an external nonprofit research organization. That's really important because it means that MSU doesn't actually have access to the data. Whatever information you share in the survey is confidential. It won't be linked back to you; MSU won't know whether you took the survey, and that data will never be linked back to you and your specific identity. We hope that makes people feel confident and free to share their experiences knowing that they can remain confidential.”
“To underscore the importance of making sure that students, faculty, and staff who we didn't hear from necessarily as much last time, this is a great opportunity for members of those communities to be able to share their voices, especially because a lot of campus climate surveys on other campuses aren't necessarily reaching out to staff,” says Nason. “They're not necessarily going out to faculty and graduate students, but everyone's voice and everyone who is being invited to the survey's voice is important and pivotal to being able to understand and inform change on our campus.”
You're going to find what you're going to find, but are there things you hope to learn and will what you learn inform some of the evolving Support More initiatives?
“Absolutely, yes,” Moylan says. “We learned a lot in that 2019 survey that we fed into the formation of the strategic plan, and we thought carefully about how this data and this information could teach us where we needed to put additional energy. We hope to find out how our community is feeling about the university and their perceptions of some of those changes in policies and perceptions of just how included they feel on campus in general. We look forward to hearing the good, the bad, the indifferent, and all sides of the issue so that we can have a good sense of what are the remaining areas of need.
What can we continue to target to keep MSU on this path of trying to improve our response to survivors?
“Most campuses when they do these climate surveys related to relationship violence and sexual misconduct only survey students. We felt like at MSU that it was important to think about our community as a full community and that staff and faculty are a big part of the culture, the climate, and the community at MSU. To do a campus-wide climate survey is still unique among other institutions. We found that we learned so much from staff and faculty and the experiences that they're having. That helped us to think about what MSU could be doing better. We really look forward to getting that sense of experiences and perceptions across the full community.
“So, we hope that everyone will click on the link, enter their access code, and take the survey. It takes about 15 minutes so you can do it while you're having your coffee or before you have a meeting that's starting in 15 or 20 minutes. The information really will help us. We will use the information, and we'll share the information back with the community so that the community can also use that information to help MSU continue to improve our response to survivors.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday nights at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
MSU Strategic Plan 2030 identifies goals within six key themes: student success, staff and faculty success, discovery, creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact, sustainable health, stewardship and sustainability, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
On this edition of MSU Today, we'll be focusing on the discovery, creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact theme of the plan with its executive sponsors: Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Teresa Woodruff, Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Norman J. Beauchamp Jr., and Vice President for Research and Innovation Douglas Gage.
“MSU has extraordinary people and an extraordinary capacity to really make a difference, and our job is to help them succeed and find ways to reach their full potential in their research work and have the full impact it should,” says Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. “That involves reducing the barriers for them to submit grants and making it easier for them to work within their grants and facilitate the valuable work they’re doing.
“That involves exciting new facilities like FRIB and collaboration with scientists around the world. It’s about having impact. Extension helps us to be good at applied research. We have an ambitious goal of $1 billion in research expenditures. That will take a lot of work, but I’m excited about the pathway to get there. This is an area where we really change people’s lives and make a difference, not just on our campus and in our state and the country, but in the world. MSU is doing that every day, and this is an opportunity to do it on an even larger scale and have greater impact.”
At Michigan State, we pursue excellence in service to the common good, generating new knowledge and applying it to address complex societal problems. When we say discovery, creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact, what do we mean and how will growth and annual research expenditures to $1 billion help us have more local and global impact?
“Excellence in the service of the common good is a phrase that I just really gravitate toward,” says Woodruff. “And I think our tripartite mission of teaching, research, and outreach and engagement really represents the different ways in which that excellence in service to the common good is lived out. If you did a word cloud of what I just said, we've got a lot of ands, not ors. We interdigitate in each of these areas. Our faculty teach and do research, and then they apply that work to help solve real-life problems in real communities that affect real people.
“And I like to think of MSU as having research and scholarship reach. As we continue to grow our research expenditures, I think we'll be able to accelerate what we're able to learn as we think about the grand challenges that our world faces. I'm really excited about our global impact initiative. It really is going to support the growth and accelerate the pace of discovery by recruiting new faculty in some of the most exciting areas of research. And by growing this annual firepower within research and scholarship, I think we're going to go deeper and broader in what we do. We're going to be able to act locally and globally in solving the world's most pressing needs.”
“Growing our research expenditures to $1 billion means that our research activities are going to expand by more than $250 million annually,” adds Gage. “And so, we'll be conducting more research, which means we'll be making more discoveries and ultimately educating more students and bringing more solutions forward. And we're going to be working to expand our research programs across the board and increasing activities in some critical areas, such as equitable healthcare, climate change, mobility, international development, and many other programs which are critical both globally and specifically to Michigan and the United States. We're going to be working across the entire campus to try to build on these new programs. And many of them will be interdisciplinary. We're going to have a lot of interactions over the next few years, and we're really looking forward to that.”
“This effort really looks at improving health by promoting treatment and prevention,” Beauchamp says. “It contributes to society by driving economic growth and productivity and by helping to address social determinants of health through access to education and job creation. And it expands biomedical knowledge by funding cutting edge research and cultivating the future biomedical workforce of today and tomorrow. I’m excited about what this means in terms of MSU's land grant mission and this essential arm and what's needed to bring health, hope, and healing to all people.”
What are the key areas that will be part of this push to $1 billion?
“That $1 billion is a big number, a huge number,” Woodruff continues. “It feels big, and it feels ambitious. And I think that's really exciting. We have enormous strengths that really rise out of our roots of this land-grant university. Our plan is to bring together disciplines in new ways and to think about how we can intersect between new ideas and state-of-the-art equipment and the ways in which problems emerge that we can uniquely solve. An example is the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. We have an incredible facility, and that's going to allow us to play a vital role in the next generation of scientific leaders and innovators.
“This is a great example because it's coupled with our number one-ranked graduate program in nuclear physics. You combine superb faculty, outstanding facilities, and a number one graduate program. We can create what I call a spiral of excellence. A second area is in improving agricultural practices and food crop yields and food security, something that remarkably is on our horizon and something that MSU can uniquely work in. And then the last one is in educational research and preparing teachers and educational leaders and change-makers. We have a top-ranked College of Education, and the more we educate, the better the world is, and it is something that we're proud of. And it's in that educational domain that we're going to lean into with many other domains to reach that $1 billion.”
“The key is that it's not a single investment that's going to get us to that $1 billion,” says Gage. “It's really about building on a whole variety of things. There are areas of strength we can build upon, and we are also going to have an opportunity to go into new areas that are going to give us the chance to expand what we do at Michigan State University. That involves bringing in new faculty, new partners, and commercial entities and funding agencies who might work with us to develop some of these new ideas. If we had to reach the $1 billion number on one strategy, we wouldn't get there. We really must bring everything we have to bear on this. A lot of it is going to be interdisciplinary and developing new areas which MSU is positioned to really develop and take advantage of.”
“As we think about this effort in health, it really will take a convergence of strengths across the university,” adds Beauchamp. “You can look, for example, at the Pediatric Public Health Initiative. To be successful there in trying to improve the health of the community, it required expertise from education, communications, geography, toxicology, nutrition, epidemiology, psychology, child development, pediatrics, and more. The point is that as we think about how we'll move the dial on health disparities, it will be a chance for us to mobilize the entire university. One of the things that the strategic plan calls out is this no silos approach to advancing research and connecting strengths and finding ways to foster that.”
Say more about how these spirals of excellence cross all our missions and enrich our educational outreach and research excellence.
“These spirals of excellence that we're building are predicated on foundations of strength,” continues Woodruff. “And then we build upward towards what we think are going to be beacons, both so people can light the way to coming towards MSU, and to provide assets that the world desperately needs. We're really in a changing time. There's an evolving nature of work and different ways in which we experience health and the workplace. All these changes necessitate new ways of thinking and doing research. Rapid technological advances and artificial intelligence or automation are reshaping education and all our skill sets. So, what we're doing at MSU is really part of a fourth industrial revolution that's changing education systems and labor markets. We're advancing this through our research and helping society to adapt to all these changes.
“We believe these spirals can be really catalytic, sparking curiosity and innovation and discovery across the community that now can see each other. And this creates a multiplier effect so that each point of contact becomes new knowledge, new value, and new positive outcomes. And this is because our research is not in isolation. We mentor. We teach. It's all interoperable. And that's what allows MSU to have the biggest, broadest, baddest, best impact.
“Our MSU arts strategy integrates arts into all of the ways we think and work. It is research. It is scholarship itself. And it also is a predicate for some of the most creative endeavors. By designing a deliberate environment that understands the world that we found two years ago is no longer the same, our community can walk into this challenge and work effectively and ethically in this world.”
“Research and scholarship are really integral to everything we do,” Gage says. “Creating new knowledge and then transmitting that to the next generation of scholars is really essential for an institution of our type. And we extend that knowledge then not just to our students, but to communities we serve through outreach efforts and partnerships. Involving undergraduates in research and scholarship is something we've had a long history of at Michigan State University. I think many of us who ended up in the STEM fields, we started out working in a laboratory or working with a scholar. I started my own career as a dishwasher in a laboratory. That's how you get the exposure to what science and scholarship are all about. That's something we really take great pride in. We don't say research and education are separate. That's not at all the case at this university. We are entirely integrated and synergistic.”
“A key part of what our students have asked is how do they learn how to think about discovery,” asks Beauchamp. “Giving our students access to being involved with research is one of the things that can happen at a place like MSU where there are those breadths of opportunity. You can't have that unless there is a depth and a breadth of research happening in the institution. Our goal is to train that next generation of practitioners who help redefine what healthcare can be.”
Tell me about the geographic reach of our discovery and innovation work and talk about the importance of our impact in Michigan and our global footprint.
“Its reach is one of the things that's so amazing about MSU,” Woodruff continues. “That’s one of the reasons I was so attracted to MSU. It's research within reach. It's not research in some mythical ivory tower. We have a commitment at MSU that's remarkable across the entire state of Michigan and to the global community. It's central to our mission and our values. As a top global university, we continue to push the boundaries to make the world better. True to our land-grant mission, we reach into all 83 Michigan counties through Extension and through our healthcare community. Extension is such an important part of what we do across the state.
“That means that the entire state is Michigan State University. We are all part of this great community. That is quite exciting. We're a top 40 research university according to the Washington Monthly 2021 rankings. That should make everyone in Michigan proud of us. We've had about $5.8 billion in economic impact in the state and about 80 percent of our undergraduates are from here in Michigan and 65 percent of them stay in Michigan. That's exciting. That says we're really having an impact.
“I'm a globalist. I think about the entire circumference of the world. And we have Spartans literally everywhere in the world. And our research is making a difference, about $82 million in annual funding for international work. We're the number one top-ranked public university for education abroad. And we have about 1,400 of our faculty and academic staff members who are engaged in international research and teaching. And in our International Studies and Programs, we have just over 30, I think, internationally-focused centers. Michigan State has made a commitment to being available to everyone who has need for education and for learning something new and for building across the globe and across the great state of Michigan. It's an exciting place to be.”
“It’s important to emphasize that we take our mission to serve the public good very seriously,” continues Gage. “Michigan State University has a reach that goes from the smallest rural counties to the biggest urban centers. And even if we leave the United States, one can wear a baseball cap with a helmet on it and go into Zambia or somewhere like that and someone will say to you, ‘Go Green!” We are there and they know who we are. We serve not just our own interests, but the interests of the world. When we look at international partnerships that really is a key to our service. It's a partnership model; we don't come in with solutions to deliver. We come in to build those solutions together.
“And we have a very strong history of that that goes back many decades. If we look at the U.S. Agency for International Development and international foundations, we are very well represented and often a key partner for those agencies and funders. We are very proud of that legacy, and we want to continue it and build upon it. During the pandemic, travel and outreach were certainly impacted, and we're very anxious to get back to work with our international partners and develop capacity for food production, for example, and other things. Particularly, climate change is not just an issue for us. It's a global issue. We can envision that we're going to have a role to play to help develop solutions around the world to assist our partners.”
“We are in every county in the state, and we're really proud of how we have pathway programs that are connections from where people are growing up to where we can help them train so that they can serve their communities,” says Beauchamp. “Another component of the work that's being done is recognizing that we live in a knowledge economy. And as we look at partnerships between academia and industry, one of the things that happens is these new ideas of innovation, technology, machines, and decision support can connect into opportunities to connect with industry, which brings both technology and human capability resources to partnerships on campus. It also gives us a global distribution. Education, research, and clinical care and our partnerships make the reach of Michigan State global.”
Why is it so important that we do this important research?
“One can look at research in a very applied way,” says Gage. “And we do quite a significant amount of applied work, particularly in areas of agriculture, education, and other areas where an outcome is really desired in the short-term. But there's also curiosity-driven research, which will have outcomes which aren't always predictable and are sometimes vastly undervalued when they're initiated. And often, even the developers of some research may not even initially have realized the value of it. In the early days of computer science, it was the dabblings of some mathematicians. Now it's really transformed the world. There are a lot of things like that that happen in very unpredictable ways.
“We have to have a place where that can happen. Universities are positioned for that. Companies can't afford to take the long view like that and hope something good comes out of it. Those days where that sort of opportunity was present in the corporate sector have really diminished. When fundamental research looks promising, we partner with commercial entities to help to develop it into something practical. That happens many times. There are a lot of opportunities for us to do that. Some things are practical from the very beginning and some things are unpredictable.
“And, of course, there's failure along the way. Investment will happen. There's always value in it in terms of education and in terms of learning from our mistakes or learning what didn't work. We are good stewards of the funds that we are given by the state and by the federal government for research. We don't take that lightly. We don't take it as play money. It's something that we have to do our very best to deliver what we promise as we begin to conduct research.”
“Many of the great advances over the past century such as computers, radars, lasers, x-rays, nuclear energy, and even mRNA vaccines are traceable to basic science discoveries, some made decades before their application,” adds Beauchamp. “And the practical use may not be seen by the researchers who first made those discoveries. But if you look at industry, they often aren't going to invest in that work. They need a limited time to which they can bring things to market in order to meet the imperatives of their shareholders. But for us in higher education, we can have a longer view. And then one of the strengths of the breadth that the university brings is you can bring together these cohorts of people who do applied and basic research and individuals whose focus is clinical care. This is a milieu where they will connect. And I think that's also where some of that magic happens that brings the return for basic science research.”
“At MSU, we do structured and unstructured work,” says Woodruff. “In some cases, we're trying to get to a cure. In other cases, we're just trying to learn something new. And it's something extraordinary about MSU faculty because they run the gamut from creation to invention to discovery to expression to revealing elements about ourselves and our world and our place in that world. And that's really quite the gamut. And some of our faculty work examines the minutia of a bacteria or a plant cell or a chloroplast, and others look at the complex significance of artistic performance. I was at the MSU Wind [Symphony] performance yesterday, which just was an extraordinary level of expression. The nature of this work helps us to understand, it helps us to contextualize, and it can help to improve the human condition. In fact, it may be completely abstracted from utility and exist solely as revealed knowledge.
“That's what's special about Michigan State University. We value and celebrate the ephemeral, from the half-life of the shortest FRIB discovery to a single note played by a bass bassoon to new knowledge about how we can engineer a chloroplast to have plant resilience. In the end, all these diverse products of the work of MSU can be lauded by many. They might be known by a few, or they might be appreciated for their extraordinary audacity or cited for their wisdom, or they may just be something that's talked about in a classroom setting.
“That's the nature of work within a university. It is the most extraordinary place that doesn't exist anywhere else. And the fact that MSU takes this work and makes it unified and interoperable with teaching is what makes this one of the most special places for discovery, for research on our way to those billion dollars, and for all those students along the way who both participate in that basic or translational or clinical work or that performance and the rest of us whose lives are made better because of all of it.”
“There's a real sense of excitement at what lies ahead right now,” adds Gage. “We see FRIB coming online. New opportunities for research across all areas have captured the imagination of the folks at MSU. Research and the culture that we create are going to outlive all of us. And that's really our goal is to create the next generation and position the institution for a continued ability to deliver for decades to come. Our challenge and our responsibility are to really put our full effort into doing that. It's all about what comes next, not what we do or what happens today when we're around. That's the exciting part. All of us are really looking forward to how that's going to develop and how we're going to be able to make those contributions.”
“One of our goals is to be inclusive in the research that we do in terms of clinical trials,” Beauchamp adds. “Participation in research should reflect the diversity of our culture and conditions and consider race, ethnicity, gender, and age. That lack of diversity among researchers and research participants has both ethical and research consequences. And one of the wonderful things about Michigan State by virtue of the breadth of the people who are compelled to be a part of the work that we do is I that we're well positioned to be a place where people of all backgrounds can participate in research and we can help train the next generation of a more diverse group of scientists at Michigan State.”
“Excellence and equity in research and teaching is really what we're all about,” says Woodruff. “We’re here to advance the institution and the future, but we're also creating new possibilities for its future. And this strategic plan that we're all working on contemplates our 175th year in 2030. Work towards our 175th year is not the destination. That's what we create now. We're really creating the predicate for a long future because that's what higher education does. We'll be here for the long run. Our values of bringing as many people as possible into this way of thinking and working is something that I think is just so exciting and so uniquely done at Michigan State. I can't think of a better place to put my own research and scholarship than with the partners that I have in Norm and Doug and everyone who's here. It's a very exciting time for all of us.”
On this edition of MSU Today, we've been talking about the discovery, creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact theme of MSU's Strategic Plan 2030, Empowering Excellence, Advancing Equity and Expanding Impact with the executive sponsors of the theme, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Teresa Woodruff, Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Norman J. Beauchamp Jr., and Vice President for Research and Innovation Douglas Gage.
Read and learn more about MSU Strategic Plan 2030 at strategicplan.msu.edu.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Uncertainty sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already pushed up the price of gasoline. Russia and Ukraine are major wheat and corn growers, and their conflict will raise prices at the grocery stores, said Charles Ballard, MSU economist and a member of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) podcast team.
“There’s already been an effect,” he said during the podcast recording. “I don’t think that will be enormous.”
With war-strangled supply disruptions and shortages, along with rising demand powered by economic stimulus checks, extra unemployment benefits, consumers are likely to find goods and services in short supply or delayed, Ballard said.
This month’s IPPSR State of the State Podcast features IPPSR Director Dr. Matt Grossmann and IPPSR Associate Director Arnold Weinfeld.
Other highlights from the monthly internet broadcast produced in partnership by IPPSR, a campus center for policy education, political leadership development and survey research, and WKAR Radio:
· Inflation, up 5.2% in January and the biggest annual gain since 1983, is likely to make a “negative dent” in President Biden’s approval, Grossmann said. How large a dent depends on inflation’s duration, how long inflation stays in the news and how strong public perceptions are in the wake of rising prices.
· Retirees’ effect on the economy looks under the public radar, Ballard observed. In the past 20 years, Baby Boomers, the generation of people born from 1946 to 1964, have hit retirement years. In the past months, workers wrung out by the pandemic have left jobs. “That contributes to the supply disruptions,” he said. “It contributes to higher prices.”
· IPPSR’s latest State of the State Survey (SOSS) shows an especially sour Michigan view of inflation and politicians. The latest survey, in December 2021, found that 70 percent of those responding to the survey expect the rate of inflation to rise; only 11 percent expect decline. In the 2020 survey, some 48 percent of SOSS respondents expected inflation’s uptick, 12 percent foresaw downturn. “As we know, perception is everything,” Weinfeld commented.
· Rising gasoline prices is a particular distaste, Grossmann said. “Voters notice those gas prices.“Voters take note and react negatively. Voters don’t like it.”Historically, rising gasoline prices are related to declining voter favor not only for the president, but also for election losses for the president’s political party.
· Even Biden’s Build Back Better initiative, addressing infrastructure and now before the U.S. Congress, came in for doubt in the State of the State Survey. When interviewers asked about Biden’s Build Back Better plan, it was opposed 47 percent-30 percent, Grossmann said. When the plan’s components were explained, it gained majority support from SOSS respondents.
· In statewide politics, Michigan still favors Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the state’s 2022 gubernatorial race and Democrats in congressional voting, Grossmann said. However, races should narrow as November draws nearer, he cautioned.
· Tax cuts are on the table in Michigan’s Legislature with budget surpluses, due primarily to federal economic stimulus, giving rise to proposals to cut taxes for individuals, corporations, retirees with pensions and certain 401(k) investments.
· Resources are available now to pay down long-term debt, cut taxes and increase benefits, Grossmann said. During times of strong resources, decisionmakers can make changes “we then regret a few years later,” he added. Strong resources now don’t mean “good times are here for good.”
The Institute for Public Policy and Social Research is a part of the College of Social Science at Michigan State University. It specializes in policy education, leadership training and survey research.
IPPSR is the home of the Michigan Political Leadership Program, the Office for Survey Research, State of the State Survey, Legislative Leadership Program, Rosenthal Legislative Internship Program, more than 60 affiliate faculty members, student policy fellows and major research databases on topics of interest to academic researchers, legislators, policy makers, elected leaders and journalists around the world.
IPPSR’s monthly State of the State Podcast is broadcast with the assistance of WKAR Radio along with radio stations on the air and over the internet, on SoundCloud and ITunes. You'll also find this edition of the State of the State Podcast on MSU Today with Russ White.
Find IPPSR on social media @IPPSR on Twitter and Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) | Facebook on Facebook.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday nights at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to "MSU Today with Russ White" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Colleen Hoffman is the radiology administrator for MSU Health Care Imaging Services. And Holly Peterson is the assistant radiology administrator.
“We oversee the day-to-day operations within the imaging services department,” says Hoffman. “We've split up the modalities. I'm in charge of PET, CT, and MRI.”
“And I'm in charge of ultrasound, mammography and general x-ray,” adds Peterson.
“MSU Health Care has been around for years,” continues Hoffman. “The Department of Radiology has been around since the mid-1980s. It was started by Dr. James Potchen. We provide outpatient imaging in the modalities I mentioned. We serve the community. We try to be patient-centric. We try to meet the needs of our patients while addressing the needs of our referring physicians within our own MSU Healthcare and outside the community.”
“I think people believe that it's just for MSU employees or retirees or students,” says Peterson. “And although we do take care of those people, we serve the entire community.”
What do you mean by patient-centric?
“We try to provide appointment times that are flexible,” Hoffman says. “In MRI, we start at 6:15 in the morning and we run until 10:30 at night so people can come before or after work. Most outpatient doctor’s offices are only open 8:00 to 5:00. We have expanded hours to help meet patient needs. We run on the weekends to help patients get in in a timely fashion without having to impact their life.”
Tell me about the new facility. What are you going to be able to do that you haven't been able to do before?
“We are joining in this great joint venture with McLaren, bringing the best of both worlds together and providing quality patient care,” adds Peterson. “We have a brand-new facility with all brand new equipment.
“I like to say we’re a full circle women's imaging and breast care facility. We do screening mammograms and follow up diagnostic ultrasounds. We do biopsies, ultrasound biopsies, and stereo biopsies. And then if there is an unfortunate situation where a woman or man does have cancer, we're able to continue care right there in one facility.”
“Right, patients don’t have to leave the community for care,” adds Hoffman. “We're trying to keep everything within the community for our patients and draw in those from the outside the community.
“We’re going to be going live with imaging in our new facility on February 28. The hospital proper is going live on March 6. By moving us early because we're outpatient-based, we will be in what's called the Outpatient Care Center, which is on the north side of the hospital. So, we're connected, but we're sort of outside. There’s convenient parking; you don't have to go in the hospital. And I have to say, McLaren has done a phenomenal job on the interior.”
The facility features a coffee shop, smoothie bar, and a Walgreens.
“There are a lot of added features that patients and their families can enjoy,” says Peterson. If a patient or a family member has to spend the day there, there will be a lot of things to do, and they should be comfortable while they're there.”
“We’re very excited about the state-of-the-art facilities, but we want people to know that we have the same staff,” Peterson says. “We have patients who we have seen for years who want to see familiar faces. Those familiar faces from both MSU and McLaren will be there. We’ll have easy parking and access. Even though we are moving locations, patients will see the same people they've seen year after year after year. I think that's going to provide some comfort to people. It's not totally new, it's just a new location. We are going to provide a new biopsy modality for those women who must have breast biopsies. Currently, we do them in an upright position where the patient must be upright so we can access it with a needle. Sometimes it's not always accessible that way and so we may end up taking the patient to surgery to do it. We have a new piece of equipment that is known as a prone biopsy table where you lie face down on the table and the radiologist can access your breast that way. That's going to open more biopsy potential.”
“Between the supine biopsy, prone biopsy, and ultrasound biopsy, we should be able to do exactly what we need to do there,” adds Hoffman. “And with added staff physicians, our goal is to be able to be one-stop shop where patients get in and out as quickly as possible with no delay.”
Are people referred to you from a primary care physician or do they just come right to you or both?
“For screening mammograms, they don't really need a referral, but we do have to have a doctor to send a report to and then any follow ups from that,” says Peterson. “If you're having problems, if you're having breast problems, you would need to go see your primary care physician or your OB-GYN doctor, and we would need a referral for that.”
How have you seen the technology change over your time doing this and what excites you the most now?
“Mammography has gone from 2D to 3D, and even getting to 2D was a big jump,” says Peterson. Now all our machines are 3D. You don't have to have a 3D mammography, but most people do. Insurance is now on board with 3D mammography where they didn't used to be. With that technology alone, we're able to look at the breast in a totally different way. A lot of women have dense breasts, and this helps with that. Ultrasound-wise, the machines and the technology are so much better. Our technologists are very experienced. I have one technologist who’s at the breast center all the time. She's registered in breast ultrasound, and we have a couple techs who are registered and they're phenomenal. That's 90 percent of what they do. And having that experience does make a difference.”
“The design both inside and outside the hospital has been thoughtfully done,” Hoffman adds. “Most patients will come to us off Forest Road and will enter parking lot C; there's a parking structure right there. We're conveniently located up on the third floor. We have a beautiful suite. There are four check-in desks, a pretty waiting room, and private dressing rooms for all the modalities. And in the back of our suite, we’re staffed by breast surgeons available on certain days of the week. We can coordinate visits so everything can be done in one visit.”
“We will also continue to offer bone density exams at the new location,” Peterson continues. “A lot of patients correlate their yearly mammogram with a bone density exam, and we will continue to offer that service. Our bone density machines do great things. And our bone density techs are certified as well.”
“MSU Health Care at McLaren Greater Lansing has been in the works for approximately three years, and we've divided it up into two different phases,” says Hoffman. “Phase one is the one that's going live with the breast imaging center. Everything that is currently within our Eyde Building sixth floor women's imaging facility will be moving over to the new location. Our website will have the latest information on the change in our phone numbers. We're going to transfer calls and all that information can be found there.
“Phase two is when we're going to be moving some other modalities. Currently, everything will stay the same at the MSU Clinical Center, and x-ray will be available on the Eyde fourth and fifth floors. In late summer of 2023, we're moving into a new building that's going to be built. It's under construction right now, but with it being winter, they've only moved dirt. It's going to be on the south side of the hospital. We've been very involved in the construction and the design working with the architects. We're extremely excited about that. We will be moving general x-ray and ultrasound. We will have another DEXA machine there. CT, PET and MRI will move there. Everything that is currently at the MSU Clinical Center will move over in the summer of 2023. We'll keep our website and the community updated.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday nights at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to MSU Today with Russ White on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows. And please share this conversation if you're so inclined.
This month Michigan State University marked the 167th year since its establishment by the State of Michigan. From the 63 students, five faculty members, and three buildings on campus when we opened our doors in May 1857, we now enroll almost 50,000 students, boast 5,700 faculty and academic staff and 564 campus buildings.
“These kinds of anniversaries are helpful in allowing us to take stock of where we're going as an institution,” Stanley says. “The founders would be very pleased with what they saw from Michigan State today. We’re a top-100 ranked global university with half a million degreed Spartans who bleed green in our alumni network around the world. And all 83 counties in Michigan are being served by MSU. Those who envisioned this land grant mission would see it fulfilled on the state level as they wanted, but they would also see the impact MSU has on the national and international level as well through our work. We're taking the mission and working exponentially to expand it to be an institution that touches peoples' lives in so many different dimensions in so many ways.”
President Stanley talks about recognition for MSU faculty from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
“We have outstanding faculty who are really the lifeblood of what we do at MSU.”
MSU has a new dean of our renowned Lyman Briggs residential college in the sciences, Kendra Spence Cheruvelil, who has served as interim Dean of Lyman Briggs College since December 2020.
“Dean Cheruvelil has really made a difference in her interim time and there was extraordinary support in Lyman Briggs for her elevation to the role of dean. She's very much deserving of that. She's an internationally recognized ecology researcher who's an expert on lakes and bodies of water around this area and does tremendous work in analyzing their vibrancy and health. Water is so important to Michigan State, so to have someone who's an expert in that is important.
“The residential colleges are a unique aspect of what we do, and they really allow students to experience the kind of small college experience that people can find very valuable. It's not for everybody, but it's an opportunity to be on campus and live with some of your faculty and instructors and fellow students who are interested in the same major.
“James Madison, Lyman Briggs, and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities allow this kind of coming together to occur and allow for a more intense educational experience. You can have a great educational experience at MSU without doing a residential college. You can create your own kind of nooks of knowledge and leadership with your roommates and people you want to live with who may share common interests. Those options are always available, too.
President Stanley talks about the transition in the head coaching position for MSU Volleyball.
“Cathy George was such a pioneer in women's sports, and we must put this in the context of all the ways in which she contributed as the first woman coach to take a team to the NCAA tournament in volleyball. Leah Johnson comes to us from Illinois State University, a Division I school where during her five seasons there, her team made five postseason tournaments, including four straight NCAA tournaments. That's where we want to be. As I think about our Michigan State teams, we want to compete for championships, and we believe we can. Coach Johnson has really shown her capabilities, and we look forward to her first season in the fall.”
Give Green Day is Tuesday, March 15th when Spartans come together to support our students through a wide range of impactful programs. It's a chance for all of us to make a big difference in the space of 24 hours. Givingday.msu.edu is the place to go. Talk a bit about the important contributions to MSU's excellence that our donors make.
“They are so important, Russ, and philanthropy is really the margin of excellence. I had a chance to attend with our students some alumni events over the weekend and hear their inspirational stories. The way they talked about the way in which Michigan State University has changed their lives and helped change the lives of their families and their siblings and everyone they know was extraordinary. These are all people who are committed to doing something to help their communities going forward. They're in different areas, but all related to science. They're all students who did research, but what they talked about at MSU was opportunity. They said very few institutions provided the opportunity to allow them to fulfill their dreams, and MSU did that.
“They also had financial support to do this; all of them were recipients of scholarships. The scholarships that donors provide to our students and grant support for our faculty translates into changing lives and impact that goes far beyond just that gift. There's really a tremendous effect that comes from peoples' willingness to donate. This day is a chance to make a big difference in a mere 24 hours. I encourage everybody to participate. I appreciate all the giving that people are doing already, but this is a time to step up a little bit and make a difference in a student's or a faculty member's time at MSU.”
President Stanley reflects on Black History Month, and in circling back to the first topic in our conversation adds “We've had 167 years now to make a difference, and we continue to do it every day. I thank everybody who's a part of it at Michigan State. We're going to continue to push the limits and make our state a better place to be.”
Read President Stanley’s Spartan Community letter by clicking on the communications tab at president.msu.edu. And as President Stanley said, there are links to more information throughout the letter on everything we've been talking about. You can also keep up with President Stanley on Instagram @msupresstanley.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday nights at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to MSU Today with Russ White on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“The Support More initiative is a critically important communication initiative that focuses on providing guidance for how respond to disclosures of relationship violence or sexual assault or sexual misconduct on campus, and it helps our faculty, staff, and anyone contacted to respond to those experiences in an empathic manner. It promotes the availability of related campus resources and services,” says Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. “This really grows out the work of several outstanding faculty at MSU who have developed trauma-informed approaches to responding to people who've undergone one of these events.
“I'm really grateful to the RVSM Expert Advisory Workgroup. Their members have been dedicated to this work, and I’m grateful to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Division of Victim Services for support of this work through a Victims of Crime Act grant award. You can learn much more about this at the Support More MSU website. Again, it's an important program, and I encourage you to go to the site because there are ways in which you can help make a difference in this important problem.”
Dr. Katie Gregory is a faculty member in the Psychology Department and co-director of the Support More project at MSU. Gregory concurs with President Stanley that Support More is about changing the culture at MSU and giving Spartans the tools to make a difference.
“Really what this is about is helping change the culture at MSU and about how we can give people the tools to respond when a friend or a colleague has disclosed that they've experienced relationship violence or sexual assault,” Gregory says. “We look at this in two directions. We want to support people by giving them the language to appropriately respond. If somebody's disclosed, what can you say to be supportive of that person? And we want to educate our community about the resources available to help survivors.”
How does a person know they need your services?
“Part of the journey of somebody who may have been assaulted is that they may not know whether they were”, continues Gregory. “They may not have a way to define what they've experienced and talking to other people is a way to help figure that out. Programs on campus include the Sexual Assault Healthcare Program, Center for Survivors, and MSU Safe Place. We also have the Employee Assistance Program and Gender and Sexuality Campus Center. Those are programs on campus where people can go to talk to somebody to figure out what's going on and to get services and help.”
MSU is striving to create a trauma-informed culture and to help our community respond to survivors of relationship violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and or stalking in an informed and caring way.
“Being trauma-informed means meeting people where they are,” says Lauren Wiklund, a fourth-year student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at MSU. “It’s believing what a survivor says has happened to them and meeting them there and providing them support on their terms.”
Who can take advantage of the resources you offer?
“The majority of the services on campus are for students, faculty, and staff,” says Gregory. “But the Sexual Assault Healthcare Program is also for the larger Greater Lansing community. People can come in if they've experienced an assault and get medical care right at the program on campus. MSU Safe Place is also a program that provides services to the Greater Lansing community.”
How can one help another person who has experienced relationship violence and sexual misconduct?
“The first step is just to listen and say that you are there for them and let them know they can share with you as much or as little as they want to at that point in time,” Wicklund continues. “Let them know that you believe them and you're there to support and help with whatever decision they might make or to listen as they maybe explore and talk about what happened or what they might want to do, even if they're not at the decision-making point yet.”
“And we know that friends and family and even professors sometimes can be the first people who are disclosed to by somebody,” adds Gregory. “Having the right words and the right language is so key in helping people move on that trajectory of healing. It really opens that door to then talk about what else they may or may not want to do in terms of accessing services.
“It is often scary to hear when somebody's experienced domestic violence or sexual assault. There are so many opportunities to be supportive. One of the things that we're trying to do with this initiative is actually show people what they can do. And we've built out a lot of materials where people can actually see examples. So we have videos on our website showing how people say supportive language. The nice thing about having all these programs on campus is that if you don't know how to support someone, you can go to a program and say, ‘I don't know what to do.’ And they're there to help. This is not something that anybody should do on their own, be it having been a survivor or supporting a survivor through this process.
“The great thing about this project is that we've received funding from the State of Michigan through the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and their Division of Victim Services program. They have been very supportive in seeing the vision that we must change campus culture. They've been very invested in this, and they want to see it be successful.
“The approach that we've taken with this is not just thinking about having people from the RVSM Workgroup be the ones who are pushing this forward. We've really worked hard to engage who we call community partners on campus. The programs that provide services to survivors are the MSU Sexual Assault Healthcare Program, Center for Survivors, MSU Safe Place, Employee Assistance Program, the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center, the Title IX Office and MSU Police.
“We've had people from those programs come to meetings and provide feedback on the materials that we've created. We’ve asked community leadership what we may be missing. Should we be doing more? This is how we've been able to get traction and get support for this, to make sure that there are a lot of people involved.”
“RVSM affects our whole community,” Wicklund adds. “It affects all of us. We want folks to know that we're here. There are a lot of resources on campus, and we're working hard to change the culture on campus so that everyone can be a part of making MSU a safer place for everybody. MSU is a big campus and there are a ton of resources. Part of Support More is letting folks know exactly what resources there are. That approach can help demystify some of that process.
“Realistically, you're more likely to tell a friend or a TA or a close professor that something may have happened to you before you even get to the step of accessing those resources. We really want to provide this Support More language for those first responders, the people who you disclose to first, to not only help bridge that person on their healing journey to the campus resources, but also start that process with them with the very first thing that they say in response.”
“This initiative really is focused on survivors and on the people who they're disclosing to,” says Gregory. “We want to be supportive and let survivors know they're not alone going through this and that we have a community on campus to support anyone who has experienced it and anyone who is supporting somebody who's experienced it. This is for students, faculty and staff, and the greater MSU community.
“If we’re successful, we are going to see the culture change. The supportmore.msu.edu website has links to all of the resources on campus, and we have a page that talks about how to support someone - what to do and what you can say to really help somebody when they've disclosed that they've experienced violence.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday nights at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to MSU Today with Russ White on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows. And please, share this conversation if you're so inclined.
“I'd like to start first by recognizing the passing of former MSU Chief of Police, Kelly Roudebush,” says Lynch. “My time with Kelly was not necessarily here at MSU as a professional in police and public safety, but we were classmates together here in the School of Criminal Justice and served a year at Meridian Township Police Department as police cadets. We had an opportunity to establish a relationship and kept in touch over the years. She touched a lot of people, that's for certain. She was a quality person, and she will definitely be missed, but never forgotten.”
Joining Chief Lynch is Assistant Chief Doug Monette, who leads the Police Services Bureau.
“I spent about nine and a half years over at the East Lansing Police Department before coming here,” Monette says. “I have been at MSU for over 25 years. The roles that I've had as a police officer include patrolman, patrol supervisor, detective, detective sergeant, detective lieutenant, captain, assistant chief, and until Vice-President Lynch was named, I was the interim chief here at the Michigan State University Police Department. I've been here a long time. I've been here roughly around 35 years and I've loved every minute of it. This is a great organization, and I look forward to the future.”
How would you say policing has changed in that time?
“Policing has changed over the years,” continues Monette. “Some of it has been cyclical because when I first got into it, community policing was a big piece of this. We are getting back to community policing, which is known as community engagement, getting to know our community, and getting to know our faculty staff and students because that's important. That's why we're here. And in doing that, we’re developing relationships and contacts so we can better service our community.”
And Chief Lynch, wasn't the concept of community policing developed at the MSU School of Criminal Justice, which you graduated from?
“Yes, Russ,” says Lynch. “It was Dr. Robert Trojanowicz, and I was fortunate enough to have him as a professor. He was one of the founding fathers of the theory and its practical components. The School of Criminal Justice here has been a leader in the overall concept of community policing.”
How do you define community policing and how does it meet your goal of better meeting the needs of the Spartan community?
“For us, it’s something we do all the time, not just some of the time,” says Lynch. “Day-to-day engagement and being part of the community and not just responding during a times of crisis or a critical incident is important. The community needs to feel comfortable enough with us to share important information with us, and we need to maintain an open line of communication both formally, whether that's through an advisory committee, and informally by the officer who is responsible for a particular neighborhood working in in partnership with community stakeholders.”
Monette talks more about the importance of building relationships and being connected, supportive, and engaged to provide better service. And Lynch says it’s important to monitor officers’ mental health as well as their physical health.
“That’s part of the overall health of our community,” Lynch says. “Officer wellbeing is just as important. If our officers and staff are not comfortable and healthy and may need assistance themselves, how could we have the expectation that they could provide that for the community?
“Doug's area is the most visible. The patrol unit is what everyone knows, the marked police vehicles and the uniformed police officers. Those are the officers who respond to you directly when you need assistance. It’s very important to us to have our officers on board regarding the community engagement components while we deliver quality service to the community. It’s probably the largest area of the department as far as number of officers assigned to it as well. The Police Services Bureau is a key component to what goes on. It is the beginning and sometimes the end of the cycle of services for us. Assistant Chief Monette's area encompasses a lot. The familiarity with what they do and how they do it is important to how our relationship will be with our community.”
“That's one of the things that I think is really important is that people have a good understanding that the patrol unit provides service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” Monette continues. “The patrol officers are typically the first responders to incidents and respond directly to calls when dispatched from the Ingham County regional 911 center.
“When they're not on calls, they're patrolling and actively engaging with our campus partners to solve quality of life issues and problems proactively. It's important that we're out there and that we're a resource for our community. Our officers get out of their cars. They walk the buildings and sidewalks, even in the winter. They're out there engaging with people because putting the name with a face is important. And it's better if people know who to contact. If someone is in a crisis, we want them to feel comfortable to call us. That's why we're here.
“I really appreciate this opportunity to have a conversation about what we do, how we do it, and the way to do it. We're very proud of our organization. We're very proud of our people. They are highly trained. They are highly skilled. They provide a wonderful service for our community.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday nights at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to MSU Today with Russ White on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows. And please share this conversation if you're so inclined.
MSU's Strategic Plan 2030 identifies goals within six key themes: student success, staff and faculty success, discovery, creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact, sustainable health, stewardship and sustainability, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
On this edition of MSU Today, we'll be focusing on the staff and faculty success pillar of the plan with its executive sponsors: Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Teresa Woodruff, Executive Vice President for Administration and Chief Information Officer Melissa Woo, and Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Dr. Norman J.Beauchamp.
Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. says MSU's staff and faculty are key assets of the university whose work determines the success of the university. And it's important to find ways to make MSU a place where people want to come to work and achieve their potential.
“Faculty and staff are absolutely critical to everything we do at MSU,” Stanley says. “And if you look at what the assets are that we value at the university, we have an amazing physical plant and amazing facilities. We have incredible students. They're remarkable, but our outstanding faculty and staff are our core assets, and their work really determines the success of the university.
“What we want to do in this part of the plan is really talk about how we help faculty and staff succeed in their important work. How can we enable them? They have the talent and the capabilities, but how do we do what we can to remove barriers and help them fully succeed in what they're trying to do? How do we find avenues for advancement for faculty and staff? How do we help them achieve? How do we help them reach the next goal? For assistant professors, how do you reach full professor or associate professor first with tenure? For staff, how do you get promoted? How do you move up the ladder? How do you take on more responsibilities?
“Finding ways to help individuals do this is key to our success at MSU. Finding ways to help them accomplish their research by providing the right support for them is key at MSU. What we'll talk about in this session is some of the things we're thinking about in this area and some of the steps we need to take to make MSU a place where people want to come to work to fulfill their dreams and reach their full potential.”
Provost Woodruff echoes President Stanley's sentiments that the plan is all about putting MSU people first.
“The entire strategic plan is about the people of this institution,” says Woodruff. “There's no part of it that doesn't touch on what we are as individuals within this great institution. Faculty and staff represent the institution, and what we want to do in the strategic plan is really to provide opportunities for every individual to reach their full potential. And in as much as we support the individuals, the institution will rise.
“In many ways, the strategic plan contemplates a series of steps that one can imagine are somewhat like leavening that they begin to help each part to contribute then to the overall elevation of the institution. And as long as we put people at the center of everything we do, including our strategic thinking, the better MSU will be in the end. Every part of this plan really is about the people.”
Woo says the plan is about creating an environment where people can thrive.
“We can't get things done without great people who understand that we have an environment where they're going to thrive, and we need to create conditions where they believe they can do truly meaningful work,” Woo says. “We can't achieve our goals without people. We can buy all this what I call stuff that we can, but ultimately we have to have people who are truly talented and really want to be here to achieve great things and go where we need to go.”
“To be successful, it has to be about the people and the mission,” adds Beauchamp. “We need an environment that supports and empowers the goals of people who choose to make MSU the place where they work, learn, and practice.”
Woo adds that inclusivity is key to the plan.
“We are working very hard to create an inclusive environment, one that is truly inclusive of diverse voices,” Woo continues. “We are really starting to excel in this area, particularly with the onboarding of our first chief diversity officer as well as an awareness of the need for inclusivity and diversity. We can see this in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan. We can see it in all of the efforts across the entire university. It's all of us together working towards creating this inclusive environment. I think this is where we excel, and we are getting even better.”
Beauchamp adds that accountability is also key to the plan.
“We excel in having a community that cares,” Beauchamp says. “In those difficult moments, what I've been struck by is how the MSU community comes together to be intentional in solving those challenges. We're also excelling in having a culture of accountability. It's something that we have to do better, and the strategic plan gets at that, but we have to be accountable to all of those who come to us in search of help or goal attainment.”
“We think of spirals of excellence in the specific areas of work,” Woodruff continues. “As we think about people, one of the things I have said and believe is Michigan State has a very high excellence to humility ratio. The humility of this place is just extraordinary. So, one of the things that we collectively have tried to do is really spotlight the excellence of individuals - faculty, academic staff, and staff. And we know of this excellence because of our rankings. We're a member of the great AAU, the Association for American Universities, because of our great people across this institution. The AAU is widely regarded as the most important metric for research intensive institutions across North America.
“And there are a number of other rankings that represent this kind of spiral of excellence. So, what we want to do is really spotlight that excellence through the strategic plan, developing a portfolio for honorifics, both for individuals as well as for the institution. And we can hopefully then enable every one of the individuals within the organization to be able to not only achieve that which is good for them, but also to be able to let the world know what they're doing.
“In the context of the strategic plan as well, each one of our offices is working to enable a new generation of work that continues to help to elevate each one of our folks. I think of the Office of Faculty and Academic Staff Development. We've started a new dean school to orient both our new and interim deans to some of the core aspects of what we're doing to build community, not just the administrative work or the disciplinary depths, but really thinking about effective team building, equitable budgeting, and evaluating faculty and staff in ways that help them to succeed.
“These are really specific areas that we've been honing in on, creating and sustaining a respectful work environment series that we've been developing and that's across our offices of Human Resources and the Office for Institutional Equity and the RVSM team. So, again, we’re trying to think very holistically about how we build competencies to enable the institution made up of excellent people to be able to thrive, and then we can both spotlight them and a great institution. All of those are opportunities for focused engagement that within a learning community and a research community can build the best MSU we can be.”
“Another thing that we do is we collaborate well because of that humility to excellence ratio that Teresa provided,” says Beauchamp. “The barriers to collaboration here are incredibly low, and an aphorism I like is from Helen Keller who said ‘Alone I can do so little. Together, we can do so much.’ And when we think about staff and faculty success, it’s about helping it not feel like this solo journey but that there's a community that is willing and enthusiastic to partner. The low barriers to collaboration are defining for MSU.”
What key goals does the strategic plan identify for staff and faculty success?
“The plan identifies key goals and metrics, but I think my colleagues will agree that part of what the strategic plan is it's a living document,” Woodruff says. “It is an ethos for how we all lean into developing that environment in which excellence and opportunity naturally thrive. If we create that environment holistically, we will attract and keep talent to continue to create the conditions where faculty and staff can do their best work, both individually, autonomously, and collectively.
“One of the things we want to do is to actively seek recognition for the excellence and innovation that this culture cultivates and fosters. And if we do that, we think we can increase faculty and staff external awards year on year perhaps by 10 or 15 or even more percent. And these are research awards, career grants, NSF grants, foundation awards, the Kellogg Foundation, and honorifics. We really have a great deal of faculty who should be recipients of prestigious academic awards, national academy membership, etc.
“So, our goal really is to support everyone towards creating that kind of workplace that advances every individual, every voice, and with a few metrics of some number of increase every year. Again, I think that that a by-product of the excellence we create will be the recognition that is won.”
“Among the key goals of the strategic plan for staff and faculty success includes supporting their career development, and perhaps most importantly, their wellbeing,” says Woo. “We really want to support the wellbeing of our staff, faculty, academic staff, and postdoctoral associates so we can focus on creating a best-in-class workplace culture.”
“As we help the excellence at MSU be recognized, and I really like this initiative, that in turn brings more resources and opportunities.” says Beauchamp. “And as we look at the scope and scale of the need and the urgency in our nation, our ability to draw attention to the excellence that exists here in ways that are magnetic for more resources to come is a critical part of this effort.”
With faculty representing so many different disciplines and the wide variety of roles for support staff, what does it take to make MSU a workplace of choice?
“It means we empower everyone to be engaged in a community that's inclusive and equitable,” continues Beauchamp. “It is cultivating, caring, and accountable leadership, and it's a culture that's transparent, open, trusting, and safe. And it's really listening so that we understand the goals of the individuals and ensuring that there are ways for everyone to contribute and to really recognize and embrace their goals and be responsive to the challenges that are faced at an individual and a unit level.”
“What it'll take to make MSU a workplace of choice is to provide an environment where people feel they can do meaningful work without limitation,” Woo says. “That can include providing a flexible work environment, whether it is to identify those roles that can work from other sites or perhaps at different times of the day than we are used to. We need to look to see what roles can work more flexibly so they can do meaningful work on the timeframe that they are able to provide that work. It means providing support for caregivers. It means making sure that we're inclusive of diverse voices and continue to advance our DEI efforts.
“It's also taking the lessons that we've learned from the pandemic. We have learned different ways to work in many cases much more efficiently and effectively, and that will help create this workplace of choice where people feel they can do their best work.”
“Melissa and Norm have said it so well,” continues Woodruff. “I echo everything they said, and I also really think about the ways in which our university policies and procedures and practices can enable that good work. And we must continue to engage in participatory engagement in each of those parts of what we think are ossified in some stone somewhere that tells us exactly what to do. We are an organization that values listening and allowing people to be part of the discussion while developing an environment in which learning can take place.
“All of our work is designed to develop the right kind of scholarship in conjunction with the learning that happens for 50,000 students at this institution. We must provide educators with access to the professional development necessary for them to feel comfortable and confident in this space to create evidence-based learning experiences through all modes of instruction. There are different ways in which a budding clinician will learn their practice versus someone who is in a performance space or someone who is in the scientific discipline or someone who is in computer science.
“Really understanding the plurality of the way we teach, of the way we learn, and the way the staff enables all of this to take place is something that I think really creates a context for improving campus culture while remaining firm in the goals and ambition of a learning community.”
This pillar seems like an area where faculty and staff would have a lot to contribute. How might you plan to engage staff and faculty in contributing to a dialogue as this area develops?
“What we've done in the Office of the Provost is to really engage faculty, academic staff, and students on many committees so that their voices are part of our dialogue,” Woodruff says. “We have summits with our leadership, with the deans, and with the assistant associate provost. And we've really done an environmental or landscape analysis to really understand how people see the strategic plan playing out in their lives. We’re really trying to gather as much ongoing input as we had input to the strategic plan.
“It really was an extraordinary thing for this president to say we are going to move ahead with the development of a strategic plan that invites all voices during a time of transition and the COVID context that we had not seen before at a time when the organization was changing its top-level management in real time. So that extraordinary level of leadership led to an exceptional level of engagement in thinking about our aspirations.
“We have to keep those principles in mind as we move into this next stage of implementation and encourage everyone to continue to contribute in a living way to that ultimate set of goals that will be adjusted, just as our teaching is never the same. What we learn is always developing because of the way we do our research. We have to think about the strategic plan in that same way. We've invited dialogue in diversity, equity, and inclusion and are thinking about advancing social justice and connecting all the pillars through promoting inclusion to each of the problem sets that the Provost’s Office is engaged in.
“We are really thinking about intentionally shifting our culture, not thinking about this as something that is passive; there is an intentionality there. And I think that in as much as we continue to have feedback and campus-wide engagement, we have a high impact document that is foundational. We, I think, will be able to continue to develop strategies going forward that will be the all souls approach that everyone in this institution is part of the success of this institution. And that's how I think we'll continue to have the best outcomes because all of us have been involved.”
“As the three of us are the executive sponsors of this theme, we will be collaborating with each other, and of course, among all of our key audiences and stakeholders that we serve, as we move through the implementation of this initiative,” says Woo. “We will be working together to make sure that we've identified strategies for implementation and prioritize the different initiatives as we move forward. And we'll be consistently communicating our progress to the campus community and make sure that we incorporate feedback from the campus community as well.”
“We’re making sure that we recognize that there are barriers to voices, and so we’re creating multiple ways that people can have input, whether that's town halls or surveys,” Beauchamp says. “We incorporated something called rounding for outcomes where you go to where people work and find out what are the barriers to what they're trying to accomplish and how can we help. Part of what we are building in and will incorporate into this is multiple avenues to receive the guidance. This isn't top down. It's really the voices of the people who are accomplishing the mission.”
“My hope is that through this process that I hope is transparent, we gather further momentum,” Woodruff says. “We are not stuck in a moment. We are part of a trajectory and that trajectory can be up or down. It can be fast or slow. And I feel that we're really on an upward march that has pace, and that's because people are involving themselves in every aspect of this. And to echo Norm, this is not top down. This is all of us. And that represents the best input towards what I think will be an extraordinary output, and I can't wait for 2030 to look back and see what we've accomplished.”
“We probably, Russ, should add the use of the term shared governance because that is essentially what this is,” adds Beauchamp. “The strategic plan can serve us in the way that will proceed as really a structure and process for partnership, accountability, and ownership. It helps make these decisions be connected to the individuals who are so central to operationalizing the decisions. We’re really committed to that. I'm proud of all the efforts to roll up sleeves together that I've seen over the last three years from the president and the provost. It's just been fun to be a part of and to see, that as shared governance is engaged, the enthusiasm from the faculty, students, and staff when their voices are heard.”
“This is MSU's time,” concludes Woo. “There is no better time to be moving forward and to be really putting in the effort and engagement in implementation of the strategic plan and truly focusing on the success of our staff and faculty. Let's do it!”
On this edition of MSU Today, we've been talking about the staff and faculty success pillar of MSU's Strategic Plan 2030, Empowering Excellence, Advancing Equity and Expanding Impact with the executive sponsors of the pillar: Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Teresa Woodruff, Executive Vice President for Administration and Chief Information Officer Melissa Woo, and Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Dr. Norman Beauchamp.
Read and learn more about MSU Strategic Plan 2030 at strategicplan.msu.edu.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
I’m remembering Frank on the program today. In 2006 on a beautiful June day at MSU’s Forest Akers Golf Course, Frank told me he was hired on September 11, 1972, in the news department at WJR.
“At time, I was the youngest newsman they’d ever hired at WJR; I was 22 years old when I started there. People move around a lot in radio. My goal was to be at one place for five years, and I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do next.” Frank cites Van Patrick, Bob Reynolds, and J.P. McCarthy as mentors.
Conversation Highlights:
On always wanting to be in radio. “I grew up with a tape recorder in my hands and I would announce tabletop games sitting at the dining room table. Then I would watch TV and announce football games that were on television. Then I would critique myself later. My parents had a son who talked to himself at the dining room table so they could either try to nurture that or have me committed, and I’m glad they chose the former!”
On the transition from news to sports then to play-by-play: “It wasn’t too long after covering the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance – for which we won a lot of awards – that WJR was looking to do some new things in the sports department, which was run by Bob Reynolds at the time.” Frank became sports director when Reynolds retired.
He talks about beginning the transition to play-by-play by doing the Lions pre and postgame shows from the studio. Then he lobbied to go on the road to do the show and began to do that. Eventually Mike Lucci left his role as color analyst and Frank began doing color on the game with Bob Reynolds.
“One time Bob became ill when we were in Chicago; he went to the hospital with some heart problems. He was out for a couple weeks so I did the play-by-play while he was sick. Bob’s health continued to deteriorate, and I became the play-by-play guy for the Lions. It became natural, then, that when Bob Ufer became ill, I got that opportunity, too.”
On his surprise when WJR transitioned from U of M to MSU: “I was shocked and stunned. You don’t expect 30-year relationships to end that suddenly without warning.” He describes what he says was the right decision that allowed George Blaha to continue to broadcast MSU games while Frank continued to broadcast U of M games.
On the notion that he’s somehow anti-Spartan: “Tell that to my father-in-law. He’s a graduate and has a master’s from Michigan State and we get along quite well and never fight. People are going to draw their own opinions, and they’re often misguided. Most of the time you can’t do anything about that, so I don’t worry about it. I’ve always admired Michigan State. I just happen to be the announcer for the University of Michigan, which is State’s big rivals. People should relax and enjoy the lore of the rivalry. There’s no need to have any dislike for one another in the rivalry. What bothers me the most is when people feel they can’t like me because I do U of M football, as if your affiliation with a college should have anything to do with the way you view a person. I’ve never understood that.
“Michigan State football has always been close to my heart. The first college game I ever saw was in Spartan Stadium when I was at Cousino High School in Warren. My dad was a huge Spartan fan. He resented Michigan because Michigan kept Michigan State out of the Big Ten for so long. He was a guy who always loved the underdog. We always followed Michigan State at my house and cheered for them. I know who I am. I’ve got great friends at Michigan State. I love them dearly. They’re just two different schools. I do Michigan Football. And Michigan State wants to beat Michigan. That’s it, end of story for me.”
We’re remembering WJR radio legend Frank Beckmann talking with me there in 2006. Nine years later in 2015 at that same spot - Forest Akers Golf Course at MSU – Frank reflects on his just-completed 30+ years doing radio play by play for University of Michigan football.
Other Highlights:
On the changes in college football during his time broadcasting games: “There are people who want to go after it because they think it’s too violent. This is a sport that builds character, teamwork, and personal responsibility in young men. All those skills lead to your success in the real world. The game itself is still about blocking and tackling. That’s the bottom line. You can have all the spread offenses and throw the ball all over the place. You still must block and tackle. If you don’t do that, you can’t play football and that’s never going to change.”
On the beginning of the Harbaugh/Dantonio rivalry: “Harbaugh will bring Michigan back; he’s a terrific coach. Mark Dantonio has done a super job at MSU. He’s put Michigan State into the upper echelon of college football. Jim Harbaugh has a chance to do that at Michigan. He’s been successful everywhere he’s been. My question is how long will he stay at Michigan? His track record is that he stays somewhere for about four years and then he’s out.
“It’s great to be here. I love East Lansing. I love the golf course. I love the people here. I’ve always had a great relationship with the people at MSU and I hope it continues for many more years.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday nights at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Dickerson made his debut in the Tigers booth in 2000 and has been the lead play-by-play announcer for them since 2002. He is a three-time Michigan Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, earning the accolade in 2005, 2006 and 2014. Dickerson is a native of Clarkston, Michigan, and his wife, L.A., is also a professor at MSU.
Conversation Highlights:
On the labor issues in the Major League Baseball lockout: “These are complicated issues, but I firmly believe in my heart there are solutions out there. We just got fans back in the stands in full force towards the end of last season. We need to build on that momentum and not lose any games.”
On the Hall of Fame status of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens: “This is a museum that’s supposed to reflect the history of the game. Were Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens a big part of the history of the game? Yes! Clearly, they deserve to be in; they’re two of the greatest of all time. And then you just make sure you tell the whole story. That’s the whole point of a museum.”
On the pace of play in baseball: He’s not opposed to a pitch clock. “I do think it could pick up the pace of play.” He’s not in favor of moving the mound back. “The extra inning runner is probably here to stay, and I’m in favor of having the designated hitter in both leagues.”
On the prospects for the 2022 Tigers: “Greene and Torkelson are the headliners, but this is a pretty deep farm system. I’ve been a Tigers fan since 1967, and I don’t ever remember two prospects with this level of national acclaim. Both are considered top ten if not top five hitting prospects in all of baseball. A.J. Hinch knows you win with pitching and defense, and they’ve got the makings of a team that can do that. Last year, Hinch really wanted to get to 500. I guarantee you they’ll go into spring training with the goal of winning the division. Winning a world championship will be the goal from here on out.”
On radio and how fans consume play-by-play: “As long as people are outside in the summer, driving cars, having family get togethers, fishing, walking, or whatever it might be, there will be a place for baseball on the radio. And there are just more ways to listen now. I don’t worry about it at all. I know people aren’t carrying around transistor radios anymore and putting them under their pillows, but they have phones. And for $2.99 a month you can listen not just to Tigers baseball but all broadcasts from around baseball. You can listen on your phone. You can listen on your laptop. There are so many ways to listen, and people are taking advantage of them.”
On teaching play-by-play at MSU: “It’s fun. I enjoy interacting with the students. I enjoy it because I know how I do what I do, but how do I teach what I do? Where do you start with someone who’s never done it before? You need to come up with a vocabulary and be able to say the same thing five or six different ways. We practice a lot with college basketball because it’s so fast paced. Don’t have the crowd roaring and you’re still trying to get the ball down the court. As long as you can keep up with the play, think of all things you can describe and describe them well. That takes time. The kids are great, and I love being in the classroom. They energize me.”
Find Dan on Cameo with all proceeds going to benefit students in need in sports journalism at MSU and follow Dan Dickerson on Twitter @Dan_Dickerson.
(Audio courtesy of Major League Baseball)
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
MSU Strategic Plan 2030 identifies goals within six key themes: student success, staff and faculty success, discovery, creativity, and innovation for excellence and global impact, sustainable health, stewardship and sustainability, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
On this edition of MSU Today, we'll be focusing on the student success theme of the plan with its executive sponsors: Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Teresa Woodruff and Senior Vice President for Student Life and Engagement Vennie Gore.
Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. says MSU student success is central to everything we're doing at MSU.
“It's no accident that student success was the first pillar of our strategic plan, and it's really central to everything we're doing at Michigan State University,” says Stanley. “It touches on everything we do. I think what's exciting about what we're trying to do in this pillar and this area of emphasis is really bring to even further fruition a change in attitude and accomplishment that is taking place at Michigan State.
“We believe that every student we admit to Michigan State is capable and should graduate from Michigan State University. They're capable of doing that. When they finish, we're going to continue to support them in having rewarding careers during their lifetime. We’re going to help everyone who comes here graduate because we believe they can.
“We're not going to stop at graduation. We're going to continue to be an advocate for them and support them as they continue in their careers and their lives. People have been talking about this before I came, but I really see this as an opportunity for us as an institution to really make this happen. We're going to talk a lot today with Provost Woodruff and Vennie Gore about graduation rates. That's one of the most important measures of success. We’re supporting students’ mental health and supporting them in every way, shape, and form. It’s a holistic approach to see them succeed at Michigan State University. And I couldn't be more excited about that.”
Gore says the goal is for every student MSU admits to learn, grow, and thrive.
“Our goal is to have every student that we admit learn, grow, and thrive here at Michigan State and make sure they have the opportunity to have access to world class education through our faculty,” Gore says. “And we want them to have access to co-curricular and extracurricular activities, which helps them to grow and develop as people and become lifelong Spartans. That's what we mean when we talk about student success for the whole person.
“I meet alumni who have been here in the '50s and the '60s and the '70s and they look back on their educational experiences very fondly. They talk about what they achieved here at Michigan State and how it's helped them in their career and their life. That's what we want for everyone. Because I think when parents send their sons or daughters here, they want them to have that kind of enriched experience so that when they leave here, they can go out in the world and do the things that they hope to do.”
“Boy, Vennie, you're spot on,” Woodruff says. “I really echo a lot of what you said. I do agree. I think the student success that we measure at MSU is unique, and it's really the measure of our institution's ability to provide the kind of environment and inclusive, equitable curriculum and environment that really enables every student to learn, thrive, persist, graduate, and succeed after graduation. Each one of those is student success.
“The way we really look at it is to be very holistic and to understand that student success is not necessarily a measure of the academic achievement of an individual or the student collectively, but rather really thinking about how well the institution supports its students, which I think is a very MSU way of looking at student success. It really allows us to identify places where there are hurdles.
“We don't want a single soul at this institution to stub their toe as they're running down the track towards the world that is awaiting them with open arms with all the problems and the opportunities that exist. This notion of student success really is something that I think I'm really proud of. Vennie, as you said, I think it's something that parents see as really the opportunity for their child or grandchild or niece or nephew or friend to really succeed.”
What are some of the ways MSU is excelling in this area now?
“Go Green Go 15 is the credit momentum campaign,” continues Woodruff. “And what that really represents is the fact that one of the things that was identified at MSU is that students needed to maintain steady momentum in order to graduate in a timely way. If you graduate in a timely way, it allows you to get to that next destination more quickly and with less financial burden.
“That really illustrates the way MSU is able to look at student success with these data informed efforts and allow us to then modulate the institution towards the students' success. Another one that I know that we've done is to really redesign the math course curriculum. We're working on general education and other gateway courses.
“Part of that really lives out in the Neighborhood Student Success Collaborative, something that I think, Vennie, you and others really brought to this institution as a way of blending together intellectual and social in the ways in which you learn in a dynamic interface between people and the living setting and the formal learning environment and that we learn from each other. The newest thing we did during my time here is really My Spartan Story. It was started before I arrived, but it's that interactive platform that allows us to capture all these experiences. If in fact we believe that student success is part of this continuum of their experiences at the institution, how can we collate and capture all of that work to allow them to use that as they move beyond this institution? Student success is not of a moment in time. It is of that student's lifelong outcomes of being at a place like MSU.”
“One of the other things about being on a residential campus this large for our 50,000 students here on campus, our graduate professional students in Grand Rapids or in Flint or Detroit or up in the U.P. is finding that sense of belonging,” Gore continues. “When I find that sort of sense of belonging in a community, it helps me find my colleagues. My grandmother used to say you are your friends. I didn't really know what that meant, Russ. But I think what it really means is that if I'm a person here who's interested in the sciences and I become part of Lyman Briggs and I meet other students who have similar interests, that enriches my whole experience while I'm here. And that sense of belonging is critically important for everyone because I think what we're learning even in this period of the pandemic is that isolation is bad for students. Being social and having a sense of connection and having that support is critical. Belonging is another thing we are working toward because that helps with students persisting in school.”
Recently the Division of Residential and Hospitality Services was merged with the Division of Student Affairs and Services to form the Division of Student Life and Engagement. How is this connected to the strategic plan and how will it support student success?
“In many ways, the two divisions have worked side by side together because we are both here for students,” continues Gore. “Residential and Hospitality Services was really focused on the campus experience. Student Affairs and Services had a broader mission of not just our on-campus students, but our off-campus students, fraternity and sorority life, our visitors, and our veterans who are here.
“Bringing the two units together allows us to have greater collaboration as we work across the campus. We know that we're not in isolation. Working with the Provost Office and the colleges also allows for us to have the holistic experience. One of the things that I've been really pleased with as the two divisions have come together is I think everybody recognizes the importance of collaboration and to working across our own boundaries. And that's critical for where we are and how we serve this campus community.”
“Well, again, I think Vennie's hit it on the head,” says Woodruff. “If we go back to the strategic plan and how engineering the institution best enables the success of every student, it is to invert the traditional definition of student success. Instead of centering on the students' assumed capacity or willingness to earn degrees, the strategic plan really defines student success as the measure of the institution's capacity or willingness to support every student.
“When Vennie and I sat down and talked about the living-learning environments, the Neighborhoods, we thought that was really brilliant. But then what we did in addition is to say, ‘Well, what happens when students live and learn for additional time within this setting? Do they succeed?’ Yes, they succeed even better. They succeed in the outcomes, which is getting to their goals academically.
“What that really contemplates as we think about the structure of the institution is the opportunity to more flexibly enable those institutional changes that support our objectives. Really that's where the Division of Residential and Hospitality Services and the Division of Student Affairs represented two groups that work together. But by coming together, we synergize in a way that we can better enable the student outcomes.
“I think institutions that are confident can make big changes, and it can then lead to extraordinary outcomes. We'll be measuring this. We'll be looking back, Vennie, in 2030 together from some vantage point and be able to say students today are better because of what we did institutionally back in 2020 and 2021. That's the exciting thing about MSU. It’s a place that's not ossified in a particular way of working, rather it’s aspirational for what our students really need.
“And then we as leaders implement. I'm really excited about what this is going to do for our student success over time.”
“If you think about the ethos at Michigan State, for an institution of our size and as decentralized as it may feel, there is a very low barrier to collaboration,” Gore says. “It's not just between the student life and engagement and provost offices. You see it in the colleges, and you see faculty members and researchers working across disciplines to expand scholarship or advance knowledge to solve big problems. That has been something that I think we have. It's just part of our DNA that we're able to do that. In other institutions I worked at, I would say that wasn't necessarily the case.”
With respect to the strategic plan, where do you see this focus on student success leading in the future?
“When we look at it in 2030, we would like to have eliminated the opportunity gaps,” Gore continues. “When we talk about the opportunity gaps, there are some subgroups of our community that aren't graduating at the level that we wish for or their parents wish for. It isn't about whether they have the academic ability. There are some non-cognitive things that come into play that make that a difficult hurdle for some students.
“Mark Largent (associate provost for undergraduate education and dean of undergraduate studies) is fond to say that if we get a student to their junior year, that we're graduating them at the rate of Ivy League schools, 90 to 94 percent. It's that first and second year that is critical for us. And that's why the second year live-on (on-campus living requirement) was really important because it provides that sense of stability for students so they can get to the junior year. They're in their program, and then they can graduate. We hope in 2030 that we have students who are graduating at a high rate across all demographics. That would be the big change that we'd like to see.”
“Absolutely,” adds Woodruff. “Some of the ways we're engineering the environment for student success is in part the merger that we just talked about, but it's also in the way we're using data across a vast network of institutions. We have our institutional data, but also through the University Innovation Alliance, we're able to scale our knowledge node in ways that allow us to gather information and be able to test our hypotheses and be able to then work towards more equitable educational outcomes in some cases that perhaps we couldn't see entirely but that can be revealed through these large networks.
“That's something that I think allows this university itself to be a learning institution. I always say I never learn anything from talking to myself. If we simply look inward, we will never actually be able to enable the success that we wish to achieve. That University Innovation Alliance is something that I'm really excited about.
“I want to go back to the Neighborhood concept. It was an MSU concept in 2010, and we really began to think about the ways in which we offer opportunities for learning environments in a holistic way. And by having this in a place that students can access easily, it creates that opportunity for the student to casually learn and formally learn in the places and spaces where they are.
“Our goal is to eliminate the achievement gaps that we see today, and we've made steady strides. In as much as this institution continues to be thoughtful and intellectual partners in the institutional sense of trying to understand institutional barriers, I'm convinced our students can get there. At some level, our students are running a race. If there's a high hurdle, what we need to do is add that little pole vault so they can get over it. As we go, we hope to learn how to remove barriers and take those high hurdles to low and then eventually have an even playing field. Everyone who comes in races at the same level, and that I think is going to allow everyone to learn, thrive, graduate, and then succeed.”
What are the primary goals in this area of student success?
“Again, we want to get to an 86 percent five-year graduation rate. That's our goal,” Gore says. “We've been very successful in incrementally moving that up over the last eight years. We want students to have a holistic experience. When they leave here, we want them to not only be good scholars but also have an appreciation for the arts, have good health and wellness, and be good citizens. They're global citizens so they understand the impact of the world. That's what student success looks like to me and that's what we would like to have.”
“I agree with that,” says Woodruff. “Our objective is to make this place more accessible and attractive to a wider variety of students. Strengthening our ability to tell our story and really increasing the success of students who are here begins to tell that story. And that's from our undergraduate to our graduate students and to our professional students. Broadening the diversity of the student body provides a way in which our students become a learning community for each other.
“That's an important part of what we're driving toward - increasing the number and diversity of learners across campus. We're widening the ways in which students can learn. And of course, part of that has been developed through the pandemic, but we're doing it in a really intentional way to understand the pedagogical ways in which students learn best. Instead of asking students to change, we ask how we can change. That's one of the objectives of the institution.
“And we really must make sure that along the way, we're creating a climate that the students can see that they are part of that climate, that there is a give and a get, that it's not just that I come, but that I am a part of, that I am the climate, and I am the institution. If we think about each other and that we are all part of this, we create an MSU that really will thrive and create the best success metrics for every student that comes.”
What are some of the biggest challenges to reaching our goals for student success?
“Some of our biggest challenges are going to be the time and people part,” says Gore. “The reason why I say this, Russ, is I think everyone in the country has been talking about the Great Resignation. Having good talent in the institution is important to us. It's not a challenge of will, and it's not a challenge of political will. It's just a challenge of making sure that we're staffed at the point where we can provide the experience for our students. I'm an optimist who believes that as we come out of the pandemic, we will start to see ourselves as an employer of choice. This is a place where people want to be. We have a forward thinking plan. Folks can see themselves in this plan and they want to be a part of it. While the talent is a challenge, it's not an overwhelming challenge for me.”
“I think that's right,” adds Woodruff. “Our limited resource is ourselves. We might think that's monetary, but I think that the limitation to MSU will only be in the way we think about how this institution grows and evolves and how we become part of that evolution. That's going to take time and trust and coordination. It's going to take each of us seeing each other as part of the solution and believing that a change in the organization isn't a reflection on me or what I do but really a reflection on what the institution needs to do going forward.
“Being adaptable through change management, particularly in the current moment, is something that requires an enormous amount of trust. What we've seen across this period in the last several years is that people have started to lose trust in the institutions that once you didn't even think about. I saw a poll recently that trust in pediatricians is at an all-time low. What that says is that we have at a societal level pressure on each one of us as part of organizations and MSU as an institution. How do we build that willingness to give each other the latitude to work in an environment that is changing but is still going to be here for the next hundred years? The value of higher education has been questioned, but there is no other way in society where we have changed more lives, not only by those who go through our institution, but by those who stay. Our student success is linked to our faculty success.
“We have to continue to enable each of us to give each other a little benefit of the doubt while we go through the moment and believe that each of us wants the best for each other. I think once we begin to bring that trust back to every circumstance, we're going to reach our goal of a great university and great student success.”
What are some of the things that position MSU to be a leader in student success?
“It's in our DNA,” says Gore. “When I graduated from graduate school in 1982 from Indiana, there were four institutions that were on the forefront of living-learning: Michigan State, Vermont, UC Davis, and UW Stevens Point. They had a history of residential colleges and what they meant for large public Research 1 institutions and that integration and that set level of collaboration. We've had this long history over the years.
“One of the other things too is that we haven't rested on history. If you were to go back and look over time, you could see the evolution of what that meant on our campus. When we started the Neighborhood concept back in 2009 as a pilot at Hubbard Residence Hall, we intuitively knew that it was going to be messy. The pilot would be very different than what the product would be. And that has been true. What that says is that the people who are attracted to this work are thoughtful and innovative, and they don't necessarily think that we have all the answers. We're going to try some things. Some of those things will work and some won’t. The things that don't work we'll forget about, and we'll keep going without feeling we failed. I think that's the big thing. MSU is okay with trying something. And if it doesn't work out, it's all right and we move on to the next thing. It's that messiness that you have to be an organization like Michigan State to be okay with.”
“I echo that,” Woodruff continues. “We're experimentalists. When you're actually doing hypothesis-based thinking, you actually are not always right. In fact, I always say we're a batter, not a pitcher. A pitcher has to be right. Most of the time, a batter only has to put the ball in play about a quarter of the time. I really think that you've hit it on the head.
“We're really enabling a series of increasingly coordinated and very deliberative and thoughtful approaches across the entire enterprise. There's a saying I have that we have provostial partnerships across the entire institution. We are all provostial in the ecumenical sense of the way the provost is part of the opening and the enabling of everyone towards their academic goals. We're really being very thoughtful.
“That includes the merger of RHS and Student Affairs in a way that is an increase in coordination and deliberation that is going to, we believe, enable student success. We're also focusing on the strengths and skill sets of existing leaders and making sure we all see how we can be part of this momentum and then leveraging that talent that exists and trying to maximize the output that we have in ways that really have no silos. We have this egalitarian way of working.
“That itself is part of perhaps some of the experimental ways in which Vennie was just talking. But also I think it's just because leaders in this space understand what our goals are, and they really are towards student success and academic excellence. And relative to that, I think our faculty and academic staff from across the university are really engaged with our staff in all the ways that this institution's goals ask them to be. The strategic plan emphasis on student success really helps shine a light on all this work that is happening. That's part of our DNA. That's part of the experimentalist in us to achieve the goals on behalf of those in whose interests we serve.”
“I like the baseball analogy,” says Gore. “A Major League player gets paid multimillion dollar to have a batting average of 300, which is getting a hit three out of 10 times. If we were in that genre, we're probably batting 700. Seven out 10 times we get it right. Those three other times, we swing and miss. That happens in life and that's okay. But we're going to try something. If something doesn't work, it's okay. We're going to move on. We're going to do some other things. We have the flexible latitude to do that.”
“We' trust each other,” says Woodruff. “Even if I fail, I know I’m going to be picked up. But if we lack coordination, he's going to call me. These are ways in which we develop leadership together with the strategic objectives of the institution and our great faculty and students to holistically come together and have that great batting average.”
Vennie, earlier you mentioned the goal of an 86 percent graduation rate. What are some of the ways we will measure the success of the student success initiative?
“We keep score, using the baseball analogy,” Gore says. “At the end of the game, you want to know whether you won or lost. Graduation is one of the ways you keep score. Retention is another way that you keep score. How many of our students are staying from their freshman to sophomore to junior years? What are those retention rates? Are we seeing changes in subgroups? It’s like calling balls and strikes in a baseball game. That’s sort of how we look at it. The data analytics are something that we really began moving forward and understanding what the important things are. I like to think of this in three strategic questions: Are you doing the right things? Do you have the capacity to do the right things? And can you do the right things right the first time? And that's all about execution. You can analytically look at all those different things to be able to say that you're being successful.”
“Right. I agree,” Woodruff adds. “That 86 percent graduation rate is one piece of this. I also want to look at placement rates for where the students go after getting an undergraduate degree or graduate degree. And that's the going to be important as well as a metric of success. We’re working to reduce probation rates, too. We'll be measuring that this year, and that's going to be an important metric for us on the pathway. We want to see that sense of belonging and the climate assessments continue to improve. One of the things in the merger that Vennie's really focused on across all our affinity and identity groups is to make sure that sense of belonging is there and that folks know that this is not top-down. This is all of us. If you're here, you're a part of creating the culture that exists.
“Looking for someone else to create culture is not the same as creating the culture we all wish to be a part of. That's the message that Vennie's been giving, and it's been really a winning and wonderful way of thinking in a really renewed way about the institution. We want to have impactful opportunities for the students for internships and externships and laboratory environments and making sure students know that's an option for them early in their careers. That's an important part of this.
“We’ve seen a bit of a decline in the use of student services during this current context. We want to make sure that use of the services that we have created is increasing. I think another one is that student debt upon graduation has been decreased and part of that is the credit momentum. That is to say that we expect you to be here for a period with deep learning and then to graduate. That will be in the student's best interest as they move along.
“Part of that is creating an inclusive, equitable curriculum and an environment that enables their academic and social and overall wellness and financial support. That leads back to the student's ability to learn, thrive, persist, graduate, and succeed. All of that's really part of what that last set of metrics really enables.”
“We all have a role in student success no matter what your role is at the institution,” says Gore. “Whether you're a faculty member or a staff member who is serving food or you're a TA, we all have a role. At least through the pandemic, what we have heard from our undergraduate students is that college is more than just going to class. It’s the whole experience.
“And that impact that we all have on the individual student, no matter what our role is, is significant. Some of the most significant relationships have come through advising and mentoring and saying hello and being there for their well-being and knowing that there's someone in your corner to support you. That's student success. This is the collective responsibility of all of us as members of our community.”
“Really well said, Vennie,” says Woodruff. “The strategic plan is really such an asset to have for an institution that, through the COVID context, was able to continue to reach for what its aspirations should be. That's the leadership of our president and every person in a leadership role and everybody who participated in really thinking about what our aspirations are at a time when other institutions were really being grounded by the pandemic.
“Out of that has come the opportunity to really change the institution on behalf of the students we serve. I'm so grateful to all my colleagues with whom we've all worked to have this strategic plan, and the opportunity to implement it is just so exciting. I just can't wait to see what happens next to all of the students who come through this institution at this particular time. It's really an exciting time and the world so desperately needs them.
“Our students are carrying heavy buckets. No doubt about it. But we've told them that what we're doing is we're putting our hands next to them and we're going to help them carry it. We can't take it away. We wish we could, but we can't. We know that whatever they've learned, both within our academic halls as well as within our residential halls and within the halls of life and the changes that they've experienced, that those buckets have been filled. But we're going to help them with what comes next. We can't predict what their lives are going to be. But we know because of being part of this institution that they're ready for both the expected and the unexpected. That's the best that we can do on behalf of these students. I couldn't be more excited for the future that they will help create.”
On this edition of MSU Today, we've been talking about the student success theme of MSU's Strategic Plan 2030, Empowering Excellence, Advancing Equity and Expanding Impact with the executive sponsors of the theme, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Teresa Woodruff and Senior Vice President for Student Life and Engagement Vennie Gore.
Read and learn more about MSU Strategic Plan 2030 at strategicplan.msu.edu.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
MSU's excellence is a product of our long presence in the communities we serve. This week, MSU proudly joined the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint to announce a $25 million grant to support the expansion of the MSU College of Human Medicine’s public health research and educational programs there. This month also marks the first anniversary of another notable partnership focused on supporting healthcare in Michigan communities. Last year, MSU joined Detroit's Henry Ford Health System in a 30-year collaboration inspired by a bold vision to discover and advance a new standard of health to help transform the lives of people in Detroit and beyond.
“They really are critical programs for the university that have brought great distinction to the university as well as made a huge impact to communities across the state of Michigan,” says President Stanley. “The Mott Foundation has been a really crucial partner in our work over the years to support the Flint community. And this grant really follows up on the Foundation's support over really a 10-year period and is designed to really help us develop a new model for improving public health outcomes.
“We're going to be able to support the addition of approximately 18 tenure system faculty members, boosting the program to more than 25 tenure track faculty and approximately 70 faculty members overall. And a community partner advisory committee will help determine priority public health areas for the program's recruiting focus. And this has been a really important part of this work in Flint. It involves the community and shows how important our community partners are in getting this work done.
“And it's not a question where we're coming to them and saying here's the problem we'll help you with. It's rather a partnership where they're talking to us about what are the needs of the community, and then we're working together to develop programs that can make a difference in these areas of priority public health issues.
“The Henry Ford partnership is something we're very excited about. This is a 30-year collaboration that we're working together on inspired by a really bold vision. And that's to really discover and advance a new standard of health to help transform the lives of people in Detroit, Southeast Michigan, and beyond. And I think we're making significant progress already.
“Our plans include building on our joint cancer research task force to increase research that opens up new opportunities for collaboration and innovation. And we're really trying to lay the groundwork for seeking designation by the National Cancer Institute, known as the NCI, for us to create a comprehensive cancer center in or around Henry Ford's Detroit campus.
“We're doing education work as well that's really critical for us. Some of our students who are third- and fourth-year medical students from the Colleges of both Human and Osteopathic Medicine are going to be doing their training programs at Henry Ford Hospital. And the MSU College of Nursing will also offer professional development opportunities for Henry Ford employees. Nurses there can have additional professional development opportunities.
“We also have partnership goals in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. And we're working on ways to define paths for addressing health equity and health disparities through our partnership, particularly in cancer care. As we've seen before with the pandemic, there are huge differences in healthcare outcomes in rural areas versus urban areas and in urban areas versus suburban areas. And what we want to do is really try to get rid of those gaps and make sure that health disparities are not contributing to poor health outcomes in the state of Michigan.
“So, the Henry Ford partnership and the work we're doing with the Mott Foundation and others throughout the state of Michigan is designed to really help us have an impact on healthcare and health outcomes in a broad swath of the population of the state.”
At MSU, an important facet of maintaining a healthy and caring community is represented by a new effort based on one of the actions in our Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct Strategic Plan. Can you talk about the Support More Initiative?
“The Support More Initiative is a critically important communication initiative that focuses on providing guidance for how to respond to disclosures of relationship violence or sexual assault or misconduct on campus. It helps our faculty, staff, and anyone contacted to respond to those experiences in an empathic manner, and it promotes the availability of related campus resources and services.
“We're really taking steps to transform MSU's culture as it relates to instances of relationship violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and stalking. And this really grows out of the work of a number of outstanding faculty at MSU who have developed trauma informed approaches to responding to people who've undergone one of these events.
“I'm really grateful to the RVSM Expert Advisory Work Group. Their members have been dedicated to this work and so has the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Division of Victim Services with support for this work through a Victims of Crime Act Grant Award. It's an important program, and I encourage everyone to go to the site because there are ways in which you can help make a difference in this important problem.”
On January 31st MSU returns to in-person learning after a three-week remote start for most classes, which was intended to mitigate the impact of potential classroom absences due to the highly contagious Omicron variant of the COVID 19 virus. While you're cautious, I'm sure you're happy that we can return in person.
“We're very excited about it. And I know students are as well. And I know faculty and staff have worked hard to get prepared to be in person in the classroom again. I think the important thing to note is that our cases have started to come down on campus. We're absolutely monitoring it very carefully. We did see a surge with Omicron as expected. The case numbers are coming down; they've been down again the past couple weeks. Our hope is by the 31st we will really have seen the peak and be very much on a decline in Omicron related COVID-19 cases.
“The critical thing, though, is that employees have been vaccinated and boosted and are wearing masks, and we believe that the classrooms represent a relatively safe environment.”
COVID booster shots are required unless an exemption has been granted with a February 1 deadline for most to update their verification forms online.
The excellence of several of MSU online degree programs was validated this week in the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings. MSU College of Education programs placed in the top 10 in all four of the U.S. News Graduate Education Discipline program rankings, with curriculum and instruction rising to number one in the nation. Among other highlights, MSU’s online master’s program in Criminal Justice is ranked number five for the second year in a row. And our non-MBA online master’s program in business jumped nine places to number 12. The online master’s in mechanical engineering program ranked number 14. Will there be more hybrid instruction even when the pandemic eases?
“Oh, absolutely. And I think it's a great mark of the quality of our College of Education, our Broad Business College, our Criminal Justice program, and our College of Engineering that they've reached these kinds of accolades.
“This is a very competitive area. Delivering this kind of material in a way that allows students to learn and be successful is a challenge. MSU and our faculty have risen to the challenge and really developed programs that are appealing to our students and that have the potential to appeal to other students as well.
“As we think about education in the future, having this combination of the ability to deliver both in person and remotely I think becomes incredibly important. With asynchronous learning, particularly, it allows us to expand the kind of students who can take and receive an MSU education. We have a quality combination of in-classroom and online coursed, and that's very special.”
This month Spartans took great pride in seeing MSU economist and professor Lisa D. Cook nominated to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System by President Joe Biden. If confirmed, Cook will be the first Black woman to serve on the board in its 108-year history.
“It's wonderful. And professor Cook is really a remarkable economist and leader whose nomination just highlights the excellence of our Spartan faculty. I was really honored in 2020 to help welcome former Federal Reserve Chairperson Janet Yellen as a guest speaker for the American Economic Association summer training program, which was hosted by MSU under Cook's direction.
“So, I've had a chance to see her in action and to get to know her. She's a great representative for MSU and I'm sure, hopefully, she will be confirmed and will make a big difference to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.”
Also, this month, we say goodbye to another trailblazing Spartan, that's volleyball head coach Cathy George, who announced her retirement after an impressive 35-season career, the last 17 at MSU. She's MSU's winningest volleyball coach, recording 302 wins with an overall record of 667 and 457 across her outstanding career.
“I had a chance to meet Coach George and see her in action coaching volleyball, and she was extraordinarily impressive. She has really been a tremendous asset and treasure to the MSU community. She was the first woman to lead a team to the NCAA Division 1 Final Four in 1989. She guided her team to 15 NCAA tournaments in all, 10 of them at MSU, with three Sweet 16 appearances and one in the Elite 8. And her student athletes were successful in the classroom as well, with 37 Big Ten Distinguished Scholar recognitions and seven academic All-America honors. She departs with our admiration and gratitude, and we'll do a national search for the next head volleyball coach. My thanks to her and my congratulations to her on such an extraordinary career.”
Any final thoughts as January turns over to February that you'd like to leave Spartans with today?
“Just again, we're so excited about this semester. There are great things that are going to happen. We are working very hard to manage successfully, and we will, through the return to campus in terms of in-person instruction. And I really appreciate all the efforts that people are putting in and the community support that comes forward to us as we continue this vital education mission.”
Keep up with President Stanley at president.msu.edu and follow along on Instagram @MSUPresStanley.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
In the first State of the State Podcast of the new year, podcasters from Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research talk taxes, the economy, the elections near term, mid-term and long-term.
Highlights:
· Institute Director Dr. Matt Grossmann: New surveys show Michigan’s public and policy insiders believe Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will win re-election in November 2022’s vote. National trends and election history predict the in-power party – the Democrats – are likely to lose to Republicans in off-presidential year elections. “The mood of the state is relatively sour” in survey results, but Whitmer was upbeat in her State of the State speech. “She said the word ‘bipartisan’ three or four times. Nonetheless, “she still is vulnerable.”
· Associate Institute Director Arnold Weinfeld, host of the IPPSR Podcast, navigated the conversation through Whitmer’s upcoming budget message, new General Motors Corp. investments in Michigan, the choice between short-term tax cuts and investment in long-term state needs, long-term concerns about the viral pandemic COVID-19.
· IPPSR Podcast Guest Simon Schuster, former IPPSR Graduate Fellow and now executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, outlined a general lack of transparency in campaign finance regulations in Michigan, especially compared to other states.
· Emeritus MSU Economics Professor Charles Ballard noted Whitmer State of the State speech call for more mental health funding, especially for K-12 pupils. He questioned Whitmer’s call to repeal the “pension” tax, primarily on retirees. Affluent retirees still pay fewer taxes than those still in the workforce. He issued a strong call for efforts everywhere to reduce the spread and threat of COVID-19 and its variants. “If you haven’t been vaccinated, please do so. It might save your life and the life of your loved ones.”
The Institute for Public Policy and Social Research is a part of the College of Social Science at Michigan State University. It specializes in policy education, leadership training and survey research.
IPPSR is the home of the Michigan Political Leadership Program, the Office for Survey Research, State of the State Survey, Legislative Leadership Program, Rosenthal Legislative Internship Program, more than 60 affiliate faculty members, student policy fellows and major research databases on topics of interest to academic researchers, legislators, policy makers, elected leaders and journalists around the world.
IPPSR’s monthly State of the State Podcast is broadcast with the assistance of WKAR Radio along with radio stations on the air and over the internet, on SoundCloud and ITunes. You'll also find this edition of the State of the State Podcast on MSU Today with Russ White.
Find IPPSR on social media @IPPSR on Twitter and Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) | Facebook on Facebook.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to "MSU Today with Russ White" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The joint venture is a catalyst for change and reimagines how we think about, innovate, and deliver health and wellness. The goal is to set a new standard for how individuals and communities experience care across the state of Michigan and the nation.
The partnership is called Henry Ford Health + Michigan State University Health Sciences (HFH+MSU Health Sciences).
Launched in January 2021 with the bold purpose of advancing a new standard of health care, HFH+MSU Health Sciences has already created critical infrastructure and new pathways for pioneering research, cancer care, education, and equitable care delivery and outcomes.
At that time, I spoke about the collaboration with Dr. Norman J. Beauchamp Jr, MSU executive vice president for health sciences and Adnan Munkarah MD, executive vice president, and chief clinical officer for Henry Ford Health System. Those two gentlemen joined me again today for a progress report.
I think things are doing extremely well,” says Dr. Munkarah. “The excitement that we are seeing among our teams on both sides to deliver on our vision, which is really to be a transformational partnership in health and healthcare across our region and in the nation, is resonating extremely well.
“We’re building on the values that we have independently, and now in this partnership we are seeing that people are really committed to what we want to do together.”
“We had a hope when we started that, done correctly, individuals, students, staff, and faculty would feel more enabled and more empowered to accomplish the mission that brought them to our respective organizations,” adds Dr. Beauchamp. “And that has perhaps been the most delightful part is that we brought people together to bring hope and healing to all people. And we laid out an aggressive set of goals because of a sense of urgency that people deserve and need better. And I would recognize that this is in the setting of a pandemic that people are carving out time to do this work because it's so important. From an MSU perspective, having a partner like Henry Ford with its scope and scale of practice has been very helpful.”
Munkarah and Beauchamp elaborate on the partnership’s achievements and accomplishments so far and about the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in reaching the collaboration’s potential.
“We hold deeply, and you can see it in the strategic plans of both organizations, that all people deserve access to equitable, affordable, safe care,” Beauchamp says. “There's an aphorism that's very meaningful. The great Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. said that of all forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman. And he uses the term inhuman because it truly is something that's a call to action.
“Communities of color, for example, do not have equivalent access to or participation in clinical trials, which has two really detrimental effects. One is that as you discover new ways to treat cancer, they may not be as effective in the underrepresented communities that weren't allowed to participate or weren't engaged in participating. But second, clinical trials are also a source of hope when all the common and existing treatments for cancer have not been effective. And individuals through clinical trials can access the most recent and advanced ways to treat cancer. Henry Ford has really established themselves as a leader in clinical trials across communities and we believe we can enhance that.”
“All of us agree that it is really shameful that in one of the most powerful nations, we still have issues with access and equity in care where we have significant disparities,” Munkarah continues. “Recognizing this is extremely important and is the first step in that journey. Part of the solution is to make sure that the most advanced and the best healthcare is available to every single member of the communities that we serve and beyond.
“Clinical trials are going to be extremely important by not only making them accessible but building trust in them. We need to change the way we think, and we need a more diverse group of providers and leaders: women leaders, leaders of color, and people with different backgrounds who can connect with communities that we serve and that the communities trust.
“In order to do that, we need to be able to recruit, matriculate, and retain medical and nursing students who will continue to serve the communities that we are in. And the work that Norm and his team and we are doing here at Henry Ford Health System is extremely focused on that. How do we make sure that we have the brightest people who want to come to this partnership so that they get their medical education with Michigan State University? They get their training with our healthcare system, and then they stay with us to be the future physicians and nurses and providers and healthcare workers who provide the services within our communities. We have a clear plan where we want to go. We are very excited about it because we don't think it is pie in the sky. We really think that it is achievable. We have the dedication and determination to make it happen. We are excited about what we have seen so far from our teams.”
“The other thing that we're excited about is that when MSU completed its strategic plan, it developed the health sustainability pillar,” Beauchamp adds. “And within that, it talks about not just connecting the health colleges to the partnership with Henry Ford Health System but recognizing the incredible strengths that exist across the campus in improving health. How do we connect these strengths? We've already had very compelling conversations with individuals in social sciences, in communication arts, in engineering, and in supply chain. We see that a key part of addressing these disparities comes from engaging the entire MSU campus in a comprehensive approach to improving health where we can leverage our expertise. Now the momentum is starting to build.”
Doctors Munkarah and Beauchamp discuss some next steps in the partnership.
“We want to make sure that we have a physical home for our combined researchers so that they will be able to sit together and collaborate and work on many of the great projects that we are looking at,” says Munkarah. “We identified the need to have that home on our Henry Ford Health System Detroit campus, and we've already started the dialogue and discussion regarding what that building looks like. What kind of research is it going to house? What are some of the general topics that we are going to bring our teams together about? We've started to think about that based on the experience that MSU has had in other markets. What does that kind of design look like? What does it mean? What is the size of that entity?”
“We want to give a huge thank you to all of those who have helped make this possible by believing in why it matters,” Beauchamp says. “All hands are on deck. This is about how we bring all people together who want to help in this effort, and we want the message to be one of inclusion. This is an opportunity for all; we need the help. We welcome it. Helen Keller said ‘Alone, I can do so little. Together, we can do so much.’ This is truly emblematic of that. Together, we can do so much. Reach out to us.”
“I want to echo what Dr. Beauchamp has said,” says Munkarah. “We have so much gratitude and appreciation for the hundreds of people who have made this possible in the past year. The accomplishments have been beyond what I have expected, and we expected a lot. We put a lot of things on the plate of our teams to make happen. There are not enough words to express our gratitude to them for making that happen. Second, it is one of the things when you get into these relationships and into these partnerships, people tell me, ‘Well, it's great. Now you are in the negotiation phase, or you've signed and now this is where the problems get started.’ I'm not naïve. I don't want to simplify things. There are always problems and hurdles to jump, but honestly, I'm more excited today than I was a year ago when we were going through these discussions. The sky is really the limit.
“I'm a true believer that this partnership of bringing Henry Ford and MSU together is transformational not only for our state, but nationally. I really think that we will be making history in healthcare by bringing our thoughts and values together to make a difference by transforming healthcare in the United States to make it affordable and providing the best outcomes and equity. This is what drives every one of us every day to make sure that we work on this partnership to drive that. It’s important for us to achieve our goal. And as I told you, I'm more excited today and I'm more optimistic today that we are on our way to achieving that goal.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on News/Talk 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
MSU Safe Place provides advocacy, shelter, counseling, support groups, safety planning, information, and referrals to survivors of violence and their minor children. All support services are free and confidential. Additionally, MSU Safe Place works to increase awareness about relationship violence and stalking through community education and outreach efforts.
Annually, the program shelters, approximately 35 to 50 adults and children and provides counseling and advocacy services to many more students, staff, and faculty who experience relationship violence and stalking. Michigan State University Safe Place was recently awarded additional federal funding under the Victims of Crime Act to expand its staff and services for MSU students, employees, community members and their families.
The grant is for just over $250,000 over one year and has allowed Safe Place to hire three new full-time staff - a full-time counselor, an additional advocate, and a full-time volunteer coordinator. Former MSU first lady Joanne McPherson saw a need for this first-of-its-kind university-based domestic violence shelter and support facility in 1994. More than two decades later, Safe Place will have a greater impact on the community through this grant.
“We have been providing stalking and domestic violence support on campus since 1994 with between three and four full time staff,” says Erica Schmittdiel, a licensed master social worker and MSU Safe Place advocacy coordinator. “We've been happy to be able to provide that support, but there is a lot of need out there unfortunately. On a campus of this size, we do see a lot of stalking and relationship violence. So having three additional staff will help us to increase our outreach so that more individuals who work or go to school here at MSU are aware of our services. That's been a barrier that we've had with being a smaller staff is providing that outreach. We know that more people are experiencing these types of victimization but may not know where to go or who to reach out to for assistance.”
How do you define stalking?
“Stalking is two or more unwanted incidences that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear or to experience substantial emotional distress. That is subjective, so I would encourage anyone who feels like they are experiencing unwanted contact to reach out to us and then we can talk about the definition of emotional distress. Maybe it doesn't rise to the level of a policy violation, but it's still something that shouldn't be happening and there are options for the person who's on the receiving end of that unwanted contact.
“A of people are surprised to hear that it's two or more unwanted instances and that it's that low of a threshold. Unfortunately, a lot of times people are experiencing stalking and unwanted behavior for weeks or months, but they don't know that it can be considered stalking. They just think that their ex has not been able to let go or that the person they had class with just won't take no for an answer. They don't like the behavior, but maybe they don't understand that it's stalking behavior.”
Are stalking and relationship violence the same thing or what's the distinction?
“There is quite a bit of overlap. About half of stalking situations stem from a current or former intimate partner relationship. Several years ago, Safe Place expanded its mission to include stalking as one of the services that we provide. Although that's not always the case, again, about half of stalking situations are where the relationship could be a friend or former friend or an acquaintance. Stranger stalking is rarer, but that can occur as well where somebody's receiving unwanted contact that's anonymous. They don't even know who it is that's contacting them. That certainly can happen although most often it's someone that the person knows.”
Are there traits that are similar in most people who stalk?
“There is definitely a sense of entitlement that it's okay to behave this way. It is intentional. A lot of times either the person on the receiving end of the stalking - the victim or survivor or others - wants to make excuses for the behavior. They may say, ‘Oh, well maybe they don't know that they're stalking you. Or they're just socially awkward.’ And I think that perhaps could be the case for a small percentage of people, but I think most people who engage in stalking behavior know what they're doing. They are wanting to pursue a relationship despite the other person not wanting that relationship.
“They feel entitled. They feel a sense of power and control that they enjoy placing the other person in fear. That is often something that we're talking to people about when they come to our program. You may care about this person. You may have been a friend to them or have been in a relationship with them. That's understandable. But at the same time, they likely know what they're doing. They're doing this intentionally. And there are steps that you can take if they are held responsible by the university or there are consequences for them through the criminal justice system. That is of their own making. Those are choices that they have made to engage in this behavior. Any criminal charges are really on them. And of course, we're not here to tell people who come to us what to do or make decisions for them. We're not insisting that they must make a police report. We're presenting that as an option either now or down the road should they choose to do that. And it’s the same with reporting it to the university.”
“What steps can a person take if they feel they are being stalked?
“We always recommend that people document the stalking. Whether they're ready to make a report here at the university, they can make a report with law enforcement. They can do either or both. But have that documentation. Whether they're ready now to do that or want to do it down the road, they have that information and they're not trying to think back, ‘Well, I think it was a Tuesday in December that they were outside of my apartment building.’ They have it written down - when it happened, what time, the location, and how it made them feel. All that information can be very helpful to build a case. Every situation is different so we don't have a cookie cutter approach, but we can talk through the situation with people.
“If they're being stalked via technology, have they checked their social media for their privacy settings? We know that social media is a part of most people's lives so we're not necessarily telling people not to use it because that may not be practical for them. But how can you use social media or technology more safely? Have they changed the passwords on their accounts? It all depends on the individual situation, but we will talk through that with people and try to come up with solutions.”
What can friends and family do to support someone who’s being stalked?
“We always want friends and family to believe the person who comes to them and tells them that they're being stalked. Maybe they're not using those words quite yet, but they're describing a situation that sounds like stalking. Don't minimize it if they're expressing fear for their safety. It may not sound like a big deal if you hear somebody saying, ‘This person is always liking my content on social media, and I've seen them where I'm at a few times and it's creeping me out.’ Don't brush it off as a coincidence. Listen to what the person is telling you. And if they're concerned about this behavior, mirror that concern. Refer them to Safe Place and know they may not contact us right away. Often people don't pick up the phone or send us an email immediately upon being referred to us, but plant that seed. Reassure them that If and when they're ready, there are confidential resources that can talk through options with them. And then if somebody's in immediate fear for their safety, call 9-1-1.
“Prior to the grant, we were serving all the MSU affiliated individuals who had contacted us for services, but we were not able to do that outreach. We were not able to do additional marketing of our services to let people know that we are a resource here on campus. Our volunteer coordinator is currently in contact with all the registered student organizations to provide that information. The grant will help us to recruit volunteers who will help us expand the services we're able to offer. We know that once individuals are trained in the dynamics of relationship violence and stalking, they become a resource for their family and friends.
“We see a ripple effect with more individuals on our campus being educated about these issues and more people then being able to come forward and receive the help that they may need. Not only do we provide confidential services in that we don't share information with anyone else on campus or out in the community once people come to us, but we have a confidential location as well for safety purposes. People can feel safe here in our location whether they're staying in our shelter or coming for counseling or advocacy appointments and know that the individual who is stalking them or the person who's been abusive to them will not be showing up here during their appointment or during their stay.
“In summary, I would just like to say that we are the relationship violence and stalking program here on campus. We're here to support people at whatever level they need whether it's having one advocacy appointment to get some basic information about what their options are or ongoing advocacy as they are going through the OIE process or the criminal justice system. We are here for whatever level of help people need. Shelter is available, but that's not the only service we provide. We also provide the counseling if people need that.
“We have a fantastic program here to support individuals who may need us. I have been here for 20 years, and I wouldn't still be here at Safe Place if I didn't believe in the work that we do. I encourage individuals to reach out to us and then to spread the word about the services that we provide. We are the only domestic violence shelter on a college campus in the nation that can shelter both individuals and families. There are a number of other colleges and universities that have responded to relationship violence by offering a dorm room for people that may need that, and that's wonderful. However, that doesn't always work for the non-traditional students with children, graduate students, or staff or faculty who may need shelter. I am so proud to work at this unique program and to be able to offer the services that we have.”
“For information about MSU Safe Place, visit safeplace.msu.edu. If you or anyone needs support, contact Safe Place confidentially at noabuse@msu.edu or call 517-355-1100.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and Sunday evenings at 8:00 on 760 WJR. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The COVID-19 pandemic has required a lot of attention and decision making at MSU to keep everyone safe and moving forward. Can you give us an idea of how these decisions are made?
President Stanley:
We begin with the fundamental principle of keeping everyone safe at Michigan State University: faculty, staff, and students. And at the same time, we’re doing everything we can to continue our vital mission of education and economic development. These things and our extension mission are critical to us. And so, those considerations sometimes conflict a little bit or may conflict with what we need to do, but in general, we try to optimize each of those things. I meet very frequently with other Michigan State University leaders like University Physician Dave Weismantel and Norm Beauchamp, who oversees all of our medical areas. I also consult with the provost, of course, because she represents faculty, and with Vennie Gore, who oversees student affairs, and with Melissa Woo, executive vice president for administration representing our staff.
It's a group that represents a number of constituents on the campus and allows us to take a very broad view of what we're doing. And then of course, we look at data. Because of my background, I'm very interested in what's happening. We follow what's happened in the past at Michigan State University. What have our patterns been in the past in terms of COVID? We're now well more than two years into this pandemic. So we can look at historical data and understand what happens. We know that when students return to campus, for example, we've seen a surge each time. Even if there was lower background in the community, we've seen a surge. When there's higher background in the community, we see a surge again on top of whatever's happening in the community. So that's happened. We need to be prepared for that.
We also know that we've been very successful in safely administering learning during this time in person in our last semester. So we take that into account as well. We also consider guidance from the CDC. We try to adopt CDC guidance and stay with it. We look at what the state department of health and human services is recommending to try and go with that. And then of course, we make recommendations based on the science. We’ve learned a lot about the virus. It transmits probably twice as effectively as the previous virus did. It's also probably about half as virulent in some sense. About a half the people who had to be hospitalized from Delta have to be hospitalized with Omicron.
About half the people who were hospitalized with Delta would be hospitalized with Omicron. So that's good. Hospital stays are shorter with Omicron, but still people are hospitalized. And if you go into a situation with with Omicron where you have three times as many people getting infected, then the fact that half as much means you're still getting more people in the hospital than you did with the Delta outbreak. So that's somewhat what we're seeing around the country right now is hospitals are at capacity. Finally, we look to coordinate with others. I talk to the leaders at other institutions. We obviously talk to our health department. We talk to our representatives from some of our cities and townships. So they understand what we're planning to do. All those things come together in making the kind of difficult decisions we do.
Russ White:
And as you mentioned, sir, we were able to limit the spread of the coronavirus while keeping most classes in person last semester. Why did we start this semester with mostly remote classes?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
It was a difficult decision because we know how much students want to be in person. And I think all of us wanted to be back in person, but I think it had to do with two things. One was just a little bit of uncertainty about Omicron, understanding it better. I think just even in the past few weeks, we've learned more about it and how it spreads. The second was the recognition that there were going to be large numbers of cases associated with this surge and that the measures we'd done before, vaccination and boosters - boosters are imperative by the way – are the difference between getting sick with these viruses and getting hospitalized with these viruses and having to a very mild illness. But what we know about Omicron is the breakthrough infections are more common with Omicron than they were with any variant up to date and it's far more contagious.
So again, most of the cases that we've seen as a country are in unvaccinated individuals. And about 90 percent of the cases we've seen that are hospitalizations or deaths, unfortunately, are with unvaccinated individuals. But vaccinated people are getting Omicron. And some of us may know people who've been vaccinated and had their boosters who are getting Omicron. So we knew there'd be more cases to deal with. And the concern was we do have to quarantine or isolate. We have to isolate individuals who've been infected for now, according to CDC guidance, at least five days. Before it was 10 days. So if we came back and we had a major surge, our concern was there would be significant absenteeism, both in classes and in the faculty because of this Omicron surge at this time. So it would make it more difficult to have in person classes because people just wouldn't be able to show up basically.
The first three weeks of the semester are critical in learning. It's the time when everyone learns about the course and what's going to be taught and some of the basic principles that are going to be important. And we wanted to make sure there was a consistent first experience for everybody coming back to MSU this semester. So we thought the easiest way to do that would be to be remote in these first three weeks. The goal now is that after we get these first three weeks in that everybody's on the same page. We know there'll still be some absentees. We know there'll be some classes that have to be missed, but people will have started the semester. They'll be in class. They'll know what's going on and it's going to make it I think a better experience.
We also cared about what was happening with the opening of other school districts. We wanted to be aware of some of the surges that might take place there with reopening. We want to give parents who have to care for children or who may have children of elementary school age who may have to come home again because they test positive the opportunity to work remotely during this time and to give more flexibility to our faculty and caregivers with their schedules. So that's what's driven it. We're looking to open again to start in person classes on January 31st. That's our goal right now. And we're following numbers very carefully as we look up to that.
Russ White:
So what else are we doing this semester to control the spread of COVID-19?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
The mask mandate remains incredibly important. I encourage everybody to get the best kind of mask you can. And I think that's very important to do that. Mask wearing indoors remains something that we need to do. And I would really encourage everybody to do that. It's always still disappointing to me that the rest of the state hasn't caught up with that, but I'm really glad that I see it on our campus and people continue to adhere to it. And it's been adhered to at sporting and entertainment events and other things as well. I really appreciate that people are doing that. The really important thing of course is for people to be vaccinated and to make sure you've had your boosters. And we're requiring boosters for all faculty, staff, and students. If you're eligible during this period of time, we expect you to get it by February 1st.
When you become eligible, if it's after February 1st, we expect you to get it within two weeks of your eligibility taking place. And so that's the most important thing. We know that this disease can change to something that can be very severe and cause death. Again, we're not seeing a huge decline in deaths right now during this Omicron surge, but they're not increasing proportionally to the number of cases as they would've with the Delta, for example, but that's still concerning. So, getting vaccinated and getting boosted is really critical. To make that easier, we're working within Ingham County to set up some vaccine stations that will be available for more of the mass vaccination efforts like we had early on in the pandemic at the pavilion.
We're looking for those opportunities with maybe a capacity of about 1,000 boosters at a time. We're also continuing to talk to other surrounding areas about the availability of vaccinations so that we can put on our Together We Will website the locations of places that are providing vaccines for people who need to get them. We're doing some vaccines in our pharmacy. We're doing some vaccines in student health, but there's about a three week wait, at least for those. So I encourage people to find out where's the place you can get vaccinated. And for those students, faculty, and staff who have not had that booster, this is a great time to do this. While we're working remotely, you can do it while you're at home.
Russ White:
And President Stanley, I think you'd like to remind listeners too, that we're all in this together. Nobody likes this, but Spartans Will get through this.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
I know that people are frustrated by the pandemic. I think all of us and many of us who have really taken this seriously have really thought about our responsibility, not just to ourselves, but to others and family members and the community to try and control some of the spread of disease. It's difficult when we're confronted with this variant that still can infect people, even though they've taken the precautions. And again, there's no shame in getting infected by this virus. It's not anything you did necessarily. It's the virus and its infectivity that's changed. But I think we still need to have the empathy we've had for people. But we also need, again, to think about doing the things that we can do to try and mitigate this to the extent we can.
We're all in this together. All of us have the same goal, which is to pursue our education and to pursue our innovative work at Michigan State University and do it in an environment where we're safe and welcome. We all have that goal. Getting vaccinated, getting boosted, and wearing your mask are all ways in which we work together to allow us to get as close to normal as we can during this challenging period. And I think it will get better. What we know from South Africa and the United Kingdom is that this virus goes up and then it goes down in a much more rapid way than we saw with the previous one. I'm optimistic that by mid-February, we'll be seeing significant declines in these numbers and that things will look much better by March.
The pandemic has been challenging. There's a high level of frustration, but there will be better days ahead. Pfizer has announced they're making an Omicron specific vaccine that may help us with this variant and may make a difference. We have new antivirals coming in from Pfizer and from Merck that may be helpful in treating individuals who do get COVID who need this. They do more to reduce the severity of disease for people who get it. There are some good things on the horizon, and we just need to recognize that this is a surge. It is going to come back down again. That's what it's done everywhere else. It's not going to sustain at this level. It's not really possible. We've got to get through these next few weeks, but then things are going to be better as we go through the spring semester.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. says the plan is a guidepost for MSU to be strategic about wisely and efficiently using limited resources and refine its values in an inclusive way.
“We have a mission of education, research and innovation, and outreach to really take what we've learned and make a difference in people's lives,” Stanley says. “So, we really need to be strategic. Resources are limited. We know that. We depend upon tuition. We depend upon state allocation. Those things have not been rising at great levels recently. We must think very carefully about how we use our resources. What we did for Michigan State University was say, ‘What are our values? What are the things we care about? How do we want to make a difference? Where do we want to be impactful?’
“We identified those values and then we said, ‘How do we accomplish and excel in them?’ We have the university's strategic plan, which looks at the university's activities on a whole level. We have the RVSM Strategic Plan, which looks at an issue that's been very important for Michigan State, relationship violence and sexual misconduct. And then we have a plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is not only a separate plan, but also incorporated into the university's strategic plan. We made a campus wide effort to bring people together.
“These plans had to be inclusive; they weren’t going to be top down. We had to have plans where faculty and staff and students had input on what we're going to do going forward. And from that we've crafted something we think, particularly in the university strategic plan, is going to take us from now to 2030 and be a guidepost for us for how we invest our resources and how we work together as an institution to be impactful and to make a difference for the State of Michigan.”
Ultimately, says President Stanley, the plan puts people and student success first.
“We have great facilities, but really when it comes down to it, it's about people. We start with our students and student success. Our heritage is to provide access for students who are economically disadvantaged and give them an opportunity to get a college education that was good as they could get at any school in the country. That was our primary mission initially, and that's continued now. So, we're finding ways to ensure student success and help every student who arrives at Michigan State University graduate.
“Absolutely essential as well is our faculty and staff and providing opportunities for them to reach their full potential. So, whether it's in education, whether it's in research and innovation, whether it's in outreach, how do we help them use their full potential and have impact? And what are the conditions we need to set to do that? How do we help them become better at educating? How do we reduce barriers to their ability to do their best research? How do we find resources to help them achieve what they want to do? How do we help their professional development so they can really see careers ahead of them that allow them to succeed and make Michigan State a destination where people want to work? Those are the things that are most significant. We're putting people at the center of our plan and focusing very much on them.”
The goal for MSU is to evolve and grow its impact on Michigan and the world.
“The destination looks like a Michigan State University that's recognized around the world as being impactful and having impact in areas that matter to people. There are some major problems we face, like problems around climate change and problems around artificial intelligence and how we use it effectively. There are issues around health and health disparities, which are a very significant problem for the United States and for the world. How do we keep our water and food supply secure so people don't have to suffer from insecurity or concerns about their water? All these things are things that Michigan State can tackle. We have the multidisciplinary ability to do it. The strategic plan lays out ways in which we can make a difference. One of the goals, for example, is to get to $1 billion annually in research expenditures.
“We know that's a number where we're going to be having impact. If we're at that number, that speaks to a national and global impact. As we look at graduation rates, we know if we can get up to 86 percent that we'd be among the top public universities in the country in terms of graduation rates. It's an achievable number, but how do we get there? This is an educational institution that matters to Michigan and to the world. We have found ways to get engaged in the problems that matter most to society, like creating the trained workforce that helps Michigan continue to excel and create economic development.”
President Stanley says the process of how the plan was developed was crucial so that the entire Spartan community could take ownership in the plan.
“The process really mattered so we needed a plan that involved input from faculty, students, and staff. The key constituents needed to have input. But we expanded that as well. The Board of Trustees was intimately involved in this and was involved in reviewing each of these three plans on a regular basis. And then we went to our alumni as well. We went to our donors and talked to them. We went to elected officials and talked to them. All these people had a chance to provide input into the strategic plan because we wanted a plan that people owned and know they contributed to.
“Without that buy-in and people seeing themselves in the plan, it could become a document that just sits on the shelf. That's not what we want. It was critical that it be an inclusive process. My hat’s off to the leaders of these different committees for all the work they did to be inclusive, all the listening sessions they held, and all the outreach they did. I think it's paid off in having a plan that I think people can, as I said before, see themselves in, buy into, and want to be a part of.”
President Stanley says the plan is not etched in stone and will evolve over time as necessary. And the plan allows MSU to refine and evolve its values.
“It's always important for an institution like MSU, one with this incredible history of accomplishment, to not rest and to always look and say, ‘What are our values? Are we staying true to our values? And are our values appropriate to the times we live in? How have they changed? And what's changed from maybe 100 years ago or 150 years ago?’ That relook was very important. Coming out of the challenges the university faced earlier in 2017 and through the pandemic, it's really helped us hone in on what's important to the university and how we’re going to be impactful. We had vigorous discussion on these questions. The values segment of the plan took a long time to come together to get cohesiveness and agreement on. Having those values defined will help us function better as a university.”
2030 is eight years away. It's the right amount of time to implement the plan and evaluate its progress.
“Eight years is a pretty good number. It's hard to get things done and have real impact in a short period of time. As we know, universities are large and complex organizations, and to get people pulling together sometimes takes some work. But once we do, it can be extraordinary. So, I think that timeframe is appropriate. Things change rapidly. So we will revisit this plan on a regular basis. We have already built into the plan a review in about three to four years into the process to see where our progress is. And Bill Beekman, our vice president for strategic initiatives, will be looking at this plan and be responsible for helping to coordinate metrics and help coordinate the reporting of those metrics. The Board of Trustees will expect several reports on the plan’s progress.
“They're intimately involved, as I said before, on implementing this plan. They want to be engaged in it. And the key thing is having an implementation plan. So having Bill's position and having strategic champions for each of the pillars of the plan that we've identified for each of them are important in making sure the plan gets implemented. Many strategic plans are done by universities, and many sit on a shelf. That's not what we want for this. We want one where we are actually holding ourselves accountable for progress. And there are some stretch goals in the plan. We may not reach every goal as fast as we'd like, but I think it's feasible to reach every goal on this list by 2030.”
As President Stanley said, it's now time for the plan's champions to begin implementation.
“That involves the champions getting together now and figuring out what the priorities are that we want to begin with. What are the areas where we want to start applying resources to make a difference and how do we do that? That's going to involve the champions working with key constituents. Those can be deans of colleges, department chairs, and students who can really start putting together a committee that's going to help guide where resources flow. Implementation is going to be the next key step, and that's taking place as we speak.”
As President Stanley mentioned, Michigan State University's Vice President for Strategic Initiatives Bill Beekman will lead the implementation of the plan. And Beekman agrees with Stanley that the plan is not etched in stone and will evolve as there are more ways than one to reach the desired destination.
“A strategic plan is an important thing for any organization, maybe particularly a university, because it's a roadmap and a sense of direction of where we want to go,” says Beekman. “If you're traveling somewhere, there's almost always more than one way to get there. You can take path A or path B or C. So, when we think about a strategic plan, it's not necessarily carved in stone. It's more about the destination. We'll figure out the path a bit as we go and as times change, as circumstances change, and as people change. To me, a strategic plan is really important because it gives us a sense of direction and a process we can adjust and adapt. It gives us a point to look towards and strive towards in the future.”
Beekman says progress on the plan's implementation will be shared often with the campus community. Bill will lead a team responsible for helping to refine strategies and actions, establish robust measures and metrics across all themes, and recommend processes to track and report on implementation across themes.
“When the Board approved the strategic plan at its September meeting this past fall, there was an implementation strategy that was written into the plan. And that called for me as the vice president for strategic initiatives to gather a group of folks who are the executive sponsors for each of the six pillars of the plan along with several other folks. And in fact, we met last week and had our introductory meeting. President Stanley came and charged the group to begin a process. So, each of those executive sponsors is going to formulate a work group or an implementation committee for each of the six theme areas. Those groups will really support the planning process. We had probably at least 200 people from the university community who were engaged in providing input and synthesizing that input into the plan.
“We'll go through a similar process with the implementation. We've got our direction and our sense of where we want to go. So, what these work groups will do is really help us think through how to get there and what steps to take and what to prioritize in the plan because the plan certainly has more than we can do in a year or even three years or five years. That's partly why we call it the 2030 Plan because it really gives us about a decade's worth of direction. These work groups will be formulating over the next month or so and begin meeting and collecting information from their peers so that we can start formulating not only where we're going, but how we're getting there and begin to dive into that process. We'll also be thinking about metrics. How can we track our progress over the course of the next decade? When can we consider something completed? What does completion mean? What does success mean? Do we need to adjust our process to get there more quickly or try something else? So, we'll have metrics that help guide us in that process. We'll share progress on the plan through a variety of approaches. One is podcasts like this. Over the course of the next number of months, we'll have various sponsors of the themes do podcasts much like this. They'll be able to share that way with the university community.
“The work groups will be communicating with those who are interested in those particular areas. The information will be synthesized onto a website. Folks who are interested in finding out more information about the strategic planning process through the website that we've structured can go to strategicplan.msu.edu. And that website will have not only the current strategic plan, but follow up information as we progress. And people who might have things they want to share can email us at msu2030@msu.edu. That website is up and running. If people have input that they'd like to make, they can contact us at any time through that website. I’m happy to answer any questions that folks might have, and I appreciate any information that folks would like to share.”
The MSU community, especially faculty and staff, can help to advance the plan, stay informed, and participate where appropriate.
“Our executive sponsors of each of the theme sections are listed in the strategic plan. As folks are reviewing the plan and there's something that strikes them as a particularly high priority or something that they're interested in providing input on, they can either contact the executive sponsors of that section of the plan and provide input directly to those executive sponsors, or they can contact us at our website or contact me directly to share that feedback and get them engaged.”
MSU Strategic Plan 2030 identifies goals within six key themes: student success, staff and faculty success, discovery, creativity and innovation for excellence and global impact, sustainable health, stewardship and sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion.
I'm very excited to be participating in this process. I think it's very important for the university that we have a sense of direction and that we're striving to achieve that sense of direction. And I would encourage everybody to read the plan. It's fairly lengthy so don't be shy about skipping to the part that most pertains to you. And we certainly welcome any feedback. Anybody who would like to help or participate in the process is welcome to do so. And that's really what it's about it. It's not about me or a particular dean or vice president. It's about all of us as a university community striving to be better. And the plan's purpose is to help guide us there.”
“Just again, I appreciate how much people have been engaged with this,” concludes President Stanley. “I appreciate the excitement about it. I encourage people to read the strategic plan, and, if you haven't read it already, to read the DEI Strategic Plan and the RVSM Strategic Plan and think about how you can contribute. As I said before, it's a living document. We'll be ready to modify it as times change or if our priorities change. We want to continue this kind of conversation and dialogue with the university community.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It's an exciting time of the year,” says President Stanley. “These commencement days are my favorite days. It's just such a joyous occasion as these students reach the finish line and celebrate with their families and friends. I never tire of it. It's always exciting.”
As an eventful 2021 draws to a close, Stanley reflects with pride on student success initiatives and three strategic plans published this year.
“Student success is one of the pillars of our strategic plan. And for the seventh year in a row, we raised our graduation rates and that's difficult to do. My hat's off to the people who work on student success and to the students and their resilience. Even in these tough times, we're seeing a continuation of this wonderful trend. And to get the graduation rate up to over 82 percent is a huge change from years ago. It speaks to the idea that what we want to do is have every student who comes to Michigan State University leave with a Michigan State University degree. And how you make that possible and the work it takes to do that is significant, but that's our goal and we're putting it on us, not on students, but on us. If we accept you to Michigan State University, we feel it's our role to help you graduate and see you through that degree.
“Commencement represents the culmination of that. I'm also just really proud that we had as close to a normal semester as we could. It's been a challenging semester. There have been a couple of incidents that everyone knows about that have been tragic and troubling. Yet, at the same time, we brought 16,000 students back to living on campus. We conducted our classes in person as we said we would do with, of course, a mix of hybrid and online. And to successfully accomplish that, again, speaks to me to the resiliency of students and the innovation and skill of our faculty and staff to make it all work.
“And three new strategic plans address relationship violence and sexual misconduct, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and a university strategic vision that will guide us as we build excellence and impact in key areas in the years ahead. Each plan focuses on creating an environment where students, faculty, and staff can do their best work and achieve their greatest potential as MSU serves its mission here and around the world. To push them through during this time of the pandemic and have them come out as such forward thinking documents that incorporate what we've known before, what we learned during the pandemic, and what our approach to the future will be is rewarding.”
Stanley says he’s proud of MSU’s 19th Marshall Scholar Andrew McDonald, who exemplifies the brightest and best at MSU.
“Michigan State University attracts extraordinary students. I look at our Honors College and the credentials that those students have. And then, when they come to MSU, they have all these opportunities to really expand their portfolios and to really do more and accomplish more. Not only do they come here bright, but they have a chance to really spread their wings and fly here. That makes them competitive for these kinds of awards.”
The opening of renovated teaching and learning spaces in Wonders Hall last week with computer and other laboratories for College of Engineering students capped a year of exciting facility openings that will support student learning and success for many years. Student success hinges in part on having the right facilities for students to do their best work.
“Couldn't have said it better. We're developing state-of-the-art facilities for our students, faculty, and staff. And that's incredibly important. It's a competitive environment out there. Students have choices and their families have choices about where they want to attend college. And when you have an outstanding faculty to teach and you couple that with facilities that are inspirational, it makes a difference.
“The Billman Pavilion, The Eli Broad College of Business Minskoff Pavilion, the Wonders Hall renovation and our amazing STEM Teaching and Learning Facility are places where education is going to take place in new and exciting ways where students are going to learn and have opportunities for hands on experiences. I met a number of first year engineering students, a very diverse group by the way, and their excitement about being in that space and what it meant to them was contagious.”
MSU ranked number 21 on the Princeton Review’s 2022 list of top green colleges in the United States. MSU is green in more ways than one.
“You're absolutely right, and I’m so proud of that. It's a point of pride not just for us, but for our students. I think they take great pride in this. This is something they care about. They're a generation that takes these issues very seriously. They want to be impactful, and they want to be associated with an institution that cares and makes a difference. To be in the top 25 Princeton ranking is great. To be one of the top ranked Big Ten schools in this list is very important for us as well. And we're going to continue. The strategic plan contains a section on stewardship and sustainability. We’ve made a commitment to continue to do this and to work to becoming carbon neutral. There are challenges ahead to do that, but we have the ingenuity and Spartans Will to excel in this area.”
MSU's academic quality is underpinned by the excellence of our faculty members, 11 of whom earned recognition for their influential scholarship among their peers. These distinguished faculty members are ranked among the world's most cited researchers over the past decade. It's hard to have student success without our world class faculty, right?
“The two go hand in hand. Great students help attract great faculty because they have graduate and undergraduate students who help work in their labs and help demonstrate the creativity and enthusiasm that's so important. And, of course, students come because of outstanding faculty for their ability to teach and to do innovative research with the global impact.
“I'm very proud of those faculty. That is a wide world out there in terms of who you're competing against. So, to have 11 faculty who are in the top rankings in the world I think is spectacular. We'll continue to try to recruit exceptional faculty and create an environment at MSU where all faculty have the chance to be nurtured to reach those kinds of goals.”
Campus safety is another commitment to our university community. And Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police Marlon Lynch recently announced two new initiatives supporting that priority: The Police and Public Safety Advisory Committee and the SafeMSU app.
“My thanks go out to Chief Lynch in his role as vice president for public safety and chief of police. He really is taking the charge that we gave him when he arrived very seriously, which is to really make sure that we're doing everything we can to keep MSU as safe a campus as possible. The advisory committee delivers on the promise we made with the task forces that we had earlier this summer who were working on policing to create a new advisory committee for the police. It's part of our goal of having more community engaged policing as we look at the campus. That's very important. And I’ve already downloaded the new app.”
President Stanley acknowledges MSU Culinary Services’ national grand prize for the allergen free dining hall in Owen's Hall, Thrive, and he shares his concerns for the rapidly emerging Omicron variant of COVID-19.
“Like everyone else, I continue to read and follow with interest and concern what we see with the outbreak at Cornell University; it’s worrisome. It seemed to involve mostly vaccinated students. There is some evidence that's come out of South Africa that still needs to be confirmed that this variant may be less likely to cause severe disease. But that remains to be seen.
“I continue to advocate for boosters for individuals. The data seems to suggest, again still early, that people who have been boosted against COVID-19 tend to be more resistant to developing infection or symptoms with Omicron. And that's really important. We may be at a stage with this variant where it's more difficult to prevent infection, but what we want to do is prevent hospitalizations and deaths. The more people who are vaccinated, the easier it will be to accomplish this.
“I haven't seen data on mask wearing, and I don't know what Cornell’s policies were. But we will certainly continue our mask wearing for we know that does help prevent against transmission of Delta. We know it helps against transmission of influenza, which is the other problem that people may be experiencing as well. So, getting vaccinated against flu, getting your booster against COVID-19, and carefully continuing to wear masks indoors is the advice I'd have for people over this holiday. And if there are going to be gatherings where you don't think you can anticipate wearing a mask, having people tested ahead of time may be helpful in trying to prevent infection.”
Stanley is excited about MSU’s upcoming participation in the December 30 Peach Bowl.
“We had a football season that was wonderful in terms of what was accomplished and particularly rewarding because it was unexpected. The pundits before the season had us picked as last in the Big Ten East. We well exceeded those expectations. Coach Tucker and his team didn't listen to what the pundits said and had an amazing season. We're very fortunate we were able to make sure that we retained Mel Tucker as the coach.
“He's done a great job with recruiting. He's done an amazing job with the X's and O's, but he’s also been a prolific fundraiser. And that's helped bring new resources to a program that is the heart of what we do in Athletics because the revenue from football really provides the revenue to support other sports. Men's basketball and football are the two sports that provide the revenue that allows us to participate and be competitive in all our sports.”
MSU will provide a $1,500 bonus to most faculty and staff in January and has given the Spartan community the week off between Christmas and New Year’s.
“I'm glad we're able to do this bonus. And it's so well earned by everybody at the university. And we wanted to make it something that all faculty and staff were able to participate in because everybody has been affected by the pandemic, and everybody has had their work changed and had to do more during this time. There's no one who's escaped the impact of this.
“And I appreciate those who sacrificed some of their finances during these challenges. I appreciate those who were furloughed and have now come back. And we're glad to see you back again. But all this was so impactful to so many. So, our ability with some of the money we have in reserves to say how much we appreciate this is something that we're very proud of. Thank you so much for everything you do. We couldn't have done this the way we did without your total commitment to MSU and your willingness to really go above and beyond what would normally be expected to help keep this university running and to serve our students, who are so important to all of us.”
President Stanley wishes the entire Spartan community a safe and healthy holiday season.
“These are some of the most difficult times we've had in terms of our safety from illness and from the pandemic. So, I encourage everyone to do the things that will keep you and your family safe. There's nothing more important than that as we move forward. The theme next semester will be to continue what we've accomplished this semester. We'll be following Omicron very carefully. So, I urge people to stay tuned over the holidays in case we have announcements to make if there are changes we might need to make. But right now, I hope people rest and relax during these holidays. Use those three days to be with your family and celebrate everything we've accomplished and the fact that we continue to move MSU forward.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“Urology is a subspecialty,” says Khatiwoda. “It's a surgical subspecialty that focuses on the genital urinary systems and disorders of the genital urinary system. It’s essentially how you pee, how your kidneys work, your bladder, prostate in men, and some urethra and vaginal disorders in women.”
“My subspecialty is gynecology, and it's a blend of both urology and gynecology,” says Moyerbrailean. “Matter of fact, that's where it got its start. The two boards got together to make a discipline that just focuses on female pelvic floor disorders. In addition to problems with the bladder and the urethra, we also deal mostly with pelvic floor issues like prolapse, uterine prolapse, and bladder prolapse.”
“I'm a general adult urologist,” Khatiwoda says. “I see men and women and practice general urology. Kidney stones are a big part of it. Urinary disorders or what we call voiding dysfunction are a part of it. Incontinence in women or leakage of urine is a big part of it.
“When most people hear about urology, they usually think of men's health and men's issues. It's very nice to have someone who's female focused like Dr. Moyerbrailean. It brings a certain element to our practice that you don't always think about when you hear the word urology. In terms of practice philosophy, it's about providing something to the community that many may not even realize is available. Urology is a personal subspecialty. You're dealing with a lot of things that people aren’t always very forthcoming about. At MSU Urology, we're here to provide excellent care to the community and provide urologic care that's at the top of the technological forefront. For me personally, it's about building relationships with people and helping them open up about something that's quite personal that they may be embarrassed to talk about otherwise.”
What symptoms would someone experience that would lead them to seek out a urologist?
“In general, we see men and women who have urinary issues,” says Khatiwoda. “Are you peeing too much? Are you not peeing enough? Are you leaking when you shouldn't be? Are you not able to empty when you should be? And we see anyone who sees blood in the urine, anyone with a history of kidney stones, and anyone who has infections more frequently than they should. And there are things that they may not be aware of that their primary doctor would figure out, like is there a growth somewhere in one of the genital urinary organs, the kidneys, the bladder, the penis, or the urethra?”
“I don't treat men,” Moyerbrailean says. “My training was based in obstetrics and gynecology and branched out into urogynecology. But we also do similar treatments with women, especially women with overactive bladder. That's probably one of the biggest things we see and one of the areas that women tend not to want to come in to see the doctor about or are embarrassed to talk about. But it is so common. Up to 80 percent of women by the age 80 have an overactive bladder. They just feel like they have to go all the time. And a lot of times their friends are telling them that there's just nothing they can do about it. That's wrong. There are plenty of things that can be done that can actually help alleviate some of those symptoms. Where I differ from my urologic counterparts is I deal a lot more with pelvic floor problems, mostly the prolapse issues.
“Some would say it's a result of childbirth. And most women are afraid to come in and have that treated figuring that surgery is the only thing that can be done when that's not accurate either. That's one of the big myths in this field, and there are things you could do that actually help alleviate those symptoms.”
Say more about how you treat urologic disease.
“Urology is unique in that while it's a surgical subspecialty, we actually do a lot of nonsurgical treatments,” continues Khatiwoda. “For most of the benign disorders - so obviously not cancer, but non-cancerous disorders - the first step is very basic and it's usually behavioral therapy. There are medications and then typically the last step tends to be surgery. There are surgical treatments for almost every disorder that a patient might come to see us for. We tend to start very basic and then move up from there.”
“Sometimes people think all we want to do is perform surgery,” Moyerbrailean adds. “The majority of the time we're not doing surgery; we're actually treating the person first and finding out what exactly they need. What are their goals? We figure that out at the very first visit. Where are they in their care and what do they want? We give them the options and let them choose.”
Are there particular challenges in treating urologic diseases? And is there research or new treatments on the horizon you’re excited about?
“Sometimes patients come to us with an expectation that we can't always meet,” Khatiwoda continues. “Let's say you have someone who has had a problem for 20 years and they finally can come and see a urologist. We do get some patients who expect immediate and 100 percent change. It's almost impossible to take a problem that's been there for 20 years and fix it in 20 minutes. But the nice thing is, you don't have to see a urologist once in your life.
“It's usually a lifelong relationship with your urologist. And there really is a certain trial and error that comes with a lot of the benign urology issues where you try something and if it doesn't work, then we reevaluate you in the clinic and then we try something else and ultimately look for a goal that improves your quality of life. You may never be how you were when you were 18 or 20, but we can certainly get you to a point where you're more comfortable and you're happier with your symptoms than you were when you came in.”
“We treat on a bother-most system where we go after what bothers you the most and try to help you in that respect,” continues Moyerbrailean. “Some things we can't cure. We are trying, and there’s always new research coming out. We're always talking about new things. But that's really where our challenge is. Some of our disorders are not curable, but they are certainly treatable. And we've got a lot of treatments to offer.”
“I feel like there's always something new,” Khatiwoda says. “We really are living in an exciting time of medicine where there is always something new. And from a general urology standpoint, the way we look for cancers, especially prostate cancer in men, has really changed the game. First, it used to just be a doctor felt your prostate and if there was something abnormal, they did a biopsy. Then it was the PSA lab test. Now we're at a point where we can do MRIs of the prostate and really pinpoint specific areas that need to be biopsied. Even since I graduated residency in 2018, there has been a huge shift in how we look at men and men's health and prostate cancer. So, yes, it seems like there's always something new every day. And it's a very exciting time to be a urologist.”
“Again, my specific focus is pelvic floor disorder,” says Moyerbrailean. “It's basically weakened tissue in the female pelvis. There's a lot of work being done now in stem cell research trying to figure out ways to improve the tissue quality. If we could improve tissue, then we would have a better chance at successfully fixing it or maybe preventing it all together.”
Is urologic disease hereditary, environmental, or a combination? Can we avoid some or all of it with a healthier life?
“It’s definitely a combination,” says Khatiwoda. “There are some things that genetics can be blamed for. Kidney stones are one of those. But at the same time, if you have a genetic predilection but you also don't drink any water, your risk is way higher than if you're someone who is well hydrated. Genetics are big. So are your environmental factors and the decisions you make about your health.”
“We go back and forth about that in the research world as far as the pelvic floor and whether or not that's something that's hereditary or not,” says Moyerbrailean. “We're still looking for answers in that respect. Smoking and occupations that are very strenuous are much more likely to lead to disorders. You can make a difference by changing your health and lifestyles.”
Are there some facts about urology you'd like to reinforce or some myths you often hear that you'd like to dispel?
“I have one that really gets my goat,” continues Khatiwoda. “It comes from anyone who has had a kidney stone and passed it on their own without seeing a urologist. They always come in and they say, ‘I have not had any calcium. I don't drink any milk. I gave up all dairy.’ That is not a good thing to do. It's typically not calcium that's the problem. It's other things in your diet. I mentioned a lack of hydration. It's usually not drinking enough water or other food issues.
“There are things called oxalates that are found in a variety of foods, even in foods we think are healthy, that can contribute to stone formation. The first thing I tell my patients, especially post-menopausal women who seem to get stones, is to make sure they get the amount of calcium that they need to get. That means the normal dietary recommendation because otherwise you're going to start having trouble with osteoporosis, and it’s probably not going to make your stone risk any better. That is something that I think people don't have a great understanding of because they think stones are made of calcium. They decide to cut out all calcium. But that's usually not what you need to do to make your situation better.”
“I think the biggest myth in my field is that surgery is the only possible option, and that's not true,” says Moyerbrailean. “As a matter of fact, we probably do nonsurgical therapy for eight out of every nine patients who come to us with some type of a pelvic floor disorder to give them adequate relief. One in five women actually in their lifetime will end up having surgery or some type of a treatment for either urinary incontinence or prolapse of some sort.”
“If you're concerned about a problem with your bladder or you've got a problem with your bowels, seek out your family doctor and talk to them. If they're not comfortable taking care of you, MSU Urology is here. We can definitely take them on and that's what we do. We do it day in and day out. It's pretty straightforward for us and we do everything we can to make our patients comfortable.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Under the direction of Chief Lynch and with the approval of MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D., the focus and structure of the MSU Department of Police and Public Safety has been adjusted to better represent the priorities of the Spartan community. The reorganization took effect July 1 and places greater emphasis on community engagement, diversity, equity, and inclusion, relationship violence and sexual misconduct, professional standards and public integrity, and behavioral support services.
As chief of staff, Green is responsible for accreditation, internal affairs, recruiting, budget, finance, human resources, and strategic planning. In addition, Green will oversee DEI initiatives, including programming, training, and education.
“I am an alumnus,” says Green. “I went to graduate school here at the School of Criminal Justice. I’ve always hoped to reconnect with MSU at some point in my career, and I’ve always been interested in university policing. One of the reasons I went back to grad school was because I liked the ability to be around different ideas and social identities and different understandings of the historical foundation of things and how things work. It was just a natural fit. This is an opportunity to grow and to further use a skillset I have from a municipal background and to bring that over to a university setting.”
What will your role entail? What will you be doing?
“One of the things I like about my role is that it’s fluid,” Green continues. “Understanding and leveraging what the university has to offer has been key for me. And particularly, one of the key documents that I was able to analyze early when I started here in July was the great work of MSU's 2030 Strategic Plan and its DEI plan, the Diversity Equity Inclusion Plan and Recommendation. So that's been key to me because we have been charged with making sure that DEI is a foundational piece of our police and public safety department. Making sure that we align ourselves, as a police department, with the university's mission is going to be key.”
Among Green’s priorities is working on the department’s accreditation, which he says “gives us an opportunity to examine and scan the department to determine and embrace our best practices and implement them. And accreditation gives us an annual review process so we're constantly reviewing those policies and procedures. And that's one thing I've learned throughout my history in policing is whatever the policy is today, it's going to change somewhere down the road. So, we must be constantly engaging and learning what's best for our university.
“Interacting with our community is vitally important. Every day, our police officers are trying to interact with our community in a way that builds trust and legitimizes our police department. We're trying to build on a great culture that historically has done a great job. We're trying to take it to the next level and make sure that we create a system of accountability and lean on our community. We're leveraging the resources of the university, too. There are some bright people at this university, and we want to make sure that they have an opportunity to engage with us and have a voice. As we build and incorporate them into our training, our policies, and our supervisory leadership training, we want to make sure that they have a vital role in that.
“And that includes a lot of the training that our officers must encounter to understand a diverse community. We must make sure that we have a multicultural competency when it comes to our police officers. They must understand as much as they can about social identities and the differences within our community. We can do that and be very transparent about it, which can help legitimize our police and public safety department.”
What are some challenges in reaching some of your goals and some opportunities in reaching some of them, too?
“I'm very optimistic,” Green says. “Learning some of the internal workings of the university has been key to understanding how the strategic plan was built, what was the foundation of it, and how we move forward. I have been listening and reading and understanding what our values are as a university. And when you look at the strategic plan, you can almost substitute the word police for the word university. I think the university's strategic plan has been key. There's tremendous opportunity and metrics that we can use to show that we are progressing in this foundational piece of establishing DEI in everything we do and becoming the excellent police department that we have been and continue to be.”
Chief Lynch talks about the Police and Public Safety Advisory Committee he has formed, and he describes the SafeMSU app.
“It's a large committee because I wanted to be inclusive,” says Lynch. “One of the primary reasons for this committee to exist is to hear from our community directly and regularly and not only in a time of critical incident or in a time when allegations are being made. This is a regular conversation. It also provides ownership. You heard Daryl mention the university's strategic plan. Our department is also creating a strategic plan, and this committee will have a regular voice in that. So, as we develop the plan, they will be actively engaged in it. We will hear directly from our community on a regular basis. It gives our community ownership and accountability. It lets them in. There's nothing behind the curtain that they won't be exposed to. They can be the perfect conduit from our department to the MSU community.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.
“Well, thank you so much, Russ. Happy holidays to you and everybody listening out there. And I hope it's a very restful and peaceful one for all of us.”
The most important thing we do at this university is educate our students. And Michigan State University's graduation rate is up for the seventh straight year. The rate for first time, full-time students entering MSU in 2015 increased from 81.3% last year to 82.1% this year. What's significant about that, and what does that six-year graduation rate indicate?
“It's very significant and something we really should celebrate on campus. It really represents the work of an extraordinary number of people who are very dedicated to seeing that number increase. And just to put it in perspective, even though that's 0.8% increase, that's about 53 students. That means there are 53 more students who graduated from MSU who wouldn't have graduated if they'd entered at another point in time who are going to get that MSU degree, go out into the world and make a difference and have lifetime earnings that are about a million dollars higher than students who don't complete a college degree.
“So, from the state's point of view and from a human endeavor and potential point of view, it's wonderful to get students through and help them graduate. We've had a very steady ascent on this. We do much better than would be anticipated in terms of our graduation rates. They’re higher than one might predict based on the GPAs and SATs and ACTs of students coming in. We make a point of really helping students get through. And I'm very excited about it. I think that's the good news. And we are seeing those increases for all students. So all of our students showed an increase in graduation rates. No students have been left behind.
“The one challenge we still have, and we talk about it a lot in our strategic plan, is to narrow gaps between groups. Because we still have groups, for example Pell eligible students, who are graduating at lower rates than non-Pell eligible students. So, we are now laser focused as an institution on narrowing those gaps while at the same time elevating everybody's success. But it just makes a huge difference. And I'm very grateful to all the people who put the hard work in, including the students, of course, who did that great work of continuing and succeeding.”
And sir, we're in the middle of a very enjoyable football season. Tom Izzo's got his group started. But there are some other things happening in our athletic department. The men's water polo club team won the men's collegiate club national championship.
“It's always busy over there and there are always exciting things happening. I'm proud that not only have we been competing, but we've been competing safely. And I just want to give a little shout out to the fans who've been coming to the football and basketball games and thank them for wearing their masks and really following our rules. We have not seen outbreaks of COVID associated with our sporting events. We want to keep that. So I encourage everybody to keep those masks on indoors. Those are our rules on campus. CDC now is advising people do that around the state. So I really appreciate people sticking with the safety. Because we want to be able to enjoy Tom Izzo. We want to be able to enjoy Suzy Merchant's team on the court. And of course we've had some amazing success in football. And I'm very excited about this game coming up on Saturday against Penn State, which will say a lot about our season and our bowl opportunities.
One of the fun parts of everybody coming back to campus is we've been able to experience Michigan State sports. And I do thank you again for reminding me of the tremendous success of our cross country team. Our women's soccer team has had a very good season. There's been a lot of success on the field and on the court. And as we just heard, in the classroom for MSU.”
And there is more support coming from our donors. You recently had the chance to thank Greg and Dawn Williams, who made a generous $10 million commitment for expansion and renovations to the Tom Izzo Football Building.
“And how fun it is to say that: the Tom Izzo Football Building? Everyone knows Coach Izzo is such an incredible fan of football. And of course, he's had great success in the basketball program, which other people have supported very much as well. Yeah, I really thank our donors. They've really been stepping up. I think we're going to set some records or come close to it in terms of athletic donations for this year. And again, I think people are really recognizing that sports are something that really unites the university and can bring us together in some very important ways.”
And to get a little bit more serious for a minute, sir, the October 29th campus disappearance of visiting student Brendan Santo gained widespread notice and led to questions and concerns from students and others in our community. MSU Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police Marlon Lynch and Senior Vice President for Student Life and Engagement Vennie Gore held a town hall recently, which can be viewed on the MSU Student Affairs and Services YouTube page. What came out of the town hall? And what would you like people to know right now about campus safety?
“My heart goes out to the family of Brandan and their efforts to return him. And our efforts to return him to the family have been paramount in our mind from the beginning. This is something where tremendous resources have been devoted both by the police on our campus and external support from other agencies like the FBI. People from Grand Valley have been coming to help. Citizens have been coming on weekends to look. There's been a concerted effort to find Brandan and return him. I think at this point in time, I want people to know that we believe the campus to be safe. There's no evidence that this was foul play and the law authorities have been very clear on this. We want to focus on returning him to his family right now but also be aware of ways in which we make campus more secure.
“One of the things that's brought up is the fact that we did have a camera that wasn't working at Yakeley Hall at the time. That's been reported. We wanted to make sure that we now have spares available and can really deal with the cameras that are out of service in a more rapid way. As everyone has learned, we're adding 300 additional cameras to the campus to help improve security there. But overall, I believe it is a safe campus. There are things we should do and continue to work for continuous improvement in that area. It's very important to us going forward.”
President Stanley, what are the plans related to COVID for next semester?
“It would be nice if I could tell you that COVID was going away, and I thought we'd have no cases coming into spring. But this is a disease that continues to be resilient, if you will, in terms of its ability to stay among us. Part of that is based on vaccination. Part of it is based on some of the characteristics in the variants that have made it more difficult to control spread. Having said that, I think the things we've been doing on campus have been very successful. We've had a slight uptick in cases that took place that began about a month ago, but they have leveled off. While at the same time, the state of Michigan and Ingham County have really shot up significantly. Because of our high vaccination rates, about 90 percent of our population now is vaccinated - students and faculty and staff.
“Because of these vaccination rates, we've had fewer outbreaks and less spread. And so fewer cases per population than we're seeing in Ingham County or the state. That's no reason for us to celebrate because any cases we have, we're still concerned about. But it means the things we've been doing like the mandatory vaccination and mask wearing have made a difference.
“The state Department of Health and Human Services is now recommending people wear a mask indoors in the state of Michigan. And I would encourage listeners to do that. I think that's one way to keep yourself safer is to wear a mask when you enter stores or enter public businesses, restaurants, and so on, unless you're eating. These are all ways in which we can stop the spread.
“I'm concerned about this recent spread. We plan to continue the same measures we've been doing now into the spring. That's our plan right now. If things change and numbers were to get better, we're always ready to adjust. And it's easier to adjust, though, to loosen some of these restrictions than it is to continuously start and stop and restart them. And so, we'll be looking very carefully at what's happening. We'll want to make sure that everybody who comes in as a student is vaccinated. So the vaccine mandate applies to new students who come in the spring. So we want to make sure they're vaccinated and we will be asking them to attest to that. Employees will probably be dealing with the rules that have come down from the White House, in terms of requiring employees and staff to be vaccinated as part of the vaccine mandate there. So we'll want to make sure everybody's in compliance with that. But I'm looking forward to a great spring. I think we've had a very successful fall so far. And I think it's because people have been doing what is necessary to keep us here.”
You recently participated in a campus symposium framing an exciting new initiative to integrate ethical consideration more thoroughly into MSU's curriculum, research, and character of the university community. What's striking you about this? What's important here?
“It's really critical. And I think as we look at our country and we look at our world right now, ethics become increasingly important. There are so many challenges for behavior that were faced every day. Times when integrity becomes important, because there are so many ways in which one can go down paths of lesser integrity or make easy choices, as opposed to sometimes what's more difficult in principle. So having students educated on this idea of ethics is important, whether they're in our College of Law, College of Business, our College of Arts and Letters, or any of our colleges. And I point out those three because those three deans have been actively involved in putting this program together. But whatever college we're in, we want people to behave ethically and understand what that means and what the responsibilities are of citizenship. This is important for us.
“We've been very fortunate to have some donors who share that vision of having ethics more incorporated. We talk in our strategic plan about our students learning experientially coupled with ethics. We think is a way in which we can really have students who are not only ready to face the world, but ready to do it in an ethical way. So we're excited about this. We appreciate the donors who've stepped in to help us do this. That symposium was very exciting. We're working towards forming an institute. And this is going to be, I think, an important role for my office as well as for the provost and those deans. I mentioned faculty who've been very involved in this in putting this all together as an academic enterprise, but one that will also go into our administrative units, as well, as we think about the ethics involved in compliance and things we need to do on campus every day.”
This month, we introduced an exciting new component to our connected campus mobility infrastructure, a 22-passenger electric autonomous bus now undergoing rigorous safety and operational testing. It's one of the largest electronic autonomous transit vehicles on United States roads. Not only will the electric bus add to the ways we're reducing MSU's environmental impact and meeting our sustainability goals, but it will also allow MSU researchers to develop a variety of real-world data to advance our already impressive, advanced mobility capabilities. The new bus is expected to enter service sometime next year. It will connect the MSU Auditorium to MSU commuter lot number 89 at Farm Lane and Mount Hope, where you can also find part of the largest solar carport array in North America. The bus must be fun. I'm sure you've had a ride in it. Talk about this program.
“What a great way to tie it together to our commitment to sustainability and the solar array that we have in the parking lot. And then of course this wonderful bus that really is autonomous in terms of its ability to get from that parking area to the auditorium site and to navigate on our regular roads. I did have a chance to ride it. It's tremendously amazing to see this thing turn, stop, detect pedestrians, and detect cars in front of it. It’s still got a few things to work through. And I saw that when I went on the ride. It's not perfect, but it is making great progress. They're working through it on these roads at nighttime when there's very little density of students and other traffic. They're working to make sure it's going to work perfectly at the time we put it in service. And that's what we expect of it. Of course, there's a driver there who can override the system and take control if necessary, and that's important as well.
“It's really a look at the future. I think autonomous vehicles, particularly for this sort of thing, are going to be very important, whether they're this size or larger or smaller. I'm not sure. The market will determine that, but this is a nice size to practice on, if you will, with about a 22-passenger capacity. It’s good enough to make a difference in terms of transportation needs, but not so large that it becomes more cumbersome to manage and take care of. It's a great starting point and I really appreciate the opportunity to work with our partners in this and to work with many colleges on campus who have interest in this because the autonomous vehicle issue is complicated.
“Now, obviously you need the technology. You need the LIDAR and radar, the infrared that allows you to detect and drive safely, and the artificial intelligence that allows it to learn a route and change how it behaves on the route. Those are critical components, as well. The sensors that are necessary to get data on its performance are critical, too. And that all comes from stars in engineering and computer sciences who do a lot of work there.
“At the same time, though, there are a lot of social issues as well. How do you utilize this best? What are the parts in terms of city planning? Where are the places where it makes the most sense to use it? And liability issues. Who's liable for this vehicle if it's running? Is it the manufacturer? Is it the person who's operating it? Who's liable if there are accidents involving it? Getting our legal scholars involved in this area and understanding this is important as well. So it's exciting, but it also raises some questions that I think people need to answer and understand. It’s wonderful to be at the cutting edge of this.”
Talking with President Stanley on MSU Today. And sir, you attended the recent Grand Awards gala that annually honors Spartans whose contributions to their communities, companies, and the university have been especially impactful. It's kind of like student success leads to alumni success, doesn't it? Almost a circle of life kind of thing.
“Again, Russ, you've really hit the nail on the head. You've phrased it really well. It's really nice for us to think about this in terms of these amazing students we graduate. But that's just the beginning, obviously. And then the potential ahead of them and the lives they live turn out to reflect on MSU in very positive ways. It was a remarkable evening for me to have a chance to listen to these incredibly accomplished alums. And some were not alums but have given back so much to Michigan State University. It was great to hear their stories and what they've done and what they've accomplished. And again, their modesty notwithstanding, these are some amazing people who've done some incredible things. And I'm not going to single any one person out because it wouldn't be fair to the others I heard. But it was just an array of talent and accomplishment and a wonderful evening where we had a chance to celebrate them and their accomplishments and to think about, again, what great things our students are going to do in the future.”
You again recently witnessed how much MSU faculty and staff love and support MSU at the annual Thanks for Giving lunch. 5,259 faculty, staff, and retiree donors collectively contributed $21 million to the university and students in the last fiscal year. These truly impressive figures put MSU second in the Big Ten and seventh among the 66 members of the prestigious Association of American Universities in employee and retiree giving.
“It's incredible. The people who work at MSU really give so much beyond the hours they put in every day in the office. They really are committed to this institution and what it stands for. Nothing speaks more to a donor, in my view, than people who work at the institution, who are paid by the institution, who then want to give back to the institution. Because here you are working every day giving your all, and then you still are giving part of that treasure you've earned back to the institution because you care about it and what it's doing.
“When I talk to donors, they’re always very impressed when I cite these numbers. Because again, it means they're investing in something that the people who work at MSU are willing to invest in as well. So I'm very grateful to what the faculty and staff have given. I thank them for their contributions to the university and I hope they continue to support those elements at the university they believe make a difference. So, whether it's student success, scholarships, faculty doing their amazing work, infrastructure to build support for many - whatever the gift is - it makes a direct difference in someone's life. And we very much appreciate it.”
Tuesday, November 30th is Giving Tuesday. Should anyone want to give to this great place, givingto.msu.edu is the place. And sir as we wrap up do you have some holiday thoughts for Spartans, or do you care to share how the Stanley family will enjoy the next few weeks?
“The Stanleys will be meeting at the location of one of my daughters. We will have everybody in the family together except for my oldest daughter, who will be celebrating with her fiancé’s family. But everybody else will be there together. And we're looking forward to a very restful and relaxing Thanksgiving and a chance to get together again and see each other. It's been a while since we had the whole group together. And it's such an important holiday in terms of getting together. And I hope everyone has a chance to experience it and experience it safely.”
As you look ahead to 2022, what are you thinking about?
“Well, FRIB opening is going to be extraordinary. And I think the chance to get this user facility, which is already in demand by hundreds of scientists around the world, actually running and doing experiments is going to be, I think, transformative. I also look forward to continuing our work in student success. We've made some progress in this. Now that we have the strategic plan, we will begin to implement that plan and begin the hard work of taking these exciting ideas we have and turn them into faculty recruitment programs. There will be work in DEI that will change the composition of our faculty and staff and students. There is hard work ahead for us, but I see much more opportunity to implement coming in 2022.”
That's Michigan State University president, Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. All he's working on for us is available at president.msu.edu. And you can follow along on Instagram @msupresstanley.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Tyler grew up in Philadelphia. She first learned about MSU when she was an undergrad at Penn State.
“I came to MSU because I was looking for a grad program that really centered all my interests,” says Tyler. “At the time I was pursuing agrarian or agricultural literacies among inner-city and urban youth. And I also was really interested in Black farmers. I did a summer program for undergraduate students at MSU that trained you how to do research and navigate the graduate school process. I came to Michigan State for the summer prior to graduating Penn State.
“MSU was a really good fit for me based on the curriculum of the department. And I had relationships with the faculty members and I was able to get funding for my graduate program. And so it was just a really good fit. Growing up in inner-city Philadelphia, I would consider myself to not be the prototypical urban child. I was very much into nature. I loved going to summer camp. I was that child who would run off into the forest to be with the trees instead of going to play basketball or jump rope or something like that. I was always drawn to the natural environment around me, hugging trees, digging in soil for worms, and studying the cycles of the moon. And I just stayed with that passion. I knew I wanted to do something related to food and the natural environment because that was my passion.”
Tyler says coming to MSU was a transition “because I jumped into the water by working with farmers. I wasn't familiar with agriculture much growing up in the city. I didn't grow up on a farm. I didn't grow up with a garden in my yard. It was a really new experience that changed my life for the better from so many angles.”
Part of what inspired her to learn more about where our food comes from was the birth of her daughter.
“Being a person of color, particularly a Black woman in the agricultural sector, I was usually the only person of color and or the only woman of color in my agricultural classes. And I always wondered why and felt ostracized and out of place sometimes. I was always curious as to why people who looked like me or people who shared my cultural background were not interested in the same things that I was interested in, that is as an agricultural major and someone who was just really interested in the natural environment generally.
“I was also really drawn to wanting to know more about where our food comes from. Because at the time I was a new mother. I wanted my daughter to have a more holistic lifestyle, particularly around the foods that we were eating because I grew up eating a lot of crappy foods. I wanted better for her. And so I started to learn how to grow my own food and just wanted to know more about the food system generally and why things were the way they were. And so I began to ask questions and one of my mentors told me that I should go to grad school because they didn't have answers to my questions and I needed to do research to get those answers. So that's what I did.”
Tyler is president of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.
“DBCFSN is the acronym. The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network is a nonprofit organization that has the mission to build self-reliance, food security, food justice, and more importantly, food sovereignty in Detroit's Black community by influencing public policy, engaging in urban agriculture, promoting healthy eating, and encouraging cooperative buying and directing youth towards careers in food related fields. We have the vision of advancing the movement towards food sovereignty throughout the entire African diaspora, not just for Black Detroiters. Because we understand that food is dignity. Healthy food is dignity and access to fresh, affordable, healthy, culturally appropriate food is a human right, which does not currently exist for everyone on this planet. And so that's what we're working towards.”
How do you define food sovereignty?
“Food sovereignty is the self-determining right to have a say in how your food is produced, how it is distributed, sold, and consumed, and even recycled back into the production process. It's really about a transference of power from the corporate food actors that dominate our food system to the people who are mostly the consumers of the food system and are generally most affected by food inequities and inequalities. We're demanding a complete transfer of power where we can have more say over our soil, our water, our air systems, and how that impacts us from a health standpoint. We want more control over these systems because seeds, water, soil, and ultimately the food that comes out of those three things intersecting is the essence of life. And currently there's a monopoly over food production, distribution, and consumption. And that's highly unethical. Food sovereignty is about changing that system where the people are in control and not corporate food actors.
“Food justice is a similar concept and is focused on fresh, affordable, healthy, culturally appropriate access to food in the way that we would like to consume it and in the way that we would like to produce it. Food sovereignty takes food justice a bit further because it's about controlling those systems that bring the food forth. They're very similar terms, but food sovereignty is often considered to be a more radical orientation where it's about community ownership of the food system. I don't want to minimize it, but it's a concept and a practice that centers around generally getting better quality food that's self-identified for the people who are consuming it.”
Tell me more about your work in Detroit.
“I'm with the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund that is subsidiary organization of Keep Growing Detroit. We are a coalition of three long-standing Detroit urban farming organizations with a collective mission to rebuild intergenerational land ownership for Black farmers in Detroit. And those three organizations are the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network that I'm currently very involved in, the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, and Keep Growing Detroit. We are a coalition of organizations that are committed to being in right relationship with the land. And we believe in the transformation of our communities through food sovereignty and the revitalization of Detroit's agricultural landscape. We honorably steward this fund to support Detroit's Black farmers in land acquisitions and general farm support. We believe that land ownership is a huge strategic tool in building intergenerational wealth, which a lot of Black Detroiters don't have.”
What's the state of, and potential for, urban farming in Detroit?
“Detroit is often considered to be the mecca of urban agriculture, and I didn't really know that prior to moving here to Michigan from Pennsylvania. And it was just, I guess, the divine flow of things that I ended up where I was supposed to be. Because when I would first come to Detroit and visit for the day coming down from campus, I used to be in such awe of so much agricultural activity happening everywhere in the city. There's such a wealth of vacant land available.
“People are growing in their backyards and their front yards and their vacant lots next to their houses and next to their businesses and even hydroponics and aquaponics in abandoned buildings. There's just so much energy around food production and growing your own food as a political power tool and taking back our voices and our power within the food system. We’re planting seeds and nourishing them through production and cleansing the water and air in the process. And we’re rebuilding our top soil that corporate agriculture has decimated over the course of a few decades.
“Urban agriculture in Detroit represents a really vibrant movement of people, grassroots organizations, and just general everyday people coming together to build a better reality in the face of so much blight and devastation that the city was experiencing.”
Can there be enough urban farming in Detroit to feed significant pockets of the community?
“Yes, that is a desirable vision for many of us in Detroit. We would like to have self-sufficient and self-reliant communities where we are growing as much of our own food as possible. Of course, everything doesn't grow here in Michigan. So that's an obvious challenge. However, we do want to grow what we can, even if it's all the tomatoes that we can eat for the season and all the leafy greens, all the onions, garlic, and things that are more commonly grown here that are common staples in our diet. We believe that is possible, and that is what we're actively working towards every day. Detroit is a metropolitan area that's unlike many metropolitan areas where there are huge swaths of vacant land available.”
From a 30,000-foot perspective, Dr. Tyler, is the world up to feeding its growing population?
“A recent report by the Food and Agricultural Organization, or the FAO of the United Nations, states that by 2021, 30 percent of the world's population, or about 2.3 billion people, will not have access to adequate food. And I wholeheartedly believe that that's not because of a food shortage. It's because of the political policies that are in place that restrict food access for many people, particularly poor people, women, and people of color. Feeding people is political, just like growing food is political. So we have more than enough food. The world grows, I think, three to five times enough food to feed the entire world over and over and over again. The corporate monopoly over the food system causes hunger and poverty. I believe that there's enough land and resources to feed the world. Will the monopoly that has a choke hold on the food system be relinquished enough so that that can happen?”
How does climate change impact the situation?
“Again, because of the corporate monopoly of the food system, our land and water and air supply are at very dangerous toxic levels because of the complete raping of the land and resources and just putting profits over people at every sector of the food system and the environmental system generally, which is causing severe climate change on a global level. And it just so happens that those who are most affected are those who are growing much of the world's food. Small scale farmers around the world grow 80 percent of the world's food, according to certain sources. Yet we have the least amount of power in the food system. And those small-scale farmers who are growing most of the world's food are using what we consider to be agroecological growing methods where we grow in communion with Mother Nature. We grow in communion with the natural environment, and we don't use a lot of harmful growing strategies like over-tilling, pesticides, monocropping, etc.
“We know that if we don't shift our growing methods rapidly within the next 10 to 15 years, there will be no more topsoil left. Topsoil is the quintessential ingredient in growing rich, nutritionally dense foods. Climate change intersects with food sovereignty and the food system generally. We know that industrial agriculture is a main driver of carbon pollution in our environment. They're a main contributor to climate change. The only way to change that is if we have a complete transference of power from corporations to people who are growing most of the world's food.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“I've been working in gastroenterology for over 20 years,” says Kerschen. “I've been in the mid-Michigan area at different practices. I've actually worked for MSU since 1999. MSU Health Care approached me about starting a practice here at MSU in gastroenterology and we look forward to getting that practice up and running.”
“I've been in practice almost 20 years and I've worked with Cathy and Maria for all of that time in some way, shape, or form,” adds Oliveri-LePain. “I'm a graduate of the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, so it's nice to be back where I started.”
“I grew up in the East Lansing and Grand Ledge area, so I know this area well,” Reed says. “I also have worked with Dr. LePain and Dr. Kerschen since 2001. I obtained my undergraduate degree from Michigan State and then went to PA school in Miami, Florida. I'm grateful to be back in the East Lansing area working with these truly great physicians to help satisfy the needs of the East Lansing community.”
So, talk a little bit about why the new practice and you're coming together. What's the goal, the mission?
“The three of us all share the same philosophical goal of wanting a patient-centric community practice where we can take care of the needs of all the people in the Lansing and East Lansing area and some of the outlying areas,” Oliveri-LePain continues. “We’re interested in outreach by helping part of the community that doesn't have the best access to healthcare. Today, nobody should be dying from something like colon cancer. We really want to help the community and build a strong program.”
What is gastroenterology?
“Gastroenterology is the specialty of treating digestive diseases,” Kerschen continues. “We like to say we cover everything from the mouth down to the anus and everything in between. Some of the most common conditions we take care of are colon disorders. Colon cancer screening is something that keeps us busy. We also take care of inflammatory bowel diseases and irritable bowel syndrome. Then we take care of esophageal diseases like acid reflux and peptic ulcer disease. We also cover a variety of liver diseases along with pancreas and gall bladder diseases. We treat a wide range of patients, but we are primarily adult gastroenterologists, so we see patients 18 years and older.”
Who should see you? What symptoms would someone be experiencing to cause them to reach out?
“There are a wide range of symptoms,” says Oliveri-LePain. “You can experience anything from abdominal pain, heartburn symptoms, diarrhea, constipation, and bloating. And sometimes the symptoms are not so obvious, and a lot of symptoms overlap. You can have minor symptoms that can be a symptom of something more serious, something like Crohn's or colitis or something like irritable bowel syndrome where you can have similar symptoms. Treatments are very different though, and they can affect all ages of men and women.”
What is treatment like and what are some of the challenges involved?
“Some of the challenges are environmental like what we eat and the stressors we're under,” Reed says. “We've all been through a lot of stress with COVID, and we try to treat our patients from a holistic approach making sure that they're getting the right nutrition and getting their exercise every day. Medication treatments are also available. We partner with Henry Ford and we're hoping to tap into a lot of research in conjunction with MSU to provide treatments for our patients that might not otherwise be available.”
Is diet the key contributing factor for someone to get a GI disease? Is it hereditary? Why would someone need to see you?
“Every disease entity has a different etiology or risk factors that make it better or worse,” continues Kerschen. “So, in some of our diseases, diet and exercise and mental health make a difference on how well the patient responds. Most colon cancers are sporadic. However, there is an increased risk if you have a family history. So, there can be a genetic link. Some of the liver diseases that we cover have some genetic links, so we'd be more likely to screen patients for certain liver diseases such as hemochromatosis. But a lot of liver diseases are due to risk factors like hepatitis C. If you had a blood transfusion years ago or if you're an IV drug user, that increases your risk. So, we would look at those risk factors for patients. It really depends on what disease we're talking about within the GI system.”
Do patients most often start with their primary care physician and then get referred to you?
“Yes,” says Oliveri-LePain. “The majority of people start out with their primary care physician and then if it gets to a point where they've exhausted their evaluation, they are referred to us. If they need a procedure, they would be referred to us as well.”
Is there some exciting research happening or some new treatments on the horizon that have you excited about treating GI better?
“There are a couple things,” says Kerschen. “In the liver world, there's a lot of research right now on fatty liver, which is a big issue in our society right now. It’s linked with other disease such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity. So, liver disease can be linked with that. Right now, all we have is lifestyle changes to help treat it, but there is a lot of research right now going on about different medications that might help with fatty liver. My anticipation would be in the next 10 years that we may have more treatment options for people with fatty liver.
“There's always research going on in a variety of diseases in gastroenterology. Inflammatory bowel disease has something interesting and exciting that they're working on in the research realm. Hopefully again, through our partnership with Henry Ford Hospital, we'll be able to get involved in some of the clinical research.”
Talk about the excitement of coming together and doing what you love to do under the auspices of MSU Health Care.
“To me, this is a perfect union of the three of us because we do know each other so well,” says Oliveri-LePain. “We know how we work philosophically. We are very similar in how we treat our patients. We're going to be able to bring a lot of positive care to the community and to MSU.
“It's important that patients always feel that they're being heard. A lot of patients are tired of the cattle philosophy where they're being herded in and out and they're not really listened to or paid attention to. We think it's important that when patients come in that they're heard and that their concerns are heard and that they're taken seriously. Every patient should know that they're the most important patient at that time. That's really important.”
What would you like our listeners to know about GI diseases and how you can help them?
“One thing that we've seen over the last few years is improvement in our treatment of hepatitis C. Previously when I first started practice, the treatments for hepatitis C were very intense and the success rate was only about 50 percent. Now over the last several years, our treatment success rate is about 96 percent. For patients who may have had hepatitis C for last 30 or 40 years or maybe don't even know they have hepatitis C, the cure rate is phenomenal right now. The treatments are much shorter in duration and the side effects are very minimal. For people who years ago may have had hepatitis C that progressed to cirrhosis and maybe even liver cancer, we don't have that anymore. We would like to be able to have a hepatitis C clinic here in East Lansing at MSU to help those patients.”
“We'd like patients to know that there are a wide variety of GI symptoms that they might be suffering with at home that they don't realize that there's something that can be done about it,” Kerschen says. “I would encourage patients to talk to their primary care physicians because a lot of times there are things that the primary care physician can do for them that will help alleviate it. But when they work with their primary care physician and find that they're still having issues, that's when they'll come to us, and we'll work further to try to figure out what's going on. Particularly in this day of COVID where people aren't asking for help as much for a variety of reasons, we want patients to get back in with their doctors and start talking to them about some of the things that are going on. Then if they need specialists like us, we're now here in the community and we can help work with them and work with their primary care physician to try to improve their symptoms.”
Can you elaborate a little bit more on those symptoms?
“That's a challenging question because depending on what the issue is, you can have minor symptoms like a little bit of belly discomfort or heartburn,” continues Oliveri-LePain. “For people who wake up in the middle of the night with acid issues or a hard time swallowing, it could be something minor like heartburn. Other symptoms are abdominal pain, which can be again from your ribcage all the way down, and diarrhea or constipation. No symptoms should be ignored. So again, start with the primary care physician and then come to us if things don't get resolved.”
“An important part of the gastroenterology practice is that we do endoscopy,” Kerschen adds. “As physicians, we spend a fair amount of time in the endoscopy unit. Right now we'll be working through McLaren Healthcare and Genesis Surgery Center, which is off Jolly Road. That is something that gets arranged through our practice with our schedulers, and we'll take care to make sure our patients are well cared for in those facilities.
“Patients can find us at the Hannah Technical Research Center on Hagadorn. We are on the second floor and our phone number is (517) 353-3102. We share a waiting room with the MSU Urology."
(Photo session followed COVID protocols. Subjects were unmasked briefly.)
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Patrick Forystek is the coordinator of the Student Veterans Resource Center. Emre Umucu is an assistant professor in the Office of Rehabilitation and Disability Studies in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education. And Matthew Ritt is an undergraduate student at MSU. He's studying building construction management.
“Veterans come back to school with a lot of things that make them a little bit different than your traditional students,” says Forystek. “They typically are more likely to have families, have a service-connected disability, be a little bit older, and live off campus. They're a lot like other non-traditional students but just have their own special twist on it. The center helps connect veterans to the resources they need. MSU already provides a lot of the resources that they might need, like the Student Parent Resource Center and Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities. We just help connect them to those resources.”
“I was sitting in class one day and a student who had worked at the center suggested I check it out,” says Ritt. “I had no idea it existed. I stopped by there and I could get snacks there, and I could do my printing there. If I had questions about any opportunities on campus or anything going on campus or any help I needed, I could ask Patrick or anyone else that was there.”
“I'm doing a lot of research on understanding how to improve college adjustment, wellbeing, life satisfaction, and academic achievement in student veterans and veterans with disabilities,” adds Umucu. “I reached out to Patrick to see if we could collaborate and do some meaningful research to help MSU student veterans improve their academic achievement.”
And what are you learning in your research so far that's helping you?
“If you look at student veterans with or without disabilities, those who experience disability in an academic setting have lower levels of wellbeing and quality of life,” Umucu continues. “We also found that if we help these student veterans to have better positive emotions, better relationships with peers and faculty, or a better sense of accomplishment, they actually get better GPA's. That’s meaningful because we can develop some interventions to test here at MSU and help these student veterans to increase their positive emotions, positive relationships, meaning in life, and sense of accomplishment. Then we can help them to have better academic achievements. That will also reduce dropout. When they have higher GPA's, they will be more motivated to stay in college and be more persistent in the academic settings. Then eventually they will get better jobs. My goal is to help student veterans with and without the disabilities at MSU.”
“At the center, our programming and everything we do throughout the year relies heavily on donor funding,” continues Forystek. “That's where we need the most support. That's the best way you can support us. Or just reach out to our office. Sometimes we have opportunities for people in the community to get involved in other ways that aren't just funding related. And we're always looking for new and exciting partnerships and ways to get our veterans engaged on campus and in the community.”
“Say hi to a veteran you see and ask how it’s going. Veterans and younger students have a lot they can share with each other,” says Ritt “There are so many veterans who have been in stressful environments that they know how to get through. When students have exams and they're stressed out, reach out to a veteran in your class and ask how they deal with stress. I've asked younger students for help when I've had problems with something like Google docs and new technology. But I also have had other students say ‘Hey, I'm trying to get through my homework, but I'm having trouble balancing all this.’ I’ve tried to help.”
“We’ve been preparing some programming for Veterans Day, and I discovered some nice data points I want to share,” says Forystek. “The graduation rate for veterans nationally is about 11 percent. There are some issues with that data; it's probably a little bit higher than that if we're being honest. But MSU comes in well over 70 percent with our student veterans. It's been like that for a while. Our student veterans come back, and they do a really great job. They're phenomenal students. And most of them are first generation college students doing this for the first time.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Russ, it's always a pleasure to be with you. And it's a very exciting weekend we have coming up. I was traveling out of state in Washington, D.C. the past couple of days and the first thing everyone wanted to talk to me about was the game. I didn't need to say more than that, just the game. People are excited about it. If you look at statistics, I can't remember the exact number, but roughly we have played Michigan let's say more than 100 times, and only four times have we both been ranked in the Top 10. The last time was 1964. This is really going to be a game that people are going to remember. And I hope it lives up to all our expectations and of course ends with a Spartan victory.
Russ White:
And sir, while we compete fiercely with Michigan on the fields and the courts, we cooperate with them through our University Research Corridor arrangement, which Wayne States is in too. We work together a lot for the betterment of the state and frankly the world.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
That's absolutely correct. And I think we really put differences aside that exist on the athletic field. And we work together on a lot on scientific collaborations. And there have been a lot of discussions about managing during difficult times like COVID 19. How do we do that? Both Mark and I were panelists in a meeting that dealt with this. And I think it's a great opportunity at multiple levels. I know the provost speaks to the provost at Michigan. We're in the same state. We have several of the same challenges and can talk to them about what they're doing and learn best practices from each other. I think it’s incredibly important and people might not believe it, but we do that.
Russ White:
You couldn't travel much during the pandemic, but lately you made a couple of trips, one to Detroit and one to Grand Rapids, where you really got to experience MSU’s land grant outreach mission in action.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
Oh, they were incredibly exciting. I had a chance to go to Detroit and see the new Apple Developer Academy, and this is in the old First National Bank building in downtown Detroit. It’s a partnership between Apple and Michigan State University. The Rocket Companies and Rock Ventures came on board to help us with the property and help make this building available to us as a donation from the Gilbert Family Foundation and the Rock Companies. It’s an incredible space and within it are some incredible people. This is the only one in the United States. There's one in Brazil, one in Italy, one in Indonesia, and we’re the first one in the United States. Apple picked MSU and they picked Detroit to place it.
Apple identifies individuals 18 or over who are interested in learning how to develop applications for the iOS system. They learn some very important foundations of coding and development. And then there are some who are selected to go on to the full program and that's another nine months, or it could be another nine months plus another year, depending on the option they take. And so, there are 100 students enrolled, I think in this first class, and they are so enthusiastic and excited. They're now in this the first nine months of training. We had a chance to watch them work with their mentors. I met a mother of six who has decided to do this so she can have a better life for her family, but also so she can talk technology with her children. I met an 18-year-old who is still in high school who arranged with his principal to be able to get mornings off so he could work at the Apple Developer Academy, and he wants to be a programmer someday.
And I met somebody who's been in the tech business but saw this as a way to give back to the community by developing apps that could help the community as he approaches retirement. It's a great program. We hope some of them may become MSU students as well, but it's something MSU can be proud of and it's very distinct.
Russ White:
And sir, in Grand Rapids, you took a tour of the Doug Meijer Medical Innovation Building. The facility is another anchor for the growing MSU Grand Rapids Innovation Park, the MSU Grand Rapids Research Center, and the continuing MSU transformation of the Medical Mile.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
One of the things that really attracted me to Michigan State University was the Grand Rapids initiatives that we have. The opportunity to really see how a public private partnership and the will and the commitment of leaders in the community can really help build an industry in a city was remarkable. And the Medical Mile represents this incredible coming together of people who care about their community and who want to see cutting edge medicine available to everyone and are willing to invest their time and energy in making it happen.
The Doug Meijer building is really the third building that MSU is involved in. We have the Secchia Center where we're housing our medical school students who train in Grand Rapids. And they really enjoy being there. I saw Spectrum Hospital where they have a chance to practice their residency programs and do their third- and fourth-year medical training. It’s an incredible facility with state-of-the-art equipment.
Then I had a chance to go back to our research building and see the amazing research that's going on there. And that was built in association with Spectrum Health, who were major contributors to it and helped build it. And then finally, the Doug Meijer Innovation Building really houses several things. It houses some offices for MSU people coming over from our East Lansing campus who are interested in bioinformatics and epidemiology based on big data. But the exciting thing probably for me is the theragnostic component. This was from Doug Meijer's experience in having treatment for his cancer in Germany. It’s an approach to cancer treatment that involves using isotopes that could both identify where the tumor is as well as kill the tumor cells and that was not available in the US. It's now going to be available in Grand Rapids in the State of Michigan for people who need it. And that's something I think we can all be excited about.
Russ White:
The university strategic plan is out. What are some things you want people to know about the strategic plan?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
The first thing to know is that it puts people first. The first category is student success. It's the idea of really helping everyone who comes to Michigan State University as a student to succeed, graduate, reach their goal, and reach their full potential. And it's about helping them, not only when they're in school, but when they're out of school as well, and really helping provide the networks and support they need to be successful in their chosen careers.
There's a lot of detail in that first section alone about plans we have and outcomes we want to see. We want to see an increase in graduation rates, and we want to see a reduction in gaps in graduation rates between groups.
And then the second piece is all about our faculty and staff. They are the heart and soul of the university. They're the continuing workers here. And the difference they make is extraordinary. So how do we make sure that their experience is a great experience? How do we make sure that this is a place where they want to come to work and that this is a place where they can reach their full potential and succeed in their careers? The provost and our HR group are spending a lot of time trying to figure out ways to make this happen. We’re going to do work in health, sustainability, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And last, but certainly not least, is our research and innovation. There are several plans on how to grow that anchored with the FRIB, our amazing plant scientists, and several other areas in our Extension program that allow us to do outreach and transform lives throughout the state of Michigan.
Russ White:
And enhancing arts and culture on campus are part of what you'd like to do. Part of that is the Billman Music Pavilion, which was opened recently. The facilities now have caught up with our world class College of Music.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
The Billman Music Pavilion is a beautiful building. We have the Minskoff Pavilion at Broad. We have the STEM Teaching and Learning Facility, which is incredible. And now with the Billman Pavilion, we have a building that does justice to our outstanding music program. The humanities and arts are so important to the university. They really give people ways to approach problems in different ways. They really facilitate creative thinking. Beauty is something we can all appreciate. And I think particularly when we've seen stressful times as we had recently, the arts really have an important healing and unifying effect. Arts are a critical part of the strategic plan, and we're working hard to find ways in which to integrate them into all the things we're doing on campus.
Russ White:
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. MSU Safe Place under the direction of former first lady Joanne McPherson was the nation's first on campus domestic violence shelter. It’s another resource where we try to help our Spartans and the community.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
It's a great resource that’s been making a difference in people’s lives for over 25 years. Peter and Joanne McPherson are to be congratulated for helping to make this possible. I think it's something people need to know more about. I think it's probably underutilized. I think there are probably people right now who are suffering from abuse who need help, and this is a place where you can get it. I encourage people to look at it, read about it, and find out about it online. In the community letter I sent there's a link that takes you to Safe Place. And I encourage people to go there and understand the kind of possibilities it can help with in a very, very difficult problem for our country that we need to do more on.
Russ White:
Another resource is our Student Veterans Resource Center.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
I can't say enough to thank our veterans for what they've done for our country. Both my uncle and my dad fought in World War II. I’m very proud of the contributions they made to the United States at that time. We don't want to forget about our veterans, and there are several programs that are available. We want to make sure they're taking full benefits out of them. One of the things that the Student Veterans Resource Center is designed to do is to help acquaint them with these services and the benefits they can get. There are also many opportunities to honor our military, our veterans, and military affiliated students at MSU, including supporting the center through scholarships. Veterans can be financially challenged even if they have benefits such as the GI bill. We'll continue to make it an emphasis in our plan going forward and part of the student success component.
Russ White:
And if I could ask you to put your infectious disease expert hat on for a moment, where are we with COVID, not only on campus, but around the world? What are you feeling good about and what still concerns you?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
I'm very pleased with how we're doing on campus right now. We've really seen a fall in the number of cases. We peaked in early September when we came back, and we've been going down steadily since then. I’m a little concerned about the state of Michigan. I haven't checked the numbers in the past few days while I've been away, but they've been doing kind of a slow but steady rise over the same time. The things we put in place are really having a positive effect. I think the vaccine is making a huge difference and is the reason why we're getting to such low numbers now. The last time I looked, we had only seven students in isolation. I don't know what the number is now, but there are 16,000 students living on campus so that tells you we really have things under control at this point.
Everybody stick with it. The mask wearing makes a difference. To anybody who's not been vaccinated, please get vaccinated because we really are serious about the mandates. They're really designed to protect the community, to allow us to come back safely, and to allow us to experience college the way we all want to experience college. And that's for faculty, staff, and students. What we're seeing is still the same thing as the pandemic progresses and that’s the Delta variant. And what we know is that the vaccine prevents and protects you against the Delta variant. And if you're vaccinated, you have an incredibly low chance of dying or being hospitalized from Delta. If you're not vaccinated, you are taking a chance.
Russ White:
What are you optimistic about? Is there something keeping you up at night? Preview for Spartans what's ahead the next couple of months.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
I worry a little bit about the winter because flu season is coming, and people will be inside more. Students and faculty and staff have taken advantage of being outdoors and we've had a fall that made it possible to do that. I encourage people to continue to try to do activities outside when they can. But I'm very optimistic about going forward and my prediction is that we're not going to experience the same winter as we did last year, which was a terrible winter for the United States. Over December, January, and February, about 250,000 lives were lost during that time. I think things are going to be better because we have more people vaccinated and people are following the rules about indoor masking.
I'm optimistic about our football team. I'm optimistic about our basketball team. I think we're going to see great things from the Spartans as we approach the end of the year. Everybody be safe, particularly this weekend. We're going to have a lot of folks here. We're going to be the center of the athletic universe on Saturday. So everybody be careful. Please take care of yourself and watch out for cars and pedestrians. Be careful and let’s practice moderation in everything we do.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Klemet recounts his career climbing the ladder in radio after graduating from MSU in 2007 to now returning home to lead the MAB. Before returning to Michigan, Klemet was the number two guy at the Indiana Broadcasters Association.
What attracted you to the MAB?
“At my core, I'm a broadcaster,” Klemet says. “I’ve loved it since I was five years old. I was listening to Ernie Harwell and George Blaha growing up. And those were my guys and I just fell in love with it. Being on air was great, but I got to see another side of it, which is fighting for broadcaster rights and helping the next generation and making sure that they're equipped in terms of support and connections that they can make. Associations play a huge part in doing that.
“Michigan does it about as well as you can do it in the country. There are 50 broadcaster associations across the country, and Michigan is one of the best. I give Karole White and her staff, I'm replacing Karole, a lot of credit for that. She's been doing this for a very long time and has been very innovative in how she's done things. So, to have that infrastructure in place and to build on a place that's already successful was incredibly attractive. Karole's been great in helping me in that transition.”
What is the Michigan Association of Broadcasters? What's the mission? What are some of the key issues you're working on?
“It's a 501 C (6), non-profit. And the mission of the MAB is to promote broadcasting and to work for our members. There are more than 300 TV and radio stations that are members of the MAB. The goal is to support the next generation, to get ahead of what is coming, and to be an advocate for our industry. There are a lot of challenges. We want to make sure that our members feel supported, that they have someone who's there to help them stay ahead of the trends, and to be a voice for them on a legislative level. And that's where the MAB really has its strength.”
What are some of the challenges and opportunities facing Michigan broadcasters and are they different for radio and TV?
“The main issues are retention and recruitment. There are many more media options for consumers even from when I was in school 15 or 16 years ago. And that landscape has changed. There are so many more options. When I was a freshman, I think is when Facebook started. And so, to think of just how that has completely shifted the entire dynamic of media is incredible.
“Attracting people to our industry is a challenge. We have a lot of opportunity there. But it's harder and harder to get younger people into broadcasting because they do have so many options, and I completely understand that. But I think there is real opportunity for us to connect with a new generation who may not have grown up changing the dial on a radio in their car. It's very conceivable that they're consuming radio in a very different way. Or they may not think to turn on Channel 7 to watch the nightly news. They are consuming news differently. And that's okay; that's completely fine. Things change, and the way we consume content evolves. That's fine. But I think it's very important for our industry to connect with those people and meet them where they are to keep our industry alive and strong.”
Do television and radio stations care how consumers get their content, or would they prefer it get consumed over the air? Should the MAB be called the Michigan Association of Content Deliverers?
“A couple weeks ago, I met with a young woman who’s in sales for a radio station. And I asked her if she listens to radio. She flat out said no. So, I asked her how she sells it then. She said, ‘I'm not selling radio, I'm selling content.’ I understand that, and that makes sense to me. You don't have to sell necessarily 95.5 on the FM dial. That's okay, but you can sell personalities. You can connect what we do as broadcasters in a very different way.
“It's important that we are flexible on meeting them there, while again, still maintaining our core. And just because we're trying to attract young people doesn't mean that we still don't have an audience base who did grow up with radio. We need to ensure that the content is strong and to ensure that the accessibility of radio and TV is easy. If that means that you're tuning it to your smart device, we need to be very adaptable in making sure that we're meeting people where they are.”
What are some short- and long-term goals you have as you get going at the MAB?
“In the short term, I really do want to make sure that we're making connections with the college students here at Michigan State's campus and across the state of college and universities because that's where the talent is. Ultimately, we're going to have to pass the torch. And so I want to make sure that they feel equipped and that they have the skills coming in. I'm not just talking about from an on-air standpoint. A huge gap and a huge priority for me is on the engineering side. If you go into any radio station or TV station, the average age is probably in the mid to upper fifties. And these are traditionally men that have been doing this for 30 years. And when you ask them, ‘How do you fix this?’ It's not in a handbook. It's in their brains because they just know how to do it.
“We need to find and train the next generation so when the current group of engineers retires and moves on, there has to be someone that they can help or that can step in for them. They need to think differently but still make sure that they're doing what is necessary to keep us on air. That is a real challenge but also a humongous opportunity. And these are very stable jobs. These are jobs where you can start and you can grow and you can be in this position for 10, 15, or 20 years. You can make a complete career out of. I think sharing that and sharing the opportunities with young people is very important. So, a short-term goal is to continue to make connections and recruit the next generation, but also to make sure that our members feel like they know what's coming.”
Klemet talks about the exciting ATSC 3.0 television technology and talks about why he chose MSU to attend college. And he describes how his time at MSU prepared him for where he is today. And he shares the names on his personal Mount Rushmore of Broadcasting. Ernie Harwell and George Blaha top the list. He also talks about Spartans in the media across the country who inspire him, some of whom were classmates. And he shares his advice for students who want to get into careers in broadcasting and communications.
“Don't be afraid to take the job that you're unsure of. I think it's better just to get your foot in the door and then figure it out. The plan that you have right now as a student is not what is likely going to happen. If you are the one percent for whom it all goes perfectly then good for you. But it likely won't. Be flexible and open to new opportunities. My former boss in Indiana, Dave Arland, gave me some great advice. He said, ‘Never turn down a job that you weren't offered.’ So, take some interviews and have that meeting with someone that you might have no idea what they're about or what they could do for you. Take the meeting and have conversations, meet people, extend your network as much as you possibly can because you don't know in 10 to 15 years where you may cross pass again.
“It’s important that people challenge themselves a little bit in stepping outside of a comfort zone. So again, you might have that plan that you want to be that young reporter who goes to ESPN, but you're not going to get that after your first year. But the steps that you take and the new things you try can ultimately get you there. Be patient as well. These things take time; careers take time. Be patient in getting to where you ultimately want to go.”
Klemet explains what “localism” is as a focus for radio and television broadcasters.
“You can pretty much get the national news from your pocket every day on your phone. You can find news content everywhere. A local perspective for broadcasters allows community voices to be heard. That is really where TV and radio are going. It's always been local, but I think hyper local is the future of our industry.
“The biggest focus for us is to create opportunities for students, whether it's through a scholarship program or career fairs or simply putting on events that connect students to broadcasters. That's where our opportunity lies. I know over the last five years we've given away about $150,000 worth of college scholarships to students at colleges and high schools. We're going to continue that and really put a focus on that because we want to make sure that the students who are coming out feel supported. And a financial burden is always a concern, especially from a broadcaster.
“The other thing is just to make sure that our industry feels strong and that it has a future. And it does. I am a huge proponent of TV and radio on a local level. We need to stay ahead of the trends and create programs that allow our members to feel like, ‘Okay, we can step into that next generation of whatever broadcasting looks like because we're hearing from the people who are making that happen.’ It's our job as the MAB to help connect our members to those trends and those decision makers.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get yours shows.
What is vascular disease?
“Most people are familiar with heart disease and with the consequences of blockages in the vessels that carry blood to and from the heart,” says Lin. “One of the most recognized vascular diseases is abdominal aortic aneurysm, which is an enlargement of a bulge that develops in a weakened area within the aorta in the abdomen. These pressures then generate with each heartbeat that pushes against the aneurysm and it tends to enlarge. If the aneurysm weakens it can rupture. Typically, we want to monitor it and repair it with surgery if it becomes large enough before it bursts.
“We also take care of carotid artery disease, which can cause stroke. Carotid disease occurs when the main blood vessels to the brain develop plaque or hardening of the artery. These build up then can become very severe and lead to stroke, which damages part of the brain. In fact, 80 percent of strokes are ischemic strokes where parts of the circulation to the brain are cut off, usually due to blockage in the carotid artery. It is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
“Another very common vascular disease is peripheral arterial disease. This happens when there's hardening of the artery in the legs. Essentially, there's blood flow that's reduced to the limbs and it can cause complete blockage in the legs. Early on, people may have difficulty walking. They get cramping pain, and eventually if it gets really bad they may get foot ulcers, infections, and even gangrene that can lead to amputation. People with PADs are more likely to get heart attacks and strokes.
“Another vascular disease is varicose veins, which a lot of patients have. You can notice the bulging veins in the leg, which then returns the blood back to the heart and it causes heavy aching, throbbing, and itching. Some of the more serious vascular diseases are blood clots or deep vein thrombosis. Deep thrombosis can cause leg swelling and pain. DVT in the blood clot in the leg can travel into the lungs causing pulmonary embolus, and that can kill somebody. Most people present with shortness of breath. Those are the main issues that vascular surgeons treat.”
What are some of the symptoms, and what causes vascular disease?
“Usually, it's age. As we age, we tend to develop hardening of the arteries. Smokers can get it as well. Smoking damages the inside lining of the blood vessels. Diabetes is also a common cause. Hypercholesterolemia, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure can cause damage to the blood vessels. Usually, we want to make sure we control risk factors and make sure that you take aspirin, quit smoking, and exercise.”
Give us an overview of the vascular surgery services you offer in your practice.
“Vascular surgeons are specialists who are highly trained to treat diseases of the vascular system, which include arteries, veins, and blood vessels comprised of arterial blood that carries oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the rest of the body. The veins then return the blood back to the heart. I think of myself as a plumber for the body. We can do ballooning. We can do angioplasty and stenting. We can also do surgery to bypass the blockage. We can fix aneurysms. If they bulge out, we can replace them either through a stent graft or by sewing blood vessels. Then we also take care of patients with medication; medical therapy is also very big.”
Share with me your practice philosophy.
“I believe in patient autonomy. I think it's important in an initial visit to identify a patient's specific concern and what bothers them to really customize a comprehensive treatment plan for their vascular condition. I strive to provide the patient with accurate information about their diagnosis and then provide them with evidence-based vascular care. There are many options. Some patients don't want any surgery or more aggressive intervention. So, then we start with medical therapy.
“When their condition gets severe enough, they may need minimally invasive procedures. That's usually the next side of therapy, like arteriogram or venogram or stenting to open blood vessels. Eventually, if they get severe enough they may need something bigger like an operation, and that's something we also offer.”
What are some of the challenges you encounter in treating vascular disease?
“A lot of it is the initial recognition. We have to be able to recognize the problem. If you get leg pain and leg cramps, you really want to see a vascular surgeon. Maybe see your primary care doctor first and discuss your situation with your doctor you trust to see if you do have vascular disease. Then they can refer to the vascular surgeon.
“Sometimes it's family history. Patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm tend to be smokers and have a family history of aneurysms; it's a silent killer. A lot of patients may not know to be screened for aneurysms so that's something that we also want patients to be aware of. If you have family history of that, we want to make a note of it and get it checked out. I usually tell patients that we can't cure atherosclerosis, but we can manage it. We can manage it so you can live a longer, healthier life.”
Are there either some facts you'd like to reinforce or some myths you'd like to dispel about vascular disease?
“Yes. People think that when they hear surgery you're going for intervention. That's not necessarily true. When you see a vascular specialist or a vascular surgeon, you're really discussing options. Not every vascular disease needs surgery and making the right diagnosis is a good start. We must make sure that leg symptoms aren’t from a pinched nerve or from sciatica or musculoskeletal issues rather than an arterial or vein problem. We have to make sure we make the correct diagnosis and come up with a good treatment plan.”
Is there some current or exciting research or are there some advancements in treatments of vascular disease that have you hopeful about the future of treating these diseases?
“Absolutely. There is an explosion of technology in diagnosing and treating vascular disease, especially in the last 20 years. We switched our focus to being minimally invasive, so we no longer really must open someone's belly or abdomen or make big incisions. A lot of it is catheter-based procedures. Instead of doing a heart catheter, we're doing leg catheterizations and some procedures that correct the blockage or improve the flow without having to make big incisions, and that may correct a lot of the problem.
“The other thing is we've had a lot of medical advancements and therapies. Sometimes you can’t dissolve the clot, and you must go in and remove the clots. But a lot of times we can perform therapies that can improve the longevity of our stents and our bypasses.
“We have digitized a lot of what we do in terms of imaging. Vascular imaging has gotten so much better that we can see things that we weren't able to see before. In the past, we may not have even known a patient had a vascular disease. From an x-ray somebody was getting or through CAT scan imaging an aneurysm may have been discovered. Then it's more of a discussion of whether or not to monitor that aneurysm or to treat it. It really depends on a patient's symptoms and the size of it. There are certainly a lot of things that we can do.”
What attracted you to MSU Health Care?
“MSU has a great name and a great program. I was recruited here to build the vascular surgery program in the Lansing area, and I took up that challenge. I'm very excited about that opportunity. I think there are a lot of under-recognized and under-treated vascular diseases, and I'm hoping to help patients with vascular disease live healthy, long lives.”
What motivated you to get an MBA in 2017?
“I've always wanted to be a doctor and I love what I do taking care of patients, doing operations, and managing vascular disease. That's what I'm trained to do. In the last 15 years, medicine has changed a lot. I wasn’t as familiar with the business side of medicine, and I felt like getting a master’s in business administration would help in terms of looking at the flow of medical care and how to improve it because a lot of what we do in medicine is teamwork.
“It takes a whole team to get things done, and medicine has really become a group of people working together. We were taught in medical school to do everything ourselves. In business it's very different. We worked a lot in teams. You can’t graduate with your MBA if you don’t know how to work with a team. The other thing I learned was leadership. One of the things I really wanted to learn is about how to become a better leader and to grow more personally and professionally so hopefully I can manage patients and my team better.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
How does technology help us live our best life, and how does it hold us back? How can we harness the power of tech for good, and how does it hurt us? Life, Meet Tech explores these questions and more! The podcast is hosted by social scientist and technology enthusiast Prabu David, who is dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University.
Each episode features lively and provocative conversations with an array of notable experts, authors, journalists, and industry leaders on all things tech life. MSU alumna Melanie Paul is executive producer of Life, Meet Tech.
David and Paul talk about how they connected to work on this project and about how the pandemic hastened the development of the podcast.
“I was a little nervous about the subject,” admits Paul. “Honestly, I'm not a technical person. I'm a storyteller. When technology in my household breaks, I turn it off, I turn it back on, I unplug it, I plug it back in and that's usually the extent of it. I was a little hesitant to dive into something where I'm not an expert, but Prabu said, ‘no, no, no, we're going to make this super relatable and interesting, and it's going to be great.’ And he started talking about these ideas and themes that were fascinating. And I have to say, that's my favorite part of the podcast. It takes these very top-line sort of big ideas and makes them relatable and informative and entertaining.”
What is it about the podcast medium you like for getting your message out?
“I personally consume a lot of podcasts,” continues Paul. “I love them! In fact, during the pandemic, I would have to say that podcasts were sort of companions in a way. You can turn them on anywhere. You can take them with you. You can have them playing in the background while you do other things. It's one of my favorite ways to consume media. Podcasts are so accessible and portable, and you can listen to them anywhere. You can take them anywhere. They're convenient. There's no destination viewing with a podcast. That's what makes the podcast medium so cool!”
“What I find most attractive about a podcast personally is that I love a good story,” says David. “I genuinely love to listen to people if you have the right people with the right insights on important topics like the intersection of technology and life. Every aspect of life is driven by technology these days. And we need to find ways in which we can make sense of it. Some of it is good. Some of it is neutral. And some of it is bad. We need to be savvy, aware customers who can make a difference.”
“I hope the audience finds each episode as entertaining as it is informative,” Paul adds. “I think we've really carefully curated some outstanding guests who are experts in these topics. And it's so relatable. We want the convenience that technology provides, but it comes at a cost. And that cost sometimes is our information and our data. So, I hope that listeners walk away thinking about this with some more practical understanding on how our day to day life interacts with technology. And what we need to be aware of. And I also hope they're entertained. We've got some really lively speakers and guests who join us on the show.”
“I want people to be entertained because technology is fun and all of us love technology,” David adds. “I want them to be informed and to understand what is going on but also to be critical and thoughtful about how we consume technology.
“There are so many benefits from it but lurking in every one of these junctions where life and technology intersect are interesting dilemmas that we should sort out as a society. You cannot take it for granted. We have a role to play. It's our data. It's our lives that are intersecting with technology. We have to coexist with technology and find the right balance for how we and robots and other kinds of technologies co-exist. That is fascinating to me.”
“I hope that the podcast makes people think,” says Paul. “I hope it's thought provoking. Because for me personally working on the project, that was something that happened every single interview and every single episode we were working on. I would walk away from it and be thinking about these topics in a way that I'd never really considered before. And that, I think, is really exciting because a podcast that not only entertains you and informs you but also gets you thinking about things will keep you coming back for more. And I hope that the audience does.”
Episodes of Life, Meet Tech publish weekly on Wednesdays through December 1st. The podcast can be found wherever you get your shows. And at WKAR.org. Life, Meet Tech is a co-production of WKAR Public Media, and the College of Communication, Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The reorganization took effect July 1st and places greater emphasis on community engagement; diversity, equity and inclusion; relationship violence and sexual misconduct; professional standards and public integrity; and behavioral support services.
Many of the changes directly align with the recommendations made by the Task Force on Racial Equity police working group, and the initiatives outlined in the Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct Strategic Plan.
Deputy Chief Andrea Munford will lead the Community Support Bureau, including the Special Victims Unit, Center for Trauma-Informed Investigative Excellence, and the Community Care Unit. Munford will continue her role as special adviser to the president and RVSM issues.
Chief Lynch will be bringing members of his leadership team with him to talk about their areas of focus in the department in a regular podcast series on MSU Today we’re affectionately calling Chopping It Up with the Chief. Deputy Chief Munford is Chief Lynch’s guest on this episode.
“It is a fantastic opportunity to serve my alma mater in this capacity,” says Chief Lynch in referring to his first six months on the job leading public safety at MSU. “Having the ability to make positive contributions and have direct impact on our community is a great opportunity.”
On the reasons for the restructuring, Lynch says “I felt it was important that we align to the mission of the university. We still provide our traditional police services, and we’re emphasizing direct community engagement and community support, meaning everything from behavioral support to relationship violence and sexual misconduct. What we do every day is engage with our community, and so having diversity, equity, and inclusion be a part of everything that we do is going to be important. The structure was built with that in mind.”
“I graduated from MSU in 1996 with a bachelor's in criminal justice, and I started with the department in 1997,” says Munford. “I started out on patrol working in our community engagement unit. I spent five years on a cold case homicide task force with Ingham County and State Police and learned a lot about what survivors of lost family members go through and how traumatic that situation can be. In 2014, we started our Special Victims Unit within the Investigative Bureau, and we really framed that around being trauma-informed, victim-centered, and offender-focused. We based our foundation on the work of Dr. Rebecca Campbell and the research she's done on the neurobiology of trauma.
“Trauma-informed looks at the social and behavioral impact, and what it's like for someone to go through a traumatic experience. It affects everybody differently. We need to be aware of what happens to folks as they go through trauma so that we can understand how to do our investigations working with people on an individual basis. In the past, a lot of the guidelines on how to do an investigation focused solely on getting the facts and the evidence. But if you're not factoring in someone's experience going through trauma, then you're really missing a lot of the micro corroborations of what they're experiencing because of the traumatic event. It's really important to work with each person that goes through a traumatic event on an individual basis so that you're really understanding what they're going through.
“Victim-centered means meeting people where they are and looking at what their needs are. We do investigative services; however, it may not be best for every person to go through a full investigation. The way we framed our unit is leading with support. For special victims’ cases, we're connecting survivors with support services and resources so that they can make really informed decisions about what processes they want to participate in. Then when we look at our community care unit, there's a lot of intersectionality between RVSM issues and folks who go through some behavioral mental health issues. We look at that intersectionality, and we look at that side through a trauma-informed lens.”
What are some short and long-term goals?
“Like I mentioned, we really want our unit to lead by support,” Munford continues. “So as folks come into our process, whether they initiate it themselves or somebody on their behalf reports something to us, we want to provide support services first. That really involves a lot of collaboration with our community and campus partners so that we're really working as a team to provide support to students, faculty, staff, and visitors that come here too. The short-term goal is to get our unit trained in best practices. Again, that's a collaboration that we need to do with the whole community. Long-term is sustaining those relationships. We now have a social work intern on our team. We’re making that part of our unit more robust so that we can enhance the services that we provide to our community.”
What about both some challenges and opportunities to achieving some of your goals?
“One of the biggest challenges right now is building trust with the community,” Munford says. “A lot of events historically and more recently have given people doubts about the police department and that's understandable. We want folks to know we're here to support them. We're really focused on being a big piece of the university's mission to enhance student success and to make the culture healthy and respectful and sustain that through the work that we do in collaboration with our partners.”
“I would agree the challenge is the community trust,” adds Lynch. “It's a national narrative in regard to police reform. We definitely heard the concerns from our community. We saw the recommendations from the task force. We've reallocated our funds, and we redirected where our emphasis is. Andrea's comments about leading with support, that's what it's about. It's providing the support for our community and being a trusted, reliable resource for our community. That will be a challenge, but I think the opportunity is that there's a lot of willingness to do it. It's very well supported by university leadership. There are members of the community who have already reached out with support. There are opportunities as well that they will have through our police and public safety advisory committee to where there's a monthly opportunity to meet and help us with our strategic planning and initiatives. This is all day every day, Russ. It's not just sort of thinking about it one and done. We're moving on. It's time.
“The structure of our department will be built on community need, engagement, and support. Traditional police services will remain, but it may not necessarily be the emphasis. Again, the structure is based on the feedback that we've received. The structure needs to be nimble. If things change, we change with it, and we'll continue to do that.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“One thing is unequivocal,” says Andresen. “That's the word that's used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the world's getting warmer. Michigan and the Great Lakes are also getting warmer. And perhaps more significant is it's getting wetter here locally. That's a regional trend; there are regional differences around the world. But globally, temperatures have warmed up a little over one degree Celsius. So a couple degrees Fahrenheit over the last century or so. It's a rapid increase relative to what we know about the Earth's geologic history.
“The last decade is the warmest that we've seen over at least 100,000 years. The world is getting warmer. There are all sorts of other variables-related to that. The ice is melting. The sea levels are increasing, and all of these things are consistent with a warmer world. That's true here in the Upper Midwest and in the Great Lakes region too.”
Andresen says Michigan has gained about a two degrees Fahrenheit over the last 30 to 40 years.
“There've been some seasonal differences and there's been more warming in the cool season, especially during the winter season and that's warmed more than the summer. The other interesting thing is that our nighttime temperatures have warmed more quickly than our daytime temperatures. So, the difference between the two, the diurnal range it's called, is shrinking or decreasing with time. And that's something we see in other parts of the world. It’s the warmest we have been in basically our recorded history.”
He talks about the rise in extreme events we’re seeing.
“Unfortunately, the extreme events are projected to continue. Projections that were made 10 years ago and even longer than that are pretty consistent with what we've observed. We're on a warmer and wetter trajectory. And unfortunately, most of these projections call for an increase in extremes.”
Andresen talks about the latest climate assessment from the IPCC.
“The projections for the future are a little bit warmer than they have been in the past. And the language in the report is more deterministic and certainly more concerning. And there’s a link between human activity and the observed warming that's taken place here over the last century. Again, the word unequivocal is used. It's happening. And a significant portion and most of the warming is attributed to or associated with human activities, notably the greenhouse gas emissions. And something is going to have to be done, otherwise we risk major problems. The more the change, the more difficult the problems will be to deal with.”
Andresen discusses climate change’s impact on agriculture and the Great Lakes. He explains why some of the changes have been positive while others have been negative.
“We just need to look around us. There's been ample evidence around us of extremes and challenges and impacts. And this whole issue of a changing climate hasn't been at the forefront or at the top of people's lists of issues. We have many issues that challenge us as a society. But climate change, unfortunately, I think is getting higher up on the list. And we really can't afford to wait much longer. Something is going to have to be done and we have to come up with some plans and some action. They're a lot of good intentions, but we really need to act on some of them.
“The stakes are very, very high and time is as an important part of this. The good news and the glass-is-half-full view is that humans have been very good at coping and adapting with changes in the long-term throughout history. There's no question we can do it again. We have the right stuff to do this, but decisions have to be made and really have to be followed. That isn't so easy sometimes, but this issue is not going away. And as we've seen recently, it's actually becoming more visible. We have to think about those who come after us and come up with some strategies and solutions to change or to solve the problem.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
Russ, it's always great to be with you. As you say, it's a beautiful day right now in East Lansing, so wonderful we could spend it with everybody outside. That's great.
Russ White:
Homecoming week, sir, just a great time really once a year at a minimum for Spartans to reflect on how important this place was to them and continues to be, right?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
Yeah, Homecoming's a great description for it, isn't it? It's a chance for people to come to their Spartan home. I missed the last two. Rained out my first year and then the pandemic struck the second. So it's wonderful for me to be able to experience this for the first time. And I'm looking forward to the parade and all the wonderful things that are going to happen. Of course, our Homecoming champion, Barbara Ross-Lee, the famous member of the Spartan community who was the first Black woman to be a dean of a medical school. So, it's a great distinction to bring her back and it ties in so much for the sense of community and respect we have at MSU.
Russ White:
And one of the things that makes MSU great is the many academic programs. There are a lot of rankings that come up. How important are those ranking to you? They're indicative I'm sure, but never tell the whole story, right?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
I think you summarized it really well. They do matter. I would never say they don't matter because there are people who pay attention to them, and they are kind of an external benchmark of how you're doing compared to peers. On the other hand, it's very complex. You can go up and down for reasons that may not have completely to do with mission. So, I don't take them quite so serious, but I do think they matter. And they certainly matter to some students and parents I think who are very interested as well.
So, it's a great achievement, I think. I look at our supply chain program and what they've done year after year to rank at the top is spectacular. I look at some of our other programs. Packaging continues to do very well. Our work in music continues to be a strong department. All across the board really we have strength, but it's nice when these programs get called out. And the Times is a stringent ranking and so to be number 35 among universities in the U.S. is a big deal.
Russ White:
A couple of ways to highlight our collaborative ethos at MSU is the partnership with Henry Ford Health System. As that evolves, what should we know right now about that?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
It continues to evolve towards closer collaboration. And we're finding many different ways to partner. They're such a powerful health system. Their reach is wide, their numbers are large, and they deliver quality care and quality research. So they have a research endeavor in human health that approximates ours.
So together, coming together, we're finding so many different ways we can work together to improve health. And that improves right at the delivery of health to work on understanding disparities better, to work on more remote things such as diet and nutrition which are critical to human health, but which we don't always think about when we're thinking about healthcare.
Russ White:
And MSU has many partners in the automotive industry. We're working with Ford on some composite materials that are lighter and sustainably-based, Dr. Larry Drzal and his team. Our mobility future was highlighted too by our University Research Corridor collaboration with Wayne State and Michigan but talk a little bit about mobility and where it's going and how MSU research is fitting into our mobility future.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
So, Michigan of course has always been the home of mobility and in the United States and really must lead the way. And so I think we're looking for ways to continue that leadership. And I think we have a number of allies in trying to do that. So, as you said, we have about 50 researchers at MSU who are studying mobility. We've done work to turn this campus into a course where one can study autonomous vehicles and learn more about how to make them safe, efficient, and effective.
And I think these are things that really help keep us in the lead. So, I met with the Business Leaders of Michigan a couple weeks ago and this was top on their list was ways we could collaborate. I heard Bill Ford talk about what he sees as the future of Ford and mobility obviously is very much a part of that.
Russ White:
And President Stanley, what about that beautiful STEM Teaching and Learning Facility you helped open a couple of weeks ago? Talk about the building, but also what's going to go on inside of it.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
It's a showcase for teaching STEM in the United States. And it makes total sense with our outstanding Natural Sciences group, our Engineering group, and our College of Education. We're well-positioned to lead in this area. And that building, that's a flagship building. And again, I think one of the participants in the dedication said, ‘This is the best teaching science facility in the world.’ And I'm not going to argue with them. I think it's amazing. And the way it was built from the old power plant and incorporates some of the historical components of that, it looks towards the future and makes it all the more exciting for our students.
So, this is a place where our students are going to be able to come together. They're going to be able to learn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and do it with hands on experience that can't be replicated in other places. So, I couldn't be more excited about it. And of course it's an amazing building, but the people we're going to put in it are pretty amazing as well.
Russ White:
I think it was Senator Stabenow who so aptly described the building that way, sir. And if you add an A for arts to STEM and make STEAM, we're opening the Billman Music Pavilion, another really wonderful facility. And again, our generous donors play such a big role in that too.
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
That's so exciting and those listening carefully to this broadcast may be able to hear a little from the Billman because I think they're practicing right next door to us right now. And it's wonderful. It's one of the benefits of being in Cowles House is we get to hear them. But donors really made this happen. There was a significant contribution from the university as well, but really donors brought this program to completion. And if you haven't seen it, you have to tour the Billman Pavilion. It added about 40 percent of space to the music building, but that space is transformational space with the kind of studios, soundproofing and so on to really allow us to teach music to a great group of students in the best way possible.
I'm so excited about it. Jim forger has done an incredible job of shepherding this and leading the fundraising for it as dean. And I know this is something he's very proud of and the faculty are very proud of. And all the students are going to benefit greatly and the community is going to benefit greatly because music is a great gift essentially to the community as a whole. We're very fortunate to have such an outstanding music program. And it's one of the ways in which people recognize MSU and the contributions we make not only directly on this campus, but to the community as well.
Russ White:
And President Stanley, you recently appointed a new athletic director for Spartan Athletics, Alan Haller is new to the position, but certainly not new to MSU. He’s a Spartan through and through. Talk a little bit about Alan and what made you choose him to be the next AD?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
Well, first I've got to give a shout out to Bill Beekman who did such an outstanding job as athletic director and who really set a foundation for great work. I decided as everyone may know to bring Bill back into the senior administration in a role as Vice President for Strategic Initiatives. He's going to help us in the implementation and supervision of our strategic plan, as well as doing special projects for me about the university.
As far as Alan goes, this is someone who we use the phrase bleeds green. There's no question that he does. He's participated in service to MSU as a student, as an athlete, as a police officer and now as athletic director after his time in sports under Bill. He's doing great work already. I think he's bringing a lot of energy, but also a real commitment as Bill had as well to make sure we don't just focus on some sports. We're making sure that all the sports are going to compete and are funded in a way that will allow them to be successful and that's really important.
I see that as a major issue for him. I see him as understanding what's going to be necessary to continue to have a football program that's doing the kind of things we've been doing the past few weeks. We want to continue that. A basketball program doing the same. We also want our track and field athletes to be competing at that level. We want our field hockey athletes to be competing at that level. We want our volleyball players competing at that level.
There are so many different sports we want to see participating and succeeding, and we don't have the revenue as you know. We didn't have the revenue to do every sport, but we want the sports we have to do well.
Russ White:
And earlier this week, President Stanley, you also sent a letter to the campus community highlighting some of the financial issues with the university right now as we're sort of proceeding through the semester. What's the financial update for MSU?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
So I think we had some things happen that we've been waiting for and we're glad they occurred. So, we did receive a budget from the state now that has an increase about 1 percent to our base in it, which is good. It's always good to get an increase. We would've liked more. We always do, but it's always good to get an increase. And then it has about another $12 million or about 11 or so percent for increase for us as well. That's one-time dollars, and it's related to federal maintenance money, but we weren't guaranteed that was going to come, but it has come now out with this legislation. So we're very excited about that as well.
So that improves our balance. We have a slight increase related to tuition that we got as well. So we did a little better on tuition revenue than we thought we would, although it's not huge, but it's helpful for us too going forward. And then of course we've been using that HEERF money to continue to defray expenses we had from COVID. And we had a great year in the markets as many universities did around the country.
While that grows endowment, most endowment funds are restricted. There is a payout that comes and the payout will be slightly larger because the percentage it'll be coming from, the percentage will stay the same, but the dollars will be slightly up. So that gives us some income essentially to use as one-time dollars to do something we've wanted to do, and that's restore the extra 5 percent match that we had as part of our benefit package. And we made the very difficult decision as faculty and academic staff and executive management that we would take reduction of the two-to-one match and just have a one-to-one up to 5 percent for this past year.
And we had planned to continue it for a second year, but now we're going to cut that six months short and restart it again in January. And I'm so pleased we can do this. And I really appreciate the patience of academic faculty and staff who have been so willing to make these kinds of sacrifices. And executive management who've been willing to make these sacrifices during this time. And we're going to continue to monitor our financial situation carefully and where we can do other things. We'll look to do other things, but that's where we stand at this point.
Russ White:
Well, President Stanley, as always, thank you for elaborating on the topics in your September 30th community letter. Just any final thoughts as we close for Spartans?
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.:
Everybody stay safe during this fall. People have been doing such a great job masking and getting the vaccine. People have been complying with the vaccine mandate. We really are approaching 93 or 94 percent of the campus vaccinated. That's a pathway towards safety. That's a pathway towards keeping people safe. And I'm so pleased with how people have been abiding to the mask mandate. I've seen a little slippage sometime in our athletic events so I'm going to be talking more about that in the future because I think that's really important. When we're inside, we need to be masked. Those are the MSU rules.
And I know everybody wants to come back and see sports and watch sports inside. I certainly do. We've got to do it in a safe way and that's really important for all of us. And so we'll continue to monitor that, but I'm so excited that people are back. And our cases of COVID are down on campus. And the number of students in isolation and quarantine has fallen. We're down about 40 percent from where we were two weeks ago so I think we're moving in the right direction.
Russ White:
That's Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. Keep up with him at president.msu.edu and follow on Instagram. His handle there msupresstanley. and I'm Russ White from the beautiful backyards at Cowles House for MSU Today.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find, rate, and subscribe to MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Mark Largent:
Welcome. My name is Mark Largent. I'm the associate provost and dean for undergraduate education at Michigan State University. And it is my pleasure to be your host today. I want to start by thanking the Spartan Jazz Quintet for their talent and their time and their contribution to this really wonderful ceremony today.
I am so happy to be here. I have to be honest with you. This is a very joyful time as we restart a school year. I am one of those people who started school when I was six and I've never stopped starting school every fall. And to have fallen out of that rhythm last year and the loss of that pattern I had really depended on and the people who I was close to was tremendously difficult. And I know that so many of you here are that way as well. And so many of you are so energized by this building and these people and our students. And so I'm just joyful to be here. So thank you for joining me for this. I think the joy we have in being here emphasizes for us the sense of place and what importance place holds for us, together, here, now, celebrating this new place.
As a historian, I cannot help but see architecture as emblematic of a very particular time and place in which a building was created. Those buildings create spaces that reflect the intentions of the time in which they were built. Those spaces, then, in the years and years that follow, both empower and constrain what happens in those spaces. We call this architectural determinism and what it means is spaces allow for certain things, but not all things. Fifty some years ago, we built the last one of these kinds of buildings, that new classroom building, right on the other side of this, Wells Hall. And much has changed in 50 years. Who we teach, how we teach, what we teach, and who teaches even has changed in that last half century. And so a building that we build now must reflect who we are now and who we want to be next, both, and this building most certainly does that.
Our dedicated world-class faculty have been formulating and reformulating answers the questions of what we should teach and how we should teach it. And this building opens the doors to an unimaginably wide landscape of opportunity to pursue those answers, but also for opportunity for our students themselves. And ultimately, that's why we're here, is for our students and their opportunity. This building is designed for both today and tomorrow's science education needs. It is incredibly flexible. Architectural determinism in this space has been constrained to limits we've never seen before in a classroom building on this campus, perhaps anywhere, because this is probably the best science education building on the planet. It is flexible. It is welcoming. It is open. And if you have not been inside of it yet, I'm excited for you to go in because you will leave with a sense of empowerment and excitement that our students have told us they feel when they walk in those doors.
So, it is my pleasure now to introduce someone who has pursued answers to some of medicine's most urgent problems throughout his entire professional life, an infectious disease expert, a researcher, patent holder, former technology transfer executive. Our first speaker is a leader who knows the value of collaborative research and multi-disciplinary pedagogy firsthand. It's also a person who has done wonders over the last year and a half helping lead us through a time none of us could have imagined. So I want to thank and introduce MSU president Samuel L Stanley.
Samuel L Stanley:
Well, thank you, associate provost Largent, or I should say, thank you, Mark, for that extraordinarily kind introduction. And I almost am ready to throw away my comments because I think Mark summarized everything I'm going to say in one sentence, which is, the best science education building in the world at Michigan State University. Is there really anything else to add to that statement? I'm not sure there is, but you know what I'm going to anyway. So we'll just move ahead. So I wanted to begin by acknowledging the state of Michigan and particularly the legislature for its partnership in helping to fund this facility. It was the first time in nearly 50 years. I'm going to say this again, it's the first time in nearly 50 years that MSU added exclusive classroom space with state funding. So thank you for the vision of those who helped make this possible. Thank you.
This is an important day for Michigan State University and all of our students. This impressive facility represents the commitment of MSU and the state of Michigan to prepare our students to thrive in a dynamic and complex world. Understanding scientific principles, mathematical concepts, physical and biological processes is increasingly important for many reasons. We know that jobs requiring STEM knowledge are the fastest growing in the country. And among the most secure. STEM occupations will grow by more than twice the rate of non-STEM jobs in this decade. And STEM occupations, on average, pay about twice as much. We also know that on the whole, STEM occupations do not, and the person who are among them, represent the diversity of our society. Since data indicate that women make up nearly half of the workforce, but a little more than a quarter of STEM workers today. Black and Hispanic participation in STEM occupations also trails their representation in the workforce.
Because of its importance, supporting diversity in STEM is a priority for the nation, as well as Michigan State University. More broadly, STEM skills and qualifications are valuable for everyone. An NSF, National Science Foundation, report concluded last year that whether or not they become scientists or engineers, all Americans should have access, opportunity, encouragement, and tools to participate in the innovation economy and to succeed amid technological progress and change. Understanding STEM principles is increasingly necessary to assess information, weigh choices, and even manage your health. And it's important for also being a contributing member of society. Science-based issues confront the world today with some of its greatest challenges, medical, environmental, and technological. Society needs citizens who are able to understand those issues, make informed choices and lead our communities. This new facility is a 21st century response, the newest evolution of MSU's land grant commitment to connect people with such vital knowledge.
It represents our innovative spirit and transformative mission. We see these qualities in the facility's creative design and repurposing of the power plant. And we see these qualities inside where learning spaces will accommodate some 7,000 students every week. Among other programs, this facility will host introductory STEM courses, including in biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, and physics. We work with faculty members and others to consider how our curriculum is delivered and how spaces are used, to design a building based on learning and the student experience. There are about 1,200 seats and common areas and gathering spaces to facilitate collaboration. We know those kinds of productive collisions are absolutely central to learning. And this building helps make them possible. The arts features will also connect the STEM disciplines to imagination and creativity, critical forces as we go forward. The innovation represented by this building extended to its construction as well.
Parts of the new wings were constructed with sustainable cross-laminated timber for example. It's the first time this mass timber has been used for a laboratory and academic building in this country. Features such as that help integrate this facility into MSU sustainability goals. So in sum, the teaching and learning facility, our STEM Teaching and Learning Facility, connects key MSU values to how we support excellence and student success. It links the university's past to its future while prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion. I'm very pleased that all of you can join us today for this ribbon cutting as we celebrate the opening of our STEM building, and there'll be an opportunity to tour the building when this program begins. Thank you again so much for coming and thank you for all of you who helped make this day possible. Thank you.
Mark Largent:
Thank you, President Stanley. During the years that this building has been in development, the MSU Board of Trustees has been an integral part of supporting the process, guiding it, and providing both material and political support that we need to carry out this work. So it's now my honor to introduce a Lansing area luminary, who has spent a lifetime in public service, board of trustees chair, Dianne Byrum.
Dianne Byrum:
Thank you, Mark. What a great day for a ribbon cutting. It's wonderful to be able to represent the Board of Trustees at the grand opening of the STEM Teaching and Learning Facility. As President Stanley mentioned, the state of Michigan has been a valued partner in this project. The allocation of nearly $30 million in capital outlay funding was instrumental in the construction of this innovative teaching and learning space. When you invest in higher education, you are contributing to student success and investing in our future. I applaud the Michigan legislature for recognizing the value of the STEM Teaching and Learning Facility and what it will mean to MSU and our state. This project provided us a unique opportunity to work with the DNR. One of the experiences of the building's design is the use of cross laminated timber also known as mass timber. It was used for the load bearing structure, framing, floors, and ceiling.
Among other benefits, this mass timber promotes forest health and a reduction in carbon emissions. I had the privilege of being here in August, 2018 for the groundbreaking. So it's an honor to stand here today, three years later, reflecting on the magnitude of changes and advancements of the project on campus. And more importantly, the thousands of students who will benefit from the experience that this building will support. The adaptive and innovative spaces will help our faculty provide even more exceptional and personalized learning that will help prepare our students to succeed and lead. I cannot wait to see how it will be used, but even more, I can't wait to see how it will empower our students to be world changers. Thank you.
Mark Largent:
Thank you, Chair Byrum.Our next speaker knows a few things about opening doors for millions of people for so many years now. She knows about building coalitions and getting things done. She knows that Michigan's future relies on our ability to build and to innovate. It is now my pleasure to introduce the honorable Debbie Stabenow, US Senator from Michigan.
Debbie Stabenow:
Okay. First, Go Green!
Crowd:
Go White!
Debbie Stabenow:
Okay. Now I know where I am. So it is really exciting for me to be here. I have to say. First of all, we all know Michigan State's the premier land grant university in the country.
One of the world's top research institutions, right Mr. President? There's no question about that. And now home to this impressive new building that's going to create opportunities, first and foremost, for thousands of students. I've just met a few of them here today and told them we're expecting great things. And then also opportunities that go beyond that, I think, in terms of where we need to go in the world. This is the first mass timber building in our state. It's the first mass timber building, therefore it's the tallest mass building. At some point, there will be one taller, but I keep telling everyone, we have the tallest building in the state, which we do, and it is about cross laminated timber, which is about the economy. It's about jobs. It's about addressing the climate crisis. And I have to tell you personally, for me, this has really been an area of focus for me as chair of the Agriculture Nutrition and Forestry Committee.
Back in 2014, we put into the five-year farm bill timber innovation act research. We're going to do research on cross-laminated timber in a more aggressive way, how we could use timber in building buildings and other opportunities. And then in the 2018 bill, we expanded it with full funding. And when I look at the opportunities that we have to address the climate crisis, which is right in front of our face, the wildfires, the droughts, the floods, everything that is happening for us, how we use wood and how we manage forests in a sustainable way is very much a part of how we move forward. And it's an intimate part of what I'm working on right now in the Senate, frankly. And what I'm also excited about is this as an economic opportunity for us in Michigan. We have a lot of paper mills around Michigan, and we all know we're not using paper much anymore.
But we are moving towards cross laminated timber as a building material and many of our folks in areas that desperately need jobs, as we retool, are part of that future, to be able to get there. Now, I was up at Michigan Tech bragging with them about Michigan State. I'm not sure that's good politics, but anyway, they are, I know, partnering with you and they're doing a ton of research as well and are very excited from the Upper Peninsula standpoint of what this means. So I see this as something that fundamentally is about students and it's about opportunity and innovation. It is also about how we move forward in a future that is more sustainable. And that Michigan State really is at the forefront of this and helping us to solve a whole range of problems we need to solve. Let me finally say I've had the opportunity twice now to be in the building, if you have not, it is so cool.
I look forward to going back. When we talk about flexibility, the workstations literally move around the room. And so I've never seen so much flexibility on what can be done. And I was very proud to be able to brag about this and bring in the United States Secretary of Agriculture about a month ago, to be able to see the building and meet with many of our farm leaders, again, to talk about our role in agriculture and forestry being part of the solution as it relates to the climate crisis. So let me close with a quote from Gifford Pinchot, the very first Chief of the United States Forest Service. Once he said, "The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities, only if we make ourselves responsible for that future." As usual, Michigan state is in the front of the line being responsible for our future. And I'm so excited to see what comes next. Congratulations.
Mark Largent:
Thank you very much, Senator Stabenow for your words and your work and your support of our work. Such a mammoth undertaking could not be possible without the support of people who believe in the future of STEM in Michigan at every level. It's now my pleasure to introduce another of those supporters, Senator Curtis Hertel, an MSU alum. The senator is the perfect representative for East Lansing and MSU. His wide ranging experience includes serving as the minority vice chair on the appropriations committee, a member of the appropriation subcommittee on universities and community colleges, and he serves on the capital outlay committee. Welcome Senator Hertel. Thank you for joining us.
Curtis Hertel:
It's a pleasure to be here with Senator Stabenow. It's always nice to be after Senator Stabenow. That's always a difficult spot to be in. She is a real Senator. I'm a minor league Senator. President Stanley, Chairman Byrum, and the Board of Trustees, honored guests, the Spartan community. It's nice to be part of this momentous occasion. I also want to take a moment to recognize my former colleague in Darwin Booher.
When you watch the cable news, oftentimes you see just the worst parts of politics. You see the anger, you see the name calling, but in reality, that's not all that's there. Darwin served on the opposite side of the aisle with me. He was always a consummate public servant. And you know, I was a freshman legislator when we got the funding for this project and I was a little loud sometimes. And Darwin didn't have to listen to me in his office over and over again, talking about this project. And he didn't have to make sure that this was part of the final deal. And I appreciate your willingness to work across the aisle and to get this done for the people in Michigan. Thank you, Darwin.
As a proud Spartan myself, it's always good to be back on campus, but I'm especially happy to share in the special occasion for MSU and its students that have been in the making for several years. I am very pleased to be part of this project and part of the funding structure. As a member of the joint capital outlay committee, and now as the minority vice chair for the Senate appropriations committee, we don't always get to see the fruits of our labor. Oftentimes we vote on something that's a very large number and we know it exists, but we don't actually get to see what it's actually doing in our community. And so to be here, to be part of this building and to see it as part of our campus means a lot to me.
It's always also inspiring to see the ingenuity of MSU's use of the space of this beautiful campus. So when you take a historic building that was formerly the power plant that powered this campus, and now it'll be a 40,000 square foot STEM building that will power, not only this campus, but our future and our nation's future. It is truly an honor to be part of it. Spartans will lead our state's workforce in science, technology, engineering, math, and computer science. Thank you again for letting us be part of this process and Go Green!
Crowd:
Go White!
Mark Largent:
Thank you, Senator Hertel. At the core of this exciting new venture is what we will do in the building. Educate. This exciting new venture is a commitment to our educators to help our students learn and thrive in the sciences and beyond. To help represent that and talk about some of it, I would like to introduce my colleague, Dr. Andrea Bierema. She is from the Center for Integrative Studies in general science and the Department of Integrative Biology. And she embodies the commitment that we have to undergraduate STEM education. Her award winning work at MSU includes teaching at the Kellogg Biological Station researching and putting into practice undergraduate biology education, and avian communication. Dr. Bierema.
Andrea Bierema:
Well, hi, everyone. I'd really like to say just how excited I am that we have this building and not just because of the beautiful building with a great theme, but because of how the rooms are actually created and what they can do. And so, as we've heard the beginning of the ceremony, we've learned a lot about teaching over these last 50 years. And with that then, part of that is thinking about how students can work in teams and how that can help with their learning and actually engage with material. So with my classes, this is what students do, they work in teams, but we're usually having to overcome the barriers of the classrooms we're in because they are made for students to simply sit there and watch me go on and on for an hour. And yeah, just hopefully they catch some of what I'm saying, but when they actually work together, it's so much better.
And when we were in those lecture style rooms, they would have to be like maybe in a long line. And you just have to recognize that the person on this side is not going to have any idea what the person on this side is actually saying, but hey, let's hope this works. Or if they're actually sitting behind and in front of each other and just trying to make it work, overcome the barriers of the classroom. But now we have this building where room after room after room is actually designed for this kind of learning. And also on top of that. So it's just kind of, this might seem kind of simple, but having not only these tables with movable chairs, but actually having outlets at every one of them. I know that seems simple, but that's one of the things, that I just can't depend on students coming in with a charged laptop, whether their laptop doesn't hold a charge or it's dead by the time they come to my afternoon class,
It used to be that those students would have to sit on the floor by a wall at an outlet, but no more with this building, which is totally awesome. Another thing too, in some of these rooms, with the tables, they actually have monitors that come up from the tables with just a simple push of a button. Totally amazing. What's nice about this is with team learning, it's really helpful if you can actually have different people, have different roles, including someone to actually be the recorder. And now we can do this where they can plug in their laptop. Everyone in the team can actually see what's going on in real time. And rather than just trying to crowd around somebody's little, tiny laptop. So totally amazing. I'm totally excited. And thank you.
Mark Largent:
The bad news is every single seat in her classes is full, so none of you are getting in this semester. Registration is still open for spring. Thank you, Dr. Bierema. It is easy to see how the work of educators like you engage our students in really amazing ways. It's also easy to see it when we talked to the students themselves. Students. Students are the reason that we're here. This is our purpose. Everything else is intended to support that, one way or another. The reason for this magnificent new structure, the reason that I'm here, the reason that we carry on the work that we do is because of the investments that we make in the people who come here in order to develop their purposes and their passions. They are our portals into the future. When I'm in need of a dose of hope, all have to do is walk outside and find it.
Wandering this campus every day, I often stop to talk to the students who have decided to put their faith in us to give them that access to the future. And it reminds me that uncommon is not just part of our slogan. It really is who fills this campus, an uncommon energy, an uncommon optimism, and a really uncommon potential. You can feel it on this campus every day. So I want to thank the students who I've had the pleasure to be around for all of these years. One such student is Alyssa Fritz. She's a senior from Reese, Michigan. She's pursuing a bachelor of arts and communications with a concentration in communication science, analytics, and research methods, and a minor in communicative sciences and disorders. She's an active member of the campus community, where she works as a resident assistant and as a student office assistant in communication science, and disorders. She volunteers with the prevention, outreach, and engagement, and she serves as an undergraduate research ambassador. She is busy, but she's joining us today. Thank you, Alyssa.
Alyssa Fritz:
Interdisciplinary. Describing the relationship between multiple branches of knowledge. A word we have heard multiple times in reference to a goal we should have in our own educations. And an adjective that this university holds close to her heart. Some of you may be asking yourself why a communication major is giving this address. Don't worry. I asked myself the exact same question when I was asked to come up here to say a few words, but that's because for the past three years at MSU, I've danced this fine line of trying to find my own academic identity. I knew what I wanted to do. I just didn't find identity in the science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, but also didn't find identity in the social sciences or the arts and humanities. I just was what I was, a communication major who loves data analytics and research methods. But I, like many of the students here, am someone who wants to make the world a better place, a more accessible place for all.
In my case, I'll do it through helping the world to find a voice in topics of speech language pathology. But some of you may go on to study foodborne illnesses and work to implement policy to protect the everyday consumer. Others may go on to study personalized genetic medicine practices to help better target cancer in the body. These are all topics that people who visit this facility daily may study and may one day centralize their whole career around. I'm just one Spartan story of interdisciplinary identities, but there are thousands of us. Of course, the STEM acronym is, in itself, an integration of multiple disciplines. This building and everything it stands for culminates to the foundations of what it truly means to be interdisciplinary. And as a senior who's walked by in this construction site for the past three years, I'm excited to see what other Spartan stories begin here today. Thank you.
Mark Largent:
Thank you, Alyssa. Well, now I'd like to introduce our last presenter, last speaker. Certainly not least, she's my boss. I would like to introduce someone for whom excellence in STEM has been a lifelong pursuit, MSU’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. Teresa K Woodruff stands at the nexus of excellence in research and education. Her many distinctions include receiving the presidential award for excellence in science mentoring under President Obama and earning the Endocrine Society's Laureate award in 2021, a top honor that recognizes the highest achievements in the field of endocrinology. Provost Woodruff's accomplishments in the sciences are matched by her passion for education. It's what makes getting to work for her truly a joy. It's my pleasure now to introduce provost Teresa K Woodruff.
Teresa K Woodruff:
Well, good afternoon, everyone. And thank you so very much, Mark. For all of the reasons noted before me, this new facility truly represents institutional investment being made in STEM here at MSU, in Michigan, and beyond. I want to add my thanks to President Stanley for his leadership, Trustee Byrum and our Board of Trustees, those who are here and those who are not, as well as to our great leadership, both in the state and at the federal level who represent us so well every day. And also to Glenn Granger and his team with whom I've spent many, multiple quality hours touring the building with multiple awestruck faculty and students. Thank you for our partnership. Infrastructure requires bricks and mortar entries. It requires intellectual planning and people. And bridging all of these requirements, our Nestor Deocampo who is here somewhere. Nestor? I hear some woots.
He's way in the back. He's standing, but way in the back. And Barb Kranz who is here in the front. Both of whom are excellent partners to all of us in the provost office and Dan Bollman in Infrastructure Planning and Facilities. Dan, thank you to all of your members of that team.
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said form follows function. That has been misunderstood. Form and function should be joined in a spiritual union. From its mass timber framing to the easy snap lab benches to the flipped inverse and other newly invented teaching modalities, form and function are truly unified in this MSU STEM Teaching and Learning Facility. Some of you have heard me talk about the ways in which I see MSU rising. In particular, through spirals of excellence that are beacons to the world, drawing in the best educators and teachers and lighting the pathway to a new generation of student learners. These instructional models create a union with the building itself and will move students from what I call horizontal learning, that which we already know, to vertical learning, that which we have yet to discover. Some of you have also heard me talk about the imprint that we wish to have every MSU student have.
Areas of entrepreneurship and innovation, ethics and honor, quantitative and creative skills. This building is emblematic of each of these traits. This new building will be a place and space that fosters discovery and innovation, a site of opportunity and exponential intellectual expansion. There's also a place in a space that bridges the arts and the sciences with its fourth floor student project space that will feature cross-disciplinary projects along with a common area for performances and the display of public art. Here, both the creative and the quantitative will be nurtured and explored. Boundaries will be pushed, stretched, and even shattered. This is truly a facility that speaks to and encourages the whole student with opportunities to learn, and to know, and to discover, and to create. A building in which form and function are inherently one. An academic spiritual union right here at Michigan State University. We welcome all of the intellectual and creative energy and excitement it will bring to our community of scholars and we are grateful to every individual who played a role in getting us to this auspicious day. Thank you. And welcome.
Mark Largent:
Having the building is wonderful. It's nice and it's empowering, but it is not in and of itself sufficient. It needs to be filled with the right things. So having the best science education building and offering the world's best science education, are not necessarily guaranteed. That's why we're going to guarantee it. The first thing that we did is we hired two really talented colleagues and we brought them into the provost office as the assistant dean and associate dean for STEM education. I want to welcome and thank two of my colleagues, Stephen Thomas, and Julie Libarkin for filling those roles.
They're right here. And I want you to buttonhole them and engage with them afterwards because you will find out immediately what a wealth of knowledge and experience and energy that they have. They are deeply collaborative colleagues, and I'm really excited that they're joining this effort to make this the world's best scientific education institution. They will do it based on disciplinary education research, based on scholarship of teaching and learning, and they will do it so that every one of our students is supported to develop their purposes and their passions. And so that every student we admit learns thrives and graduates. That that is our goal. So thank you for what all of you have done and for what all of you are going to do in this building. This is a really wonderful day. Thank you for joining us for it.
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President Stanley:
So, good afternoon everyone. I love the energy we have in this room right now. It's incredible. We've had a great past few weeks of welcoming students, faculty and staff back to campus. For our student athletes, how pleased I am to see them have the opportunity to be back with their teams and coaches preparing for an exciting year. We have plenty to be excited about.
The Haller era has begun with a bang. It's true. Our athletic teams have had great starts, highlighted by football opening the regular season of Big Ten play with a very, very impressive 38-21 win at Northwestern on Friday night. But the news gets better. That was just one of several wins by our Spartan teams over the weekend. Field hockey, women's cross country, volleyball, men's soccer and men's golf all posted victories. Congratulations. Our fall sports teams have combined to post a 14 two-and-two record so far. We're very proud of all they’re accomplishing, both on and off their competitive fields of play.
I'd like to recognize our Board of Trustees members who are here today. I know trustee Byrum will introduce them to you in a second, but please join me in acknowledging them. I also want to give my sincere thanks to Big Ten Commissioner, Kevin Warren, for joining us and for his partnership and leadership of our conference. Kevin Warren, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. And certainly to members of the search advisory committee who gave their time and effort to assist the university with this search. I'm so very grateful to you for your involvement and passion about MSU Athletics. Some of them are here today. I'd like to acknowledge them. Trustee Renee Knake Jefferson, Coach Mark Dantonio, Lauren H. Grant, there she is, Brooke Bogan. I'm not sure they're here today, but if you are please signal to me, Craig Brown. We can applaud anyway. Gene Washington, Steve Smith, Bob Skandalaris and Board of Trustee member Kelly Tebay.
As I mentioned last week at our special board meeting, I felt it was important that we conduct a national search for our next athletic director, to look at all options and find the best fit for our current needs and future opportunities. The process worked the way it should. It led us to the best and new leader for our athletics department. I'm pleased. Our selection is already a Spartan, already a part of our community. The values that Alan Haller lives, integrity, compassion, empathy, and a steadfast commitment to public service makes him a natural leader.
I have confidence that a strong dedication to the department, its students and our community are essential characteristics to position us well for the future. You're going to hear these words to describe Alan many times today, and I'm very proud of that. I'm proud that we have a strong leader to continue our commitment to student success, to all students' wellbeing and to growing into the best version of themselves. Again, as I said last week, Alan understands that our athletes are students first and we will not lose sight of that priority.
His perspective as a former athlete is important and his background as a police officer and in public service, these experiences have shaped him as a leader and influenced the vision he has for moving MSU Athletics forward now. Alan also understands the financial and operational aspects of leading a Division I athletics department with 21 sports programs and more than a thousand athletes and staff, as well as hundreds and thousands, dare I say, millions of fans and supporters and donors throughout the globe. I'm excited to already have started working with Alan on his plans for keeping MSU at the forefront of college athletics. Let's face it. It's a challenging space right now, but I have confidence Alan can handle those challenges. I appreciate the board support throughout our search process. Last week, we had a unanimous vote of the board for Alan as our next AD. Thank you all for supporting this important process. Thank you.
We're going to hear from some outstanding coaches today. I appreciate that we have so many here to celebrate this new era. Our coaches and their staff are critical to our student success in providing the types of support needed to help all of our athletes excel. Before I introduce our next speaker, I'd also like to recognize Bill Beekman and thank him for his leadership these past three years. We're grateful for the role he's stepped into and we look forward to having him back in our central administrative team, helping with our strategic planning implementation. Now I'd like to introduce the chair of the Michigan State University Board of Trustees, the honorable Dianne Byrum.
Dianne Byrum:
Thank you, President Stanley. I'd like to start by recognizing my colleagues on the MSU Board of Trustees. Would you please stand so we could recognize you, Trustee Melanie Foster, Trustee Renee Knake Jefferson. On behalf of the MSU Board of Trustees, I want to congratulate you, Alan, on your new role as athletic director. We are excited to see how you will continue to move MSU Athletics forward. I want to thank President Stanley and members of the search committee for successfully leading a national search process and landing us a qualified leader for the 20th athletic director for Michigan State University and for keeping the board informed along the way.
As many of you know, Alan is no stranger to the Spartan family or the greater Lansing community. A former two sport MSU student athlete himself, Alan understands and can relate to student athletes and the student athletic experience. It is that transformational experience that will help him succeed in this new role. As I shared last week, Alan is a remarkable leader and well-rounded administrator who has been so very instrumental in positioning MSU Athletics for continued success. He is a leader steadfastly committed to the success of MSU and our student athletes. I have full confidence that he will continue to move our department forward with a vision that focuses on student success, competitive excellence, and integrity in all things we do.
I believe I speak for us all on the Board of Trustees when I say we are so excited to see what is in store for MSU Athletics under your leadership. Alan, congratulations again. It is now my great pleasure to introduce Big Ten Conference Commissioner Kevin Warren.
Kevin Warren:
It truly is a pleasure to be here today. I'd like to thank my wife, Greta, who made the trip from Chicago here with us today to honor Alan and your family and Michigan State University. Today's special. When I was thinking this morning what would be appropriate to discuss with you for a few minutes, one thing came to mind, and that's the importance of dreams, of dreaming big. Alan who grew up here in Lansing, he was probably told from the time that he was a young man that he'd never be able to get a scholarship and play at Michigan State. What did he do? He kept dreaming. He kept praying, but most of all, he kept working. He got an opportunity to play here, not only football, but also to compete in track and field.
Then he was told the odds of making it to the National Football League are very small. What did he do? He kept dreaming. He kept working. He kept praying. He got his opportunity in the NFL. And because of his servant leadership, he came back here to join the police force, which many people probably told him was either too dangerous or not worth his time. He embraced it for 13 years. Then when this opportunity arrived to join this incredible athletic department, what did he do? He came in here. He worked hard. He kept dreaming. He kept praying. There were many people along the way that said he would never have an opportunity to be sitting in this seat today.
Why that is important is because for student athletes, like we have here today, we as leaders in the Big Ten Conference and on our incredible institutions, we need to encourage our young people to dream, to believe, to work hard. But most of all, we need to encourage them to develop the attributes that Alan Haller has. Those of intelligence, hard work, dedication, commitment to excellence, integrity, honesty, honor. Those are important. So, every morning that I wake up and I have an opportunity to lead this conference, I ask for the strength to do all that I can do to make sure we create an environment here to allow our 10,000 student athletes the opportunity to dream big, to support them.
Who's the next Alan Haller right now at Michigan State who one day will be the commissioner of the Big Ten Conference, the president, the board chair, head coaches? They're here. They may be president of the United States, ambassadors, doctors, lawyers, school teachers, police officers. So, I am so grateful to have this opportunity to lead this incredible conference. I'm grateful to so many people who put their arms around Alan during his journey to get to this seat today. There are two gentlemen here that I'd like to point out, Joel Ferguson and Greg Eaton. I just want to thank you all for being strong Black men, to be able to lead men like Alan to say it's okay to be honorable, to work hard and to dream. For him to sit here today, there's so much credit that goes around this room. I also would like to thank President Stanley. This is not an easy time to be a college president, but I appreciate his commitment to excellence, to doing things the right way and his support of me on a daily basis.
So with that again, Alan, congratulations. It's been an incredible pleasure to watch you. I've noticed one thing about you. You'll make a great leader because you're a great supporter and the way you supported Bill Beekman is really special. I'd like to thank Bill for welcoming me into the Big Ten. So with that, on behalf of our 10,000 student athletes, our 6.4 million alumni, our 14 incredible institutions, I just want to congratulate you for all your hard work and to let you know to keep dreaming, keep working, keep praying, keep believing. You'll always have my unwavering support. I look forward to working with you as we're welcoming you into the room of athletic directors at the Big Ten Conference. So with that, I'd like to introduce head football coach, another spectacular human being, Coach Mel Tucker.
Mel Tucker:
Excuse my voice, we had practice this morning. I only raise my voice in enthusiasm. Thank you, Commissioner Warren. We appreciate you joining us today. It's great to see everyone here this afternoon to welcome Alan as our new athletics director. As many of you know, Alan has been associated with Michigan State for more than 30 years. He wore the green and white for Coach Perles as a defensive back and was a member of the track team as well. He is a Spartan for life and has rightfully earned deep respect and credibility from players, peers, coaches, and the community. I work with Alan on a daily basis, and I watched him in action interacting with our current and former players. Alan is a tremendous leader. He brings people together. He connects the dots. He listens to others and he cares deeply about Michigan State.
He will elevate our student athletes, the success of our department and our university as a whole. Alan understands what it takes to be successful at the highest level, and that's exactly what we need. To build a championship culture, we need the right people in the right seats at the right time. It's the same for our players. They not only have to want it, have to believe it, but they have to live it as well, and Alan does this each and every day. Alan has the vision and progressive mindset that I admire in a leader. Alan will be a visible, vocal, innovative proactive leader for MSU, the Big Ten, and nationally. The Spartan family is strong. We have a solid foundation. Now's the time to build the future. Alan is that leader.
This past Friday was a great night for Spartans everywhere. I was especially proud to celebrate the victory by presenting Alan with the number 20 Jersey for having been named the 20th athletics director in school history. It was a special moment to share with our players. They went crazy and I know they were excited for Alan as well. As soon as I called Alan up, they started saying, "AD, AD, AD, AD," going crazy on there. Alan, I look forward to working with you for many years. This is just the beginning and a sign of great things to come and Michigan State. Thank you again everyone for joining us today. I want to introduce our next speaker, one of our longest serving coaches, softball head coach Jacquie Joseph.
Jacquie Joseph:
I never thought I'd see so many people come out for the first day of practice. You guys didn't know that, did you? This is really a treat for me as I've known Alan since the day he joined our athletic department. Alan is a man of character and integrity. He is fiercely loyal to Michigan State. He truly cares about all our teams and our student athletes. He always has. He understands as well as we all do that fair does not mean the same and that everyone deserves an opportunity at excellence. This is not an easy job. He'll need the support of everyone who cares about MSU Athletics, but he has the vision and toughness to lead us. He will have that support from our coaches.
We've got the best coaches here at Michigan State. I just want to shout out to them. I know they're all here supporting you Alan, and we've got your back. I'm just super pleased to do this for him and to be here in front of you guys. Now I'm happy to introduce our women's golf coach entering her 26th season and by any measure one of the greatest coaches in the country, Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll.
Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll:
Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for this opportunity to be here. It's a great, great pleasure. So excited. Our number one job as coaches is to recruit the greatest players, the next greatest players for our teams year in and year out. Every player that we recruit is introduced to the Spartan family. We don't have to talk a lot about it. We just let the recruit and their family feel and see it when they're in their 48 hours on our campus. It truly is a feeling and a sense from the people that make up our teams. Many of you that are here today, our current players, our coaches, our string trainers, academic coordinators, fundraisers, and the list goes on, they all care. They will all go above and beyond what is expected from each of them. That is the Spartan family.
I know that Alan Haller, our new athletic director, clearly knows all about the Spartan family. He has been a part of it for many years now. He is as passionate about our family as I am. The family changes us and molds us as young people, and it allows us to be who we are today. It is an honor to be here to welcome Alan and his family as the next leader of our department. It is exciting to know that we have an athletic director who understands our culture and our family. I was fortunate to have Alan as a supervisor for two years recently. In that time, I saw his dedication to our athletic department, to my student athletes and all of our student athletes and the staff. He listened, he cared. He asked questions. I knew that when I needed help, he was going to be there to help me in any way possible as any family member would do.
Alan will be a great leader because he wants Michigan State to be number one. We want to be the best in the business. That's what we're all here for today. He has been around long enough to see where we were at our best and where we were at our worst. He is passionate about Michigan State and his experience as a student athlete, both revenue and non-revenue, gives him perspective for the direction that we need to go next. Alan is a true Spartan, and I know he will embrace all of us as our families do to help us move forward, to get to that place that we know this department can be. We're all behind you, Alan, and we cannot wait for a new era in Spartan athletics. It is now my pleasure to introduce our men's basketball coach, Tom Izzo.
Tom Izzo:
Well you guys are in my building, so this is a good place to start, but I'm looking in the back. Commissioner Warren, where in the hell is the teleprompter because you're the only guy that got up here and spoke so eloquently without any notes. I mean, Coach Tuck had a book that somebody wrote for him. The first thing I'm going to tell Alan is I need a raise. I got all these football guys and the president, Coach D walked in my office in his Armani suit, Tucker, Warren, Haller, you guys all got ties. I had to go find a sport coat. I couldn't afford a tie. So I'd like that to be your first bit of duty. Thank God for Rick Lash. Somebody out there dresses like me, but getting to serious business.
Jacquie and Stacy got to see Alan as a player and I got to see him unfortunately sometimes as a police officer. I got to know him as an administrator and a friend. Now I get to see him with arguably one of the most important jobs because what goes on at the top usually filters down to the bottom. We are all servants of this university, then at the athletic department, and then hopefully of our teams. I know I got my players back there because I always said I wanted to be a part of hirings and sometimes firings because I've learned a lot as I've watched different people go through different things.
For Alan, to be everything you said, I could just say ditto because everybody talked about the same things, his integrity, his honesty. But I thought, since I came up kind of the same way he did, he played football, I worked for Jud. We both had our problems, but in doing that, you learn a lot. You go through your ups and downs. You've had success. You've had failure. There's no doubt that we've been through a lot here in the last four or five, six years, and I think understanding that is going to make it easier to move forward.
I want you to know that the dream big that everybody talked about has been my motto since I came here and you got to dream it to achieve it. You've proven that you've lived the dreams that Commissioner Warren said. You've walked the talk. I know you've been involved. You don't have to have somebody pave the way for that because you've done it. I think that's very, very important. So being homegrown as we looked through and Mel and I talked a lot, I talked to a lot of the other coaches, I talked to President Stanley, I talked to the board, there's always things that we don't have. I was never a head coach and things semi worked out. I could never win another championship fellows, national that is fellows, but we've all been through it. But when you've grown up through the process, and remember I think that's a word that we don't use enough anymore, there is a process and you have shown that you've stayed fast to the process. For that, I think you're going to be an incredible athletic director.
I'm looking forward to working for you. I'm looking forward to working with you. I appreciate what you've done for all of our student athletes and excited to see what the future is going to be. We've got championships to win. It doesn't matter which sport, the support that all these coaches give me, give each other is incredible. So, you are part of a special place here. I know that we have all of our pros coming back this weekend, not to put any pressure on you. I think Magic's coming back, not to put any pressure on you, but I think getting people back is a key and having one of our own, bringing them back is going to be a big key. So congratulations, congratulations to your family. I hope everybody has a great day.
With that being said, we've all talked about student athletes and Brooke Bogan is a sprinter. She is a big time athlete here, but as important she's a leader in our campus. So when you can do both, as you are doing, are going to be doing, you are doing now, I just want to say thank you for what you've done for our university. Thank you for the leadership you're giving. I think you'll enjoy working with Alan too. So with that, Brooke Bogan, you're the next speaker.
Brooke Bogan:
Thank you. Thank you, Coach Izzo. I want to say that I'm very grateful to be given the opportunity to be able to speak in front of all of you today at such a monumental and important event. As previously stated, my name is Brooke Bogan. I am a fifth year senior on the track and field team. In my five years, I've learned a lot about this university, being that especially in the athletic department, it takes a community in order to be able to run efficiently. When I heard that MSU would be on the search for a new athletic director, I had hoped that Alan would be brought into the conversation. I think because of not only his leadership within the athletic department prior, but also his experience as a Spartan athlete. It really speaks volumes both with football and track and field. So that definitely was something that stood out to me.
Since I know that you have a track and field background, I have made it my personal goal to get him on the track at some point and see if he's still got it. But on a more serious note, one thing I'll forever be grateful for is Alan's genuine care for student athletes. He is somebody who, when our team was at our high and low points, I could definitely count on seeing him on our zoom calls. A couple of summers ago when things got a little bit rocky with things surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion, he was somebody who was there to offer support. That also spoke a lot of volumes to me because it showed that he cared about us, not only on the track on the field, on the court, but also off. Without further ado, I have the greatest honor of introducing MSU's new athletic director, Mr. Alan Haller.
Alan Haller:
Wow. Emily Guerrant, Matt Larson, Tiffany Clark, you all told me this was going to be just a little small gathering. This is incredible. I mean, how many people are going to be able to be introduced by coaches Tucker, Izzo, Joseph and Slobodnik-Stoll and President Stanley and chair Dianne Byrum and Brooke, I'll get to you in just a second. This is incredible. Good afternoon. My pastor in one of his sermons recently mentioned that God had a sense of humor and ever since last week, I've been thinking about that sermon. Wednesday, when I was appointed, I was like, "How big of a sense of humor does God have? Is this really real?" Yes, it is. I'm your athletic director and I'm excited.
Bill Beekman, if you're here, I'm not sure if you're here. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership. Bill took us through some very challenging times and brought us through to the point where we could do a national search and give me the opportunity to be the athletic director. So thank you, Bill and Cindy, your wife. Thank you. Thank you, Brooke Bogan for that incredible introduction. You're amazing. I appreciate you. I was intentional. I wanted a student athlete to introduce me and I wanted you to do it. So thank you. As far as me getting on the track with you, you're a sprinter. So, all I do is jog really slow now. But I'm going to go through some thank yous and this might take a little bit, but this is a big deal for me. A lot of people have helped me throughout this time.
Wow, a former principal, Dr. Clyde Carnegie is here. Well, thank you. Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Eaton, my guy, Coach D, thank you for all your support. You all have helped me to get to this point. I would like to thank President Stanley for your leadership and offering me this opportunity. I'm really excited about working with you and being a part of your vision for Michigan State University. I'm excited to work with you. Thank you. To our board of trustees and chair, Dianne Byrum, thank you for your leadership. I'm excited to work with you as well. To our advisory committee who put a lot of work and effort in the search process, thank you for your efforts.
I also would like to thank the MSU community for your outpouring of support. I promise, I promise I will answer every single text message, every email and every voice message at some point, but there were a lot and I really appreciate your support. To all the current and former student athletes, the outpouring of congratulations and support and excitement has been incredible. Coach Tucker, what you did in the locker room and that chant, I can't describe what that did for me. So thank you to all of our student athletes. I promise you this, I promise you this current and former student athletes, we will work extremely hard to make sure you are proud of your athletic department. Thank you.
Thank you to my former teammates, some of them are here today, my family, you were amazing. You all picked me up, literally, and carried me and dropped me off at this point. So thank you to all of my Spartan teammates, my brothers. Thank you. I'll also like to thank all of my friends and coworkers at the MSU police department for your support. You've been incredible through this as well. All of my coaches, coaches that had a big impact on my life, and I'd like to go back and say thank you to my Little League coaches, Coach Lockhart and Coach Smith, Coach Tom and James Taylor, my high school coaches, coach Bob Myers and the legendary Paul Pozega, my guy. Thank you.
Also, my college coaches, my track coach, Coach Bibbs. You've been incredible. Oh my goodness. I talked to you last the other night and you weren't sure if you could make it. Thank you. Oh my goodness. You've meant so much to my life. So thank you for all your support and you're still there for me, and Coach Perles. I learned a lot of lessons from Coach Perles. Work hard, be on time, carry a flashlight because it's going to be a long day. My freshman year I learned the value of forgiveness. My freshman year I was on the punt block team and we were playing at Michigan and we have a punt block on. We blocked it. John Miller picked it up and ran it back for a touchdown and I was off sides. So it was called back, but he forgave me. To this day, that's one of the traits and values that I learned from my time under Coach Perles, so thank you.
To Jennifer Smith, deputy athletic director, you and I went through a lot this past couple of years in trying to lead a department. I'm thankful for your leadership and dedication to MSU and our student athletes. So thank you Jennifer Smith. To our coaches and staff for coming together these last couple of years and making sure that our student athletes had what they needed to be successful. So thank you to our coaches and staff.
I'd like to say, thank you to my family. My sister Audrey is here, my nephew Desmond, my other sister Sherry's in Denver. She couldn't make it, and my sons, Devin and Blake. Blake is excited because he gets to miss a little bit of school to be here today. But I promise you, son, we'll get you back in time for practice. DeWitt has a big game against East Lansing this week. So, I'll get you back. My daughter, Alison, she's a junior at Michigan State right now and she has been my rock. I came home about four or five weeks ago and Alison was in the kitchen and she said, "So I saw on social media the athletic director's position is open." I said, "Yeah," and I started talking about the process and it's a national search and it's going to be competitive. She stopped me right there and she said, "Dad, why can't you be the athletic director? You should be the athletic director." I said, "You know what, honey, I'm going to compete and go after it." So thank you, honey.
To my parents, my dad is at home watching. He couldn't be here, but my parents went to every single one of my events as a kid. Even as a young adult being out here at MSU and in the NFL, they were at every event, every football game, every track meet. My dad is an incredible person. I learned my servant leadership from my dad, how to treat people and make an impact on people across their paths. So thank you dad. Then my mom, my mom is not with us anymore. I used to get really, really nervous before events, before my football games and track meets. I come out in the stadium and on the track and I look up and I'd find my mom and she would be looking at me and that would calm me down. So, mom, I know you're here today. I feel your presence. I'm calm. I'm ready to go. Thank you, mom, for everything you've done for me.
We've experienced some tough times in Athletics the last couple of years. Recently, we lost two very valued members of our family in Jim Pignataro and Olivia Long. Jim and Olivia, we will honor your legacy and memory by being examples of who you were, which was caring, loving people who had an impact on our young people. So Jim and Olivia, you will be missed, but we will honor your legacy. I grew up in this great community. I'm a product of Lansing Public Schools, a proud graduate of Lansing J.W. Sexton class of 1988. My principal is here today. Thank you.
I started coming to this great campus as a little kid, attending art camp and MSU football camps. As you know, I was a student athlete here. I played football and ran track, and I've been coming to this great campus for the last 40 years. I love this community and I also played four years in the NFL. I was cut eight different times. That's probably, if you think about it, not even possible, but I learned the skill of being resilient and persevering through tough times through my time in the NFL. Last week, Fred Heumann, I think Fred is here and Jack Ebling asked me, has this always been your dream job? And yes, yes. You want to know why, that person is here as well. I didn't know he was going to be here, but he's here.
Dr. Clarence Underwood was an athletic director when I was a student athlete here. Dr. Underwood kind of took me under his wing and made me feel special and always was there as a person that gave me advice and guided me much like a Jedi. I'm a big Star Wars fan. I know my kids know that. So, I was his young apprentice. I learned during that time how to treat people and how to conduct yourself and how to look for the future. Dr. Underwood went on to be the 16th athletic director at Michigan State. I said, you know what, I'm going to go through this life and I'm going to have an impact or at least try to have an impact on young people the way Dr. Clarence Underwood had an impact on me. And here I stand in front of you as the 20th athletic director, in large part because of your leadership and your guidance in my life. So thank you, Dr. Underwood. You taught me well, which is another Jedi phrase.
So this is my dream responsibility. This is not a job. This is my dream responsibility. To our department staff and coaches, I promise to listen, learn and be engaged. Together, we will create a culture of excellence with a foundation of integrity, honesty, transparency, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Together we will celebrate our successes, and together we will support each other during challenging times. We are going to do some incredible things together, and we're going to have a little fun while doing it. To the MSU community and this great university, we will be a valued partner and member of this institution. Spartan athletics exist to add value to this great community, so we will be an extension of MSU. We will be an extension of MSU values, purpose, and mission, and our alumni fans and supporters, we will make all of you proud to be affiliated with MSU. I guarantee that.
Last week at Northwestern, before the game, we got there a little early and I went out and I walked through all of the MSU tailgates. I was surprised that a lot of people recognized me. I thought I could just kind of walk around, but it was a really cool experience getting to know some of the fans and just listening to them. We have the most passionate fan base out there. I was so energized being out there, walking through the tailgates. So, I'm going to bring that to this year. I'm going to walk every home football game. I'll be outside walking the tailgates, getting close to the community and learning from our community because this is about all of us together. This is going to be a community effort in terms of what we do moving forward. I will listen to our fans and supporters and community members.
Our student athletes, we have a representative from each team that is here. Student athletes, please stand. I am not the athletic director. I'm your athletic director. I work for you. There won't be any barriers or layers in between us. You will have direct access to me at all times. Like I mentioned before, my student athlete experience was transformational. It provided just about everything that has happened in my life. I want all of you to have that same experience. People have asked me what's different about your experience compared to the current student athletes, but no one's asked me what's the same. What's the same? It's that look in your eyes. It's that desire to be great. It's wearing your varsity jacket across campus. It's being with your teammates and going after a goal. It's being a part of this great university. That's what's the same. And you know what, our department staff, your coaches, your athletic director will do everything possible to make sure each of you have the resources and support to maximize your potential and go after your dreams.
In closing, Michigan State Athletics, thank you. Michigan State Athletics is positioned to do something really special. We are. That's why I took this responsibility, President Stanley. We are positioned to do something special, but it's not just my responsibility. I can't do it alone. I need all of the student athletes, all of the staff, all of the coaches, university leaders, the community, donors, letter winners, everyone. We have to do this together. I love this great university. We are going to do great things together. Thank you and Go Green!
Audience:
Go White!
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find "MSU Today with Russ White" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D., was joined by Dr. Norm Beauchamp, MSU Executive Vice President for Health Sciences; Dr. Suzanne Lang, Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Academic Human Resources; and Mr. Rick Fanning, Interim Associate Vice President for Human Resources. The discussion was moderated by MSU Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Dr. Jabbar Bennett.
Dr. Bennett:
Hello, and thank you for tuning into our podcast to learn more about MSU's plans and preparations to keep Spartans safe this fall. I am Jabbar Bennett, vice president and chief diversity officer for Michigan State University and I will be your moderator.
In this podcast, we'll address your questions about the health and safety measures in place this semester and we'll share additional information on our collective efforts to keep our Spartan community safe. We're going to hear from MSU experts about the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine and mask-wearing and how these important health requirements better protect the campus community. In addition, we'll spend some time answering your questions about these requirements and what they mean for you, our faculty and staff.
And now, I'm pleased to be joined today by a number of guests who have wide-ranging expertise in infectious disease, healthcare, and human resources. We'll start our conversation today with MSU president, Dr. Samuel Stanley, whose background in infectious disease research has helped navigate MSU through the COVID-19 health crisis. He will be followed by Dr. Norm Beauchamp, MSU executive vice president for health sciences, Dr. Suzanne Lang, associate provost and associate vice president for academic human resources, and Mr. Rick Fanning, interim associate vice president for human resources.
With that, it is now my pleasure to welcome Dr. Sam Stanley. President Stanley, thank you for joining us.
President Stanley:
Thank you, Dr. Bennett, and to my fellow panelists for joining us for this important conversation for our faculty and staff. I've said since I arrived at Michigan State University, just over two years ago, that the health and safety of our campus community are always my chief concern. And when it comes to making decisions in response to the pandemic, we always need to consider how it will affect our faculty, staff, and our community. And we need to follow the science, the public health trends, and of course, health agency guidelines and rules. We have a fundamental obligation to keep our campus community safe while continuing to move the university forward and focusing on the success of our students.
Late last month, the Centers for Disease Control issued some very concerning data and guidance related to the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Data from several studies indicated that the Delta variant is much more serious than the original strain in its transmissibility and possibly in its health impacts. In fact, it's three times more contagious than the original strain of the virus. The R-naught value of the original was around 2.7 and that of the Delta variant is closer to 6 to 8. And that's significant when you consider the close proximity of students, faculty, and staff together on a college campus. We also learned that there were some cases of what are called breakthrough infections, where people who had been vaccinated could spread the virus, even though they don't have symptoms.
At the same time, we were watching the trends nationally and locally for reported cases, which were rising here and elsewhere around the country. And that's really unfortunate because vaccinations had made good progress in knocking the virus back by this summer as more and more people had received their vaccinations. And I've been a firm and vocal proponent of these vaccines. My reading the data tells me that they're extraordinarily safe and incredibly effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death.
In addition, the base of knowledge we've accumulated on vaccines at this point in time is huge to what we've learned from the very robust clinical trials and because so many people have now safely been vaccinated in the US alone, nearly 200 million. But as we observed vaccination rates, we became concerned that we might be short of where we needed to be to reach herd immunity in our community, primarily due to the new threat posed by the Delta variant.
Because of this, as well as important input from faculty and staff through shared governance, and input from student leaders, we decided to mandate vaccination for all students, faculty, and staff at MSU with exemptions for medical or religious reasons, and to issue a mandate for mask-wearing indoors for at least the first six weeks of the fall semester.
These actions are key in allowing us to return to campus safely, to experience in-person learning again, and to engage in all of the things that make the MSU college experience so special. And we know Spartans can do it. One of the lessons we took away from the last year and a half is that we can support a safe campus environment when we take the right precautions.
I encourage listeners to learn details and get updates at the MSU Together We Will website. This has always been a dynamic situation, so we will keep the website up to date. I'm looking forward to hearing what our other panelists have to add, Dr. Bennett, and to take your questions.
Thanks so much, President Stanley. That was really helpful for me and I'm sure our viewers appreciate that as well. I'd like to move on to Dr. Beauchamp.
Dr. Beauchamp:
Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Bennett. And just following President Stanley, I mean, one of the blessings we have at MSU is a president who is an infectious disease specialist, as we seek to navigate this. And my feelings really strongly echo President Stanley's. What I would say is I had the opportunity to be appointed by President Stanley with Dr. Weismantel, our university physician, to really help lead the reopening last year.
And we made a commitment. Our commitment was that we would be a value-based organization and our decisions would be based on safety for our faculty, our students, and staff. And no matter how difficult the choices might be, safety would define all that we did. And I've been really proud of how our campus has held true to that. It's what Spartans do.
And when we think about a vaccine mandate and what that means, it really is about safety. 98% of the deaths that are happening from COVID-19 are in the individuals that are unvaccinated. We know that we lessen the risks of hospitalizations. We know that we lessen the spread of the disease. And to the extent that we can lessen the spread, we decrease the likelihood of new variants appearing. So I'm just very proud of our organization making this very difficult decision to embrace a vaccine mandate and a mask mandate.
Dr. Bennett
Thank you so much for those very, very thoughtful comments. Much appreciate it. And I have a question for you. So some individuals may still have concerns over the safety and efficacy of the COVID 19 vaccines. How do we reassure our community on the safety and efficacy of these vaccines?
Dr. Beauchamp:
It's an excellent question, Dr. Bennett, about the safety of the vaccine. And really, our knowledge is that the vaccine is highly safe. The technology behind it has been in development for over 30 years. The ability to use mRNA to protect people from an infection has been an ongoing effort and it has been over the last two years where the focus has been on the COVID-19 virus. And when you combine that with the science of monitoring the effect of the vaccine and reactions to it in over a hundred million vaccinations, it just tells us that this is an incredibly safe vaccine. And particularly when you put it in the context of the number of lives it clearly saves, and the damage that results from being infected with COVID 19.
Thank you so much for sharing that information. I feel reassured after hearing you walk through that. I'd like to now introduce Dr. Suzanne Lang and give her an opportunity to share some comments before I ask a question. Dr. Lang?
Dr. Lang:
Thank you, Dr. Bennett. It's my pleasure to be a part of this panel and answer questions that faculty and academic staff may have. I know that before the mandate was issued by President Stanley, that we had a number of questions that were coming through from faculty and academic staff who were very concerned that they would be interacting with people who were not vaccinated. And although many of them were vaccinated, their concerns were the possibility of being infected and then going home to small children where they might infect their family. So we really support Dr. Stanley's action and believe this is the absolute best approach for dealing with the Delta variant.
Dr. Bennett:
Thanks so much Dr. Lang, and we all are concerned about safety: individual, personal, as well as the broader community. So here's my question for you. What is the discipline process for employees and students who do not comply with the vaccine requirement?
Dr. Lang:
Well, MSU HR and academic HR will be referring non-compliant employees to the appropriate unit leader to initiate the applicable disciplinary measures through existing processes. We certainly encourage those who have a medical condition that need to be exempted or those with strong religious views to go ahead and use the links that have been provided for applying for an exemption. But then all others who are not compliant will be referred for the appropriate disciplinary action.
Dr. Bennett:
Thank you so much for answering that question. I know it's one that is on the minds of many people as we return to campus for onsite work, but also for students in classes as well. Thank you. So I'd like to introduce Mr. Fanning and allow you, sir, to share any remarks before I ask you a question as well.
Mr. Fanning:
Certainly. Thank you, Dr. Bennett. It's just a real privilege to be able to be here. I really want to recognize how this last 18 months has impacted every one of us across campus. I think we've all experienced some form of challenge and change, and these are certainly challenging times. But I think we also have to recognize just how much incredible work that we've all done together. And I think we need just remember how much we've worked through together and really be proud of what we've all accomplished as a Spartan community.
I want to thank everyone for all their hard work and incredible dedication, both those who worked remotely, as well as those who were coming to campus throughout this entire time and working in person. I think we really do need to be incredibly proud of all we've done. And recognizing some degree of bias here, I particularly want to recognize the team at MSU HR and HR professionals across the campus.
I think we also need to keep in mind that, while we've all gone through this, we've all experienced it very differently in some cases, and we need to continue to show respect and empathy and civility as we adjust to coming back to a more typical way of doing things and being more present here on campus.
We certainly all hope that everybody, faculty and staff and all employees and students, embrace these COVID-related requirements in order to help keep the community safe.
Dr. Bennett:
Thank you so much for your remarks. And I truly appreciate you mentioning the importance of us all displaying respect and humility and civility during this process, because it is tough on everyone. So here's my question for you. Are employees with existing 100%-remote work agreements already in place, are they exempt from the vaccine mandate for the duration of their remote work agreement?
Mr. Fanning:
Yeah. Thank you. That's a very important question. And the answer to that question is that no, they are not exempt. And the reason for that is, in a word, equity. There was a lot of thought and consideration put into this issue, but we really believe that requiring all faculty and staff to participate in the program, regardless of whether they are working in person or remotely is simply the most equitable and fairest approach to these requirements.
Dr. Bennett:
Thank you so much, Mr. Fanning. Now I'd like to transition to considerations around civility and inclusion. As mentioned, the vaccine and mask mandate occurred during the fall semester to help ensure the safety of all members of the community. I appreciate the commitment that our leaders have demonstrated to the overall health and wellbeing of Spartans, so far and near as well. And what I'd like to add is that we must also remain vigilant and be prepared to mitigate bias in the return to campus, which for many will be the very first time that people will be in-person among large groups, some of whom they know and many others they are not familiar with, following what has amounted to an incredibly difficult year for many.
With the return to in-person activities. I also encourage us all to allow ourselves grace in learning and acknowledging harm and respecting one another. Spartans are members of a global community, so we must be intentional about addressing the biases that we all have, especially when encountering different identities, abilities, socio-economic statuses, places of origin, and legal statuses as well.
My office, the Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, offers a number of educational resources, all aimed at helping to mitigate and address bias, including the DEI Foundation's online educational module, the implicit bias certificate program, and MSU dialogues. In addition, we have promotional materials available that help to elevate inclusion, respect, civility, and accountability. As a campus, we are truly dedicated to inclusive excellence, and we strive to create and maintain a welcoming and safe experience for all Spartans.
And President Stanley, I now want to pose a question to you. What work is underway to promote tolerance and inclusion for all Spartans, including those who have medical or religious exemptions, and those who prefer to continue wearing masks, indoors and outdoors, for their own health and safety.
President Stanley:
Well, Dr. Bennett, as you know firsthand, diversity, equity, and inclusion is one of our key institutional priorities at MSU. And our mandate is an effort to really align with those values, to help ensure the safety, inclusion, respect, and accountability of all Spartans in the return to an in-person campus experience. And I think we all know that bias can go both ways towards those who wear masks and those who don't wear masks, towards who those who are vaccinated and those who aren't vaccinated.
And even though we have mandated vaccinations and indoor mask-wearing, there still may be stigmas based on perceived status and identity. For example, someone may not be able to get vaccinated based on a pre-existing medical condition, or someone may prefer to wear a mask in all spaces on campus because they have young children or are caregiving for elders at home or are immunocompromised.
We must approach this situation as humanely as possible, whether in the classroom, residence halls, or on the banks of the Red Cedar. Empathy is so important at this moment in time. We really have to remember we are Spartans and we are all in this together.
Dr. Bennett:
Thanks so much for that response, President Stanley, and also your mention of empathy, which is keenly important along with everything else we've been talking about. So we are now going to transition into a Q&A segment to answer questions that we've received from you. So I'll ask each of our panelists at least one question to start. And President Stanley, I'm going to ask you the first one. Can you tell me and tell the audience, why is it important for even those who have recovered from COVID-19 to get vaccinated?
President Stanley:
We agree with CDC data, which shows that even those who have been previously infected should still get vaccinated. We don't know how long antibodies can or might protect a person against future infection after they've had COVID-19. And studies showed that these safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines provide a strong boost of immunity in those who have previously had COVID-19. And this is one case where the immunity induced by vaccination actually appears superior than the immunity induced by natural infection. So therefore anyone who's had COVID-19 should still get vaccinated afterwards.
Thank you, President Stanley. Dr. Lang, I now have a question for you. How will supervisors proceed with staff that have not been vaccinated or granted a waiver by September 1st. Will any guidelines be provided by employee relations?
Dr. Lang:
Yes. Thank you, Dr. Bennett. What we will do is that both MSU HR and academic HR will refer non-compliant employees to the appropriate unit leadership to initiate the applicable disciplinary measures through existing processes. So we will be working with the unit HR individuals.
Dr. Bennett:
Thank you, Dr. Lang, that's very good to know. Mr. Fanning, a question for you. For employees that don't have a need to work on-site, should they continue to work remotely to reduce the number of individuals on campus?
Mr. Fanning:
Thank you, Dr. Bennett, for that question. Employees should continue to work in the manner that they've arranged with their supervisors. Because again, we are going to be requiring participation either through vaccination or obtaining an exemption for even those employees who are working remotely.
Dr. Bennett:
Thanks so much, Mr. Fanning, that's very helpful. Very helpful. Dr. Beauchamp, I have a question for you now. Will MSU be bringing back clinical diagnostic testing, like what was available at Spartan stadium last year?
Dr. Beauchamp:
Thank you, Dr. Bennett. Currently, testing is only available on campus through the early-detection program and at the Olin Health Center. The good news is there are multiple testing locations within several miles of campus. And we're confident with the EDP, Olin Health, and these testing centers, we will be able to more than meet the needs of faculty, students, and staff. But like with everything, we'll continue to monitor it and if we have to upscale, we certainly will.
Dr. Bennett:
Thanks so much for that. And while I have you, I have another question I'd like for you to address as well. What are the quarantine protocols for our classrooms? How will faculty be notified if a student has contracted COVID and can't attend class? Will we be expected to test in quarantine? Will our courses go remote if we're exposed?
Dr. Beauchamp:
Thank you, Dr. Bennett, I appreciate the many components of that question. It's really important to faculty, students, and staff and it's clearly a balance with respecting the medical information and the privacy of individuals with COVID. So the approach will be the university physician, in conjunction with the county health department, will notify all known close contacts of an individual who has tested positive for COVID-19. So that notification will only go to the close contacts.
Now, those close contacts who have been unvaccinated, they haven't received a vaccination, those individuals will be required to quarantine for up to 14 days. Now, for those that are vaccinated, they'll need to self-monitor for symptoms for 14 days, but they will not need to quarantine. And all of that is in accordance with CDC guidelines.
Now, in terms of communication to the faculty, that really will only be necessary if the student requires accommodation, and it will be up to the student to have that discussion with the faculty. There are no requirements for faculty members, importantly, to transition their entire class remotely if someone in their class has tested positive. So it really will follow established protocols for contact tracing.
Dr. Bennett:
Thank you for those very clear answers to a complex question. I appreciate it. Next question is directed to Mr. Fanning, but Dr. Lang, if you would like to add anything afterward, I welcome you to do so. So Mr. Fanning, will supervisors receive a list of employees who have not verified their vaccine status or who have not been approved for a waiver?
Mr. Fanning:
Thank you, Dr. Bennett. Not necessarily, no. The plan is for employees to be given some degree of warning before we move to any kind of more formal discipline process. Following that, at that point, both HR and the office of employee relations will be working with the units, including supervisors, on those employees who are not in compliance, meaning that they have not either been vaccinated and attested to that through the appropriate form being submitted or having obtained an exemption through that process.
At that point, supervisors could become involved in that process in those unfortunate cases where the university needs to move forward with more formal discipline. But I think the hope and, really, the expectation is that as Spartans learn about this and learn about the importance of keeping our campus safe, that we'll be able to avoid any of those kinds of cases. But we will be prepared to move forward if that's necessary.
Dr. Bennett:
Thank you, Mr. Fanning. Very helpful for supervisors to know. And Dr. Lang, is there anything you'd like to add from the academic human resources perspective to this question?
Dr. Lang:
I think that I agree with Mr. Fanning. Our hope is that people will go ahead and get vaccinated. We do have a system for reminding individuals who are not yet vaccinated to apply for the two limited exemptions. And if they are not approved, they need to go ahead and be vaccinated. And our hope is that our reminders will be sufficient in encouraging people to be vaccinated.
Dr. Bennett:
Thank you both for that answer. I know this is reassuring to supervisors who may be staff and faculty as well. So thank you very much. President Stanley, I have one more question for you. Is MSU considering requiring that visitors and guests to campus be vaccinated like employees and students?
President Stanley:
Dr. Bennett, we've talked about this, but at this time we're not requiring vaccinations of visitors or guests. One of the reasons is that, of course, it would be incredibly difficult and time-intensive to track and enforce in an equitable fashion. We believe it is important to ensure our Spartan community, students, faculty, and staff are vaccinated, which make up the vast majority of individuals coming to our campus.
Dr. Bennett:
Thank you for that. Thank you very much. And Dr. Beauchamp, a question for you. How will MSU verify vaccination status and ensure students, faculty, and staff aren't falsifying information.
Dr. Beauchamp:
Thank you, Dr. Bennett; really important. So much of who we are and how we'll be successful has to be built on a culture of trust. What we are asking is for individuals to self-report their status: faculty, staff, and students. We will have the ability, and we communicate this at the time that individuals provide their status to confirm, because there may be some occasions where we are required to seek additional information about confirming status, particularly as it goes to the need to keep the campus safe and respond to individuals coming down with the virus.
Importantly, we want people to know that the information will be kept secure and it will only be reviewed by MSU leadership and public health professionals. We want individuals to know that personally identified information will not be shared with the public, with faculty, with classmates, or supervisors. So we really do ask that everyone fill this out because it's just another key tool in keeping the campus safe.
Dr. Bennett:
Thanks so much for that answer, and also just underscoring how we're working to ensure the privacy of individuals throughout this process but, again, while thinking about the broader community safety.
Dr. Bennett:
I want to thank all of you: President Stanley, Dr. Beauchamp, Dr. Lang, and Mr. Fanning. You have certainly provided us with some critical information and insights as well into the requirements and MSU's plans for mitigating risks this fall, all in an effort to keep Spartans healthy and safe. So thank you each for joining us today.
And to the listeners, thank you for tuning in. I know we weren't able to get to all the questions submitted to the town hall in the limited time we had, but over the next week we'll work hard to address some of these commonly asked questions we've received on the university's Together We Will website. Thank you for joining us, and I'd like to welcome back President Stanley for his final remarks.
President Stanley:
Thank you, Dr. Bennett. And I also want to thank our other panelists today: executive vice president for health sciences, Dr. Norm Beauchamp; associate provost and vice president for academic human resources, Suzanne Lang; and human resources interim associate vice president and director of the office of employee relations, Rick Fanning. This has been an important conversation to have, and I hope we provided information and perspectives that faculty and staff members will find helpful.
I'll just conclude by emphasizing the importance of all of us doing the things we discussed to help keep ourselves and those around us safe, and you have extra consideration and understanding as we all readjust to this new academic year and, for many, a return to our workplaces.
So thanks to those working hard to prepare our campus for the return of students and employees and those who've been coming to work for the last 18 months. Thanks also to the faculty members who pivoted to remote learning. All of us have been working on these challenges together. So thank each and every one of you for your dedication to MSU.
How much funding do we receive and what areas of MSU receive funds in this process?
“The number changes a little bit every year, so the number I'm giving right now, which is $287 million is a number that we're getting this year,” says Bertram. “Now that's just in one line for one purpose. That's general operating dollars from the state of Michigan. In addition to that $287 million, AgBioResearch gets about $35 million and MSU Extension gets about $30 million. There are other smaller programs like Project Greeen, which is an annual program that does plant-based agriculture research. There are a number of other programs as well.
“When you add it all up, it's about $400 million a year, maybe a little under that for all of MSU. This is money that goes into our general fund, but not for Athletics. I would distinguish that no money from the state goes to Athletics. I'd also qualify that no money from student tuition goes into Athletics. Athletics is a completely standalone program; they're self-sustaining. They receive gifts from donors as well.”
“What I would add in there is that for the $287 million of general operations, that works out to be about 20 percent of our operating fund today,” adds Reuter. “Historically that number was much higher. And another point on Athletics is that the scholarships that students receive are funded by Athletics. The scholarships are for full tuition rates that Athletics has to cover. So as the cost of tuition rises, that's an increased cost for Athletics to have to be able to cover in their operating budget and in their revenue stream. So, while there are no direct dollars coming from the state going there, there is a correlation in terms of cost of operations for Athletics based on what the university's tuition is.”
With a need for a more educated workforce to meet the employment needs of today and in the future, Bertram and Reuter tell why then there isn’t more state funding for higher education.
“Once upon a time there was more it; unfortunately, it's not as high now as where we believe it should be,” Bertram says. “What's happened is a real transformation over a period of decades. From our perspective, we just need to raise the importance of higher education funding within the state budget. And that's not just an MSU thing; it's everybody.”
There are 15 public universities in Michigan, and they say investment in not only Michigan State University but higher education in the state of Michigan is an investment in our state. They also compare and contrast the funding history of higher education to other education funding in Michigan, like funding for K-12.
“We really don't want it to be about higher education versus K-12 or higher education versus community colleges because really we all work hand in hand, and, quite frankly, we've always said that if a student isn't taught well at the K-12 level, MSU is going to spend a lot of resources and dollars when they arrive on our campus to get them to where they need to be, to graduate them, and to have them be successful,” says Bertram. “We have a lot of student success programs in place, and we've been ramping up our percentage of students who are graduating. The last thing you want is to have someone spend thousands of dollars and then not get a degree.
“It’s not a competition, but K-12 has been funded better. I will also say that community colleges have been funded on a similar scale approach and are maybe doing a little better than our four-year institutions in the state.”
The duo talks more about the current budget process and the dynamics at play. And they talk about the challenge of the declining demographic of college-aged students in Michigan that is facing MSU and all the state’s 15 public universities. One thing that has helped the overall state budget is collecting taxes on internet sales. They also analyze some of the current budget proposals for the upcoming fiscal year coming from the House and Senate.
Reuter says Spartans and higher education supporters can engage in the budget process and keep up with what's taking place by becoming a Spartan Advocate and supporting MI Spartan Impact.
“While the site is a huge source for our Spartan Advocates and our Spartan friends out there across the state, the country, and the world, it also serves as a great tool for legislators to understand the impact of MSU. Those decision-makers we've been talking about can see the same data and look at it from their district and see how much of an impact MSU’s land grant mission has in their area.”
Reuter shares some examples of advocacy work so potential advocates know what to expect when asked to engage. And Bertram adds that advocating for MSU and higher education “is not like a second job. It doesn't take that kind of a time commitment. It might be a couple of times a year that we ask for help. We would love to not have to do it. It would be nice if we were only sending out thank you notes. It’s only a few times a year and everyone is welcome to participate.”
“I would just encourage anybody listening that even if you don't sign up as a Spartan Advocate to engage with your state legislator about higher ed funding and the importance of it. We really think the conversation needs to flip a little bit. In the past six or eight years, there's been a trend of people saying ‘Well, do I really need to go to college? Do I need to get a degree?’ We really need to change that conversation to understand that roughly three quarters of the jobs that are out there are going to require a degree. While you might have a good paying job for a few years, to sustain a career you do need to have a degree. That hasn't changed, and job providers are still asking for degrees.
“So, it really is in people's best interest to get a degree. And the only way to make that affordable is to have the state commit to funding higher education. It's really that conversation we need to have. It needs to be casual, and it needs to be in the district at home when one sees their legislator in church, in the grocery store, or walking on the street. Those are the types of conversations we need to have, not just for MSU, but for all our institutions in Michigan.”
“When you speak with your representatives, make it as localized as possible. Talk not only of your personal experience here at Michigan State University but help them understand what we're doing in your backyard and across the state. Between AgBioResearch and MSU Extension, we've got research stations all across the state. MSU Extension operates in all 83 counties. MSU is across the state. That is part of our mission. It goes beyond just your personal experience here on campus.
"Help them understand what we're doing in their backyard and make it as personal as possible. Because that investment in MSU really does go a long way, not only for degree attainment, but for the delivery of extension services and our agriculture community across the state. We play a very wide role and understanding what we do as a university here in the state of Michigan is really important for Spartans and for folks who may not affiliate as a Spartan but who understand that we are still in your backyard and we're there and we're helping in the community.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
What are some tips for adjusting from working from home back to a nine-to five-schedule in the office?
First of all, be easy on yourself,” advises Hall. “We've been living in a weird state of reality for the past several months, and so practice some grace and show yourself some grace. We're so used to just rolling out of bed in our sweats and then jumping into a Zoom call, but when you have to get ready for a commute, you have to pack a lunch and you have to let your dog out. Start doing that so that the first day back and the first week back, you won't be so stressed that by the time you get to work, you are panting and sweating and just overly anxious. Another thing that I think is really important for people to do, whether you're working at home or in the office or in a hybrid model, is that you need to create a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule.
“It's an important way to keep yourself accountable, keep yourself on track, and give yourself a roadmap. But also you can see where your time drains are. A lot of us have those times sucks and you're like, ‘Wow, I should have done this by the end of the day on Wednesday, and I haven't even gotten started.’ It can let you look back and see where you're having those types of bottlenecks.
“Another thing that I think that a lot of us, including myself, need to remind ourselves is to be generous when scheduling your meetings and assigning yourself tasks. If you're going to do a meeting from 9:00 to 10:00, don't necessarily schedule the next meeting at 10:00. You have to factor in some time because it might run over. You have to take breaks. You have to check your emails. Giving yourself that cushion is very important.
“Another thing I want to really emphasize is that a lot of things that we did before the pandemic we did them that way because we always did them that way. And we didn't really question our routines or our processes. Now is an opportunity to hit the reset button. We realized during this pandemic and working from home that we could be creative and streamline processes and be very innovative. As you go back to work, don't necessarily go back to the same old same old. Think of some ways you can make jobs more efficient. Now is a really good opportunity to hit the reset button.”
What are some tangible ways that employees can practice self-care during the workday if they feel anxious or overwhelmed?
“It is normal that people are feeling stressed out right now. I'm feeling stressed out right now. We are dealing with the Delta variant, and we haven't been in the office for a long period of time. Things are very new, and things are constantly changing. Realize that it's normal to feel stressed out and out of sorts. I think practicing grace is an important first step.
“Another thing on self-care is to take five minutes for yourself. Practice meditation. Listen to music. Go for a walk. Hang out with your pets. Do things like that and block out time to reset. We're still living in a pandemic, and it's going to be even more difficult as people transition back and as people who have children transition back to the school year. A lot of kids are going back to school; how do you negotiate that? Know that you need to take that time out for yourself.
“The other thing that I think is very important is to solicit social support, whether that means leaning on your coworkers or commiserating with them. Be transparent with your boss about what kind of needs or apprehensions you may have. Join some type of employee resource group or support group where you have other people who you can talk to. Lean on people who are in your professional network. I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't have a great network of people I can lean on, bounce questions off, and ask for help. If it's to the point that you're depressed, because a lot of people are depressed, reach out to your employee assistance plan and try to find some type of counseling and do things that support your mental health.”
What about for employees who may be asked to come to the office more than they may be comfortable? What are some good tactics for addressing those concerns with their supervisors?
“This really resonates with me because I have a child who is immunocompromised and is on immunosuppressants. I had a very frank conversation with my boss, and I said, ‘I don't feel comfortable coming in right now because she's very, very sick.’ And he was so cool about it. He was like, ‘No, no, we want to help you.’ This past year and a half, people have become more empathetic. They realize that times are tough. Be transparent about what you're going through rather than try to come back and be resentful because you should've said something that you didn't.
“But there are situations where you just can't work remotely. You are a nurse or you’re with an organization which is just not allowing people to work remotely. There are still some things that you could try to do. You could try to have a schedule where you are coming in only a couple of days a week, or you could try to ask for a certain type of space where you could be more socially distant from people. You could ask those around you, ‘I've got some problems. I have some concerns. Do you mind masking?’ Be transparent and proactive. Also, if you feel that you cannot come back for whatever reason, arm yourself with data.
“You can tell your boss, ‘Hey, for the past year and a half, I've been working at home and things are working out okay. I've been able to do my work. I have been able to be proficient. I haven't had complaints from customers, clients, or coworkers. And I’m productive. Let me show you how I'll hold myself accountable in the future.’ Try to negotiate and say, ‘Hey, why don't you let me continue to work remotely from home until you see a problem, and then we can try to revisit that. But if things aren't broken, why try to fix them?’ And that all goes part and parcel with explaining why you want to work from home; be able to address the concerns that your boss may have.
“A big concern for a lot of bosses is that they're afraid about the office culture. They feel things may not be as cohesive when people aren't in the office seeing each other face to face. But you can talk about having Zoom meetings on a regular basis - one-on-one or in groups - or meeting people socially distanced for short periods of time so that you can see their faces. Hopefully, you can reach some type of compromise or happy medium where you allay your boss's concerns, and you've also allayed some of your own.”
From the employer's perspective, what are some things they can do to help their employees transition smoothly back into the office?
“Don't expect things to be perfect when you come back. For example, I haven't worked the photocopier in my office for a year and a half. Trust me, Russ, I won't know what to do if paper gets stuck in there. I'm going to be calling someone for help. So imagine there are going to be hiccups. Things are going to take a little bit longer. For example, my husband just went back to work. He's an attorney with the state of Michigan, and he works on the eighth floor. He has to budget more time to get up to his office because either he has to walk up the stairs, or only one or two people can go in the elevator. Can you imagine eight o'clock when everyone's going in? So, you have to expect that things are not going to be like they were before.
“You've got to also practice regular check-ins with your employees to make sure that you discuss their concerns and help them feel validated and heard. Even if you can't change things for them, just the notion of employees being able to engage in what we call voice and being able to air their concerns goes very far in terms of employee wellbeing, mental health, and productivity. Another practical idea is to schedule meetings for midday rather than early morning. At the end of the day, we all get Zoom fatigue, and so you don't want to have these meetings necessarily at the end of the day. And people have to get used to their commute, finding a parking space, and walking in. And be open to feedback from your employees.”
How do you see the rise and acceptance of more remote work playing out in the years ahead where people seem to want more work-life balance and some of the power dynamic seems to be shifting more in the employee direction?
“I see this as the next wave of the labor movement because there has been a shifting of power. And it's not because employees just want a free ride, but they'd rather get a job where they're treated like a human being rather than go someplace and make 12 bucks an hour and go through hell every time they go to work. Employers have to think about treating their employees better. They have to see employees as a resource instead of as an expense. They're not an expense you're trying to minimize, they're a resource or an asset that you're investing in. You need to empower employees, hear their voices, solicit feedback from them, and make sure you have good two-way communication, like having transparency about what you're doing. Even if the communication from the employer is, ‘We don't know. We're living in uncertain times, we'll keep you posted, but as of this moment, we really don't know.’
“And you don't want to create a big chasm between the frontline workers going to work and the higher paid or mid-management executives who work from home safely away from all the drama. As a manager, even if you are working remotely some of the time, you need to come in on a regular basis to check in with your employees to see how they're doing and to hear their voice.”
What are some issues, challenges, and opportunities in the fields of human resources and labor relations?
“The biggest challenge is the notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I am a person of color. I am an Afro-Latina first-generation from Panama; my parents came from Panama in the 1960s. The DEI movement in the academic field of human resource management got very little love for many generations. In fact, my advisor when I was at Florida State told me to stay away from those issues because he didn't want me to be looked at as an angry Black woman. And that was good advice at the time because it would've been career suicide. But now, people are really interested in diversity, equity, and inclusion. We need to make sure that this is not just a moment. This is a movement for anybody who wants to feel included and valued in the workplace, whether it's because of your gender identity or orientation, whether it's because you have a disability, you're a veteran, or you're a low-income worker. It’s an issue that needs to be ingrained within the field of human resources. Another thing that is very important is the notion of artificial intelligence and technology, their place in the workplace, and the fact that once again, we don't want there to be a chasm created. We don't want those employees left behind because they're not trained or because they're being replaced by technology. Find a way for them to have a place in the workplace.
“Another trend that you're going to see in human resources that we began to see even before the pandemic but that you're going to see even more is something called job crafting. More and more employers are allowing people to craft their job into a job that fits their skills. For example, you may be better at creating reports, and your co-worker may be better at analyzing the data. You may have the same role, but you do more of the report generation and that person does more of the data analysis. Job crafting and finding ways that employees can thrive in their roles is something you're going to see more and more of in the future.”
What first attracted you to MSU? And what are some of your own research interests?
“What attracted me to MSU is that I'm in the multidisciplinary School of Human Resources and Labor Relations; it is one of the few schools of HR and LR in the country. The fact that I could do multi-disciplinary research at a top ranked program really attracted me, and the fact that I could learn from people from other disciplines. It's really cool being able to work with a psychologist, for example, and the great thing about MSU is that we're able to work with people so easily from other disciplines. I'm currently working with some faculty and students in the College of Engineering, particularly Andrew Mason, who is also a real dear friend of mine.
“The main thing that I am known for if you were to Google me is that I study employee accountability. Accountability means the belief or expectation that you'll be called to account for your actions. Because we feel like we're going to have to account for things, we adapt certain types of behaviors. It might be covering your behind in a situation, or it could be a situation where you think ‘I better think about this long and hard because my boss is going to ask me why I did that, so I better have some good explanations.’ I'm looking at how employers can promote accountability and how people react to accountability. The other accountability research that I'm really excited about is how people from historically marginalized groups manage their accountability.”
Tell me about your podcast, what you focus on, and why you think this medium is a good way to get your message out.
“I have a podcast series called People Talk with Angela Hall. It is available on Apple and Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts. I talk about how you engage and motivate your employees and also discuss issues about career leadership, career management, diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s fun, and I get to talk about timely topical things related to HR.”
Summarize some of your tips for making a smooth transition back to working in the office.
“As an employee or as an employer, you need to practice grace with yourself and others. You need to be open and transparent about what you're feeling, and you need to solicit feedback from others. You need to lean on others and seek social support. Don’t seek social support once you start flailing. Seek that kind of support from the beginning. Employers need to think about having things like town halls and open communications, and employees should feel empowered to talk to their employers about what's happening. We all realize, too, that we're in a time where things are pretty ambiguous right now and that we have to realize that what is okay today may be very different tomorrow. And remember that we're going to have to practice some flexibility.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It's great to be back,” Akmon says. “I did work here at the MSU Museum as an undergrad. I did what I like to affectionately refer to as grunt work, painting a lot of walls, helping with a lot of exhibitions, and putting the vinyl on the walls. I was an art history and museum studies student at the time. It's interesting to look back. I really think those were the first steps that actually launched my career. It exposed me to museums in a new way, and I got some theoretical training with some practical hands on experience. And when I left MSU, I ended up going to grad school and studying something completely different. And as luck would have it, instead of actually going into that field, I ended up in a museum as I finished my graduate studies and then began my journey. It's brought me back here almost 20 years later. I would have never imagined that I'd be back here at MSU working for the museum, but it's a bit of a homecoming. It's great to be back.”
Akmon describes the mission of Science Gallery Detroit and tells why he was excited to add director of the MSU Museum to his responsibilities. And he shares some of his short- and long-term goals for the Museum.
“The very first thing we're going to do is put our heads down and actually put together a strong strategic plan and think about, in that planning process, what are the types of resources we need? What does our programming look like over the next five years? In general, and especially coming out of consulting, I've learned that one of the number one barriers that prohibits organizations from truly flourishing in the arts sector is not planning out far enough. You don't have enough time to think creatively, to fundraise, to market, and to educate your audiences. We're going to put our heads down and really build a strong roadmap. And in that process, we'll really understand and figure out what we're going to do. But I think there are some overarching things we can already assume.
“One of the things we realize is we've got this beautiful building. It's an old building, and it's geographically in the heart of the campus. But it's also limited. We already know that we're going to have to find a way of doing a little bit of what I call the push pull model. We want to pull people into the museum, but we're also going to have to push activities out into the campus community. Even this fall, we're already thinking about that with the first exhibition we're going to open when the museum reopens in September. We have some exhibits that we’ll probably be embedding in the STEM building, and we’ll be partnering with the Greater Lansing Arts Council to do some things up and down Grand River. And we're putting all the programming out over campus, like the workshops and performances. None of that will actually happen in the Museum.
“We’ll be thinking broadly about how we embed things across the campus community. We know we're competing for time and attention. We have to meet people where they are. We have to be relevant. We have to be creative and innovative in that programming. So, it's really top of mind to think critically about the partnerships we have in student success and academic success and how we support that. We want to be truly relevant in the life of students. Nothing would please me more than to just even see students studying in this building. People think you have to go to a museum only to see exhibitions, but I like to think of this as a third space on campus where people can just come sit and relax. We all had those experiences when we were undergrads, right? There were different places around campus that we went to. So, it's my heart's desire that the Museum will be that for our undergrads today.”
Akmon says collaboration with campus partners will be one of his key goals.
“I feel so fortunate that I have such great peers that I've already met across campus. My colleague Monica at the Broad Art Museum is just absolutely phenomenal. So are our friends over at the Residential College and our friends over at the Museum Studies Program. Everybody's really keen to collaborate. There's a shared focus on impact on the community. And we all know that we can go farther together than alone. We're already in so many ways coming to the table and thinking together. In fact, the MSU Museum, the Broad Art Museum, and WKAR are going to program an art event shortly after we open. And that just kind of materialized over the course of a week. People just say, ‘Hey, we've got this idea, do you want to be part of it?’ You'll see a lot of that at the MSU Museum going forward.”
What are some challenges to reaching those goals and some opportunities, too?
“There are all kinds of challenges. We know that our campus community is busy. We're competing for time and attention, and we need to be relevant. And that's always a challenge, right? We're in a very loud and noisy world with so many activities happening. We're very pragmatic about the institution we're in. The physical building, as I mentioned, is very old. It has some really wonderful assets to it, but it also has some challenges.
“We don't have a lot of gallery space. We don't have a lot of workshop space. Part of the reason that we don't do programming here is we don't have a lot of programming space. So, there are certainly plenty of challenges for not just our museum, but I think museums in general, especially as we navigate COVID. The whole industry and the traditional business model have been disrupted. Figuring even that out is really hard, but I always like to look for the silver linings. I have an entrepreneurial mindset. I like these challenges and it enables us to think boldly and creatively about what a new future can be and how a museum like this can serve its community for that next chapter. We're just going to tackle each challenge in that manner going forward.”
What are some of the challenges and opportunities for museums in general and arts and culture in general?
“One of the big things right now for museums as I keep alluding to is a very competitive landscape out there. We see attendance declining nationally in museums, which is interesting because museums remain among the absolute most trusted institutions in our country. There are a lot of things that people are pessimistic about, but museums and cultural centers seem to be still rated as trusted institutions. We face these weird challenges where we're trusted and celebrated but attendance is declining. That goes back to this idea of how we compete for time and attention. How do we make sure we're relevant? How are we responding to the needs of the communities we seek to serve? That has to be top of mind. We also really have to think about experience design.
“That's what we refer to as the experience economy. And that's really critical. What does it mean to come and visit the museum? What does the experience feel like from the minute you walk into the door to the minute you leave?”
When you were coming out of high school, why was MSU the place for you?
“I grew up in Metro Detroit, but my dad worked in government. He got transferred up to Flint and we lived in a small town. And one of the first things right away that I fell in love with at Michigan State was the beauty of the campus. I came out here in the summer. And as we all know, summer on the MSU campus is a postcard. So that kind of coupled with the sheer size of it. Some people get intimidated by large schools. For me, it just felt so wonderful to be around so many like-minded and similar aged people. That's what kind of brought me here. My best friends to this day came from here.
“I met my wife here as an undergrad. I feel really lucky that I chose MSU. And I often think I just don't feel like it was as competitive as when I was applying to college like it is today. I felt a little bit more free to choose a university that really fit me as opposed to the competitive nature of it. So I just feel really blessed in that regard. And MSU was just an incredibly good experience for me.
“As an undergrad, I really began to blend some of my interests, one of which was the City of Detroit. I was doing a lot of photography and lithography work at the time. I was also studying studio art and I was going back and forth between Detroit and East Lansing. And I think that exposure was really critical in my development. I began much more to explore my identity. I'm a third generation Lebanese American, which opened up all kinds of doors for my professional work and museums later in life. I had a rich array of experiences. Not only did I work at the MSU Museum, but I worked for the State News and actually pursued a journalism career for a while before I figured out that wasn't really for me.
“There are so many amazing assets here. If you truly embrace those and you explore these opportunities, all kinds of doors open. We grow as individuals, and we begin to see the opportunities out there in the world. I just kind of followed my heart with that. That’s why the Science Gallery aspect of our work is still so critical. That really speaks to me. I keep thinking about how important it is for that age group and those experiences as undergrads to think that we can have a role in shaping that in the same way the university helped shape my life. There's an amazing power in that and I hope we can pay that forward.”
Summarize what you'd like those joining in on our conversation to know about you and where you want to take the MSU Museum.
“People should expect new ideas coming out of the MSU Museum, things they haven't experienced before in the past. This fall, we're going to open a whole new exhibition that explores surveillance and the way it permeates all aspects of our lives. It's going to be a very tech heavy show and probably a little bit unsettling because these are things that we tend to push out of our mind. You're going to see new things in the space programmatically with the exhibitions and certainly the way we engage faculty and students to provide richer experiences for them. Stay tuned.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get yours shows.
Christine So (she/her) is ASMSU's Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer and Senior Advisor to APASO, that's the Asian Pacific American Student Organization. Kelly High McCord (she/her) is Director of Human Resources for Residential Hospitality Services. Dr. Ashley Green (she/her) is Assistant Dean of Administration and Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for International Studies and Programs. And Dr. Jim Lucas (he him) is Assistant Dean of Global Education and Curriculum at the Office of Undergraduate Education.
What's the relationship between DEI and the COVID-19 pandemic? In what ways are people differentially affected based on their identities?
“We know that some people are at a higher risk because of their race or ethnicity due to underlying conditions, or more so because of lack of access to regular healthcare and preventions. But there could also be differentials in the impacts of dealing with the trauma or the aftermath,” says Green. “So if you come from an area where numerous loved ones have died from the disease, you now have an added layer of trauma or grief that impacts your mental and physical health due to the actual COVID-19 disease.
“And I have to also mention the differential impacts on our workforce, such as differences in salary adjustments, furloughs, possible inequities in work assignments, power dynamics, and from a personal perspective, women who are juggling heightened full-time work and additional duties at home while managing children being schooled from home. And then more specifically, as it relates to some of the international population, they have had to navigate a number of issues such as border closings disabling them from entering their home countries or leaving to come to the U.S., navigating time zone challenges when trying to participate in courses and meetings virtually, less than ideal internet in various parts of the world, and fears of being unable to obtain a visa for educational or professional traveling thereby resulting in decreased opportunities to travel, which impacts international research and global experiences for our faculty and students. And then lastly, other issues of DEI that are exacerbated in virtual spaces include lack of connection and hands-on physical support. There are some language barriers that are heightened in virtual spaces or while wearing a mask as well.”
“In Residential and Hospitality Services and beyond on campus, many of our frontline team members are people of color and women,” High McCord says. “And so they have been affected in having to make really difficult decisions regarding whether to come to campus. Do I feel safe? Am I going to bring something home to my parents that I care for? Some healthcare institutions may have been closed or compromised in various ways. If you have childcare issues, where can you put your child when you still need to work? There have been a number of challenges.
“We've had staff members who've lost people due to COVID-19, and they’re dealing with the loss. The workforce is very thin right now, and so they're putting in a lot of hours to help us cover and take care of the campus that's still here and operating during the pandemic.”
“In addition to childcare issues, we're hearing about people who have family responsibilities in terms of elder care, and then also students who may be helping to support their families,” Lucas adds. “And so for them, maybe their parents or guardians are out of work and they need to work more. And then of course, we have to look at the jobs sometimes, as Kelly alluded to. If you have a position as a frontline worker or in the hospitality industry, you're being put at the forefront of being exposed to COVID.
“And I just want to also stress something we haven’t talked about enough. We’re seeing internet access issues for our low-income students and our rural students. We've actually had students who've been driving to McDonald's or to Starbucks to sit outside to take tests or to do their homework. And we know that people from certain cultural backgrounds may not feel comfortable accessing medical care or mental health care. And so they may be suffering in silence. And then of course we have to think globally about who has access to what vaccines and who's able to obtain them easily, but also what is the United States' role in supporting COVID vaccination globally?”
We know that vaccine and mask wearing policies have caused some controversial conversation. Can you explain some of the bias or apprehensions around mask wearing and vaccinations?
“To be candid, there were some African American men who were initially hesitant to wear masks in public spaces for fear of being targeted or profiled due to negative stereotypes,” Green says. “As it relates to the vaccine, we also have to acknowledge that there are some in the African American community who are not trusting of the medical professionals or political figures, given the systematic oppression that the community has felt. Some have even cited the Tuskegee Airmen syphilis experiment where black men were intentionally and secretively injected with syphilis as a reason to not trust the vaccine. Ultimately, there are some concerns. They think that there's some ulterior motive or hidden agenda for the government to gain more power and control or for the medical industry to make profit off of them as Guinea pigs.
“I'm supportive of the science, but whether you agree or disagree, it is a reality for some that needs to be acknowledged. Then some people are just simply pro-choice in every way and are against being forced to do anything.
“There's also some concern on the other side where people still want to continue wearing masks, even when and if a mask mandate is lifted and they're just concerned about being teased or looked at like they're odd when they're still wearing their masks. So we are really seeing the concerns on both sides. And again, whether you agree or disagree, I think it's important to acknowledge everyone's feelings when trying to deal with this.”
Christine, what do you think students are most worried about in general coming back to in-person this year?
“A lot of students are still concerned about their own safety in the classroom,” So says. “There have been things going around about how people are creating fake vaccination cards or fake COVID tests. So even though a student may submit a vaccination card, what's to say it's real or not real?
“A lot of students, including myself, really want empathy. I know some professors were more empathetic than others. I feel like some professors were very accommodating and others were not. So I'm kind of interested to see and concerned about how professors will treat students this fall because we all know the transition back to a somewhat normal year will be very challenging for not just students, but the faculty and staff in our institution. So I'm just really hoping for some empathy and mental health. And transitioning of two basically new freshmen classes will be a big learning curve for not just those students, but for the faculty and staff supporting those students with resources and teaching them. And something I want to emphasize too is the pandemic still exists. It’s still going.”
“Faculty, staff, and students with sensory issues are also affected by masks,” adds Lucas. “It may inhibit their ability to read lips and it can be harder to hear sometimes. We’re thinking through how we'll be doing fall welcome events and the scope and the scale of those events. We're basically going to be repeating some of the events that this year's second year students went through virtually because we know from talking to students that the virtual year, although they benefited and they had a great education, it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same as meeting people.
“We're hearing a lot about social anxiety issues as students transition to a place that they know a little bit but not a lot about. And they are going to want to be with friends and engage in clubs and do all the things that first year students do. And so there is a campus reorientation effort that's looking at how we can do that and how we can basically transition all of our students back.”
“I would add that our staff is feeling similarly,” continues High McCord. “Many of them worked from home, and so they’re reacclimating to campus and thinking about the thousands upon thousands of students who are going to descend on campus and they're very anxious. And like Christine said, this pandemic is still happening. And so there's some staff that are saying, ‘Why are we acting like this is not happening?’ So we've been trying to encourage our team members to come back to campus now to ease their way into it. We have people who are very anxious coming from home where people were shopping online and having things delivered curbside who are now coming into an office even with 5-10 people, and that is very anxiety producing.
“I really liked Christine's point about empathy and thinking about how to keep people physically and psychologically safe. And we're talking to our supervisors about how to do that. You know, don't take for granted that no one wants to wear masks. Some people do. And there are people who are worried about being bullied for wearing a mask, or people asking about vaccination status or health status because some choose to wear a mask. We want to protect people so we're telling people to not ask those questions. Let people make that choice for themselves.”
“We've politicized COVID, unfortunately, and mask wearing,” Lucas continues. “Whether you're a faculty staff, employee, or a student, you have to remember that people are coming from different backgrounds with different beliefs, and you can't make an assumption about someone because they want to wear a mask, or they don't want to wear a mask. We have people who have immune compromised loved ones, and they want to be safe because they don't want to bring it home. And so we have to remember it's both ways and that's something I find that it's helpful to talk to people about. As much as some people are nervous about coming back, some people are really eager to come back. And there is no right answer other than what I hear us all trying to say is you have to have empathy and grace.”
Ashley, can you talk about how xenophobia plays into our discussion?
“That's been a big concern among the international population, particularly, but not solely from the Asian community,” says Green. “As many people know, there has been a rise in hate crimes against the Asian community. And some of this stems from the assertion that the coronavirus came from China, along with our former political figures, unfortunately, calling this the China virus and making other disparaging remarks. There are people who are now targeting members from the Asian community in a prejudiced or discriminatory way, and that’s causing a lot of emotional and even physical harm.
“As it relates to faculty, there is tension between the government compliance and sometimes unjust mistreatment of international faculty as they deal with additional layers of scrutiny and approvals and other protocols that not all faculty have to deal with. And so it's just a really big concern. As people come back to campus, they want to feel welcomed and they want to feel invited. It's not just purely an MSU campus culture issue, it is a U.S. national issue. And so it's prevalent among many groups. I just took the time to talk about the Asian community, but many populations are feeling this just as some Muslim populations felt this during the 9/11 crisis.”
The university is focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. What are some of the ways in which your college or department is advancing to contribute to an inclusive environment?
“International Studies and Programs advances programming related to global and cross-cultural initiatives,” Green says. “Working with academic colleges, we develop education abroad programming and other forms of student exchange. We offer a diversity of seminars, conferences, and workshops through our units related to global DEI. We also have a role in internationalizing teaching and learning and integrating diverse perspectives, cultures, and voices into the curriculum. And then externally, we facilitate equitable partnerships to transform lives and address global challenges through collaborative research and outreach.
“And all of this is for our students to participate in and benefit from, and we have other initiatives through our units, such as the GenCen, serving as the hub for gender and sexuality research from a global perspective, Muslim studies programming, our area studies, creating cross-disciplinary research on a global scale, and then our Office of International Students and Scholars with all of their support for immigration regulations, intercultural communication workshops, and other DACA related issues. And then we're also proud to have partnered with the president's office and OI3 to develop a robust set of information and resources for our undocumented students, refugees, and DACA students.”
Kelly, what about at RHS?
“I'm glad you asked because I wanted to make sure we didn't jump from the xenophobia piece too soon because we really need to outwardly say and demonstrate that we want all of our students to be safe, including our Asian and Asian American community members,” High McCord says. “We need to be explicit about that. And so we’re checking in appropriately to see how people are feeling and if they feel safe. What you can do to help them feel safe is really important. I know in our division, we're trying to do that. We've talked about our Hate Has No Home Here campaign. Students will see that right away when they move in to campus. We'll have a robust campaign going and a pledge signing piece as well. But as students have told us, if we are saying that hate has no home here, then we need to put some action behind that and show how we protect our students, staff, community, and faculty. We're looking forward to doing that.
“We've been trying to stay on the pulse of what's happening for folks of color and our international students throughout this pandemic and talking with our colleagues across campus. Christine has been a part of a summit that we had in RHS and Student Affairs and Services to really talk about what we need to do to make students feel safe. And students have given us a number of demands related to safety that we're trying to respond to right away. And so maybe Christine wants to talk a little bit about that, but I think we're really trying to talk about action steps to do it. It's not verbal support, but actually supporting them in our policies, practices, and procedures.”
“I want to thank Kelly for sharing the work that summit has been doing in that group,” says So. “It's been really good. As a student who participates in some of those organizations and those circles, it's really nice to see that demands are now receiving actions. Something I also want to emphasize is that because MSU is a PWI, a predominantly white institution, it's really important that these colleges are developing steps to promote their DEI initiatives. It is important to bring that sort of awareness to our university.
“On the topic of xenophobia and being a Korean American woman myself and looking very East Asian, which Chinese people also fall under with that unfortunate stereotype that has been circulating because of the pandemic, I have not had an experience where somebody has blatantly come up to my face. But I remember at the peak of the pandemic when my brother and I would go to the grocery store or I'd assist my mom when I came home in March of 2020, the stares and people blatantly moving away from us in the grocery store. I don't think some people recognize how hurtful those small actions can be or be felt so it is really important to make sure that people are checking in with students and faculty and staff who are part of this community as well.”
“Our office runs a lot of different programming that looks at DEI and its connection to student success,” says Lucas. “We know that creating a hospitable campus with a positive climate is essential for all of our students. And so whether it's the way we do orientation or the way we do first-year transition programming, we have been embedding DEI into all of the work that we do. And in relationship specifically to COVID, some of the efforts we've been doing is having specific global education and DEI related conversation so that faculty members who are most likely to be teaching our younger students have some context of what they're facing and how to address those issues in the classroom.
“Sometimes faculty and staff may see each other or a student in distress or something might have happened like George Floyd, and then they don't say anything about it because they don't know what to say, or they don't know how to say it, or they don't feel prepared to deal with what might come out of launching into a conversation. I can say from my perspective that's something that we've been trying to do a lot during COVID is to give people the skills to be kind. I don't mean that people aren't kind, but give people the skills to be empathetic and to give them the confidence to reach out to other people.”
We've been touching on it throughout the conversation, but what are we expecting to experience with our staff, students, and faculty this fall and how are we preparing for it?
“We're doing our best to prepare for it,” High McCord continues. “Right now we are responding to the mask mandate and how students and staff are responding to that, and also the vaccination mandate that has been handed down. There are so many questions about what this means for me and the timelines. Getting information out to the MSU community will be very important in helping them make sense of it and what it means. There are a lot of people who are saying, ‘If I decide not to get it, does that mean that I'm terminated and I can no longer work for the university?’ And what does that mean? What does that mean for them and their livelihood and their family, but then also for the institution?
“We've been trying to hire a lot of people. Across the state and across the nation, there's an employment shortage. Losing individuals because of this mandate could be pretty detrimental, depending on what the volume is of people who decide to make that decision.
“That's what we're focusing on right now. I appreciate what Jim said about there being a lot of people who are really excited to get back. I think our students are really excited to get back. We also have a lot of returning students who are coming into their sophomore year who are looking forward to living on campus because they missed that experience their first year. Being in RHS, it's great to see that people want to live on campus and have that experience and really value it because that's a part of diversity, equity, and inclusion as well, learning to live with other people who are not like you. And it puts the onus on us to create a welcoming environment to support the diverse people that we serve.
“We try to encourage people to get to know people who are not like themselves. You’re discovering who you are and what your values are. And so a lot of the kind of inclusion and equity pieces come from you knowing who you are and what you value, and then also then learning about other people. We're really excited to have students back on campus to talk with them more about how we can work together to make a safer environment on campus.”
Jim, are there any resources to support faculty and students regarding mental health and wellbeing?
“We have been posting a list of the available mental health and wellbeing resources on the Keep Teaching, Keep Learning, and Keep Working website. We have the support units, the counseling center, and the employee assistance program. But we've also launched a new program with the support of the provost called Kognito. And that program is an online discussion simulation where the AI responds to your comments and gives you feedback. It's designed to help people feel more comfortable having conversations about mental health and also to encourage them to seek out mental health support.
“Kognito is available in an employee version and a student version, and all students and employees have access to it. And we've integrated that information into new employee, graduate student, and student orientation. And we're also developing some trauma-informed practice guides for faculty in the classrooms. On the student side, the counseling center, CAPS, has launched CAPS Connect, which is a program that's been going on for a few years. It sends the counselors out into diverse spaces. So into college offices, into international student offices, and into the multicultural center to put mental health resources where our students are. That's the one message that CAPS would like to get out to the community is, if you're having students who are experiencing mental health distress is to get them to the CAPS Connect professionals.”
And how are we thinking, Jim, differently about student services and curriculum as we shift to in-person? Like, what's happening with reorientation?
“Reorientation has been a real campus-wide activity to look at what it means for all of us to come back to campus,” continues Lucas. “And as my friends and colleagues have pointed out, in some cases it’s not just the students who have never been on campus. For some, it's just who spent time away and who may not remember how to do certain things. Or their campus navigation skills have gotten a little rusty. So we have a series of initiatives. One is looking at, as I said before, the scope and scale of our activities. So things like Sparticipation and resource fairs, understanding that more people might be wanting to go to those events. And so maybe they need to be larger, they need to be more spaced out because of COVID. And maybe we need to think differently about the resources we're giving, because it's not just students looking for clubs, but students looking for education abroad and research and community engagement type of activities.
“We're really thinking about that. And we're really trying to promote trauma-informed practice on our campus and encouraging people to have open dialogue with students and to give students the space to grieve, to give employees the space to grieve, to have learning communities within your workplace to talk about the transition back, as Kelly mentioned, but also to perhaps be doing that in the classroom.”
“There is the new Global DEI Task Force,” Green adds. “That is a cross-university task force that has been created including representatives from key administrative offices. Many of the offices are represented by the speakers today. And we have some faculty with expertise in global engagement and intercultural competence. This task force is charged by the associate provost and dean of International Studies and Programs, and I'll be chairing it. The goal is to develop resources, programs, and potential policies to reinforce inclusive practices in a global context. We're discussing the needs and developing recommendations over the summer for implementation beginning in the fall semester. And this institutional-wide effort will build on existing programs and resources to result in educational materials, teaching resources, training options, and even a communications guide.
“We also plan to increase diversity trainings and other initiatives and campus conversations geared toward global diversity, equity, and inclusion. And this is really important to us because scholars have noted that in many DEI strategies and conversations, the global dimension is sometimes an add on or an afterthought. We're really working hard to make sure that it's a natural integration into these discussions and efforts.”
And Jim, can you define what trauma-informed is and why that's important in DEI?
“Trauma-informed practice is being espoused by several different groups on campus,” says Lucas. “It was actually started in relationship to sexual assault and relationship violence, but also it relates to a communication tactic post any form of trauma, whether that be a recent trauma or a past trauma. We believe that after everything that we have gone through as a community, as a nation, and as a world related to COVID, that we have all experienced a trauma. And so the idea with a trauma-informed practice is kind of what you've heard my colleagues talking about. You know, not asking someone, ‘Why are you wearing a mask?’ Or not asking someone to give you proof that they're upset, that you assume and give grace.
“So instead of saying, ‘Well, prove to me that you need an extension on your paper and explain to me why you didn't get it done,’ take that more critical, analytical approach, which I think sometimes we see happening in the classroom. Say, ‘I understand. I empathize with you. I'm here to support you. How can I support you? Where can we direct?’ You're starting with this kind of openness, one of belief, and one of support, instead of asking, ‘Give me evidence. Give me proof that you had COVID. Give me proof that you need to be online.’”
And Christine, as the chief diversity officer for ASMSU, are there any initiatives that student organizations and leaders are involved in?
“I know a lot of students are excited, especially on the ASMSU side, to get back into academic governance and in places where student voices really need to be represented,” So says. “As a resident assistant, I've also had the opportunity to be a part of conversations about gender-inclusive housing and what that will look like in the fall since Wonders Hall, which is where I'm a resident assistant, is piloting that. I'm really excited for that. But I know a lot of students want to be a part of spaces and panels through OCAT, our Office of Cultural and Academic Transitions. And there have been a lot of conversations happening there as well in terms of campus safety and that transition coming back.”
Why is DEI work everyone's responsibility?
“Everyone should be mindful that DEI is broad and really should consider many populations,” says Green. “Specifically in my role, I like to promote that we have to recognize the immense value of having a truly global community, and then ensure that as we talk about DEI, we aren't just focusing simply on diversity, but also providing the support and resources needed to ensure equity and full inclusion.
“We have international students, scholars, faculty, and staff in all areas and levels of the university, and these global Spartans bring invaluable cultural, intellectual, and experiential contributions. And so this is an area where MSU is well-positioned to be a diversity champion in alignment with our world grant identity to be inclusive of the globe, not just of the nation, particularly due to our long-term and continuing strengths in international engagement. Global DEI is an approach that we need to take at a top 100 globally ranked institution, and it's all of our jobs to ensure that all are welcome and supported on this campus.”
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion is in everything that we do,” adds High McCord. “It’s in every decision that we make and every interaction that we have, whether we recognize it or not. And so diversity is there, whether we recognize it or not. The inclusion piece is actually recognizing it and acting on it and the equity is making sure that everyone that is there and is a part of it has what they need to be successful and has the same types of opportunities for promotions, progress, and tenure. It's in everything how we utilize our resources and who has access to our resources.
“MSU is a highly diverse institution. It could be more diverse, yes, but we need to definitely serve the diverse community that we have and it's in everything. And I think that people are asking for us to just stop celebrating diversity and actually take action to move towards inclusion and equity within our environment. It touches absolutely everything that we do.”
Christine, from your student perspective, why is DEI all of our responsibility?
“Coming to MSU was when I really started to become passionate about DEI work and recognizing the diversity and the equity and inclusion that needs to happen,” So says. “I think Ashley brought up a great point about how DEI is very broad. And the reason why it's so important for everyone to practice it is because it's so broad. And because it's so broad, there's so much opportunity to learn and to educate oneself. And I feel like that also intimidates a lot of people. So something my department in ASMSU, the DEI department, is trying to do is to have mandatory DEI goals where we are asking our staff to set a goal on a topic where they want to educate themselves more and ask them to reflect and read a book or watch a documentary. And then at the end, have a discussion or a survey about how they felt and also how I can better give them resources.
“If someone comes and is like, ‘I want to learn more about the LGBTQA+ community,’ that's kind of broad. It’s my job in that position to steer them in a direction that's more specific. I know DEI in that sense is also very intimidating. So something I just want to put out there is that it's also very important to make sure people are allowing people to have that space to learn and grow and apologize and be sensitive and empathetic. Because I think a lot of the times people are very scared or they have bad experiences because someone corrected them without mercy and they weren't shown or given grace. So that's just something I also want to emphasize.
“With DEI, I think it's just important when it's everyone's responsibility that you're very patient with yourself and you don't try to force it because it can be really tiring work. That's what I've learned in my position. I just want to remind everyone that it is everyone's responsibility but be patient with yourself and don't be so hard on yourself about it.”
“Building off something that Kelly said, it's something that integrates into every aspect of our work and our lives,” Lucas adds. “I was hired to do internationalization of the curriculum. From a curricular perspective, some people always say, ‘Well, should I integrate it or should I make it its own class?’ The challenge is when you make it its own class, or you put the responsibility on a certain person or a certain office, then it allows you to marginalize that office or that class, or it becomes a one-off. And really, DEI is a part of the ethic of our institution. It's part of our culture, and it needs to be living and breathing across all spaces.
“When I'm working with faculty, I might have a faculty member say to me, ‘Well, I teach a genetics class, how can I teach diversity? That's not the content.’ But the way I like to talk about DEI work in global education is it's not just about the content. It's about the climate that you create in your class. It's about having equitable policies that are transparent and fair for all of our students. It's about the pedagogy you use. It's about the books and the examples you use. And it really takes all of us working together because we all have expertise in different areas. It's only through collaboration that we'll ever achieve our DEI goals as a campus.”
Final thoughts and key takeaways from our conversation?
“The university has really been focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion,” High McCord says. “President Stanley from day one has been talking about how important that is to him and how he wants to see it integrated into the institution. He established the DEI Steering Committee where Dr. Wanda Lipscomb and Luis Garcia and Dr. Cynthia Jackson-Elmore led that charge. We're really excited about their report and the recommendations it issued. The report is on the president's page. Our Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Dr. Jabbar Bennett, will take the lead in orchestrating what needs to happen across campus. It doesn't just rest on his shoulders. As we just talked about, it's all of us being involved to help implement those recommendations and make this a better climate and environment for everyone in our community.”
“It's really important and intense work, as Christine mentioned, but after this conversation, I'm energized because this is just another example of how we really need partnership, we need collaboration, and it's all of our responsibilities,” says Green. “I have much respect for everyone on this call in all of their hard work and valuable contributions to this conversation.”
“Students are very eager, including myself, to get back to campus,” says So. “There's a mix of different stressors that come to mind with the pandemic, but we’re very excited to be back hoping for a somewhat normal year to have those normal in-person club, e-board, and executive board meetings. Zoom, I think we all made it work and everybody adapted very well, but I do miss that in-person reaction, passing people in the hallway and saying hi. And I'll also be sitting on the Homecoming court, so I really want to enjoy that opportunity while trying to stay as safe as possible.”
“If I could say anything it's to reinforce the ideas of grace and empathy, both for ourselves and our colleagues and our students, allowing us the time and the space to be flexible and creative in how we're achieving our work and how we're working with those around us,” Lucas says. “And I think my main point that I'd like to leave you with is we need to be encouraging help-seeking behavior with all the people around us. Some people are really reticent to seek out especially mental health assistance because they may be stigmatized. Seeking help is a strength, not a weakness. And Spartans are here to help. They're here to help each other. They're here to help the world. And you can't do that if you're suffering. We need to be giving ourselves grace and encouraging people to get the help they need.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The DEI Steering Committee was formed by MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. in December 2019 and is co-chaired by Wanda D Lipscomb PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and College of Human Medicine senior associate dean for diversity and inclusion and Luis Alonzo Garcia, director of Migrant Student Services.
The committee was charged with taking inventory of the university's efforts related to DEI across campus, identifying potential synergies, pinpointing existing gaps and establishing a framework for making MSU a national leader in DEI. The framework includes 27 recommendations categorized by four major themes; increase diversity, ensure equity, promote inclusion, and enhance outreach and engagement.
Lipscomb and Garcia share the committee’s definitions for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And they detail the process the committee used to compile the research and recommendations in the plan. They also discuss the four key themes in detail and some of the key recommendations in the plan.
“President Stanley made it clear from the beginning of this process that he wants MSU to become a national leader in DEI,” says Garcia. “We cannot become a national leader if we just simply settle for what we historically have done.
“We cannot be a national leader if we don’t embrace different communities and bring them to the table. At the same time, we have to make sure that their voices are being heard. One of the things that was bought out of the report is that we began to look at the landscape of college aged students in Michigan; it's becoming quite flat. Where are all these state institutions in the state of Michigan going get their students? As we began to bring in new students, what will those students look like? What are their needs?
“What diverse faculty do we need to make sure the institution is providing a situation where students, faculty, and staff say ‘Wow, they understand me. I feel good here. I can see myself here.’ That's our core mission. It doesn't matter how diverse we are in the student body, though, if we don't graduate students. We looked at that, too.”
“If there is one thing MSU must do it’s that MSU must invest resources,” says Lipscomb. “We're talking financial resources, people resources, and programmatic resources. When you look at the institutions around the country who are distinguishing themselves, there is this embedding of diversity, equity, and inclusion into the day-to-day life of the university. So, if there's a take home message for us to become a national leader, it means we all have to be working towards it. It means we each have to be held accountable regardless of what your title is. It's very easy to think, oh, well, you got these diversity deans and this chief diversity officer to handle this. We're not superheroes. We're not super people. We're just people.
“Your values are demonstrated based on where you put your resources, and MSU has the potential to become a national leader. But it does mean that MSU has to be willing to realign resources and clarify the use of resources. The other issue that was very clear from the benchmarking that was done, and we talk about this in the last section of the report, we have to align leadership. We want campus to understand that this was a presidential initiative. This was something that President Stanley said he wanted to do. The establishment of the DEI steering committee and the direction to us that our work had to feed into the strategic plan we took that very seriously. The thought that we can begin to weave diversity, equity, and inclusion as a priority across all the activities of the university is how we can become a national leader.
“It won't be putting up a poster; it won't be saying, ‘Oh, this is what we're going to call this initiative.’ It will take integration across the mission areas. We think there's great opportunity because we have wonderful, bright, intelligent folks who can do this. We just need to create the avenue for the conversation. I think that is what we hope this plan does. It gives us the avenue for the conversation.”
“The one point that I want to amplify that Wanda pointed out was the issue of accountability,” Garcia adds. “The only way this plan will go forward is that the ministers and the leadership of the institution understand it, buy into it, and participate in moving it forward. Because if we simply say we're going to put a program together annually and that's it. That's not what we're talking about. If that's what you got out of this report, we did a miserable job. It's really looking at the full operations at the unit level, at the college level, and at the program level and really taking it in and digesting it. And some of it won't be fun. Let's be clear.
“If we are going to become a national leader, it's going to take effort. It's going to take resources and it's going to take some grit. If we do things right, we're going to come out in a good position.”
“This has to be a living document,” says Lipscomb. “This has to be a living process, and I think if you talk with people on the committee, I think we all learn things from each other. We certainly stumbled across lots of things as we went along and it's like Luis talks about, it's going to take some grit. It's a helpful endeavor if we have a positive attitude. In order for us to move forward, we have to take positive steps. We have to do something different tomorrow that we didn't do today and that's challenging for the university because the university is broad. Dr. Bennett talks about what he envisions with taking the report and actually going back through the recommendations, prioritizing them, and figuring out what's feasible. I've said this to the directors and in session that we're going to have to be the people who roll up our sleeves and get to work.
“It's going to have to be us. We all have to step back and ask more difficult questions than we have before. I do believe that when we start to look at the executive VPs in place now at the university, I think each of them in their own way has talked about the importance of interfacing diversity, equity, and inclusion to the lines that they're responsible for. We have challenged the president to be thoughtful about what he's responsible for.
“You make progress because you walked a lot of feet and then you got some yards and then eventually you got a mile. And sometimes it can be daunting because you want to be at the mile marker, but great athletes get to the mile marker by the little things they do every day. And that's what MSU is going to have to. That's what I'm hopeful for.
“Some people will have positive comments. Some people will say we didn't go far enough. Well, if we can just start with what we have, we can grow and breathe life into the next stage. I think that's a responsibility that all of us have.”
“As Wanda summed it up, this is really not the end of the DEI,” continues Garcia. “The plan is a process that is going forward and that's really where the energies need to be. But as I indicated, I think we have some wonderful opportunities to rethink our institution in ways that we have never done so before and to have different voices and different languages at the table as well.”
What are some key takeaways you'd like people joining in on our conversation to take away about the plan?
“Find a place in the plan where you're ready to start and get to work wherever you are in the institution, whether you're in a department or whether you're in a large unit,” Lipscomb says. “Begin the conversation as it relates to your level and as it relates to your unit and be a part of the conversation. Be a part of the work that has to be done.”
“One of the takeaways, additionally, that is important to me is when you sit down with the people who you lead, look around,” Garcia says. “Who's missing? Who are we missing? We must begin that process. The different voices we bring in bring value to MSU. We really need to understand that. I think historically, we have not looked at it like that. That means that if we bring in other people who are different than us and who have other mindsets and other thoughts, what you're doing is bringing in new worlds to the institution.
“These are worlds perhaps we don't understand. That's where the effort's going to be for us to take the time and to learn from others. It really speaks to the commitment that the people that the president has assembled are all truly and honestly committed to where he wants to take the institution.”
“The steering committee was a large group because there were faculty members, there were administrators, there were staff, and there were students,” says Lipscomb. “Various populations were represented. Moving forward, we're going to have to do some population specific work. And we have to figure out how to do that. And it's not about this group over another group. But each of the groups needs something that may not be needed by another group. Luis throughout the whole process would challenge us to think about who is not at the table.
“MSU is just such a large institution. It is so easy to get lost. Think about all the social identity groups. Think about those groups as you create search committees and advisory committees when you're pulling people together. Almost have a checklist and say, ‘How representative are we for real?’ It's got to be representative of where we see ourselves in the future.
“Some census data has recently been released. It wasn't surprising to any of us that the populations that are growing are the populations that are growing. What does that mean for MSU? How do we maintain a competitive edge? How do we say from a land grant standpoint that we want our graduates to go out and serve? Not only the state of Michigan, but the greater United States and the globe? We can't do that if we don't have representatives of those communities as a part of our community. It is probably one of the most important things we need to always reflect on because we have the opportunity to change.
“We have the opportunity to be better, but as Luis said, if you never look at who isn't at the table, you won't ever get better. You'll just have the same people sitting there who have always been sitting there.”
“And then constantly you're expecting different results, which is really odd because historically that's the way we've done it,” Garcia adds. “If we continue to do the same thing and just say, ‘Well, we tried but we still got the same results,’ no, stop. Stop the machine. Do self-assessment. We'll probably mess up a few times and that's quite all right, but you're trying something different, it's okay. And even if you look at the future of MSU through a business model, this makes business sense at the same time. People want to sell their product to everybody. It's not an exclusionary market. And I think those who figure that out are the ones who are going to thrive as institutions.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
A diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer interrupted Judy's career as an author.
“Like for everyone else, it came at the worst possible time. But cancer really doesn't have a great time,” says Pearson. “I was a newlywed. I had met the man of my dreams. My youngest son had launched into a great career as an electrical engineer. And my oldest son is just retired, but he was career Air Force and was about to deploy to Afghanistan. And then I found the lump two months after a clean mammogram and through it all discovered that there is a condition that's much more well-known now called dense breast tissue. I tell everyone to never stop being vigilant about your health anywhere, but especially your breasts. It doesn't matter if you get a clean mammogram, you can still have things that mammography can't see through if you have dense tissue.
“The fortunate thing was after my mastectomy, they found three other tumors that by the time I would have gone around to the next mammogram, I would not have survived quite probably. It was triple negative breast cancer, which is rare and very aggressive. And so I made a deal with God and the universe. If I survive this, I'm going to do something with it. I don't know what that is, but just guide me and I will do something.”
Pearson talks about why she chose to attend MSU and how the university has impacted her. While many of Judy's friends from her small hometown of South Haven thought MSU might be too big for them. Judy was attracted to the “hum” at MSU.
“I had high school classmates who came to school here and found it too big. They felt lost. There were myriad issues, but always surrounding its size because South Haven then and now is only about 5,000 people. We had 200 kids in our graduating class. For me, there was a different feeling partially because I was familiar with the university, but partially because I just love the hum of it.”
Recognizing that healing is helping, Judy founded A 2nd Act.
“A Second Act celebrates and supports women survivors of all cancers who are giving back to the greater good using their experiences and their life span, whatever those days are, to give back to the greater good to the world around them.”
Discovered at MSU, Cisplatin would become the backbone of combination chemotherapy. Pearson believes it saved her life.
“My oncologist sat me down after my mastectomy and said, ‘Okay, this treatment is going to be really rough. And usually people have to have a three or a four week span in between treatments. You're very healthy other than that little bit of cancer. We're going to make that an every other week occurrence.’ And even though I had no evidence of disease once the breast was removed, with triple negative cancer, I had had a 30 percent chance of it coming back without the chemotherapy. So I thought that was just too great of a chance. And she said, ‘We're going to hit you with three drugs’ then told me the names of the drugs. One of was Cisplatin.
“Then I go back home and two days later, the MSU alumni magazine arrives in my mailbox. And one of the featured articles was about Dr. Rosenberg, who invented Cisplatin here in 1965. And it wasn't until after my own treatment that I wrote an article talking about the fact that Dr. Rosenberg saved my life. When it was discovered, it was miraculous.
“It was the first platinum-based chemotherapy drug. And it's not without side effects, severe side effects, like horrible nausea, hair loss, and joint damage afterwards. But I would take all of those in exchange for my life. It was well worth it. The other really interesting connection is in 1971, Richard Nixon was facing a very iffy reelection and his aides came to him and said, ‘There's a bill making its way through Congress called the National Cancer Act. If you sign that, we are quite certain you will be reelected. It's a bipartisan issue. Democrats and Republicans both fear it, and we'll even toss in that we'll cure the disease by the Bicentennial.’ He signed it. It infused $1.8 billion, which is $8.4 billion today, into research. And at that time, Cisplatin was in final clinical trials. I don't know for certain, but I'm quite sure that some of that money went into the final trials for Cisplatin. Ironically in 1971 when Nixon signed that bill, I was an incoming freshman at Michigan State.”
Pearson talks more about her cancer diagnosis and journey through treatment as a survivor and not a victim.
“The diagnosis comes like a thunderbolt. It's like any catastrophic event. I read an article one time about the top 10 stressors in life. And besides the death of a loved one and a divorce, catastrophic illnesses is the next one. And so you get that kind of why me sort of thing. And I was actually talking to a pastor and asked why me? And he said, ‘When people ask that, I respond to them by saying, why not you? Should it be him? Should it be her? Why not you?’ And I thought, well, that's a good answer. I'm a researcher by profession. I very carefully researched my disease, my treatment, and my reconstruction. At no time did it occur to me to research survivorship. I didn't even think it was a thing. And that surprises me because I thought myself fairly well read. On the other side of all the treatment I started having unexpected and really quite frightening issues like night sweats, severe joint pain, chronic fatigue, insomnia, and brain fog, which for a writer is a really bad thing.
“When I went to my oncologist and asked why I hadn't been told, it wasn't like I wouldn't have taken the treatment. She said, which was very common 10 years ago, ‘It wasn't important to talk about. We were busy saving your life.’ I now know. And all of the folks that I interviewed for From Shadows to Life who were the architects of the cancer survivorship movement, their whole focus has been on making sure that survivorship is considered part of the cancer continuum. There's diagnosis and there's treatment. There may be adjunctive types of treatments after the main treatment's over, but survivorship is every bit as much of the cancer continuum. It's the rest of your life. The treatment is really a year, maybe a little longer, to get you to the rest of your life. Why not spend as much time focusing on learning about these issues and learning how to move beyond them?
“And that was why the survivorship movement launched and became so successful. Before the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship was founded by 23 people, all with a connection to cancer, and before they launched the cancer survivorship movement, we were called victims in the newspaper. And even after their 1986 founding, the newspaper articles all said victim. And even if the article was about them and the headline read survivors, not victims, the writer continued to call us victims in the article. It was hilarious. And so at first, the term survivor was a little foreign to me because I felt like I'd won the lottery by beating cancer. If you said to Vince Lombardi or George Patton ‘Wow, you survived that,’ they would have punched you in the face. I don't want to just be a survivor. I want to be a winner.
“And then I realized I was swimming upstream. Survivorship was already coined and I'm happy with that. I get it now. I totally get it. The other interesting thing about the idea of survivorship is if you experience a heart attack, boy, from the moment you have recovered or had whatever corrective surgery, they're starting to talk about rehab. They're starting to talk about you getting back to your life and what we're going to do to make sure that the rest of your life is quality of life. And they never did that for cancer, which I find so interesting. Now it's true cardiac issues kill more people every year, but there are more cancer survivors in the country, 17 million as of this year just in America. It's a much bigger population that absolutely should learn how to deal with their disease and its long-term effects.”
Judy Pearson's latest book is titled From Shadows to Life, A Biography of the Cancer Survivorship Movement. It’s part medical history and part inspirational biography. This is the story of a social movement that continues to improve life for millions.
“I mentioned I'm a storyteller and after cancer, I just couldn't find the next great story to tell. I started asecondact.org, and through A Second Act was introduced to a woman called Susan Ley, who lives in Tucson, which is about two hours from Phoenix where I live. Susan is one of the founders of the cancer survivorship movement and became the inspiration for the book From Shadows to Life. And the shadows part of the title is that Nixon designated all that money and people actually started surviving. Before the Seventies, more than half of the people diagnosed died. So it was a grim diagnosis. Cancer was still thought to be contagious.
“You couldn't tell people that you'd gone through cancer treatment because even though you might have no evidence of disease or been cured, like they used to say, people were terrified that you still had the germ. And so you could be fired. You couldn't join the military. You couldn't adopt children. College students couldn't get roommates because their parents feared that they would catch cancer. It was a horrible life. So you went through this God awful diagnosis and then were just left behind. One of the architects of the movement, Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan, said it's as if we had invented sophisticated treatment to save people from drowning. But once we dragged them to the dock, we left them there to cough and splutter on their own. And that's exactly it. That was just it. We're done. You're saved. Now go be. So it was a really monumental task to bring cancer out of the shadows. And that's what this group did.”
People really thought that cancer is contagious?
“Isn't it crazy? It's nuts. It's just what they were fed. If you went to someone's house, you were fed on paper plates. It was really crazy. By the Eighties, that was pretty much dispelled. Like every other old wives’ tale, it took longer in other parts of the country to dispel. But even in the Eighties after it was no longer thought to be contagious, employers could ask if you’d ever had cancer. Employers didn't want to hire survivors for fear that they would have a recurrence, that they would die, and that they would be a puny and sickly lot. And it was just a bizarre thought.
“This was on the heels of the AIDS movement. And they took a page from that and started testifying before Congress and made sure that the Americans with Disabilities Act included cancer survivors.”
Are you optimistic about a cure for cancer one day?
“We don't use the word cure. The other part of survivorship is that you couldn't call yourself a survivor until you passed five years. And then it was 10 years, or maybe it was three years. There was some moving goal line and then you could be a cancer survivor. Well, what happened if you got diagnosed again the day after you hit the five-year mark? Are you no longer a survivor? So sort of the same thought is there with cure because we still don't know all there is to know about the disease. But what we do know is that it's not one disease. It's not like the polio vaccine. Polio had three or five cousins that they had to kind of deal with, but mainly it was one thing. Practically any cell in your body can become cancerous, any cell anywhere.
“It's hundreds of diseases. What we have learned and what's so brilliant is we now much better understand cell structure and DNA and the human immune system. And in fact, the COVID vaccine research was based on the infectious disease research. The National Cancer Institute had a great deal of genetic research that they've been working on now for decades that really pitched in and helped with the COVID vaccine creation. So that word cure is not even in my vernacular. What I know is that if my cancer, for example, metastasized or I had another primary cancer, that I'm in a much better place today than I was even 10 years ago because they can use my immune system.
“Ten years later, there have been massive leaps forward, and the research that's being done here at Michigan State that I just learned about in the lab, man, it's really wonderful. The hope is that someday we can actually prevent cancer cells from developing.”
Pearson shares her three key takeaways from our conversation.
“First of all, you are your own best advocate. Listen to your body. Don't be dissuaded by a doctor who says he or she has done everything and now doesn't know what to do. They say you're fine. That's just not good enough. Keep going until you have an answer. I did that. I'm about to do it again with a heart issue. Don't ever back away from that diagnosis you don't have, or that prognosis. You don't have to be rude. Just go get a second answer.
“Secondly, for people who do have an illness, be it cancer or anything else, find someone to help advocate for you. You become your own advocate. In the throes of the diagnosis and the flurry of treatments and everything that comes along with that, you get pretty muddle brained. Find someone who can be your advocate, who can come to appointments with you, take notes, and ask the questions you may forget to ask. Do that. Ask for one if you're the patient. And do that for somebody if you're looking for some way to help.
“And then the third thing is live every day. Get rid of toxic things, not only the chemicals in your house, but maybe the people in your life, too, and maybe your job. Don't waste a minute of life because it is so precious. As I tell my grandchildren, even if you're having a bad day, it's not forever. It's just for now. Look at tomorrow as a brand new day.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“We're investing $10.8 million in the partnership,” says Fred Stephan, president of Amcor Flexibles North America. “The partnership will create an endowed chair of sustainability professorship. The chair will conduct research into sustainability in the circular economy. In combination with that, we're also contributing towards some necessary building renovations that will offer students a modern facility and access to state-of-the-art technology. And it really is part and parcel of our ongoing strategy of open innovation as we strive to develop more sustainable packaging.”
“Amcor is really excited about growing our partnership with MSU for a couple of reasons,” adds Eric Roegner, president of Amcor Rigid Packaging. “At the heart of what Amcor is is innovation. That's how we've survived for 140 years. It's by constantly innovating the state of the art of technology that's allowed us to do that. There is so much opportunity out there that as we continue to look for the right set of partners to work with, you guys are the best. You have the biggest school for this.
“You graduate the most folks into the space. We have, the last time we checked, about 75 MSU grads active inside of our population. We know that this partnership will drive continued innovation across sustainability and across that ecosystem for us as well as for the world. We need an ecosystem of players to come together. We're a big player, the largest producer of rigid packaging in that space. But you guys are right there in the middle with everyone. You have MSU grads in just about every consumer-packaged good player and every packaging provider out there. You have a network of incredible people who are driving that innovation. We just see this as being a win-win across the whole ecosystem.”
Matt Daum is the director of the MSU School of Packaging.
“I can't overstate the importance of this gift and what it's going to mean to our school,” says Daum. “We're really at a critical juncture in the history of the school. And I can't be more thrilled to partner with a global leader like Amcor. We've talked and thought and visioned for many, many years about how do we take the school of packaging to the next level, and how do we prepare for the future? And this gift is going to do that. It's really going to help continue our separation from other packaging programs and keep us in a preeminent position.”
Stephan, Roegner, and Daum elaborate on how Amcor and the MSU School of Packaging define sustainability.
“We love plastic; we hate plastic waste,” says Roegner. “And one of our missions is to make sure that as soon as humanly possible, every one of our bottles is made out of 100 percent post-consumer resin. And after we make that bottle and the consumer uses it, they put the cap back on, it goes back, and 100 percent of them get recycled back in. We want to minimize the effect that our products have on the environment. And we are absolutely convinced that we're at the forefront with the most sustainable package by any metric.”
“We've made a pledge for our packaging to be reusable or recyclable by 2025,” says Stephan. “And what we're really talking about is packaging that truly can be recycled or reused. That's how we're defining sustainable packaging. We've made substantial progress in that area as well. Close to 70 percent of our packaging is already recycled across the Amcor portfolio. We're working to close that gap between now and 2025. And the way we think about it is it's really a three-legged stool. We've got the product piece of it. We've got the infrastructure to actually be able to recycle. And then we've got behaviors, and we need people to actually take products to the right bin to be able to recycle. If we get all three of those in that three-legged stool in place, we're going to be making a lot of progress across the country.”
“Sustainability and trying to purposely and intentionally design your packaging to be more sustainable is now a customer expectation,” Daum adds. “It's a business imperative. Companies now don't have a choice but to really address this and be purposeful about it. We teach a material neutral perspective. Sustainability is built into our curriculum in most of the classes. This is where Amcor and MSU really have a similar vision and a similar commitment to doing what's right for the environment.
“That's why this partnership really fits well. It's not necessarily that there's bad packaging, there are bad packaging applications. You've got to have recycling facilities and infrastructure. You need to have waste management companies bought in. You've got to have your legislation all lined up. It's a very intricate problem. You can't solve it with just one specific solution. Part of the motivation behind this endowed chair is that we have a voice that thinks systematically and that thinks across the whole ecosystem, the whole value chain, and can bring a data-driven perspective into the conversation and help facilitate this partnership that has to happen between a lot of different places in order to have long-term solutions.”
Daum says more about the impact the gift will have on the school.
“We need to upgrade our facilities. We really need to match the facilities that we have with the leadership that we produce. But our facilities are quite dated. The last renovation was back in 1987. There were no cell phones then. There were no laptops. The way that classes were taught is different than today's needs. And we really want to create and update our facilities so that we're giving our students an environment that better matches what they're going to see when they go into industry. We also want the space to be a hub, a place where thought leaders from industry, government agencies, and NGOs feel like this is the place to be. This is the place to come when you can come and gather and talk about solving some of the great packaging and sustainability challenges.
“The building renovation in particular is about modernizing what we have. We want to continue to keep pace with the industry. The industry's growing 3 to 4 percent a year. And we know that we're going to have to eventually grow as well. But this phase one really is about bringing the level up of our current facility to make it what it needs to be. The other part of the gift is going to be given for an endowed chair position. And this is really critical. There's a certain element when you have an endowed position where you're saying to the academic community and to industry that this is a really important area. That's what we want to create here in the area of sustainable packaging.”
Daum describes the three key areas the endowed chair will focus on: research, teaching, and outreach – consistent with MSU’s land grant mission.
“We are convinced that in partnering with MSU, that we can promote and actually accelerate thought leadership in this space,” Roegner adds. “We need more. There's much more innovation to be had, and we think MSU is the place that's going to drive that. And we're just glad to be able to partner with you, both in that chair for the professorship as well as helping out with the facilities in the building. And this is going to be just a start of a relationship. And I'm looking forward to the next 75 MSU grads that we're going to get, bringing you all into our technology centers, letting us work with you on the whole spectrum of different opportunities out there. Because, we have to crack the code on this. When I talk to my kids about what I do and how proud I am to be here, in today's generation, sometimes packaging of any type gets a bad name for a variety of reasons.
“I say, Really? You really want to move the needle? You really want to help the environment and make a real difference in greenhouse gas emissions or whatever it is, then this is your answer. Solve the packaging problem. Figure out how to get every one of these PET bottles recycled and then made out of a hundred percent PCR. That will do more to help the environment than just about any other activity that you can engage in anywhere. If you want to move the needle, this is where you do it. MSU is right at the forefront of that.”
“We've made a commitment to the environment, and our commitment is to transform the sustainability of flexible packaging,” Stephan adds. “And we see that combining our efforts and the real-world experience we have at Amcor working with many diverse customers around the world with the academic world and all of the talents at Michigan State can really help us accelerate our efforts to bring sustainable packaging solutions to everyone. The partnership offers us access to the MSU talent and bright minds working on how to make the world a better place. It's going to take all of us working together to make progress in this area. It's not just one single group of companies or constituencies. It's everyone working together to really advance the cause.”
Daum describes challenges and opportunities facing the packaging industry, and he says packaging is a major for students who want to combine skills and interests in a way that can directly impact the environment.
“We call it a discovery major because usually people find it once they get here. It’s a unique major for this reason. It blends creativity with engineering and material science, and it has business in it as well. It's this very interesting combination where you're creating things that people see, touch, and feel. And you are able to directly have an impact on the environment.
“When you're designing packaging for a company, you're front and center with customers and how they view sustainability and the environment, and you can have great impact. And we have very high starting salaries. We have one of the higher starting salaries in the university. We have students go to almost all the fortune 500 companies. We have students at Tesla, Apple, Pepsi, you name it, and there's probably an MSU packaging grad in those companies. It’s a fantastic way to combine a lot of different interests into something that is creative, and visible, and tangible, and usually you'll find yourself having a great career in packaging.”
In summarizing the importance of Amcor's gift to the MSU school of packaging, Daum says he hopes this is the first of many partnerships between the school and industry.
“First of all, I want to say a huge thank you to Amcor. This is just really unprecedented in terms of the size. It means a lot that they would think that highly of our program and our school. Hats off to them. The gift really shows a leadership perspective and vision, and we want to make good on that. The other thing it does is it really demonstrates the kind of partnership that we want to have and that we need to have with industry. If we're going to continue to be the premier program, and if we're going to continue to grow and develop students that the industry needs, then I'm hoping that this is just the start of many kinds of partnerships that we can have with industry that really create a robust long-term program that meets the needs for students, and for our faculty, and for the companies that our students go work for.”
“We need to groom and train and enable the next generation of leaders, not just in packaging, but in all of sustainability and the circular economy,” Roegner adds. “MSU is at the forefront of that. Being able to contribute and play our part in developing that next generation of leaders is huge. And it gives us all a great amount of satisfaction. It's one of the things we can help give back as a leader in the industry Let's enable the future.”
“I want to also offer a big shout out to all of our Michigan State alumni,” says Stephan. “Thank you for all of your efforts. Hopefully this demonstrates our commitment to the legacy that you're creating at Amcor, and we look forward to recruiting much more in the future from Michigan State.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It's been a remarkable two years, Russ, and I'm so glad that as we look towards the fall to be a part of MSU and the important work that's going on here,” he says. “I think what still stands out the most since I've come is the people - the students, faculty, and staff, and the alums. The commitment and love they show for Michigan State University has been impressive and it's really helped us pull through this past year and a half or so together in a very positive way.
“I've had a chance now recently that we're gathering again to talk to alumni and to talk to students. I'm impressed by the fact that, away from campus, they talk about how they have stuck with MSU. They're excited about MSU and they're excited about coming back. I think that's a testament, again, to the hard work of our faculty and staff and the resiliency of our students during what were really remarkably difficult times.”
Are there some things that have surprised you along the way or some lessons learned in your first couple of years?
“I am impressed by how much students care about the college experience and being in East Lansing. I think when we made that first decision to go remote, I expected more students would return home than did. That's a testament to how much they want to be with their fellow classmates and how much they want to stay in the college environment.”
As you look forward to the fall and the next couple of months, what are you thinking about?
“I'm really excited. We are paying close attention to what's happening with the Delta variant and what's happening in cases in around the United States, but particularly, in our region, because that dictates a lot of what we are able to do or not do. And I think one of the things I want to say just to reassure the campus is that we are still going to continue this policy of safety first. We are going to be monitoring what's happening in the community. We're not going to be doing things that run counter to what's coming down from the CDC, from DHHS, and from Ingham County Health.
“Our vaccination rate for this region appears to be high, and which is great. I applaud the people of East Lansing to continue, everybody to continue, to get vaccinated if they have not been. And that's the message, of course, that we're giving to our students, faculty, and staff that the key to opening this fall is to have as many people vaccinated as possible. I would love to see 100 percent of people vaccinated here. I think that makes a lot of sense. We'll continue to emphasize that; we'll continue to show people how it's easy to get a vaccine.
“There are still some people who may have hesitation or concern, and so we've got to continue to outreach to them and educate them because it's so important going forward. We're going to continue to monitor this. If the situation changes and we see a growth in cases, we'll be prepared to deal with it. And that could be a resumption of masking. That could be an expansion of a testing program. There are a number of things we can do. And, of course, continued education and providing optimal access to vaccines would be a huge part of that issue as well. So I'm excited about going forward, but we're going in with eyes wide open. We know that people have some concerns and we want to make sure we're listening to them and understanding what those concerns are.
“But the best way, Russ, and you said it to begin with, the best way to take care of this problem is for as many people as possible to get vaccinated. And I look forward to the moment when the FDA approves the vaccine for children under 12 because I think that's going to help some parents get more confidence and have fewer concerns going forward. I think students need to go back to school. I think it's very important, but I think many families will be more comfortable when they know their children have been vaccinated, even though the risk of disease for children as we know overall is very low. It's still a concern. If I was a parent of a younger child, I'd certainly have concerns.”
What are some of the challenges and opportunities facing MSU and higher education?
“We’ve just gone through another hopefully very brief but significant economic upheaval. And, of course, we had 2009-10 when, again, the economy was troubled. And I think what you saw during that time was a college education was extraordinarily valuable. The difference for many people between employment and unemployment was a college education. Getting that message across about the importance of going to college and completing college is important. We need to continue to speak more about the access we're providing for students. There used to be a philosophy as one looked at higher education of selectivity and how elite you were was the most important thing.
“That was the wrong focus, and I think we've changed the focus now to how we make sure that the students we accept a Michigan State University, and we want to accept as many as we can, succeed at Michigan State University and go on to the productive life that a college degree helps people achieve. That, to me, is of continued importance. Student success is going to be a high priority for us as we go forward in the strategic plan. And then how do we eliminate the gaps in graduation rates? That's something that troubles me and others. We need to make sure that the students coming here graduate from Michigan State University.
“One of our major focuses over the next few years under my leadership is going to be to work to abolish those gaps. And that's a tall order, but it's doable, and that's something we'll focus on. The other thing is, again, we've recognized how important research is. Biomedical research has certainly come to the fore of this miraculous ability to turn out this vaccine, to see how well these mRNA vaccines work. That shows again the power of research and innovation and how it can really change people's lives in a very concrete manner.
“Climate change remains a major challenge. What is Michigan State doing and what expertise is being applied to make a difference in this area?
“What are we doing to help the economic development of the state? How do we make Michigan a better place where people want to live? How do we create a society where people want to stay or a community where people want to stay in Michigan and see this as a place? Working remotely is more and more possible. There will be more of a premium on states that really provide quality of life than I think there's ever been before.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Harris talks about what attracted him to MSU and about some his favorite moments on the football field. And he describes his role as the first director of player engagement for Spartan Football.
“It's a position centered around player development, and basically player development is everything off the field that we do with our student athletes,” Harris tells Beekman. “And that spans a wide range of activities, especially with name, image and likeness (NIL) coming out this year and everything that entails for a student athlete. From Coach Tucker's lead on down, we believe in developing the entire holistic student athlete. That means your academic career and your athletic career, but also your social career and your mental and spiritual side as well. So developing all of that. I get to touch the academics, the social, the mental, the spiritual, the branding, all of that.”
Harris talks about the Overtime Program and tries to describe a typical day in the life of a director of player engagement and says the days he gets to spend with student athletes are the best days. He also talks about Coach Tucker’s “relentless” approach to everything he does.
“His work ethic is off the charts, and he makes you want to work harder. It's similar to what you see from your best player on your team. Hopefully, your team captain, whoever it is, the hardest worker and you want to emulate what they're doing. I feel the same way about Coach Tucker. The veracity and relentless nature, to use his word, in which he works is something that motivates me every single day. And I think also the beauty of working under him, working for him, is that he's not a micromanager. So if you have an idea, if you have something you want to do, something you want to facilitate, he's going to let you do it.
“If he has something that he thinks that you're better suited to do, he's going to say, ‘Hey, I need you to get this task done and go ahead and execute it.’ He's not going to continue to check in and make sure you're doing it a certain way. He trusts his people to get the work done. And that's why I think we have such a great staff. I love working with him and learning from him. His career path is stellar; it speaks for itself. Whether it's being the youngest coordinator in the SEC or the youngest coordinator in Cleveland Brown's history, or obviously the 10 years he spent in NFL, to two national titles. I mean, you can't get that anywhere in terms of that wealth of knowledge and what he's seen. I love learning from him day in and day out. I love working for him and just want to continue to learn from him.”
Harris talks about how his undergraduate degree in journalism and graduate degree in marketing impact how he does his work. Journalism taught him how to be diligent in looking for information to share with the players.
“Marketing is everything, whether it's in recruiting or how are we market our program. Marketing is key in how we market the program to donors and make sure they know what we're doing so they want to give back.”
Harris talks about what he’s learning from the players and the challenges and opportunities social media present for student athletes.
“That word opportunity is the key. NIL is a chance for our student athletes to experiment in ways that student athletes have never been able to experiment with before. They have to think bigger picture than just social media, advertisements, endorsements, pay for posts, and those types of things. And all that stuff is great. And it's awesome. And you can see a lot of our student athletes, whether it's football or other sports, they're starting to tap into that now. And I love just sitting back because we can’t facilitate anything. I love just sitting back and watching them take advantage of this and navigate the space and become businessmen and women. It's great to watch.
“Most student athletes are thinking short term now, which they should, because student athletes have never seen anything like this before. Eventually somebody's going to break through that door and be a trailblazer. I'm hopeful that the first to really do that comes from Michigan State. I think we have some very innovative student athletes. I think we put them in position with the Burgess Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation to learn how to navigate that space of being an entrepreneur, being a businessman, being a businesswoman, figuring that out, and navigating that space. Some of our student athletes are going to really take advantage of that space in a different way than I think a lot of people are thinking about now and really make a breakthrough there.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“I've worked in college athletics ever since I was an undergraduate student,” Baker says. “And much of my experience has been working directly with student athletes and coaches and being with the academic support side. As I navigated my career, I understood very early on the importance of working with people in our industry and what our environment and the culture of our department meant for people navigating that space.
“Over the course of my career, opportunities like this didn't exist in college athletics. This is something that at least from a formal standpoint, focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, is something that is more recent in terms of creating these formal roles and embedding these efforts into our overall department goals. Michigan State as a university and as an athletics department is in a unique space right now in that there's so much potential for the direction that we can move in terms of being a leader in college athletics.”
Baker talks about Big Ten and NCAA initiatives in DEI, and she describes the roadmap she’s preparing for Spartan Athletics.
“An important part of my work is looking at our current culture, looking at our traditions, looking at the current social climate, and identifying where we need to make change and create some strategy or planning around the things that we're doing so that we can enhance the experience of our staff, our students, our stakeholders, and our campus as a whole.”
Baker describes her five areas of impact that guide her development of the roadmap: Culture building, assessment and evaluation, education and awareness, recruitment, retention and advancement, and social responsibility and supplier diversity.
“There are specific goals and objectives that fall into those areas that encompass things like creating this DEI plan, reviewing our policies and procedures through an equity lens, tracking our progress as it relates to DEI goals, making sure that our staff feels valued and respected and that we have perspectives that are represented from a variety of different backgrounds and areas, thinking about who we hire as a staff and how we retain our staff and even thinking about how we're serving historically underserved communities that surround our campus and throughout our state.”
Baker’s advice for educating ourselves on DEI issues and initiatives, particularly in the workplace, requires that we be lifelong learners.
“Being learners and educating ourselves and then coming together collectively and being partners in learning is key. And the way that we do that is by informing ourselves and then holding one another accountable. Reading books and listening to podcasts is great, but it also is about diversifying the group of people that we surround ourselves with. It's inviting other perspectives and experiences into our spaces and learning from them and listening and not being the first to be dismissive or say, ‘Well, that doesn't apply to me,’ but really being open to understanding what's happening around us and educating ourselves on it.
“I think it's important not only for us to identify those things for ourselves, but then to come back into our workspaces and share that with one another. So I'm an avid reader. I love to read. I read journal articles. I read books. I'm a researcher at heart, so I love to educate myself and inform myself. But the reality is no one person will know everything. And that is why that shared learning and understanding is so important and that we carry the weight of this work together and we show up in spaces where we are willing to contribute and share authentically who we are and know that that space is going to accept us for who we are. But then also know that we're here to be open minded and listen to one another and take into account different perspectives that will certainly and ultimately help make our space more diverse and more representative of what our world looks like.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Upon graduation, the Pontiac, Michigan native applied for a position in the Secret Service. While waiting to hear back. He began a career in insurance, which gradually led him into human resources work. Without even realizing it, Cubia was beginning his work in diversity, equity, and inclusion before that work had a name.
“What I found along my journey through corporate America is that I was running into people who were just having a hard time being heard, moving through the process, and getting opportunities. I started on this journey to help people in corporate America to do better, to realize their dreams, and to be seen and to be heard. It wasn’t officially my job, but I was always advocating, speaking to supervisors, and challenging the status quo. Sometimes I got myself in trouble because at that time, it wasn't kosher to speak up. You were supposed to do what you were told.
“But that was never who I was. I was always respectfully challenging the status quo. Why were certain things the way they were? Why did so-and-so get passed over for an opportunity? And that eventually led to me leaving my sales and account management role and moving into a diversity, equity, and inclusion role.”
When defining diversity, equity and inclusion, Cubia says the key is to embrace our differences. He says there's value in embracing those differences. His twist on the golden rule is that we should treat others as they want to be treated, not necessarily how we want to be treated.
“When I think of diversity, I think of someone different than yourself. I know people sometimes equate it to black versus white. When I think of diversity, I look at all the dimensions of diversity. It's the things you're born with and then the things you acquire later in life, like your education and the knowledge and habits that you pick up along the way.
“We do measure some of the basic things around race, gender, sexual orientation, LGBTQ, veterans, disability. We pay attention to all of that. But again, we also look at education. Were you educated? What's your background? What experiences have you had in life? Because all of those things help to make organizations and the world better when you embrace and accept people for their differences and then understand that there's value in differences. And by realizing that, I think we could just make this world a better place.
“And not to sound hokey with that, but when you accept people for who they are and treat them not the way you want to be treated but treat them the way they want to be treated, then I think you have a more engaged and a more productive society.”
Cubia says DE and I work continues to evolve as more organizations realize that embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion is not only the right thing to do, but sound business practice. He says that if organizations are doing DE and I correctly, that it impacts every aspect of the business and is embedded in everything an organization does.
“When I think about the evolution of DE and I and the role of the chief diversity officer over time, I've seen it really change. Back in the day, it was all about diversifying from an ethnicity standpoint. It was a people agenda back then. What's evolved over time is now it's a business imperative.
“Most CEOs and Fortune 500 companies realize the value of having a diversity strategy for the organization that touches every aspect of the business, whether that's how they market, how they communicate, where they recruit, where they open or close locations, or what products are on the shelves. The DE and I team and leaders across most companies are now part of all of those discussions. We're being brought into discussions with investor relations now.
“When investors are out there at a public company they want to invest in, they want to talk to the chief diversity officers and say, ‘tell me about your diversity, equity, and inclusion program. What are you guys doing to address A, B, and C? And then what kind of progress are you making?’ The evolution has been amazing. It's been fast paced. It's hard to keep up because our phone is now ringing from every part of the organization asking for time with us to help consult about an issue that may evolve around DE and I that maybe that leader isn't that well-versed on.
“We're being asked to be part of the training program within organizations and how we shape culture within the organization. If you're doing it the right way, then DE and I is embedded in everything that a corporation or an organization does. DE and I touches everything. I don't think there's anything in corporate America or in any major institutions that DE and I doesn't touch or shouldn't touch.”
When discussing challenges, opportunities, and goals for expanding DE and I work, Cubia says that, for him, DE and I comes down to two words, dignity and respect.
“The challenge is that there are still individuals out there who feel that this is social work and it has no place in business or in decision-making. One of the challenges is getting to those individuals and sharing with them factual data and showing them research where if you have a real strategy that's comprehensive in nature, that it does contribute to the bottom line and the success of your organization, regardless of what your organization is.
“It's really only two main words, and that's dignity and respect. If you just follow that golden rule and treat everybody with dignity and respect, most of the times things are going to work out for you around DE and I.”
For all of us, Cubia says the first step toward embracing diversity, equity and inclusion is to educate oneself and not to turn the other cheek.
“When George Floyd was murdered a year plus ago and we started to see the peaceful protest and then unfortunately some of it broke into civil unrest, a lot of white guys, like yourself, asked me the question, what do I do? I think the first step is educating yourself and getting information on how the experiences of others have affected their lives and the challenges and the situations that we see today. Learning is one. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid to say, ‘I don't know.’
“But the other thing that I would say is not turning the other cheek. Just because it doesn't affect you directly, doesn't mean it doesn't affect you indirectly. When these things happen, it affects all of us in some way, shape, or form. The sooner that we come together and work together and value the differences and understand each other's perspectives and point of views, the sooner we'll start to see the world differently and understand other people.
“Part of it is just education. We just celebrated Juneteenth a couple of weeks ago. And for some folks, that's the first time they ever heard of it. If we understand the past, hopefully we can prevent the same mistakes. Hiding it and overlooking it and pretending it doesn't exist is not going to get us there.”
Cubia followed his brother and sister to MSU. It's the only school he applied to and had any interest in attending. And Cubia adds that as big as MSU is, it always seemed small to him. The university had so much to offer him and he'd attend MSU again if he had to do it all over again.
“This is going to sound a little hokey, but I believe in full transparency. I went up to Michigan State this past weekend with my son. And as I got out of the car and stood in front of my dorm, I almost teared up. Because when I think about where I am today, had Michigan State not given me the chance and the opportunity to show what I can do, with help of course, I probably would not be where I am today. I have no idea where I would be today. Michigan State helped me because it gave me the services that I needed.
“Michigan State believes that they want to create an environment where everyone is welcome, where everyone can realize their full potential. I see Michigan State constantly striving for that. I believe in celebrating Michigan State because it's a great university that I’m recommending to my son. If I had to choose again tomorrow, I choose Michigan State all over again.”
Carlos Cubia's advice for today's MSU students is to be authentic and true to yourself.
“Being authentic doesn't mean not compromising or being flexible. It just means stay true to your values and your value system. I don't ever compromise my value system, but I compromise other things depending on the situation or the ultimate goal that I'm trying to achieve. Don’t hide and pretend to be something for someone else via social media. The hardest thing in life is trying to be something for someone else, trying to be what somebody else wants us to be. The easiest thing in life is just being yourself because that's truly who you are. Always be yourself, stay true to yourself, and follow your own dreams and I think you'll be fine.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“Historically at MSU students have had a formal record of their credit bearing and learning through the academic transcript. And we at MSU know students are engaging in thousands of opportunities that are non-credit bearing and tied to MSU's undergraduate learning goals. And that has led to the creation of My Spartan Story and the Spartan Experience Record.”
Schultz says My Spartan Story initially was a project in MSU’s Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology started in 2016 with the goal of determining the focus and purpose of a co-curricular record at MSU.
“Students are engaging in many opportunities outside the classroom. And to list a few, think of students who are engaging in on-campus jobs, internships, leadership roles, undergraduate research, and volunteering in the greater community,” continues Schultz. “And think of those opportunities a student found through conversation with a faculty or staff mentor. Those are all opportunities we've known existed, but we haven't had a formal way to track and make further meaning of and really empower students to have recognition by MSU of their learning beyond the classroom. In fall 2020, we formally launched My Spartan Story. In the midst of a global pandemic, we are moving forward with the new academic year with a ramp up of our great new initiative for Spartans.”
Schultz explains how the program works for students and the significance of the Spartan Experience Record. My Spartan Story is an initiative that’s part of President Stanley's role on the Taskforce on Higher Education and Opportunity.
“My Spartan Story is one of the key initiatives for the 2021 to 2022 academic year with the task force, with the key focus of supporting our students in their preparation for success in a post-pandemic economy. Therefore, My Spartan Story is empowering students with a brand new resource, supporting them directly in addressing many of their current concerns of feeling ready for that next step beyond MSU. The record directly includes a short description of their undergraduate learning experience outside of the classroom and the learning goals that they accomplished through the experience. It provides them with some great information to prepare for an interview, shape a resume, and as a whole, empower them to reflect on and synthesize their learning in its entirety at MSU.”
MSU is a leader and a trailblazer in this area.
“Yes, we are absolutely a trailblazer in the conversation on co-curricular records. My Spartan Story is one of a kind within the Big Ten, and we are one of a handful of institutions in the nation with these records. It is our goal in the next few years to be the largest comprehensive co-curricular record in the nation and truly be a leader for our campus and higher education as a whole.”
And what's been the reaction from employers and grad schools? Do they appreciate having a lot of these experiences codified?
“That's a great space we've begun to explore and get positive feedback from some initial employers we've put the record in front of. They have really provided excellent feedback to how this is a fantastic way for MSU to say, ‘Yes, the student not only engaged in this experience, but here's the rich learning they've taken away.’ Students can curate their records at the registrar level. Employers can really get a great sense of who the student is from a leadership role perspective and the great ways they've invested their time and talent outside of the classroom.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
And if that first name sounds familiar, Hannah Zimmerman is the great granddaughter of renowned MSU president John Hannah. She's on campus exploring her great grandfather's archives in the MSU library to learn more about his legacy and how it inspires her.
“John Hannah was my great grandfather, and I grew up in his legacy,” Zimmerman says. “I knew growing up about him through the sense that we lived on Hannah land, but I didn't know much about who he was or what he did in his incredible career until later.
“I started a nonprofit, which has now transitioned into a hybrid organization based around ideas of civic engagement and organizing. Part of the work I'm doing here is learning about similar work he did and seeing how I can build on that legacy.
“I took a course on election law at Stanford, and John Hannah's name when he was the commissioner of civil rights was in the cases we were reading. And it was just weird to me to see that this part of my life that I hadn't thought all that much about was really impactful in an arena I would want to go into. As I continue to grow into who I want to be and the issues I'm passionate about, I'm learning how to find inspiration from my great grandfather and the work he did.”
As Zimmerman explores her great grandfather's memoir and archives, she's learning about his dedication to all people and to making room in an organization for everyone.
“One of the things I'm really coming to appreciate is when he had dedication to one issue. Something my mom said to me last summer is ‘The thing about your great grandfather and what made him such a good leader is he understood to be a good leader you have to find a place for everyone in the organization. And that is my piece of advice for you.’ When I started reading his memoir, which is part of why I wanted to come here, he talks about that principle of leadership and communicating. If you have a vision for something, you have to make sure that other people can see it, too.
“He has that famous quote, ‘Only people matter, especially poor people.’ That's something I am trying to live by. And as I read through the folders and see all the people he impacted, you can really see that for him, people are what mattered. And he was someone who really cared about feeding the world. And while my passion for organizing is different than his passion for agriculture, I can still see that he had one passion and followed it through several years in several different capacities. And that's just inspiring.”
Zimmerman is the founder and director of TICO, The Institute for Civic Organizing, and she'll bring the TICO mission to East Lansing next year. She elaborates on the evolution and threefold mission of TICO. She’s optimistic that more of us will become more civically organized in the months and years ahead.
“The metaphor I always like to use with political participation is that it's like the ocean. Scientists say we've only explored about five percent of the ocean and there's 94 percent we haven't seen. And I feel like it's kind of that way with public participation as well. So many people are just not engaging as much with public institutions as I'd like to see. Taking the public and private and combining them, which is what we do at TICO, is my way of forcing the public sector to catch up through private sector activities and learning from what other countries are doing with their civic engagement processes and hopefully seeing what we can bring back and develop here.”
Zimmerman details how she became New York's youngest elected official.
“I really love the opportunities to connect with my neighbors and talk to them about who they're voting for and how to vote. And that work is very important and rewarding and you can see why people stay in public service. And again, I love building things like we do at TICO. I see my role there as building connections that help people vote and vote in an educated way. I'm glad that I can look at things that he did and find inspiration in them. And I'm also proud that that's what came from my family and I'm proud that I'm able to carry on with the work I'm doing. And hopefully in some small way, that'll add to what's going on in the world.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It's been a great partnership over the years,” Emmerich says. “Not only are we at Schupan big Michigan State fans, we're fans of what you do and what your radio station puts out to the greater public. You cover a lot of really important subjects and we are thrilled to be a part of that.
“Schupan is a locally owned, Kalamazoo, Michigan based company. The owner is MSU alumnus Marc Schupan and his family. Mark is the CEO and the company has been around for 53 years; it has evolved into an amazing organization. When we talk about Schupan, we have five different business operating units. We started in the scrap business, your regular industrial scrap. We have aluminum and plastic sales distribution and manufacturing businesses.
“Schupan Recycling is our beverage container recycling business. We have a materials trading division that does business internationally. Then we have electronic scrap recycling that we call asset management. So that's Schupan. When we talk about Schupan Recycling, it's the beverage side of the business where we handle a large percentage of all the containers in the state of Michigan.”
What's the state of the company and the industry? Where is recycling and Schupan going?
“That's an interesting question. I think you could ask anybody in any industry the same thing and you'll get somewhat of a similar answer. The pandemic has probably been good for some companies and some organizations and some industries, and it's been really hard on others.
“Being a diversified organization, we have divisions that have done pretty well through it and the future looks pretty bright. Then we have other areas, in particular our manufacturing and distribution, that are having a much harder time coming out of it. All in all, our company is strong. Our future is bright. Do we have challenges? Of course, but I'm very excited. In fact, we just initiated a strategic roadmap. That's our long-term vision for where we're going to go as an organization. It's really people-centric and it's going to help us take our company to the next level.
“Our business will continue to grow. I think the economy is stronger than most people thought it would be coming out of the pandemic. We're all challenged with employee issues. I think eventually that's going to work itself out. It's a real problem for not just Schupan but all businesses. I hope within six months to a year that gets behind us. Then I think you'll really see the economy take off.”
How is the state of recycling in Michigan? We've heard that we lag other Midwestern states. How are we doing recycling wise?
“There have been a lot of efforts to try to increase what we do in Michigan. Do we lag other states? We absolutely do. We have like an 18 percent municipal and recycling rate. That's up a couple percentage points, but it still lags behind the Minnesotas and Wisconsins and a couple other Midwestern states.
“What I think is important to point out is that those states actually invest a lot of money in recycling. I don't have the exact numbers, but it's like $20 or $25 million in Wisconsin and $15 to $18 million in Minnesota. They put money back into recycling. Michigan doesn't do that. We only spend a couple million dollars a year in Michigan, and that's relatively new.
“We have relied on the deposit law as our marquee recycling program in Michigan, and it's been incredibly successful. There's no reason to look at changing that, but it really comes down to funding. How much money is the state willing to put back? And mandates. Michigan has really no mandates on banning certain things from landfills. Other states do. The states that do have much higher recycling rates.”
Emmerich details the specifics of legislation pending in Michigan designed to increase the state’s recycling rate.
“I testified for two different bills, House Bill 4443 and House Bill 4444. Those bills were pretty much introduced by the beverage community where they are looking for a half cent per container income tax credit that would help them invest back into the deposit system. Distributors are responsible for the program. A lot of people don't understand that. Since day one, they initiate the deposit. They're required to pick the containers up at retail and properly recycle them.
“That's where companies like Schupan come in. They've hired us and others to help them with that process. As costs have gone up over the years and money was taken away from distributors back in the early to mid-nineties. They haven't asked for a penny from the state to help them with infrastructure costs.
“It's just gotten to the point where our business is no different than anybody else's. Our costs are up well over 25 percent in the last five or six years. Coming out of the pandemic, they're even more. We're paying much more for labor than we did pre-pandemic. Everybody's doing that.
“Now the problem with that is anytime these pieces of legislation start to get introduced, you get the folks who want to get rid of the deposit laws start coming out and you get the folks who are benefiting from money from the state for recycling. They definitely don't want to see things like this happen. It's very political.
“Where things stand right now, which you might find interesting, is that the two bills passed out of the House and they're in committee in the Senate. There are discussions going on between legislators and the governor's office to see what they can come up with that makes sense so that her office will be accepting of where they're going. We're close. I'm not sure if it's going to happen. I hope it does because it's definitely the right thing to do.
“We're looking at a significant investment in our Wixom operation that we built 16 years ago. It's like your car. Your car can only run so long. It needs to be repaired at some point or replaced. That's where we are. If we don't, then the cost of maintenance is just going to go up and our ability to service retailers and the consumer is going to go down, and nobody's going to be happy with that.”
Is it cheaper for municipalities to throw stuff into the landfill than to recycle it?
“Curbside recycling is expensive. You'll hear folks say that aluminum being in the deposit system is a revenue stream that that takes away from those types of efforts. That is true, but it's also not the golden goose because there's another huge issue that nobody ever wants to talk about, and that's glass. We are handling over 300 million pounds of glass going through the Michigan deposit system. It's very clean. It's 100 percent recycled and it's left out of curbside streams. When that stuff ends up in curbside, it contaminates everything and it makes the curbside process much more difficult.”
Emmerich shares his 4 E’s for a successful recycling program.
“My last name begins with an E, so back in a management meeting years ago I said, ‘We've got to come up with something collaborative for why it makes sense to recycle.’
“The first E is education. People have to know what's recyclable and where to go to do it. The second one is ease. It has to be easy or convenient to do. The third one is efficiency. You have to have efficient logistics and operations so that you can properly handle the material. Lastly, and maybe really more important than the others, is that recycling has to be economically viable. In other words, you have to have a semi-lucrative market to sell the material. If there's no end market for the material, you can't have sustainability. You can't close a loop and you won't have an effective recycling program.”
Emmerich says Schupan is a people-friendly place to work.
“I mentioned earlier that companies all over the country and all over the world are struggling getting employees and we're no different. We think we're a very unique place to work. I would encourage folks to go to our website if they're interested in getting into a career, whether it's recycling or any of the five areas in which we do business. We have plenty of job openings and plenty of opportunities throughout the state of Michigan. We'd love to talk with folks about that.
“Regarding the general state of recycling, I think the future is bright. I think it's exciting. I think there's going to continue to be pressure put on the packaging industry, especially in plastics, due to the plastics in the ocean and the waterways. The packaging brand owners are all saying the right things. They really are trying to do the right thing to put more recycled content back into their bottles. I think that effort's going to continue. That's exciting.
“I talked about mandates earlier. They won't all do it without mandates. I prefer to do it without mandates. But again, market conditions and the commitment to true sustainability efforts by the brand owners and the packaging companies are going to drive that. If they don't want to be mandated or legislated, then they need to do everything they can. And they are. I'm encouraged by that, for sure.
“We keep a close eye on that. I think the future of recycling, not just beverage container recycling, is still bright. We'll work hard with all our partners like Michigan State and others who are interested in that effort. We'll continue to work with them.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“You can tell two things from the length of my title,“ says Largent. “The associate provost and dean of undergraduate education's responsibility is to coordinate the undergraduate experience, especially in and around the classroom, across the 169 majors in our 17 different degree granting colleges. My job is, from the central unit, like the federal government, to help coordinate all the activities that go on across the college campus related to undergraduate education and to create a more coherent and seamless experience for our students because 70 percent of them change their majors from the time they start to the time they finish. About half of them change them more than once.
“That's not really a problem unless they're doing it into their third and fourth years. And in fact, as soon as they change their majors in their first and second years, they tend to have really good outcomes. They tend to persist and graduate as they're exploring and finding their way and discovering their purposes and passions. And then we coordinate with all the other things that happen that are different from going to class versus going to college. Going to college consists of a lot more than going to class. Students only spend about 15 percent of their time in class. The other 85 percent of their waking hours are spent in college.
“All of the co-curricular and extracurricular things and everything that happens in the residence halls and everything that's part of the overall student experience falls to my office to help coordinate, make sense of, and ensure that our students are given the best opportunity to learn, thrive, and graduate.”
Beekman asks Largent how MSU defines student success.
“That 15 percent does understate the academic and curricular investments that students have to make in their time. For every hour that a student spends in class, the expectation is that they spend two to three hours preparing for class or working on assignments and projects. So you're really looking at one hour of class time leading to three or four hours overall. And so suddenly that 15 percent is now closer to 60 percent of their time spent on academic pursuits. And then the rest of their time is spent working jobs and participating in sports and co-curricular and extracurricular activities. So that overall suite of things is a really critical part of what we think of when we talk about student success.
“The old definition of student success was that a student was successful as measured by the things that go on their transcript. So student success was just a student getting good grades. It was simply that. In the 21st century, both professionally and colloquially, when we talk about student success, we're actually talking about the ability of an institution to support the students that it matriculates so they can learn, thrive, and graduate. Student success in the 20th century was really getting good grades. Student success in the 21st century is a measure of the institution and whether your institution is designed to support your students. And so when we look at the persistence and graduation rates across the country, on average, half of the students that start college will not finish. It's an astoundingly low rate. Fifty percent of the students who start working on a college degree never finish it. But then when you go to a place like the Ivy League, approximately 95 to 96 percent of the students that start finish.
“When we started this effort, we were at about 77 percent of our students. We were in the top half of the Big Ten. Seventy seven percent of our students who started here finished at Michigan State. About another 10 percent started at Michigan State and finished someplace else. And sometimes that was because they decided that their purposes and their passions were in one of the really few areas in which Michigan State didn't have a major. So for example if you wanted to get a degree in aeronautics and become a pilot, we don't happen to have that program. So you'd have to go to a place like Western in order to do that. Sometimes they would want to pursue a degree that we have limited spots for. So for example in nursing we typically have about 500 students a year who start in our nursing degree, but we only have about 175 slots because of clinical placements. So those students will go someplace else.
“So we were looking at about 87 percent of our students who would start at Michigan State and then finish here or someplace else. And we said we can do even better than that. And so we began a very concerted effort to redesign all different aspects of the university. Advising, counseling, curricular pathways, the ways in which we supported students with residential education and what's happening in the dorms. The ways in which we help students with career advice and career counseling, not when they're in their junior year or their senior year, but when they are going through new student orientation. We push it all the way back so they can start thinking about the alignment between what they're learning and what they ultimately want to do with that degree.
“What has happened over the last seven years is every single year, our persistence and graduation rate has gone up. We went up from 77 to 78, 79, and 80 percent. Last year we finished at 81.3 percent. That constant push isn't about changing who we're admitting; we are admitting the same students. We’re actually designing the institution better to serve the students’ needs. And so when we talk about student success, it's a measure of the institution, not a measure of individuals sort of making it through their classes. The other thing that we've learned in this process is that grades are actually a pretty poor predictor of student success. It turns out that their grades don't tell us very much about whether they're going to graduate.
“In fact, the students who have the highest graduation rates don't have the highest grades; they're in the second tier of grades. They tend to be more resilient. They tend to be more adventurous and they do quite well in terms of retention and graduation rates. It turns out that to be successful as a student, you need to do a lot more than just get good grades. So to be a student success institution, we need to do a lot more than just make sure students get good grades. We have to support every aspect of them. We have to support their mental and physical health, their financial wellbeing, and every single thing that goes into a student's sense of belonging to the institution.
“A lot of the student success work that we've done has focused on things like basic needs. Helping students feel more confident that they know where their next meal is coming from and how they're paying rent next month, making sure that students have access to physical and mental health facilities as they need them, and increasing access to physical fitness activities on campus, which is a really big push for us right now. So combined, all these things are redesigning the university to make it a student success institution. And what we've found is that if a student starts their junior year, 19 out of 20 of them graduate. Juniors have almost a 95 percent graduation rate at Michigan State University. So our real focus right now is really looking at what happens in those first two years and designing that experience so that the students are very well taken care of and that they make it to their third year. And if they do, they're golden. They graduate.”
Largent talks about the pandemic’s impact on MSU and its operations and about the university’s plans for a more traditional campus experience this fall. And he describes his career path to MSU and what attracted him to the banks of the Red Cedar.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“The basics are pretty much the same, but I think one of the things that's happened in the pandemic is that more people are much more aware of what nursing is about.” Rasch says in response to Beekman’s opening question about how nursing has evolved and what the profession’s future looks like. “When people hear nursing, what they hear or what they visualize is what they see nurses doing, like getting patients' medications, baths, and all of those things while you're in the hospital. People are beginning to hear more about what nurses have to know and how they have to think.
“I would say that what's going to happen is that the outpatient part of the job outside of hospitals is going to grow. Probably most of our listeners have had family members or they themselves have been in the hospital and they've been there a couple of days and then they're released. Years ago, you would have been there a week or so and had an opportunity to really get prepared to be released.
“Where we're moving now for nurses is really to be able to say this patient, as far as nursing is concerned, isn't ready to go. Or if you're getting ready to send them home, we need to be connecting to make sure that nursing care is provided at home so that they and their family members know what to do and can provide that care as well. And that has an impact on patients, of course, because who wants to turn around and get readmitted to the hospital, right? So the outcomes are a big piece. What people don't realize is that if you return to the hospital within a certain amount of time, it's big money because the hospital loses money and they're penalized for it.”
Rasch encourages all of us to get our covid vaccine and debunks myths about the dangers of vaccines. And he gets emotional when talking about what inspired him to become a nurse.
“Get immunized yourself for your own personal protection, but covid is a public health issue. You also get immunized so that your fellow citizens and residents of this country are also protected.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“The work we do in the Hub is around designing for change in higher education,” says Gretter. “What that means is we focus specifically on learning experience design. Our work can range from helping faculty members or units redesign their curriculum to creating a new learning experience, like the Apple Developer Academy, which encompasses the whole process of building something from zero to launch in a few years.
“Dr. Grabill started initial conversations with Apple on the academy about three and a half years ago when we really decided to launch what we call the small bet. The small bet was piloting what we call the iOS Design Lab on campus, which was a very small version of what the academies are now. We collaborated with multiple Apple teams to really bring that to life. The iOS Design Lab still exists on campus right now and is really successful in attracting a diversity of backgrounds and interests from students at MSU who are interested in app development and understanding the basics of coding design and entrepreneurship within the Apple ecosystem.”
Gretter is the first ever female director of an Apple Developer Academy.
“I'm really excited to be in that position. We know that diversity in the tech industry is a big hurdle. Being the first woman to lead an academy is an honor but also something that I'm really adamant about embedding within the fabric of how we build the academy. So not only are we the first academy in the United States, we're also the very first one that's under Apple's new racial equity and justice initiative, which means that we are looking at this educational opportunity from that very lens of diversity in the tech industry.”
What is an Apple Developer Academy?
“Apple has Apple Developer Academies worldwide. I think we are the 15th one to be open, and there are more to come around the globe. Apple Developer Academies really focus on the app economy in general and on creating pathways for new tech leaders in this 21st century. We cover basics of coding, design and entrepreneurship within the Apple ecosystem. And we'll use what Apple calls challenge-based learning to get to the core of using technology to solve the world's biggest challenges. Students have their own experiences that they'll go through in the Academy, but they really learn to network and communicate and collaborate with industry and community partners to work on solutions that really will have a real impact in the community around them.
“In my role right now, I’m supporting the process and making sure that all the teams are talking to each other and that the process is as seamless as possible until we launch. Once we launch, as the director, my responsibility will mostly be ensuring that everything functions in terms of operations, but also ensuring that the staff and the mentors that are going to be teaching in the Academy have all the support that they need on my end. As I represent MSU in this process and in this project, we are ensuring that the mentors are really the core of the work that we provide. But really at the end of the day, my job will make sure that students are having the best experience that they can in this educational and learning environment that MSU and Apple are creating for them with support from our close partners. The mentors themselves will be doing most of the teaching every day, and I'm looking forward to having that team and that cohort start with us fairly soon this summer.”
What are Apple’s and MSU's goals related to Academy outcomes?
“It will vary from academy to academy and from student to student. The outcome really is ensuring that students have the pathway that they are interested in. What is fascinating with Apple Developer Academies worldwide is that we're looking at the app economy and app development in its entirety. So it's quite different from a coding bootcamp, if you will, where some students' pathways might be in project management or product ownership or business. And we're looking for outcomes that will produce wealth generation within the community, but also for those students who might be interested in either pursuing further education or going into the industry and getting a job. We're looking forward to seeing what those outcomes will be and how we can make sure that we achieve them.”
Why did Apple select Detroit and MSU as its first US academy?
“The relationship that we built with Apple over the years was a great factor. The iOS Design Lab was the first stepping stone in building the confidence that Apple has in MSU to provide that opportunity for students. Detroit has a rich ecosystem in entrepreneurship and technology, and we are really excited to be part of the vibrant existing ecosystem. Detroit is quite unique in many ways, and MSU has had long-term relationships with the city and we're happy to continue that relationship and be embedded within that community.”
What can students who are accepted expect to get out of their year at the Academy?
“So many things. The pathways that I mentioned are one of the main outcomes. But really, the relationships that they will build with each other is what we're looking forward to the most. Exploring different life pathways or professional pathways that they might not have expected when starting at the Academy is going to be one of the most surprising expectations that we'll see happen. But we've seen and we've learned from other academies that often, individuals meet future business partners in the Academy and build businesses out of the work that they do together. Or students might just make friends for life, which is also a great outcome.”
The Gilbert Family Foundation, in cooperation with the Rock Family of Companies, will support is the new Apple Developer Academy in Detroit.
“We are so excited to partner with and be supported by the Gilbert Family Foundation and Rock Family of Companies. We have worked and communicated with those groups for quite some time now envisioning what that support could look like and how we will partner in the future. We are really thrilled for this gift and the potential that it will create for the academy itself.
“What I'm really excited to see is the cohort of students that we will bring to the Academy and the changes that they will produce through the work that they do in the community and for the tech industry and the technology that inhabits our day-to-day lives. I'm really excited for the work to happen and to see those students go through the program and be successful.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
In this edition of the MSU Today podcast, four MSU scholars discuss the sustained significance and impact of Juneteenth.
“I am not one who grew up participating in or knowing about Juneteenth,” says Dr. Tamura Lomax (she/her), Foundational Associate Professor in MSU’s Department of African American and African Studies (AAAS). “I didn't learn about it until sometime in high school in California. I lived my life between California and New York. And I'd never heard about it in New York, but in California I remember hearing something about it but not really understanding what it is.”
Lomax explains what she means when, as a historian, she says the thing about Juneteenth that strikes her is the multiple attempts at freedom.
“What's important to me is that, yes, Juneteenth is a celebration, but there's still this delayed sense of gratification in terms of freedom. So that's what's important to me in terms of my work, in terms of noting that. And noting how Black folks free and enslaved have been forced to navigate, this idea of freedom while living a life that is truly within a context of unfreedom.”
Dr. Shondra L Marshall (she/her) is a national president of MSU Black Alumni.
“I would like to salute the student body and all the excellent and phenomenal work they’re doing at MSU. We push, and we move forward. MSU Black Alumni was officially founded in 1980. Under my administration, I have elevated three areas of organizational focus. They are engagement, enhancement, and evolvement. We have an endowment which includes several named endowments at the institution. And that actually was started off at one of our first homecoming events in October of 1980. At that event, they passed around a pumpkin and they raised money, which included $1000 to earmark our endowment at the institution. And today we have over $2.5 million in endowments.
“When I think about freedom to liberation, how is MSUBA helping the institution get to liberation? Are we holding the institution accountable and looking at every policy, practice, rule, hire, and program with an anti-Black lens. What I have witnessed under the current administration is some progress, but I'm looking forward to see true change. And to me, liberation looks like access, opportunity, programming, resources, and freedom. And so the question that I like to ask is really just are we thriving? We're getting to liberation and the notion that we are living in a sense of freedom, but there's a sense of unfreedom that we are experiencing. How are we together thriving?”
Sharron D. Reed-Davis (she/her) is a senior at MSU studying political science pre-law and human development and family studies. She’s the former two-term president of the Black Students’ Alliance (BSA).
“I didn't grow up celebrating Juneteenth,” she says. “I didn't know much about it. I actually grew up celebrating the Fourth of July. But once I got to college and started getting involved in BSA, that is where I learned about Juneteenth and about what our celebration is supposed to be and when it's supposed to be. Not with the red, white and blue. Not celebrating a country and an institution that has held us down and has taken us for granted.
“I think people should care about Juneteenth and want to uplift Juneteenth because not all people were free when everyone was free. Black people weren't free. We're still not free. So this small celebration that we get to have is when we as people got some type of freedom. It was just one step in the steps that we're still taking to become entirely free people. So this small celebration is something big for us. It may not be when everyone was free, but that's because we always have to be last. We always have to be the ones that are enslaved, that are taken for granted, that are pushed around. So this small celebration on Juneteenth is something that's big to us. And that's why people should want to celebrate and care about Juneteenth.”
Stratton C. Lee III (he/him) is the president of Michigan State University Black Faculty, Staff and Administrators Association.
“When I think about the significance of Juneteenth, I think about it being a celebration of freedom and liberation,” Lee says. “It serves as a reminder to our community of the lives that have been lost - for those who have fought for freedom and liberation coming from the continent of Africa to living their lives here in the U.S. to those of us who are alive today. This has been a fight for African Americans for absolute quality of life, rights and property. We memorialize those who have died and stand in forceful protest of those who have killed them. It is a celebration. And so when we think about liberation and freedom, we think about what does that mean? And what does that look like in word, action, and in deed?
“It's important for us to come together at these times. To remember our past. To reflect on our shared histories. To learn about our various experiences and to come together collectively to identify what we want to do as a community as we move forward. It speaks to the resilience of our community and the people within it.
“Upon our freedom and liberation, it finally meant that in theory, we are all free. But when you get into what freedom actually looks like, you recognize that our history has been bound to this sense of delay. Many in our communities have experienced those long-term impacts of Jim Crow and segregation and Black Codes, even though we had the Emancipation, the Proclamations, and the Thirteenth Amendment. There are those in this nation who fought tooth and nail to ensure that Black folks would never be able to truly experience that sense of freedom. And on these days and these times where we are able to come together as a community, this is our space to celebrate. To come together and to experience what joys and pleasures we can as a people and as a community. There are many to celebrate and there's much to smile about, even though things sometimes look ugly on the outside.”
“To me this is a celebration of blackness,” adds Marshall. “Juneteenth at MSU on June 19th is called Juneteenth Celebration: From Freedom to Liberation. This is the first time MSU has hosted a university-wide celebration to commemorate the ending of slavery in this country. This recognition is really huge for a predominantly white institution. And what I'm most thrilled about is the unity across our affiliate groups, which are represented here today: Black Student Alliance, Black Faculty, Staff and Administrators, of course Black Alumni, and also the Department of African American and African Studies (AAAS) and Black Graduate Student Association as well. It shows the power and unity, and it clearly shows that institutional synergy as we have a trustee and leaders across the institution engaged. The event is going to happen on June 19th from 12:00 to 2:00 and more information, including how to RSVP is on the website of the office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives. This is a true celebration with music, with food, community and more.”
“I want to thank both Lee and Shondra for really bringing us back to the Black joy and bringing in that balance because that's very important,” Lomax adds. “I think about the ancestors, and I am amazed. I spent 10 years in what we call the stacks in my graduate program at Vanderbilt reading firsthand slave sources. And I've always been amazed at all the creative ways in which the ancestors have made joy and made beauty and made culture in the midst of complete dehumanization, just complete demonarchy, just complete ugliness they made the space for joy and beauty. I really appreciate that being re-centered.
“I'm new to the institution, and I am watching the institution daily. We say in AAAS, ‘Okay, what y'all going to do?’ They may say, ‘Well, you have a new department. You're hiring these people.’ Well, it's more than that. I want to see all the ways that justice and equity in very real ways center Blackness. How are they lived out in terms of politics? I can't say that I'm seeing that every day. And that is as a new faculty member. I'd like to see what’s next. I'd like to see what’s next and want more.
“This celebration is a start and it's wonderful in terms of acknowledgement. But truth be told, after America was burning last summer, a lot of companies dedicated time and resources and language to DEI efforts and to Black folks. I'm very much interested in how the institution plans to incorporate a model in real life. Beyond the celebration and beyond the building of the department, what is it? What are the plans? I'm very interested in that. Because to me, that should be a part of the efforts. I don't want to talk about Juneteenth and not talk about all the structural ways that the institution should be evolving.”
“I want to echo that as well, because I think that a lot of what's been happening with people trying to step up and be allies,” Reed-Davis adds. “It's all good, but the world of social media and the people in charge are trying to make Black culture seem like it's something new and something that just happened or that we just made up. Juneteenth has been a thing. I'm not impressed that because of everything that happened last year, things are finally starting to happen for Black communities. The things that are happening to us are finally coming to light. That's why people are trying to hop on a bandwagon and say that this is not right. It's been not right. So yeah, I appreciate people finally learning and finally highlighting what is happening to Black communities, but what's next now? What's about to happen now because thanks, this was cool, but what's next?”
“I want to attend to something else that Sharron pointed to and some of what Dr. Lomax and Dr. Marshall did as well - this sense of progress juxtaposed with trauma,” Lee adds. “Oftentimes people will say, ‘Well, why do you all want to do this? And why do you want to celebrate? And why is it important?’ There are many people who have been a part of this. But when you think about it, it's still very new and fresh for many of the folks in our communities.
“Many of us are navigating traumas that have been passed down from generation to generation. The fight doesn't stop. We can take time to celebrate. But as we celebrate, we must continue to move forward in advocating for our freedom, our liberty, our justice, and our rights.
“I think that that's an important aspect of this celebration. It brings us together in a point of joy and reminds us that we are actually a community of people, one people, who have a common ancestry that brought us to this place in this time.”
“I want us to truly think about what freedom deliberation really looks like,” Marshall says. “What are we doing to really look at, as I mentioned before, the policies, the practices, the structure, the hires, the programming, the funding, the resources, the access, and the opportunity? How are we looking at all of these things and holding accountable those who have the decision-making power to ensure that we're getting liberated?”
“When I think about the progression of black people, my outlook on it is to appreciate and move forward,” adds Reed-Davis. “Thank you, but what is next? We have a long way to go still, and we have come a long way. We need to appreciate how far we have come but continue to look forward. If we get complacent or stuck on where we came from or what someone gave us, we won't be able to move forward to the next steps and find true liberation. So thank you, but what's next?”
“I think about this is a time for the Black community to come together in joy and gladness,” Lee says. “Let’s leave all of those internal conflicts and learned helplessness and all that type of stuff behind and find the strength and excitement to celebrate being Black in the U.S. I think about it as being a time our sister Maxine Waters describes as ‘Reclaiming My Time.’ This is our time to reclaim. Our time to reclaim our joy. Reclaim our freedoms. Reclaim our peace. Reclaim our power and our energy to be us authentically and unapologetically. We’re doing that in what people call a traditionally white space, and we're making an inclusive, diverse community each and every day.”
“I am always looking back in order to look forward,” concludes Lomax. “And so sometimes I may dwell in the difficult parts of the past more so than the joy. I think the key here for Juneteenth is really bringing that balance. I know sometimes non-Black folks will see Black folks celebrating and think that we enjoy our oppression. I want to make it clear that when we see people celebrating, it is not about an enjoyment of oppression. It is a sense of finding joy, despite it all. That really speaks to the resilience of Black folks.
“To me, that needs to be the centering message of the day: the amazing resilience of Black folks, then and now. It is amazing that Black folks are this resilient and that they can find joy. And so to me, the centering message for the day is that Black folks can find joy in spite of it all.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Regarding CANR’s rankings in the 2021 Quacquarelli Symonds World Research Rankings, Hendrick is justifiably proud. “It’s an honor for us to be in the top 10,” says Hendrick. “If you look at where we sit within the U.S., we're still in the top handful of programs and always have been. Really, what this measures is our scientific impact, the quality of the work we do, the amount of scholarship we do, and the impact that has globally in terms of both generating basic knowledge and then also applying that to solve problems related to food and the environment. It speaks well to the long history of what we've done here and to the innovation that our faculty continue to do with the support of our staff in partnership with our graduate students, and in many cases, with additional help from undergraduate students as well.”
Hendrick details the scope, scale, and impact of CANR’s academic programs, which range from the traditional disciplines in agriculture and natural resources to the home for the School of Packaging, the country's first packaging program, and the only one that awards PhDs, to programs like interior design and dietetics.
“We're a broad, diverse, and well-rounded college. And then of course we have AgBioResearch and MSU Extension that really help amplify the work that we do in terms of the breadth of our research scholarship and our creative endeavors. And then we get the information that we produce out to the communities, farms, families and big and small cities and rural areas around the state.”
Millenbah, who previously served as CANR senior associate dean, underscores the importance of the ‘all hands on deck’ culture in the college, especially over the past 12-14 months. “It's been absolutely quite a year we have had to navigate as a result of the pandemic,” Millenbah says. “And I cannot extend my thanks enough to our faculty, staff and students for their ability to adjust. For example, we had to pivot essentially in three days to an online environment, which meant that a lot of our faculty had to get trained up on how to deliver in an online space. I can’t tell you more how proud I am of everyone who stepped forward and been able to deliver our curriculum to ensure that our students are still having really strong learning environments.”
Hendrick describes some of the challenges he and his team faced during his tenure.
“Yes, we have had our share of challenges here,” Hendrick tells Heinze. “Some were imposed upon us, and, unfortunately, in some cases, there are things we've imposed upon ourselves or have made worse. The Nassar challenge certainly, I think, fits the latter category. My approach since I got here really has been to focus on making this a place where people would feel welcome and could come and be their best. It's the reason we have focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The work that we got started in 2016 and into 2017 served us well in the college. We were able to have open conversations about things that were happening on campus. We were able to address issues and circumstances when people didn't feel that they were welcome or included. But similarly, people who are affected directly, and we had a number in this college, or indirectly by the crisis, it felt like they had a place where they could feel welcome, where they had support from their colleagues, and from administrators, and from their professors or advisors.”
“The efforts that have been ongoing in the college, in particular, over the last couple of years have been the absolute best work that the college has done in DEI,” Millenbah adds. “We always will have more work to do. That is something I think is starting to become more of the fabric of our culture, the recognition that this is not work that is one person's job, and this is not work that ever is done. I truly believe more and more people are recognizing it's on all of us to be able to make the necessary changes that all of us are looking for and desiring.”
“I feel good about a lot of our other successes,” says Hendrick. “We have many very distinguished mid-career and late-career faculty in this college, and we've hired some really outstanding early-career faculty as well. I arrived here at the same time as many of them. To be able to watch them progress, to go through reappointment, or go forward for promotion and tenure, that's been very rewarding to watch and to be able to support and be a part of.
“We've had very strong support from our stakeholders and the legislature. I’m proud of the funding we've been able to get, with help of advocacy of our stakeholders, for the Michigan Alliance for Animal Agriculture, for example. We have also made major renovations to our fruit and vegetable lab. And we have purchased and outfitted a mobile lab for a food processing program that will allow us to not only deliver the program on campus, but also to our 12 community college partners around the state.
“As a land grant university, providing access is still an important part of what we do. And those things we do both on campus and off campus, in partnership with others, has helped to foster and grow that access. We continue to advance our research and our outreach missions. It’s heartening to see the support we have in the counties, thanks to the great work done by our Extension team, both in terms of programming, but also their advocacy. I think we've had 11 or 12 successful millages passsed around the state in the last few years to support the work that we do in MSU Extension.”
As Millenbah takes the helm of the college on July 1, she looks ahead to some of the opportunities and challenges CANR will face. She hopes to see much of the college’s infrastructure upgraded and modernized “to really enhance the work that we're doing and expand the high quality work around research and teaching that's already happening in those spaces. That mission definitely sits front and center for me.
“There are other things that we'll continue to work on, which include our greenhouses. That's been something that we need to see some improvement in. And we've got a lot of people who have been advocating and pushing for that, not only here at MSU, but with our stakeholders, who've been just phenomenal partners in helping with regards to some of our infrastructure needs. And not unlike other institutions, our infrastructure is probably one of our greatest challenges. And there will likely be other things that we will need to start focusing in on to ensure that we do have some of those state-of-the-art facilities for teaching and research.”
Hendrick, who becomes Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Texas Tech University, July 1, will apply his experiences at MSU in his new role. “I wasn’t looking to leave, but opportunities, as they tend to do, came along,” says Hendrick in closing. “The more I explored, the more it looked like a good fit for me, and I think, for Texas Tech. I'm hoping to take things all that I've learned here and other places and work with the colleagues and the faculty and staff at Texas Tech to put that to greater benefit for them as well, just as we've done those things here.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Jody Conradi Stark, Ph.D, is a board-certified music therapist with over 35 years of experience. Her work and research have contributed to that growing body and has impacted numerous populations including psychiatric, cognitively impaired, autism spectrum disorder, veterans, medical, and hospice.
Jody is the site director of music therapy clinical services at the Michigan State University Community Music School, Detroit (CMSD), where she partners with the Children's Hospital of Michigan to provide music therapy through a grant funded by the Children's Foundation. Jody is also the president and founder of Creative Arts Therapies Inc., a company that provides contractual music, dance movement and art therapy services to agencies and individuals throughout Southeastern Michigan.
“The American Music Therapy Association defines music therapy as the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program,” says Stark. “That's kind of long and wordy, but basically it's using music in a structured manner to improve the lives of all different types of clients and individuals.”
What is it about the power of music that's so therapeutic in so many ways to so many people?
“When words fail, music speaks. That's one of my favorite quotes, I believe by Hans Christian Andersen. There is something about music. It's happening in the here and now. It's nonverbal, and it's connecting us. I like to emphasize that therapeutic relationship. We connect with individuals, and we provide those transformative experiences through music. Music moves us. It engages us physically, emotionally, spiritually, and cognitively.”
How has music therapy evolved?
“One area that it's evolved in is the medical arena. We've got quite a body of literature and evidence that proves the effectiveness of music and music therapy. That has been an area that has opened up to music therapist as we've seen how effective it can be with patients, regardless of what we're addressing. We could be addressing pain control, working with children during procedures to help them to be calm, and to just simply normalize the environment in the hospital that can be quite scary.”
Stark says she’s fortunate to have been working at CMSD since it first opened in 2009.
“What excites me about working at the Community Music School, Detroit is that we're really taking the outreach mission of MSU to individuals in Detroit and to people who may not be able to access music otherwise.
"Our largest current grant is from the Children's Foundation, and it funds services at the Children's Hospital of Michigan. We are onsite at Children's Hospital. What’s most important is our work at the bedside working with children individually.”
Stark talks about how she plans and implements a music therapy session.
“It's all tailored to the individual; no two sessions are alike. If I'm walking into a room and I am seeing a child for the first time, I know what they're in the hospital for. Situations can range from infants in the neonatal intensive care unit to older teenagers and even young adults who started their treatment at Children's and are maybe returning for chemotherapy or rehab. We understand what they are there for. If it's for rehabilitation or if they've maybe been in a car accident or had a traumatic brain injury, we would be on the rehab unit working perhaps to help a patient learn how to walk or learn to speak again.
“If we're working with children on the burn unit who might be having burn dressing changes, it's more of an immediate intervention where we're trying to help distract them from the pain of those procedures. We're there to normalize the environment for the family and for the patient. It really is family-centered care and sometimes the family needs support certainly as much as the patients in terms of what they're facing with their child being hospitalized. So if I'm walking into the room and I have a sense of what I will be facing, I first and foremost want to introduce music therapy services and introduce myself. I want to give them a sense that I'm not there to do a procedure.
“I'm there to provide something that maybe is more normal in their environment or in their lives, whether they play an instrument or whether they just enjoy music and love listening to it. Most adolescents and children do. Things we can do in music therapy include playing instruments, singing songs, composing music or songs about their frustration that they're in the hospital or what they miss about not being home. It can be listening to music. We can focus on relaxation, breathing techniques, and learning to cope with pain. It really runs the gamut of a number of different types of interventions.”
Stark says her work is rewarding.
“I am so passionate about my work. I love my work. I love that I've been able to work in a number of different settings and with a variety of populations and individuals.
Sometimes our impact is immediate. If a child is at the hospital and in pain or crying and needs to have assistance with falling asleep or relaxation, we can help with that. It surprises me how quickly they can fall asleep and be able to have some relief from pain and have a chance to relax.”
What do you suggest for someone who thinks they have a loved one or a friend or a family member who could benefit from music therapy?
“Going back to that quote where words fail, music speaks, patients can benefit from an experience that is transformative, goal directed, and a stress reducer. Perhaps their loved one is elderly and is experiencing dementia. Often music elicits long-term memories. I've had elderly clients who could no longer speak. They lost that ability because of dementia, but they are able to sing every word to a song from their youth. We've had loved ones come to music therapy groups so they could see their loved one come back alive through music and dance and interact with them and see the joy that music brings when it elicits those long-term memories. Music impacts us physically, emotionally, and cognitively. So with the variety of goals that we focus on through music, I think certainly they should consider music therapy as an alternative.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“She has a long and storied career at Michigan State, both as a student and for many years in our central advancement office,” says Spartans Athletic Director Bill Beekman. “And most recently within the College of Music, where she was the principal fundraiser for the Billman Music Pavilion, a truly spectacular facility that sits in the center part of campus, adjacent to the Music Building.” Surian joins Beekman on this edition of MSU Today.
Surian describes literally growing up on the MSU campus as her father was a French professor. She sees similarities in raising funds for the arts and for athletics.
“People were surprised when they learned that I moved from the College of Music to Athletics and thought, ‘Really? Arts fundraising and now athletic fundraising?’ Frankly, I think it's very similar,” says Surian. “I'm talking with alumni who are passionate about Michigan State University. They are passionate about this university having great opportunities for our faculty and students.
“I see an easy transition. I know a number of alumni who have supported the College of Music over the years, as well as Athletics. So I actually see it as a very logical and easy next step in my career path. It's visiting with people and talking about their passions and desire to support MSU and see both our academics and the university as a whole succeed and do well and thrive.
“Being a fundraiser is about developing relationships with people and understanding what their passions are and what excites them about Michigan State University. The relationship evolves and gets to a point where you have an opportunity to talk with them about the experience that they get and the joy that they get when they make a gift to the university. It's really about letting donors understand the experience and the joy that they get when they make a significant gift to the university. It's really all about building relationships. The ask comes naturally. When you talk about passion and when you talk about how people want to invest in their university, it’s remarkably easy when it gets to the point where you talk about a gift. ‘What would you like to support that would be meaningful to you and your family at Michigan State University?’ When you reach that point, it's a natural, easy process.”
Surian shares some her current fundraising priorities, like the Munn Ice Arena renovation, implementing Mat Ishbia’s significant gift to MSU, and endowed support for students and travel funds for coaches and programs.
Surian is the first female to lead the Spartan Fund. “It is a profession that is largely male dominated. And yet you've taken this on with gusto and passion,” says Beekman. “What does that mean to you?”
“I'm honored. It also makes a great deal of sense. Fifty percent of the athletic scholarships are awarded to female athletes. Women love athletic competition just as much as men do. It makes perfect logical sense to have a woman in this position working with male counterparts and alumni who love sports. It makes perfect sense to me.
“Many alumni want to be a part of the excitement. They want to be a part of the transformation on campus. And we want to be a part of the opportunity to help our student athletes be the best that they can. It's exciting that I'm the first woman to head the Spartan Fund, but I don't think it's particularly unusual or strange. We're just all people trying to figure out how to make our university better. And I just happen to be a female leading the Spartan Fund.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“We have about 15,000 former athletes who we represent,” says Johnson. “My job is connecting and engaging with them and making sure they feel welcome whenever they come back to MSU. And after they have left MSU, how can we extend an arm to them in their life journey? My job right now is working with all of our coaches and trying to find out how I can do a better job at connecting them with their former athletes and making sure that we are available to them. And I work in the community to see what we can do with our current student athletes to make sure we're engaging in our community.
“We have a lot of fans who support our programs, and we want to make sure we're connecting with them as well. So I'll be working closely with the Spartan Fund. I'll be working closely with all of our coaches. I'll be working actively in-house with our own current student athletes. And I’ll work with our devoted alumni clubs across the country.
“Our mission is to be there for our students when they're here, and we want to be connected with them when they leave the university and keep that relationship ongoing.
“What makes you well-suited for this role,” asks Beekman?
“I had a chance to spend the last 30 plus years in corporate America working with six of the prominent employers in Michigan: Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Dow Chemical, Steelcase, Spectrum Health, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. And in my journey of working in all these places, I've been in human resources. I have certification in team building and working with teams and knowing how to help people reach their goals.
“The outreach of former Spartans reaching out to me asking how they can help has been amazing. We have a lot of individuals who care about this university and they all want to help. They all want to be involved. This has been a tough year, but people are looking forward to coming back. I'm just looking forward to that Saturday when we can just laugh, throw a football, and hopefully get a hamburger from somebody. That whole enthusiasm of coming back is what everyone's looking forward to and to supporting our current athletes. I walk across campus and I get to say, ‘I'm here at MSU. I'm more than just a fan now. I'm here at MSU.’ And then I ask how I can help. That's where my enthusiasm and passion and desire come from. I want to help.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It's fascinating because it's a mix of things that you could have seen coming and stuff that nobody ever imagined,” says Phelan, in talking about the state and future of the automotive industry. “The move toward electrification and reduced carbon emissions seems to really be gathering speed with vehicles that will become mainstream models. And more customers than ever before are considering whether they should get an electric vehicle. That's the foreseeable part of it, although it may have accelerated more in the last few months than most people expected.
“The unforeseeable is the fact that every automaker in the world is saying, ‘Where am I going to get the computer chips I need to build the cars that people want to buy?’ It is an after effect of the pandemic when automakers thought that sales would be depressed for a really long time. They're happy that sales recovered faster than they expected, but they canceled some of their contracts to buy parts. And the chip makers went out and got other customers.”
How do the auto companies define mobility?
“Sometimes I wonder if they know what they mean by that,” quips Phelan. “It's a word that resonates well with the investment community and with different groups of consumers because it can mean whatever they want. Generally, it breaks down into two buckets. One is developing vehicles that can increasingly take over some, most, or eventually all of the work of driving autonomous vehicles.
“The other half of it is adding services to vehicles that we never thought of before. It's a rare car these days that does not come with the capability of connecting to one of the digital assistants like Alexa.
“The idea is making it easier for people to do more in their cars, to get better directions, to avoid delays, to make reservations for a hotel or place a carry-out order, and all kinds of other stuff. And the reason that the automakers talk about it so much and that the investment community wants to hear about it so much is that it ties into the capability to offer subscription services. The latest buzzword is subscription services.
“Electric vehicles will need considerably less regular service and maintenance than conventional vehicles do. That reduces one of the revenue streams for automakers and dealers. They're trying to find ways to offset that, and subscription services is one of the things that they think can do that. I don't fully understand what they're going to offer that customers will be willing to pay $5, $6, $10 - whoever knows how much – for a subscription to a service. But 8 or 10 years ago, I could not imagine having 5 or 6 streaming services that I pay a subscription for. What will people want to pay extra for?
“All of that wraps up in the idea of mobility, making it easier for people to use their cars, allowing them to do more things while they're in their cars, and making it possible for car companies to sell them things they never thought they wanted before.”
Phelan says the auto companies are going full speed ahead on electrification.
“Perhaps in our lifetimes, there will be a day when gas stations are as rare as the places where you buy hay for your horse. There will always be some gas vehicles that remain. There will be people who collect the classics. There will be events for them. But the big auto makers that can afford the investment, and it is massive investment, they have all reached the point of no return and kept going. They are on the route to electric. Most of the large automakers like General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, and Mercedes are at the point where they are no longer beginning investment in new gasoline-burning engines. You don't come back from that. They're going to keep the engines that they've got for a while. They're going to keep building gasoline-powered vehicles for quite a while, but all of their capital investment is going into electric vehicles these days.
“It would take some kind of a catastrophic intervening event for them to decide that they had to turn back now. But people worry. I get emails from people saying, ‘I'm thinking about buying a new car and I'm afraid to get a new Honda Accord because I'm worried that I won't be able to get spare parts for it, or I won't be able to buy gasoline in five years.’ Nobody should worry about that.
“There'll be gas stations on every corner for a long, long time. Automakers have to keep building parts for vehicles. And none of them are discontinuing these vehicles. Electric vehicles may be the way of the future, but you need to fund the future with money that you make today. And they make that money selling their current vehicles. There are going to be huge numbers of gasoline and diesel-powered cars and trucks built at least through the rest of this decade.”
Phelan describes his experience with Ford’s new F-150 Lightning and discusses how the country’s leading-selling vehicle could hasten the transition to electrification.
“We’re at a critical point where we need infrastructure to catch up. We need more generation and we need more charging stations. Both of those are things that are being addressed by the proposed infrastructure bills. There's a possibility of the pieces coming together and the change accelerating rapidly from here.”
Phelan talks about connected and autonomous vehicles. And he talks about cybersecurity issues facing our increasingly connected vehicles.
“The recent pipeline hack is the perfect example of why cybersecurity is so important. I was at an automotive cybersecurity conference a few years ago. And people were talking about all of the things that they were doing to prevent these huge, sophisticated actors from being able to hack into their car.
“And then I asked one of them in a side conversation, ‘Why would any of these big multinational organizations, terrorists, criminal, governments, whatever it may be, want to hack my car? The worst they can do is have me run into a wall and is that really worth their effort?’ And the person looked at me and said, ‘No, your car is the gateway to the infrastructure.’ And that's where cybersecurity becomes really important for the whole country.
“Connected and autonomous vehicles are going to have direct links to infrastructure. The more autonomous vehicles we get and the more driver assistance we get, the more we will have vehicles that can communicate with stoplights, with railroad crossings, and with other vehicles on the road.
“Similarly, as you're more connected, you may pay for a charge or for a carry-out order just by tapping ‘purchase now’ on the touch screen in your car. That gets your car connected to financial infrastructure. So, your car is the potential gateway to disrupting basically all aspects of life in America. And that's why connected cars need to have absolute cybersecurity.”
Phelan talks about the evolving field of journalism and discusses its challenges and opportunities.
“At least we are not being called the enemy of the people on a daily basis,” he quips. “But there are still tremendous challenges economically. Newspapers are increasingly getting a handle on it because they have learned how to monetize more services. The Free Press now has premium content that requires a subscription for access on some stories. And we've been very successful in getting people to sign up for that access.
“But when there's a story that's an emergency, as with most of our COVID coverage, we make that and most other newspapers also make that available to everyone for free because we feel an obligation to do that. It's incredibly competitive. We still live in a world where there are far too many voices that are making claims that they can’t support and just making wild charges in general.
“We can all probably think of five examples from the last week's news of that kind of thing. But we are continuing to do everything that we can to provide the information that people need and to make sure that we get it right. There isn’t anyone at any of the established outlets that doesn't feel a real responsibility to people who trust us to provide information.”
Phelan talks about how and why MSU was the right college choice for him coming out of high school. And he describes how his MSU J-School experience has impacted his life and career and those of many of his Free Press colleagues. And he offers his advice for young people who want to get into journalism. He also provides an update on what’s going on with the Detroit auto show.
“The J-School was absolutely invaluable. I chose MSU because the J-School is outstanding. It's had a good reputation forever. It teaches the things you need to actually do the job as well as the big overarching principles of freedom of the press and giving voice to those who don't have it.
“And I had the good fortune at MSU to work at The State News. It was the best possible training. There are people who I worked with at the State News who are colleagues of mine at the Detroit Free Press today. It is a testament to the success of the J-School at MSU and to the State News. I've been incredibly lucky, and I can't overstate how much of that is due to the things that happened and that I was lucky enough to learn while I was at State.”
In closing and in returning the conversation to the automotive industry, Phelan says he will be closely following the practical limits of electric vehicles and hands-free driving.
“I’m hoping this fall to be able to take a road trip in which I might take one of the new electrified Fords, probably the Mustang Mach-E, on a drive where I would try both of those technologies. The people who are most uncertain about electric vehicles are the ones who are afraid that the longer charging time will be inconvenient for things they like to do.
“So, I want to see what is the best way to go 11, 1200 miles in an electric vehicle? How much longer does it take if I'm moving with the latest technology as far as finding charging stations? If I can combine that with a vehicle that does most of the driving for me when I'm on the highway, that would be ideal. “That's kind of the thing I'm most interested in attempting this year. Otherwise, I'm just really looking forward to seeing how various companies answer all of the questions that are facing them these days.
“The most interesting thing in the world to me is when you see two smart people come up with different answers to the same question. And maybe they both work. Maybe one of them is right, and one of them is wrong. And it's even better when you're spending their money and not yours to come up with these answers. We have enough different approaches to electric vehicles coming now that we'll be able to see what works, what doesn't, and what are the great new ideas we haven't thought of. Then we'll see people start to converge around a consensus on what these vehicles can do. I’m eager to learn more about the action to improve generating capacity and the charging that's really necessary for this technology to take off.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
She comes to MSU Law from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Law, where she joined the faculty in 1989 as a full professor and holds the Evjue-Bascom Professorship. She was a visiting professor at both Georgetown University Law Center and Harvard Law School. At Harvard, she was the first African American woman to teach at the law school.
“I've been in the Big Ten for three decades at Wisconsin,” says Greene. “MSU has been a big part of that Big Ten experience. The opportunity to be a law dean is so special right now. All of society's challenges and opportunities require legal intervention and legal reform, so it's a great time to be at a great law school. I was also excited to have an opportunity to do this at what I'm calling my sister institution in the Big Ten. This was a really great fit for me. My University of Wisconsin Law School experience has really prepared me to work with my colleagues to carve out a really important role for the College of Law at MSU.
“Our societal challenges require multidisciplinary approaches, and this is a new phase of growth for both the College of Law and Michigan State. I always say that the best law schools are embedded in great universities. And conversely, a university will not be truly great without an intellectually preeminent law school. I'm really excited to lead the College of Law, but I'm also excited to expand our work with other colleges at Michigan State University for our mutual benefit.”
Dean Greene describes some of the research and curricular strengths of the college.
She talks about work in innovation and entrepreneurship and the Center for Law, Technology and Innovation. Intellectual property and copyright law are also strong. And there’s the Indigenous Law and Policy Center. Greene also talks about the Immigration, Housing, and Civil Rights Law Clinics and the Geoffrey Fieger Trial Practice Institute.
Greene is a leading scholar in sports law and has done work specifically on Olympic governance. She predicts what controversies she thinks we'll be hearing about this year.
“There will be a few. There always are. One controversy is whether the Olympics will take place at all. Given the current COVID surge in Japan, my understanding is that the many thousands of workers who will be working at the Olympics will not be vaccinated. There are so many unanswered questions about whether the Olympics will take place. There have been sports competitions taking place around the world, but not on the scale of the Olympics.
“Another is whether the ban against illegal substances will be effectively enforced. That has been a serious problem during prior international competitions, especially at Sochi. Will women be barred from competition because their hormonal levels vary from what is typical in women? This involves the question whether people are allowed to choose their gender identity or whether we will approve a biological definition of womanhood for purposes of competition. This has been an ongoing issue over 10 years.”
Greene also writes and speaks on intercollegiate athletics.
“There are two big issues right now. One I think people can really understand is whether collegiate athletes will have an opportunity to share in the wealth they produce and whether they will be able to use their images and likenesses for financial gain. There's legislation in many states around the country that will permit athletes to profit from their images and likenesses. That means that if you are a popular athlete, you might be able to get a shoe deal where in exchange for an amount of money, you allow your name to be associated with an athletic shoe. That would be an example. Or you might be able to have branded apparel and then obtain profit from the sales of that apparel.”
Greene has been the chief diversity officer at two institutions - the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California-San Diego - and is a noteworthy scholar and commentator in this area. Diversity, equity, and inclusion will shape her vision as dean of MSU Law.
“In a nation that is becoming ever more diverse, our future competitiveness and excellence as a nation, as a state, and as a university, depends upon our capacity to educate a diverse population of students. That is the only way that we are going to be able to draw on all of our talent for our creative scientific and social science advancements. I see our diversity as our future excellence, and I plan to collaborate with my colleagues at the College of Law and at MSU on a vision of excellence through diversity.”
Greene shares her short- and long-term goals for the college. She’ll work on the colleges’ accreditations from the American Bar Association and the American Association of Law Schools.
“During the next academic year, we will complete a College of Law strategic plan. The ABA requires that we complete a strategic plan in conjunction with our self-study review. More importantly, the provost and I agreed that during my first year, we would conduct a strategic planning process so that we can identify our College of Law strategic priorities for the next 10 years. In that strategic planning process, we will be taking into account the strategic priorities of the university's strategic plan, which is close to completion. We'll also be establishing our own strategic priorities for the next decade.
“It’s really important that we recruit a more diverse cohort of students from every corner of the state, the country, and the world. This is going to be more important because the American Bar Association is considering a standard for accreditation that will focus on the diversity of the student body, staff, and faculty. Diversity is going to be not only important to our service to the state, but it's also going to be important to our success in our review process upcoming.
“We want to be sure we're providing service to every corner of the state. Some of our clinics are engaged in that enterprise, but we need to do more. I talk about making sure that the College of Law is a significant presence in our historic home in Detroit. All the way up to the Upper Peninsula, we are Michigan's law school and we need to serve all of Michigan's people. I want to work closely with our alumni. They have so much to offer to our current students. And we also want to be sure that we understand their needs and that we are supporting their development throughout the arc of their legal careers.
“Of course, a priority is to raise private money to support the College of Law. We have had some incredibly generous donors in the past. Now we need transformative financial support to retain and recruit faculty. We also need transformative scholarship support to maintain access and affordability to legal education.”
What's the state of the legal profession your graduates are entering? How have legal education and the legal profession evolved over the years? What does the future look like?
“Legal education is more important than ever. Every controversy and every challenge in which our society is embroiled has a legal dimension. From George Floyd to COVID 19 to the disputes over executive power, there are so many areas of society in which law plays an important role. This is probably one of the most important times for people to attend law school and to become lawyers.
“What are some things that have changed? The legal profession and legal education have had a number of ups and downs. We had a diminishment of demand for legal education after the crash of 2008. And then what we're now seeing is a surge in interest in legal education. It's not just an interest in the legal education of the past, but a legal education that focuses on the most important issues in society. The challenges that we face in our communities, in our country, and around the world are significant, but those challenges are fueling a much greater interest in the study of law than ever before. And the challenge of a law school is to make sure that we prepare our students to address these evermore complex problems.
“I look at legal education as the beginning of a long process in which our graduates will have to learn and re-learn and acquire new information in order to serve people effectively across a 50-year career. Many of them will practice law for 50 years or more. So how do we provide a legal education that provides a foundation not only in the areas that are currently important, but also the kind of foundation that will enable our graduates to be lifelong learners and leaders in the field of law? There's just more opportunity than ever. It’s very exciting.
“I would argue that at every stage of our country's development, law has always played an important role. It is the responsibility of the College of Law to provide the kind of legal education foundation that will not only prepare students to hit the ground running as lawyers today, but also to be leaders, policy makers, and servants throughout their careers. And those careers will extend 50 years and beyond. We've got to prepare them to serve society. And I'm so excited to have the opportunity to do that at MSU College of Law College.
“The College of Law has a history of over a century of making enormous contributions to the state. This is a new phase of the College of Law's development, and we are very excited to play not only an important role in Michigan State University's activities, but to be an important player in every place in the state. In every place, every neighborhood, every community, we want Michigan State College of Law graduates to make a difference. That's our goal.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Before talking with Hammersmith, Grossmann and Weinfeld discuss the implications of loosening mask restrictions, the recent ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, and the “enormous” influx of federal dollars into Michigan’s state budget. The money is very helpful to Michigan communities in many ways, but Grossmann cautions that “the spigot is going to be turned off at some point.”
Grossmann and Weinfeld also talk about the removal of Liz Cheney from her leadership role in the Republican party in Congress. Grossman explains why he thinks the move was less about Donald Trump and more about how people just don’t like public internal squabbling in political parties.
Hammersmith joins the conversation to discuss the progress of the redistricting commission. She and Grossmann emphasize that the maps must reflect communities of interest and the diversity of the state.
“Communities of interest are identified in our Constitution as either cultural or historical groups or groups with shared economic interests, but they’re not limited to those groups,” says Hammersmith. “We’re listening. And we’re asking those communities to come forward and talk to us. Obviously as 13 independent people on the commission we can’t know everybody in the state and know where those communities are. They will self-identify, and we’re looking forward to learning more about our state and learning about people who feel that they’re better impacted when they’re voting together as a group and a community of interest.
“There are many ways to engage with the commission, and we want to hear from the citizens of Michigan.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“Kaiser Family Foundation has done some interesting survey work,” says Finkelstein. “Looking at the rates of anxiety and depression type symptoms in 2019 compared to now, there's been a huge bump. Anxiety and depression symptoms and substance use are all on the rise. Interestingly, the suicide rate has not risen to the extent that people were concerned about.”
In a conversation last May, Dr. Finkelstein told me she would love for everybody to know how completely normal it is to feel completely abnormal right now.
“That's it in a nutshell. It happens to everybody. Sometimes you just can't feel like you have the enthusiasm to face the day. I think all of us go through periods of varying emotions. And it doesn't mean you're crazy if you're feeling anxious or worried or depressed. With everything, there's a range. Feeling symptoms of anxiety does not equal having an anxiety disorder. But having an anxiety disorder doesn't make you abnormal. You are among many. We've all got a little something.”
In that May 2020 conversation, Dr. Finkelstein added that an adage she lives by it that “it’s never all in your head and it's never all in your body. We have done a disservice in splitting our mental health and our physical health because they're intimately related to each other.”
Dr. Finkelstein talks about her five tips to help our emergence into a new normal.
“Do not forget joy, whimsy, and laughter.”
“Don’t be a jerk.”
"Remember what is my business, your business, and universal business, and respond accordingly."
“Find common ground.”
"Keep an eye on yourself and each other. Remember to heed the words of Bill and Ted and be excellent to each other."
She believes there are some good things that have come out of the pandemic.
“Keeping mental health in the public conversation is one of the very positive things. The access to telehealth is another huge bonus. Also just keeping the possibility of some quiet, reflective time. Many of us were so on-the-go every minute of the day that we didn't even have a moment to connect. And the parents of little kids and those with pets have had more time to spend with their loved ones. That is something that we should absolutely keep.”
How do we know when how we're feeling is more than normal ups and downs and we may need to seek professional help? How do we recognize this need in family and friends?
“It's not like an on or off switch. It's kind of a sliding scale. But big changes in sleep or appetite, a lot of bottles showing up in the recycling bin, those kinds of things sort of trigger your spidey sense. If you have a doubt about someone, it's worth checking.”
Dr. Finkelstein refers to our collective mental health as the next pandemic.
“The anxiety and depression and substance use levels that I've described are just cresting. People have been affected economically and financially. There are many milestones that have not been adequately celebrated. Weddings have been postponed. Loved ones have died. Grief takes some time to process. There are few people I know who have not been directly impacted in one way or another. Our collective grief is going to take a while.”
The key to Mental Health Awareness Month for Dr. Finkelstein is the self-reflective piece.
“Try to notice if you feel like you’re doing too much or too little. When is the last time you went outside? When’s the last time you laughed? How are you spending your limited time on Earth? I hope we continue to be more self-aware and keep an eye out for each other.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“I have such fond memories, and I love to get back whenever I can and see the beautiful campus,” Sena says. “I think only later in life do you realize how fortunate you were to be at such an amazing place to get your education. It's really cool.”
Sena describes her career path from leaving MSU in 1985 to where she is today leading Suzanne Sena CreativeWorks, LLC, the parent company to all her creative endeavors.
“It’s been an unusual career path, which I think in itself is a lesson. I think when we go to school, we think we have to know what we're going to do, what we're going to be when we grow up, and what we're going to do when we graduate. And the truth is I found that the book of my life has so many different chapters. I never could have anticipated many of them. I would never have believed that the whole direction would change completely at one point or another, or do that several times, but it really has.
“I will be honest, and I think this is an important message. Throughout my career, I would have people say, ‘Don't. You're trying to do too much. You can't be this and be that. You can't be an actress and also go there and be a reporter now. No one will take you seriously.’ Don’t listen to people who say, ‘You have to choose one direction.’ You don't, and whatever you choose now, doesn't mean that's where you stay forever. But everything builds upon everything else.”
In March of 2020, Sena launched her podcast “The Confidence Connection.” One of her favorite quotes is that confidence is contagious.
“It was really about getting the message out about confidence. I wanted to have access to people who knew more than I did about some things. I find that so inspiring. I'm a trained interviewer and feel I'm a good host. I'm so deeply curious about people so I conduct the interviews for me. Then people have access to those people through me. And it turns out that overall, the message is the same, pandemic or no pandemic. We want to know about the people who've made it, how they made it, and what struggles they went through so that we are inspired.
“Over the last year, we've seen such an increase in people listening to podcasts. They've looked for more forms of entertainment. And then by virtue of finding one, they look for others. It's a great medium. And it's also a great outlet if you're creative and you have a message you want to get out there.”
Sena talks about why MSU was the right college for her coming out of high school. And she describes how her time at MSU has helped her to get to where she is today.
“At MSU, I learned what I was capable of, and I was treated with respect. I had unlimited opportunities, and my skills were able to be developed and noticed. Then when somebody I respected respected me, it made me feel better about myself.”
Sena says that the enormous changes in the communications world also bring enormous opportunities.
“The biggest thing is to learn to take advantage of the trends. I remember attending a conference about 10 years ago with all the network TV and studio heads. They were saying within a year or two people would be watching television mostly on their devices. And I thought that was ridiculous. Now I look at my phone to see the latest episode of the Handmaid's Tale or whatever I'm watching.
“Get as much knowledge as you can and don’t limit yourself. Communication is evolving and making everything more accessible and every dream more attainable.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It has been a very active year for us,” Beekman tells White. “With the challenges of the pandemic we've been facing, it really is quite extraordinary. Our team has done a really special job. I would be remiss to not acknowledge the work of our athletic trainers as the sort of frontline workers in athletics. They have administered literally thousands and thousands of COVID tests, and they've provided athletic training support to over 700 athletes whose schedules were really compressed. With the exception of football, most were compressed into a very, very narrow window with all of our sports being in competition between January and now of 2021.
“We are very happy and lucky that we were able to get every team into competition, with the exception of women's gymnastics. Every other team had the ability to compete despite cancellations and postponements. I'm very excited that so far we have two Big Ten Championship teams; our women's cross country team, and most recently our women's golf team with a great win.
“I just can't thank our team enough. They've been so adaptable and nimble in trying to get things into the right place so that our student athletes could have every opportunity to compete. Much of our budget is tied to football. When we didn't have spectators in the stands for football and we were forced to reduce our number of games from a 12-game schedule to a nine-game schedule and then several of our games ended up being canceled due to pandemic related issues, that really affected our revenue stream. Our revenue decreased by about $80 million this year. We lost over half of our revenue and had to adapt very, very quickly.
“In the Athletic Department, we don't receive any revenue from the university in terms of tuition dollars or state appropriation. All of the money that is spent in Athletics is generated through Athletics. Much of that comes from television and ticket revenue, including seat premiums and the premium seating areas. When you buy a t-shirt with an MSU logo on it, the licensing component part of that comes to Athletics. When you see advertisements in the football program or hear them on the radio or see them on the video boards in the stadium, that revenue comes into Athletics for the rights fees paid for those commercials that you see. All of that comes in to fund the department.
“There are only about 25 schools in the entire country that can make that claim, that they are 100 percent sort of floating on their own bottom. To me, given my history largely on the academic side of the university house, I think it's very important that tuition and the appropriation go to academic purposes and our academic mission to keep that part of our university as strong as it possibly can be.
“We do fund ourselves. Hopefully the horrible years don’t come very often. I've told some folks that this is probably the worst financial year in the history of college athletics. But we will persist and find our way through it and have a Spartans Will attitude. We'll make it, but it certainly has not been without its challenges.”
What’s your current thinking on attendance for football in the fall?
“I think that we had a good experiment last week with the spring game. We offered tickets to 6,000 people. It was a little drizzly, so I think we lost a little bit of attendance due to the weather. We’re making progress on the vaccine front. Over the course of the summer, we’ll be watching Major League Baseball, NASCAR, and others to see how it goes as they slowly bring back more fans.
“I'm hopeful that as we get into the fall, we'll have robust crowds in Spartan Stadium. Whether that's 100 or 75 or 50 percent capacity remains to be determined. I remain hopeful that we'll have a good solid crowd with the band and the cheerleaders and the kick step into the stadium and some really, really good football.”
Beekman says donors to Spartan Athletics play a key role.
“When you look at most of our athletic facilities, those are all donor funded projects. Our donors are critical in that they allow us to try and take our programs to the next level. Some of our programs have absolute state-of-the-art facilities as a result.
“Mat Ishbia's gift of $32 million is spread across a number of activities. I'll mention two. One is improving our football facilities and helping them remain state-of-the-art. The other is tied to what Mat appropriately calls a Spartan For Life Fund. That fund really is tied to working with our student athletes while they're here on campus. Mat's very passionate about career services and the student athlete support process. We're very excited to get that program up and running this summer.
“As we continue with ticket renewals for the fall football season, I would just ask for people's patience. We're following the latest guidelines that come out of the CDC in Atlanta along with our state guidelines. We work hand in glove with the Ingham County Health Department. They've been extraordinary partners in this effort, giving us guidance on things like the spring game and other activities that we've had on campus. We'll continue to work very closely with them making sure that we're making every possible effort for our extraordinary Spartan Nation family to be able to see our young people in action this fall.
“And if you get a chance, I encourage you to get out and see a baseball game or a soccer game or a softball game. Some of our sports that maybe are not covered as widely in the newspaper or on television, but where the student athletes are competing every bit as hard.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Edwards talks about the plethora of services available to student-athletes through SASS at the Clara Bell Smith Student Athlete Academic Center. And he discusses the recent academic gala, which annually celebrates the academic achievements of Spartan student-athletes.
Gove (men’s track and field and cross country) and Szabo (women’s tennis) talk about balancing academics and athletics and about what they want to do with their degrees. Szabo is a supply chain major; Gove is a horticulture major. Edwards talks about the department’s all time high graduation rates. Gove and Szabo are among a record eight student-athletes who earned the President’s Award with perfect 4.0 GPAs. The President’s Award is the most prestigious individual academic honor presented at the gala.
“We had seven sports that had a 100 percent graduation success rate,” says Edwards. “Men's Basketball was one, which I believe might've been their third year in a row. Ice hockey, men's tennis, rowing, women's golf, softball, and volleyball. And I want to throw out a special shout out to the ice hockey program. Our ice hockey program currently has a federal graduation rate of 100 percent, a graduation success rate of 100 percent, and an academic progress rate, which is another metric that the NCAA uses that measures retention eligibility. It's called the APR. They have an APR of 1000. So they have three perfect scores on the metrics that we're judged on right now. I don't know if we've had that before previously in university sports. I want to give them a little special mention.”
Edwards talks about plans for outdoor graduations this semester, and Gove and Szabo describe their favorite classes.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct (RVSM) strategic plan builds on the work of the RVSM Expert Advisory Workgroup, which has been a major driver of RVSM efforts on campus and was tasked with creating a values-driven operational plan with recommended initiatives, timelines and metrics.
The Workgroup — co-chaired by Dr. Rebecca Campbell, professor of psychology and Lt. Andrea Munford, coordinator of the Center for Trauma-Informed Investigative Excellence at the MSU Police Department — was formed in 2018 to make immediate recommendations to transform MSU’s institutional response to RVSM and oversee the implementation of those changes in the wake of the Larry Nassar crisis. Members of the workgroup were appointed by the president based on their expertise in RVSM services, prevention, policy and/or research.
“What we've learned through conversations through the Nassar case and through other cases and conversations with survivors and with other community stakeholders is that people didn't report what was going on because we as a university didn't give them a safe place to report,” says Munford. “There was a lot of judgment and inaction in reporting. And that became more known that there was a pattern there. And so people stopped reporting because they didn't feel like it was safe to do so.”
“I also heard people didn't know where to go,” adds Campbell. “They didn't know what services we had, and they didn't know how to access them. We've had longstanding victim service programs, both in sexual assault and in relationship violence and stalking for decades, actually very strong programs, good trauma-informed services, and people didn't know that they were there. We knew that we needed to be doing more to create clear, accessible pathways to the services that we have and to strengthen those services. There was still more we needed to do in those services. Both in terms of improving options for reporting and in terms of getting support in healthcare, we needed to start over and we needed to really think through how to make accessible pathways for victims.
“We did a lot of listening. We have been in campus engagement sessions since spring of 2018. We've had an online portal forum where people could send in their suggestions, their comments, their concerns, their anger, and their fears. We read all of those. We did a crosswalk between our current programming and national recommended best practices to identify all of the gaps. And then we spent months looking at model programs, looking at what we had, and applying for grants. We have a number of initiatives in this plan that are funded in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Division of Victim Services, to create new programs. It was a combination of a lot of feedback, bringing some outside perspectives into the university through those funders and through consulting with national organizations to identify what would be model practices and to build out a plan around those.”
Campbell and Munford define relationship violence and sexual misconduct, and Munford defines trauma-informed.
“Being trauma-informed is really understanding what neurobiology of trauma looks like,” says Munford. “It's understanding that your body reacts in ways during trauma that somebody else may not recognize if they don't understand what that means. It's working with somebody who is in trauma and being able to support them through it because they may not know why their body and their mind is reacting a certain way and being able to guide them through that process by providing supportive measures along the way, too. Working with a survivor of sexual assault while they're in that trauma and what they're telling you about what happened may not make sense because their mind really in the midst of that trauma isn't processing it sequentially or their memories are very fragmented. And so, they're not able to say, ‘This is how it started. And this happened.’ That's not really how most people's minds work during trauma.
“So, guiding them through that process and saying, ‘I understand that you won't be able to tell me what happened from the beginning to the end manner. And that's okay. Tell me what you remember, and we can start from there.’ We've all in the past just made assumptions when someone comes forward to report something. And if it doesn't sound like an accurate story and because maybe we didn't know what trauma can do to people, we just assume they were lying. Understanding how trauma affects somebody helps us do a better investigation and helps us support a survivor better. And regardless of what process someone chooses, the outcome is better because we've supported them along the way.”
“One of the things we've been focusing on in the strategic plan is to look at all of the different stakeholder groups on campus like the survivors, the helpers, the leaders, the campus community, and our service providers to ask what training they have received,” adds Campbell. “Do they have training that's consistent with empirical research? Do they understand the impact of trauma? And are we preparing them to receive disclosures and to know how trauma affects people and to be able to respond in an empathic way and to connect people to support services? A lot of the initiatives in our strategic plan focus on training of the campus community in small groups and large groups and our leadership to know those basics of what trauma is, how trauma affects people, and what their role is in being part of a trauma-informed community.”
Campbell and Munford describe the values-driven and principles-focused approach to developing the plan and discuss how the plan needs to be intersectional.
“Violence is experienced differently in different communities, and certain communities have higher rates,” continues Campbell. “Depending on people's intersectional identities, they're going to need and want different resources. And different resources are going to feel more or less supportive or safe for them. It's not a one-size-fits-all, and we really need to be having multiple options for people depending upon what is safe and supportive for them.
“We also wanted to focus on the fact that all of our actions need to be trauma-informed, that we need to build on the work that Andrea has done in creating trauma-informed investigations to really think about how we do trauma-informed services all throughout the university. So that no matter where a survivor reaches out and to whom they may disclose, that that person has a fundamental understanding of trauma and can respond supportively and connect people to services.”
Specific initiatives of the plan?
“Our data from the Know More survey told us that the number experiencing RVSM was a much larger number than the people who were seeking help,” adds Campbell.
“Seeking help could include reporting to the police or Title IX, but it also means reaching out to victim service programs or employee assistance. And we just weren't having very many people come forward to seek help. We need to increase help seeking, and we need to make clear, accessible paths for people to receive help and support. And we simply need to reduce the number of people experiencing this. We need a real strong focus on prevention to reduce the incidents of RVSM.
“In terms of increasing help seeking, research is very clear, we need three critical things. Number one, we need trauma-informed services and clear, accessible ways to get to those services. Second, we need a trauma-informed culture. People need to feel safe to disclose, and the people in that community, particularly the leaders, need to know how to respond in a trauma-informed empathic way. And third, we have to change the way we handle RVSM sanctions and discipline. People will not report and they will not seek help if they don't believe that the institution will take it seriously. The office of the provost is initiating sweeping changes in how they approach sanctions and discipline process.
“On the side of preventing RVSM from ever happening in the first place, again, research gives us three very clear directions. Number one, we need to look at what resources and education and intervention we're providing for those who have been found responsible. Because without education and intervention, research is pretty clear they may commit those acts again. So that is often referred to as secondary prevention. For those who've already done it, what do we do to educate and intervene to make sure they don't do it again? The second key thing that research tells us we need to do is focus on the primary prevention, so it ever happening in the first place. And there what we really want to be focusing on is developing skills that all members of the community need to recognize that this is a situation that could result in relationship violence, sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, or workplace incivility, and that they have the skills to intervene.
“It's often called bystander intervention, meaning a person understands and recognizes what the dynamics are and that they have the skills and feel empowered to intervene, that they don't just sit back, that they don't just sit silently and go, ‘Oh, well. There goes so and so again being the way they are in a faculty meeting. And there they are again, treating staff that way,’ to say, ‘No, that's not okay.’ And that they have the skills and the confidence to intervene to say, ‘No, that's not going to happen. I'm concerned about your behavior. We need to redirect that.’ We need to teach people those skills. And third, we need to create respectful work environments. And we have a lot of sub-initiatives, a lot of specific projects that are really focusing on creating a respectful work environment because what that does is it sets what the behavioral expectations are. What are our norms? What do we expect all students, faculty, and staff to do in being a member of this community?”
“There's an ongoing training for leadership called, Creating and Sustaining a Respectful Work Environment,” adds Munford. “It focuses on what leaders can do in regards to early intervention and addressing behavior in the right way. And depending on the severity of it, what needs to happen from there, from creating an environment and not just creating it upfront, but sustaining it. So there's ongoing work that needs to happen, communication with folks in a unit to make sure that everyone understands that there are certain behaviors that won't be tolerated, and if that behavior does occur, following up appropriately. We must teach our leaders what the process looks like and what their part in it is. And again, giving them the tools to be able to run a unit and sustain it so that there's a culture and foundation of respect.”
What about a timeline for and evaluation of progress?
“One of the things that was really important to us in this strategic plan was developing a robust evaluation of it,” says Campbell. “Putting out a bunch of initiatives doesn't really do much if you don't evaluate them and know whether they're working. We already did one climate survey in 2019. And as part of that, we collected really rigorous baseline data in terms of the incidents of RVSM, how many people are experiencing it, what the help seeking was, where people are reporting to, and measures of climate, how are they feeling about the leadership of the university, our culture around RVSM. That provides us baseline data that then we can return to in the spring of 2022 and in the spring of 2024 to see if we're seeing demonstrable change. What we're hoping for is that the rates of help seeking - again that can include reporting, but it doesn't necessarily mean formal reporting to Title IX or the police – continue to go up; we're hoping for statistically significant improvements in those.
“We're also hoping to see that our primary prevention programs are working and that the overall incidents of relationship violence, sexual misconduct, and workplace incivility are decreasing. And we're hoping to see changes in those climate measures and that people feel that this is a serious issue of RVSM, that our leadership are invested, and that we are making significant progress in transforming the culture of that. All of those data are publicly available through the office of civil rights website. And all future evaluation data will also be public. Accountability is important; transparency is important. We need to be putting those data out for public engagement, which we have, and will continue to do so. And if we find that those metrics are not changing, it's our responsibility to dig into that to understand why. Is there a problem in our programming? Where is it missing the mark? What do we need to be doing better? How can we improve this? It's a living, breathing plan of continuous improvement and change over time.”
Campbell and Munford feel good about doing this important work.
“I'm often asked, ‘Isn't this hard, isn't this depressing?’ Certainly, there are days when it is, but by and large it's not,” Campbell says. “I love this job. I love this role because every single day, I get to meet people at MSU who are committed to this issue and want to be part of the solution. I meet people from literally all different parts of this university in all different roles who ask me about this work and who want to know how they can help. I meet deans who are committed to this work, and I meet student activists. The number of people we get to interact with here at MSU who are really committed to this work is inspiring.”
“And working with survivors of relationship violence and sexual misconduct, whether it's sexual assault or sexual harassment, and being able to make a process for them better is rewarding because they already went through a horrible traumatic event,” Munford adds. “And sometimes the processes themselves, if not done correctly, are just another traumatic event. Going through the Nassar investigation, the criminal investigation, the university investigation, I watched the layers of trauma over and over again. The failures that these survivors experienced on so many different levels are not okay, and it needs to be addressed. It can't just be, ‘Let's fix it right now for compliance to say we did;’ it has to be ongoing, and it has to be re-evaluated.
“We have to learn as we go and keep improving systems so that people have a safe place to go to report. Again, it doesn't mean reporting to police or Title IX all of the time. It can, but it means having places in the university where people are comfortable talking about their experience so that they can get support. And again, there are so many different facets to that that we have to be able to look at this comprehensively to make sure that we're covering all of these areas and building a much-improved system than what we've been working with. And for me, like Becki said, there are days you feel like you're just spinning your wheels. And then there's a breakthrough. This is my calling. This is why I'm doing the work I'm doing because people deserve better.”
It's rewarding for Campbell and Munford to have support right from the very top in President Stanley.
“President Stanley's commitment to this has been very clear from day one,” says Campbell. “Back in the days when we actually got to work in our offices at MSU, our offices are literally next door to his. We've had the opportunity to have those hallway chats with him. He asks how we're doing. He sees us heading out to different campus meetings. We see him later on and he asks, 'How did it go?’ When he came to MSU, in addition to the required training that all students, faculty and staff participate in, he asked for additional training on trauma and the impact of trauma. He is genuinely very curious and wants to know the current research on this to add that into his own knowledge as a physician.”
“He sincerely cares about the community and really wants to improve culture in many different areas,” Munford adds. “He has been very committed to the RVSM initiatives and very supportive of Becki and me and the work that we do.”
What are a couple of key takeaways you'd each like people to take from the plan?
“For our community, no matter what your role is, when you know better, you're able to do better, but you have to make the choice to do so,” Munford says. “As this plan is rolling out, be engaged, pay attention, and make a choice to do better because there's a lot of information that helps you know better.”
“We can change the culture at MSU,” Campbell adds. “It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be quick. For it to be real, it has to be meaningful, and it has to take time. And it has to take all parts of the university. It has to take our leaders, it has to take our faculty, our deans, our staff, and our students. It has to take everybody. The plan outlines many concrete behavioral things that we can and must do to decrease the prevalence of relationship violence and sexual misconduct and to make it easier for survivors to seek help and support.
“I encourage people to read the report. It presents the underlying philosophy and the values and the principles that inform this work. It describes the process of how we did this and all of the different data sources. And it lays out all of the different initiatives.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Before exploring Carnahan’s work, Weinfeld, Ballard, and Grossmann talk about the impact of the Derek Chauvin conviction and the likelihood that it increases the chances for federal legislation. They say some more modest reform legislation could pass in some states, but that federal action is unlikely.
They talk about how important video was to the George Floyd case and what, if any, impact Chauvin’s conviction will have on the economy and income inequality.
On the economy of Michigan and the country in general, Ballard says we’ve climbed back much of the way – not all the way – from the devastating losses of a year ago and where the economy was in February 2020. Despite much of the good the federal stimulus dollars are doing for the economic recovery, Ballard sees himself as a “lone wolf” in voicing concern about the country’s long-term debt, now north of $20 trillion.
Grossmann and Ballard both talk about the impact of the infusion of federal stimulus funds and how long they will last. Are many Americans beginning to expect a check from the government every so often?
In describing his research, Carnahan says that conspiracies are not a new problem. What’s new is how the social media accelerate the spread of misinformation and make it more visible to a larger group of people.
Carnahan also defines what he means when he says social media are good at sowing confusion and what “flooding the zone” means.
“A lot of my research is primarily interested in how we go about trying to correct misperceptions once misinformation circulates,” says Carnahan.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find "MSU Today with Russ White" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
At the time of her installation, Malawi was going through turbulent times. The country was in the midst of a deep economic crisis and had undergone a process of serious democratic erosion. To make matters worse, the government had fallen out with the international donor community.
Nevertheless, expectations were high on the new president. As only the second-ever female president on the African continent, she drew attention from around the world as a trailblazer for female empowerment. However, to what extent can a female President elected under such difficult circumstances really promote female empowerment?
The legacy of Banda’s presidency for women in Malawi politics has been debated. President Banda herself was voted out of power in 2014 amid plummeting approval ratings. For the first time since the introduction to multipartyism in 1994, female parliamentary representation also declined in the 2014 parliamentary election. These findings correspond with other research suggesting that women presidents and prime ministers may not be more prone than male leaders to advance the political careers of their fellow women.
Still, in a new article by MSU researchers Michael Wahman and Nikolaos Frantzeskakis, published in the American Political Science Review, the political scientists argue that President Banda advanced the role of women in politics in a less obvious way. Studying debates in the Malawi parliament, they find that the Banda presidency was associated with a significant increase in the number of speeches delivered by female lawmakers. They argue that the change in female parliamentary behavior is an indication of intra-elite role model effects and that Malawi can teach us a lot about the symbolic importance of women presidents.
In this interview, President Banda and Michael Wahman discuss the obstacles to women political leadership and the symbolic importance of a woman president, but also some of the limits that women leaders face in promoting fellow women while in power.
Read From Thin to Thick Representation: How a Female President Shapes Female Parliamentary Behavior by Michael Wahman, Nikolaos Frantzeskakis, and Murat T. Yildirim on the symbolic impact of President Banda’s presidency in the American Political Science Review.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
James Clift is the deputy director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. And before that, he served as policy director for the Michigan Environmental Council. Saulius Mikalonis is a widely respected environmental attorney in the Bloomfield Hills office of Plunkett Cooney.
“The impact and insignificance of Earth Day is that it started the ball rolling,” Mikalonis tells host Kirk Heinze. “Shortly thereafter, the EPA was created, and the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act were passed. There were environmental statutes that were in the books before that, but they were very mild and not very well enforced.
“Environmental issues were always things that people were concerned about, but it didn't become actionable until they had a critical mass of people to work on it and the legislation passed.”
“I like Earth Day in that it helps trigger people's memory,” adds Clift. “How long have we been at this? It’s been 50 years since the first one. It’s good for people to think about how much progress have we made over time or areas where maybe there's been a little bit of a lack of progress. But if you don't have an end date, a mark to kind of put in the sand, it's sometimes hard to conceptualize the time that is passing.”
“What are some of the key implications for the environment that you see in the early stages of the Biden administration?” asks Heinze.
“The infrastructure package is key, and I think it's really kind of interesting how it overlaps Earth Day in a way,” Clift says. “We really built today's water infrastructure in the '60s and the '70s through some of the grant programs that were developed at that time.
“Well, that infrastructure is now 50 years old and is in much need of help. And that old aging infrastructure is having public health impacts in communities across the state. It's really a great tribute to Earth Day in the country to say, ‘Okay, now it's time to, collectively, readdress this infrastructure question that we've been ignoring in large part and help get the economy rolling again in a way that's going to improve public health, especially in a lot of the cities across the nation.’"
The trio discusses the growth of renewable energy sources.
“It’s interesting,” says Mikalonis, “that private equity renewable energy investments in the United States in 2020 were $23.7 billion. This is private money; this is not federal money. This is not state money. These are private dollars going into renewable energy.
“It’s heartening to see industry realizing this is not only the right thing to do, but it's because it's profitable to do it, and that's probably the true sign of where we’re headed.
“The millennials and people following them, they're very in tune with this stuff. And those are our future employees and consumers. Companies want to make those people happy.”
“Switching from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles is going to be a significant transition for the auto industry and you have to plan for that,” Clift adds. “You have to be out ahead of that. What are those skills that are going to be needed in the future for auto workers? What's going to happen to the supply chain? How is that supply chain going to change? Where's that manufacturing going to happen? Who's going to make those batteries?
“If you're not thinking about all those things 15 years in advance, you're going to suffer some transition pains that could have been avoided if you planned it right. Think about it through that equity lens. Where is it going to impact certain communities within the state? Making sure that when we address something like climate, we're doing it in a way that's thinking about its impact on all of the residents of Michigan and making sure this is an inclusive process moving forward.”
Heinze, Clift, and Mikalonis talk about water, too, and the status of Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac.
“The good is that Lake Michigan is 11 inches lower than it was last year,” says Clift. “We're just coming off of the five wettest years in our history, and it was clearly causing some challenges around the shores and with systems throughout the state. We were pretty happy with the mild winter and the drier spring up until now; it's making this much more manageable.
“But, long-term, we realize we've got to look at climate change and how it's impacting the lakes. Is our water infrastructure ready for more variability and larger storm events? Can we handle those storms? That's when we see a lot of the nutrient pollution runoff from farms. It is occurring during those larger storm events leading to the algae blooms that we're seeing in Lake Erie and in some of other bodies of water. From a getting-ready-for-resiliency standpoint, there are a lot of investments we need to make in that storm-water infrastructure system to make sure that we handle that variability in the future.”
“There are so many new contaminants, emerging contaminants, and contaminants people aren't even thinking about,” Mikalonis adds. “One example is the effect of all the people taking antidepressants because of being locked in their homes and the effect on the biology of the lakes. That stuff isn’t filtered when it goes through the treatment system. There's a lot of stuff that isn't filtered when it goes to the treatment system. You have a bunch of fish sucking down Xanax and who knows what else.
“And so that's another issue that's going to be coming up in the future. I don't know the answer or how to address it, but there's such a mix of chemicals and people just don't know how they interact and how they affect them and us.
“I would be shocked if we, in our blood system right now, don't have seven parts per trillion of PFAS in us, considering how ubiquitous this stuff is. It's in everything, and it has been around since the late '50s when 3M developed it. It's everywhere and I'm dealing with it with a number of clients on a regular basis. That is going to be a huge issue because it's not easily treatable. It moves through the water very quickly and I don't think we have a full grasp on what the negative effects of that stuff are.”
“What is plan B if Line 5 gets disrupted?” asks Clift. “Where would the energy come from? Where would the other petroleum products come from and how would it get to the various end users? The key is trying to make sure that these other systems that we might be required to rely on at some point are robust as possible to avoid any kind of disruption or any price spike that could occur, regardless of whether the disruption occurred due to a legal filing or if it was an unplanned disruption in the pipeline infrastructure.
“And something else here is really important. Let's address the underlying problem here, which is the addiction of fossil fuels that this country is on and try to reduce that need for fossil fuels and the climate impacts of those and make sure that we reduce our need for those sources long-term.”
How will the pandemic impact our sustainable future?
“There will be some temporary and short-term benefits due to fewer carbon emissions from so many people working from home,” says Mikalonis. “Long term, though, the trend of working from home is likely to continue. And if you cut travel by half, what is that going to do to air emissions? If you're not driving 500 miles a week in your car, maybe the next car you buy will be an EV as opposed to something with a gas tank.
“I don't think we have any idea. I think maybe five years from now we'll be able to look back and say, ‘Oh, okay, this was because of this. This was because of this.’ I can't see the future. I do know that when things like this happen, there are permanent changes. And I think you only realize them when you look back in retrospect.”
“One of the things to think about is where science fits in to solving problems,” says Clift. “We have to make decisions based on best available information. And I think governors across the country have made some really tough choices based on the understanding at that time. The pandemic has highlighted our disinvestment in local public health in a significant way. And you build up that infrastructure to get you through times like this.
“The other part of the science that I think has been fascinating is we've been doing a fair amount of work in studying wastewater. By testing wastewater, we can we tell where the next COVID outbreak is going to be. And I think that's going to have a lot of applications in different areas over time where we can look at precursors to disease vectors happening and make sure that we're staying in front of them to the extent possible.
“Over time, we have built a deeper understanding and now we're dealing with environmental issues that are tougher, in a way. When you look at trying to address non-point pollution issues with the water, they tend to be a little harder to tackle.
“We're also looking at more dimensions of every single problem we're looking at. We're looking at what's the environmental justice impact? What's going to be the labor impact? What's going to be the just transition that's going to get us through this? I think that's a very positive thing. We're looking at problems much more holistically and hopefully that will lead to more holistic answers to them moving forward.
“And as Saulius mentioned, we’re seeing the private sector step up in this area. Many companies tend to think from quarter to quarter. But there are a lot of companies that have been around for a while that are thinking to themselves, ‘Hey, if we don't change our business practice, all of a sudden we're only going to be around for another decade or two and then we might be history.’ So they're joining in and trying to solve these problems. And I'm hoping that that will change the dynamic in a way that I think can provide people a little bit of hope that maybe we can address some of these very challenging problems that we have in front of us.”
“Probably the thing that I find most hopeful is the buy-in from corporate America,” says Mikalonis. “Everybody's heard the term greenwashing, right? Are you just saying this because that's what you think your customers and the people you want to work for want to hear? There's a generational change coming. The boomers are exiting, stage right. But the people who are coming up from behind are different. Obviously they're not all the same; there's no generation that moves in lockstep. But it is a different way of thinking for a lot of these people.
“And I think a lot of these companies, the ones that will last, realize that their future employees and their future customers have certain expectations that they had better meet. And if they don't, they may be the dinosaurs. They'll be exiting stage right with us boomers.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870, and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“Dough's mission is to drive consumer purchase power towards women-owned businesses,” Kangas says. “Our co-founders Vanessa and Anna created Dough out of their own experiences, grappling with the unique challenges that many women face in building successful companies and raising capital to grow their businesses. Before COVID, only something like 2.7 percent of investment dollars went to women-owned businesses. And since then, that number has actually shrunk to 1 percent. Meanwhile, only something like 20 women have founded and led a company that has gone public.
“With Dough, they really wanted to create a bottom-up approach to addressing the barriers we face in growing businesses and raising capital because our collective purchase power as everyday shoppers is massive. If everyone in the U.S. spent $20 a month at a woman-owned business, we'd drag nearly $5 billion towards women-led companies each month. And that kind of capital would move mountains in advancing women-owned businesses, ensuring that they have what they need for their businesses to grow and thrive.”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are hallmarks of Dough’s mission.
“The tech industry can be notorious for being pretty hostile to those of us from underrepresented backgrounds. There's an inherent moral imperative behind DEI. Removing systemic barriers so that we have an industry that's able to not just accommodate, but actually embrace and foster multiple pathways for people from a range of backgrounds and experiences is just the right thing to do.
“Another reason DEI in tech is so important is the increasing influence of technology in our lives. For many people in our country, technology plays a critical role in how we work, how we live, and how we learn. As a society, we are in the midst of tackling so many complex problems whether it's addressing poverty, health, systemic racism, climate, the list goes on, right? But when you have an industry that's not diverse, and it either never gets or it loses people from a diversity of backgrounds due to the lack of equitable systems or inclusive environments, you really lose out on the perspectives and experiences that have an incredibly valuable role to play in solving the big issues of our day.”
Kangas defines conscious consumerism as “the practice of making purchase or product decisions that are really grounded in this awareness of the impact of the products you use. This could be knowing how the people who make your products are treated or compensated. This could be knowing the environmental impact of how a product was made or even which communities you're supporting with the money you spend. There are so many possible dimensions that shoppers may take into account that really fall under this conscious consumer umbrella.”
And you also talk about more equitable technology towards social impact. What do you mean?
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core to our mission and our practice at Dough. We are not succeeding unless we are moving the needle on outcomes and making an impact for women entrepreneurs. So far we've featured over 600 women owned-businesses, but for us, it's not just about how far we're able to reach. Diversity and inclusion and who we bring along with us also deeply matters. Many of the e-commerce systems that we engage with as shoppers actually can result in inequitable systems where often it's winner take all. So only a very few merchants take in a disproportionate majority of consumer sales on a given platform and vertical. So at Dough, we want to be intentional to ensure that we're doing as much as possible to ensure that the technology we build fosters more equitable dynamics and outcomes.
“When we say we want to build more equitable technology towards social impact, that really means that we measure and analyze who on our platform gets exposure to marketplace and sales opportunities, where the money is going, and how it's distributed so that we're aware of who may be falling through the cracks and if there's an opportunity for us to uplift and do something about it.
“The biggest opportunity I think we have in front of us is impact. Our team is dedicated to playing a meaningful role in the success of our brands, and we invite everyone to come and join us in supporting women-owned businesses. We work with so many incredible women doing incredible work, and there are so many women starting and growing small business ventures. Our collective purchase power is huge, and to bring that level of capital to these businesses and bring about that level of impact that we seek, it's going to be an amazing thing to see.”
Kangas says her time at MSU helped launch her career aspirations.
“My time at Michigan State really prepared me to feel like I could tackle anything and everything I would pursue. MSU has so much to offer. And for me, it was like this playground where not only would I be able to pursue my degrees in math and economics, but I would also have the opportunity to gain experience as a student advocate through my time in student government all the way to honing public speaking skills through my time with the mock trial team. So not only did I pick up the STEM education that was the groundwork for my early career in research and evaluation and eventually in technology, but it also served as this way to develop these other experiences that are really pillars to how I approach all of the non-technical aspects to my work over the years.”
In summary, Kangas says “I would love people to join us on this journey to support women-owned businesses. There are so many incredible women doing incredible work and building incredible companies. Supporting women-owned goes miles in supporting these businesses to have what they need to grow and thrive.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and WKAR.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“Our center is a student-centered campus resource that works to celebrate, affirm, and empower LGBTQA+ members of the Michigan State University community,” says Beal. “We are the hub of LGBTQA+ life on campus, a home away from home. We also provide trainings, workshops, consultation services, and educational programs for all of campus.
“But at the end of the day, our whole job is making sure that LGBTQA+ students know that they are whole and perfect and complete exactly as they are and that we celebrate who they are and everything they do on our campus and beyond.”
Why the name change, Jesse? And why now?
“We have been asking for this name change for a while. Our students have been asking for this name change for even longer. The running joke among the student population is that it's a typo of some sort, and so students love to troll us about our persistent typo in LBGT Resource Center. The truth of it is, when the name was created that the acronym was less static than it is today. Right now, there's a particular order that is more common and understood to be correct. That wasn't the case 15 years ago when we named our center. There is some mythology around that part of why the B is further up in the acronym; it was to center bisexual folks. And that's great. We don't want to give up that part of our mission. We will do the work of supporting bisexual, pansexual, and fluid communities, but we think we can do that with a name that's more inclusive.
“In addition to this, centers around the country have been moving to the gender and sexual diversity model for center names to get away from the acronym because the acronym is inherently exclusive. We're always adding new vocabulary for folks to better describe their experiences of gender and sexuality, which is a good thing. Because LGBTQA+ people have only been talking about ourselves in public for a relatively short period of time. But the acronym gets longer and longer. That means we would have to change our name again and again. And we wanted to move away from that into something that feels more inclusive for all parts of the community, so people with all genders and sexualities.”
Oprah Jrenal (she/her/hers) is the center's assistant director.
“The name is more representative of what we do,” Oprah says. “We talk about gender. We talk about sexuality. We provide resources around exploration of gender and sexuality for our students. We affirm them and we give them permission to do that exploration, to choose the words that feel best or hurt the least. And we also uplift them and we encourage them. This actually speaks to what we do more so than the letters encompass.”
Using a person's preferred pronouns when interacting is important to promote inclusion and so is understanding the differences between gender, sex, and sexuality.
“People should know that everything they've been taught about gender has been limited and has not included folks who have always existed in our culture, but society has gone out of its way to exclude people who have always existed in our culture and society across the world,” Oprah says.
“The next thing I want people to know is that they can unlearn and undo what has been done to them around this gender binary stuff, like they can get out of it. They just have to make the choice that, you have lived one life, you only know what you know, but there are other folks who are living and their stories are just as valid and real as your story is. And so, how can you unlearn the stuff that's been given to you so that you can make more room to love and to care about people that are different from you?”
Jesse, Oprah, and students Valentine (she/her/hers) and Camille (she/her/hers) talk about the difference between gender and sexuality. And they distinguish romance from sexuality. And they encourage “practicing active mindfulness.” And they talk about how suicide prevention is a key initiative of the center.
“I think it's really important to unlearn and then relearn all the things that you know about gender and sexuality,” says Camille. “It's like unlocking a part of your brain and reprogramming it to function in a different way. It's really important and really special when you get to the point where you get to decide and dictate who you want to be and how you want to show up in the world and understanding that you don't have to be locked in or tied to any specific label or box. I think that's really what is the beauty behind gender and sexuality because you have the freedom to choose. That choice is very important, especially when it comes to pronouns. Because a lot of times, people get stuck on the language or the grammar of pronouns when the English language or language in general is made up. It's like we really don't have to be stuck by that. The process of rewiring your brain to reach that new level of understanding is super cool.”
Students Valentine and Camille appreciate the leadership, counsel, and direction the center offers and provides.
“We use the center as a conduit to contact other organizations that are focused on the same goals; the center can facilitate a lot of that interaction,” says Valentine. “Even though the entire campus essentially is virtual right now, we’re still able to have the sense of community that is facilitated by the center. It has really been one of the highlights of my college experience, honestly, being able to access so many different people who I would never meet otherwise and do things that I would otherwise not get to do.
“I have so many different opportunities to thank the center for in terms of leadership and professional development. It's absolutely essential, I think, to my college experience as a trans person, but I'm also certain that it is to so many other queer people. It's like a cornerstone of the way we experienced the university.”
“I completely agree,” says Camille. “I think the name change is necessary because it offers a new step in the direction of becoming a more united front on campus. Not only with the queer orgs on campus, but also the typical hetero clubs on campus as well, because it's kind of saying like, ‘We are all going through the struggle, so why don't we just go through it together? Why can't we support each other in a way that we need to?’ We're making good progress and we're making good strides. I'm excited to see what the rest of 2021 looks like as well as 2022.”
“Everything we do is an act of love,” says Beal. “Everything we do is because our students deserve the very best and we are doing our very best to make sure that they know exactly how awesome they are.”
In summary, Jesse Beal says.
“On July 1, we will become the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center. This name change is important to us because it is more inclusive, it is more current and, most importantly, it's what students wanted. We're entering this new time at MSU, this time of great promise for LGBTQ inclusion with a new name. We're so excited to be doing this with and for our students.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“We’re fortunate to have a season this year, and we’re thankful for the Big Ten conference and MSU supporting us,” says Orlando. “We get to play an unbelievable schedule. The Big Ten conference is one of the best conferences in the country. It’s exciting to have that many quality matches.
“We're off to a good start. It's been a great improvement; the guys have really come a long way. We weren't able to compete in the fall. But we took the challenge, and we were just so excited to be able to be back together in September and train and work together. We really missed it and we stayed true to each other. And we had no COVID cases and just kept our bubble small. But the guys trained so hard.”
Orlando talks about how he became interested in tennis and how he immediately fell in love with the game soon as he was introduced to it. And he discusses how the game of tennis has evolved over the years.
“The equipment, obviously, has been transformational; going from wood rackets to graphite has added more power to the game. Then there’s the physical training. Back in the '70s and '80s and even the early '90s, training and fitness weren't really part of the game. Now it's a major part of the game. And there’s the mental side; you have sports psychologists. You have all these different assets going into developing a tennis player. Before it was not that. It was just the athlete learning on his own, doing the drills and competing. But now when you have all the athletic training, the fitness, the mental side, and then the development of someone's game, you’re really producing unbelievable players.”
Orlando adds that tennis is a much more international game then it was a few decades ago. He still focuses most of his recruiting in Michigan and the Midwest.
“We can't miss out on the opportunity to grow the game within Michigan and the Midwest. The more players that we give the opportunity to play the game and to compete at this level, the more likely it is that they will go on to share the game with many others. Some might be tennis pros, and some might be just club players. But to me, for us to really grow this game, it's really important to have American players.
“It's great if you can mix in and just have maybe a sprinkle of international players. I think that really gives a great flavor for all the players on your team to get an international experience and international players to get an experience of American players. But it might be to a point where there are teams that are completely foreign, completely international. But I think it's important for college teams to give the opportunities to American players to grow this game and give everyone an opportunity to play the game.”
Coach Orlando talks about the differences involved in playing tennis indoors and outdoors. And he describes some of his favorite memories in 30 years as MSU’s men’s tennis coach.
“When we qualified for the NCAA tournament and we got to have the watch party, Coach Izzo opened up his video room and we had it on a TV screen. And we were truly on the bubble. It wasn't like we were waiting for our name to be called. When our name was called that was pretty cool.
“And some of my best memories are when alumni return to campus to be recognized. To see their joy and see how touched they are, and being part of that, those are moments that really stick out to me the most. Just sharing the and being part of the past. Even though I wasn't there, I felt like I was there sharing many moments with our past players and seeing their successes. It’s great to see their success as they have moved on through life. To see other people's success, those are the best moments.”
Orlando talks about guiding his team through the pandemic.
“One of our goals was to stay COVID free; we had to be responsible. We have great leaders who really stressed the importance of keeping our bubble small and being smart. Our guys have done a great job. And sure, it hasn't been easy. We had our episodes, just like every other team, but we've weathered the storm.
“We can't look at it and say, ‘Oh, woe is us,’ or ‘Are we going to be able to play this season.’ This is life and we have to do the right thing and do what's best for all of us.
“I think the guys have done a really good job. They’re treating it as if their next match could be their last match because you really don't know. You could be sidelined or the team could be sidelined. Treat each day as an opportunity to get better and know that there's no guarantee for tomorrow. And when we compete on the weekend, I've been hearing it from the guys when they speak up, ‘Hey guys, we're leaving it all out there today because there might not be tomorrow. There's no guarantee for us.’
“We will be better because of this situation that we've been in the last year. Sure, it's tough living it and being in it. But I think once we get past this, we'll look back and say, ‘Wow, this is what we did and this is what we accomplished, and I am better because of it.’”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Bruno and Memije talk about how they became interested in tennis. Memije says the “individual aspect” of the game drew her to tennis while Bruno says the “team-oriented” nature of college tennis attracted her to the sport.
“It’s interesting that way,” says Beekman, “It’s an individual sport and yet there's a team, and so in some ways, the best of both worlds.”
Bruno describes her coaching and recruiting philosophies and the relationships she builds with her players. And Memije talks about why MSU was the place for her coming out of high school.
“As soon as I stepped on campus, I had this overwhelming feeling that I belonged here,” she says. “I knew I would excel in both tennis and school and also just grow as an individual person.”
Memije talks about her preferences for playing tennis indoors and outdoors and describes the different challenges in playing singles and doubles.
Bruno talks about starting each practice with an inspiring quote. Memije’s favorite is "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
“You have to tell your story and the truth about your program and what you do,” says Bruno. “The balance piece makes us unique. We’re not going to eat, breathe and sleep tennis. And we're not going to jam things down your throat here; it's just not how it's going to happen. At some programs, that's how it is. You're going to be respected by your coaches and we expect the same in return. We’re growing as a program, and I think we're on the cusp of being a consistent NCAA qualifier. I think we're right on the cusp of that. We need that kid who's going to come here and wants to help make that happen. We just tell the story of what we are and where we want to be headed. We've had some of the best recruiting classes since I've been here, we just got to keep plugging away.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870 and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Dr. Field is a nationally recognized gynecologic oncologist. He brings more than 15 years of oncology experience to Mid-Michigan. Dr. Field specializes in minimally invasive surgery, open debulking of ovarian cancer, chemotherapy, and hormone therapy treatments for women with gynecologic cancers, including ovarian and endometrial cancer. Since 2012, he has served as principal investigator for Gynecologic Oncology Group, NRG Oncology Clinical Trials, which is responsible for improving and expanding cancer diagnosis and treatment. He is assistant professor and director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University.
“Gynecologic oncology has a bit of a name problem,” says Field. “We're basically specialists in women's cancer. We treat women with cancers of the reproductive tract and sometimes benign problems as well, so problems with the uterus, the cervix, the ovaries, and the tubes. We do both surgery and chemotherapy and coordinate radiation oncology care for women with gynecologic cancer. We're a bit like the primary care doctor for women with those types of cancers.”
What attracted Dr. Field to MSU?
“The biggest thing that a gynecologic oncologist likes to do is be busy taking care of patients, and this area has been without a gynecologic oncologist. Everyone was really enthusiastic about being able to offer those services in this area. My main goal is to take excellent care of patients and do excellent surgery and care for patients through the life cycle after their diagnosis with a cancer.”
Dr. Field says there have been “amazing breakthroughs” in the last three years.
“We'd gone through sort of a 10-year dry period with not a lot of new treatments, and in the last three years, we've got a whole new class of treatments for patients with ovarian cancer that overlaps with breast cancer patients. The PARP inhibitors are really effective in patients with genetic predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer. But we're finding that 50 percent of patients, whether they've inherited those mutations or not, can benefit from those drugs, which is really exciting. We're realizing how much earlier to offer those treatments to patients. The next step is combinations of new therapies to treat patients once they've developed resistance to drugs.”
Field talks about the role telemedicine has played during the pandemic, and he thinks it will remain in some form even after the pandemic.
“This was a breakthrough. The increase was almost instantaneous last March and was automatically approved to be used as a regular visit. A lot of my patients are elderly and are brought to me by their kids or their relatives and have transportation issues and functional limitations. To be able to not have to get out, get in the car, get in a parking spot and make their way into a clinic and instead be able to hook up to somebody's smartphone, I think is just really nice for patients. I don't know that I'm great at it yet, but I just think it's really nice for patients to have that as an option.”
Do you think we’ll ever cure cancer?
“Cancer isn't one thing. It's one of the reasons that what I do is so interesting. Ovarian cancers, from a doctor's perspective and a scientist's perspective, are really interesting because the ovaries can make anything, a whole person. The range of cancers that come from the ovary are so different. I'm always in awe of my pathologists to be able to tell the difference in types of cancer just from the small amount of tissue that we give them. There's so much variety. I think we're getting better and better. In the last three, four, five years, things have sort of rapidly moved in a direction that nobody anticipated just from 10 years ago. So always the hope is to get rid of it, but it's not one thing. It's not that simple.”
Dr. Field says the main things patients can do to prevent cancer are the things we do for ourselves every day.
“Two-thirds of cancers can be prevented by things like not smoking and eating healthy and exercising. Several of the cancers I take care of are really helped by people who live a healthy lifestyle; that's probably the biggest thing you can do. The next step is to see your doctor yearly. For women, I think they should be seeing their gynecologist yearly. They're going to screen them for cancers, like cervical cancer, and ask them questions related to the other types of cancers that I treat.
“If they notice differences in their body, like bleeding when they haven't had a period in a long time or problems where they're losing weight and not really trying to lose weight or having trouble eating or problems using the bathroom or new pains or discomforts that they haven't had before and those symptoms stick around for three weeks, they should get those checked out by their primary doctor and their gynecologist. Usually, the way I see patients is their excellent primary doctors have picked up that something's wrong and oftentimes sent them for tests or imaging. By the time I see them, it's very obvious what's going on, whereas it can sometimes take weeks, months, and even a year to figure out that first part, who they need to see.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
LCC President Steve Robinson, MSU Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education and Dean of Undergraduate Studies Mark Largent, and MSU junior Sarah Day, who came to MSU from LCC, join Russ White to discuss Envision Green on this edtion of the MSU Today podcast.
The partnership, called Envision Green, provides a seamless transition from LCC to MSU by embedding MSU advisors within LCC to guide students through their educational journey — a transition more than 5,500 LCC students have made over the last decade. With this partnership in place, prospective LCC students can consider MSU from the start of their higher education journey. The affordability of the LCC-to-MSU path means a four-year-degree is an option for more people in the region — crucial for building and retaining an educated workforce in Michigan.
It is estimated that community colleges are the entry point for close to half of America’s post-secondary students, making this partnership a win-win for students, the institutions and the local community.
The Envision Green memorandum of understanding specifies a one-year partnership with an option for renewal, and states both parties’ intention to continue to grow the relationship. Broadly speaking, both institutions want to make it easier to plan an academic path from one institution to the other.
As part of the relationship outlined in the MOU, the institutions will:
· Provide two MSU academic advisors one day a week on LCC’s Downtown Campus
· Communicate MSU transfer credit changes and MSU transfer credit process changes to MSU advisors at LCC as well as LCC employees
· Work individually with LCC students to facilitate a smooth transition from LCC to MSU
· Promote policies that will encourage students who start at LCC to finish their associate degrees before transferring to MSU
The partnership’s benefits extend beyond campus, as well. In an era when post-secondary credentials are in increasing demand, broader access to higher education ensures the Mid-Michigan region is an attractive prospect for startups and businesses looking to expand.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“I actually started as a newspaper reporter,” says Meagher. “I worked at The State News the second semester of my senior year, which was a great experience that kind of allowed me to take the next step after I graduated. I had a couple of internships, including one at the Oakland Press in Pontiac and then became a reporter out in Santa Barbara, California, first for a daily that is no longer in existence and then an alternative weekly there. I was a reporter for about six or seven years and had a conversation with the congresswoman who represented the area out there one day and decided to come onto her staff and become the press secretary. That's kind of how I flipped to political communications.
“Since then I've worked in California. I've worked on a couple of campaigns in Colorado and Montana. I worked on the mayor's race in Chicago in 2019. I had a brief stint at General Motors in Washington DC doing public policy communications. And then in 2019, I was the national press secretary for Mayor Pete Buttigieg in his presidential campaign. I had a few gigs in between including with Governor Whitmer, and now I'm honored and lucky enough to have the opportunity to work at the White House.”
Meagher describes the exhilaration and excitement of working in the heartbeat of the new administration.
“There's really nothing quite like it. You get carried away in the midst of your job and what you're doing and the tasks that you have to accomplish. And then you look out the window and you see the front of the White House and you're like, ‘Wow.’ Just what an honor to be here and working hard to get things done.”
Meagher describes some of his duties and responsibilities as White House deputy press secretary.
“Every day's a little different. You never know what's going to happen. You never know where the day is going to lead. You can sort of have a vision for what you need to accomplish and then something happens and you have to react to it. I like that. Every day offers something a little different. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has a daily press briefing. And so a lot of the first half of the day is preparing for that and making sure that she has the information that she needs to relay to reporters in the briefing room.
“The rest of the day is just interacting with reporters more or less and dealing with the volume of inquiries that come in every day. I have a portfolio of dealing with some of the more political requests, some of the bigger picture type questions that are coming in. So not necessarily in a beat per se, but kind of a potpourri of incoming questions and inquiries that keep you on your toes. You never know what somebody's going to ask about. But one of the cool things about the White House is it's a working building. Reporters’ offices and cubes are literally right down the hall from mine. They can literally walk down the hall, open the door, and walk right into my office.”
Meagher says his desire to study journalism led him to MSU.
“It was exactly what I was looking for in a college experience. I lived in Wilson my freshman and sophomore years, so not too far from the School of Journalism. I have absolutely no regrets about attending Michigan State and still get back there as often as I can.
“I remember sitting in one of my early journalism classes and the professor was talking about the nuts and bolts of conducting an interview and taking notes and how he had developed a shorthand. And at the time I was like, ‘that's crazy. How do you read this? How do you understand it?’ And lo and behold I developed my own shorthand. I also realized journalism is all about people, and that it's the people behind the stories that really matter. In journalism, you're often sitting in city council meetings or county board meetings or watching what's happening on the State House Floor or in the halls of Congress. But I think what Michigan State and my journalism education really taught me, and it’s something that I tried to carry with me throughout my reporting career that continues even on the other side, is it's all about the people.
“The American Rescue Plan's a great example where we're making these decisions about huge pots of money and where they go. And you can sort of forget about what we're really talking about, and that's checks in people's banks accounts for families who have lost jobs or are struggling with school-aged children. The decisions that we make impact people's lives.”
How have you seen journalism and public relations change since 2005? You graduated about the time Facebook and Twitter were coming on. Where is this media landscape now? And where do you see it going?
“Twitter and Facebook have completely changed things. I think from my perspective as a communicator, it has just totally completely changed the news cycle. It's nonstop, frankly, between cable news, CNN and MSNBC and Fox, just 24-7 around the clock coverage, too.
“So their reporting online never stops. And then Twitter obviously never stops. And so it's not like you are working until the New York Times deadline approaches at 6:00 p.m. or whatever the time is on a weeknight. And then you can kind of take a second to breathe. It just keeps going, keeps going, and you're always monitoring Twitter. I think one thing that I think we really understood on the Pete Buttigieg campaign and one thing that the Biden campaign also did really well was remembering that while helpful and while important, the vast majority of the American population isn't on Twitter. Twitter is a valuable tool in your toolbox. It's a valuable tool to reach reporters. It's a valuable tool to reach thought leaders and people who can really drive a conversation.
“But at the same time, you can't react to every little thing that you see on Twitter or else you'd go crazy. We reminded ourselves on the Pete campaign constantly that something like 6 percent of the United States population is active on Twitter. That's a lot of people when you're trying to reach people where they are and communicate a message that isn't necessarily where everyone is. But you can't let what's happening on Twitter always dictate what you're doing or what you're responding to. Sure, it's important and it is a way to reach people where they are, but it's not the only way. And it shouldn't be the only way.”
Meagher believes it’s an exciting time to be in journalism.
“There's no question that news organizations have endured, especially on the local level, difficult times and are sort of battling these questions themselves. But I think there's always going to be an appetite for information. I think there's always going to be an appetite for people shooting straight with the American people. You've seen it prioritized by the Biden administration bringing back daily press briefings every single day of the week. Well, Monday through Friday. Because we understand that reporters have a job to do. And that job is to relay what is happening in the White House to the American people, and that's always going to be valuable.
“People are always going to be seeking information. The way that they seek it is fluid and changing, obviously. Some people go to Twitter for all their information. Some people go to Facebook. Some people have their five websites that they check. Some folks still get the newspaper delivered every day. The need for information is never going to subside, and the need to hold power and government accountable for the decisions that are going on always needs to happen. The First Amendment and the rights of journalists are always going to exist. And I think that that's really important.”
What’s Meagher’s advice for students in MSU's J-School today or anywhere throughout the College of Communication Arts and Sciences who may think they want to get into political communications in some way?
“I always say that my time at The State News really allowed for me to take that next step toward getting my next internship. And then that internship led me to my next internship, and that led me to my job. And it wasn't an easy path to get there, and I don't even know if I would have been on that path if it wasn't for that semester at The State News. Whether it's journalism and reporting or whether it's communications and politics, take those opportunities while you're still in college to the extent that you're able to. Find a way to get your foot in the door and show them that you're willing to do what it takes. Then just keep your head down and work hard and put yourself in a position to be successful.
“You're not going to know everything right out of the gate, but you're there to learn and to grow and to build a new experience. A lot of the younger folks that I encounter in political communications these days take that step while they're in college, and they do that summer internship, or they take a semester off to go work for their congresswoman. If that's something that you're interested in, I would totally recommend it. I would also recommend working on a campaign if you do want to do political communications. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“There's really nothing like spending six months a year of your life building up towards something and fighting for something every day. It all culminates in whether you win or whether you lose on election day. If it's something that you're passionate about, just dive in and get involved. And it doesn't even have to be communications. There are a lot of different types of jobs in politics that are interesting to people.
“I'm a proud Spartan. I try to get back to campus once or twice a year for a football game and to see some old friends, but I'm really proud of my time at Michigan State and all of the exciting things that the university is doing and that alumni are doing here and around the world. I’m proud to be able to represent the university and the work we're doing at the administration. Dive in and give it a shot and see what happens. If you work hard and you make the right connections and you keep building that resume, you never know where you might end up.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
When it comes to vaccine acceptance, Dr. Furr-Holden thinks we may have done ourselves a disservice with the term Operation Warp Speed.
“What a lot of people heard was corner cutting or skipping steps or quick and dirty,” says Furr-Holden. “There was a very rigorous process in place. There were no steps that were skipped, but I can understand why people may feel that way.”
She says myths and misinformation around the vaccines are a problem, so she encourages us to seek out more than one sole source for information.
“The myths and misinformation are a big problem. We know this. I think people have just enough information to be dangerous to themselves right now because we've all learned a lot about vaccines and viruses and spike proteins, things that we'd never heard about before. There's no one sole source for accurate information. I think the CDC is great. I have many colleagues who work at the CDC. I've told people all during this pandemic the CDC is filled with some of the nation's greatest scientists and clinician scientists and researchers and epidemiologists. They are only one source of information.
“We have great trusted sources of credible information. Included in that are our local health departments. Especially as it relates to vaccines, that's a very, very important resource. Why? Because vaccines are actually being rolled out at the local level. If you want to know what's happening, your local health department is a trusted and credible place to get that information.”
Dr. Furr-Holden stresses the importance of a “medical home,” and when she says equity, she means fairness.
“I always tell people your medical provider is not the person in charge of your health and wellness. You are. But they're a critical player on your health team. If you don't have health coverage, if you fall in that weird spot where you make a little too much to qualify for Medicaid or other supports and not quite enough to be able to afford it out of pocket, please reach out to your local federally qualified health center.
“You might say, ‘Well, I'm an MSU employee. I have health insurance.’ But you may have others in your life who don't have that luxury or that benefit. The federally qualified health centers, the FQHCs, are charged with ensuring that everybody in the community has access to a medical provider.
“On the issue of equity, we have major gaps in our system. We saw huge breakdowns in both distribution and the data infrastructures that are needed for us to answer the question, are we not only getting the vaccine to community fairly and equitably, but are we also getting it into people's arms fairly and equitably?
“I consider the vaccine the dose of hope. And I personally believe hope is something that should be fairly and equitably distributed to all people.
“We all have elderly loved ones, and we've watched people jump the line and get the vaccine ahead of them. We have people in our families with pre-existing health conditions that predispose them to a bad outcome from COVID. So when I say equity, I just mean fairness. Fairness for all people. And I will tell you, our federal partners are fired up and figuring out how we can get that push in place to get our states to really make that a value and something that's at the forefront of how we're getting this vaccine out to people.”
Furr-Holden wants us to be good stewards of the opportunity to be vaccinated and take control of our healthcare.
“You have to stay on your toes, and you have to stay informed. I encourage people to sign up. And if you sign up on multiple lists through your health department or a local pharmacy, when you get your first dose of vaccine, I'm asking people to be a good steward of the opportunity and go back to the second list and cancel that appointment. Don't do it until you get that first dose, but please be a good steward of the opportunity and know that we're also working hard to get the data infrastructure in place so that we don't have so much duplication of effort and so much burden on people and already overburdened organizations to ensure equity in distribution and administration.”
While Dr. Debra Furr-Holden believes in the efficacy of the vaccine, she doesn't tell anyone whether they should or shouldn't get it.
“The choice of whether or not to get the vaccine is yours. I don't tell people to get the vaccine. What I tell people is this. Grapple with it right now. Get all the information and get all of your questions answered. We want to get to herd immunity. The way to get to herd immunity is through prevention. I'm an epidemiologist by training. I love public health; it's the thing that wakes me up and lights me up every day. Herd immunity is not about allowing a significant proportion of our population to get sick. It's about preventing them from getting sick in the first place.
“Be prepared for a game changer every two or three days. Remember, science is not about we've got it all figured out, and this is the truth. At one point they said the world was flat. Thank God somebody ventured beyond that point and we have learned a lot about how our world works. We're learning a lot about how to do the rollout, distribution, and administration of this vaccine. It would not surprise me if we see better systems for ensuring those who need it the most and those who are at risk for the worst outcomes move higher up in the priority chain. So I just ask everybody be patient. That's why it's also so important for people to do that work now so that when your number does come up, you don't lose your place in line.”
Can vaccinated people still be infected by the virus and can they spread it once they've been vaccinated?
“The thing that we know, like we know, we know, we know, is the vaccine is super great at preventing severe illness. So if you were to be exposed and you're vaccinated, it's very good at preventing severe illness. Think about it. This virus is brought into the body through the respiratory tract, through your mouth, through your nose, and possibly even through your eyes. There is a remote possibility that you could be out, you could inhale virus, and you could exhale it. And even though you're vaccinated, you could still pass it on to somebody else. That's a very small possibility, but it's possible.
“Let's just pretend we're in the best case scenario, and you've received your first dose. Depending on which one you got, you got it in the right timeframe window, and you got the second dose. You're three weeks out. So you have the full benefit of the vaccine. There will be some very small percentage of people who will actually still get the virus. And if you get the virus, you still may have the potential to spread the virus. But that likelihood goes way, way, way down relative to if you were not vaccinated. And more importantly, it gives you the tremendous benefit of avoiding these very negative outcomes that we've seen people have. We're learning now that even people who were asymptomatic or had very few symptoms are starting to see these wonky long-term effects that people are dealing with. So it goes back to the point that I make, that you would much rather get the vaccine than the virus. It's an imperfect but important layer of protection. Imperfect, but critically important.”
Furr-Holden was appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to be a member of the Michigan Coronavirus Taskforce on Racial Disparities.
“As a nation and as a global community, we are at our most vulnerable right now. This has taken a toll on everybody, independent of race, economics, gender, and gender identity. The pandemic has made us all very vulnerable, and in some respects, has allowed us to understand, see, process, and digest, and almost be forced to confront the world that we live in. Fundamentally we know that we don't live in a world where opportunity for health and growth and development is realized equally and equitably by all people.
“Privilege is a really funny thing. There are a lot of people who experience privilege who never asked for it. They are champions and believers in a world that works for everyone, in a world that's fair and equitable. And I think a lot of us have now had to confront that that is not actually the society that we live in, either at a national level or at a global level. And some of us knew this and have had different lived experiences that speak to it, but now it's become inescapable. So I really just encourage people to use this opportunity, while we are in this period of modified operations and people are at home and sort of almost forced to digest and consume media and other things that are happening, not to be overwhelmed by it, but to really say, ‘Okay, if I didn't see it or understand it before, I can see it and understand it now,’ and really stand in, ‘What can I do and who can I be as a champion for a world that really works for everybody?’
“For many of us on the front lines of health care, this has always been our mission. That health is something that people experience as a right, and not as a privilege. And in a nation as rich and as capable and innovative as ours, I think we should be global leaders in developing and implementing a world that works for everyone. I do encourage people to stay safe and continue to practice all the protocols. But there is an opportunity before us to really just now confront some of our gaps and having health and health care be something that is a right and not a privilege.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Dear Faculty, Staff and Students,
Like many of you, I am eager to get back to working and learning together on campus later this year. While we continue to prioritize the health and safety of our community, we also realize the need to plan for summer and fall on and off MSU’s campus.
Making decisions now about the future of our university is not an easy task, as the pandemic has shown us. However, with vaccinations continuing to progress, we are optimistic that we can begin to safely transition during the summer and move toward more in-person experiences in the fall — all while continuing to prioritize the health and well-being of our students, faculty and staff.
Fall 2021 semester
I am pleased to share that the university is planning for a more typical fall semester, with 75% of undergraduate classes offered in person. Classes will be offered in multiple scenarios — in person, hybrid and some still online, especially those that would traditionally fill large lecture halls. We expect that routine mitigation testing and other public health policies will continue at some level in the fall, and all of us will need to adhere to these policies and engage in the actions and behaviors that have kept us safe and healthy.
· We will offer a residence hall experience to first-year students and as many other students as possible while still providing a safe living space.
· MSU Athletics is planning for fall events with spectators again, although we’ll be following state requirements and guidelines that will be in place at that time regarding attendance.
· The Wharton Center and Broad Art Museum are planning events this fall.
· Community-based activities will be permitted in alignment with local and state requirements and guidelines.
· Our current university-related travel restrictions will be adapted to location-based guidance.
· As we prepare for more students to be back on campus in the fall, we also will have more employees returning to in-person positions as well. More information will be coming from unit supervisors and leaders in the coming months.
Summer 2021 semester
We’ve learned a lot over the course of the pandemic, and we’ve adapted our safety protocols and policies accordingly to ensure the health, safety and well-being of each of you. This spring, we increased our in-person offerings and nearly doubled the number of students living on campus. As vaccination rates continue to rise and the pandemic recedes, we will take every opportunity to add additional in-person courses to the schedule this summer.
· Most summer classes will be online, which is MSU’s standard practice for summer sessions. Classes for labs and programs that require in-person interaction will continue.
· There will be no large summer camps or events on campus. Nearly all of the conferences usually planned for MSU’s campus have chosen not to hold their events.
· Limited day camps may occur, such as those that are primarily outdoors and are able to adhere to safety protocols.
· We will have students living on campus this summer who are participating in classes, labs or who call MSU their home.
· We are restarting in-person campus tours this month, and those will continue throughout the summer.
As of today, more than 2.4 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine have been administered to Michigan residents — 1.5 million residents have received their first dose, and 880,000 are fully vaccinated. The number of students, faculty and staff who have received the vaccine is another critical factor in our ability to return to a more normal fall semester. I encourage each of you to get the vaccine when it is available to you. The state of Michigan has a vaccine-finder application on its website that you can use when searching for locations to get the vaccine. Starting March 22, Michigan residents 50 and older are eligible to receive it. While the state is not yet prioritizing higher education employees in the 1B “education” group, I continue to advocate for a change in that approach.
All of this is encouraging news for many, but I want to remind you that the university will continue to make important decisions about the fall based on all current science and data about the pandemic and in coordination with our partners at the state and local level. As we have learned from the outset of this pandemic, we must stand ready to adjust to protect our campus and our greater community. We will constantly be reviewing our plans for the fall and keeping you informed along the way.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that this pandemic has taken a toll on our physical and mental well-being, and it has put financial strain on many. The economic impact has yet to be fully realized, but I am encouraged by the fact that we will be able to award approximately $15 million in student financial aid grants from funding made available to us under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, which was signed into law in late December 2020. We will share more information on that in the coming weeks.
Conclusion
I am excited at the prospect of coming back together again, and I am greatly looking forward to seeing our vibrant community of students, faculty and staff fully engaged in on-campus life. Optimism is a good feeling, but let’s not let our guard down. Continue to keep yourself safe, follow safety protocols and be empathetic to each other as we move toward the summer and fall semesters.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D.
The 1918 influenza pandemic provides a cautionary tale for what the future may hold for COVID-19, says Chandra.
After a decade studying a flu virus that killed approximately 15,000 Michigan residents, Chandra, a professor in MSU’s James Madison College, saw his research come to life as he watched the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was so surreal,” said Chandra, who has a courtesy appointment in epidemiology and biostatistics. “All of a sudden, I was living my research.”
Chandra’s research is published in the American Journal of Public Health with co-authors Julia Christensen, a graduate of James Madison College; Madhur Chandra, Senior Community Epidemiologist with the Ingham County Health Department and graduate of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at MSU; and Nigel Paneth, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and pediatrics at MSU.
Using influenza infection and mortality data on Michigan from 1918-1920, Chandra identified four distinct waves. The first large peak was in March 1918. “After a second spike in cases in October 1918, the governor instituted a statewide ban on public gatherings,” Chandra said. “Much like the restrictions that were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
After three weeks, the number of cases decreased and the ban was lifted, which led to another peak in December 1918. “The ban didn’t stop the spread of the flu. It just delayed the spike in cases,” he said.
Chandra mapped the data showing the peaks and spikes in cases from October 1918 and December 1918 and tracked flu virus case growth by county over time. In October, counties in the southern part of the state and near the Mackinac Straits had the highest numbers but by December, the highest numbers of cases were in the heart of the state.
The most surprising piece of data came 18 months later in February 1920, when a statewide explosion of cases created a massive spike even larger than the one in October 1918. For Chandra, it is an educated guess as to the reasons for this delayed increase.
“Assuming it’s the same influenza virus, World War I ended in 1918 and the men were coming home to their families,” he said. “We had a mobile agent that brought the virus home to infect family members, which would explain the increase in cases among children and the elderly.”
Unfortunately, there is not a way to confirm this, Chandra noted. “We would need samples from patients in 1920 from across the state. Then, we would need to compare those with samples from patients in 1918 from across the state, and that’s not likely to happen.”
The weather may have also been a factor since cool temperatures with low humidity likely provided optimal conditions for the virus to live and spread. Another factor that played a role was the absence of a vaccine.
“In 1918, there was no hope for a vaccine. In 2021, we have a vaccine available,” he said.
One of the key insights from the 1918 pandemic that can inform the public health response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is the number of people who are susceptible to the virus. Which means that it is possible that a spike like the February 1920 one will occur in late 2021 or early 2022.
“So many people will remain susceptible until they get vaccinated,” Chandra said. “Bad things can still happen a year or two from now even if we see a decrease in the number of cases now. We still have over 200 million people walking around who are susceptible to the virus, including myself.”
Written by Emilie Lorditch
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“The osteopathic profession is really booming right now,” Amalfitano tells Beekman. “It's the fastest growing of the health professions. One in five graduates of a medical school right now is graduating from a DO medical school. One of those is ours. And then one in four medical students entering medical school this year in the United States is entering an osteopathic medical school.
“And that primarily stems from our history and philosophical tenants of how we view individuals and our longstanding, over-130-year history of trying to preserve health and prevent illness rather than treat symptoms and send patients on their way. It's what we call a holistic view to anybody who seeks us out for care.
“We just celebrated our 50-year anniversary. We have about 7,000 alumni of which, at last count, about 65-70 percent, depending on how you want to count it, actually practice in the State of Michigan. And the majority of those graduates are in primary care, so pediatrics, family practice, and internal medicine. And you can add psychiatry and even emergency room medicine; many times our doctors are out in rural areas providing primary care.
“We've graduated more doctors, let's say since 2014, who self-identify as a minority, than any other medical school in the state, based on public data. We've got a long way to go on this, and I'm not saying that we've got an answer, but we pride ourselves in trying to meet that challenge. We're going to be stepping up to that in the coming years, and hopefully we'll be able to even broaden that capacity. We’re following the proverbial land grant mission of this university to serve the people of Michigan. I can't think of a better way than providing them physicians to help in that.”
Amalfitano tells Beekman about the college’s research foci and about his own work harnessing viruses to use them as potential treatments.
“I actually developed a virus that we inactivated. It's a common cold virus. We took the DNA out of that virus, and now we can engineer it to produce any protein or antigen we want. That's now been taken by several companies, who have been using it primarily as an immune vaccine platform.”
What’s on the horizon for the college?
“I think more of the same, because these are great things. We want to continue our focus on primary care and our students' desire to pursue that. A big goal is continuing to address this issue of lack of diversity in the medical profession. If you just look at the numbers across the nation, the number of physicians that come from under underrepresented minority populations is inadequate. It's a long-standing institutional problem. Racism has contributed to that. I want to make sure that our college is a welcoming place, a place where we can attract the best and brightest and a diverse student body. We get knowledge from that. Diverse experiences empower our entire curriculum.”
Amalfitano says he wants to expand the college’s research “and really step it up.
“With our access educationally to 40 hospitals, we think that through this network, we can start addressing community-wide medical issues in research. Things affecting the communities like diabetes, obesity, hypertension, the opioid crisis. Some of these things can only be answered by looking at large populations. The laboratory will not yield the answers that impact the entire society. We're looking at ways we can harness this educational network and craft it into a research network.
“We continue with our clinical activities in East Lansing. We continue with our affiliations with all of our hospital systems. I want to see those grow, and I want these hospitals to know that their future physicians are coming from our medical school. They have a vested interest in making sure we continue in this path, and I want them to understand that we appreciate their partnerships and going forward we want to facilitate that as well.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
MSU’s College of Human Medicine was a pioneer in the area of community-based medical schools. Third and fourth-year students do their clinical training in hospitals around the state.
“That philosophy that the best place for people to learn to be a physician is with the people they will eventually be taking care of stays with us,” Sousa tells Beekman. “And our dedication to those communities is a part of what makes us different and special. We were leaders in that. Almost every medical school now has some sort of community experience and there are more than 80 medical schools across the country that now think of themselves, at least in part, as a community-based medical school.
“We were real innovators. It's been a great thing for our students. They get great training with people who they will eventually take care of. Most of our students end up practicing in Michigan after they've finished their training. And our communities have been incredibly generous and thoughtful. They've been interested in having the college do more there, and that has led to development of research and economic development opportunities for people in those communities. It's been a really great symbiotic relationship.”
Sousa highlights the college’ public health work in Flint and the growing research presence in Grand Rapids. He talks about MSU’s new partnership with the Henry Ford Health System and about the college’s continuing focus on the Greater Lansing area.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“The university has a special place in my heart,” Smith tells White. “I never thought, Russ, back in my days in college, that I'd be on the other side, I used to call it. When you're an athlete and young, you're always running away from the media, but I definitely enjoy it.”
Smith's advice for the students he encounters at events like the Spartan Sports Journalism Classic involves passion and hard work. And he says he learns from the students and fellow alumni too.
“Network with all our terrific alumni. You have to put your hard hat on and do the extra and have passion for what you want to do. Hone your skills in writing and in being in front of and behind the camera. And then one day you'll get a chance to maybe have that opportunity.”
In 1997, Smith donated $2.5 million toward the construction of the Clara Bell Smith Student Athlete Academic Center. This donation in memory of his mom is the largest gift to ever be given by a professional athlete to any college or university. This donation helped fund the construction of a comprehensive study center for student athletes, among the best of its kind in the country. Additionally, he provided $800,000 to fund a scholarship that covers more than 90 percent of tuition for select Pershing High School students who attend Michigan State.
“We were the first back then, so that was very special. And then I also understood from being an athlete myself before student athletic centers were built on campuses how much they could benefit the student athletes. I saw the future of how much it could help them achieve their academic goals. It’s gratifying to have student athletes come up to me and say ‘thank you.’
“And the scholarship is a way to give back to the Detroit community where I grew up, a community I’m so fond of. It’s gratifying to see how well the Smith Center is doing. It has helped recruiting for all sports, not just basketball. Parents love it, too. We’re student athletes, and I always tell people the student comes before the athlete. Take that very seriously because you're going to be a student in life much longer than you're going to be an athlete. Even if you have a long career, we're all lifelong learners.”
Smith's generosity set an example for other Spartans to give back to MSU.
“Giving back is contagious. After my gift to the university, we had Spartans like Earvin, Flozell Adams, and Draymond give back, too. When I got the news about Draymond’s gift, it made me proud and stick my chest out and say, ‘Hey, not a lot of universities are doing this.’ I had a chance to tell him I'm proud of him. And obviously we speak a lot; I've known him since he was junior in high school. It's great to see the way he's developing. He's his own man. His giving wasn't him following my act. It was him. That's Draymond Green. I had my day. I can step back and be proud. I'm Uncle Steve now and I get a chance to see all the development.”
Smith says his path to MSU began with fellow Detroiter Greg Kelser and the Spartans 1979 national championship.
“Growing up in Detroit, my first connection to Michigan State was in '78 and '79. Greg Kelser was a kid from Detroit that I used to hear about from my brothers, and they talked about his game. And then obviously the headliner was Earvin Magic Johnson. Those two guys and the Spartans won a national championship. And I can remember I was young, I think I was 10 then, my family jumping around and just us gathering around the television. You had Bird versus Magic. Greg Kelser got a chance to win a national championship from the city of Detroit. So MSU was my first love.
“As time went on, this little guy just kept coming around. Tom Izzo just kept coming around. He won me over and I was his first recruit. I was actually his first recruit he ever signed. We all know, and I can speak candidly about this, Jud wasn't really recruiting back then. He was just like ‘You want to come. You come.’ But Tom put in the hard work.
“And then I learned so much on the court with Jud and Tom and the coaching staff. And I tell people, look at my coaching staff I had here. I mean, I had Jim Boylen Junior and Senior, both have been very successful at the college level and in the pros. I had Herb Williams, who was just fantastic. I had Tom Crean and Tom Izzo. I had Brian Gregory. I was blessed. And then I had the general, the crazy man Jud. I learned a lot about life and tough love, but it was what I was used to, and it drew me to Michigan State.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It’s has been a great privilege for me to serve as the director of MSU Extension and the highlight of my professional career,” Dwyer says.
“It's not very often you get to wake up every single day knowing that the organization you're a part of is impacting tens of thousands of people that day. And that's what it's like being the director of MSU Extension—working with over 600 people who are immensely talented, who are located across the state and who are doing great work every day. Whatever has been accomplished over the past five years has been a team effort in every sense of the word.”
Dwyer talks about enhancing the agricultural and 4-H programs historically associated with Extension while also launching innovative healthcare and community development initiatives. He’s also proud of better connecting MSU Extension to the greater campus community and for ramping up assistance during such unanticipated events as the Flint water crisis and mounting depression among farm families.
“One of the things we were able to do in Flint was remind people that MSU Extension is one of those rare organizations that doesn't have to go to a place like Flint to help when it's needed because we're already there. Given that we're there, we can help emergently and also grow our presence. We've had Extension educators in Flint since 1907. When the Flint water crisis hit really right at the beginning of my tenure as director, we had in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 people working full-time in Flint and Genesee County. Now we have well over 40 working there full-time on a regular basis and that's because we were able to build on the great people that were already there helping Flint in this particular crisis and bring in other resources to grow what we're doing there.”
“About four years ago, we became very aware that there were some real struggles in rural America and on farms. And particularly, we were seeing, at least anecdotally, we thought an uptick in attempted suicides and completed suicides in farm communities and in farm families and that was a great concern. And we invested in our first experts in behavioral health at that time. We now have seven full time people whose principal focus is mental health or behavioral health. That's how big the need is.
“And we did get a lot of questions at first about why are we doing this? We should really be focusing on helping people grow things. But health really is in our domain. And today I can tell you that there's nobody that says that.
“Because of our behavioral health expertise that we now have in place, I contend that we could have a hundred experts in mental health and behavioral health. But without the more than century of experience and trust built by our agriculture experts in those communities, we would never have gotten in the door.”
Dwyer has also strongly emphasized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at MSU Extension.
To that end, for example, he asked all service units in MSUE to examine their practices and seek ways to attract a more diverse workforce and a more diverse clientele. In addition, MSUE had recently launched an initiative to better educate and guide staff with respect to interactions with LGBTQIA+ communities.
“My own view as it relates to DEI is that it's not just an important thing to do for a whole list of reasons, but it's what will make us better as an organization. I have long viewed racism as not only a social and economic, but also a public health crisis. It's something we need to be thinking about literally every minute of every day.”
Dwyer also discusses some of the challenges facing his successor, Patrick Cudney.
“One challenge is going to be finding increased revenue streams, perhaps new revenue streams, but certainly growing the streams that we've introduced in recent years around contracts and grants, around new partnerships that didn't exist before and also philanthropy. Another challenge will be establishing new baseline contracts with all counties across the state. I anticipate that everything will go very well, but it's a challenging series of conversations. And Patrick would be the first to tell you, if you understand one county of the 83 in Michigan, you understand one county of 83. They're all different. There may be a few common elements and threads that run through them all, but they each have their unique needs and opportunities.”
How has the MSU Extension culture evolved during Dwyer’s tenure?
“One important outcome of more people knowing about the great work we do and the diversity of the work that we do is that our people are more regularly being made visible in their roles. And they’re proud to be part of MSU Extension and Michigan State University.”
Dwyer believes that efforts to ensure that campus and field staff are working in tandem and Extension educators are better able to collaborate across the University at large have helped strengthen existing relationships and forged important new ones.
And as for a few parting thoughts, Dwyer has this to say to the citizens of Michigan.
“To those of you who have worked with us in the past and to those who haven't, reach out and go to our website, where we now have nearly a 1.5 million visitors per month. Reach out through the university or in your communities because I have colleagues whom you're sitting next to in the church. I have colleagues whom you're standing six feet apart from in the grocery store line. And the great thing about my colleagues and MSU Extension is, if the individual educator you're interacting with doesn't have the expertise you need in that moment, it's important to remember that she or he has more than 600 colleagues all across the state to reach out to immediately.
“And, on top of that, Extension educators have more than 3,000 faculty and staff colleagues at Michigan State University to whom they can reach out as well. I sincerely hope that Michigan residents increasingly see MSU Extension as not just the window into solving their immediate problem or as a window into the larger framework of a great land grant university, but really as a window into solving some of the most important issues they're facing as individuals, families and communities.”
With Dwyer’s permission, we conclude the interview with an example of a management style widely recognized as inclusive, compassionate and bold: breaking out in song during his annual “State of Extension” address.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“I had the really fortunate opportunity to go to undergrad during what is now considered Web 1.0, Russ,” says Schram. It was the time when we all took our AOL dial-up internet experience and brought it to broadband. And actually, that's one of the reasons I chose to live at Holden Hall in South Campus. At that time, it was, I think, the first or second residence hall on campus to get wired ethernet, high-speed internet. And by high speed, I think it was at one or two megabytes at the time, but that was incredible at the time. I actually spent my experience in East Lansing working full-time.
“I grew up in a media family. A lot of my dad's contemporaries who ran radio and TV stations were looking for people to build them these new-fangled web pages. I had taught myself in high school very basic HTML and JavaScript and was fortunate to have this confluence of high-speed internet where I lived and worked. I was able to do that remotely. So way before this COVID economy, when we're all at home, I was doing it remotely. And I grew up in an industry that I loved, but I realized that I wasn't going to be the person to be behind the mic like my dad used to be when he was growing up in the business and that I could actually forge a new path by really embracing my history and marrying it with this future opportunity.”
Schram recalls how smartphones came online and we no longer had to be behind a laptop or desktop to interact with the internet.
“To be able to have these brand relationships with consumers that were on the go and harness all those tools just fascinated me and really stoked my curiosity. So after an incredible seven-and-a-half year run at ePrize, I met Ted Murphy from IZEA. And Ted actually was a partner of ours. He was talking early about social media endorsements. There wasn't a name for it yet. It wasn't called influencer marketing back then.”
Schram eventually decided to join Murphy at IZEA.
”We talked about what today in 2021 we would call The Creator Economy. We talked about this mass opportunity for democratization of storytelling and advertising messaging and how the proliferation of social networks would change all of this. The inefficiency of traditional advertising and marketing can benefit our company. And so in the fall of 2011, I was named the firm's first ever Chief Marketing Officer. And that's brought me to where I am today. And it's been an amazing nine year run.”
Schram defines influencer marketing and talks about its origins and evolution.
“I draw from my background growing up in broadcasting. The most valuable inventory is when a personality opens a mic in a stop set, breaks the norm from the reported commercials, and talks to you about a local dealership, or their favorite restaurant, or something they've seen or done with their family. That is a paid endorsement deal. In radio, the combination of that storytelling and the theater of the mind makes it the most single valuable inventory in the entire arsenal of what those stations sell to advertisers. So if you think about modern influencer marketing, it's the same idea.
“But instead of having one morning show personality doing it, it can be hundreds or thousands of different individuals from all walks of life, all shapes and sizes of a follower base, across all multitudes of social platforms. But the basics are the same. They're being compensated in cash, product, or both by brands to create that content. That content can be written word on a blog. It can be video on YouTube or Twitch. It can be an Instagram story. It can be all those things. But the idea is what's happening from an outcomes perspective is incredible amounts of reach and engagements and authenticity that transforms what would normally be a one-to-many marketing message that a brand would traditionally do to many perspectives in modern influencer marketing.”
What are some trends in influencer marketing?
“The first is the continued advancement of diversity and inclusion in the work that we're doing. And it's not only people of color. It's really embracing the entire spectrum of diversity and bringing more equality to the influencer marketing space. Because very fairly, the industry has a bad rap. We’re thought of as young white girls making duck faces on Instagram; that’s kind of what people think influencer marketing is. But the very best influencer marketing is a broad range of voices and perspectives across a complex matrix of societal norms and un-norms.
“And we've seen over the last several years, not only the recognition from our brand partners that this was so critical, but we also see it where the rubber hits the road, which is the average cost per post, meaning what someone's being paid for that sponsored endorsement. People of color, in fact, African American females earned more than all other race types here in 2021, which is the first time it's ever happened before on average. I like to believe that we're starting to see the evidence well that while we have a long way to go, the industry is trying to really understand what does inclusivity look like, and how do you make that part of the fiber of what makes this industry great?”
Schram talks about the “elastic workplace” of the future. And he wonders how the social media can and will evolve.
“The challenge we're having right now, post election in this COVID economy, is the fact that we have a lot of people who have a lot of time on their hands who are very apt to be behind those keyboards or thumbing through their phones and saying or doing things that they wouldn't ordinarily either have the time to do, the thought to do, or both. And so the platforms are really trying to figure out what is their role in all of this without limiting free speech, but also at the same time, not being a vector for promoting hate. And the good news is we're talking about some of the most valuable well-resourced organizations on the face of this earth with some of the smartest people in our space. And I think that there will be a path forward to doing that.
“What the last 12 months or so have taught us as a society of human beings on this planet is that there is some good in all of this. There's the connective fiber that we've had while being so lonely and being by ourselves at home that, at least for myself, has been very good for my mental health. To be able to still talk to people and interact with them like you and I are doing over Zoom right now in recording this podcast, I wouldn't have the chance to be able to see you or talk to you in real time if it weren't for these types of tools. And for that, I'm grateful. I think about even Christmas day in our family, I ended up buying Facebook Portal TV devices for members of our family that couldn't safely travel to Michigan for the holidays.”
What’s your advice for today’s Spartans who may be interested in a career in influencer marketing?
“You need to be hungry and humble from the start. Those who really succeed the best don't form a sense of entitlement. They realize that there's tremendous equity in being able to be self-starters. And I think that Spartans are really well equipped for this. Spartans tend to be people who are a little bit more entrepreneurial in nature, a little bit more focused on the substance versus the sizzle.
“And ultimately, in an industry like mine, where there's plenty of frothiness and plenty of shiny coins going on, at the end of the day, the types of young professionals that we're looking for are those who can really separate the wheat from the chaff and say, ‘Great. Our business is elevated by some of those frothiness types of things, but it doesn't change the fact that we need individuals who can take a look at what we're doing, figure out how to continue to transform it and continuously improve upon it, and can do so knowing that they're working in a space that never has had a playbook.’
“So being able to live in that uncertainty is critically important. I also think that from a pure educational perspective, specific to advertising and marketing, it's important to realize how these two historically very separate disciplines have collided at light speed over the last decade or so. And the world works in a very integrated capacity right now. And all you're hearing from those chief marketing officers is that they want integrated marketing talent that understands what the media world looks like and what the creative world looks like. How do you measure all of it from a business intelligence perspective?”
Schram talks about why MSU was the college for him coming out of high school. He closes our conversation with a couple takeaways influencer marketing and where it's headed.
“Globalization continues to be a major trend. You have Fortune 1000 business leaders who want to be able take their campaigns out of one section of the world and bring them to others. There is going to continue to need to be a real focus on how does that storytelling evolve on a country to country basis? And working together with those different brand leaders in different corners of the world is something that we think is going to be a real trend in the years ahead. Secondarily, there's also this idea of how do you continue to get as much utility and measurement out of influencer marketing as possible? We feel like the reusability of what we're doing can be tremendously powerful, even beyond the ways that we've conventionally measured it.
“All influencer marketing can provoke engagement and certainly impression-based media outcomes. We're also seeing more modern marketers start to utilize it for things that may not necessarily have been conventional in the past. You can take a really great Instagram video and repurpose it because you have the rights to it for pre-roll across digital outlets or digital platforms. You can take photo assets from a campaign that may be on a blog and repurpose them to retail activations. There's just a plethora of ways to get more and more utility out of those investments that we think will continue to push the industry forward and really continue to elevate the promise of what influencer marketing can be.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream your shows. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“It's an awesome feeling,” says Lynch. “I arrived at MSU in the late 80s. I was a criminal justice major. I'm a product of the School of Criminal Justice. Actually, I started as a police officer at Meridian Township Police Department. That evolved through the police cadet internship program. I had the privilege of working at Meridian Township Police Department as a cadet first to get an idea of what it's like to be a police officer then actually began my career as a police officer prior to completing my undergraduate degree.
“The connectivity is coming full circle. I've been in policing now for 28 total years, 25 years in campus policing within higher education. Universities are anchor institutions in their communities. They connect to the city they reside in and have a positive impact on the community. The School of Criminal Justice provided that educational background, and I stay in contact as an alumnus. I'm on campus three to four times a year. To come back full circle as chief is a great feeling.”
Lynch currently serves as chief safety officer for the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. In this position he oversees more than 180 individuals in police, health system security, emergency management and community services. He jumped at the opportunity to guide his alma mater’s police department.
“This is the first time in 40 or 50 plus years that the MSU has actually opened up the position to external candidates. This is not something you look at and say, ‘Oh, well, it'll come back open at some other point.’
“I’ve always had the goal to have a role in police leadership and had identified this particular job as one that I would keep my eye on. If an opportunity presented itself, I most definitely would pursue it. The circumstances are ripe as well. I'm originally from Chicago and it's just a short drive. My family is still in the area. I actually spent a lot of time on the MSU campus growing up as a kid. I have three uncles who live in Lansing, and I have a bunch of cousins in the area. Every summer I'd come up to Lansing and spend a couple of weeks in the area and we'd come over to campus. I've been familiar with MSU for a long time.”
As vice president for public safety and chief of police, Lynch will lead the university’s 120-member police department including community engagement, cybersecurity, emergency management, parking enforcement and traffic engineering. His emphasis will be on community policing and enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
“Being part of the community is extremely important in campus policing. My philosophy is based on that: How do we engage our community, our students, our faculty, and our staff? One way to do that is to create opportunities where the community helps define the role of the police services they want, what services they receive, and how they receive them. This is a part of what we're seeing today in the national narrative on police reform.
“All of those can be applicable to college and university campuses, but it's extremely important not to take a cookie cutter approach. What I would like to do with our community is identify what's appropriate for our community and integrate those services into our department through collaboration. Create opportunities for engagement, seek input, and the accountability will come with it.
“Policing has to evolve. Our laws and ordinances are based on what society wants. That's how they're created; what are the social norms? Things have changed and it's time for some laws to change with them. Again, engage the community and find out what they expect to define the role of police.
“And there are opportunities to police in a different way. Police are always on 24/7, 365. And over the years, responsibilities have evolved to include services that were eliminated elsewhere, like some social work. ‘We’ll train the police to a certain limit to provide those services.’ We've outgrown that. The police can do a lot and they can be trained to do many things, but some of the things that we're encountering now in policing, there are experts for this. There's a reason why there are social workers. There's a reason why there are mental health professionals. There's an opportunity for joint response and to have those services be collaborative. Those opportunities are there, and I'm definitely open to working with our community to identify them.”
Do you have some short and long-term goals for the department?
“Short-term, I think it's important to get to know the staff within the department. This will be a new transition for the department, integrating a police chief who is not from within the department. Also, the listening tour with our community is going to be extremely important. I’ll spend a lot of time meeting with our stakeholders on campus and off. Our relationships with East Lansing and Ingham County are important.
“Long-term goals are to focus on the accreditation process. There will be a mix of short and long-term goals in regard to defining the role of police and the direction of our community policing strategies. But it'll all begin with direct feedback from our communities. There are some core foundational components that will need to exist, and how we fill out that framework will come from our community.”
Challenges and opportunities ahead?
“The challenge is what is the immediate need, right? It's identifying that immediate need and being effective and efficient in how we provide solutions. That's a challenge, but I also think there are opportunities.
“It's an experienced team within the Michigan State Police Department; that's an advantage. That's not always the case within university police departments. There's an experienced team here.
“We're going to have to work on our overall representation of the department. Diversity means a lot of things to a lot of people and we need to be representative of our community. The MSU community is extremely diverse, not just in race, but in gender and lifestyle, too. It's important that our police department reflect that. Those are opportunities to me.
“There will be some change that will take place, but our community will be part of that and be directly involved in how that takes place. I'll always be available. I will be on campus and I'll be actively around all the time, reacquainting myself with the institution and the university grounds. I look forward to being an active part of the MSU community and to being engaged and around all the time, not just when things may not be going well.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream your shows. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
“As athletic trainers, we arrive here in the morning before the athletes usually go to work out, go to lift weights, go to other workouts, practices, or whatever,” Nogle tells Beekman. “We help get them ready for that. We might stretch somebody. We might tape somebody, put a splint or brace on, whatever they need before they go work out to do their lifting, their conditioning or practice. There are administrative tasks, too, like giving an injury report to a coach.
“Then treatments start and continue throughout the whole morning. You're doing rehabilitation all morning long for all the injuries that have happened. You may use modalities like the ultrasound, electrical STEM machines, heat, or cold, and then we do hands-on rehab. Then we get to the afternoon and do a lot of taping for football because all their ankles will be taped. Then the practice comes, and so we go out to practice and we cover the practice and we watch them work out and watch the injured people to see how they're performing. Are they getting better or worse? What's happening there? Then we evaluate and take care of any new injuries that happened at practice. It's a long day.”
Nogle tells Beekman she talks a lot about hydration, sleep, and nutrition with athletes because that's the best way to recover, to be honest, she says. She likes athletes to get eight or nine hours of sleep, too.
“It doesn't happen very often, but we do like them to get eight or nine hours of sleep. That's what they need at that age and for their body to recover faster and better. We talk about hydration because if you're hydrated, you recover faster and then nutrition can help you with recovery. Our dieticians help the athletes know what to take and when to take it, and that helps them recover also. Between compression units, rolling out, ice tubs, and lifestyle, I'll call it, that helps the athletes recover faster.”
“With all of the fancy technology and tools and other things available to us, it sort of comes down to kind of what your mom told you when you were in high school: get a good night's rest, eat healthy and take care of yourself,” quips Beekman. “Those are the biggest keys towards wellness for people or for our student-athletes.”
What about some changes to athletic training over the years?
“When I first started, some of the things were crazy,” says Nogle. “You think about the surgeries. If someone had a meniscus tear in the knee, their season was done. You had to open them up, and the season was over. People had trick knees. We didn’t call them ACLs to be honest, we'd call it a trick knee. Now, you have arthroscopy and now you can fix the ACL. The PCL, the other ligament in the knee, we never fixed before. Now we can fix those. Doctors can fix those. I think the biggest thing is these athletes are going now year-round. They had an offseason when I first started. Trying to help them through year-round athletics and make sure they do get some rest and recovery away from their sport or away from the repetitiveness of it is something we deal with now that we didn't deal with 25 years ago.
“Concussions, obviously, have changed immensely. We did what we thought was best at the time. There were concussion protocols that we followed. We followed them and believed in them because that's what we were told by the neurosurgeons in the country. In the end, obviously, it wasn't the right advice. “Now, we've changed what we do. They don't go back into a game again if they've had a concussion. Before, if they cleared up in 15 minutes, you put them back in. We would never do that now. We think that'd be terrible. Back then, that was the norm and you were following what was best practices at that point in time. That part's changed a lot.
“Some of our modalities that we have now to treat injuries have improved. There's a lot more knowledge. The research that's been done in athletic training is improved a lot. Sports medicine's improved a lot. We now know the techniques that will help us get an athlete back faster or the surgery that's better to do than we did before. We've had a lot of advances in 25 years.”
Nogle talks about how the pandemic has impacted athletic training and about what inspired her to get into the field. She tells Bill about some of favorite memories, like the Rose Bowl and Cotton Bowl victories but says her favorite memory may have been when Amp Campbell returned to the field after being injured the previous season.
“He broke his neck when we played at Oregon. Then a year later, Oregon played here and he picked up a fumble and ran it back for a touchdown. That was just like, ‘Wow!’ because I never thought he'd make it back to playing. It’s one of my memories that was really special.
“That's why our jobs are great. You get the highs and the lows as they go through the rehab process. Then to see them compete, which is their ultimate goal, is really exciting. It makes it all the work worth it.”
Audio courtesy of Scott Moore and the Spartan Sports Network.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream your shows. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Tucker recalls the challenges of being hired on February 12, 2020 and then shutting down the program a few weeks later due to the pandemic.
“I was just in the final stages of assembling the staff and had just put the strength coach in place and got everyone under contract,” Tucker tells Beekman. “We were actually going to start spring ball the following Tuesday. I was going to make a trip down to Indianapolis for the Big Ten basketball tournament, and I got word that they weren't going to have fans. And then a couple hours later, I got word the team was headed back to East Lansing. And at that point, that's when my world had changed forever.
“Our staff did a great job adapting quickly to the situation. I sent everyone home and said that we're going to be working from home for a while so get with the IT guys to get packed up and get your laptops and whatever you need to work from home. Then we started talking to our academic folks about what our players were going to do and they started mentioning something called Zoom. They said that the professors on campus were using Zoom and they recommended that we do the same. And so, we're all saying, ‘What the heck is Zoom? I've never heard of that.’
“So our first challenge was to figure out how to use Zoom to communicate with our players and have team meetings, have unit meetings, individual meetings, figuring out how to put a background on the Zoom, Zoom etiquette, lighting, auto mute, all of those deals, and it was fun. We recognized right away that that was going to be our most daunting challenge. How do we connect with our players when we're a new staff? All the players have been sent back to their permanent homes and they don't know us and we don't know them. Take out the X’s and O's, just to introduce ourselves and just get to know each other as people was done completely over Zoom and FaceTime and phone calls and text.
“And then we needed to install our playbook on defense and special teams and so we did that through Zoom and our coaches became very creative on how to incorporate chalkboards and telestrating and unit meetings with guys in various places in the country. And it was just fascinating how quickly the players and the coaching staff adapted. And now you look, Zoom is like walking the dog now. It's like riding a bike; it's just normal. But at that time, it was not, and there was a learning curve. Some of the learning curve for some of our coaches was steeper than some of the others,” Tucker quips.
“You started your early coaching career as a graduate assistant at MSU back in 1997. So now going on 24 years ago, when you think about what it was like back then in the football program and across campus, what's changed? What's the same? What were some of the things that you've noticed as you've been back on campus,” asks Beekman?
“Those were great memories,” Tucker continues. “I remember I felt so fortunate to have the opportunity that Coach Saban gave me to come here and start my coaching career at a great university with the football tradition. I mean, it was just huge. When I got here, my focus was, ‘what do I need to do to make Nick Saban happy?’ That was my goal every day. ‘What do I have to do to get the job done? What does he need done? What do the coaches need done?’ And so my focus and my world was very, very small. It was pretty much the Duffy Building and Kellogg Center for me. I didn’t get to know a lot of the campus at that point.
“When I came back this past February, I got a chance to see a broader scope of the university, and I became even more excited. I saw some of the changes, like the 1855 Building. That wasn't part of the campus landscape. With the Skandalaris Center and the North End Zone I just really felt like I was walking into a great situation at Michigan State.”
Tucker talks about the coaches who have influenced him most: Nick Saban, Barry Alvarez, Jim Tressel, and Romeo Crenel. And he describes some of the differences between college and professional football.
“In the NFL, it’s all business. For those players, it’s their livelihood. That’s how they feed their families. So when you're coaching an NFL player, they don't have any use for you if they don't believe that you know what you're doing. All they want to know is can this coach help me stay in the league. Can he help me in any way provide for my family? And those NFL players, they make those assessments very quickly. And so you have to, in short order, gain the trust of your players and prove to them that you are an asset and that you can help them in their career.
“But one of the things that's very similar is that at the end of the day, it's still football. There are fundamentals of the game, whether it's Pop Warner, high school, college, or pro that don't change.”
Tucker tells Beekman about his recruiting philosophy.
“Recruiting is the lifeblood of your organization. Good players make you a good coach; great players make you a great coach. And when it comes down to it, when you look at the best teams year in and year out, they usually have the best players. The purpose of recruiting is to improve your team. It’s very similar to the National Football League. The purpose of the draft and free agency is to improve your team. You always have to ask yourself, ‘Is this player better than this player that's already on your roster?’ Can this student athlete make us better?’
“You have to recruit every day and your players have to be a good fit. Character and academic standing are extremely important. We want guys who want to graduate from Michigan State and have the ability to do that. We also want players who want to buy into something bigger than themselves. They're all highly recruited players who have individual aspirations. They all want to go to the NFL, but we want guys who believe in the concept of team who are unselfish and who pour themselves into the team and who understand that the better the team does, the better they do individually.
“And so it's not just an athletic evaluation; we're also doing our best to evaluate some of the intangibles and the things you can't see on tape. Character, unselfishness, teamwork, discipline, maturity. But it's an inexact science. We lay out the standards and we communicate the standards to the coaching staff. We all know what we're looking for. And at the end of the day, I have the final say; the buck stops with me.”
Tucker says this time of the year “is one of the more exciting times of the calendar year. Our players are back. We've been able to evaluate our guys who are returning, and we know what they can do, what their strengths and weaknesses are. The guys who are back are guys who want to be here. And we want them to be here. They bought into our culture, they understand the expectations and the standards, and they're ready to work. I like to coin this time of year as the out season. I believe there's an in season and an out of season; there's never an off season because football is a year-round sport now. Recruiting and training never stop.
“In this out of season time, it's time for our coaching staff to do scheme evaluation, scout, and look for new ideas and look for things that we know can help our players. It's also a time for us to indoctrinate our mid-year enrollees and our high school players and our transfers. The onboarding of those student athletes to our culture is critical. We’ve begun our Spartan Training Program, STP. We'll have eight weeks of training in our weight room with our strength and conditioning staff. Coach Novak he has a great staff. And I told him that I wanted this to be the most rigorous, demanding, out of season training program in the history of sport. He guaranteed that it would be.
“I truly believe that your team is built in the weight room. You want your team to first and foremost be the best conditioned. Fatigue makes cowards of us all. The toughness of your team, the competitive nature, the sense of urgency, attention to detail, grit, determination, straining, overcoming adversity, having adversity, all of those things really start in your weight room. That's what's exciting about this time of year.
Tucker closes the conversation by describing the toughest NFL stadiums in which he’s coached and telling Beekman what his favorite meal is.
“Going to Seattle is probably the loudest. They've got a DJ there. And I swear they pipe music in there. I can remember coaching a preseason game there and my ears were ringing for days. You literally could not hear anything on the headset. And that was just a preseason game. I can't imagine what that would be like during the regular season or playoffs. It's extremely loud there.”
He says Pittsburgh and Green Bay are also tough.
“My favorite thing for dinner would be lamb chops with mint jelly and a healthy portion of mashed potatoes with a little butter and some pepper sprinkled on. That would be ideal for me. If I need to get my weight down a little bit, then I would swap out the lamb chops for sea bass, snapper, or a grouper entree.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream your shows. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Henry Ford Health System and Michigan State University, two of the state’s leading education, research and health care institutions, are partnering to make Michigan a national leader in providing access to exceptional health care for all residents, scientific discovery and education for providers, patients and families.
In a landmark partnership that will last for at least 30 years, both institutions are committed to aligning efforts across key departments and programs to achieve critical health care and educational goals, while addressing social issues that impact health outcomes for patients in Michigan and beyond.
Here to talk more about the partnership are Dr. Norman J. Beauchamp Jr., MSU executive vice president for health sciences and Adnan Munkarah, M.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer for Henry Ford Health System. Dr. Beauchamp will chair the board selected from leaders of both institutions.
Key features of the agreement include fostering innovative, groundbreaking research; providing best-in-class cancer care; interprofessional training; increasing diversity among the next generation of health care professionals; and addressing the needs of traditionally underserved communities. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are core components of the partnership and are embedded throughout the agreement in a commitment to addressing access to health care and health disparities in both urban and rural communities. For more information about the partnership, visit www.henryford.com/msuhealthsciences.
MSU will expand its presence in Detroit through the development of a regional campus, located within the existing Henry Ford Detroit Campus footprint. The institutions will create a new Health Sciences Center (HSC) that tightly aligns basic and translational research, fueling innovation and discovery through an academically and clinically integrated network of health care providers, scientists, academicians and public health practitioners.
A new urban-based public health program is planned to focus on education and research, as well as provide a platform to collaborate with other institutions. With the planned expansion of their combined research enterprise, Henry Ford and MSU are developing a joint research institute, the Health Sciences Center, dedicated to research and academic activities.
Alignment between a top academic institution and a leading integrated health system will accelerate the recruitment and retention of top clinical and academic talent, which is essential for advancing research, providing superior patient care and educating the next generation of premier health care professionals.
With the MSU partnership, the Henry Ford Cancer Institute will expand research and clinical applications to create an international destination for access to the most advanced cancer therapies and research. With its focus on innovative cancer treatments, prevention and screening protocols, the institute will offer vast improvements in population health, fuel discovery in basic sciences, support translational research aimed at curing cancer and close the gap in health care outcomes for cancer patients based on race, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are foundational to Henry Ford and MSU’s partnership and are articulated in key goals and deliverables that seek to eliminate health disparities, address the social determinants of health, and remove barriers to care and opportunity for medical education. This includes a commitment to educate diverse health care providers and ensure equitable access to quality health care for historically disenfranchised and marginalized populations.
This partnership is not an acquisition or merger. The Henry Ford and MSU names will not change, and both organizations will maintain their respective autonomies. The goal is to combine the strength of both institutions’ legacies and storied brands toward their shared goals. By mid-2021, there will be co-branding within some areas, including joint research efforts, and the Center will establish an umbrella entity for its activities and a joint identity. Several of the partnership’s advancements will result from the integration of both institutions around key research and program elements, while others, such as capital projects, are dependent upon securing private and philanthropic funding.
At the core of the partnership is a unique primary academic affiliation. As the partnership evolves and expands, Michigan will be established as a destination for exceptional clinical care, advanced research and innovative medical education. The partnership will chart definitive progress in eliminating health disparities and addressing the needs of marginalized communities, improving health care for everyone. Most important of all, this partnership will provide improved care options and increased hope to patients and families facing disparate medical challenges, including cancer.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Texting is the most alarming distraction. Sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for five seconds. At 55 miles per hour, that's like driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed. You cannot drive safely unless the task of driving has your full attention. Any non-driving activity you engage in is a potential distraction and increases your risk of crashing.
Using a cell phone while driving creates enormous potential for deaths and injuries on U.S. roads. In 2018 alone, more than 2,800 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers.
On September 19th, 2016, MSU freshman Mitchel Kiefer was tragically killed in an auto accident caused by a distracted driver on I-96 on Mitchel's way to the MSU campus. Steve Kiefer is Mitchel's father. Steve earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University, and he is a member of the Michigan State University College of Engineering Alumni Association Advisory Board. He's GM's key executive at Michigan State University and is a member of GM's senior leadership team. He is senior vice president and president of General Motors, South America and International Operations, meaning he's responsible for GM operations outside of North America and China.
Soon after Mitchel's death, Steve founded The Kiefer Foundation to honor Mitchel's legacy. The mission of The Kiefer Foundation is to end distracted driving and all associated traffic deaths and injuries. The foundation focuses on three pillars to support its mission, awareness, technology and policy. Within each of these pillars are specific goals they hope to achieve and initiatives in which they hope to get involved. They've already made some progress, but still have a long way to go.
“Until something like this happens to you personally, I don't think people really understand the magnitude of this problem,” Kiefer says. “It's important for people to realize that, around the world, because this is a global problem, 1.25 million people are killed on the highways of the world every year. It's a huge number. Some 50 million are injured or disabled every year in car crashes and pedestrian related car crashes around the world. We lose somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 people on the highways of the United States each year. It's a staggering number.
“The folks who do the analysis on distracted driving estimate that about 10 percent of those are due to distracted driving. We honestly believe that number is way under reported. As a matter of fact, the stats would generally say that 94 percent of crashes that occur on the highways are due to some type of human error. It could be speeding or drinking and driving or drowsiness, but we know a large percentage of those are distracted driving. The simple statistic that I think is most staggering is that, in this country, 10 people every day are killed by distracted driving. And it's just, again, until you go through it, it's just hard for me to imagine that today and tomorrow and the next day, every day, we're going to have another 10 people, another 10 families going through what my family has gone through. And it really is one of the prime motivators for us to get something done here and really bring an end to distracted driving.
“The story never gets easier to tell, but as you said, it was September 19th of 2016 - the worst day of our lives. Mitchel was in his first month at MSU. He had come home for a nice weekend to go see a Lions game. He was driving up to MSU on I-96 early Monday morning about 7:50. It was a beautiful Monday morning, the sun was out, the roads were dry, and there was no reason for a crash to occur. There was a little bit of traffic congestion. The traffic slowed down, and Mitchel slowed down. The young lady behind him did not. She impacted Mitchel's car at about 82 miles an hour.
“As most people probably know, when airbags deploy, there's a flight recording function inside modern automobiles. You get the forensics from the vehicle. It was clear that the car was going 82 miles an hour, but also that, at the time of impact, the driver's foot was on the throttle, not on the brake. That's a pretty clear indication that the young lady was not paying attention and never touched the brakes. That resulted in Mitchel being rear-ended and driven across a very narrow median on I-96 near Dietz Road, a narrow median that had no guardrails at the time. Mitchel was driven into oncoming traffic where he was hit by a large truck and killed instantly.
“It's a horrific thing to think that one small act of lack of paying attention, of distraction, can just really destroy lives forever.”
The Kiefer Foundation focuses on three pillars to support its mission, awareness, technology and policy.
“First and foremost, we learned how large this problem is, and interestingly enough, we referred to it as a global pandemic several years ago before the more recent pandemic,” Kiefer continues. “And I really believe that it is a global pandemic. This is certainly, as I covered in the earlier stats, causing deaths and disabling injuries all over the world. So we felt, first and foremost, it was important to make as many people realize this as possible. You do find that there are families like ours all over the country that have a similar goal. We do things like advertising, billboards, and a number of community events to help raise awareness. We engaged with a nonprofit organization in Grand Rapids, Michigan called the PEERS Foundation, which brings simulators into schools and churches around the state and around the country to educate young people on the dangers of distracted driving.
“We're able to put them in a car and let them drive in a simulated fashion and then distract them and show how it causes crashes. We also had the opportunity to do some things to memorialize Mitchel and to create awareness. “Mitchel was a hockey player. He went to Detroit Catholic Central. He was part of the 2016 State Championship Catholic Central Hockey Team. And he was a goalie. They won that state championship at a USA Hockey rink in Plymouth, Michigan. We worked with the USA Hockey Foundation and actually dedicated that rink in Mitchel's honor. So that ice rink is now known as the Mitchel Kiefer Memorial Ice Rink, which really feels good from the perspective of a father to memorialize your son.
“More importantly, we didn't just put Mitchel's name on the rink. It's covered with distracted driving messages. There's a locker room that has a video that runs with distracted driver statistics and other messages. There are 500,000 people who visit that ice rink each year for various activities, whether it's hockey games, ice skating competitions, or figure skating competitions. And I can't tell you how many people contact me and say, ‘Mr. Kiefer, we're in your son's ice rink right now. And it's given me an opportunity to talk to my children and my family about these dangers and your message is having a huge impact in this ice rink alone.’ There are several other examples I could give, but that's probably the one that's kind of closest to my heart because every time I visit that ice rink, it's such fond memories of Mitchel and the state championship, but also a really effective way to spread a message of driver safety.
“There are many aspects to the technology pillar. In some cases, it's related to awareness and educating people that you need to be more cautious when driving. There are a number of technology tools that people can be using right now. One is using the safe driving mode and do not disturb mode on your Apple phones and your Android phones. Those tools work very well if you can just get everyone that you know and your families and friends to use those tools. Essentially, they disable the phone from receiving texts or calls when you're driving.
“There are a number of newer technologies that are being developed, driver monitoring tools by some vendors that are watching the driver as they drive and recording these things. They hopefully alert drivers when their eyes are not on the road for a short period. These technologies are being developed. There are other technologies related to blocking the use of phones like phone bags that, if the phone is in the bag, it can't receive a signal.
“And then maybe the final one that we're really quite proud of and it's a little bit of a stretch on the technology theme, is the concept of these cable guardrails. I described in my opening comments about the circumstances of Mitchel's crash. Had there been a guardrail on that narrow median on I-96, it would have stopped Mitchel's car from going into oncoming traffic and he probably wouldn't have even been injured at all. We worked with the Michigan Department of Transportation on these very simple cable guardrails that you see all over the state. We actually did a co-funding project half sponsored by the Kiefer Foundation and half sponsored by MDOT to put in about five miles of cable guardrails at the point where Mitchel's crash occurred.
“Now, when we did that, we really thought it was kind of a ceremonial thing. I just wanted that exact point on the highway to be safe. I couldn't imagine, but within the first year, that guardrail was hit 12 times. Simple technology like these cable guardrails is really quite inexpensive and cost-effective, and we know this one saved 12 lives in that short period of time. You continue to see it all over the state where you see these cable guardrails that have been damaged or knocked down. They are effective and they are saving lives.”
Kiefer is focusing most of his time and attention on the policy pillar.
“While awareness and technology are important, we also realize that legislation and policy can be an extremely important piece of this. Reflect back on the progress that's been made, I would say in my lifetime, since the 1980s and '90s, on drunk driving in those decades. It was a huge problem. We saw a group of very motivated and very influential people called Mothers Against Drunk Driving get very active in the legislative front and in the courts.
“They first made sure that there were very stiff drunk driving laws in place. Second, they sat in the courtrooms and made sure that anybody who was guilty of these things received very severe punishment. And when I was young, that seemed like a crazy group of people. And a lot of us didn't understand it, until you lose a child, then you realize exactly why they were doing what they're doing. If you look over the years now, the drunk driving occurrences have completely changed, and I would even say culturally. If you think about the younger generation right now, I know my kids would never even consider getting behind a wheel after drinking. They equate it to holding up a bank or something. You wouldn't do something like that. So behavior has changed completely. And there are now services available like Uber and Lyft, which have also really helped bring down the need for anyone to be driving under the influence.
“If I fast forward to the laws that we're working on now it's about hands-free legislation. And really it basically says that if you're in a vehicle and you're holding the phone for any reason, it becomes a primary offense. Law enforcement can see it, and they can pull you over and you receive a severe ticket. By the way, this is not unusual. This is what most developed countries do around the world. I've spent many years living in Europe. In Europe, if you hold your phone in the car, it's instantly a 400 or 500 Euro penalty. So it's not a new or unusual practice, but we're trying to get these hands free laws implemented in every state in the country.
“We really believe that if the laws are in place and then the awareness and enforcement are in place, and this is really important, that we have a tool that law enforcement can use. Because right now, laws that ban texting still allow people to hold the phone in the car. And it's just impossible for law enforcement to determine what a person is doing on their phone to distinguish between texting and phone usage. We believe that the hands-free laws will give law enforcement a tool that will basically be able to change behavior. And then through enforcement and education, we're optimistic that we can bring down the traffic crashes significantly. And I would just say that the data supports this effort. Every state that has implemented these laws has seen significant reductions in crashes and deaths as a result of these hands-free laws.
“We're in the process of re-energizing a campaign that we refer to as Hands Free Michigan. We first introduced this a couple of years ago, and we agreed to take a bit of a pause during the latest pandemic last year, but it's time now to get re-energized on this. There are now 25 states that have these hands-free laws in place. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get the law passed here in Michigan. There's a bill that's being developed and sponsored in the House right now in Michigan. Our hope and expectation is to get as many people on board as possible to support this bill and to support the passing of a law. We have a goal here to basically get the bill brought forward and through the State Legislature and passed into law by September of this year.”
Kiefer shares his wisdom on the state and future of the automotive industry, and, in particular, General Motors.
“I couldn't be more excited than I am today as to where we're headed as an industry and where we're headed as General Motors.
“We have a vision at GM of a future of zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion. On this concept of zero crashes, as we get to autonomous driving, and we will, we're convinced that this will essentially eliminate all traffic crashes related to human error. We're optimistic about that, but unfortunately, that's many years in the future. In the meantime, I personally believe that ending distracted driving and keeping drivers’ eyes on the road and hands on the wheel is probably the best thing we can do to reduce crashes in the short term.
“On zero emissions, we believe in an all-electric future and plan to roll out a whole portfolio of new battery electric vehicles.
“Electrification has many forms, but in its broadest sense, it's the idea of moving from propulsion systems that are based on internal combustion engines like gasoline and diesel engines into propulsion systems that are driven by electric motors and electricity. I say it that way because I think even fuel cells, hydrogen fuel cells, which are in our future as well, are another way to produce electricity for an electric vehicle. We're focused on this all-electric future, which is really about battery electric vehicles, and you'll start to see more and more of them roll out.”
Challenges and opportunities for GM to reach these mobility goals?
“The sky's the limit here. Technology always comes with challenges and risk, but I think one challenge is ensuring a pipeline of extremely bright, intelligent, motivated people for these jobs. I'm excited in my role participating with the MSU College of Engineering to help define some of those needs so that we get some of the best new engineers coming into our company. I think our story at General Motors right now is absolutely fantastic. And I think it's really helping us because I can't tell you how many people want to join the cause, want to join General Motors, whether it's young engineering students or even seasoned industry veterans. A lot of people are looking to General Motors and wanting to be part of the future success story.
“The human capital and getting the right people in is always important and a challenge, but I think we're well positioned. The other thing is, there's a whole area of legislative and infrastructure challenges involved in getting electrical charging in place in countries all over the world. And then as you move to the idea of removing the driver from the car in these truly autonomous vehicles, safety is the absolute highest priority. There are some pretty cautious and time-consuming legislative hurdles that need to be overcome.”
Kiefer talks about why MSU was the right university for him coming out of high school and more about his role on the MSU College of Engineering Alumni Association Advisory Board.
What does he want listeners to keep in mind and take away from our conversation?
“First, really think about the idea of what would it feel like if this happened to you? It's really hard to get people's attention and involvement until they personalize it. So, I just ask everyone to think about what you can do differently? What would you do to protect your life and your children's lives and your family if you thought that something you could do differently today might save them tomorrow from a distracted driving related accident? That's a hard thing to imagine, but I'd ask people to recognize that we never in our lives imagined something like this could happen to us. And then one day your life is shattered.
“It's about personal accountability. This is a behavioral change and every one of us has to participate. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit how actively distracted I used to drive before this happened to me. I was somebody who could drive really well with my knee on the wheel while looking at the phone in one hand and maybe drinking a coffee in another. And I thought I was very cautious about it because I knew the risks. But I still admit that I did it. And then it happens to you and you realize just how senseless that is. From a personal accountability standpoint, if people could just really internalize that and say, ‘I don't need to be on this phone while I'm driving.’ It is just way too dangerous. And it's just not worth the loss of your life or your child's life or the other people on the road.
“Use tools like the do not disturb mode and the safe drive mode that are readily available. Commit to them, use them, keep your eyes on the road, drive safely, and make sure your children and all your friends are doing the same. That's the easy first step. If everybody could just do that, we'd be in a better place.
“And then in a broader sense, for anyone who's willing to help us with the cause of Hands-Free Michigan, be very vocal on your support for getting laws in place that will help make our roads safer. Speak to your elected officials. Be vocal on this because it does have an impact. We're seeing overwhelming support for these hands-free laws. There is just no reason why we shouldn't be able to push them over the edge and get these things implemented this year.”
Please find more again at mkiefer.org or Google the Kiefer Foundation.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
This month’s guest is Dr. Jakana Thomas, an Associate Professor in MSU's Department of Political Science whose research focuses on political violence, how violence influences conflict resolution, and the determinants of a successful peace process - items that are no doubt on the minds of many Americans today.
“The drop in the economy in Michigan and everywhere else was dramatic in April of 2020. Really, by many measures, April 2020 was the worst month in American economic history,” says Ballard. “We previously thought that the 100,000 jobs lost in Michigan in January of 2009 was really horrendous; in April of 2020 we lost 10 times as many. We lost about a million jobs.
“I think there are a couple of things going on. One is the federal government has stepped up and has relieved the burdens in many ways. Another is that we have learned a lot of businesses have been able to continue to operate better than maybe we first thought in an online, remote environment. So the good news is that the budgetary situation for Michigan is not nearly as bad as we once thought.
“The not so good news is that the recovery appears to have stalled out.”
“Can we keep injecting federal money into the economy,” asks Weinfeld?
“On the one hand, I think this is not yet the time to worry about balancing our budget because our economy is still in deep trouble. On the other hand, the federal deficit for the fiscal year that ended last September was more than $3 trillion. And now the total accumulated debt is pushing toward $22 trillion. So far, the world credit markets seem happy to gobble up that debt and we don't have to pay very high interest rates. I do worry that there will eventually be a day of reckoning. I hope that once we get past the worst of the COVID crisis, which I think we may well be able to do that by summer, then it will be time to have a serious national discussion for the first time in a long time about maybe paying our bills.
“I think that the tax cuts that were passed three years ago were absolutely wrong-headed because introductory macro economics tells you that you should balance your budget or run surpluses when the economy is good leaving some room for deficits when the economy is struggling. But the tax cuts that went into effect three years ago meant that we were running a trillion a year even when the economy was doing well. That's a concern, but I feel like I'm kind of a lonely voice in the wilderness when I say that. Because in order to deal with it, you're going to have to cut some spending or you're going to have to raise some taxes.”
Weinfeld asks Grossmann to reflect on the events of January 6th and how corporate America has seemingly taken a different tact with its philosophy on donations.
“First it's too early to say on the donation patterns,” says Grossmann. “This is right after an election; this is not usually a high time for corporate PAC donations. Many of the businesses that have made announcements have just said they're not making donations for the next six months or doing some kind of pause. Overall, actually the data shows that corporate donations tend to moderate representatives. It's actually the individual contributions that are more likely to lead to more extreme representatives. It's not clear that those patterns are really going to change our polarized landscape.
“On the stimulus, I just want to make sure everybody understands that although state and local government funding wasn't directly included in the December stimulus, Michigan is still vastly helped in its state government by that stimulus package. Not only is money that is for health and education likely to be fungible in the state budget as it was almost entirely in the last state budget, but we also benefit in terms of revenues from those higher unemployment benefits and from checks going to individuals. So those stimulus packages before really helped to alleviate what would have been big pain in the state budget.
“Going forward, if we do get to that point that Charley mentioned where we start to see if not austerity, at least a turning off of the hose of federal money, we are likely to have postponed that potential pain in the state budget rather than gotten rid of it completely.”
Weinfeld wonders whether Democrats and Republicans may or may not work together more closely in the wake of November’s election.
“It doesn't seem like it's so far,” Grossmann says. “We're a few days after the inauguration and already there's a dispute about even how to form the Senate committees. There's no evidence that there's Republican support for any of the initial legislative proposals that Biden put forward, either the immigration one or the stimulus proposal.
“So there's a lot of talk about unity, but most of that was about being unified in values or against extremism or maybe toning down the culture war. There's not really a whole lot of sign that there's going to be bipartisanship when it comes to public policy. Democrats do now have full control and there are a lot of people who are going to want to use that full control to enact a lot of policies. We also know that the party out of the presidency tends to win the midterm election, and so they are going to see this as a fleeting chance that they have to potentially enact new policies.
“Now at the state level research shows that the party out of power in Washington is more likely to move their states more ideologically in the opposite direction. So we will be looking for Republican states to actually move rightward under the Biden administration while Congress tries to take advantage of its couple years with Democrats in the majority.”
“I think 2021 is going to be better than 2020,” Ballard adds. “But that's setting the bar really low. Certainly, the Trump administration never really took fighting COVID very seriously. They viewed it as a public relations problem, not a public health problem. It will be difficult for Biden’s team not to do better. I think there's a decent chance that we will speed up the shots in arms rapidly. But since there are still bottlenecks in the system, I think it's probably summer or fall before we really start seeing major progress, and then it will take many months to put the economy together. Most economists say that 2021 will still be a rocky year and maybe we can look to 2022 to getting back to an economic more normal.”
Grossmann welcomes his colleague from MSU’s Department of Political Science, Jakana Thomas, to the conversation.
“She’s an international expert on terrorism and violence,” says Grossmann. “Jakana, talk about how you think we should see the attack on the Capitol in an international context.”
“America is not really the only country to encounter many of these same problems,” Thomas says. “This looked very much like post-election violence that we would witness around the world in other countries. And post-election violence occurs often when people distrust the electoral process or they're unhappy with the outcome and so they engage in violence. A key point of focus here is a lack of trust in the institutions and specifically in the electoral process.
“A colleague of mine notes that what we saw on display on January 6th is consistent with democratic backsliding, and this is kind of where you see a democratic state sliding closer and closer toward autocracy very slowly. Other colleagues say that there are clear indicators of some deep-seated trouble ahead for the United States, and some of the key factors that are going to cause some of these problems are the gross economic inequality and the growing polarization in our politics, and these can cause or lead to democratic erosion and breakdowns.
“The events of January 6th were not necessarily a death knell to our democracy. It's not that this is a sign that our country is dying. However, it is a sign that there are some broader problems. And one of the problems that I focus on a lot in my research is the growing extremism and the growing radicalization that has led to violence in our country and the kind of violence that was on display on January 6th.
“Some of those factors like polarization and inequality, they breed grievances that can fuel political violence. They can allow political entrepreneurs to seize this moment and say, ‘Look, we have a crisis that we have to solve that our government cannot solve.’ One of the biggest things that I think Michigan really needs to focus on and look at is this growing radicalization among the population that's fueled and supported by militia activity around the Midwest and around the country more broadly. Groups like the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, and the Proud Boys are concerning organizations and we know this because at least one Three Percenter was involved in the plot to kidnap our governor.
“The Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters have been around since 2008 and 2009; they're not just harmless patriot groups that are protecting the Constitution. They're actually challenging our authority and they're threatening the democracy. Politicians have to somehow restore faith in our institutions. They have to combat this erosion of trust in our electoral process and the institutions more broadly.
“Congressman Peter Meijer recently came out to denounce the violence and he's been trying to restore the faith in the process. I thought he said a couple of really interesting things. He mentioned that it was really important to help us move past this point that we have accountability for what happened, but also that politicians start to tell their constituents the truth. So not just to tell them what they want to hear, not necessarily just tell them what's politically expedient, but tell them the truth. And to some degree the truth that's important that would help combat some of this growing radicalization and this growing extremism is that our Constitution is not being undermined by government actors. Our elections are safe and secure for the most part. Our institutions are not beyond repair, and that means that people can continue to participate in participatory democracy in order to see real changes.
“And most importantly for me is we do not need non-state actors like these militia groups to protect the government from its citizens or to protect the government from itself. A particularly troubling sign is after Meijer came out suggesting accountability, he's had to buy body armor and change his security routine because of this threat of violence. One thing that we really have to do is acknowledge that this is a problem that our country has. It was not an isolated event. January 6th is not the last time we are going to see violence. It's really important that we acknowledge that that was not just a fleeting moment. January 6th was not an aberration; this is potentially a sign of what might be coming if we don't take seriously the fact that we have armed non-state actors roaming the country, and for the most part, going unchallenged.
“We saw terrorism and organized peaceful protests at the Capitol on January 6. Those two things coexisted at the same time, and it's really important to treat those actors separately, acknowledge that those were different sets of actors and the repercussions are different. We cannot come out forcefully and just denounce all the protesters and quash all right wing speech and protests because it happened to coincide with violence. That just feeds into this radicalization loop and this radicalization process.
“What we know from around the world is that government repression is one key reason people become radicalized and take up extremist politics and take up violence. In order to avoid turning some of those peaceful protesters into violent extremists in the future, we have to make sure that we don't just crack down on their ideas and their beliefs and their speech just because we don't like it but recognize that just because they were there and just because they may have contrary beliefs, they're not necessarily complicit and guilty.
“However, for those who are complicit and guilty of engaging in actual violence and insurrection, the government has a responsibility to crack down on those actors in order to deter further violence in the future. But again, lessons from around the country suggest that we can't treat those sets of actors the same. We can't treat the peaceful protesters as if they were rioters, and this is a job for law enforcement. They're going to have to do a really good job of discriminating between those who were actually violent and actually planning and orchestrating these violent events from those who participated in the violent riots and those who were just out to protest peacefully. Because they're not the same.
“There are underlying grievances that have sparked people's anger that need to be acknowledged. Some of these things are legitimate, like economic inequality or the fact that people are hurting economically. Some of this is brought on by COVID, but some of this has been around for a really long time. This can be dealt with by actually governing, by responding to people's grievances that they have. These grievances allow violent actors to then appeal to people who otherwise would not be violent. These grievances make these political entrepreneurs say, ‘These problems that you're facing are beyond what the government can control and change. They're not interested in doing this. We, however, have the unique solution, and the solution is to take over the government.’ If the government continues to ignore that the people who came out to protest might have some legitimate grievances toward the government, they allow these violent actors to recruit.
“Another concern is that these violent actors are also feeding them lies that some of the politicians are also feeding them. They're painting a picture of a country that is not actually our country. They're painting this picture of a country where people can't go out and vote for their politicians anymore because elections are meaningless. They're painting a picture that there is no point in participating in the institution, and that there's no point in running for office anymore because you can't actually change things from those institutions.
“It's also important for government actors, and specifically the ones who contested the results of the election to come out and say like Peter Meijer did that this is just not what's happening. This is just not the truth. The institutions are still what they've always been; they're still safe, and they're still secure. You can still participate. You can still change the balance in Congress. You can still change the local political landscape by participating in politics. This is not your only option. And it's very important that people see that there are other options out here other than violence.”
What about the role of racial politics, Grossmann asks Thomas?
“There has been some really interesting research on ethnic violence and ethnic politics that would say that these cleavages become salient when political actors make them salient,” Thomas continues. “These are cleavages that always exist and that can co-exist. “But when you have a political actor who comes and fabricates this conflict, people who are on these different lines are likely to buy into it. Unfortunately, political actors and trusted elites have a big role in stoking this violence and also quelling this violence as well. So around the world, we see often that there is ethnic conflict, but what we also see is there are a lot of people in countries where there's huge ethnic mixes, maybe where there were histories of contention, that can figure out how to live and coexist peacefully. So just because we have this polarization doesn't mean that it necessarily has to lead to conflict, but it only does when we allow politicians to stoke these tensions along these dividing lines, when they make these issues salient.
“We need to find a way to make these issues less salient. They'll never go away, they're not going to go away in our country, but they may not play such a primary role in our politics. I guess one of the things that we can do, which sounds very naive, is to return to civility. Return to politics of respecting other people who have different beliefs, who are different than you and believe that they have a right to exist. They have a right to be in this country as well and have contrary opinions and we can disagree without going to war. It is possible for us to do that in this country and I think we're hearing this rhetoric that that is not possible. It is not possible to co-exist with these different viewpoints, but that's just not accurate. The rest of the world has been contending with these kinds of issues and has had to figure out a way to do that.”
“It will be very interesting to watch in the years ahead, not just in the weeks and months, but in the years to come to see whether the polarization in our country accelerates or whether we can pull it back,” adds Ballard. “I'm cautiously optimistic that our democracy is sufficiently robust and that we'll get past this, too.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Today, we're joined by Dawn Kepler, coordinator for the MSU Collegiate Recovery Community, and Chris Anthony vice president of US Consumer Goods at Salesforce. We're discussing recovery, sobriety, and the de-stigmatization of both on college campuses and in the corporate world.
Dawn's passion for helping others struggling with substance use stems from her journey with recovery, 18 years in the making. With a BS in psychology and work in the substance use disorder prevention and recovery fields, Dawn strives to improve behavioral health services by incorporating research on program design with the ultimate goal of achieving sustainable outcomes for those in recovery.
Chris studied marketing at MSU and has established himself as a business leader, public speaker, coach, mentor, and lifelong student striving to be of service to others. With over 25 years of experience in technology, he currently serves as the vice-president of US Consumer Goods at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, where he grew from account executive to vice president. Chris recently opened up about his 15-year journey with sobriety and established thesoberexec.com to help others navigate recovery and sobriety.
“Our Collegiate Recovery Community here at MSU has been on quite a journey,” says Kepler. “From the very beginning, it has been spearheaded by students. It's for students and by students who have come to MSU. It was approximately three years ago that a more formal program was established that is similar to what we have today, the Collegiate Recovery Community. MSU has the first on-campus recovery housing in the state of Michigan. It all stemmed from needs being identified then students advocating for them and working with staff and faculty on-campus to make things happen. The ultimate mission of the Collegiate Recovery Community is to help students achieve their goals - their academic goals, their personal goals, and their recovery goals - and live a full college experience feeling supported in their recovery from a substance use disorder.”
Kepler and Anthony talk about the need to destigmatize recovery and sobriety, and they discuss how they dealt with their own recoveries while on campus. And they talk about how the pandemic is impacting recovery and sobriety.
“It’s a really challenging situation we’re in for a lot of individuals,” says Anthony. “It's hard enough for people to make themselves vulnerable to reach out and ask for help. When we're quarantined or locked in place, it makes it harder sometimes to reach out to others. And with so many of us working from home, the challenge around addiction in any form whatsoever is hidden more than ever right now because we're all on Zoom; we're all on video. Someone can easily be living a very dark moment in their life and get on camera and smile to everybody. When that camera turns off, they're back in their dark dungeon of whatever misery they're experiencing. They're not going into an office space where someone can notice that they're declining, or it's easier to hide use now because you can have a coffee cup with wine in it and sit on a Zoom and do that all day long and no one knows the better.”
“There's a lot of awareness, think goodness, around other mental health issues, particularly depression and anxiety,” Kepler adds. “I think that's the direction we need to go with substance use disorders. Some of the students we have in our Collegiate Recovery Community have told us that they were diagnosed with depression years ago and sought treatment for the depression, but they weren’t made aware that their substance use might be part of the problem. They didn't see that turning point until they were diagnosed with a substance use disorder and began receiving treatment and assistance for the substance piece.”
Kepler says students in the Collegiate Recovery Community “are some of the most successful students at colleges. We see it here at MSU and the research that's been done across the country. Our students have gone on and graduated and done amazing things. As anyone who knows an individual in recovery knows, you will be able to recognize the resilience and strength and dedication of that individual. On top of that, most of our students also have jobs and do a lot of work through community service. Our students are very busy, they're very dedicated, and they do go on to do amazing things after they graduate MSU.”
After 15 years of sobriety, Anthony felt comfortable with the vulnerability of becoming an advocate for recovery and sobriety and made his feelings public in a LinkedIn post. He explains how working with both Navy Seals and the band Metallica helped him come out publicly about his sobriety. The Seals thought Anthony’s sobriety was “cool,” and Metallica thought Anthony’s talking about it publicly would help others.
“I knew that I was creeping up on 15 years of sobriety, and I was thinking a lot about the fact that here I am hitting almost 15 years and yet I really don't talk about it publicly. People around me who worked with me would know, but I didn't talk about it publicly, and that was really bothering me a lot.
“My wake-up moment was, I'm like, ‘OK, if Navy Seals think it's ok that I'm sober, and the Metallica community thinks it's cool that I'm sober, I'm like, What is my problem? Why am I so ashamed and hiding this?’ On June 20th of this year, I decided to, quote unquote, come out about my sobriety. I posted an article on LinkedIn on the 15 Things I've Learned in 15 Years of Sobriety, and I put it all out there. I was scared as could be, and I put it on a couple other social media channels as well.
“Exactly zero bad things happened to me. In fact, just the opposite occurred. In that very moment, I had discovered my why in life. I discovered my purpose in life, and I knew right then that it was simple, to be of service to others. Literally every day, since that post, I get asked for help. It's been an outstanding experience. Here I am, and it's the greatest feeling ever. And if it gives anybody an ounce of encouragement that they can speak up about being sober and be proud of it, I'm doing my job.”
Both on college campuses and in the corporate world, there can be pressure to celebrate and commiserate with alcohol or substances.
“Look, I work in sales,” adds Anthony. “Anybody in the sales culture knows that alcohol is central to it. The phrase, ‘we wine and dine customers’ denotes alcohol. And celebration often focuses on alcohol. I think in the business world, it's very typical and normal.
“I've been navigating it for 15 plus years. To me, it's about saying no, and it's about remembering that I'm simply just trying to be healthy. Never, ever apologize or feel sorry about it. For whatever reason, there is often a massive stigma attached to saying, ‘I don't drink.’ That doesn't happen with mayonnaise or cilantro when you say no to it. People don't say, ‘What do you mean? You’re not addicted to cilantro? Are you addicted to mayonnaise?’ Nope. You just have to get comfortable in your own skin answering it.
“No apology is ever needed. There is no need to ever feel bad for choosing a healthy lifestyle. Now that I've opened up about my sobriety, I hear horror stories. But I am here to say that part of my other mission is I'm going to end the stigma, but there is no need ever to apologize for being healthy.”
Anthony talks about why he refers to his sobriety as his “superpower,” and says “there’s an old saying for people who have challenges with addiction that says you either get locked up, covered up, or sobered up. I chose to get sobered up and it has paid dividends since the day I made that choice. It's my superpower.”
Kepler and Anthony talk about how we can all be allies to people fighting substance abuse or in recovery like offering non-alcoholic options at gatherings.
“I really like what Dawn talked about with the idea of just being thoughtful with our language,” Anthony adds. “I think back to the stigma concept, too. We're running into this territory again where when someone makes the declaration, ‘Hey, I'm not drinking,’ they find themselves on their heels trying to defend why. It is really possible with just sparkling water or a Red Bull to have equally as a good a time.
“For the individual who's on the receiving end of that type of questioning and stuck with managing through that, it can be scary. It is just ominous for so many individuals, and it keeps people cooped up in their homes because they don't want to go out for fear of being asked that question. There are a lot of different paths to start to open up this dialogue with others so you can get comfortable with that conversation and almost be ready and excited to answer the question about whether you're drinking or not. It's a matter of seeking some community and knowing that you're also not alone.”
“Many of the stereotypes around what an individual who struggles with substance use looks like are not, in fact, what we see,” Kepler says. “Often when you start discussing your recovery and sobriety, other people will join in the conversation because they personally have been affected by addiction as well. It is very widespread. It is a disease like any disease, and it is something that should not be silenced because people feel shame or guilt over it. People in recovery go on to lead hugely successful, happy lives. Raising awareness will help more and more individuals to be able to achieve their goals and live that healthy, happy life.”
In closing, Anthony says the most important thing to do is ask for help.
“Ask for help, full stop, ask for help. If you are struggling or if someone you love or care about is struggling, ask for help. I don't care what walk of life you're from, there are tons of resources that we'd be thrilled to help you with. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, and I have a website that I created in all this called thesoberexec.com. You can reach out to me there. Nothing would make me happier than to point you in the right direction.
“And if any current student in recovery now hears this and is scared about going into the corporate world or on to a career because they think their sobriety and choice to be healthy is going to put a cap on their career, I'm here to tell you that it will not. You may have to manage it. You're going to have to learn to manage some conversations, but you should not be fearful about achieving everything you hope and dream to achieve in your life.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“I made kind of a circuitous route back to the university, Bill,” Hendrick says. “I did my bachelor's and PhD degrees here and left in 1992. I did a post-doctoral fellowship in Alaska, and then I went to Georgia for 16 years. That's where I spent most of my active faculty career then migrated back a little bit north to The Ohio State University for about seven and a half years. I came back here in the summer of 2016 as dean.
“It's an interesting and exciting time for our college, and we do a lot of different things you would expect, of course, related to food and the environment. But I have everything from interior designers to soil microbiologists on my faculty and everything in between. And so my responsibility really is to empower my leaders at many levels in order to do the teaching, the research, and the outreach missions. We are a little different than other colleges because we're also the home for MSU Extension and our statewide presence there. And then also AgBioResearch, which is our agricultural experiment station as Michigan's land grant university. We have a very big international footprint as well and are literally on every continent and in many parts around the world and have remained that way here through the pandemic as well.”
Hendrick tells Beekman how the pandemic is impacting the college’s efforts.
“We do have a very big footprint. I think we are definitely the university's biggest tenant in terms of acres occupied. When the governor's executive order initially came out, there were exemptions for things related to food and fiber production, including research. So we had both the fortune and the big lift of getting our research adapted to this new operating environment. And one of the things that couldn't go interrupted at all was all the care for all the things that we have custodial responsibility for. All of us have been focused on the two legged, right? It's about keeping ourselves and our colleagues and our students and those around us healthy. But I've got a lot to care for with four, six, eight or even 100 legs. And I have entomology and fisheries and wildlife and packaging.
“So there are spins and feathers and furs, and all those things require care. Some require more than others. Some it's feeding and watering and looking after basic medical care. But at our dairy facility, those cows need to be milked every day and now we're milking them twice a day. And so much credit to my staff and the staff leaders and faculty and my administrators for keeping all those things going. And we've been remarkably uninterrupted, but it was a very big lift early on getting things going. When we moved to remote work in late March, we were right on the cusp of the start of the growing season. So crops and other things need to go out and not just ours to support our work, but our stakeholders, we're a very agriculturally diverse state.
“We are working with our partners and on farms and with them and in their facilities year round. But particularly during the growing season, we can't let insects or disease problems that might decimate an important food crop, for example, get out ahead of us. And we're always on the outlook for animal and wildlife diseases and other sorts of things. So it was a very big lift but with the help of the university and senior leadership and my folks within the college, I think we've done a remarkably good job.”
Of the colleges brand around the world Hendrick adds “it's less about the brand and I think more about the positive impact we've had in so many places around the world and continue to have today. It’s a real point of pride for Michigan State that a lot of people probably aren't aware of.”
And Hendrick says the college faculty had been innovative and really stepped up when the pandemic arrived.
“I think finding the proper blend and balance of the hands-on and the distance or remote learning is going to be important for us to find. And that'll take a while to figure out, but the faculty have been very ingenious and the students have been very engaged and accommodating.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Dwyer discusses his career path at MSU that began in 2006 as associate dean for research in the College of Human Medicine. He tells how the Flint Water Crisis was “when I had the privilege of becoming the director of MSU Extension. A lot of people thought, ‘Huh, this is odd. A sociologist who has spent the last decade in a College of Human Medicine with Extension.’ I think a number of people were sort of wondering how all of that worked, but I think it all comes down to the connection to the community.
“Flint's a good example of that. I actually took on this role in Extension right when the Flint water crisis became so public and actually within the first couple of weeks dug in. We were able to focus our people that were already working in Flint and Genesee County over that first year. We nearly doubled the number of people we had working in Flint because of the importance of the things that we were doing there around nutrition and around working with youth and many, many other things.”
Dwyer tells Beekman how MSU Extension works in all 83 Michigan counties.
“I think that's important because the way we are able to reach literally potentially all residents of the state of Michigan is because we have this 100+ year history and people know us and people expect us to be there. We're truly embedded in communities. I have a little north of 600 faculty and staff all over the state. And they're not just doing a job there, but they're sitting in the pew at church with people, they're at the grocery store, they're often elected to roles in their city or township or county. They’re really an embedded part of the communities in addition to bringing the resources of a great land-grant university to that community. I really think about our staff and Extension as being sentinels in the public health sense of sentinels who really know what's going on in communities.
“They really know what we need to be paying attention to and that has been important in our ability to address many, many different topics and issues and emerging issues of importance around the state. We work in so many different areas like agriculture, 4-H, and health and nutrition. And we work with communities on strategic development.”
Dwyer talks about how Extension pivoted its programming to address the pandemic and how MSUE itself helped to fight the virus.
“We’ve been able to continue to have an impact in at least three different ways. Early on we were positioned very well in communities throughout the state, including on-campus and in the Lansing region, in being a part of collecting PPE and getting it out to the health providers who truly needed it in those early days. We developed a protocol for decontaminating N95 masks that's very effective. Our staff made over 3,500 calls to businesses all over the state of Michigan to determine their need for PPE and to make them aware of those suppliers that might be able to assist with that need. So those are just three examples of things that we would not typically have thought of ourselves doing, but because of our statewide footprint, because of our embeddedness in communities, and because of the talented people that we have willing to jump in really on a moment's notice and address emerging issues, we've been able to play a key role I believe.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
He became president and CEO of Wendy's in 2016 after joining the organization in 2013. Prior to that, he held leadership positions with the Kellogg Company and Ford Motor Company. Penegor is a member of the Eli Broad College of Business Advisory Board. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting in 1987 and an MBA in Finance in 1989, both from MSU.
“Growing up in the Upper Peninsula, I was focused on attending a Big Ten School,” says Penegor on the MSU Today podcast. “I looked at other schools but really knew that Michigan State was the school for me. I just felt comfortable there and I wasn't proven wrong. I loved being there my four years; I loved it so much I stayed there for graduate school.”
Penegor talks about what it means to him to be a Spartan. And he talks about how important it is for alumni to give back to their alma mater. Penegor and his wife named The Todd and Jill Penegor Large Team Room on the ground floor of the Broad College’s new Edward J. Minskoff Pavilion.
“I think about how much opportunity my alma mater has created for me. The school gave back a lot more than knowledge. The relationships, the connections, the comradery, and the pride, I thought it was important with the success that I've been able to have in my career to make sure that we give back.”
Penegor’s advice for the graduates?
“This year we spent a lot of time at Wendy’s trying to figure out how we'll lead a little differently and lead in a more remote work environment. Some of the messages will be some of the messages that I've shared with my employees at the company this year with the field team that I've tried to connect to differently and with our franchise community. And what you're going to really see is communication is key. People want to still be connected in this virtual world.
“You need to really be adaptable and flexible. We've all faced many curve balls during the year and you've had to manage through those, and you need to really be nimble to check and adjust to anything that's thrown your way. So you really have to find ways to master adversity a little bit differently. And one of the mantras I've had throughout this year is control what you can control and influence where you can. And if you can't influence or control it, don't worry about it. Just prepare for it. Have the contingency plans in place and as things come your way, build your plans to successfully manage through it.
“And it's not easy to do that. It's easy to say it, but we're all learning to work a little bit differently. And for the students who are coming out of school this year, whether they're undergrad or the graduate students that I get to talk with, they've had this opportunity to learn to work in this environment. So they've already got a lot of those skill sets that they can bring to new organizations to not just survive, but to thrive moving forward.”
And what about challenges and opportunities ahead for Wendy’s and the restaurant industry?
“We’ve been blessed. We're in the quick serve restaurant category so we've had the ability to manage a drive-through. We were deemed an essential service early on to help take some of the pressures off the grocery store. So when you think about why QSR plays such a great spot in today's world like speed, convenience, affordability, we play in those spots. The drive-through certainly helps. We can deliver food fast and in an efficient environment. At Wendy's we can differentiate on the quality of the food being fresh and never frozen beef and fresh cut vegetables, all at an affordable price. And when you think about the journey we're on to really compliment all of that, we launched breakfast earlier this year. A little challenging with the morning day part completely disrupted, but our breakfast is doing quite well behind our quality messaging.
“The digital journey that we're on is about how do you make a more frictionless experience at the restaurant? How do you turn your parking lots into transaction centers? Whether that's mobile ordering, mobile grab-and-go, curbside delivery, or a loyalty program to connect the business on loyalty and frequency. Then for us it's how do we continue to provide more access to the brand? Unfortunately, a lot of restaurant brands are shutting down and we have opportunities to continue to grow. Whether that's in North America with unique and different formats complemented by technology, or growing our business outside of the US, those are all things the team's working on with a lot of opportunity going forward. And our higher purpose is to create joy and opportunity through our food, family, and community. And we're working hard to bring that to life every day.”
And what about for higher education?
“Learning is changing, right? How do we connect and communicate as things change? How do we work in this hybrid world that we'll all be working in in the future when it's a little bit virtual and it's a little bit in person? And when you have that environment, how do you teach, how do you communicate, how do you connect to make sure that everybody feels included, whether you're there in person or whether you're there by video? You have to make sure that it is a seamless discussion.
“Everybody's going to look for a little more flexibility and look to connect a little bit differently, and we're going to have to learn how to teach in that environment. We're going to have to learn how to create working experiences in that environment and really ensure that our students have the skill set to communicate and break through in that hybrid environment.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Moran’s true discipline is asking the right questions and merging human and environmental sciences to get a holistic understanding of some of the world’s most crucial problems—climate change, land use—and a project he pioneered some 30 years ago: determining the potential of the humid tropics for intensive agriculture.
Moran is a John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor with the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, the Environmental Science and Policy Program, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University.
“I've been working for several decades, mostly in the Amazon, and Africa, too. I've worked on agriculture and what is known as land use and demographic change, migration and demography. My work is probably best known for, for the first time, using remote sensing to examine very small fields in farms to understand how people make decisions about how much rain forest to cut and how much to cultivate. And I’ve studied what happens after you deforest the rainforest.”
Moran’s latest work centers around the environmental and economic impact of hydroelectric dams in Brazil.
“We have found there are many dimensions to this work. The turbine is the thing we want to deliver at the end, something very practical and usable that people can be given for their energy use. How can we serve off-grid communities anywhere in the world? I have credibility from working in the Amazon for so many years. People believe me when I say I can do this. Most people can't do it; it's too hard a place to work. But people believe that I can do it because I've done it for a long, long time.
“We're excited about the potential. Now, the challenge ahead is, how can we convince Brazil and the energy sector in Brazil that this is doable, that they should be moving in this direction? And they should, because Brazil is the most dependent country on hydropower. A few years ago, they were 80 percent dependent on hydropower for all their electrical consumption. They got that down to 67 percent, but solar is still less than one percent in Brazil of their energy needs. And wind power is increasing rapidly, and they already out-compete the smaller dams. But smaller dams do as much damage as the big dams. They block the river so the fish still cannot get through. The damage can actually be worse from having 14 or 15 small conventional dams compared to a big dam. And in fact, in another project that I have, we're working on investigating and comparing a string of small hydropower dams with the big ones to see which one actually causes more damage. We'll be doing that for the next three or four years.
“Support science and encourage people to innovate and not to think inside the box. We've been building hydropower dams for a long, long time, since the turn of the other century. In fact, the first dam was built in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So we have a history of building dams. We have over 2,000 dams in Michigan at the moment, many provide hydropower. We are possibly starting to look at Michigan as an object of study. We're looking for the right place in which to do it. But we have a big problem in Michigan. Most of those dams were built in the '30s. They're already 20 to 30 years past their expected lifetime. Most of them are, by the evaluation of the people who monitor dams in Michigan, considered to be dangerous. They're considered to be high-risk dams.
“We already had a breach recently in central Michigan, and this is going to happen more and more. And I'm just amazed that so little is being done to address the problem. Everybody somehow is comfortably enjoying the reservoir for their recreational activity and not thinking that a lot of those reservoirs are high-risk dams that are likely to breach unless either we invest a lot of money in fixing them, or we spend a lot of money removing them. But as they stand, it is a high-risk situation for human life and property. Our research offers a solution. If what we want is the sustainable energy source of hydropower, this technology can do it.
“And at some point we even discussed in our group, can we put our turbine in Old Town in Lansing as a demonstration to show people that this is possible? Because there used to be a hydropower dam there in Old Town. It no longer generates power; it's too old. By putting something in the same place to show that we can generate power for Old Town, for example, is something that we might undertake. It would be a good investment for Michigan that will take us in a direction that would be safer for our citizens. And that would put us at the forefront of new technology for the nation.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Today we're talking with Erik about his latest book, The Focus Project: The Not so Simple Art of Doing Less, and how the digital landscape has changed since we last spoke three years ago and will continue to change in 2021. Erik is a five-time number one bestselling author and motivational keynote speaker. He's performed in over 55 countries and his work has been used by the likes of the National Guard, NBC Universal and NASA. His keynote topics focus on innovation, leadership, digital trends, and digital transformation. In our last conversation, Erik mentioned centering his next project around finding focus in a world filled with distractions. This past July, Erik released The Focus Project.
“The inspiration for the new book came to fruition because focus is something I was struggling with,” says Qualman on the MSU Today podcast. “Each day when I got home my hair felt like it was on fire. And I'm sitting there going, ‘Wait, I own the company. I control my time. What is going on?’ I wondered if I was alone in feeling this way. When I traveled the world to speak, I talked with CEOs, school principals, superintendents, and stay at home dads and found that everyone wrestles with the same thing.
“I talked to top performers to ask their key to success, and many told me they thought they could just focus better than most. They added that their biggest challenge was often maintaining that focus. I knew I wasn’t alone. I always start a book with a readership of one, meaning will this be helpful for me five years from now for me to reference the book? That's why I undertook the project.”
The ability to say no is a key part of staying focused, says Qualman.
“Steve Jobs said ‘Sometimes the most important thing you do is deciding what not to do.’ And it's exactly that. It's just really understanding doing the big versus the busy, and all of us kind of fall on the busy because it's a little easier and it gives us that dopamine hit. It's like our mind tricking us, ‘Hey, you took your emails from a hundred to zero.’ It feels good. You get a dopamine hit. But unfortunately, as you look back over the years you go, ‘Did I get the big things done?’ Often you did not.”
Qualman talks about how the pandemic moved up the publication date for The Focus Project. And he talks about how systems are important to building and maintaining focus.
“The top three things I learned during writing the book are that focus is really hard but can be learned. Second, people who are really good at what they do are better at focus because they say no to almost everything. And then third is to strive for progress, not perfection.”
Equal Man explains how and why he defines digital leadership with one word: empathy. And he describes how the digital landscape has changed since our 2017 conversation. And trends moving forward?
“I always advise people to invest in the trend, not the tool. Always invest in your people (customers and employees). If your tool is My Space and you over invest in it, your customers and employees don’t come with you when Facebook emerges. If you invest in people, then they come with you even when My Space becomes Facebook, Facebook becomes Instagram, and Instagram becomes Tik Tok.
“The trend that I'm most interested in is anything that removes friction. So why is Amazon dominating? They remove friction. I don't want to go to the store. If I want to return something, I want it to be free. Everything's been Amazon. They removed friction. They're in the business of removing friction.”
Qualman talks about the future of U.S. tech giants Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon and where they’re headed. And he talks about the value of social media.
“The Focus Project is an antivenom to Socialnomics, my first book. I recommended that people get into social media. This isn't just for teenagers. It's going to change the way we elect politicians, it's going to change the way you communicate, it could change business, it could change the world. People went too far into their phones, and they're at a disadvantage because they've got these trained PhDs who get paid millions of dollars to make sure that you stay on the site. Now the proponent of the social media outlets would say, ‘That's a good thing. We're giving you something that you want to see. We're just reacting to what you like, so that we serve an ad up for something that's relevant to you.’ The opposite side of that, people would argue that that's a bad thing because sometimes the stuff you serve isn't in the best interest of that person.
“And so my take on it is that it's a scalpel. All these digital tools and technology going back hundreds of years, like even the telephone, they're all scalpels, meaning that they can save a life or they can take a life. So it all depends on how you use it. And so my whole purpose on why I'm here is to help people understand how to use these tools. These tools aren't inherently good or bad; they actually can be very good. They can connect the world like never before when you break down those barriers of culture. I can understand you better and it's less likely that we're going to go to war.
“That's the vision at the highest end, but it can take a life because someone can get served something that makes fun of the way they look and all of a sudden there's a person that commits suicide. And so it is literally those two extremes when you think about world peace to someone taking their life. The whole point and my mission is to make sure that everyone lives their best life and understands how to use these tools in the best way.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“We began in 1937 and we recently celebrated our 83rd anniversary,” Clobes says in discussing the credit union’s beginnings. “Credit unions are membership-based non-profit cooperatives. They work a lot like some of the things that you might see today like a GoFundMe.”
Clobes says MSUFCU continues to embrace the latest technology to provide members with the best possible service. There’s even an “Ask Fran” chat bot to help answer members’ questions on the credit union’s website. Fran was the credit union’s first employee. She was hired in 1957 and worked there for 30 years.
MSUFCU is offering its members loan extensions, Savings Builder plans, and increased online engagement opportunities during the pandemic. The branches are considered essential businesses and remain open.
“We have found ways to serve members while meeting all the health department, state of Michigan, and MIOSHA orders. We have the branches set up with markers on the floors. There's plexiglass. And we have a mask requirement. The drive-ups are available for those who don't want to come inside a branch. We've seen unprecedented volumes in our call center and our online services team, a 250 percent increase over last year. And we were able to continually serve our members and get their questions and ease their fears during this time with the same number of employees as last year, even though we had such an increase in volumes. The team has really risen to the occasion on living our mission and serving the members during these really challenging times.
“We've had quite a robust suite of digital products since the early 2000s. You can certainly do everything online,” Clobes adds when detailing some of the credit union’s new offerings like CVVKey and increased video chat opportunities. And she explains how important the physical branches are to members, even during our increasingly digital society.
“I get often asked, ‘Why are you putting a branch up when people don't need branches anymore?’ We certainly wouldn't build branches if it wasn't good for business. Every day, I get member requests for a branch in their community. Those of us who are asking why we keep building branches tend to be the members that are fortunate enough to have a branch pretty accessible to them. We're probably rare in that we opened two brand new branches in the last eight months during the pandemic. And those branches within two to three months of opening have done an incredible amount of business, even with reduced in-person interactions during the pandemic time. We see tremendous growth any time that we open a branch.
“In fact, every time we've opened a branch, within three years of the branch opening in the region that it opened, the members almost doubled their deposits or their loan balances with us. And then we grow about 30 percent in new members. And that's a pretty significant model to follow for growth for the organization. Now, those folks may come in once every three or four months, but they still want to have a local presence for their financial institution. And there's just something about that physical location that makes you feel connected to your financial institution that people look for close to their home.”
Clobes details the MSUFCU philanthropy ethos, particularly as it relates to MSU Athletics, the Wharton Center’s Broadway Series and its Institute for Arts & Creativity, and scholarship and academic support for students.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“It's really a very special place,” Grannemann tells Beekman. “It's a home away from home for many of our members, who often call us their ‘Cheers.’ We're a private club that offers services and programs for those who value quality experiences, personalized service, and a lovely atmosphere. It's interesting we can talk about what we are physically, which is a private restaurant, a banquet facility, a fitness center and a spa and a beautiful new outdoor pool and hot tub complex. But I always like to talk about what happens at the club because that's much more significant than the physical facility itself. We're a place where traditions occur and where generations of families have made memories together. We're a place where connections happen, both business and personal. And we have a staff that's passionate about delivering those quality experiences. People often tell us that we've got the best food in town, and we certainly agree with that.”
Grannemann explains how the pandemic is altering operations.
“The pandemic has robbed us of the opportunity to provide the traditions our members have come to cherish. If we can’t be open to provide these traditions to our members in person, we were going to deliver them to them anyway. We’re committed to that. We've been doing carry out meals, of course, like many restaurants have, but we've also been doing virtual wine tastings and craft and cocktails carry out. Our bake shop has gone into high gear to produce sweets for our members.
“And then we get into those holiday events like the gingerbread house workshops. We had seven workshops scheduled and they were all sold out when we were mandated to close a week or so ago. And so we went into high gear and converted all those reservations to kits and packed up all the candy and the icing and everything else and our members are picking them up and taking them home. We sent out over 500 Thanksgiving dinners out the door. We weren't able to do our Halloween party so we staged that as a whole series of small outdoor things like pumpkin carving and a costume parade and trick or treat event in the parking lot. A pet costume party. Just anything we could do to try to still deliver that experience, but under extenuating circumstances.”
Grannemann explains the reciprocal agreements the UClub has with over 500 clubs around the world, its relationship with the Forest Akers golf complex, and membership requirements.
“We’re referred to as the inclusive exclusive club. We are a private club. Our services are only available to those who join, but there are no barriers to joining. The University Club was started in 1929; last year celebrated our 90th anniversary. It was started as a faculty club, thus, that's the origin of the University Club name. Over the years, we have evolved to be very focused on the community as well. We kind of have that town and gown environment where it's a wonderful mix of university administrators, professors, support staff, as well as everybody from the governor and mayor of Lansing to business people and professionals. Anybody who wants to enjoy the services and the experiences that we offer is welcome to apply for a membership.
“My favorite part as the general manager is the relationships that are built at the University Club and the wonderful people that belong there and engage in the activities together. I've seen families that start off just sitting next to each other on chairs at the pool become lifelong friends. It's kind of like those friendships you make through your kids' schools that just last forever. And that's what the club does. You grow up together and you celebrate life's milestones together. You share life's tragedies together. We send cards to our members when they're ill or when they've lost a loved one. It's a special place, that's all I can say. And that's my favorite part.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe from Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
So how can we cut through the noise and make healthy and tasty food choices for our families? We'll hear from two Spartans whose lives revolve around food: award-winning author and speaker, Michele Payn and MSU corporate chef, Kurt Kwiatkowski. Michele and Chef Kurt will pull back the curtain on food and demystify some of the myths and misnomers fed to consumers.
Michele is a 1993 graduate of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, holding a degree in agricultural communications and animal science. She's an award-winning author and the founder of Cause Matters, a company dedicated to addressing food myths and connecting the farm to food. Her latest book, Food Bullying: How to Avoid Buying BS, dives into the marketing tactics and psychology that pressure consumers into questioning their food choices. Michele is a passionate advocate for global agriculture and a catalyst for re-establishing food as a means of celebration rather than contention.
“I was inspired to write Food Bullying because I have worked for nearly 20 years in the space of connecting farm to food. I'm so tired of people being scared of their food and where it is grown,” says Payn. “I continue to see marketing claims get out of hand. And what I have found through the research and writing the book is that there are actual neuro-marketing techniques that are being used to manipulate your brain to believe certain things that are not true.
“Food should be a celebration, especially at this time of year. If there was one thing that you could remember during the holidays it is to celebrate the abundance of food that we have today. It's really unfortunate in a pandemic that people aren't doing enough of that, but rather they're fearing for their health and they're worried that their food is going to harm them.
“I define healthy food based upon the four standards: health, ethical, social, and environmental standards. Russ, your standards are very different than mine, I'm sure, and I think that everybody has the right to be able to have their own standards around food. And if you know what your health, environmental, ethical and social standards are, you can measure all food claims against those. For example, ‘farm raised’ is what I would consider BS, which is bold speak as defined in the book. Farm-raised is a BS label in my opinion and here's why, because food is raised on a farm and there's no need to slap a label like that on that. That does not fit my ethical standard as an example.
“There is no definition for sustainable food. There's no measurement that can be found on the label and therefore that doesn't fit my environmental standard. We need to all return to going to the nutrition facts label rather than the front of the packaging because, as one of my friends likes to say, that's like putting lipstick on a pig. You can dress the pig up and make it really pretty, but it's still pig. Go to the nutrition facts label if you want the real information.”
Kurt Kwiatkowski is MSU’s corporate chef; he’s better known as Chef Kurt. In that role, Kurt designs and sets the standards for all menus in MSU residential dining halls and develops culinary training for dining hall staff. Kurt holds a bachelor's degree in food systems management and economics and a master's degree from the School of Hospitality Business. Kurt is also a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, having completed their culinary enrichment and innovation program.
Chef Kurt thinks the pandemic is changing our relationship with food.
“I've never seen so many people so excited about bread and growing their own vegetables in their garden,” says Kwiatkowski. “If that can get people more connected with food then I'm all for it. And my hope is that people maybe understand what it takes to make something of quality, to put something together because you can have a good sourdough bread and you can have a rock that's super heavy that has no real flavor to it whatsoever. People are learning that it's not just as easy as adding flour and yeast and just stirring and all of a sudden you have this beautiful loaf of bread. I believe people are connecting more with their food.”
Chef Kurt advises us to seek “the cleanest label” when we’re shopping for our food. He describes how the smaller gatherings we’re encouraged to have during the pandemic are altering holiday menus. And he shares food preparation and storage safety ideas.
“I try to find products that contain the least amount of ingredients. Higher quality often means fewer ingredients. I emphasize NCO in the kitchen: neat, clean, and organized.
“To me, food is something really special. I think food brings people together and hopefully it can bring people together in a different way. Food creates memories. When you're cooking this holiday season, think about some of those memories. Think about the turkey and the good times and be thankful for everything that we have. We're here and we've got an abundant life and I'm incredibly thankful every single day. Take that time to just enjoy it and celebrate some of those memories.”
Watch this conversation here on the MSU Alumni Office Facebook page.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe from Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Bennett will also be a professor in MSU's College of Human Medicine. He most recently served as Northwestern University's inaugural associate provost for diversity and inclusion and its chief diversity officer. Bennett will report directly to President Stanley and work collaboratively with other university senior executives, deans, faculty, staff, and students, to develop and implement a comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion plan.
Bennett shares his background and career path that has led him to this new and important position at MSU, and he talks about what attracted him to the position at MSU.
“As I learned about this opportunity at MSU and began to do my research, I realized that MSU has been a forerunner and innovator for a very long time as a land-grant institution,” says Bennett. “I was pleased to learn of MSU’s leading status as a global research institution and of its core values of equality, inclusion, and connectivity which do align with my own personal values. I’m learning and understanding more about the diverse and robust campus community that exists.
“I also was aware of the solid foundation that has been built at MSU over many years by a lot of people to really think about how to develop and launch work that is relevant and that can help support the current and emerging needs of the Spartan community.
“This is truly a transformative time at MSU and there is a renewed commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I was happy to learn about the strategic planning process that is ongoing at the institution along with the diversity, equity, and inclusion plan. I look forward to learning more about what those processes have developed and how we will integrate the diversity, equity, inclusion-related work and needs into the broader strategy.”
Bennett shares his definitions for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And he elaborates on the mission, vision, and values of the Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives and some short and long-term goals for his office and team.
“Our mission aligns within and closely supports the university's mission. And the university's mission is to advance knowledge and transform lives. In addition, the work of my office and my team embraces MSU's core values of quality, inclusion, and connectivity. We do our work through an equity lens with the understanding that true excellence cannot be achieved without diversity. In our work we consider diversity among members of our community, we acknowledge various ways of living, learning, and working, and we promote inclusive practices and policies which support the success of all Spartans.
“We will begin to focus our efforts to ensure efficiency and impact, and we'll do this while we're addressing the critical needs of today's students, faculty, and staff. If we do this well in the short term it'll help guarantee that everyone on campus acknowledges, respects, and embraces the ever-evolving composition and character of the Spartan community, as well as promote the safety, satisfaction, wellbeing and overall success of Spartans, including those who are members of underrepresented groups. In the meantime what we'll do is monitor and assess what's happening, think about the relevance and impact of our current efforts, and of course we have to remain vigilant and anticipate persistent and emerging needs that may arise.”
What are some challenges and opportunities to achieving your goals and how will you know if you have an impact?
“One of the first challenges that I will have is a personal one. I'm brand new to MSU. No one knows me. Because of that I may not be trusted immediately and I may not gain the necessary buy-in to deploy the strategy that's currently being considered. But I am truly confident that this will change over time. And that will change over time as I begin to meet with people and learn more about them, the work that they do, their thoughts about the work that we should be doing, and how can we partner to do it together.
“I also know that there will be people on campus and off, students and colleagues, folks in the community, who may not fully understand or acknowledge this work is critical to promoting the overall success of the university. I want to be sure we spend time talking about that, engaging with people, understand what people's thoughts and beliefs are in order to make any clarification so that we can move forward together.
“Everyone has a role to play in helping move this important work of diversity, equity, and inclusion forward. I'll first say that we all have to embrace and leverage our own position and power as agents of change wherever we sit, whether we're students, faculty, staff, alumni, or members of the community. We also need to acknowledge that we are more similar than we are unalike. And when we do that I think that'll break down a lot of the misconceptions and potential hesitance that we have to engage and to help and assist in various ways. We have to spend time getting to know people who do not share all of our identities, I think that's really important. We have to treat people the way that we would like to be treated.
“I believe that we can make MSU an even more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and exemplary world-class institution if we all do our part. Just as we were forerunners and innovators that provided a model for land-grant institutions across the nation, we have an opportunity to lead the way and demonstrate what inclusive excellence looks like. And we can do this by modeling that behavior for our current and future students, faculty, staff, and alumni. I'm committed to doing my part and my team has been doing theirs. Now we must all decide the role we will play to help realize this vision and position MSU to be a beacon and an inspiration to our community, nation, and the world, especially during this period of diminished life, waning hope, and lack of compassion among many of us.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Cregg says “things are going well with our growers. Demand has been up the last few years; we're seeing good industry growth these days for Michigan trees.” And he describes some of the latest research he and his colleagues are involved in related to real Michigan Christmas trees. He also talks about how climate change is impacting Michigan’s Christmas tree industry. And he describes the mission of the Michigan Christmas Tree Association.
Cregg offers his tips on selecting, maintaining, and properly disposing of a real tree.
“When you go out to get a tree, it’s best to get the freshest tree you can. The best way to do that is to go out and cut your own. We have literally dozens and dozens of choose and cut Christmas tree farms around the state. I suspect pretty much anybody that's listening to this probably has a farm within 30 or 45 minutes of where they are.”
Cregg describes the “pull” and “tap” tests he suggests using when picking out your tree. And to properly maintain the tree throughout the holiday season Cregg says “fresh tree, fresh cut, fresh water. The big thing is to give the tree water and a lot of it. We hear different things about bleach, aspirin, sugar and soda pop. Just give it plain water.
“I don't think often people appreciate how much water a tree can take up, especially if it's a fresh tree. If you've gotten a choose and cut or a fresh tree from a lot, the tree doesn't know it's dead. It's going to keep taking up water and oftentimes, especially its first three or four days to a week when it's first in the house, you can almost hear that giant sucking sound as that tree is taking that water up. Check it daily.
“We usually estimate about a quart of water per inch of diameter. If you look at the cut end of your tree, it’s typically going to be about three or four inches across for a normal sized Christmas tree. Well, that means that tree can take up three quarts to a gallon of water a day and most of our stands maybe hold a gallon. Then you have to account for the displacement of the tree itself. Definitely check that tree often and keep the water to it. That's really the biggest thing.
“Also, think about where you place your tree. Avoid heat sources. If you've got a vent or something, make sure you put the tree away from that. If you can't, maybe use a piece of cardboard or something to block the flow so that air is not going directly onto the tree. If you can keep it away from direct sunlight, too, that helps. Those things will all help keep the tree fresh.”
And when the holidays are over, how do we properly and sustainably dispose of the tree?
“We want to make sure that we're recycling the tree. Some cities have curbside pickup. A lot of other places have central recycling. Look around for that. Oftentimes there's a park where you can drop your tree off and they'll grind it up. Those trees get ground up and made into mulch to go on to trails, beds, and things like that. Definitely the thing we want to avoid are the trees ending up in a landfill. Make sure that tree gets recycled. Some people live out in the country. They'll put the tree out in the field and it makes for a good bird habitat. There are some places where they drop them down into lakes and it makes fish habitat. There are a lot of ways of doing it, but just make sure that tree gets recycled somehow.”
Cregg discusses how the pandemic might impact tree shopping this year and suggests calling ahead to the farm you’re interested in going to and learn of their procedures and protocols.
“My key reminder is to keep your tree fresh. Nothing's worse than having a real tree and then getting a bunch of needles on the floor or, worse, have it become a safety hazard. Make sure that you get the tree fresh and that you keep a lot of water in it. That's really the big thing we want to emphasize. Michigan is one of the major growers in the country. One thing people can feel good about when they're getting a tree here in Michigan is that they're keeping their money local. You're supporting the local economy, and I think that's a good thing to be doing in these times.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Providing the analysis are Arnold Weinfeld, associate director for the institute, institute director Dr. Matt Grossman, and MSU economist Dr. Charlie Ballard.
“Michigan did go against Donald Trump and swung toward the Democrats, but not by much and not by as much as the polls were expecting,” Grossmann says. “We again saw a polling error in the same direction in very similar states from 2016, but of course, with a different electoral result that was mainly driven by white voters with a college degree in the suburbs and in West Michigan and the Traverse City area. Other than that, a lot of people voted the same way. We continue to find pretty big divides between elites and the public, especially on the Republican side where the Republican base is much more culturally conservative and much more favorable toward Donald Trump. And they still have views associated with racial resentment and white identity that are quite different than the political elite.”
“The biggest issue in this election was Donald Trump,” adds Ballard. “And that's really often true when somebody is running for a second term as President. The election becomes a substantial referendum on whether you want this person to continue in office. And what we saw was that Trump once again outperformed the polls. The other thing that I think is quite interesting is that Republicans outperformed Trump.
“He may have outperformed the polls, but not enough to win the election and Joe Biden's margin in the popular vote is substantially more than Hillary Clinton's margin in the popular vote four years ago. But the Democratic blue wave that some people have been thinking would happen really did not happen. Democrats actually lost seats in the House of Representatives. Take Susan Collins of Maine for instance. The Republican out polled Donald Trump in her state by double digits and she won re-election easily. And so, what we're seeing is that the nation and to a substantial extent, Michigan does not reject every element of the Republican agenda. We have people who are moderate to conservative on many issues, but I think there was at least something of a rejection of the very divisive tone that Donald Trump has brought to the office.”
“Charley’s right,” adds Grossmann. “Polls were off even more overall in House elections and state legislative elections and incentive elections than they were in the presidential vote. Republicans actually won the national House vote in 2016 by one point. So Donald Trump actually underperformed the generic Republican margin twice in 2016 and 2020. This time, it resulted in more gains for Republicans. It looks like what happened is that the new voters that Donald Trump brought in 2016, who at the time were Trump maybe only or mostly voters who didn't necessarily vote Democrat and Republican down the line, this time did vote Republican down the line, including for state legislature. And the new Biden voters that were previous Trump voters or previous non or third party voters did not necessarily also vote Democrat in other offices.
“I think that sort of pattern explains the discrepancy this time. And it is got to be troubling for Democrats moving forward if those continue because 2022 is already likely to be an election where the party out of the presidency does better. And it would only take a normal presidential slot midterm slump of about one third of the normal size for Republicans to take back over The US House of Representatives.”
“We saw some strange bedfellows in various places which I think will force both Democrats and Republicans to reevaluate where they go on certain issues in the future,” adds Ballard. “You can't find a more blue state than California, and there was a ballot initiative to bring back Affirmative action in California. It failed; it wasn't even close.
“Meanwhile, Florida, which voted for Trump despite polls suggesting the opposite easily passed a ballot initiative to substantially increase the minimum wage, which doesn't sound like traditional Republican orthodoxy. When you put those things together with the ongoing demographic shifts, we've got real questions that I don't think we yet know the answers to about what will the Republican party be post-Trump if it ever gets to be post-Trump. And where will the Democrats go? I think the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic party will have some difficult conversations going forward.”
“The one oddity is going into the election we were thinking this diversifying country was going to be hard for Republicans to maintain competition in and we actually saw racial depolarization,” Grossmann says. “It was actually white voters who were more likely to move against Republicans. And they either did not lose ground, or in some cases gained ground, among Hispanic and Asian constituencies. It will be interesting to look forward to see if the diversifying country does mean a move toward Democrats or whether Republicans are able to find ways to compete.”
The group discusses another tough election season for the accuracy many polls and what this election means for tweaking survey methodology. And they discuss the potential impact of redistricting on future elections.
“These seemingly arcane debates about survey methodology really matter if it's the case that there were people who said they were voting for third party but actually voted for Trump,” Grossmann adds. “It’s one thing if we got the turnout wrong. But if we have systematically been underestimating support among Republican voters for the last year, that matters for everything else. It matters for our estimates of how many people are following COVID restrictions, and it matters for the approval of the governor. All of those things if the problem is the sampling bias, which it very well could be, and some people being less likely to respond to polls, then it matters for all of our other estimates. Even the unemployment rate. Everything depends on getting a good sample of the public when we're making these determinations.”
“It's a real challenge and the inaccurate polls in my view can sometimes actually change the outcome of an election,” continues Ballard. “Polling is very difficult because there are a lot of people who are reluctant to respond to surveys. I think that we'll continue to tweak our methodology, try to find what ways we can to re-weight the sample and try to find ways we can locate certain demographics who are very reluctant to get involved in surveys. But I'm not sure that polls are dead yet.
“We’re observing an increasing segregation by political preference. And if a population is highly segregated geographically, it's difficult to get really competitive districts. Because if all the Republicans are in one district and all the Democrats are in another district, you're going to have districts that are not very competitive. The unfortunate by-product of that is that if you don't have a whole lot of districts where it's really competitive and where a winner has to appeal to moderates and even to the other party, then you're likely to get a Legislature or a Congress that's at least as polarized as the general public and even maybe more polarized.”
“We are actually seeing continued signs that moderates do better than those at the ideological extremes in general elections,” concludes Grossmann. “Charley mentioned Susan Collins. We also had an example where Elissa Slotkin outperformed her district, which voted for Trump by four points. So there are continued examples that that's true. There's also some positive trends for diversity in the Republican party. There'll be more Republican women than ever in the US house. Almost all of the Republicans that won in swing districts are either women or racial minorities. That's a positive diversifying trend for the Republican party. I think two pro-choice Republicans got elected to the US house. There may be some signs that the parties are starting to recognize that, at least in these swing districts, it's useful to put up people who can appeal to the other side.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
We do so with Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown, the Inaugural Chairperson and Professor of AAAS, Dr. Tamura Lomax, Foundational Associate Professor of AAAS, Dr. Kristie Dotson, Executive Academic Advisor to AAAS and Professor of Philosophy, and Dr. April Baker-Bell, continuing member of the transition team and Associate Professor of Language, Literacy and English Education.
“The African American and African Studies at Michigan State University (AAAS) began as a program in 2002,” says Dotson. “What was unique about it is that it was a program that was PhD granting. It did not have an undergraduate arm, but it did offer PhDs. One of the things the department is working toward on is a real commitment to supporting Black people, helping to facilitate and create cultural workers in Black communities, and to Black sovereignty.”
I was excited to read about AAAS's core areas and feminism, genders and sexuality studies,” Brown says, in talking about what attracted her to AAAS at MSU, “I was excited by the new build of this department and what we would create. It would be collectively oriented and anew, which meant that this work is bigger than any one person. And I'm interested always in being a part of something that will have impact for generations. The call for that integral chairperson position affirms my long-held commitment to ways that affirm Black communities and Black thought life.”
“The timing, the opportunity, and the people all aligned for me,” says Lomax. “Anyone who knows the history of Black studies knows that the emphasis on Black feminism is revolutionary. I don't mean in terms of offering a few classes here and there or sprinkling Black women faculty here and there. I mean literally to specifically and unapologetically center and weave Black feminism in our curriculum and our values, and our bylaws.
“The second thing is that we share a collective statement and the wellbeing of the whole, that's very important to Black feminism because, just to paraphrase Anna Julia Cooper, ‘When Black women are centered, everyone else's centered too.’ That is what drew me to the department. When I understood the vision for where this department could possibly go, I wanted to be here.”
“We insist that Black studies uncovers and creates technologies of living for all Black people in Black futures,” adds Brown. “When we say Black people, we mean all Black people. When we say Black futures, that is to say beyond survival into wellness, that is our vision that we created together. It guides our work, it guides our interactions, it guides our curriculum, and it will guide the work that we continue to do in the new build.”
“We have three organizing inquiries that motivate and sustain our work: Black Cultures and Institutions, Black Girlhood Studies, and Black Speculative Ecologies,” Dotson adds. “We specialize in community and cultural works, cultivating radical imagination, and collective revolutionary knowledge production. As a unit we are committed to making concrete connections between our scholarship, pedagogy, and social justice.”
“One of the main opportunities and challenges that is before us is that we have an opportunity to shape students who will go out and create alternative futures,” Lomax says. “I’m expecting them to go out and fight for this world, this other world that we want, where everyone can be a part of it and everyone can be a part of it in terms of wealth. One where everyone is living well and has an opportunity to access wellness. Right now that's not the case. But Black folks know that it's not been the case forever than in the United States.
“This is an opportunity for MSU to say who they are through the work that we do. There is a history, there's a narrative, that's not so good. It is important that we do well and that this work is supported. There's a lot at stake for us personally, there's a lot at stake for the institution, there's a lot at stake for the department. We need it to do well. For me, I need it to do well because I need to see this future that I've been dreaming about.”
“This is the department we've all been waiting for,” says Baker Bell. “This is the department we've needed for a very long time. I needed this department as an undergraduate student. I'm thinking about my daughter; this is the department she will need to be part of to explain our history and to map out the future we need. I'm so excited about what this will mean for our future students to come, not just at Michigan State, but everywhere. How is this particular department going to transform Black studies all around the country? I'm really excited and hopeful. I think it's so necessary. It's been necessary, but I'm really excited about the work that we’re going to do.”
The group discusses some its short and long term goals and some of the challenges and opportunities to reaching the goals, especially during a global pandemic. And they describe how people can participate in the evolution of the department.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
In a survey of 3,000 U.S. adults, people who were meeting an exercise goal of 150 minutes per week pre pandemic saw a 32 percent drop in physical activity following social distancing orders. So how can we get back on track or start a new fitness routine without risking injury? Our guests are FLEXcity Fitness co-founders Trista Parisian and Jenny Quinn. Trista and Jenny talk about some of the challenges their fitness studio has faced during the pandemic, how they pivoted to livestream sessions, and some tips on how to get moving before the onslaught of holiday foods.
Trista is a 2005 kinesiology graduate of the College of Education and certified personal trainer with over 15 years of experience. Jenny, who also has over 15 years of personal training experience, holds a BS and MS in exercise physiology and health promotion from Central Michigan University. Together, they co-founded FLEXcity Fitness in 2012.
FLEXcity Fitness is a fitness studio that focuses on high intensity interval training, better known as HIIT, and was recently announced as a recipient of the ATHENA PowerLink Award for 2021. Established in 1999, ATHENA PowerLink is a national mentoring program designed to increase the growth and profitability of women owned businesses. Following the closing of Michigan's fitness centers in March, Trista and Jenny moved toward digital offerings to keep clients engaged from the safety of their own homes. They also took on the task of opening a new fitness studio in Lansing in preparation for the return of in-person workouts.
Can you first define high intensity interval training and give us a little insight into what first drew you to it? Why did you build FLEXcity Fitness around this method of exercise?
“We have tried everything,” says Parisian. “We've done personal training and heavier lifting. We've done the barre workouts, cardio running, and we wanted to create a place that had everything, a one-stop shop. We've found the best of the best and put it all under one roof, and it incorporates everything no matter what fitness level you're at. We have beginners to advanced, and we like to call the high intensity work YIIT. It's your interval intensity work based on you. It's the most efficient and effective workout you're going to get.”
“We found that many people thought their path to health and wellness required a big time commitment,” adds Quinn. “If you couldn't devote an unrealistic amount of time to your fitness then what was the point? We really wanted our program to be efficient and effective, and the interval training is one of the quickest ways to get the most bang for your buck. Our workouts take less than 4 percent of the time in your day, but it will accomplish what you need from a movement standpoint while also being fun and keeping your body truly engaged. Also, the way we do it helps with injuries and just exercise boredom in general.”
“And with our studio workout, it's not like doing a thousand burpees,” adds Parisian. “We have treadmills and spin bikes, too. It's not just the calories you burn in class with the high intensity work. The benefits continue for the next 24 hours depending on how hard you work in class, and that's the fat burning, calories scorching, and all the good stuff that comes from the high intensity work.”
“And we both had done so many other things in our career. We kept thinking, ‘This is awesome, but it's missing this. This is a great option, but it misses this.’ What if we found something like HIIT that could check all of those boxes?"
When fitness studios had to close in March, Parisian and Quinn quickly pivoted to digital alternatives.
“We made the decision to close just before the shutdowns happened,” Quinn adds. “The first day we made the decision to close, we did an Instagram live workout that day from the studio as we were getting things packed up. And then by Wednesday the 18th, we offered our first class for people at home. That was when we all thought the shutdown was going to be two weeks. We had it going within the first week just because we wanted to be able to provide that to our customers, and we knew it was important because everyone was on edge and stress levels were high. We knew that if we could give our clients a little bright spot in their day to do something, that would be good. So we pivoted quickly.
“The feedback was very good and we've learned a lot. There are certain things we've all learned working from home and doing more virtually. We have tried to be mindful of people's time constraints at home and their space constraints. If you're in an apartment, you can't really be doing some of the stuff that you might be doing if you have a lot more dedicated exercise space.
“We improvised. We even developed a workout where you stuffed your suitcase full of books and that was your heavyweight!
“We are still offering our live classes. We're live streaming in-studio classes so people can, if they're not comfortable yet coming into the studio or don't have the childcare, they can still join us. Even if you don't have a treadmill or a spin bike at home.”
As instructors, Parisian and Quinn had to adapt as well.
“Our customers are amazing,” says Quinn. “We aren’t about ‘Hey, get a six pack for spring break.’ We’ve always sought sanity over vanity and health over the beach bod. Those are good side effects. We both have young children at home, so we know what it feels like to have no breaks whatsoever. Taking care of that mental side that physical activity provides is important, too.”
“If you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to be able to take care of everybody else,” adds Parisian. “If you're feeling good and at your best, then you can help do all the things that you want to do.”
Parisian and Quinn discuss the challenges in opening a studio during the pandemic and what they’re looking forward to in 2021.
“When we signed our lease last year to move to our dream studio that we designed from scratch, we didn't anticipate obviously a global pandemic,” Quinn says. “But some of the silver linings were that we knew that we would eventually get to a post-COVID world, so we designed the finishing touches in the studio accordingly. We put plexiglass between all the treadmills and installed a new HVAC system.”
“We also bought these really cool headphones so that when the weather got really nice, we've been doing outdoor classes,” Parisian says. “We could get 19 people outside in a group class with the headphones. We could really simulate an in-studio class with the loud music, and people have really been enjoying those special classes.”
“We’re looking forward to the time when people can get out and about more,” says Quinn. “I think we’ve done a really good job with our safety measures and we follow all the protocols and guidelines. Our customers tell us all the time how safe they feel. As restrictions either tighten or loosen, we feel like we can be quick to adapt to a range of scenarios.”
With the holidays on the horizon and some of us looking to get ahead on some of the calories coming our way, what piece of advice would you give to avoid injury and see the greatest benefits from a fitness routine?
“Keep moving,” Parisian says. “If you know you're going to be going to Thanksgiving dinner, make sure you get in a good workout and get active before you eat.”
“Figure out how to allocate your time for movement,” says Quinn. “One of the best tips for holidays is to break up your movement and take shorter bouts of movement throughout your day. Stretch for 10 minutes in the morning followed by a walk with your family or find something active to do rather than just sit around. Make time for non-food related activities during the holidays.
“A lot of people think ‘OK, I don’t want to gain weight over the holidays.’ They feel like they have to be training for the Olympics when they've been sedentary up until that point. So we always say to follow that crawl, walk, run mentality. Meet yourself where you're at, start small, and then slowly start building, because those small steps are the things that are going to give big rewards later on.”
Parisian and Quinn say health and fitness are more than working out. The food we fuel ourselves with is equally as important.
“We believe in the 80/20 rule,” Quinn says. “We believe in making good choices most of the time, but also that life is supposed to be enjoyed and lived. If you are making good choices, eating well, and eating healthy, but also enjoying life, it tends to make it easier. We're not big fans of super restrictive or unrealistic ways of eating.”
“We're big into real food, not things that are made in a factory,” Parisian says. “If you're going for your Thanksgiving dinner, try to eat healthy foods before. Don’t go places starving. Eat a good salad before you go. Fill up on the greens or have a healthy smoothie. And it when you can, drink a lot of water. Water is huge.”
How have you maintained a positive attitude throughout these trying times?
“We have little kids and we have to stay positive for them because they can feel everything going on,” says Quinn. “Honestly we have felt like, what's the alternative? We know that we have to be positive for our customers because we care about their health and wellness. So by just being there for other people and trying to be their cheerleaders has naturally given us that positivity. There are few things we have control over right now, but our mindset is one of them.
“We care. We love what we do. We are going to figure out a way to do it, and it might look a little different than we thought, but health and wellness have never been more important. We know that what we do matters in the grand scheme of things and that life will hopefully eventually return to something like it used to be. We always say you can't control much, but you can control your feet and your forks. That's what we're trying to do.”
Watch this conversation on the MSU Alumni Office Facebook page here.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Thomas is a university distinguished professor, and in 2008, he led the team that prepared the winning FRIB proposal, bringing FRIB to Michigan State University. Since then, he's led a team of 850 employees to run the FRIB laboratory within Michigan State University.
“FRIB is the world's most powerful heavy ion accelerator,” Glasmacher tells Spartans athletic director Bill Beekman. “We can accelerate any element from hydrogen to uranium to half the speed of light at quite a high intensity. By doing that, we can make rare isotopes that once existed on earth that have long since decayed and continue being made in the universe and in stars. We can make those isotopes available to scientists from all over the country so they can study their properties and see how they can be applied to better everybody's life.”
Glasmacher explains how FRIB works and how the facility is a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility and what that means.
“Part of being a user facility is that scientists have to write proposals to use the facility. They have to promise to publish the results. These proposals get reviewed by a panel of other scientists. And if they're ranked high enough, they get allocated beam time. Scientists come from all over the country and the world.
“The average experiment has teams of 30 to 50 people. These instruments are too hard to run just with one scientist. You have to convince the panel that you have a group of people who can pull it off and get the data analyzed. The typical experiment is about a week-long and involves those 30 to 50 collaborators. Some of those collaborations are also from different countries. They come here a couple of weeks before, set up their instruments, get everything going, then run it for a week or two. We have about 1,500 scientists in our user group, and they come from probably about 100 countries in the world.
“FRIB will be the most powerful facility in the world. Our accelerator is the most modern and powerful; scientists go where the best opportunities are.”
Glasmacher describes FRIB’s impact on Michigan’s economy and developing the next generation of scientists. And he touts the significance of FRIB being located on the campus of a research university.
“The great thing about the Michigan-based construction and the Midwest focused machine shops and fabricators is that we found we have about 1,000 suppliers. We found 1,000 partners who were willing to put up with us and help us with this. We have found suppliers who build things similar to the ones we want who can extend within their comfort zone to the product we need.
“And our scientists make discoveries along the way. To me, that is one of the key features of FRIB. It's a world-class machine facility on the campus of a research intensive university. And we have the opportunity to expose students who come to study at MSU to FRIB. We give them tours. Some of them have jobs here, and some of them do undergraduate research here. And by engaging in nuclear science and accelerator physics, they see what's possible. Then they start to imagine a career in that field, and then they take a career in that field.”
Glasmacher appreciates the bipartisan support FRIB has received from the beginning.
“We have an incredible team and I think we're just really humbled as a team and as a university to be afforded the opportunity to build this national facility for the country and for the scientists of the world.
“In the beginning, we just wrote the proposal and then we won the job, and then we got started. And it's only in the last year or two that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that's a really good feeling because the important part is the accelerator is working. We commissioned the accelerator already. This last year will be spent hooking it up to the existing facility. And there were many moments where we weren't quite sure what the next right step is, but in the end it all worked out with the help and advice of many, many people. And we really appreciate the public's trust placed in us to make this one of a kind thing work.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
At the MSU Broad, her first initiative was a community-powered installation entitled Acts of Care, where local individuals submit nominations for honoring those who have taken care of our communities during this pandemic.
“The museum is a tremendous asset to be linked and nested in such a prominent and respected university as Michigan State University,” Ramirez Montagut tells Spartans Athletic Director Bill Beekman. “What our university museum has that few other independent museums have is that we can actually go and chat with experts in any single field out there and have them contribute with their expertise to the art exhibitions. We can leverage that faculty expertise in many occasions to help us give context to some of the art that we have on view.
“Art museums are a lot of fun, which is why I work in one. They help us connect with each other. Art inspires us. Art gives us a lot of energy. It also stimulates our senses and our intellect. A lot of faculty members also enjoy this collaboration with the museum. And seeing their work framed inside an art venue instead of a classroom must be fun for them as well. It's really the perfect universal stage where we can bring a lot of partners, not only on the campus, but off campus, to help us tell the stories of each other and ourselves, ultimately. We learn a lot about ourselves through a museum and we learn a lot about the communities that we live in.
“Sometimes with contemporary art it may seem that we really don't understand what we're looking at unless we are art historians or art experts. So I certainly understand that. And that certainly happens to me sometimes when I walk into gallery spaces that have no signage, no labels, and no explanations. A lot is expected of the visitor in that case. It's like going to a theater piece or a concert where the audience is expected to clap and to participate. A little bit of that happens in contemporary art museums.
“Ultimately I do think that U.S. museums of contemporary art need to do a better job at explaining the art on view because I do think it's not easy. And it is not easy because contemporary artists are always trying to create something that has never existed before. So how do you do that? How do you invent something that nobody has ever seen or even imagined? And you create a visual culture object out of that. And of course, if there's no precedent for that kind of visual, it's hard for us to then recognize something that is just not familiar to us at all.
“It defeats the purpose if someone walks into our museum and they leave feeling like they didn't understand. So it's the job of the museum to start providing those points of access and explaining, ‘Well, this is an experimentation with a new material,’ or, ‘This is an image that came from abstracting a molecule.’ It's exciting, but we need to do a really good job at the museum of explaining why what you're looking at is important. What are you looking at? And if not, what are the intentions behind the artist? And then just share that with you so that you have a good standing ground to start. Then you can explore your own creativity and your own association of ideas.”
Ramirez Montagut believes the building itself is a work of art.
“The complexity of the building and the added layer of creativity of the build environment where art is being displayed really adds to the experience, not only for the visitor, but the whole environment. Many museums are designed as white boxes. White cubes, we call them. What is nice about the MSU Broad building and the Zaha design is that you're constantly being attracted to the next space and the next space. And once you are done with the museum, then the frame of the landscape around you, the visual frames are also very appealing. So then you want to go outside and enjoy the sculpture garden. That's something that you need to understand when you work with the building.
“We have so many beautiful windows that frame the terrific outdoors of our campus that I would say that the building actually is enticing people to go outside while they're looking at terrific arts. It's a spectacle of attention between the indoors and the outdoors. And it's just really terrific as an experience to go see art and feel like you're indoors and outdoors at the same time. It's quite unique. And I do believe that that's precisely why it is a masterpiece.”
Ramirez Montagut explains her passion for creating socially engaged exhibits. And she says she’s already planning for the museum’s tenth anniversary coming up in two years.
“MSU is just absolutely the perfect setting to do that because we have a strength in engaged scholarship. We have a strength in working with our communities, learning from our communities and their lived experience and their expertise and then helping all of us access that knowledge to then discuss in an academic scholarly setting.
“We hope people take the opportunity to visit the museum. It's really a very refreshing experience given our working-from-home situation. It's highly recommended. I went to the museum today and I just had a blast. So I can certainly recommend the experience for folks who want to be able to have an informal learning experience and an inspiring one, but within a very safe environment. So hopefully we'll see many of you at the museum soon.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
The College of Music at Michigan State University is thrilled to announce that a project created fully by artists from MSU has been nominated for two Latin Grammy Awards. King Mangoberry is a suite of music for wind symphony written by MSU professor of composition Ricardo Lorenz that has now been recognized internationally, and the connections to MSU and the surrounding community are strong.
In addition to Ricardo, this recording is performed by students in the MSU Wind Symphony, conducted by MSU professor of music Kevin Sedatole, produced by MSU assistant professor of music David Thornton, arranged by MSU music alumnus Travis Higa, and recorded locally by MSU music alumnus Sergei Kvitko.
In addition, the artwork for the CD package was created by seventh and eighth grade students at Chippewa Middle School in Okemos, Michigan. It's truly a home grown project made entirely in Michigan and it's now in the epicenter of Latin music after being nominated for Best Classical Album and Best Classical Contemporary Composition for the track Pataruco. The latter features renowned maracas player Manuel Alejandro Rangel, and it's the first time in Latin Grammy history that Venezuelan maracas are in a classical music category nomination.
It's rare to receive nominations of this kind for a recording created by an academic institution.
“It’s really important to point out that if it wasn't for this collaboration, there wouldn't be a CD,” emphasizes Lorenz.
“This is something we've wanted to do for a long time,” adds Sedatole, as the duo explains the collaborative process that brought the pieces to life. MSU and its College of Music are known for their ethos that supports interdisciplinary collaboration.
On the Grammy nominations, Lorenz says “the beautiful message about this is that we're nominated by the Latin Recording Academy for a project that is mainly made in Michigan. I am so proud and so happy for the performers, these phenomenally talented students who they would never see themselves in that realm of being spotlighted by anything having to do with the Latino culture. Yet here they are and some of them, maybe this was the only connection they have to anything that's Latino. Now they are considered for an award by the most prestigious association that recognizes Latino culture.”
Sedatole describes how the College is adapting to the pandemic as “we have no undergraduate students on campus except for some of our undergrads who come into the building so they can practice. The process is very regimented and safe and follows extensive protocols. The provost has recognized that our students are unique in that way that they've got to have the capability to practice in a space that allows them to do that.
“I will say that the students have just been fantastic about following the right protocols. And if someone feels like that they have been exposed, there's an immediate call that goes out and that person will quarantine. Luckily we haven't had to deal with that very much at all over the last two months.
“It's been a challenge but one that's been worth it. And the students are having to perform in different ways that may be uncomfortable for a while. But it is making them listen and communicate in a different way. I do believe once we get through all of this and things come back to quote unquote normal, that we're going to have learned a bunch from going through this procedure.
“Mainly we're going to learn how much we love to perform with each other. That's been the biggest hurdle for them to get over. We just never knew how much we missed it until now. We learn not to take things so much for granted when they're taken away from us and hopefully we'll get back to whatever normal is going to be sooner than later.”
“My admiration goes to conductors and musicians like Kevin who have made their living bringing people together and having them listen to each other in very close quarters, which is so necessary in order to make good quality music,” Lorenz says. “I'm just very proud and very grateful that they will not stop, as it should be.
“One thing I would say that has been a benefit to me personally and something we can eventually incorporate when we do go back to making music in the way we have grown up to love it is that space is no longer a deterrent. I've been able to have these amazing workshops with students all over the country through Zoom, something that I would have not been able to because sometimes it's expensive or you can't travel. That’s not a limitation anymore.
“I've been part of wonderful conversations with composers that I would have never been in the same space with them if it wasn't for this new opening to technology. And another example, my son, who's a 14 year old cellist, is studying with a cellist in Georgia. He has never seen him in the same room and he has been studying with him for three months already. He's making great progress all through Zoom.
“Music is all about relationships. It's all about making relationships and bridging differences. We couldn't have had our wonderful CD if we had not brought in an artist like Manuel Rangel, who brings in a completely different culture and a different scene to music that we don't have. We wouldn't be talking to you right now about being nominated for a Latin Grammy. It's the bridging that I'm always very interested in.”
“And the experiences for the students is why we do these projects,” Sedatole says. “It's great to have a record of pieces for a particular composer, but for the students, it's all about their experience they have with composers and soloists and what they learned from that. And particularly this music, like Ricardo was saying, they wouldn't have had that experience dealing in this particular genre, if you will, and working with a soloist from another country who, in all honesty, didn't speak great English. We let the music speak for itself.
“That, for me, is probably the most important aspect of this whole journey, what the students get out of it and how they grow both musically and as people. It's great to have the CD and it's great to have all of the awards, hopefully the awards, but more importantly, it's the experience for the students.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“We started in 1970 with people like Jack Shingleton and Patrick Scheetz,” says Gardner. “They saw that they could add information and understanding to the broader community in college recruiting. The survey has continued to grow and evolve.”
Gardner says the pandemic is having a dramatic impact on the college labor market.
“It’s changing how companies recruit. The virus makes it very difficult for companies to decide on what their hiring needs are. There's a group of employers that have no choice but to hire, and they're hiring. Their businesses are going to go on whether we have a virus or not. Some sectors seem to be weathering this better. Then we have sectors that are completely being crushed by the virus.”
Recruiting on campus is different now. And he explains why associate degrees are faring better. He says some companies of all sizes are hiring.
“Twenty five percent of employers that typically would be on campuses are riding this out. They're not going to hire this year, or they're waiting until January, February, maybe even March before they decide if they're going to hire anyone. About 42 percent say they are going to lower their hiring, which is a significant number. We haven't seen that since we started coming out of the recession in 2008. Another 30-some percent that are increasing hiring are balancing that out.
“So there's a lot of uncertainty that makes these numbers kind of mucky.
“Around the country, employers are hiring community college students, particularly those coming out of applied technologies like computer science, IT, and health technicians. It's kind of sad that a lot of the community colleges have taken big enrollment hits at a time when there's probably going to be a demand for those students, depending on the regional economic activities around those community colleges. If there's any bad news in here, it's for MBAs. The market is down quite a bit. It's typical in an economic recession to see MBAs go in a swoon like that. It's a questionable investment if you don't have a lot of work experience to justify that MBA at this time.
“Students have to be prepared and they have to be ready and they have to be persistent. The job market is going to open and unfold in dramatically different ways over the next nine months. It could go along very well for a while and then all of a sudden shut down. Students have to be prepared. They can't get discouraged.
Employers are active out there. And the students have to be prepared, too, because there's a lot of labor out there that's now displaced, and that it makes it easier for employers to find experienced laborers. They don't have to rely on new college labor as much. So, just to sit there and wait for employers to come to you is not going to work this year. In fact, even the recruiting strategies aren't even suited to that anymore.”
Gardner talks about the new blend of in-person and virtual strategies for recruiting. The use of digital platforms in recruiting isn’t new, but its use is increasing. Employers say there are pros and cons to virtual recruiting.
“Employers and students still like to engage with each other face to face in person. But they know virtual interactions will continue to increase.
“Students have to understand that the pandemic will change how they go about looking for work. It's never been truly a passive activity. Students who are more proactive tend to do better and faster. It's certainly going to be much more proactive on the student's part to reach out and figure out how to use these technologies and how to use the information that they can glean from, say Handshake at Michigan State or Simplicity at their campus, to identify employers and do their research and then make the contacts and be ready and prepared to talk to them in ways that they haven't before. And this is not going to go away the minute the virus is over and everybody's going to happily come back to campus. This is accelerated adoption of technologies that we predicted would happen, but maybe on this soon. Now I think we're going to see it accelerate and happen much faster.”
About half the companies surveyed expect most work to stay virtual at home. And many assignments will be virtual.
“It could be that new hires will come in and spend a couple weeks at a facility. They'll get an assignment that will have them work remotely, and then when they finish that they may come back in and work with the team in-person for six months on a project and then rotate out back out to more remote work.
“So what it really does now is combines a whole bunch of divergent skills in a new package, in a new way. You've got to be able to work effectively virtually. You have to prioritize your time. You have to prioritize your work assignments because working virtually, it's really hard to all of a sudden pick up something new that just happens to come into the office or something that has to be handled right away. Employers find that doesn't work very well virtually.
“Overlying everything are broad power skills that are more grounded in culture and values and attitudes and behaviors that emerge out of how you approach work, how you work effectively with others, and how you do all that is going to still be critically important. And employers acknowledge that. I think that's going to be their biggest challenge in recruiting as we see more and more students having to do remote work as part of their internship. You lose the opportunity to build relationships and instill the organizational culture.
“We're in this flux period of how we're going to balance this remote work, which more and more of us are going to do. Everybody likes to be in an office and see people every once in a while. I think you're going to see a much more rotational kind of schedule.
“It's about attitude. It's about being flexible and adaptable. A lot of students may have anticipated that they were going to do certain kind of jobs when they graduate. It may not be possible for them to do that, and so employers are encouraging them to be flexible and open minded about what the opportunities are. These jobs may not be what exactly they wanted, but they may open paths to where they want to go.
“When it gets down to it, it's a mantra used much during the recessions in 2000 and gain in early 2008. You have to plan. You've got to start early and be prepared. That means you've got to do your research. You've got to think about how you're going to interview differently. You have to persist. That may not be easy. If you're in computer science, you're probably going to have a lot more opportunities than others. Still, every student has to plan for this. It's plan, prepare, and persist. That’s the message right at the moment.
See and download the Annual Recruiting Trends Survey & Report here.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Michigan’s election landscape still looks uneven, Matt Grossmann, director of MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Science, said in the monthly IPPSR broadcast that covered politics, economics and a new election “pick-em” game, Election Madness.
On the podcast, MSU Economist Charles Ballard projected a pickup in the economy late in 2021 or even by mid-2022 as job losses have worsened recently and further fiscal stimulus legislation stalls.
Political scientist Eric Gonzalez Juenke was the October podcast’s featured guest. With Grossmann’s help, he created the game inviting policy wonks, researchers, faculty and students to pick Nov. 3 election winners in 21 races.
Picks are due by Monday, Oct. 26. Juenke and Grossmann select the winners – in this game -- for honors only.
At the same time, Michigan voters are casting ballots to elect president, U.S. Congress, state House of Representative, state Board of Education, higher education boards and local positions across the state.
“More than a million people have already voted in Michigan, and we will expect those numbers to climb,” Grossmann said.
Until 2018, Michigan voters had 30 days before a presidential election to register to vote. They could vote absentee only for certain reasons.
In 2018, a Michigan constitutional amendment allowed absentee voting for any reason and empowered voters to register up to and including the day of election. Facing the pandemic coronavirus in 2020, Michigan’s absentee voters were encouraged to mail ballots or drop them off at drop boxes or in person at local clerk’s offices.
With that change, “it’s really sort of uncharted territory for us,” Grossmann said. “But overall, (Vice President Joe) Biden is leading in the national polls. Democrats and Biden are both spending a lot more than Republicans. And the trends seem to be moving a little bit in the Democratic (Party) direction.”
While Biden is ahead in most national polls leading up to the Nov. 3 national election, Grossmann recalled 2016’s election. Polls then predicted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of then-candidate President Donald Trump in 2016. He is now seeking a second term.
“I would caution that in both the 2016 and the 2018 elections, we saw early voting enthusiasts talk about Democratic advantages building over time, only some of which materialized when all of the votes were counted.”
Absentee ballots require voters to take additional steps, like signing their ballots, Grossmann said. Such requirements may offer a statistical trade-off between incomplete ballots and increased voter enthusiasm. “It's just a displacement of a vote rather than a real change,” he said.
Meanwhile, the economy has changed from “horrifying” this April to “only bad” this fall, Ballard observed. It may not approach a more “normal” status until the pandemic is under greater control, he said. “Many of the forecasts suggest that the economy might be able to return to its pre-COVID-19 state by sometime in late 2021, or in the first half of 2022.”
Job losses have hit more women, minorities and lower-income households, Ballard said. U.S. Census Bureau data, due next September, will increase an already 40-year trend in income inequality, he added.
For the past 10 years, Juenke had hoped to create an election-year competition with the excitement of the National College Athletic Association’s college basketball championship. The NCAA games have become known as “March Madness” for their spring timing. Fans play along by selecting winning teams.
Some 3,000 students are now competing for game points. IPPSR Technology Manager Jes Sprague created an app so teams can play together against faculty and national pundits.=
Juenke and Grossmann calibrated points. Select upset winners successfully, and “you win the points,” Juenke said.
For example, Democrat Hilary Scholten is running against Republican Peter Meijer for Michigan’s open 3rd District Congressional seat. Pick underdog Scholten to win in an upset to gain six points. Pick Meijer, favored for his name recognition as grandson of supermarket founder Fred Meijer, to gain four game points.
The online game also hosts links to election forecasts, political science resources, scorecards and point calculators.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
She's also been a magazine editor and the owner of a large, successful agricultural advertising agency. In addition, Patricia is a distinguished alumni award recipient from MSU's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Orlowitz reflects on her more traditional communications career before 1997 and her international development career since. On the global front, she has worked on numerous U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) projects, in a variety of roles, at far flung locations all over the world.
The success of a six-year Private Farmers Assistance Program in Moldova was featured in People Magazine in 2000. The project focused on land reform measures that broke up collective farms and issued private land titles to over 1 million Moldovans. For her leadership on the project, Orlowitz was presented with the Republic of Moldova Civic Medal in 2001 by the president of Moldova.
More recently, in Bangladesh, Orlowitz worked with the World Food Programme, recipient of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, to design the first ever food assistance program in Dhaka’s urban slums. The pilot program helps 50,000 urban poor in two, low-income areas of Dhaka at high risk of COVID-19. Beneficiaries receive cash-based transfers for fresh vegetables, staples, and eggs from local vendors, or, if they are quarantined with COVID symptoms, a food package delivered to their door.
Orlowitz also discusses other particularly rewarding, albeit often challenging projects. In Cambodia, for example, Orlowitz and her team developed a ground-breaking program that helped to significantly reduce maternal and infant mortality during pregnancy and childbirth.
And then there were the challenges associated with her work with the USAID Afghanistan Division. “I will say every project is tough and rewarding at the same time,” says Orlowitz. “But, for a number of reasons, I did find Afghanistan especially difficult.” One of those reasons had to do with her working closely with the military and the associated security issues.
In discussing what she has learned about U.S. foreign policy and the importance of international development programs, Orlowitz uses a metaphor.
“When we look at foreign assistance and foreign policy, in general, we say there are three branches of government, three arms that carry out our U.S. national security policy. Thus, there are three legs to our national security stool. First, there is diplomacy. That's the State Department. Then there is national defense--our armed services. And, thirdly, there is development, and that's USAID and people like me and people like the MSU students and professors who are working in international development. At any given time, each of these three branches is doing what you need in foreign policy and national security to try to ensure a more stable world.
“Development is indeed a difficult concept to fully grasp. When I first started working in the international arena, I didn't fully understand what it was.”
Orlowitz likes to use examples to better elucidate development.
“A country wants to have better infrastructure so people can get their agricultural products from the farm to the market. You need to have roads. Well, how do you develop those roads? And how do you finance those roads? If you're a developing country, you need to find a way to collect taxes or generate some kind of income, but you don't even know how to do that. We can help.
“And then look at things that we have learned in education, early grade reading being the foundation of education. And how do you better teach early grade reading to first and second graders? If we can share those skills with a developing country, that's the kind of program that helps them improve education for all their citizens.
Orlowitz is extremely grateful for the years she spent in East Lansing.
“MSU totally prepared me not for just my international experience, but for all of the jobs that I've had. A good internship opened my eyes to the interconnectedness of agriculture to many different things. MSU gave me the basic skills. MSU exposed me to students and professors from around the world. But I also think MSU gave me something even more basic. And that's an appreciation of opportunities—to be able to listen and learn and keep learning over a lifetime.”
Orlowitz concludes by sharing some advice for young communications professionals.
“You have to, in your career, look for career tracks that may not specifically say communications. I look at my counterparts in the Army who are in civil and public affairs. And they're doing communications, but they may not always call it that. In Afghanistan, I worked with great Army colleagues who were running preparedness programs and development programs, but working hand in hand with me on the USAID development side.
“I think communications experts no longer need to look just at careers in magazine and news journalism, or on television and radio as we used to, but to look for other related, but less apparent positions, whether at a company, a non-profit or a branch of government. Communications is a basic skill, and everybody is always going to need effective communicators. If you are open to those other opportunities and are even willing to help persuade those companies or agencies that what they're missing is a good communicator, I think you'll find fascinating career prospects out there.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
During the pandemic, Robin has shifted her outreach methods from large scale, in-person events to personalized accessible experiences for parents and kids adjusting to the new reality of at home learning.
“The pandemic has made families really concerned with whether this will be a lost year or not,” Pizzo says. “Families have to be very flexible and fluid. They have to be okay with not knowing what tomorrow is or what changes may occur in the future as soon as a week from now. And that uncomfortableness can be difficult for families. And you feel as though your children might not receive all of the best that they deserve and should have from the school system to educate them at home in cooperation with your school system and teachers. Families are really wrestling with what this year will look like. And one of my roles and responsibilities as director of education is to give them the confidence and the encouragement that they'll be okay and that they have the skills and the tools to help see their children through this very tumultuous, interesting, trying time.”
Pizzo details how her role has changed during the pandemic.
“We continue to move forward with our mission to inspire and to educate and to help support our families do the job that they are already doing and encourage them to stay relentless.”
How has the pandemic shaped your perspective as a leader in education, and where do you see this all going? And what are some of the lasting changes in education?
“It has caused me to feel like I need to continue to be a staunch advocate for inclusive and equitable resources and support for children and families at every level. Socioeconomically, we see that there are some disparities when you have limited access to broadband and wifi or resources within the home even for those children where home may not be the safest place to learn all day. I think that one thing that PBS and WKAR have always done is to provide a safe place for children to learn. When you turn on that TV you're able to watch programming that's encouraging and that continues to teach each child that they have a world of possibility within them. We believe in and support co-viewing with our families so that they are able to teach and learn with their children. That's really, really important.
“I am concerned, however. I was a longtime educator in the Lansing School District. I've taught just about every grade level. I also was a director at Lansing Community College helping families who were trying to get through their programs with young children and supporting them through their programs. And I’ve been an adjunct professor at Davenport. I've educated at every level. I know how difficult that can be to maintain some sanity but also make sure that every student receives the differentiated instruction and care and support that they need to be successful. I need to maintain that advocacy and that commitment to support all families through this and to speak on their behalf.
“And part of the way we do that at WKAR is by being a connector to all of the partners within the system. There are so many partners at Michigan State University and all throughout our region that are working on the behalf of families and children and just making sure that the voices of all children are heard and the needs of all children are met. It's a huge undertaking, but we cannot allow this pandemic to take away from that work.”
What’s your advice for parents at home on how to keep their kids engaged and how to support their child's development in these crazy times? Really, we don't have an end in sight at this point.
“We don't have an end in sight, but my advice is the same advice I give myself sometimes. First, breathe. Sometimes we want everything to be happening that isn't happening and you just need to breathe. And on the days that you need to take a break and your kids need to take a break, take a break and then get back to it. Strategize with your children. Talk to them and ask them what will work. What helps? If we can't do six or seven hours of sitting in front of this screen for you to learn, how can I help you get the best out of this experience? Work with your teachers and continue to advocate on your children's behalf.
“We believe in all our parents and their ability to help support their children. I encourage people to get questions to me at WKAR at robin@wkar.org. Send in your questions. We'll research and we'll connect with partners if I don't have the answer. I definitely just say breathe. It's okay. It's not supposed to look like it did before the pandemic.”
Watch this conversation with Robin on Facebook.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Siu is from the Cleveland Ohio area and came to MSU from Case Western Reserve University.
“I'm really excited to come to Michigan State and learn another organization structure, a whole lot of new people, and build new relationships,” says Siu. “I hope to bring what I have in terms of experience and goals to help develop the leadership among IT teams and the security team overall and help Michigan State become a little more agile from an IT standpoint and able to respond to the constantly growing security threats.”
Siu shares his definition for information security and says it’s important to distinguish between data and information.
“We keep thinking about how we are protecting information by balancing out the risk of deploying it, giving it away, and making it more broadly available to the community because that's what the mission of university is, to discover knowledge and disseminate it and share it.
“I didn't say data. I said knowledge, and knowledge is on the top of the stack of information. So I have data that helps us define information, and then you use that to create knowledge. Protecting that means making sure its integrity has not been modified. Knowledge grows and evolves. As the chief information security officer, my role is to help ensure that all the IT systems and all the workflow that goes on around that helps the education and research missions achieve their goals.
“I'm essentially going to be Michigan State's IT risk manager. And that means not running away from risk. It means taking some and understanding what those qualities are that it takes to take risks without exposing us too far. Obviously, information security in higher education has run into broad challenges as we've moved a lot of things into cloud-based resources. It's clear that information technology has revolutionized how higher education works in the last 20 years.”
Siu talks about some of his short and long-term goals for protecting MSU information security.
“We are really going to refine the security strategy for the university, the information security strategy in particular. I'm looking forward to connecting with decision makers and stakeholders to get their input on how we make decisions on the information security side because we don't succeed when we make decisions in a vacuum. That's a key lesson learned from working at any university. There are stakeholders and they have varying points of interest, and sometimes how research is done in higher education often means you've got government requirements to lay specific security programs.”
Challenges and opportunities to achieving these goals?
“The very first one that's obvious to us all is COVID-19 has changed the way we operate. It's changed the economy of the world. Most of Michigan State is virtual and remote, and that changes the threat envelope or the threat exposure of user computers working remotely from home. They don't have some of the same controls to protect them from attack from internet based sources. And so that's spread out our threat surface. That's probably the top thing right now, how we help users who weren't used to working from home and now have been doing so for several months.
“The second piece is, Michigan State had a ransomware attack last spring. The attackers have pivoted the way they adjust their response because they want money. And they've been demanding ransoms by encrypting your infrastructure and taking you offline out of business. And now they've actually pivoted to ex-filtrating data and threatening to disclose that, especially if it was sensitive information. So now do you trust them to not disclose it if you pay the ransom? I think that's one of our problems we have to deal with all together. And that's not just Michigan State. I'm pretty much certain that's everybody in the higher education environment plus anybody that has any IT infrastructure exposed to the internet, which is pretty much everybody.”
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Phishing and spoofed emails are areas we all need to be more aware of.
“We want to make sure people are aware that if you receive emails that have what looks like an attachment or an invoice that maybe mirroring a business process you're familiar with, you have to still be very wary of those. That is how most of the ransomware attacks are still occurring. They send you an attachment and the email systems don't filter that out. And oftentimes it's a Microsoft word document that you have to download and operate, and it will take advantage of unknown vulnerabilities within your desktop and then start to infect your machine. And then it works its way across your networking and that can happen at blistering speeds.
“The second thing to think about that I've seen in the past five or six months is still the spoofed email. The attackers look up your department directory and they see who all the faculty members are. They spoof in the name of one and they say, ‘Hey, I need your help.’ That's their classic gift card scan. ‘I'm in a meeting and I can't get back to you right now. So just send me this stuff. Can you go buy me some gift cards and I'll pay you back? I promise.’ And that has turned out to be something that people are quite susceptible to.
“We are going to be making some more concerted campaigns about using two factor authentication throughout all of Michigan State University authentication environments. “I look forward to coming up to the campus. I live in Ohio right now and am working remotely. At some point you'll see me around campus. I wear a cowboy hat and boots. I think that'll fit right in with the Spartans.
“There are challenges to higher education. It starts with data, moves to information, then moves to knowledge. Those three different steps have security issues in each one of them. Security is going to be able to enable and enhance a number of those things and hopefully inhibit the problems that do occur from being in a world where respect for boundaries like that on the internet are gone. It's important for us to understand that and understand where we're going. And I hope to bring that sort of focus and attention to these issues throughout my future here at Michigan State University.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Bennett most recently served as Northwestern University's inaugural associate provost for diversity and inclusion and its chief diversity officer. As vice president and chief diversity officer, Bennett will report directly to President Stanley and work collaboratively with other university senior executives, deans, faculty, staff, and students to develop and implement a comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion plan.
“We are living through an intense period of reckoning around issues of racial justice at the moment in our culture; that's one of the reasons why this is important,” says Chris Long, dean of MSU’s College of Arts and Letters and co-chair of the search committee.
“As we think about the commitment that Michigan State University has to excellent research and teaching, we know that commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is at the heart of that mission of excellence. We know that science is better when it is undertaken in diverse communities. We know that the questions we ask in the humanities and the social sciences and the arts that we undertake are better when we have diverse voices in the process. This position is at the heart of Michigan State University's effort to be a premier research and teaching university in the country.”
“You cannot have excellence at any level, whether it be academic, administrative, or in our outreach mission to the community without an eye to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” adds Melissa Woo, executive vice president for administration and chief information officer and co-chair of the search committee. “This is so important at this time. It's past time and this is the time to really focus on having someone come in, give us a vision that brings all of us together as a community, and really helps us to understand what it means to get to the next level in truly having a diverse community. One that provides equity and is inclusive.”
Long and Woo describe the open and transparent hiring process that sought community input.
“What we really needed was a person who could convene the communities, could bring communities together, and focus all this great energy towards advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion at MSU,” Woo says.
“One of the main things that we were thinking about was could we find somebody who had executive experience at a comparably complex university,” Long adds. “Obviously working on these issues at Michigan State University as an AAU University, a member of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, and a major land-grant university is an enormous undertaking. So we needed to find somebody who had direct experience with leading in that kind of a context. That was an important component of our search.
“Jabbar demonstrated an ability to listen and an ability to convene people as Melissa emphasized. He’s someone who will both have a strategic vision to advance, but also who has demonstrated the ability to listen to various constituencies in shaping that strategic vision. We thought it was very important to have someone who could listen and nurture the kind of trust that we know is going to be needed to make transformative change here at MSU.”
“Something that really stood out when we looked at all of the feedback is that people thought that he would do a good job here by consensus and called out all of these qualities that Chris just talked about,” says Woo. “Someone who is collaborative, who is a convener, who can bring people together. Those are incredibly important skills for the candidate to have. I'm really excited to work with Jabbar when he gets onto campus.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“One thing that struck me as I have been reflecting on our history is the role that radio has played in the advent of public media, and I think MSU saw the potential of broadcasting early on,” says Susi Elkins, director of broadcasting at MSU and general manager of WKAR Public Media at Michigan State University. “They saw it as a force to improve the lives of Michiganders, and I don't know if a lot of people know this, but they began an experimental radio broadcasting service in 1917. It wasn't until 1952 that broadcast television spectrum was set aside for educational purposes.
“Once again, Michigan State University was very innovative. In 1954, we launched one of the first educational television stations in the United States. We do have a really strong, long history and it becomes intertwined with PBS' a little bit later. We started creating wonderful content here on campus to fill that programming schedule. It all goes back to the land grant colleges and Michigan State's mission, and MSU has been a pioneer in this area for a long time.
“Once people saw the benefit of the educational stations that were cropping up, they really saw a need to take a look at the where mass media was heading. A lot of the early legislation was making it very commercialized and trying to bring audiences to advertisers. It became clear we needed to solidify educational programming, make space for it, and make sure that every citizen in the country had access to free educational programming over the air. That’s really what started the mission for PBS and we have stayed true to those roots.”
As the missions of PBS and WKAR have evolved, viewers and listeners are consuming WKAR’s product in more ways that just traditional over-the-air broadcasts. Elkins describes the American Portrait project and talks about her role on the board of PBS.
“There's so much change happening, so we're always talking about change and how we need to adjust and make sure that we're continuing to be relevant for audiences and bring them what they need while always doing that with that core mission in mind, meaning that we serve all Americans. We serve everyone in every unique community. It's an interesting juxtaposition as a broadcaster. We broadcast from one to many via mass communication. However, our mission states that we want to serve individual voices and really personalize and localize the experience. It's okay if we have smaller ratings if we're telling a story that fewer people are tuning into. Those who are tuning in are being impacted positively and cared for and served in a unique and interesting way.
“On the board, we're always thinking about how to balance those things, and we're trying to innovate and take advantage of new technologies while always negotiating and keeping the local station at the forefront. That can be challenging, in all honesty, but it's worth it. It's worth every drop of sweat and every tear to try to figure out how to do it and I think we've been really successful. PBS has a long history of innovating. We created closed captioning, we had the first satellite uplink system, we had the first broadcast facility in digital, and so we just continue to innovate and find new ways to serve audiences.
“We also have really been talking about our role in helping the country grapple with legacies of systemic racism and inequality in our country, and we've been committed to leveraging the unique strengths we have as a public media system to manage and encourage conversation around difficult topics. Part of our mission at WKAR is to affect positive change. We don't shy away from difficult issues and difficult topics.”
Elkins and her team recently produced a stakeholder report.
“We talk all the time at the station about how grateful we are to our donors, our members, our listeners, and our viewers. We have so much support from the university. The MSU Federal Credit Union has been incredible, and Consumers Energy has been with us since the beginning with Quiz Busters and now Curious Crew. We just really wanted to put together a report to show folks what their contributions have meant to our community. It was a big project, but one that we felt was important. We've been excited to share that with our stakeholders and others who sometimes don't know everything that we're doing. We’re not just putting out programming, but providing engagement events and community screenings and working with the university to make sure that the general public understands the role of research and how it creates positive change in communities.
“I think we are as important as we've ever been. Occasionally, people say, ‘In a world full of media choices, there's a plethora of information and news and music, and I can get it anywhere I want whenever I want, and so why is PBS needed today?’ I am a firm believer that PBS is needed now more than ever because of the plethora of news and information out there and the trust that WKAR and PBS have built means that we aren't beholden to anyone else. We are only serving those in our local community. As the last locally owned stations working to extend the learning from our educational programming, we convene those conversations. That is at the heart of our mission.
“There is no one else doing that. There's no one else cutting through the noise in the way that we are with our community. And we can only do it because of the support of our community. I personally am so grateful to live in a community like ours where people are interested, engaged, and involved. They want information and they want cultural programming, and so it's a pleasure to serve this community and I'm just grateful to everyone.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“Jill runs a really extraordinary program that represents Michigan State so nicely in Detroit on the street named after Jill on Woodward Avenue in Downtown Detroit,” quips Beekman. “So Jill, give us a sense of what the program's about and a little bit of background on what happens at the Community Music School in Detroit.”
“We’re in the MSU Detroit Center just a stone's throw from the new Little Caesars Arena,” says Woodward. “And we actually just celebrated our 10th anniversary if you can believe it. I like to say we're one of the best kept secrets in music education in Detroit because we really don't spend as much time as we should tooting our own horn. We’re too busy doing the work. But the Community Music School is another way for MSU to share the resources of the university with Detroiters and with families from across Southeast Michigan.
“We provide music for all ages, abilities, and incomes. But what's most important, I think, in this day and age is that we remove the economic barriers to participation in really high-quality music education for our low-income families. When you think about some of the issues that our society is thinking about, especially right now, like diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, the arts are one of those things that are not as accessible to everyone as we would hope they might be. It can be very expensive to rent or buy an instrument or to take private lessons, especially if you don't have that in your school.
“Dean Forger looked at the situation 10 years ago and was like, ‘Geez, we really have to step up.’ It's important for all children to have access to this curriculum. We know there are just reams of research about the benefits of music study and what that does for people of all ages. But for babies and for youth development, the the skills that we really need for the 21st century economy are built into music study. You might find that a presumptuous statement, but I have a favorite quote from a Nobel Prize winning physicist. And he said that all he needed to learn for success he got from his bassoon teacher.
“Kids who have access to music have better academic results and better workforce opportunities. And in general, they tend to have more civic engagement over their lifetime as voters and volunteers. So when we look at music and the skills that it teaches, we tend to think of it as building out the whole citizen. It teaches critical thinking. It teaches abstract math. Because, well, that's what musical notation is; it's all fractions.
“We benefit from all the thought leaders at the College of Music who are really innovating music education today. It's not what it was when I was growing up when you learned to play Hot Cross Buns and then you moved on to harder and harder pieces. Today, they're really looking at how music can deliver different concepts including social justice concepts. We worked with some professors at the College of Music to design a curriculum we call Music Empowers. And what that does is use music as a way to introduce kids to social justice concepts.”
Woodward explains what culturally relevant pedagogy is and says CMS Detroit teaches music to everyone from babies to seniors and everybody in between. And she describes how the pandemic is impacting their mission. And she details what happens in an infant class.
“We are very fortunate to have Dr. Karen Salvador in the College of Music. She’s an internationally renowned expert on early childhood music. Essentially, you grow the majority of your brain synapses between being born and around age six. And music is one of the activities that, unlike just listening passively to music but interacting in a musical engagement, lights up all areas of the brain. And literally, it fuels growth and development. You learn music in the same way you learn language.”
Woodward explains the Lonely Instruments in Need of Kids program.
“And one of the most exciting things is that we've had 40 program alumni matriculate to MSU. Twenty five were first-generation college students from Detroit. That’s indicative of the talent that we have. There are a lot of young people who just really need additional resources to fulfill their potential.
“And most of these kids didn't go on to study music. They're studying biology, and law, and communications, and they're going to be tomorrow's civic leaders in any number of fields. But music was an important tool for them to get to where their destiny needed to take them. And we've had a lot of other kids come through the program and get full scholarships to other places.”
Learn more about MSU’s Community School Detroit at www.cms.msu.edu/detroit/ and on Facebook.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“I kind of say I do stuff, Bill,” Gore says. “We do all the on-campus living in the residence halls and apartments. On a normal year, there are roughly about 16,000 to 17,000 students and student families living across campus. We are one of the largest single campus residential systems in the country. We also do all the culinary food service on campus. In a normal year, we serve between Sunday through Thursday about 50,000 meals a day. And then we run a hotel, we have two golf courses, the tennis facility, and the MSU Union. We’ve helped with the new research building in Grand Rapids. And most recently, I’m the interim vice president for Student Affairs and Services. So I kind of do a little bit of stuff. That’s what I like to call it. My daughter jokes that I’m like the mayor of MSU.”
Gore talks about growing up in a military family and about how his physical education degree continues to impact how he performs his ‘mayoral’ duties.
“A lot of coaching theory is about how to make teams grow and develop over a period of time. And so I'm able to translate that piece into leadership and how to coach a team and think about what your game plans are because you learn those lessons in coaching theory. And then you get a chance to practice it when you're doing it. And I think one of the things that you learn is how to think both tactically and strategically.”
Gore talks about the $34 million in food he buys for MSU each year and about his role co-chairing President Stanley’s strategic planning process that’s envisioning MSU’s future.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
DOE Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar was on hand for the ceremony and joins me on MSU today.
“That means the facility is open for researchers at MSU, elsewhere in Michigan, and around the nation and world,” says Dabbar. “We make a conscious effort to build our facilities in places where they can be opened up for users. The way people get access to FRIB is they have to submit and pitch proposals. We then select available time for researchers to come and use the facility based on their scientific merit.”
Dabbar says FRIB will play a role in strengthening the innovation presence of the United States globally, like in the life sciences.
“Physics is at the core of DOE, and MSU has the top-rated nuclear physics program. Many people think mainly of nuclear power or strategic weapons when they think of nuclear physics. Understanding the symmetry and the architecture of individual isotopes and molecules around the isotopes and how they might be used and how they're imaged and how they work is a clear part of what I would call the discovery science side. On the applied side, life sciences is the biggest one of the practical applications of this work that we do.”
Dabbar describes how FRIB can impact the next generation of scientific leaders and how important it is for the Office of Science that FRIB is located in the middle of a research-intensive university campus allowing students to become attracted to accelerator technology and engineering.
He participated in a round table discussion with manufacturers who described the impact of participating in FRIB and their own businesses and their local economies.
“I really sensed the pride from everyone involved in the project. This is a facility that will drive science and they want to be involved in a project that can help save people's lives. The various owners of the various businesses from around Michigan and elsewhere who I met with were unanimous in their pride in participating.
“I think America and the world have a very interesting set of initiatives coming up, whether it's Quantum information technologies or us getting to Mars or clean energy innovation. I think from a technology point of view, there are amazing opportunities for students on the horizon. And FRIB is absolutely a portion of that driving innovation in physics and driving innovation for healthcare. This overall momentum has me excited. And I think it gets a lot of people excited at MSU and around the world.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Erica Schmittdiel is a licensed master social worker and CARE advocacy coordinator at MSU Safe Place.
“A lot of us think of the physical aspect of domestic violence, and while that is certainly present, in some domestic violence relationships not everybody is physically abused,” says Schmittdiel. “And they may be experiencing things like emotional, verbal, or sexual abuse and isolation. Victims often are not really allowed to have much of a social life. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're locked in the basement, but maybe the abusive partner is making it difficult for them to spend time with family or friends or demands that they come home from work immediately afterwards.
“We see threats, we see stalking, we see intimidation, gaslighting, sabotaging school and work efforts, and economic abuse. And those are just a handful of examples, but really anything that an abusive person does to gain and maintain power and control in a relationship. And again, they may be using physical abuse or they may be able to gain that power and control through other means. A lot of times we use the test of whether the victim is free to leave the relationship. If the answer is no and they’re afraid of what her partner will do if she leaves the relationship, then that relationship is probably abusive.
“And we see abuse in all kinds of relationships: heterosexual relationships, same-sex relationships, and anybody can be a victim or survivor. While we see mostly women experience domestic violence, people of any gender can be victims.”
Schmittdiel details common traits of abusers and talks about how their terror is mostly about power and control.
“Some people are good at hiding that side of them and they only show it behind closed doors with their partner. A lot of abusers are very skilled at hiding this aspect of their personality and that's one way they get away with this behavior. That way if the survivor does come forward, people are less likely to believe that this is really going on.
“Abusers are really skilled at hiding this and they're not necessarily going to show this side of them when two people are dating. They're going to wait until their relationship progresses and then start to show signs of their controlling behavior. We can never blame somebody for being in an abusive relationship. They didn't know. And then they come to find out the relationship isn't really so healthy and they need to talk to somebody about it. We need to be supportive of that and understand that nobody asks to be in a relationship that's abusive and nobody deserves to be abused.”
She says it’s often difficult for a survivor to disentangle themselves from the relationship and the process can take some time and some planning. And that's okay.
“We're not here to tell people that, ‘Oh, that relationship is so toxic, you need to leave right away.’ We may want them to get out right away for their own safety, but it may not be safe. The abusive person seeing that they're losing that power and control, that their partner is leaving them, can trigger increased violence.
“We encourage victims to have a safety plan. They're often willing to give their abuser the benefit of the doubt because they have been in a relationship with this person. They've seen the good side. They've seen that the relationship can go well at times. They may think, ‘Oh, I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. I'm going to sit down with them and explain all the reasons why we don't need to be together anymore.’ And that's one thing that we caution people about, that you may think that you owe it to them to have that conversation, but it may not be safe. And if you feel that you need to have that conversation, doing it in a public place would be better. Or maybe leaving a letter or sending an email, but having that face-to-face conversation may not be safe if that abusive person sees they're losing power and control.”
For those of us fortunate enough not to be experiencing domestic violence, how can we recognize it in family and friends that may need help and how do we help? What are some warning signs?
“We may see our friends and family withdrawing. They're not coming to family functions anymore because the abusive person is saying things like, ‘Oh, you spend too much time with your family, that's not healthy, how come they're always in our business?’
“Maybe you're seeing isolation with people that you care about, that you used to spend more time with. Check in with them. Ask if it's a good time to talk.
“Don’t make accusations because nobody wants to hear that their relationship is abusive. A lot of times people are in denial that somebody that they love could hurt them. Express concern, but don’t label the relationship as abusive. Maybe point things out that are concrete like, ‘you don't really come to family functions anymore. We miss you. Just wondering what that's all about.’ And maybe express some hesitation, even if you're convinced the relationship is abusive, by saying things like, ‘I don't know if this is what's going on, but if it is, just know that I'm here to support you regardless and I care about you and I want the best for you.’ And again, you may not get a great response to that right away, but you've planted a seed. You've let that other person know that you care about them and that if they are ready to talk, if they are ready to come forward, that you are a safe person.
“There's also sometimes hesitancy for people to get involved. They may not feel like they're qualified to say anything. And that's okay. You don't have to be a therapist or an advocate to point somebody in the right direction and let them know that there are services in the community that are available to them.”
Schmittdiel details how MSU Safe Place is the first and only domestic violence shelter on a college campus in the nation and how Safe Place is operating during the pandemic.
“I'm one of the two advocates on staff and basically that means I'm here to help people with whatever it is that they need. Everybody's situation is different. We don't have a cookie cutter approach and tell victims they need to do A, B, C, and D. We talk with people about what it is that they want and what's going on with them. They may have identified needs already and we are just there to help get them what it is they need. Maybe it's a divorce attorney, an immigration attorney, a personal protection order, or a restraining order. Maybe they don't know that they can get a personal protection order. So we're talking about options. We're providing information, resources, referrals, and support for individuals.
“And people don't have to leave the relationship to receive our services. That is not a requirement that we have. Sometimes people are trying to decide if their relationship is abusive or not. They're not sure, but maybe their friend said, ‘Why don't you call Safe Place? I think it would be a good idea for you to talk to them.’ Or maybe they've tried to leave the relationship that they know is abusive and unhealthy, and the other person is stalking them and won't let them go. We see a wide range of situations and we're here to help with whatever it is that people are dealing with.
“We are hearing from programs across the country that domestic violence is up diring the pandemic and law enforcement is reporting the same in some jurisdictions. But we are actually experiencing a decline in services. There's sort of a paradox here where people are calling the police, potentially, because they're in danger and they don't feel like they have other options in that moment, but yet they're reluctant to reach out for services. And we understand that some survivors just can't. If the abusive person is so controlling that they're either with the survivor 24/7 or they're making that survivor account for their time 24/7, the survivor may not feel like they can reach out.
“And they may be scared to reach out. Even if they have a moment to make a phone call or send us an email, they may not know that we have individual shelter units available and that we have Zoom and phone counseling and advocacy services offered remotely.
“During Domestic Violence Awareness Month we want people to know that we are here as a resource. If somebody wants to talk maybe a little bit more in depth about a friend or a family member that they're trying to help, we can talk through that with folks. We do get calls frequently from family members and other professionals whose specialty is not domestic violence that they would like some more information on how to help somebody else. So we are definitely available for consultation. And we just ask that everybody keep in mind that domestic violence is everybody's business. We all play a part. This is a community problem that we have here in Lansing and across the globe and we all have a part to play in raising awareness and stepping in and trying to do something when we're aware that it exists.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
While the nation goes to the polls to elect a president on Nov. 3, the Electoral College determines the country’s next leader, said Economics Professor Charles Ballard said in the monthly Institute for Public Policy and Social Research broadcast.September’s Podcast covered fresh pandemic observations on the nature of work and guest appearances from Michigan Political Leadership Program Co-Directors Susy Avery and Steve Tobocman.The U.S. Constitution provides for each presidential candidate to be awarded Electoral College votes based upon the popular balloting in each state. Electoral College votes are based on each state’s congressional representation.The podcast is a monthly production of MSU Institute for Public Policy, a center for public policy, political leadership and survey research and WKAR Radio. It broadcasts over WKAR this Sunday and popular podcast channels SoundCloud and Apple ITunes.
Michigan, for example, has 16 Electoral College votes. Michigan, like most states, requires its Electoral College members to cast votes for the winner of the state’s popular vote.
Historically, the popular vote has carried the Electoral College. However, in a few cases, President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 included, a candidate has won the Electoral College but not the popular vote
“This is the only election in the world where the person who gets the most votes is not guaranteed to be the winner,” Ballard said.
A small number of key states – Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona -- may determine the nation’s next president, Ballard forecast.
“Most of the polls show Biden's somewhat ahead. But not necessarily far enough ahead to win the election,” he said.
The presidential campaigns, meanwhile, battle over the pandemic coronavirus and its effects on the economy through the spring and fall, Ballard noted. “The economy has gone from disastrous in April to I would still say quite troubled now.”
August’s U.S. unemployment rate was pegged at 8.7 percent. The nation may not return to more normal operation, Ballard said, until next year at least.
“We won't fully get back to normal until enough people have been vaccinated that people feel real, relatively safe about substantial gatherings in person. We can't get all the way back to normal until that happens.”
As for condition “new normal,” the nature of work will likely be disrupted too, Ballard observed, university instruction included. He now records lectures from an office-studio in his basement and offers “open” office hours – via Zoom -- to his students.
That’s a drastic change from the introductory microeconomics classes he typically teaches in a Wells Hall auditorium with capacity of some 600 students.
“I was glad yesterday when four students came to my Zoom office hours because I got to see them in person. And that's one thing that I missed this semester is not being able to ‘see’ my students.”
Michigan Political Leadership Program (MPLP) Fellows are tackling online networking and remote learning too, said Avery and Tobocman. MPLP is recruiting online as well, actively seeking 24 aspiring leaders ready to take advantage of the certificate program’s personal leadership, policy analysis and good government mission.Z
“MPLP is a pipeline for elected officials on both sides of the aisle,” Avery said during the podcast taping.
Avery and Tobocman are political leaders in their own right. Avery is a former Republican Party chair and executive in Gov. John Engler’s administration. Tobocman is a former Majority Floor Leader in the state House of Representatives and now leads economic development and immigrant initiatives from southeast Michigan.
The bipartisan program brings together 12 men and 12 women from every region of the state, helping them to build networks that have lasted far longer than MPLP’s 10 months of formal training, Tobocman said.
“They really get to know each other, get to know each other's families, know each other's jobs, aspirations, and become lifelong friends, and build friendships that can help them be effective at governing when they get to the Michigan Legislature or in their local community,” he said.
Applications are due Friday, Oct. 2.
Even this year’s annual MPLP fundraising dinner, coming up on Thursday, Oct. 1, has moved online, they noted. Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, headlines the event with WKAR’s “Off the Record” star Tim Skubick. Tickets are available.
The award-winning Sabato is a nationally known speaker, political analyst and forecaster, who founded “Sabato’s Crystal Ball,” a political newsletter and website.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
As we enter into the harvest season for some of Michigan's major crops, Kirk Heinze discusses the overall status of our state's agriculture with the current and past presidents of the Michigan Agri-Business Association (MABA). Chuck Lippstreu took over the MABA helm from Jim Byrum in January. Byrum served as the MABA president for 25 years and keeps busy with the family business and several consulting engagements ranging from ag finance management to government affairs.
“The Michigan Agri-Business Association has about 400 members, and the way to think about our membership is to think about all of those businesses that are along the agriculture value chain,” says Lippstreu. “We have a couple of producers who are members, but primarily our members are businesses that work with farmers around Michigan every day to help them get the job done. Our membership highlights all the different things that come together to help agriculture be successful, and all those different segments make up portions of our membership at MABA.”
Membership ranges from agricultural retailers who provide seed, fertilizer, and crop protection products to farmers to grain handlers, food processors and ag law and accounting firms.
Byrum notes three major developments in agriculture over the past two to three decades.
“First is certainly biotechnology,” Byrum says. “Biotechnology changed the way farmers grow and make cropping decisions. Biotechnology is not just Roundup-ready technology or herbicide tolerance, but it's also, for example, improving the genome of the corn plant and soybean plant itself, and that's been substantial. The kind of yield increases we've seen in corn and soybeans in the last quarter century has been absolutely astounding, and you see it every day when you're in farm country with bigger fields and bigger grain storage facilities. And at harvest, you see it with more trucks on the roads.
“Number two is consolidation. Farms are getting bigger, particularly those that are dealing with commodity crops, corn, soybeans, wheat, dairy production, pork production, and turkey production--they're all getting larger and larger because there are cost efficiencies in those kinds of production systems. But, interestingly, we're also seeing a parallel trend towards smaller producers that might grow specialty crops, like hops and grapes or who raise specialty livestock.
“And, thirdly are the incredible, society-wide technological advancements we have made in quickly accessing, analyzing and then using data to make better management decisions and production decisions have been remarkable.”
“I think Jim nailed it in terms of major changes in the industry,” Lippstreu adds. “And another challenge is how do you make sure the consuming public understands how modern agriculture runs, what a modern farm looks like, what an agronomy facility is and what it does, and how different segments of the value chain function.
“It's a big challenge, and one of the things that we're consistently engaged in is trying to be sure that we're out there being proactive and educating not just the public, but those in Lansing and policymakers in local communities about the agricultural economy in our state. But technology remains absolutely pivotal to everything we do, and it's also the biggest challenge we have in terms of telling our story and educating those who might not be part of agriculture.”
Another major, and on-going issue in the agricultural sector is international trade—retaining and expanding markets for U.S. goods abroad. However, the volatility in trade negotiations over the past few years has created growing uncertainly and angst in the industry.
“We can’t underscore enough that Michigan agriculture has to trade and export to be successful, and we just can't afford a trade policy that's based on surprises,” Lippstreu continues. “Businesses in our industry count on certainty. They count on those established relationships that take years to establish and maintain. It's not just China that we're concerned about. We in Michigan also spend a lot of time thinking about our neighbors across the border in Canada. We send a huge amount of agricultural product to Canada, and they send quite a bit to us. There's a great two-way trade relationship there. In fact, we have MABA members who have business locations on both sides of the border. It's really difficult to understate how important it is that US trade policy be based on predictability, certainty, and a two-way trading spirit with our customers around the world.”
Sustainability has always been and remains important for those in agriculture. Agriculture has been a de facto ‘green industry’ since its beginnings, but issues related to, for example, climate change and water resource management have been especially challenging.
“The whole sustainability discussion is making sure that we're good partners with the communities we serve, and today's technology really allows us to do that,” says Lippstreu. “Not just farmers, but agriculture retailers around the state of Michigan are using imagery and modeling in ways that have really never been used before to make sure that when we use critical elements like fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and things that are absolutely critical to being successful, we're using those in a targeted way and in a way that's based on both sound science and also incredibly precise modeling.
“And I think one thing we don't talk enough about in agriculture is the fact that our industry holds a huge amount of solutions on climate change, and we can quantify those things like we never could before That's going to be a value proposition for agriculture in the coming years.”
“What's happening today that's critically important is that the private sector is weighing in,” Byrum notes. “And they're not just encouraging sustainability in production agriculture and the food system and supply chain, they're demanding it. I've predicted this for some years, and it's happening very, very aggressively right now. The major food companies want sustainability. They want to reduce the carbon footprint of the products that they buy, and they're demanding it from their producers and the food processors who handle those products. We're seeing that all the way from fast food operations to retail. We're seeing it in food service. It's happening everywhere. The irony is in the past many believed that sustainability would be driven by government. No question about it, the private sector is driving sustainability initiatives.”
While the vast majority of Michiganians have been frustrated by the state’s dire infrastructure shortcomings, the issue for farmers extends beyond roads and bridges to broadband internet access. Some recent developments have been slightly encouraging, but much more investment is needed.
“We're in a crisis situation in rural America right now that’s more than the occasional dropped call. Many families don't have access to high speed broadband to do remote school and remote work,” Lippstreu says. “It's a priority for the Michigan Agri-Business Association to ensure we elevate broadband as a discussion because we need a better idea of where those shortfalls are around the countryside, and we need to figure out some way to expand rural high-speed broadband.”
“High speed, consistent, reliable broadband is crucial for modern farming,” says Byrum, who adds that the country’s supply chain has been challenged by the pandemic.
“The one thing that we don't talk about that is really impacting supply chain infrastructure is the changing dynamic that's come about in the last six months in the whole marketplace. For example, most veal and lamb is consumed in restaurants. If restaurants aren't open, guess what? Those industries are in serious trouble. So, we're seeing all sorts of things impact supply chain, including infrastructure and the availability of quick and just-in-time delivery. And for gosh sakes, the number of little gray vans driving all over the state of Michigan doing next day delivery is changing how people buy, go to the market, buy from the market, and everything that they do in daily life.
“All those infrastructure issues, all those supply chain issues are going to be with us for some time, and they need to be addressed. But we absolutely have to deal with broadband. There's no question about that.”
Byrum and Lippstreu further discuss the pandemic’s impact on agriculture and also about the “absolutely integral” role Michigan State University has played, and continues to play, in advancing Michigan’s agriculture industry.
“When all is said and done, Michigan can be really proud to have an agriculture sector that's progressive and forward looking,” Lippstreu says. “Discussions continue at the state and federal levels on how we can invest in infrastructure, how we can give farmers and agriculture retailers ways to participate in the climate change discussion and deliver solutions, and how we talk about agriculture technology and the push for rural broadband.
“I think it's important to understand and remember that people look to Michigan agriculture to lead because we have a reputation here for being progressive and forward looking. That's going to continue, and MABA will do everything we can to facilitate that as we head into 2021.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Vennie is the vice president for Auxiliary Enterprises. And recently President Stanley promoted Vennie to senior vice president as he is now also overseeing Student Affairs and Services. And Joe Salem is dean of libraries. Vennie and Joe are the steering committee co-chairs of MSU’s strategic planning process that's charting a course toward a brighter future for the university. It's an inclusive and comprehensive strategic planning process. And while many of the plans have been adjusted or placed on hold due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the work being done around strategic planning is too important not to move forward.
And as we move through the conversation, we'll be joined by four Spartans who are also members of the Steering Committee and are directing focused inquiry groups.
“I think it's important as we begin to look at the future for the university, COVID has made us realize that having to pivot to online instruction and all the challenges that created, strategic planning becomes more and more important for us as an institution,” says Gore.
“I would add that I think one of the goals that President Stanley articulated to us is, in addition to helping to chart what MSU will work on and look like, it's also important, and it was important to him early in his presidency, to articulate and to demonstrate how we'll work together,” Salem says. “The idea of being inclusive and engaged and to really leverage the expertise on campus and to lift and listen to and engage as many voices as possible is an important part of what a modern strategic planning process looks like.
The idea of having a plan that you create and that just sits on the shelf, no one wants to do that. The whole idea is to go through a process that engages people and listens to them. And so I think that idea of trying to establish how we want to work together is just as important as what we'll work together on.”
Anna Maria Santiago is an associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Social Science and a professor of social work. She's leading that group on the optimal size and scope of the university.
“We call it the optimal scope and scale inquiry group because we felt that our charge was to develop recommendations, to shape a model and process that optimizes the use and allocation of institutional resources. It’s more than just a matter of size,” says Santiago.
“As we move forward, we need to think about developing a continuous inclusive and transparent process to assess priorities, practices and activities that we want to engage in in the future. We need to think about focusing on areas of excellence and what does that mean and how are they defined? We also think that we need to intentionally assess decisions and examine them in terms of their benefits and costs. And in particular, to frame future and realign current decisions and practices using the lens of diversity, equity,and inclusion.”
Jennifer Johnson is the C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health and a professor of OB GYN, psychiatry ,and behavioral medicine. She's been looking at values.
“Values are defined as core beliefs and guiding principles that inform and shape our daily activities, behavior, and interactions across the university,” Johnson says. "What values would we like to see guide Michigan State University over the next five to ten years? And what would these values look like in action?
“Values don't have a lot of meaning without a definition. Those values are partnership; improving the human condition and solving the world's major problems and promoting local and global citizenship; diversity, equity, inclusion, and access; putting people first, valuing and supporting the wellbeing of students, staff, faculty, and the communities with whom we work; safety, integrity, innovation - this encompasses both the ideas of creativity and addressing the world's most pressing and intractable problems, and having new approaches to things; and excellence.
"We will hold ourselves to the highest standards of teaching, research and engagement because our excellence makes a critical difference to the amount of good we can do."
Thomas Jeitschko is associate provost for graduate education and dean of our graduate school. He’s thinking about institutional resources and budget.
“What was important for us was to recognize that we really want to deliver on our mission through a manifestation and the living of our values,” Jeitschko says. “And that should be the guiding principle when we think about resources that we have and budgeting around that.
“Essentially, we think of it sort of as three areas that we need to concentrate on that we're going to flesh out a little bit more. Concentrate on the core mission of the university around teaching, research, and service and outreach. We want to make sure that these missions reflect our values. And what kind of support systems and infrastructure do we need to support the core mission?”
Jeff Grabill is associate provost for teaching learning and technology and a professor rhetoric and professional writing. His group is looking at virtual and online learning.
“Our online learning strategy really has two components to it,” Grabill says. “One is looking at fully online learning programs that the university does offer and might offer in the future. And the second is how do we use digital technologies to support student learning and success regardless of the modality of instruction?
“The big thing for us is, and this will not be surprising, is that the pandemic changed everything. Where people were with regard to their habits and expectations and understandings and dispositions towards online education before March, they're in a different place now. And whereas it may have been a little bit challenging to get people to engage with thinking about the future of MSU as a significantly digital future, that's changed.
“And so we have more engagement, we have more ideas, we have more enthusiasm around campus for the conversations that we've had about the role of digital technologies in general and online learning more specifically with regard to the future of MSU.
“We're in a state with a declining number of students attending high school. Digital technologies and their impact on the economy are changing the need for continuous learning for human beings throughout their lifespan. There are a lot of opportunities for MSU to leverage digital technologies and online programs to meet its mission as a land-grant institution in the near future.”
“In our next phase we want to engage the campus community,” Gore adds. “We didn't really have a chance to do that as much as we would've liked to in the spring when the stay at home order was put in place. And then we all went out and we were trying to figure out how we survive in this digital world. So this is our next step, we want to begin to do that.”
“Although there's been really great work done so far, it really sets us up for good conversations with the communities,” Salem says. “Especially on the values. They inform and frame a really good conversation about the big questions about our mission. We still have big opportunities to ask big questions about significant parts of our mission that we really haven't addressed yet. There are significant questions to be asked about the way that our values and our strengths related to the student experience, to extension, to our community engagement, and to our teaching, learning, and research missions.”
“Another important part of our work is the work of the diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic planning committee,” adds Gore. “It’s important that we incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion in our work. That committee and ours share a common goal to make the MSU family better connected.”
For more information or to provide some input or get involved, visit the Initiatives and Mission section of President Stanley's website at president.msu.edu.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“Food has become a battleground where spurious marketing labels and misinformation are used to cajole, manipulate, even shame consumers about their eating choices.”
So writes Michele Payn (’93 B.S., Animal Science; ’93 B.S., Agriculture and Natural Resources Communication) in her third book, Food Bullying: How to Avoid Buying B.S., (Morgan James, 2019), recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) Gold Medal in Health, Medicine and Nutrition.
Armed with science, compelling personal stories, and a lifetime on the farm, Payn challenges the way we think about food.
“I believe deeply in choice, especially when it comes to food. I wrote Food Bullying to help people first become aware of the subtle, sophisticated, often devious ways they are manipulated and then to develop strategies for making guilt-free food choices based on their own ethical, environmental and health standards.”
Payn, also a nationally acclaimed public speaker and consultant, began her business, Cause Matters, at age 30. “When I was at Michigan State, I knew I wanted to work in the agricultural industry and I would someday launch a business. But I never imagined I would do that at age 30.”
One of the salient themes running through all Payn’s work is the importance of dialogue among agricultural producers, consumers, doctors, nutritionists and other key influentials in the food industry. “Communication among knowledgeable professionals ensures that science-based information becomes the key component of food purchasing decisions—rather than marketing claims or testimonials from organizations with special agendas.”
Payn grew up on a dairy farm outside Jonesville, MI and attended Litchfield High School. “Because of frequent visits to the beautiful MSU campus for 4-H and FFA events, there was never any doubt where I would go to college.” Her passion for dairy cows continues as a Registered Holstein Breeder on her farm in central Indiana.
The dual degree program was challenging, Payn recalls, but the blending of the animal sciences and communication provided the career preparation she sought. Her advice to MSU students interested in working in the food and agriculture industry: “Despite the recent tough economic times, people in the industry are resilient; we will get through this, and there will continue to be excellent career opportunities for Michigan State graduates.”
“One of many things I learned at MSU is that nothing builds strength like overcoming difficulty. Keep your mind open to possibilities; don’t limit your dreams. And avail yourself of all the wonderful opportunities MSU offers, especially the faculty and staff whose support and guidance will prove invaluable.”
In addition to her commitment to family and career, Payn volunteers for a number of organizations, including Big Sisters, Boone County 4-H, and National FFA. She is also past president of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Alumni Board.
Payn’s work has been featured in USA Today, Food Insight, and Food & Nutrition Magazine, on CNN and NPR and many other media outlets. She is also the author of No More Food Fights! and Food Truths from Farm to Table, also an IPPY award winner in Health, Medicine and Nutrition.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“At its core, a library has always been the same thing,” Salem tells Beekman. “A library provides people with the resources they need to learn, either in a structured environment like a university or on their own in a public library. It provides the space, either physical or online space, to use those resources and to create new information or knowledge with those resources. And then this is the really important part, it wraps all that with expertise that can be in the form of technology enabled expertise or in-person expertise.
“We're increasingly digital first with a lot of our resources. Even the information resources - we have a pretty good collections budget and a really robust collection here – 70 percent of it is spent on digital resources. The space is beautiful here on campus, but the library is also really useful online. What makes it a library is those components and then having the experts to help you use, find, analyze, and then create with whatever you're using.”
Salem details many of the services available through the MSU Library. He discusses how Big Ten libraries collaborate and talks about some of the library’s special collections featuring cookbooks, comic books, and the Vincent Voice Library.
Salem says one of the best parts of his job is “talking about the great work we do and the really great work that my colleagues do.” He says he misses the energy that students bring to the physical library and hopes they can return en masse soon.
“The students feel ownership of the library and really love the place. You can feel that. They take care of it.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“We have 27 acres of outdoor recreation like intramural fields and tennis courts,” McNeil says. “We have a gorgeous campus for outdoor activities like biking, walking, and running.
“We want to remind people that we're continuing our virtual activities. We've been virtual since the 1st of April, and we've actually expanded on that. It’s a membership-based system where Spartans across the globe can have access to our fitness offerings and our virtual platform, and they can get their exercise that way from wherever they are. And then we're also going to have a few locations outdoors that are going to have live, in-person, with mask distance group exercise classes at about 15 different outdoor campus locations.
“Our mission is to engage Spartans. We identify Spartans as students, faculty, staff, retirees, and alumni. And especially now that we have this virtual platform, we have Spartans who are physically not on our campus but who want to engage in healthy lifestyles through fitness, sports, and recreation opportunities They can do that through us.”
McNeil talks about the breadth of activities available at MSU and about the state and future of some of the campus fitness facilities, some that have been upgraded recently. And he details how Spartans can gain access to all the recreational sports and fitness opportunities. And he talks about MSU’s 28 club sports and over 900 student organizations.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Michigan State University has put in place a new relationship violence and sexual misconduct (RVSM) and Title IX policy following new federal regulations that took effect on August 14. MSU’s new policy replaces the university’s previous RVSM policy.
Changes to MSU’s policy were made in accordance with new Title IX regulations released in May by the U.S. Secretary of Education and govern how K-12 schools, colleges, and universities must respond to reports of sexual harassment and assault under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination in education on the basis of sex.
“We took this as an opportunity to create a policy that strives for clarity and important supportive measures that increase equity, accountability, and transparency for all involved in the Title IX process” says Tanya Jachimiak, Associate Vice President of MSU’s Office for Civil Rights and Title IX Education and Compliance in a letter to campus. “Our commitment to ensuring a campus free of violence remains unwavering.”
MSU’s new RVSM and Title IX policy will:
- Defines prohibited conduct in alignment with community expectations as to what constitutes relationship violence, sexual misconduct, and stalking as well as prohibited conduct under Title IX.
- Makes clear that Title IX regulations apply to complaints brought by or against employees and are not limited to complaints involving students.
- Explains the process for responding to and addressing reports of prohibited conduct, including retaliation.
- Provides claimants with more autonomy as to whether to request an investigation through the formal grievance process.
- Explains the availability of equitable supportive measures, interim measures, University-provided advisors, and confidential resources.
- Provides for an equitable, fair investigation process and hearing process with realistic time frames and regular communication from investigators and decision makers.
- Streamlines investigations, including permitting parties to review all evidence directly related to the allegations prior to completion of a final investigation report.
- Sets expectations for University faculty, staff, and academic staff on reporting conduct.
The new policy is the result of work by a multi-disciplinary team of faculty, staff, and students and received feedback from a number of groups on campus. Those included the Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct Expert Advisory Workgroup; the Center for Survivors; MSU employee labor unions; Academic Human Resources; MSU Human Resources; the University Committee on Faculty Affairs; the Academic Specialist Advisory Committee; Associated Students of Michigan State University; the Council of Graduate Students; Council of Racial and Ethnic Students; and other faculty, staff and students.
Jachimiak’ s team will continue meet with stakeholders throughout the Fall semester to compile ideas, questions, and suggestions Members of the campus community can also provide individual feedback by emailing ocr@msu.edu.
The Office for Civil Rights and Title IX Education and Compliance leads MSU’s efforts to cultivate a campus community that is free of discrimination, harassment, sexual misconduct and relationship violence. To learn more about Title IX at MSU visit the OCR website.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wherever you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify,Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
While farmers and food producers struggle with supply and demand issues, consumers are continuing to see rising grocery prices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, grocery bills shot up by 2.6% in April, the largest spike since 1974. And those price increases haven't let up. From farm to table COVID-19 has placed added stress on everyone's plate.
To help us better understand these complex issues, I’m joined by Spartan alumnus Dustin Baker, Class of 2012 from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Today he works as the manager for education and research at Commodity & Ingredient Hedging, LLC in Chicago.
“There are really two main drivers of these issues. While they're intertwined, they're really separate from one another. The first one occurred when stay at home orders went into place and people immediately began shifting the way that they consumed products, food included. The second major impact came from the proliferation of COVID cases in meat packing plants around the country. And they're really two separate issues that had differing impacts on different commodities. If we look at the first one, when people were forced to stay at home, businesses, restaurants, and schools shut down. People changed where they were consuming their food and other products. We saw this in toilet paper. When people were stocking up to limit the number of trips to the store. And it was really confusing to some because were people all of a sudden going to be consuming more toilet paper? The answer to that was no, but they were changing where they were consuming that toilet paper.
“And the same was true for food, where rather than eating outside of the home, people were consuming most if not all of their meals at home. People consume food differently at home than they do away from home. In 2019 about 55 percent of total food expenditures were on meals away from home. We saw a major increase in demand at the grocery store in March and April for staples like bread, eggs, milk, and ground meat.”
Baker tells why despite increased demand at the grocery store and higher prices for dairy and beef products, farmers are often forced to dump milk or slaughter cattle before they reach production. And he talks about whether we may see fewer choices for consumers in the coming months. And Baker says food insecurity has impacted more people during the pandemic.
“When we talk about food insecurity, we're talking about people who don't have access to the correct mix of calories we all need in order to live an active and healthy lifestyle throughout the year. And unfortunately, here in the United States, we have a pretty significant issue with food security. Even in a normal year without a pandemic, one in six households with children is food insecure at some point throughout the year.”
Baker says “the million-dollar question” right now is what long term impact the pandemic will have on the food supply chain and consumer behavior. “Ultimately producers will increase the choices that consumers have to feed themselves and their families.”
What about any silver linings in this situation? Any areas of innovation that will flourish as a result of the pandemic? For example, some economists have said that despite the challenges faced, our national food supply has proven to be resilient.
“I don't want to minimize the impact that rising grocery store prices have had on consumers, especially those who are struggling, because it's real and it's not trivial. In March over 50 percent of Americans were buying food online. It'll be interesting to watch the future of e-food commerce and whether it evolves into access to fresh and affordable food for consumers around the country.
“Every single day farmers are out producing food and manufacturers are out making the food and making it into consumer-packaged goods. Even though it might be uncomfortable to see a shelf bare at the store because we're not used to seeing that in the United States, rest assured it's being made behind the scenes and there'll be more tomorrow if it's not there today.
Baker talks about how attending MSU was the right choice for him and how agriculture is a high-tech field more young people should consider for careers.
“I think it's really cool to be a part of something bigger than myself like MSU. I see my classmates who day in day out do the research on the genetics of food and of the plants and animals that we eat. They work to ensure that people have access to fresh and affordable food around the country. They work to make sure that the rules of the game are set up from a regulatory framework in Washington, D.C., such that competition rules and consumers have choice. And so I think that's pretty awesome to be a part of that land grant mission, even in my own simple way.
“And it extends beyond the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, too. MSU is full of people who are elite but not elitist. I see that every time I look at classmates who are out teaching the next generation of leaders or working on criminal justice reform in their own communities or researching the next big medical breakthrough. It makes me really proud to be part of that. One of the greatest achievements in my short life so far is being a Spartan and having that comradery with other Spartans around the country.
“I like to say that there is job security in agriculture. People have to eat. People might not go to the doctor every day or they may not go to a classroom every single day, but they typically eat three times a day. Agriculture is here to stay. It's definitely at the forefront of technological breakthroughs. And I think it's a fun thing to be a part of. And it's a good story to tell because everyone has great connections to food. You sit down with families and eat. We center holidays around food. We center football games and tailgating around food. So, It's a really interesting aspect of the economy to be involved with.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wherever you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
As the world continues to battle the coronavirus, Michigan residents are giving Gov. Gretchen Whitmer high job performance marks while describing their personal finances as more depressed, new results from the State of the State Survey show.
President Donald Trump drew lower marks in the results of two sets of cell phone made in February and May 2020. Each survey was answered by 1,000 people, and carried a margin of error of 3.1%.
In February, 36.6% of Michigan’s residents gave Whitmer “excellent” or “good.” By May, she won 51.9% favorable ratings, said MSU Economist Charles Ballard, who directs SOSS for the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.
President Donald Trump’s approval changed very little from the February survey to the one in May. In February, 39.2% of Michigan’s residents gave him an “excellent” or “good.” He won similar responses from 39.5% of Michigan’s residents in May. “About half of survey respondents gave Trump a ‘poor’ rating,” Ballard said
Michigan residents were also asked how Whitmer and Trump had handled the COVID-19 infection. Answers to those questions tracked the job performance ratings, Ballard said. “It appears a lot of Michigan residents were impressed by the way in which Gov. Whitmer has handled the COVID crisis,” he added.
The survey results were shared during the recording of IPPSR’s State of the State Podcast featuring political scientist Matt Grossmann, IPPSR Director, and Arnold Weinfeld, associate IPPSR director.
The August podcast edition focused on COVID-19’s ripple effects on primary elections around the country, Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential candidate, combined with outlooks for the economy and the national election.
On pocketbook issues, those answering the survey noted coronavirus effects on their current finances and their outlook for the year ahead. Michigan residents who said they were better off than a year ago fell 16 percentage points. The fraction who said they were worse off than a year ago increased by the same amount.
Among all those answering the surveys, 45.6% called their current circumstances “excellent” or “good.” Another 17.6% called their finances “poor” or “not so good.”
“If you're able to work remotely, you probably have maintained your employment and many folks are doing okay,” Ballard said. The ratings reflect jobs lost and people working through the pandemic, Ballard observed.
Don’t look for much of an economic recovery in the short-term, he counseled podcasters. “We will not get the economy back on track until we get COVID under control. It’s likely to continue to be a bumpy ride.”
The survey results differed along party, gender, race, and income lines. Women and African American respondents gave Whitmer majority high marks; Trump found more favor among male and white respondents.
Among Democrats, 85.9% gave Whitmer approval. Of those who identified themselves as Republicans, 84.6% gave Trump good or excellent ratings. Independents gave higher favorable marks to Whitmer than to Trump, with 44.8% saying Whitmer is doing an “excellent” or “good’ job, compared to 38.3% for Trump.
Men, Republicans and those reporting an income of above $100,000 were more financially upbeat. Of those with household income of $20,000 or below, 46% described their finances as not so good or poor.
Those 65 and older felt the most comfortable, with 58.6% describing their household finances as excellent or good.
On other election trends, the podcasters found:
*More minority women are winning primaries across the country and in the GOP the most women nominees ever. It’s not clear if those gains will hold through the Nov. 3 General Election and beyond, Grossmann said.
*U.S. Sen. Gary Peters doesn’t appear well-known with voters and Republican challenger John James has some opportunity to make his differences known against his incumbent Democratic opponent, Grossmann said. “But bottom line, if it's a Democratic trending year, you just don't expect Republicans to win Michigan.”
*While some polls show former Vice President Joe Biden ahead in Michigan, President Trump could still lose the popular vote and win the Electoral College, Grossmann said. That's exactly what happened four years ago, he said.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and wherever you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“Wow, it’s been amazing,” says President Stanley. “The welcome and support I’ve had from the campus community and from so many different constituencies has been extraordinary. People have offered their ideas and their work to help me succeed and move Michigan State University forward.
“And I continue to be impressed by the concept of ‘Spartans Will.’ Our ability to get things done and be tenacious and resilient under the most difficult circumstances has really shone through in so many ways.”
Stanley says he was pleased and impressed how quickly and effectively the faculty was able to convert all of their course content to online instruction last March. And he details the many ways the campus will be different this fall, like students having the choice to study remotely or from East Lansing. And he describes the “principled leadership” he has called on to guide MSU through the pandemic.
Stanley shares his views on how MSU – and higher education – may look different after the pandemic has passed.
“The ability to work from home changes things. Our staff has been amazingly adaptive and productive working from home.” He sees online education evolving and getting better and expanding the reach of a Michigan State University education.
“Those are potential positive factors moving forward, but we’ve also been reminded throughout the pandemic how important the campus experience is. The desire of students to get back to campus reminds us how important the socialization component of MSU is. We have to make sure we preserve that component of MSU. A lot of the unique traditions we have at MSU and the pride of being a Spartan comes from having walked on the campus. Maintaining that is very important.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“The garden’s origins go back to about 1987 or 88, and the founding curator, Jane Taylor, who also worked for the Michigan 4-H Foundation, had the idea that she wanted to create a a garden for children,” Lownds explains. “And what she meant by that was an idea that no one else had really had up until that time. She wanted a place like a botanical garden, but one that was for kids so that when you went in it, you didn't just walk in and follow the pathways and all you could do is look at plants because, God forbid, that you ever touch anything or step on the grass even or that sort of thing. She was very tired of when parents with young children ask the children, ‘Well, where do you want to go?’ They would always say, ‘Well, we want to go to the zoo.’ Never did they say we want to go to the garden.
“There have been many copies of the 4-H Children's Gardens since then, but we are the first true children's garden. It’s located on MSU's campus and is a wonderful place to visit.”
Lownds says the pizza garden is one of his favorite spots in the garden. “A pizza garden is a garden where a kid or an adult is going to be able to see all of the plants that make your pizza. But in order to make it so that it's immediately recognizable by children, the pizza garden is shaped like a pizza; it's round. The crust on it is concrete, but it is rounded concrete. It has imprints in the concrete of tomatoes, and onions, and basil leaves. It also even has a piece cut out of it so that you can step in and be a part of the pizza.”
Lownds says about 100,000 visitors come through the gardens each year. He describes the development of the garden’s Monet Bridge. And he says there’s a pharmacy garden that “contains plants that are used to make pharmaceuticals. If you go back in history, almost all of our pharmaceuticals started as plants, in plants, or extractions from plants.
"The science discovery garden is our attempt to make available hands-on, right in front of you some of the research that's going on in the buildings that you can see when you're standing in the garden, like in the Plant and Soil Science Building and the Plant Biology Building. So we have examples of some of those experiments. Many of them are NSF funded experiments. And so we're providing some of the broader impact or the community outreach component of those gardens.
“Part of our mission is to provide a place of enrichment and delight for children of all ages.”
The sheep statue in the milk, meat, and wool garden is special to Lownds.
“Kids can sit on it because everything in the garden is designed to be interactive. What I tell my college students is, and it's a little bit tongue in cheek but not that much, and I'm usually sitting on the sheep while I'm talking to them, I tell them that what I want them to do is to come out there before they graduate and get their picture taken on the sheep. I'm trying to make that a graduation requirement. I just think everyone should get out there.
“My favorite plant in the garden is a plant called the sensitive plant. And when you touch the leaves of it, it closes up. It has action and activity and it’s the number one favorite kid plant in the garden, and it's my favorite plant too.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“I've been going to MSU football games since I was probably six or seven-years-old,” Beekman says. “And to me, every football season when the band comes out of the tunnel and they do the kick step and they come out in the same sort of way every single year, it just sends a shiver down my spine. To me, that's sort of the first moment to me that you feel like the season’s begun and we're really at a football game. The band is a much larger part of our culture here on campus than many of us maybe even realize.”
“The preparation of the marching band is really a year-round project for us,” says Thornton. “We have about 310 students in the band. We're a part of the athletic department and supported by the athletic department. But we also are an academic class that students sign up to get credit for.”
Thornton talks about the process of developing halftime shows.
“It starts with a note on my phone where I'm constantly brainstorming and thinking about what are songs that would be fun, or what are themes, or what are artists that are maybe having an anniversary, or are really popular in pop culture, or we have a significant anniversary, or an event coming up on campus. It starts with always being open minded and always brainstorming.
“And then we start thinking about the design aspect of our show based on how many shows we're going to do. So we do a new halftime show for every home game. So depending on the schedule, that could be anywhere, six, seven, or eight games. And so from there, then we look at things like Homecoming and Halloween that might dictate the type of show that we would do. And so there's a lot of brainstorming time and thinking about what we're looking at. We've got a new football coach this year. So I've met with Coach Tucker to talk about some of his musical interests to see if we could collaborate on a show to welcome him to our MSU family. And so all of those things are our influencers in that process. But another big part of it for us is the collaboration with our students.
“The music is the most critical element for us in putting together a halftime show and the one that certainly takes a lot of thought and a lot of time to come together. But it's very much a collaborative process with myself, our staff members and our students. And every year, the students at the end of the year, we take a little survey and the whole band recommends themes and music that they would like to do. And we try and involve some of those ideas into our planning and our performances to give the students a little bit of ownership in the process.”
Thornton says a couple of his favorite performances have been when “we made the elephant fly through the sky. And then we also did the Africa themed show for the Year of Global Africa in partnership with the African Studies Program.
“It’s great to learn about different music and different communities and to connect with different people, which I think is a great message for the time that we're living when we need to be open minded and good listeners. And these cross collaborations are incredibly powerful. And our students really enjoy the opportunity as well. And so it was a great experience despite the sideways snow storm two weeks later.”
Thornton talks about how the band has evolved over its 150-year history.
“Our band program as a whole is really significant, particularly in the Big Ten and really across the country. The first band was established in 1870, and it was a 10-person student Civil War group. And that was how our organization was started. It has grown now to an over 300-person member ensemble.
“This Fall as a part of our anniversary for the 150th year of MSU bands, we welcomed back over 900 alumni that came to participate in a halftime show. And we had over 1,200 people combined alumni and the current Spartan Marching Band on the field, which was just spectacular. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. And so that was a fantastic reunion. It was just so great to see people that had been in the band over 50-60 years ago come back and want to be a part of the great tradition.
“We're not the oldest band in the Big Ten, but we're certainly one of the oldest. And we take great pride in carrying on that tradition. And it's my job to have that tradition continue.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Michigan State University will continue providing much needed assistance to students who are children of migrant farm workers with a U.S. Department of Education grant renewal of more than $2 million. MSU's College Assistance Migrant Program Scholars initiative, better known as CAMP, has served more than a thousand eligible migrant and seasonal farm worker students during its 20 years. The CAMP initiative identifies, recruits, admits and enrolls migrant and seasonal farm worker students and provides them academic, social and financial support to complete their first year of college. The program has produced more than 300 graduates throughout the past 20 years.
“The purpose of CAMP is really to provide an opportunity for first generation college students; their most difficult year is their freshmen year,” says Luis Alonzo Garcia, director of MSU's Migrant Student Services. “And our perspective and that of the purpose of CAMP is to facilitate and get their feet well grounded in the institution and provide them some basic skills to make sure that they can get through their four or five years of undergraduate studies.”
“I'm a daughter of migrant farm workers,” says Kiara Liz Zarate, a third-year undergraduate student at Michigan State University currently working toward her degree in child development with a minor in Chicano Latino studies. As a third-generation migrant field worker, she plans on establishing nationwide early childhood development centers that will benefit migrant and immigrant families with access to resources and a better education.
“I'm the third generation of the field workers in my family. I'm from South Texas and in all honesty, just to keep it real with you guys, if it wasn't for the CAMP program that I was introduced to, I would not have had a chance to attend college. Universities are quite expensive. And for a low-income family who just depends solely on agricultural farm work, it's pretty difficult to afford top notch universities. CAMP has been an overall great experience the years that I've been there. Like Luis mentioned before, they really do make it easier for us to be there.”
“My experience with CAMP has been, honestly, one of the best moments of my life,” adds Eduardo Jimenez, better known as Lalo. He's a first-generation college student studying computer science. This is his third year in college. And after he graduates, he hopes to work with cyber security in Los Angeles.
“I'm a farm worker as well. I always was working in the fields and education was always a dream because we couldn't afford going to college. I personally couldn't afford it. I never even thought about going to college. I was just living life, working in the fields, going to school and then just going back and working, working. When it became time to apply for colleges, I didn't know what to do. I didn't even plan on going to college. Because of CAMP coming into my life, it really changed everything. It changed my whole life around because I never thought I'd be here. I never thought I'd be attending Michigan State ever in my life. I never thought I'd be studying computer science because I never thought I’d go to college.”
Garcia talks about the particular challenges children of migrant farm workers face in college. And he describes how CAMP finds, attracts, and recruits students like Kiara and Lalo. And he tells why CAMP is such a good fit at MSU.
“And one of the first things I tell the students when they arrive at MSU, I make it very clear to them, is that nobody owes you anything in life,” says Garcia. “Nobody’s going to give you anything. In life, everything you get you're going to have to earn. And that is our expectation of you as a CAMP student. You're going to get a degree, but you're going to earn it. Nobody's going to give it to you, but we are going to be your support system to get you through it because you can do it. And the entire staff are former migrants. They've all worked in the fields. So we know what we're talking about."
“I think one of the most important things about the migrant farm worker community that we work with is how much of a mobile population they are,” says Elias Lopez, senior associate director at MSU's Migrant Student Services Department, where he has worked in a management and advising capacity to migrant and seasonal farm worker students for more than 10 years. And Elias was a participant of the first MSU CAMP cohort in 2001. He graduated from MSU in 2006.
“And we don't think about the disruption they experience within the K-12 system and how each student experiences that education so differently. Oftentimes students attend more than one high school in a year. And we have some of our students who often will attend three or four different high schools in one year. When we go out and we recruit them, many times these are children who never had hopes of going to college. They never thought about it. They never thought that this was going to be something that they could achieve because of the amount of disruption in their lives in addition to being low income and not knowing how to pay for it.
“So being able to be in a position to go and meet many of the students before they're even thinking about college and facilitate the process of applying and familiarizing themselves with the opportunities that exist with higher education is an amazing opportunity that we have, especially as we are part of Michigan State, which prides itself in being a land grant institution. And even many years later, we continue to be able to go to some of the most vulnerable populations in our country to give them these opportunities. A lot of the work that we do is very specific to that first year experience to be able to give them that exposure to college.
“And I think that what makes us so proud to be a part of Michigan State University is how much they've been able to provide in not only their mission, but also in some of the resources and commitment that they have to our students to be able to continue some of their services after their first year.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Two Spartan alumni are working to empower Black students in Michigan through mentoring and leadership development. Ongoing mentoring relationships have a powerful impact on young people. Research shows that students who have mentors in their lives are 55 percent more likely to enroll in college and 130 percent more likely to hold leadership positions in the future.
Rhonda Walker is a 1991 graduate of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, and Detroiters may know her as the co-anchor of the weekday morning newscast at WDIV Local 4 News, Detroit's NBC affiliate.
Off-camera, Rhonda is the founder of Rhonda Walker Foundation, an organization that works to empower inner city teen girls toward becoming strong and successful future leaders. The foundation's mentoring program boasts a 100 percent high school graduation and college enrollment rate.
Walker says she was inspired to start her foundation by the young people she would meet when guest speaking at schools in Detroit.
“I started realizing that you really can't change much in one conversation with children,” Walker says. “You have to have sustainable conversations featuring empowering messaging and expose the girls to resources and mentoring so they can see other professional women, particularly for these teen girls, that they can aspire to become.”
Ideally, believes Walker, a mentor should be someone outside one’s family.
“It's a new voice that's able to provide you guidance from a different perspective. And it's also attention. When you're mentoring a teen girl, you're showing that she's important, that her interests and her concerns are important to you, and that you're taking your personal time to give that child attention. That means a lot. It’s the personal attention, and it's also the positive messages, guidance, and support for the parents.
“Sometimes someone outside of your family has the resources, the experiences, or just the similar interests that can meet that child where they are and really help them to dream bigger, aspire bigger, and help build confidence. They know that they have that special person that's rooting for them.”
Walker says watching her father mentor children while she was growing up in Lansing also inspires her to give back. And she believes mentoring is important for everyone, including teen girls.
“It's important for young black girls to realize that they can accomplish anything. And that sometimes when you're a minority, you don't see as many people doing the things that you aspire or want to do. And you think that it's because you're a minority. Or for some reason, those opportunities aren't available for you. The kids I work with are growing up in inner city Detroit in predominantly Black schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods. And when you grow up that way, you're not having a lot of exposure to what the real world looks like and having real world interaction with people from different cultures.”
Walker describes how her mentees are responding to and processing the killing of George Floyd and the broad awakening people of all colors are having to the racism African Americans have faced for years.
“It's also a time to reflect, too, on all of the opportunity that is out there for African Americans already. There are some injustices, but there is so much opportunity for us to change that. Our kids can go into the legal profession. They can become renowned judges. They can run for office and assume those leadership roles.
“And I do think that the movement is so strong right now that a lot of companies are rethinking hiring and rethinking boards and rethinking what can they do as executives or as business owners to help provide more opportunity for African American people.
“I'm very encouraged. I'm especially encouraged, too, by the diversity of those who are demonstrating and speaking out. They're from all walks of life, all ages, all races, and that's what our country is.
“And I think sometimes we have to remind ourselves that this is a great country to be in, and that there are a lot of positive things that happen here. There's a lot of opportunity to change some of the things that need to be changed. I don't know, I'm just an optimist and I feel really good about where we are.”
Walker says empowering teen girls is her way of giving back, and she encourages all of us to find our own ways to make our communities better.
Tim Herd is a 2019 graduate from the College of Education. As a junior at MSU, Tim launched a student organization called Rising Black Men, a group dedicated to the mentorship of Black male undergraduate students at MSU. The group was so successful in its first year on campus that it was recognized as the student organization of the year and quickly drew attention from beyond East Lansing.
Tim has spoken about Rising Black Men at institutions such as Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California.
He and his three fellow African American freshmen at MSU didn’t always feel like they fit in and belonged at MSU when they first arrived.
“I realized that my situation wasn't necessarily an anomaly and that was reflected across the institution. And I realized that four to six-year graduation rates for Black men at other four to six-year institutions was one of the lowest amongst other demographics.
“I started to get involved with different organizations on campus, such as the Urban Educators Cohort Program and the Intercultural Aid Program. Being able to use those resources and the people who I came across, I decided in my junior year that it was time to be the change that I wanted to see.
“I went about brainstorming with one of my mentors, Dr. Chezare Warren, a faculty member within the College of Education. And he was like, ‘You should think about creating your own group.’ That was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to see how I could join and help find a solution. And the solution I came up with was establishing Rising Black Men.”
Herd had the privilege of growing up in a two-parent household with college-educated parents in Grosse Pointe.
“So in terms of that sense of belonging or that culture shock, that wasn't something I'd experienced because I'm originally from the east side of Detroit. But in the fifth grade, I moved to Grosse Pointe. But at MSU I saw a lot of students coming from Detroit Public Schools, and many experienced some type of culture shock from going from a predominantly Black neighborhood in a predominantly Black area to a place where there are 50,000 students.
“And it's not just in terms of being a predominantly white institution, but just all types of people. We have a large population of international students. So that can be an adjustment, and it can be an adjustment for every student.
“That sense of wanting to belong is something that I've seen. One of the biggest things I saw was a need for mentorship. And like Ms. Walker said, not just for Black men, but across the board. But if I was to pinpoint one problem or one area in which I see that there needed to be a solution for, it would be in that sense of belonging and feeling like you really belonged there.”
Herd talks about how his organization connects college students with professionals and MSU students with K-12 students in the Lansing School District.
“I really wanted to do that is to provide exposure because you don't know if you don't see.
“So even for me, growing up in a two-parent household in Grosse Pointe in a middle to upper class neighborhood, I didn't see a lot of Black professionals prior to entering Michigan State. When I got to Michigan State, that was a shock for me because I hadn't seen other Black people who had their PhDs, and who were achieving at high levels.
“For me, that was exposure that motivated me even more to want to first go into the field of education, but then also to pay it forward. And what I've done and what we've been able to do, or have been privileged to be able to do within Rising Black Men, is going to the K-12 school system within Lansing and work with young Black men. We talk with the students about things like financial literacy and that sense of belonging to help develop confidence.
“So often you hear this narrative that Black men might not succeed at the same rate as other demographics and that Black men only have sports as their outlet to success. And if they don't succeed in sports, then they're not going to make it. But there are plenty of other outlets. The whole idea is to provide that exposure and mentoring.
“So just being present in those spaces in K-12 is important because it shows that you're just there for them. We say ‘I'm here for you and I'm going to help you. And I'm going to connect you because my whole idea is it takes a village; nobody can do it alone.’ That's what we try to provide within Rising Black Men. Building that village and providing that exposure and really helping with that mentorship is what we’re all about.”
Watch the MSU Alumni Office Facebook Live video of this conversation here.
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices.
Phil Hart earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees in sociology in 1970 and 1974 respectively from MSU’s College of Social Science. Hart has dedicated his career to studying race in America through the lenses of sociology, urban planning, and social justice. He's authored more than 100 books and articles on race in America and has served as a leader both on campus and around the country on race-related initiatives.
Hart talks about his time as a student activist on campus and offers his perspective on the challenges our nation is facing today.
“When I first arrived at MSU in the fall of 66, there was a lot of excitement about football. It was Bubba Smith and Duffy Daugherty. That was the center of attention. As we got to April 4th, 1968 with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, the mood changed totally, and I became very active in campus life. I was one of the founders of the Black Student Alliance that began putting pressure on the university to respond to the racial injustice and the urban protest that was going on starting after the death of Martin Luther King Jr.”
Hart talks about how he evolved as a student leader and points out that MSU opened the nation’s first department of urban affairs. He was instrumental in establishing an urban experiment station at MSU.
He senses a difference in the country’s mood following the killing of George Floyd “because the protests are more multiracial and multicultural, and the true awakening is happening in cities and towns around the world like London and Berlin.
“Also, what I think about is one of the things that Martin Luther King spoke about. He talked about the arc of history. He said, ‘The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.’ And I think the thing that I see different now from, say 1968, is that I think the arc of history is now bending towards justice. As you think about where all of this is leading today, we're obviously in the midst of a pandemic. I've been on lockdown in my house since March 11th. That plus the collapse of the economy because of our response to the pandemic and then the urban unrest is different than 1968 in that we've got the pandemic laid over these other events. Non-Black people are waking up to the plight that we have been experiencing as Black people in America since we got here in 1619 in a history of racial oppression, racism, and white supremacy, frankly.”
Hart writes and speaks about solutions-oriented approaches to social injustice. He explains what he means by “solutions-oriented” and shares his views on reparations.
“What we need are solutions for the United States of America to address racism, the question of diversity and inclusion, and wealth creation on the part of Black Americans.”
Hart shares his “broad three-pronged approach that I believe are possible solutions moving forward that address social justice and wealth creation. That includes reparations, universities’ responsibility, and corporations’ responsibility.”
Hart says “in many ways, Michigan State University has been ahead of the curve in addressing racism. It was 50 years ago that Clifton Wharton became the president of MSU, the first African American president of a major predominantly white public research university.
“And I would expect that Michigan State, among not only land grant universities but universities at large, would be in the lead in terms of addressing these issues. And Michigan State has a significant population of Black students. Even when I was there, and that was 1970, 1974, the number of Black students that we had at MSU exceeded the number of Black students at several historically Black colleges and universities. Michigan State's traditionally been in the lead in terms of issues that relate to Black Americans.”
He shares his views on how he would define both White and Black fragility and on how we can all help make a difference in our own communities.
“Racism is a virus. In our local communities we can be anti-racist and take proactive steps to make sure that racism is eliminated. COVID-1619 is a vaccine that is needed to fight racism. But before we find a vaccine, just like before we find a vaccine for COVID-19, we can take steps. Wear a mask. Practice social distancing. If all of us in our local communities take an anti-racist stance and stop using skin color as a way to say whether someone is good or bad or that we're going to treat them in a certain way, that's a good first step to take.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices.
It's always my pleasure to welcome Dennis Martell to the MSU Today microphones. Dennis is executive director of the National Social Norms Center and is in the Health Promotion Department at MSU. And it's great to welcome Monique Mitchell Turner to MSU Today for the first time. Dr. Turner is professor and chair of MSU's renowned Department of Communication.
“What's challenging about this situation, Russ, is that in my 35 years of being at MSU, I've never had a situation where we're constantly chasing an ever-changing pandemic that's affecting an ever-changing population, which is then affecting reactions from administration for ever-changing policies and mandates,” says Martell. “In order for us to get an idea of how this will all play out in the fall, we needed to do a survey of students on and off campus related to these issues. The effect of health risk messages is a concept that we need to study with the students, and also understand even from our own point-of-view, what is the best way to help the university reopen and have the students follow the protocols that will keep them safe.”
“There are some important differences between the COVID-19 response on campus and the kinds of risk messaging we've been doing for decades,” adds Turner. “On college campuses, it's pretty normal to have messaging about binge drinking, smoking, depression, mental health generally, etc. And when students’ behaviors are what we would call risky, then we can focus on the impacts that they're having on themselves in the main. When you smoke, you're hurting yourself. When you're drinking, you're hurting yourself. Certainly there are effects on their friends and families as well.
“But COVID-19 is really interesting because these students' risk behaviors might not have a substantial effect on their own health because of their age, but they will have a substantial effect on a number of people around campus, including the immunocompromised, older adults, etc. And so here we are faced with an issue where students risk behaviors are affecting other people on campus, and we've never really had to message something quite like that. We really haven't had cases where we've had to work quickly in a dynamic and changing environment to communicate about infectious disease.”
Turner and Martell discuss the characteristics that define Generation Z and how knowledge of those characteristics helps define effective messages for them. And they talk about data from the National College Health Assessments from the American College Health Association and U-Celebrate 2019 and what the data reveal.
“What these data reveal is just how community-oriented our students are and how collectivistic they are,” Turner says. “And that gives us a great window into the kinds of communication we can have with them. Certainly you hear people talking about mask-wearing behaviors and physical distancing behaviors and how people aren't thinking about other people. Maybe that's true. I don't know. But what we do know is that students do greatly care about each other. And so if our message can really make that salient and point it out to people, it seems as though that would really resonate with our audience. And so I think that that is a great ray of hope for us coming into reopening.”
The duo discusses how pride in MSU can inspire desired behavior.
“I'm a proud Spartan alumna with three degrees from this fine university,” Turner continues. “And no matter where I've gone in this country, or even internationally with my Spartan gear on, I find another Spartan crossing the street to let me know that they too went to MSU. Spartans take a great deal of pride in this university and what it stands for and it being a land grant university. And that's something that can compel people to engage in behaviors that protect other Spartans.
“Oftentimes, we have messages that just tell people what to do but maybe forget to tell them why to do it. I argue that this is a very special place with a special mindset, and we should really talk to people about how thwarting COVID-19 is also about protecting this university.”
Martell and Turner have a new survey in the field now.
“Much like the surveys that Dennis and his team have collected previously, what we really want to understand is the psychological mindset of the student body,” adds Turner. “Do they perceive COVID-19 to be a threat? Do they feel it's severe? Do they feel susceptible? Do they think other people are susceptible? How common do they think it is to wear a mask or engage in physical distancing? How are they experiencing these behaviors emotionally? Do they make them nervous or angry? We also want to understand how oriented they are toward being a member of a group. We really want to understand what they think would work. We want their voice. And that's what the survey is attempting to gain.”
“What we're trying to do, too, is advise upper administration on how to go about the messaging,” Martell adds. “The social norms part of this is really important; social norms are a really positive approach. We advise the university not to tell students what to do. Social norms don't tell you what to do. They tell you what you do. In other words, if it's normative to wear a mask, we tell the students it's normative to wear a mask. One of the tenets here is that we're not about correcting the students. We're about connecting with the students. We connect with them and tell them what their peers think. If 90 percent of students approve of wearing masks in the classroom, then we just tell them that. Those are the data we're trying to look at and trying to advise the university on as to how best to create their messages so that we can reopen.”
“When you're designing risk messages for the college-aged group, the most important thing is to not be reactive, not to be finger wagging at them or be condescending, or assume you know what they're thinking,” adds Turner. “Those strategies are regretfully used all over this nation, but Dennis and I would never do that. We respect our students. We care about their voice. We care about their health. What we're trying to do is develop messages that connect with them in a way that will make them engage in the safest behaviors possible.”
“The challenge here is somehow getting the students to know that we're not wearing a mask necessarily to protect ourselves,” says Martell. “We're wearing a mask to protect others and that they need to protect those people who are most vulnerable. You may not experience the symptoms and severity of it. But you have a responsibility to protect your mom, your dad, your grandparents, your step-parents, faculty and staff, and people who may be more vulnerable than you. This is what I think we can do with MSU because of the connectivity and the way MSU students think about the pride of being a Spartan. I can say that now is a time more than ever to raise your shield and actually wear that mask to protect and keep the university open.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices.
We're all spending a lot more time in virtual spaces and that's likely to continue well into our future, even as we might be slowly moving back towards more in-person meetings and classes. But virtual spaces aren't void of harassment.
Harassment can show up in these spaces of learning and working just like in-person. Here to define and talk about virtual harassment are Lydia Weiss from Michigan State University's Prevention Outreach and Education Department (POE), and Erin Martin with MSU’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE).
“When we're talking about virtual harassment, we're looking at willful and/or repeated harm inflicted through the use of electronic tools,” says Martin. “And these are tools that we use really every day. But now that we are working primarily remotely, we may be using them more than we had before. When OIE is looking at harassment and what harassment is either in person or in this new virtual environment, we're looking at really two types of harassment that are discriminatory in nature. That would be harassment that is against somebody because of their age, color, gender, gender identity, disability status, height, marital status, national origin, political persuasion, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, or weight. So that's one umbrella of harassment that we may see in these virtual spaces.
“The second kind of harassment that we may see falls under what we would consider relationship violence or sexual misconduct. And that's loosely defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other unwelcome behavior of a sexual nature. In these virtual spaces, we acknowledge that even though we are not face to face, we are still having interactions. Most virtual harassment can be placed under one of those groups.”
Martin and Weiss describe the difference between virtual harassment and social media harassment.
“In a lot of ways they can intersect, but in this new virtual learning environment for the university, we are especially letting people into our most private spaces. We're letting people into the environments where we feel the most secure and safe. When we're talking about virtual harassment, we're talking about people using this new relationship and environment in a negative way.”
“If you're an instructor or a faculty member in a classroom, it's important to set expectations for virtual spaces,” says Weiss. “What are the expectations for how we interact in this space? Are people able to private chat one another? That's a space where these private interactions might lead to some virtual harassment.
“Are you requiring the use of video? That can make some people feel safer and some people feel more unsafe. Really it's ultimately about how are we fostering community and respect in these virtual classrooms. Do your students know what they can do if they're experiencing or witnessing virtual harassment in this space? Do they know that they can come to you to talk about something that might've made them uncomfortable in the classroom? And how are you going to address it as a community in that space? On the flip side of that, if you're a student in the classroom, ultimately you have potentially less power in that space, so your responsibility is very different than that of a faculty member or instructor. That intervention likely will look different.”
Weiss explains the three D’s of bystander intervention: direct, distract, and delegate.
“Sometimes, one of the reasons we don't intervene is we don't always recognize behavior as harassing behavior,” Martin adds. “Sometimes I think we get caught up on the most dramatic forms of harassment. We first started having this conversation when Zoom bombings were occurring and they were really intense and graphic and disturbing. But harassment in these spaces can be much more subtle as well. It can be as small as aggressively interrupting people or talking over them during meetings. It can be using language that's inappropriate or offensive.
“It is in everyone's best interest and in the community's best interest to report anything that feels uncomfortable that you think may be harassment. We would rather have reports come in that we have to analyze whether or not they're appropriate to take further than people be fearful to make reports or think, ‘Oh, I know harassment, and that's not harassment, so I'm not going to report it.’ We would really rather have anything that comes in that feels uncomfortable and let us take it from there.”
“The thing that I want folks to know about virtual harassment is that it has a big impact,” Weiss adds. “Just because it happens in a virtual setting doesn't mean that it doesn't have a huge impact. Virtual harassment is a serious issue and there are support and resources available to you.”
“It’s important for the campus and the community to understand that harassment doesn't stop just because we're not in physical spaces, it can just look different,” says Martin. “It’s still something that the university is committed to address to make sure people are feeling supported.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk at 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
“Sending waste to landfills is more expensive than it seems," a recycling advocate told Michigan lawmakers recently, "It costs money to store and manage trash, it also takes valuable material like plastic and aluminum out of the supply chain and away from manufacturers who could reuse it."
Michigan Recycling Coalition Executive Director, Kerrin O'Brien went on to tell legislators that a package of bills recently introduced in the state house aims to reverse that by rewriting Michigan solid waste law to emphasize recycling and composting material over sending it to landfills. The bills aim to increase the state's recycling rate, provide curbside or drop off recycling for most Michiganders, and strengthen oversight of landfill and composting facilities.
“Current state law says that Michigan counties have to demonstrate that they have enough disposal capacity to meet the needs of 100 percent of the waste that's produced in that county. So our solid waste laws are really keyed into making sure that we have the disposal capacity needed rather than the capacity for other methodologies, like recycling and composting, to more productively dispose of that waste. And frankly, we've been more focused on ensuring landfill capacity. We're really not investing in using our materials more productively. Since the legislature back in 2018 put money into recycling, however, policy needs to follow through on making sure we have the framework that we really need in place to assure that we can step up to do more recycling and composting.”
“Right now the state of Michigan recycling is poor,” says Michigan Environmental Council Policy Director Sean Hammond.” We compare very poorly to not only our neighbors, but the whole country. We're looking at about a 15 to 18 percent recycling rate, that's the lowest in the Great Lakes and one of the lowest in the country. It is really disappointing given that we were a leader in recycling at one point with the passage of the Bottle Bill 40 years ago and the city of Ann Arbor starting up a single stream recycling program in the early days of that technology.
“So these bills really want to have Michigan retake the lead in managing solid waste and recycling differently. And these bills to me really do that by flipping county planning on its head. Instead of looking at just solid waste of capacity, as Kerrin noted, now we're looking at recycling and composting capacity as well. We're not just, again, looking at landfill capacity, we're looking at how are we managing all our materials? How are we diverting waste from landfills and giving incentives to those counties that work towards those goals?”
“Michigan certainly has a lot of room for improvement,” says Michigan Chemistry Council Executive Director, John Dulmes. “We do have a very strong container recycling program that does well with those materials, but a lot of the other materials that are out there - plastics, metals, cardboard, glass, and other things that we use every day - Michigan is putting a lot of it into landfills.
“There have been studies showing that hundreds of millions of dollars of value every year of materials gets land filled in our state. Companies that are part of the supply chain want to see that stuff return to available use. And in fact, there are a lot of companies out there that are looking for these kinds of materials and they want to meet recycling goals of 50 percent or more recycled content in their products. Michigan can play a big part in making that happen, but only if we get our act together and get recycling more universally across the state and get everybody educated on what they can recycle and the best way to do that. Counties need to be part of the process and make sure that the facilities and infrastructure are there and that we are not just putting things in the ground irresponsibly.”
How can we all become better recyclers?
“First and foremost, it's really about paying attention to what you can recycle in your local program,” O’Brien says. “Don't put something in your recycling bin that's really not supposed to go there. Yes, many things can be recycled, but there's only a subset of materials that can be put in your curbside recycling bin or accepted at your drop-off. Other things can be recycled, like for example plastic bags, but they go back to the retail store. Meijer or Kroger or wherever you do your shopping will take back those bags for recycling. So it's really important to clue into where material can be accepted and don't send them garbage that only degrades the whole process.
“We, the industry, really certainly needs to be better at providing the right kind of information and educating consumers about who, what, how, why and where. These bills provide funding and requirements to do that. So I expect we'll get better with education, but recycling is a really effective way for residents to participate in doing something helpful for the environment. And if we can get better at it on an even larger scale, we can reduce all the environmental impacts that go along with producing and consuming in our modern lifestyle.”
“We encourage everyone to look at what you're consuming to start with and try to figure out and buy more reusable and recyclable products,” Hammond adds. “A lot of times things that you might think of as recyclable aren't really. So for example, plastic silverware is made of a plastic that you would probably think is recyclable, but it's often not. The whole system that we have is based on consuming products and throwing them away.
“That's how we've dealt with our waste for forever in this country. And what we really need to do is look at what we're buying, how we're buying it, and how we're using it to do better by recycled materials and send those market signals. We've seen success in this, for example, the last straw campaign where McDonald's has ditched single use plastic straws in a lot of places and gone to paper or compostable products. There are options out there. As consumers, we need to be better at buying those options that are recyclable or compostable or contain recycled materials to help drive the economic piece of everything.”
“A lot of products now, additionally, have very specific labels detailing how to recycle and what can go in where,” Dulmes says. “That can help make that process easier. I would also say at the local level that you should just speak up with your waste hauler, with your township or county or city, whoever is responsible for managing those things. We've seen in recent years and even during COVID that sometimes those local governments and municipalities cut back on recycling when the costs go up a little bit and they feel like that's not something that the citizens would want to support. And I think it's very important that citizens make their voice heard at the very local level just to say that recycling is something that's important, not only to individuals and to our state's wellbeing, but also to industry.”
“Our solid waste laws are 23 years old and were developed in a different time when we were more concerned with filling up our landfills,” says O’Brien. “But what we're finding now is that we've got plenty of disposal capacity. What we don't yet have the capacity for is to use all of these resources that are already circulating in our economy to their maximum benefit. And that's really what we're trying to do. And I think that many people in the legislature see that and get that. And so if you want to weigh in with your state legislator about your opinion, this would be a good time to do that.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on WKAR News/Talk at 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
Bill Beekman, Michigan State University vice president and director of athletics, welcomes Barb Kranz to MSU Today. Kranz is the director of Facilities Planning and Space Management at MSU and a person who many people at outside the university may not be familiar with. “But I can assure you that everybody inside the university knows Barb's name because she's the point person on all issues related to space, and space is a very critical issue at a university,” Beekman says.
Facilities Planning & Space Management is responsible for Capital and Space Planning and Space Administration for the university, aligning space and physical resources with strategic vision to support MSU’s core mission of teaching/learning, research, and outreach.
“People need places to work, says Kranz. “We need to make sure we have classrooms for our students and other instructional spaces. We collaborate with Residential and Hospitality Services and Athletics. We look for ways to coordinate and leverage our space, financial and human resources. As we bring people together with our facility resources, we have policies, protocols, and procedures that we develop to help ensure our space resources are used the best they can be.”
Kranz talks about the depth and breadth of research MSU faculty are involved in and what goes into finding faculty appropriate research space. She describes the new STEM building under construction on campus, too.
Kranz has quite possibly set foot in every room on campus during her career and says her favorite locations are the lobbies at the Auditorium Building, both on the main auditorium side and on the Fairchild Theater side. “The North Kedzie lobby is also very beautiful as well. I would say those are three of my favorite spots of all of our spaces on campus.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
The relative losses have been larger in the Great Lakes region than in any other region in the U.S., and larger in Michigan than in any other state, economists Charles Ballard and John Goddeeris found.
They shared results of their work in the latest State of the State Podcast, hosted by MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research in the College of Social Science.
The research began a year ago before the coronavirus pandemic and the death of George Floyd focused heightened public attention on racial disparities in the United States, Goddeeris said. The study focused on annual wages in the full-time, year-round workforce and spanned four decades. Find the research paper here.
“Since around 1980, Black workers, both men and women, have lost a lot of ground relative to whites outside of the south,” Goddeeris said during the podcast. “It is striking that African Americans have lost the most ground in Michigan.”
The most important factors explaining these trends are racial differences in education, they concluded, along with occupational segregation.
They called for continued enforcement of anti-discrimination laws as “an important part of any effort to improve the earnings of black workers,” in a presentation made as part of an IPPSR training program.
In addition, they recommended:
· Greater public awareness of the racial wage gap.
· Any steps to help reduce overall inequality, including raising the minimum wage, will help erase the racial wage gap.
· Improvements in the quality and quantity of education to all will lift the fortunes of all American children, but is likely to help African Americans disproportionately.
· Longer K-12 school year, better financing for education, and increased attention to graduation rates from elementary school through college.
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IPPSR Director Matt Grossmann and Associate IPPSR Director Arnold Weinfeld hosted this broadcast over Zoom while MSU employees conduct teaching and research remotely during the coronavirus pandemic.
IPPSR is best known for its policy education, leadership training, and survey research. It is home of the Public Policy Forum Series, the Michigan Political Leadership Program, Office for Survey Research and State of the State Survey and a number of databases valuable to researchers, academic faculty and media.
The major cities include (most of) Lansing, East Lansing, Brighton, Howell, Clarkston, Lake Orion, Rochester, and Rochester Hills. That would include then, of course, Michigan State University.
Representative Slotkin describes how September 11 led to her “unusual” and apolitical path to Congress as part of our country’s national security team. She quips that she met her husband in Iraq “where every good girl meets her husband – in Saddam Hussein’s palace.”
She explains how ultimately she was motivated to run for Congress in May of 2017, “the first time the House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. What I really care about is protections for people with preexisting conditions.”
She talks about what has surprised her about being in Congress and how there are really only 50 or 60 truly independent swing districts in the entire country and how that reduces interest in bipartisan cooperation.
Slotkin says her priorities “are the things I get pulled over in the grocery store about: the price of healthcare, the price of prescription drugs, clean water, and then bringing some sense of civility and decency back to government.” And she describes how Covid-19 has impacted these priorities. She says her “new obsession” has her focused on America’s supply chain and bringing some of our manufacturing base back to the United States, especially on medical supplies and pharmaceuticals.
On the challenges facing Michigan State University and all of higher education, Rep. Slotkin says colleges and universities are struggling with the drop in revenue brought on by Covid-19. And she expresses her concern about the “massive” problem of student debt.
“I’m a big believer that getting a student loan is not like getting a loan to build a new deck on your house. It’s an investment in your future. All loans should be capped at 2.5 percent.”
Slotkin says she wants to continue to work to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. “And we need to treat our environmental security like homeland security. We have an opportunity in Michigan to reframe how we talk about environmental issues. It’s not a niche issue that only one party cares about. It’s about preservation of our way of life and the safety and security of our kids. If you can’t feed your child a glass of water without knowing if they’re going to get sick, that is a threat to your family. And if you can’t fish the rivers your grandfather taught you to fish in, that is a threat to your way of life.
“In an independently minded district (like Michigan’s 8th) where everyone has very different views on things, I hope to be a representative that hears everyone, reaches out to everyone, and tries to hear all sides and makes independently minded decisions about pieces of legislation.
“I hope this district wants a representative that tries to lead based on integrity and duty to the Constitution. That doesn’t mean everyone will agree with everything I ever do. But I hope they know that I’m doing this from a place of principle.”
Rep. Slotkin adds that she thinks “our young people are doing a good job of showing that they’re ready to lead. In terms of preparing yourself for elected office or to lead in general, you can’t study it in a book. You have to put yourself out there, take a little risk, and run for something now. You have to take initiative and experience what it is to lead in order to sharpen those skills.
“I still believe that in the United States, fortune favors the bold. If you’re willing to try something and do something that others are reticent to do. If you put your blood, sweat, and tears into it, you’re still going to succeed here more than anywhere else on the planet. But you have to put yourself out there. You can’t just comment from the sidelines. You have to be the man or the woman in the arena, as the phrase goes. That starts wherever you are in high school or college. You have to run for something. You have to lead now in order to learn how to do it really well.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices.
The task force is acting in an advisory capacity to the governor and studies the causes of racial disparities in the impact of COVID-19 and recommends actions to immediately address such disparities and the historical and systemic inequities that underlie them.
There are two Spartans on the task force. Debra Furr-Holden is an epidemiologist and the associate dean for Public Health Integration at Michigan State University and the director of the Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions. Randy Rasch is professor and dean of the MSU College of Nursing.
“When we were looking at the coronavirus and the pandemic in Michigan, we recognized that African-Americans, who are 14 percent of our population, were overrepresented in terms of infection with the COVID-19 disease and deaths from it at about 40 percent,” says Rasch.
“The thing that I appreciate the most about the task force is, one, the work was already afoot,” adds Furr-Holden. “There was already work underway to deal with racial, ethnic, and other vulnerable and marginalized population disparities. We have a lot of groups and a lot of segments of our population in Michigan that are at excess risk for not getting basic primary care and preventive services.
“What we've seen during COVID-19 is an amplification effect. So COVID-19 was not the beginning of health disparities for Michigan or the nation. It unveiled some very important underlying both social and political determinants to health and has given us an opportunity to identity targets for intervention so we can have people experience health and access to healthcare as a right and not a privilege that's based on economics or race or ethnicity or any other type of status.”
“One of the things that the primary care work group is also looking at is who are those trusted members in the community who can work with an understanding of how people are actually living and think creatively how to do social distancing, how to do the hand-washing, and do all those things that we take for granted that are recommended by CDC that are a challenge for the folks who we're really trying to work with,” says Rasch. “We want to identify the trusted folks in a community who can also really get that message across,” Rasch says.
“We have an opportunity before us,” adds Furr-Holden. “I feel like as a nation and as a global community, we are at our most vulnerable right now. The virus has taken a toll on everybody independent of race, economics, gender, and gender identity. This has just made us all very vulnerable and in some respects, has allowed us to understand, see, process, and digest and almost be forced to confront the world that we live in. Fundamentally, we know that we don't live in a world where opportunity for health and growth and development is realized equally and equitably by all people.
“A lot of us have now had to confront that that is not actually the society that we live in either at a national level or at a global level. Some of us sort of knew this and have had different lived experiences that speak to it, but now it's become inescapable. So I really just encourage people to use this opportunity while we are in this period of modified operations and people are at home and almost forced to digest and consume media and other things that are happening not to be overwhelmed by it, but to really say, ‘Okay. If I didn't see it or understand it before, I can see it and understand it now. What can I do and who can I be as a champion for a world that really works for everybody?’
“For many of us on the front lines of healthcare, this has always been our mission. That health is something that people experience as a right and not as a privilege. In a nation as rich and as capable and innovative as ours, I think we should be global leaders in developing and implementing a world that works for everyone. I encourage people to stay safe and continue to practice all the protocols. I remind people we are in the middle of the pandemic. It is far from over. There is an opportunity before us to really just now confront some of our gaps in having health and healthcare be something that is a right and not a privilege.”
“I think the lesson that we can really learn while we, as Debra said, are sheltered in and have the time is to reflect on who we are as human beings and members of the human race and that we really are connected to each other,” says Rasch. And that when the most marginalized are doing well, we probably all do much better. We're connected in ways that are really important. I think this is a great time to revisit that. We've had two horrible things happen in our country in the last several weeks, and some of it has been very distressing. You can lose hope, but there are glimmers that should make us all feel hope for what's possible if we work collectively to address these issues.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices.
“We have a family room, where people are often found napping or watching endless YouTube videos, but mostly just hanging out and connecting with one another and finding community because chosen community is so important to us in the LGBTQA+ community. We do a lot of trainings and workshops.
“At the end of the day, we affirm that LGBTQA+ people on our campus, and in particular, our students, are perfect and whole and complete exactly as they are. And we celebrate, affirm and empower them.”
“We are a resource center, so we're kind of that middle person,” assistant director Oprah Jrenal adds. “Jesse has done a great job of making connections across campus. When a student comes in and they're like, ‘This thing happened,’ Jesse is able to go through the Rolodex of people they know and say, ‘Oh, I can connect you to this human in that college who can support you with making the choice on that or to figure out how to fix that.’
“That's why it's so important that we do all the workshops and trainings and keep our website up to date with a glossary of terminology so that folks who are just sitting in their offices can go, ‘Gee, I heard this word today. What does that even mean?’ Our website has so many resources on it, so if folks really don't want to talk to a human, they can always go to our website and explore more about our community.”
Beal says “the easiest way for faculty and staff to engage with our center is to either attend one of our trainings or workshops or to bring us in for consultation. For students, I think the easiest way to engage is to start with social media like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and our website. Or come to one of our many events and programs.”
Beal and Jrenal explain the importance of pronouns.
“Pronouns are words that we use in place of your name,” Beal says. “Most people have pronouns that they expect people to use for them when they're not in the room, right? The most common ones are the he series, he, him, his, or the she series, she, her, hers. I think it's important for folks to remember that they, them, theirs pronouns have been used as a singular since I think 1375.
“This is not a new thing, but it feels like a new thing to a lot of people because they haven't heard about folks using they as a singular for people who have a non-binary or a transgender identity. I use they/them pronouns. Those are the pronouns I expect for people to use for me when I'm not in their space or when they're talking about me when I'm even in front of them. I've been using those pronouns for a really long time. People can be very helpful in creating an inclusive space for transgender and non-binary folks by simply using the pronouns that we ask you to use for us. All it takes is a little practice.”
“A lot of the pushback will be, ‘How do I even learn what a person's pronouns are?’ Well, you ask, right? You don't assume that you know someone's pronouns because when you assume that you know someone's pronouns, you assume that you know their gender. We don't know that by looking at someone. What you're doing is you're taking cues from their body, from the length of their hair, or sometimes from a name on a list. You're assuming so much from so little when all you have to do is really ask someone who they are and get to know them.
“When you meet that person, actually meet them and leave behind whatever biased stereotype stuff that you might have to try to put someone in a box really quickly. As humans, we want to know as much as we can with as little time spent as we can, right? I want to put you in a box so that I can move on, but that hasn't served people for a long time. It hasn't served all of us for a very long time and it's very damaging, very harmful.
“If folks want to create more inclusive environments, one thing is to take your time and ask people their pronouns and provide a space for them to share them.”
“I want to add one tiny thing to that for folks who are not transgender or non-binary, or who don't use a gender-neutral pronoun,” Beal adds. “The easiest thing you can do to normalize and make it okay for people to share their pronouns is to just share yours. That may happen in your email signature, or it could be, Russ, you could so easily say, ‘Hi. My name is Russ, and these are the pronouns I use.’ That gives me, as a non-binary person in the world, a little bit more space to say, ‘Hey, I'm Jesse. I use they/them pronouns. Thanks so much.’
“The more current acronym is either LGBTQA+ or LGBTQIA+. That's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual. Plus means on and on and on in the rest of the acronym, because the problem with the acronym is we're going to leave somebody out unless we have it go for a very, very, very long time.
“I jokingly call it the ever-expanding acronym. I get to make that joke; I don't know that people who don't belong to the LGBTQA+ community get to. The more inclusive way to have the acronyms these days is to include the plus sign to indicate that there are more identities that are not included in the first set because we are ever growing and we are huge and we are not just one community.
Beal and Jrenal talk about June being Pride Month.
“LGBTQA+ communities are diverse and LGBTQA+ people exist in every employee group, in every racial identity, in every religious group, in every student group. We’re everywhere. I don't say that to sound scary, but we are; we're everywhere. We are so representative of the diversity that makes MSU so beautiful and there are so many ways to engage with us.”
“One of the things we hear a lot is that all of these pronouns have come out of nowhere. It's just that folks weren't paying attention. Folks were under the threat of death and safety and losing jobs and all these different things. Folks were oppressed, or are oppressed, so you're not going to have someone tell you who they are when they can't trust you that they're going to have their job the next day. It's important to understand that we've always been here and we're everywhere, just like Jesse said. I think that's one of the things that I want folks to understand, is this stuff isn't new.”
“Yes, and the language is changing so rapidly. Part of why the language is changing so rapidly is because we haven't been able to talk about ourselves freely and in public for very long at all. Until recently, we haven’t been able to be fully who we are in the world. LGBTQA+ people have existed since humans existed, we just have different language for that all throughout history. This is not a new thing; it just looks a little different than it used to.”
How can we all show and practice solidarity?
“The number one thing I'm seeing right now, given our current political moment, is the need for folks to diversify their media consumption,” Beal adds. “If you're not hearing the stories of LGBTA+ people, that has to do with what newspaper you read or what movies you watch. Something that everyone can do, that's actually super easy and also fun, is to actually start reading books about queer and trans people, watching films, and learning more about who we are. Because we are you. We are a part of what it is to be human and we exist and we probably exist in everyone's families and communities. Learning a little bit about who we are and our story and our struggle is incredibly vital. I have some film suggestions if anyone's interested.
“A very simple things folks can do on campus is to please put your pronouns in your email signature. That is such an easy way to just do a simple thing that will make a difference and teach somebody something about what it means to be LGBTQA+ in the world. Change your forms, go to a training, don't assume people's gender or pronouns when you're talking to them. Actually get to know them.”
“Take your time,” encourages Jrenal. “You don't have to know everything. Jesse and I don't know everything. I think a lot of folks completely get turned off by the concept of inclusion because they feel like they need to know every single thing before they act at all, and that's just not true. We just need you to show up and to try and when you mess up to apologize and then do better the next time and then do better the next time after that. It’s about progress, not perfection, always. We need folks to start and to keep going.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
Each year honeybee colonies in the United States decline an additional 30 percent, according to research published by the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership and Apiary Inspectors of America. But did you know honeybees and other pollinators produce more than 30 percent of the world's food supply? Last year, Ford launched a global beekeeping program with honeybee hives at its Dearborn World Headquarters. And now Ford has partnered with Michigan State University to help the university with its Heroes to Hives Program.
Michigan is home to 640,000 veterans who are facing a multitude of challenges as they transition from military to civilian life. These challenges include anxiety, depression, dealing with service-related health issues and disabilities and finding career opportunities that are personally rewarding. The Heroes to Hives Program was started by Adam Ingrao, a veteran and now Michigan State University Extension educator, to help veterans who may suffer the effects of PTSD by training them to be beekeepers.
Heroes to Hives had no location to carry out the project in southeast Michigan, where the majority of the veterans are located. So Cormac Wright, Global Energy Systems Project Manager at Ford, coordinated to provide Adam and his crew with a location at Henry Ford's old farm just outside Ann Arbor.
“Heroes to Hives started in 2015; my wife and I had a vision for what this program could do for veterans,” Ingrao says. I had transitioned from the military in 2005 and after that transition, really struggled to find purpose and find that next mission. As veterans, we're service oriented individuals and I wanted to continue serving my country and my community. And really for me, it started in 2010 when I took a beekeeping class at my alma mater, Cal-Poly, San Luis Obispo. When I transferred to Michigan State University to finish my PhD, my wife and I had a conversation about the effects that beekeeping had on me. It really offered me this opportunity to continue serving my country by protecting the most important managed pollinator on the planet.
“And in 2015, we launched the program at our own farm in Lansing, Bee Wise Farms, with five local veterans. From then, the program has just taken off like wildfire. We moved to MSU in 2016 with 15 students; in 2017 108 students, and now we're at a point where we have 280 veterans and their dependents from 25 states participating in the program.”
Related Content: Ingrao tells MSU Extension Director Jeff Dwyer more about Heroes to Hives.
Ingrao says the program offers many benefits to veterans.
“What we find is as they go through this nine months of being together, seeing one another, interacting with each other in on-ground workshops, these veterans start to build bonds. And the conversations that we see happening over the bees really go from things about biology and management to things that happen in combat or maybe experiences that we've had returning home and struggling.
“And so Heroes to Hives is much more than a beekeeping education. It's an opportunity for veterans to reconnect and to have this broader mission that really gives us purpose, which a lot of us struggle with that when we come back.
“Often times as soldiers we're tasked with destruction, with going and taking over areas by destroying enemy installations. But when we come home, we want to diversify that ability to interact, not just from a destructive perspective, but from a nurturing perspective. And that's what beekeeping offers individuals as they transition is an opportunity to come from that mindset of destruction to that mindset of nurturing and taking care of this small animal.”
Ford has been working to help the honeybee population and partnering with Heroes to Hives was a natural progression.
“I was aware of the plight of honeybees, but to me it was one of those abstract problems like a global warming that seems so big you don’t know where to begin to help,” says Cormac Wright, Global Energy Systems Project Manager at Ford. “I proposed a plan to Ford’s vice president for sustainability at various locations throughout Ford. We have such a large global footprint so this would be an opportunity to educate our employees and to have the conversation around what challenges are facing bees and how we could help.
“When we were rolling out hives at the world headquarters site, we had Adam in for a conversation on how we might help the bees. In the course of our conversation, he was telling me about Heroes to Hives and the issues they had with not having a location in southeast Michigan. And to me, it just seemed like such a great opportunity to step in and offer Ford property to help. We were establishing hives around the southeast Michigan area so if we could dedicate some to the Heroes to Hives Program, it seemed like our partnership could solve this issue for MSU.”
“This partnership is an opportunity for Heroes to Hives to explore these corporate partnerships,” adds Ingrao. “Ford is helping us by offering us a site, and we're also helping Ford by offering our training to their employees. We have 280 veterans and their dependents participating in the program. And we have 440 Ford employees participating in the program.
“And one of the things that I constantly hammer on with my students is we're in a situation where we don't need more beekeepers. We need more educated beekeepers. Because an uneducated beekeeper is just killing bees year after year and that's not helping the problem. That's exacerbating the problem.
“The partnership with Ford shows that we can have an impact by helping veterans, and through these corporate relationships, we can also foster and promote this type of education within an organization. Ford has a global sustainability initiative around pollinators. We want those individuals who want to be part of that initiative within Ford to be the best educated individuals so that they can actually contribute to solving this problem rather than contributing to the problem.”
MSU Today airs Sunday afternoons at 4:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
Henry Ford Health System and Michigan State University have announced the two organizations have signed a letter of intent (LOI) to significantly expand their long-term partnership, a unique primary affiliation among the first of its kind for the region between a fully integrated academic health system and major state university. Committed to redesigning care around our patients and communities through education, research and clinical care, the enhanced collaboration will focus on radically improving access, affordability and outcomes, especially for our most vulnerable populations.
“We’ve worked on a letter of intent between Henry Ford Health System and Michigan State University to develop a deep partnership in some areas we think are incredibly important,” says MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. “Those areas include education. Our health colleges are very interested in working with Henry Ford to develop an actual site where we could train students and physicians.
“It’s very important from a research point of view. We believe we have a number of areas where we could collaborate on research, particularly in the biomedical area. And Henry Ford would also love access to some our social scientists and some of our public health experts who they think could be helpful to them as well.
“And in clinical care, one of the challenges we’ve had at Michigan State University is to find a partner interested in a deeper partnership.
“This is something we’re excited about and can develop with Henry Ford. We think they’re a great partner. Their outreach, particularly in southeast Michigan, is extraordinary. They were one of the leading groups taking care of patients with Covid-19. And I think this ties in very well with the work we’re doing in Flint. With our greater engagement with public health throughout the state, I think this partnership gives us the opportunity to increase our clinical outreach to areas that could use our help, not just in medicine, but in public health and other areas where we can make difference.”
The non-binding LOI was signed after months of talks and has several hallmark elements including a unique primary affiliation for a shared research enterprise, expanded opportunities for health students and long-term plan to build a joint Research Institute in Detroit, MI. Combined research areas will include Health Inequities and Disparities as well as Social Determinants of Health, Primary Care, Implementation Sciences, Precision Health and Cancer.
“Healthcare is more and more holistic,” adds Stanley. “It’s about prevention. It’s about reducing health disparities. And with Henry Ford and MSU working together, we could really develop a partnership that could really make a difference to the state of Michigan in a number of different ways.
“It’s still a letter of intent at this time as we work through details of how we would bring this partnership to together. So I don’t want to over promise because we’re working together to get this done. But there’s great enthusiasm on both sides. Each partner brings to the table a number of great strengths, and I think we could do some wonderful things together. We just need to get it figured out.”
Another major partnership component includes a fully integrated cancer program, which will combine research and clinical applications to create a national and international destination for access to the most advanced cancer therapies and research, including a joint effort to achieve National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation.
Additionally, with both institutions sharing a long history of and commitment to medical education and training, MSU and Henry Ford will expand education opportunities for physicians, nurses and other health care professionals, focused on diversity, recruitment and retention, and revolutionized training models.
Stanley believes there will be more higher education/healthcare partnerships in the future.
“This is very important for us. We have a number of talents and so many resources that we bring to these discussions that we’ll look for more partnerships if we can find them.”
The two organizations will now work toward a series of definitive agreements which they hope to finalize this fall.
“We’re living during a time of profound hurt and frustration and, for many, a sense of deep disappointment and despair at the state of what’s happening with Black America in our country,” says Stanley. “Our challenges with systemic racism have never been more important to deal with. We need healing. We need people to come together. And we need to have real plans for what we’re going to do to address the problem of racism and the consequences of it for so many people in our nation.”
Stanley talks about his background in infectious diseases and how that has informed his decisions during the pandemic and the university’s decision to bring students back to campus in the fall. And he addresses whether he expects college football to be played in the fall.
“I think there are ways that this could be done. It involves frequent testing of players, coaches and trainers to make sure they’re free of Covid-19 infection. It involves physical distancing and making sure anyone who comes on the field doesn’t show any evidence that they’re infected with the virus. If you get there, then I think you can play. Then the next question becomes whether we can have fans in the stands. We would be outside and that reduces risk. And we can spread people six feet apart. Managing the entering and exiting of the stadium is one of the most difficult things to handle. The critical thing will be for all of us to wear masks.”
As the summer gets underway, Stanley is looking forward to the fall.
“We’ll be in some uncharted territory, and I appreciate people’s patience. We won’t have all the answers all the time, but we’re doing our best with the health of students, faculty, and staff paramount. Patience will be important as we move through these issues. And given the climate in our country right now, it’s important to talk to each other and maintain lines of communication. And it’s important to have empathy. There are people experiencing things right now in ways that may be different than you’re experiencing. Understanding their perspective and what’s hit them and what they’ve had to undergo is important in helping us deal with these critical issues we’re facing currently.”
MSU Today air Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices.
Coach Knull describes the challenges of coaching her team remotely. And Barker talks about some of her favorite memories playing for the Spartans, like winning the Big Ten Tournament in front of friends and family in her hometown of Columbus Ohio. And she talks about her career path into health and medicine.
“Once I found out what a physician’s assistant is and was able to shadow some PAs and get some experience, it resonated with me,” Barker says. “I always knew I was going to go into medicine in some form.”
Abby is one of the all-time leading scorers in MSU Field Hockey history, ranking fourth in career goals and fourth in career points. She was a three-time All-American, earning Second-Team honors as a senior and a sophomore and Third-Team accolades as a junior. She was a three Academic All-big ten honoree and a four-time NFHCA National Academic Team honoree. As a junior she was Big Ten Tournament MVP, leading the Spartans to a Big Ten Tournament Championship in 2013 and the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. She’s now a physician’s assistant at two hospitals in inner-city Columbus where she’s often the first line of help.
“The biggest challenge is adapting to all the new information that’s coming in so quickly and then being able to implement it into our practice as smoothly as possible.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
Brand talks about the 2020/2021 schedule at Wharton Center and how it’s been impacted by the pandemic.
“As Covid-19 started to look like it was going to take a while to get under control and for a vaccine to be developed, we decided to move our entire fall schedule to the following winter and spring. That gives us more time to prepare our facilities for a safe experience. And now we’re just waiting for the industry to say it’s OK for all the actors and musicians to resume productions. Moving forward, the Wharton experience will be as touchless as possible.
“There are a lot of moving parts even though we’ve announced the season, but we’re getting a great response from our patrons. They want to make sure Wharton Center is thriving after we get through the pandemic. We feel good about the community support.”
Brand talks about his strategy for booking shows and how he’s often working three or four years ahead to make the Wharton schedule.
“It’s kind of like when your coaches are out looking for players. You’re looking at high school players when they’re freshmen and following them through four years watching how they develop. We do the same as your scouts do when we’re out looking for artists.
“And we’re looking at other options where we could bring some of our productions into your home. We’re looking at new ways of marketing and enjoying the performing arts. Our industry is going to have to start looking at out-of-the-theatre experiences.”
Brand talks about the outreach mission of the Institute for Arts and Creativity and tells why two of his favorite visitors to Wharton Center are Laura Bell Bundy and Itzhak Perlman “because they really love talking with young people and ask if they can do that when they visit.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
Rhonda Walker has been helping Detroiters get motivated and ready for the day with her incredible energy, enthusiasm, impeccable style, and passion for her hometown for the past 20 years. A confessed morning person, this award-winning talented and versatile journalist starts her day at 2:00 a.m. to co-anchor the weekday morning news cast at WDIV Local 4 news, Detroit's NBC affiliate.
In 2003, Walker founded the Rhonda Walker Foundation.
“The mission is to empower inner city teen girls towards becoming strong, competent and successful future leaders,” Walker says. “My inspiration came from working in Detroit as a broadcast journalist and becoming involved in the community. I got to know a lot about the community’s needs and got involved in a lot of different nonprofit and charity work. I've always been a lifelong volunteer since growing up in the Lansing area; it's just a part of who I am.
“The more needs I saw, the more I wanted to get involved. I wanted to jump in and start doing more. I started volunteering with various charities at first and then I really honed in on wanting to work with kids specifically. And at that point it just started feeling like I needed to hold myself more accountable and do something literally in my name that would really have an impact and make a difference.
“I started visiting schools and talking to teen girls about believing in themselves and being leaders and not followers, and goal setting, and making good choices, and choosing your friends properly, and just a lot of that messaging that kids need at any age. I certainly did. And it just grew from there. It was like this moment where God was talking to me and saying, ‘This is what I want you to do with your life and with the blessings that I've given you.’ I feel incredibly fortunate to have this career. With that blessing, there is much to be expected of me and what I can do with my blessings. I want to empower kids in Detroit who are less privileged and have less resources and opportunities.”
The five-year program is for girls from eighth grade through high school.
“235 teens have completed the five-year program with 100 percent high school graduation and college enrollment rates, and 95 percent college graduation. We have 51 girls in the Girls into Women core program right now and 100 middle schoolers currently in our RWF Academy afterschool program in 5 middle schools.”
“They stay in the program the entire time and we work on career and personal development. We have a mentoring program, we do health and wellness workshops, financial literacy, etiquette, goal setting, and college preparation and tours. It really is very comprehensive. And the personal development side is really important too, in terms of just building friendships and building confidence and problem solving and public speaking skills. And we really try to work with the kids on so many different levels where we meet them where they are. And we just try to build them up into being the best that they can be.
Walker talks about how broadcast journalism has changed over the years.
“It’s like night and day from when I started. Technology, yes, plays a huge role. We try to navigate the technological changes and still do what's most important, which is to investigate and provide important information and interviews and talk with leaders. And we still try to deliver the important messaging that our viewers rely on us for, but the landscape is very different.
“And even right now, going through this pandemic, information and accurate information and timely information is so incredibly important. And we're doing it from remote locations, which makes it a challenge. But that's when you're really thankful for the extent of what technology can enable you to do. Ninety percent of our people aren't even working inside anymore. Everyone's working remotely and just kind of figuring out a way to do it, and we have done a lot of creative things to make it happen. But it's exciting. Change is a part of life. And the way technology works, you have to keep up with it. I love my career and I'm just ready to kind of take whatever comes my way and continue to navigate it.”
As for young people, like the girls at the Rhonda Walker Foundation, who want to follow in her footsteps?
“My best advice is to do what you're passionate about and don’t let anything discourage you. Find out what works for you and your interest and your passion.
“And one thing that technology does enable us to do is a lot of different things. Technology is everywhere, communication is everywhere, more so than ever before. There is so much more opportunity than there ever was from every single sector, from healthcare to any type of business that you can think of, where we can use our skills as writers and interviewers and storytellers and investigators. There are so many more ways to use communication skills now than when I was younger. No matter what your interest is, work hard to be good at it and don’t allow anyone to tell you that it's crazy. You should go after it with passion and hard work and a commitment and just a mindset to never give up and be distracted by what other people might tell you.”
Walker grew up in East Lansing in the shadow of MSU. She knew she would attend MSU almost from the time she enrolled in preschool at the university.
“MSU is where I went to feed the ducks on the Red Cedar. It's where I learned how to play golf with my dad. And it's where I went to see basketball and football games growing up. I was green and white to the core as a kid. I went to cheerleading and gymnastics camp. I knew that campus like the back of my hand. As big as it is. I knew where everything was. I just loved it there.
“And when it came time to apply for colleges, my parents had us look at other universities. We traveled across the country. We went and looked at some of the historically black universities and colleges. And I went through the formalities, but I knew exactly where I wanted to go. Michigan State was the only place that I applied to. They had a great school of communications there, so it fit my major as well. But even if it didn't, I still think I wanted to go there. It's just such a beautiful place and the culture is so beautiful there. And I felt so at home there already, and it was so familiar, but yet I got to live on campus It was just the best of both worlds for me.”
Circling back to her foundation, Walker adds “I just think it's important that we all remember that it's upon each of us to give back and make our communities a better place in whatever you're passionate about. For me, it's kids and mentoring and empowering young people who are underprivileged. If you have a passion for working with teen girls and helping to empower, encourage, and build their confidence, Rhonda Walker Foundation would love to have you as a mentor and a supporter or a volunteer. But if that’s not for you, then it could be something else. Maybe you like animals. Maybe you want to do something that benefits the homeless. It can be anything, but just find something that you can do to give back in addition to whatever it is that you do as a career and for work. The most important thing to remember while we're on this earth is that we have more responsibility than just to do things for ourselves and our families, but to help others who are less fortunate.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
“If someone Googles MSU CAPS, they might see an advertisement to buy a baseball cap,” Patishnock quips. “Actually it's what we're commonly known as. Counseling and Psychiatric Services is the primary mental health service for all MSU students. We are charged with being accessible and providing quality care to all 50,000 plus enrolled students. We have a bevy of resources, and we're here for students and faculty.”
Patishnock and the CAPS team have created a Summer Care Kit for our growth and well-being.
“It was in response to folks reaching out and asking for help in a variety of ways. “We've seen everybody struggle with trying to figure out how to manage in these unprecedented times. We first noticed signs of stress in our own staff. They were struggling with some of these transitions and we saw the same thing with our families at our homes and the students we're serving. The Summer Care Kit is five identified areas that we're finding to be fairly universal right now that all people could be benefiting from taking a look at and refocusing their energy. We chose these five areas as a way to create bite size snippets to focus on as opposed to a large document that would feel overwhelming. We broke it down to these five basic areas.”
The five areas are the basics, maintaining connections with ourselves and others, coping skills, dealing with loss and uncertainty, and meaning and motivation.
“In some ways you might look at our five areas and say, ‘Duh, that's not rocket science.’ But when things go awry and we're stressed, these are the first things that go out the window - our sleep, our exercise, and our nutrition. We tend not to think about those things and often we'll get dehydrated or we'll be malnourished, or we just won't be as active as we've been. Those things have a pretty immediate impact in all of our areas. And so just like when we're working with students who are coming in for depression or anxiety, if you show me a student who generally has a good sleep hygiene, sleep routine, who is eating nutritiously every few hours and who's getting some activity throughout the day, I'm generally going to show you a student with less depression and anxiety than they otherwise would have.”
The CAPS team encourages us to be Spartan Fit through SMART goals. The idea is to make goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
“When you do that, you can feel a sense of accomplishment. It's really just a way to think about how we're setting goals and expectations. And those things are associated with whether we feel good or get frustrated. It's a way to refocus realistic expectations and goals for ourselves.”
And when is it time to seek professional help?
“Going to see a mental health professional is often not the first step that someone takes. Usually it's pretty common for people to try to manage on their own. They might talk to family or friends first. By the time someone does consider going to a mental health professional, it's usually been anywhere from months to years that someone has been struggling with an issue. I encourage people to think about not creating a high threshold to have to ask for help. Mental health professionals are trained to understand people's concerns in the context of their own individual identities, their culture, and their experiences in the context of our overall circumstances. We don't have to wait until things get really bad. And as a result, there might be different recommendations that come out of that. I would just have people have a low threshold to ask for help. I think we all can use help from time to time. It’s perhaps time to seek professional help anytime something is going on where you notice that you're not enjoying life as much or something is impacting your relationships, your mood, your behaviors, your activity level, your diet, your sleep, your interest, and motivation.
Basically, if you're not living life the way that you want to be living it and you don't feel like you're interacting with the world and with people in a way that's happy or satisfactory to you, that might mean that there's something getting in the way. And that's what trained mental health professionals can help you figure out and overcome.”
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. What would Patishnock like us to be more aware of?
“I’d like people to realize just how normal it is to have a mental health concern. As a society, we're getting better at de-stigmatizing mental health. But many still believe that someone either does have a mental health problem or they don't have a mental health problem. And it's seen as black and white when that's just not the case. A lot of us see our physical health as fluid. I don't think any of us would say that we're 100 percent physically healthy. I have lower back pain from time to time. If all of us were honest, we would say there's something about us that's not 100 percent healthy, but it doesn't mean that we need to be at a doctor's office.
“It doesn't mean that we're not okay, but we tend to look at mental health as something where a person either has a mental health problem or they don't. I would like people to know that it's important to think about our mental health the same way as with our physical health’ it’s fluid. It's not black and white and therefore we don't have to categorize ourselves or others as either having a problem or not. It's actually better to see that we all have varying degrees of mental health and varying degrees of physical health. And at various times it might be important to seek help to address those problems just like we would for any physical issue.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices.
Claudia Finkelstein is the Director of Wellness, Resilience and Vulnerable Populations. Jennifer Johnson is the C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health and Professor of OB/GYN, Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine. And Julia Felton is Assistant Professor in the Division of Public Health and Pediatrics and Human Development.
“It's a very different experience for many different people, depending on how their lives were before and during the pandemic,” Finkelstein says. “There's a pervasive sense of grief and transition from normal. Your life may be more or less tranquil, but it is certainly different than it was before all of this hit. For many of us, transition, even when we choose it, is very anxiety provoking. And this enormous transition is not voluntary.”
“What Claudia mentioned about the uncertainty is really crucial here,” Felton adds. “One thing that we know is that uncertainty is not a comfortable place for any human to be. We like to know what's going to happen, just like little kids like routines. And we like to have our planners as adults. Human beings like to know what's going to happen next. And one of the things that we can do right now is to develop a tolerance for uncertainty, but it's really hard. And it goes counter to a lot of the things that human nature breeds for us. So that's been, I think, one of the biggest stumbling blocks, is we just don't know how this is going to resolve and how even tomorrow is going to look.”
“This is genuinely difficult.” Johnson says. “Some people are grieving. Some people are worried about family members who are sick or others who won't stay home. Some are inside with very little children in small spaces. Some are worried about their money and their jobs. Some communities are affected more than others, but it's just really important to acknowledge that yes, it is stressful. And there are also things we can do to help take care of ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically.”
What would the panel like us to be more aware of during Mental Health Awareness Month?
“Historically there has been a stigma attached to mental health,” says Johnson. “There are people who when you say mental health think, ‘Oh, something's wrong with me.’ But mental health is like physical health. It's an indicator of how you're doing. And everybody has ups and downs. Being under stress will make you more vulnerable to whatever your weaknesses are physically or mentally. Everybody has mental health - good, bad, or medium - and it's important to attend to it. Just because you're stressed, though, doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.”
“I also think that we want to be aware of those around us and how mental health problems or the ways that things can go wrong can look really different between people,” Felton says. “So just because somebody is not responding in the way that you are doesn't mean that they're either totally fine or totally falling apart. But allowing a space for kindness both for yourself and for the people around you is really important. And understanding that we're all going through this in different ways, and it might look different in different people, but understanding that everybody right now is under some level of stress.”
“I would love for everybody to know how completely normal it is to feel completely abnormal right now,” adds Finkelstein.
The trio describes what they mean by Emotional PPE, and they talk about when it’s time to seek professional help. How do we know when how we’re feeling might be more than normal ups and downs?
“People show stress in different ways,” Johnson says. “For some it looks like anger. For some it looks like changes in sleep or eating. In kids, it can look like crying, irritability and pain. I think if you are getting to a point where you're uncomfortable enough that something's really bothering you, or if you see someone around you uncomfortable enough, if they're in distress, that's one reason to potentially call someone. Or if you notice you're having trouble pretty consistently doing things that you used to be able to do, whatever's going on your stress is interfering with your ability to do work, your ability to sleep. It doesn't hurt to talk to someone just like you might go to physical doctor for a checkup. It doesn't hurt to go and talk to somebody about what you're feeling, what you're experiencing, and the stress that you're under.”
“It's hard to know right now because right now everyone is impaired in their functioning,” Felton says. “But for people who are really having a hard time just even managing to get through the day without feeling overwhelmed, that's where we might want to start to think about trying to gather some support for those people. A good place to always start though, if you have any concerns, is to call your doctor. And just talk through with them what you're experiencing and feeling and ask them for some recommendations.”
“I have a friend who talks about the Oreo sign,” says Finkelstein. “When the number of Oreos starts disappearing at an alarming rate, or when the number of bottles start appearing in your recycling at a faster rate, or the number of Amazon boxes arriving at your house is growing. When you're engaging in behaviors much more than usual, that may be a sign that you are looking for self soothing.”
“Another sign is if you've lost interest in things you usually enjoy, or if there are things that you usually get really excited about or care about, and you just don't, that's another early warning sign,” Johnson adds.
A myth about mental health, says Felton, “is that there's something wrong with you if you are experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety or some other mental health disorder. We can expect that everyone's going to be going through some of these things and that it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you, or that you're always going to feel this way. But rather, this is just how you're feeling right now. I encourage people to show a little compassion to yourself and get the help that you need right now.”
“One adage that I live by is that, it's never all in your head and it's never all in your body,” says Finkelstein. “We have done a disservice in splitting our mental and the physical health because they're intimately related to each other. They each affect the other.
“Hunger and sleep affect your mental health, and your mental health affects how your body experiences pain. It's never all one or the other. And everybody's got something. I don't think that there is a person alive who has impeccable physical or mental health; there's always something. And it's extremely legitimate and an act of service to all the people who interact with you to get help when you need it. It doesn't mean you're weak. It means you are keeping yourself tuned, just like you keep your car tuned to deal with what it deals with every day.”
“We all have mental health,” says Johnson. “Sometimes it's terrible. It's almost never perfect, but it fluctuates. Often it's the situation. When we don't recognize that we fail to see a lot of the things that can be done to be helpful. Because often changing the situation completely solves the problem.”
“Be aware that everyone has physical health, everyone has mental health, and they fluctuate up and down,” says Johnson. “If you put anyone under enough stress you'll start to see less good mental health.”
“This is a really tough time,” says Felton. “But if we show a little compassion, both for ourselves and others, and come from the perspective that both we and everybody else around us are doing the best that we can, it might make the situation a little bit more tolerable.”
“The pandemic is a crisis that is bringing to light many of the things that have been in the shadows in our society, and one of them is the need to attend to our own and each other's mental health, just as a basic fact of life,” says Finkelstein.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker and connected devices.
“Forgotten Harvest is Southeast Michigan's food rescue organization,” Mayes says. “Our specialty is to find food from groceries, food manufacturers, agricultural outlets, anywhere we can find it that would've actually ended up going to waste because it doesn't meet the manufacturer's specs or doesn't meet the retail specs. Then we turn it around and give it to about 250 organizations in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb County for free.”
Mayes says two challenges to the mission during the pandemic are the food supply chain and the need for more volunteers.
“Without the volunteers that we typically get, and it's about 16,000 a year that we usually get to help Forgotten Harvest complete the mission, we just can't get the volumes of food that we get in our hands out to people.”
Mayes talks about Forgetten Harvest’s partnership with the city of Detroit and says his giving nature was instilled in him by his parents.
“This is what my mom showed me my whole life through her example of giving back. Whether it's been through getting up every day and working through her local church community or being the matriarch of our family.
“Serving people, doing things for the right reason. Trying to think ahead of the need so somebody doesn't necessarily have to ask for something that you can see that they need. Thinking about the emotional and mental journey that somebody's going through when they don't have enough, and making sure that you're not just there to provide for physical needs, but also that you're there as a human being, helping somebody through a part of their life. All of these things are the true values that my mother instilled into me that allowed me to be a strong servant. Some people look at me and think that I'm a leader, but I'm just really trying to help.”
Mayes defines the serious and pervasive issue of food insecurity. And he explains why Forgotten Harvest is more of a food rescue organization than a food bank.
“No disrespect to the food banking world. But we set up our operation to identify where fresh, healthy food is that still has life, and we try to get it straight to the community with our own logistics capability.”
And he believes the world is up to feeding a growing population.
“I definitely do. There's a lot of the food that we have right now that's being wasted. There's room to be more efficient with what we already have. There are ways that we can actually improve the gaps between what's needed and what's used. I think that will be critical in us being able to make sure that we have the proper kind of food in our supply chain.
“Before we get to a place where we have food shortages, we're going to get to a place first where we have to deal with having less choices, which for Americans and for many people in free countries, that can seem as restrictive as not having all the foods you need. But the truth is we have so many choices and because of those choices, we naturally waste.
“One of the good things right now through the COVID process is the fact that everybody and all motion has slowed down significantly. I'm hoping that that's given us a little extra room and a little extra healing time so the planet can still be there for us when we need her.”
Mayes says MSU was the right place for him coming out of high school.
“Going to MSU, and MSU being literally one of the largest campuses in the country and having a diversity palette of pretty much every culture and every race of people around the globe, being on that campus, it was big enough for me to feel like I was in a whole other world. I feel like MSU was the first world that was mine to grow into.
“MSU was where I grew up. It's where I grew up as a human being, where I grew up as a man, where I learned in many ways what it meant to be an African American against the background of all these other cultures that we're all a part of as well. And learning that we have a significance as an African American community to contribute to that. But there are a lot of other cultures we can also grow from, and I can also grow from. For me, it was just a fantastic experience of growth and discovery and friendships that I still have to this day.
“We've been getting tremendous support from the MSU community and others, but we worry that as this pandemic continues to go on, that about 90 days from now, we don't know where the support's going to be. Don't forget about us at Forgotten Harvest. We may still need you if the pandemic is going on. We could use all of Spartan Nation to get by our side right now. Go green!”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
Michael and his partners at Gypsy Vodka take a community first approach to their business. They've routinely donated their hand sanitizers to hospitals, healthcare facilities, and first responders on the front lines of the COVID-19 effort in the greater Petoskey area.
“We were following the COVID-19 situation pretty closely,” Kazanowski says. “We're in a small town, and everyone works with one another and sticks together. We started hearing from doctors and nurses at the hospital that they were running low on hand sanitizer. As soon as we got the green light, we were in contact with McLaren Health Systems, and they told us their dire need for hand sanitizer. They told us they had about two days left of hand sanitizer for their hospital. We didn't really think much about it. They called, and we had the equipment on hand to make the stuff, and we're like, ‘Whatever we could do, let's do it.’ So we immediately stopped production of vodka and shifted over to making hand sanitizer.
“Just seeing how appreciative the nurses are, the doctors are, the firefighters, the police people. It really makes you feel good. They’re the ones putting their lives out there on the line for us every single day, so if we can give them just a little bit of support and a little bit of protection, then that's a win in our column.”
Kazanowski talks more about his company’s community-first ethos that made making and giving away hand sanitizer a no-brainer. And he’s says they’ll keep making it as long as first responders need it.
“If we have the means to make the hand sanitizer and somebody needs it, it just doesn't really feel right to say, ‘No, we're not going to make this anymore.’ And, obviously, the need is growing and growing. We want to keep on making it. And our goal is to get it to as many people as possible.”
Kazanowski add that MSU was the right place for him coming out of high school.
“Ever since I was a little kid, there wasn't really another school I ever really thought about going to. My dad was a Michigan State Spartan. I guess I bled green my whole life. And every single moment since the day I stepped foot on campus for orientation until the day I graduated was a whole learning experience, and not just inside the classroom, but outside the classroom. And I think that's what really puts Michigan State in a category by itself. The people there, the friendships you make, the life experiences, and then, of course, the education. I mean, it was just a full-blown, amazing experience.
“Our biggest goal is to provide as much hand sanitizer as necessary for first responders, firefighters, police, hospitals, nurses, and health care workers. Anyone that is in need of it, please don't hesitate to reach out. We want to make sure we can get it to you. Our main goal is to make you have a little sense of ease when you're fighting the daily battle every single day. If we can do anything at all to help out, we're going to go the extra mile for you because you guys are giving it all for us.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
“The MSU Broad has a tremendous reputation in the art world,” she says. “The contemporary art programs they do are absolutely top notch. The staff is very talented and professional.”
Ramírez-Montagut brings nearly 20 years of arts and culture experience to the MSU Broad, in addition to her background as a trained architect. Throughout her extensive career, her approach to art is known for being both publicly engaged and socially conscious.
“Being trained as an architect affords me the perspective of understanding the building and leveraging all the stories and narratives that are already embedded in the walls of the building to contribute to the exhibitions. I don’t find the building to be an obstacle; I find it a tremendous asset.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
LaDonna Mask is the principal at Kendon Elementary in the Lansing School District and is one of 19 educators from across the country selected for the PBS Digital Innovator All-Star Program. She’s a 2020 PBS Digital Innovator All Star and was supported and recommended by WKAR. Mask's career in education has spanned 40-plus years within the Lansing School District.
The PBS Digital Innovator All-Star program brings together a community of PreK-12th grade educators who are innovators and leaders both in and outside of the classroom. Each of the Digital Innovator All-Stars was selected from a cohort of educators who are doing extraordinary work in their local communities, supporting student learning by integrating media and digital technology in their teaching environments, inspiring students to use these tools in responsible, effective and empowering ways.
“COVID-19 has provided teachers with the time, impetus, and the support of each other to try some new things and get support from one another” says Mask. “I want to help and support our teachers to be willing to try new things and put themselves out there to see what’s possible.”
She played a vital role with the PBS KIDS Playtime Pad Research Project that WKAR is just about to complete. The project was 3-year collaborative research and engagement project that brought together WKAR, College of Communication Arts and Sciences, College of Education, Lansing School District, and PBS to distribute more than 3,600 playtime pads to all Lansing kindergartners since 2017.
“Nothing will take the place of a teacher in front of her students. There’s a magic that happens there that just can’t be replaced. It’s hard to see in a Zoom lesson when someone just doesn’t understand. You get that when you’re face to face.
“I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where we completely take away the idea of face-to-face classrooms. You can read a lot in a child’s body language when they walk through the door in the morning. But we definitely use technology as a support.”
As a graduate from Michigan State University with a degree in Special Education and certification in Elementary Education, Mask has devoted her life's work to empowering students to realize their greatest potential and ability to achieve.
“I loved my time at MSU and will always be a Spartan. I love ‘Spartans Will’ because it really does embody the mindset we get at MSU. I see the training that MSU education students are getting now and how wonderful it is and how much it will really help to change the lives of people forever. I’m proud to be a Spartan for certain!”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
He talks with Spartans Athletic Director Bill Beekman about MSU’s collaborative ethos and the university’s low barriers for researchers to work together to fight COVID-19. He explains the process involved in developing a vaccine, too.
“Viruses are very tricky,” Beauchamp says. “Do I think it'll take three to four years? I'm more optimistic than that. My hope is that something like an effective vaccine, assuming that it is possible to generate lasting immunity, which I believe it is, would be closer to 18 months.”
Beauchamp discusses how testing and contact tracing impact the fight against COVID-19. He’s cautiously optimistic about a healthy future for all of us.
“This is an incredibly stressful time. People being quarantined, being isolated, the economic injuries, the loss of life. And yet there's reason for optimism as we're starting to see the case numbers flatten. The ability to be optimistic and to have hope is to be thoughtful and really adhere to the guidance that we're getting about staying at home. I want optimism that is based in a recognition that we do have a path, and it is working, but not have an optimism that leads people to dismiss the guidance that is leading to the flattening of the curve of COVID virus.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
Pohl talks about what it feels like to retire, and he describes his path to MSU as a student and then to WKAR five years after graduation. And he says there two interviews that stand out to him over his career.
“I have to cite two: getting to talk with my favorite author, John Irving, and the man who inspired me to talk into microphones for a living, legendary Hall of Fame Tigers play-by-play announcer Ernie Harwell,” Pohl says. “Nothing can top those two.
“My favorite story took me back to my childhood. I attended a one-room schoolhouse through the third grade, and a series I did years ago took me to several that were still open in Michigan at the time. At one of those schools, I happened to capture on tape a child’s very first exposure to the concept of multiplication. A golden moment for a reporter.”
Pohl tells why he’s still bullish on terrestrial, over-the-air radio. And he advises young people who want to get into the ever-changing communication world to “make sure you love it. Work hard, write a lot, and talk into a microphone as often as you can. You have to sound confident when you’re on the air.”
As for his legacy at WKAR Pohl says “My commitment has been to be fair and to be right, and to correct myself when I’ve been wrong. I think I’ve done those things, and I hope the audience does, too. And I hope I put a smile on listeners’ faces at times.”
Pohl will continue to contribute part time to WKAR in the coming weeks, and he also plans to stay active in, and supportive of, local theatre.
“I have always respected our audience. I’ve always been grateful for how they support WKAR. I hope they’ll keep listening and contributing.
“Thank you to everyone who has been at the other end of the radio when I’ve been talking into the microphones at WKAR over the years. You’ve all been great, and I hope to see you soon.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
Woodruff talks about her past interactions with MSU and the state of Michigan, and says she “grew up wanting to be a teacher. I never thought about being a provost. When I went to college, I was thinking about being a first grade teacher. My mother was a teacher, and my grandmother was a teacher of all grades on the Panhandle of Oklahoma during the great Dust Bowl. My goal was really set in education. And so in many ways, I've continued with that particular goal, but as I got into college, I really fell in love with research, really trying to not only understand how people derive those answers in the back of the book, but really how to come up with those questions.”
Dr. Wooodruff is an expert in ovarian biology and reproductive science. She explains how in 2006 she coined the term oncofertility to describe the merging of two fields, oncology and fertility. Oncofertility is now globally recognized as a medical discipline with insurance and reimbursement available to patients and providers in many countries. In addition, she’s an advocate for women in science and has led efforts to change federal policy to mandate the use of females in fundamental National Institute of Health research.
“It's not every day that new fields of medicine are developed that change the fabric of how reimbursement and insurance actually gets done. Because of what we were able to accomplish, we really do have options for most male and female young cancer patients from zero age all the way up to about 40 years of age,” says Woodruff.
Woodruff was presented with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring by President Obama in an Oval Office ceremony in 2011.
“That was really the highlight of my life,” explains Woodruff. “President Obama is such a champion of mentorship, science, and medicine. Standing in front of the Lincoln Desk in the Oval Office listening to him really talk about how we have to make sure that the next generation of learners understands how science informs their lives was so inspiring.”
President Obama told Woodruff how “’the most important thing to me is making sure that we have a bright light on mentoring and we make sure that everybody understands that mentoring is really a part of the fabric of how America continues to grow and develop.’ It was really a very inspiring, inspiring moment. At the very end he leaned into me as he was shaking my hand and said, ‘Say hi to everyone back in Chicago.’ So a really exciting moment.”
As provost, Woodruff will be the chief academic officer for the university, providing leadership for academic programs, research and outreach involving faculty, students and staff. Woodruff will also be an MSU Foundation Professor of obstetrics gynecology, reproductive biology and biomedical engineering.
Woodruff says she was attracted to the position because “there are great underlying strengths at Michigan State. It's a great AAU institution. I have been very interested in leadership and wanted to make sure that I could contribute whatever I've learned over my time to the next generation of learners. Michigan State really is a place that is pivoting towards a very exciting future and it's a place that I really admire and have admired over time. It's been stress tested, no doubt, over the last several years, but it's a very exciting place to be. I'm most excited about President Stanley. He really is an amazing individual. He has a great national reputation. And as someone who is an expert in infectious diseases himself, he's a great scientist, and he's also a great leader for us at this time.”
Woodruff talks about some of her short and long term goals for MSU and says “there are headwinds because of COVID-19. How will we use technology to communicate and what does that means in terms of community? The university is a great place where we learn not just by what is in the books or that you can Google, but when you talk to people, how you think, and how your professor thinks. That's really an important part of how we learn and how we think. So we're going to have to really think through a lot of that. Whether we're in person or not, all of those nuts and bolts of what it is to be within a university setting are going to have to be part of our thinking, and so we're just all going to work together to enable the best outcomes for our community. And I look forward to being part of that decisioning.
“I am looking forward to really working together with the university family to really enable the creation of people and ideas to do the best of what they do and to make not only our individuals better, but our community better and hopefully our world better. That's something that I really can't wait to get started on.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and your smart speaker.
Most of us are in our sixth week of working remotely, and in many ways it feels much longer for a lot of people. So much has changed in that relatively short period of time. Beekman keeps the safety and health of MSU student athletes at the forefront of all the decisions he’s making as he prepares for a future where information and the situation constantly change.
“On the one hand, it feels like we've been in this mode forever. On the other hand, in the greater scheme of things, it's been a relatively short period of time,” says Beekman. “The watchword of so much of what we're doing is that, as Dr. Fauci now has famously said, ‘The virus controls the timeline.’ There are things that we can do to try and impact that, staying at home obviously being a key factor right now, but really, the virus will control the timeline.
“We've been working very hard to do two things simultaneously. We're working hard to make sure that we're ready for whenever we can get closer to our normal operations or to a new normal in operations. We've got people out making sure that the fields are in good shape and that our softball, baseball, soccer, football, and other fields are appropriately maintained.
“And we have a whole crew of people working very, very hard to make sure that our student-athletes are taken care of. They're spread across the globe, 800 young men and women. Some are still in East Lansing. Others are scattered across the country, and others are living in international places. They have the tools they need to stay in shape both mentally and physically. This week, they're completing their exams and we're making sure that they've got all kinds of tools to stay in good physical health, good mental health, and complete their academic work as scheduled.”
Beekman confers with his fellow Big Ten athletic directors via conference call every weekday morning. They’re making several different contingency plans for getting back to normal or to a new normal. And they’re thinking ahead to the 2020 football season.
“We’re looking at every different option and then trying to think two, three, four chess moves down the board because invariably, what we're faced with at the end of the day will be something different than we're thinking about now. There will be factors and issues that we may not be able to anticipate. That means we've just got to work harder to think through every issue that we possibly can so that we're ready.
“You want to get far enough down the road so that you're ready, but not too far down any road that you're getting stuck. It's just really a lot of talking and a lot of planning.
“From my perspective at MSU, our first principle in every case is the health, safety, and wellbeing of our student-athletes. Our second principle is that we're a student-focused organization trying to do what's in the best interest of our student-athletes. Those two principles guide what we do at MSU.”
Games and practices are canceled, but that doesn't mean the department isn't working. And departments like strength and conditioning and academic support are working as hard or harder than ever as they work remotely.
“I think as we debrief on this experience, we'll discover that many of those remote approaches are things that we may be able to implement on a more regular basis when we have teams traveling, for example, and how we think about students when they're remote, even though they're in the midst of their season. I'm excited that there are some silver linings in all of this that will make our athletic department stronger and better over the long run.
“At Michigan State, we're first and foremost an academic institution. Our primary consideration is getting our 50,000 students back on campus. It's my great hope that in one fashion or another we can do that. Certainly, sitting here towards the end of April, there's a lot of time and a lot of circumstance and a lot to happen between now and then, but that would certainly be my great hope. Assuming we can do that, then we can move on next to our 800 student-athletes and getting them back in the groove of their academics first and their sport second.”
Beekman says Michigan State's athletic budget does not receive general fund dollars. He discusses some of the budget discussions going on in athletics and what happened financially when the NCAA men's basketball tournament was canceled. He says there are about 25 athletic departments in the country that receive no funding from their university. “MSU is very proud to be one of those departments.
“The tuition revenue and state appropriations the university receives, not one penny of that goes to the athletic department. We're completely self-sufficient and we run on a separate budget. It's certainly still under the realm and auspices of our president and our board of trustees, but financially, it's distinct. That allows our university's academic resources to be focused on academics, which is something I'm very proud of.
“Our budget in athletics is about $140 million. Like every Big Ten school or every autonomy five conference school or the schools in the Pac-12 or the SEC, our football revenue makes up over half of our department budget. Without football, we really are in a pickle. We're in a very challenging environment.
“This is a tragic time in the history of our community, our country, and our world. I think at this point, most everybody knows somebody that's been affected by this horrible virus. Many of us know people who have passed away as a result of the virus. My heart really does go out to everybody who's been impacted or has had a family member or a loved one or friend impacted by this.
“Yet at the same time, I do think that in terms of the way I live my life, I'm a fairly optimistic person and I'm always trying to find the silver lining in the gray cloud. In the case of what we're going through now, I think there are a number of real silver linings. In terms of our athletic department, I've just been extraordinarily impressed by the creativity, the entrepreneurship, the innovation, and the resilience of our staff.
“Our team has just really pulled up their bootstraps and got to work and are doing things that, really, there's no playbook for. You're just winging it based on your best judgment some of the time. There's no playbook for what you do here, so you go back to your principles. You try and make thoughtful decisions that are in the best interest of the department and you push forward. Our team really has done that.
“In terms of our ticket office, we've never been selling tickets in a pandemic before or thinking about how seasons will start. The work that they're doing to give people flexibility has been appreciated in the community. The work of our strength and conditioning and nutrition teams that I mentioned earlier, again, very, very creative and forward-thinking and developing practices that we'll be able to take and use even after this passes that will make our department better.
“Really, my heart is warmed by the extraordinarily hard work of our team, the compassion that they bring to what they do, and the creativity and resilience that they've exhibited that I think will make MSU Athletics far stronger in the long run.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
Building on the momentum of Michigan State University's successes to chart a course toward a brighter future requires collective thought and action. For that reason, MSU is undertaking an inclusive and comprehensive strategic planning process. While many of the plans have been adjusted or placed on hold due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the work being done around strategic planning is too important not to move forward.
Joining me to talk more about this planning process are the Strategic Planning Steering Committee co-chairs, Vennie Gore and Joe Salem. Vennie is vice president for Auxiliary Enterprises at MSU, and Joe is Dean of MSU Library.
“When President Stanley arrived, he began having many conversations with all of the university community,” Gore says. “One of his goals is to have a strategic plan, which would chart the course of the institution over this next decade of 2020 and beyond. He wants an inclusive process, open for the community, that allows for input into what are some of the issues we need to think about as a university.
“How should MSU position itself as a land-grant institution? What are the critical issues of our decade that we can think about moving forward? What does the fourth industrial revolution mean for our institution? And how do we best position ourselves to solve big problems?”
“It’s not only a great opportunity for us to look forward, but to do it together,” adds Salem. “Early the president identified that one of the things that this campus and many campuses would benefit from is not only identifying what to work on, but how it wants to work and come together around big goals. We've really committed as a university and as a steering committee on a very open inclusive process. We want to have as many voices in the process as possible.”
Gore and Salem discuss how the novel coronavirus pandemic is impacting the planning.
“What does virtual distance learning look like in the future? What should be our position in the marketplace around that to move forward,” asks Gore? “What does our institutional resource model look like moving forward? How do we support the things that we want to do? What should be the scale and size of MSU?”
The committee wants your input on MSU’s future. Visit the Strategic Plan section of President Stanley’s website to learn how to provide your input.
“The size and shape of an institution like Michigan State will be something that we deal with and think about in the coming years,” Salem says. “And what we learn by responding to the pandemic will help guide how we evolve the university’s land grant mission and what it means for the 21st century. Our mission has been central to so many of the conversations we've had as a community. It's one of the things everyone is proud of. We have a really great opportunity to, in some ways, redefine it as a collective, to go back to the portions that we feel still orient us, and to really take some of the core that we all understand to be at the heart of the land-grant mission into the future and to build on it. And I think that's really exciting for us.”
“I encourage everyone to try to participate. We know it's challenging at this point to think about something like strategic planning. It's part of the reason we've tried to focus right now on core elements like mission and values and how we want to take those things into the future.”
“It's really about the core of who we are as an institution, our land-grant mission, being open and accessible to all and having a community that is supportive of multiple identities,” says Gore. “It is through that lens that we become a better place because we accept and embrace everybody and all the things that they bring.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
It was 50 years ago we celebrated the inaugural Earth Day on April 22nd, 1970. Created by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, an estimated 20 million people participated nationwide. The observance has since become a global phenomenon. MSU Today is marking Earth Day 2020 with a round table conversation among MSU environmental leaders, who have devoted much of their lives to the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of the university and our planet.
Vennie Gore is Vice President for Auxiliary Enterprises, Dan Bollman is Vice President for Strategic Infrastructure Planning and Facilities, and Amy Bulter is Director of Sustainability at Michigan State University.
“Sustainability has been one of our key values as an organization dating back to 2007,” says Gore. “And it started as a response to students. Not only is it about recycling and reusing, but it is also how we procure various different products in fair trade. There are both the physical things that we do around the residence halls and in hospitality areas, but it's also a way of how we look at the social ramifications of the things we do.”
As Bollman reflects on Earth Day, “it seems like we often get so caught up in the day-to-day we don't take time to step back and really pause and think about how our actions really can affect the larger ecosystem and can have a great impact on this Earth. When I think about Earth Day, I think about how our sustainable actions today can have a real big impact tomorrow. Often for us, it's around energy savings, but it's also really about protecting the natural environment and the human health of all of our occupants on campus.”
And for Butler “Earth Day is a time where people become aware and awaken their passion for protecting the environment They make a commitment to take action. Every single person has a role to play. Here at MSU, we look at sustainability as the 4C's: campus, community, curriculum, and culture. It's really the intersection of all the things that Vennie said, all the things that Dan said, weaved together with our academic and our innovation side as well. And that's what we look at to move the university forward. It's certainly something that our students demand. It's something that our alumni demand. And it is embedded in the roots of who we are in the mission of the university as a premier land grant institution.”
The group discusses the impact of the university’s energy transition plan that began in 2012 and how MSU has met some of those goals two years early. And they talk about sustainability being in MSU’s DNA.
“Sustainability and being socially aware isn't something that we do as an add-on, it's just who we are,” says Gore.
“One of the things we're really focusing on is continuing to expand the reach of sustainability throughout the campus by engaging our faculty, our staff, students and alumni,“ Butler says. “Another important role that we play is convening thought leaders to start having some of the tough conversations around subjects like climate change, and resiliency, and mobility, and economic prosperity, and even environmental justice.”
“And we're beginning to take a look at how we reduce our carbon footprint across the campus,” says Gore. “We have a supply chain that goes back and forth and we feed 50,000 people a day when we're fully in campus. As semi-autonomous vehicles come in, what are the things that we can begin to look at in terms of reducing our energy footprint with electric vehicles in the future or even autonomous vehicles?”
The group talks about how covid-19 is impacting sustainability at MSU.
“It's causing us to really look at how we do things. It has brought more awareness to the surface of the importance of sustainability in having tools in place to help us to deal with things like this,” Butler continues. “And it’s given our university an opportunity to really show how we can be leaders in demonstrating technology and innovation quickly when the community needs it.”
“MSU is here for the long haul,” says Bollman. “As a university, it's important for us to think holistically about the future and what we can do to ensure that our way of life is protected. Our day-to-day actions have a definite impact on our future and it's important that we keep that in front of us. We try to think sustainably in really everything that we do.”
“We're the institution of a thousand years,” says Gore. “We need to really be mindful of how we leave the campus and the campus environment for the succeeding generations of people who will follow us. One of the great things about Michigan State is that we have a low barrier for collaboration across units, and that's what you see.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
Joining me to talk about this are three of our medical deans at Michigan State University. Andrea Amalfitano of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, Aron Sousa from the College of Human Medicine, and Randy Rasch from the College of Nursing.
“We're doing a lot,” says Amalfitano. “As a college we typically graduate about 300 physicians a year. We're pretty proud of the fact that 70 percent of them typically will end up practicing during their residency in the state of Michigan. And that usually translates into them staying to practice as well. And we've been doing this for many years. This year as usual, we have about 213 students that have already matched to a residency program in the state of Michigan. And typically what would happen is they graduate around May 1. And between then and July 1, they would then make plans to enter one of the hospital systems in the state around July 1.
“This year we talked with the licensing body called LARA in the state of Michigan and let them know that our students are available and that they should proceed with haste to process their licensing documents so that if the medical system they're going to go join needs additional help or support, they can potentially join the health system sooner rather than later. And so what we basically have done is validated that these students have met all the criteria, the four plus years of training, and they have seen patients. They're ready to go. Our students can go and begin their careers as physicians in this unique time.”
“Our fourth-year class leadership said to us, ‘We're going to start July 1, but most of us are already done with our training and our curriculum and we're not getting any smarter sitting here doing nothing. Could we start early?’ From there, as Andy talked about, our students are able to be available to residencies and hospitals earlier than they would otherwise,” adds Sousa. “And I think it's important to say that the students have all finished all of their training. We didn't cut short their training or skip anything. They just happened to already be done. And so then certifying them to be ready to enter and join residents and residencies, they were going to join anyway July 1, was really just a matter of having the state come through on the paperwork and greasing the skids to get that work done. And the state was really wonderful. They really very quickly figured out a way to make that happen for our students and for the people of the state.
“I think the university is really showing what a land grant institution is all about and how we’re a part of the scientific safety net for the country. Hopefully some of our work helps save lives in the community and across the country.”
“For the College of Nursing at Michigan State University, we will graduate probably this year close to 300 students, but we do them in waves,” Rasch says. “We have a group of about 90 students graduating in May. We can certify that students have completed their requirements for licensure and the board will issue them a license permit that allows them to work as nurses until they sit for the examination and are officially licensed as registered nurses.
“A crisis is also an opportunity. Whenever there's a crisis or anytime that we come to a crossroads, there's an opportunity that we can do more in terms of education and practice, and more to link practice and education. In getting our students and graduates from all three of our colleges out there to help people, they can begin to learn how to work together and take those habits out into the workforce when they join it.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
In the second part of this conversation, they’re joined by Dr. Keith Hampton and Dr. Johannes Bauer, both of whom are affiliated with MSU's Quello Center, which is focused on research that stimulates and informs public debate on media, communication, and information policy. They'll be discussing their latest report, which investigated the broadband gap and K-12 student performance, a subject made even more timely by the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic and resulting closure of schools for the remainder of the school year.
On the economy, says Ballard, “I look for silver linings in any cloud, but this is a very cloudy cloud. Right now this is the sharpest, fastest economic contraction that the United States economy has ever had. Moody's Analytics says that daily output is down by 29 percent nationally, and it's actually a little bit more than that in Michigan. Different states are slightly above or slightly below that national average of a 29 percent fall in economic activity.
“There is no question we are in a recession now. The best that we can hope for, and there are good things that we can hope for, is if we can get the virus under control. The sooner that we can do that, the better it'll be for the economy. If we can begin to move back toward more normal activity, we may be able to have a fairly rapid rebound from this extraordinarily sharp downturn. But right now, in early April, this is certainly a very, very difficult patch in terms of our health and in terms of our economy.”
And on the impact of Covid-19 on our politics, adds Grossmann, “President Trump has certainly tried to leave it to the governors and not provided as much as he could and not do as much coordination as past presidents have done. Ggovernors are already both fighting and coordinating among themselves, and in the longer-term, they're going to be very reliant on federal resources because right now they have some new expenditures and they have a dramatic drop in revenue coming.”
The trio discusses the potential impact of the virus on Michigan’s manufacturing sector and on K-12 education across the country.
“Nearly every state has closed its schools,” Grossmann says. “Many have already ended face-to-face instruction for the year, and many others will go down that route. We’re tracking what states have decided and attempting to provide some of the research background to make some of their transitions potentially more effective, but it is going to be a difficult situation.
“Essentially, most states that we've seen make moves so far are telling the districts, ‘okay, you need to start distance education as soon as you can. You have to abide by every federal restriction in terms of students with disabilities and still provide individualized instruction to students with special needs, and we don't have any resources for you, and you need to do it in the next two weeks.’ And that is obviously going to be a big problem for everyone trying to implement it.
“There are some districts that are prepared to distribute, say, internet-connected devices and provide some kind of curriculum for at least some age groups within their districts. But there is not a single state that was prepared even to the level that universities were prepared to shift all of a sudden to providing statewide distance education. And while there's a lot of innovation that we're tracking in terms of being able to make contacts in other ways, for example, some of the research does suggest that the contacts with teachers are our most important. If they can be done by mail or by phone or by text, they could also be effective. There are some districts innovating there, but everyone is learning on the fly. What we've tried to do is collect on our website what every state is doing, what they're requiring of their districts, and any materials that they are providing to their districts to make that happen.”
“About a year ago, much before this crisis, we set out to look at levels of digital inequality primarily in rural Michigan,” says Hampton. “We partnered with 15 school districts and Merit Networks, primarily rural school districts, to look at levels of at-home connectivity, what students were doing online, what types of devices they had, and their digital skills. Most importantly, we were interested in how variation in those different levels of inequality was affecting different types of performance related to standardized test taking, classroom grades, intent to go on to university, and even interest in STEM-related careers.
“When we looked at rural students, about 47 percent of those who were living in rural areas had some kind of high-speed internet access at home, compared to about 77 percent of those suburban students that we interviewed. Of those who don't have any kind of home connectivity, about a third of them also don't have a computer at home.
“There's a very big gap between what students are doing who don't have connectivity and those who do in terms of digital skills.”
“Our report has had influence on the ground,” Bauer adds. “It was received by many people who are worried about how to navigate these difficult times. Some of these inequalities are difficult to overcome in the short-term. It's not that we didn't know them. They have been known for decades. Ten years ago the federal government issued a national broadband plan that laid out the territory as to what needed to happen to be able to use broadband to increase productivity in the economy, to deliver important government services, and to deliver educational services. We have made significant progress in the meantime, but broadband is not yet at all those locations where it should be to really have a second effective mode of education in a crisis like this.
“This is not just a rural or small town issue. We see the same or even more egregious divides and inequalities actually in urban areas, where the differences between those who are connected and those who are not connected, for income or for non-availability issues, are as large as they are in rural Michigan.”
“A year ago when we started this, we set out to find out if and where these inequalities exist. It’s really about skill and devices. Cell phone-only access is not equivalent to having high-speed access and a computer in the home. And even once you work on these inequalities in access, students are going to be experiencing massive differences in their digital skills and ability to engage online with content, and that's even before we address inequalities in parents' and teachers' digital skills.”
“Education is the strongest indicator of future earnings, and the differences between the earnings of those with more education and those with less have widened very dramatically in the last 40 years,” says Ballard. “Among men, the average real earnings for those with a high school diploma or less are less now than they were in the early 1970s. For those with a bachelor's degree or more, there's been pretty good growth. So, education is absolutely crucial, and increasingly I think digital sophistication is going to make a huge difference.”
In closing, Grossmann is thinking about the next school year and adds “Students are going to come back behind where they otherwise would be even if you assume the very best efforts on behalf of students, teachers, and districts to try to make these haphazard changes very quickly. The easiest way to make up that lost learning is actually going to be more instruction, that is, a longer school year or a longer school day. There are a few states thinking about it, but it, of course, has to come with more resources to make happen. And those are currently in short supply. Governor Whitmer opened the door. She said that districts could advance different schedules for next year, but it's not just different schedules that are going to be necessary. It's actually more instruction.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
At last report, the virus and associated illness COVID-19 raised the nation’s unemployment ranks to 3.3 million people as manufacturing, retailers and offices sent employees home to layoff or to work remotely. Ballard calls the report “stunning.”
As of mid-afternoon Friday, Michigan had reported 3,650 cases of Covid19 and 92 deaths due to the virus that has no proven cure and in the U.S. has caused some 100,000 cases of illness and 1,554 deaths. Health authorities are predicting a continued global increase for the foreseeable future, while seeking a preventative vaccine.
MSU initiated online instruction for the remainder of the semester and postponed commencement as did schools and universities across the state. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued executive orders to keep the state’s population in their homes and at a safe distance to prevent further spread of COVID-19.
The podcast features political scientist Matt Grossmann, director of MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and podcast home, Ballard and Arnold Weinfeld, IPPSR associate director.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the country is in a recession,” Ballard says. The coronavirus is a “nasty, nasty opponent,” he adds.
One potential positive sign, Ballard says, the economy’s relative strength before the coronavirus began its spread. The stock market had climbed to its highest levels ever in February and unemployment nationally was at one of its lowest points in decades.
In the podcast, Ballard and Weinfeld cover the 2020 presidential election, increased confidence in President Donald Trump, state and federal disease controls, likely results of a $2 trillion economic stimulus, the Defense Production Act, civil liberties during a pandemic, and the virus’ impact on online shopping and placemaking.
“The race in the primary for the Democratic nomination to run for president is basically over,” says Grossmann. “The race is in a suspended animation pattern because we aren’t having any primaries while we deal with the virus. The presidential race has receded from the news dramatically while the virus takes center stage.”
IPPSR is a unit of MSU’s College of Social Science. Its focus is on public policy education, political leadership education, and survey research.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
“I’ve been having meetings through Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and conference calls in my office in my basement. I’m mostly working the phones and trying to stay in touch with everyone.”
Beekman has a conference call every weekday morning with his fellow Big Ten athletic directors and new league commissioner Kevin Warren and his team. And he’s staying in touch with Spartan coaches and student-athletes.
Beekman feels badly for the student-athletes who have worked so hard and who didn’t get to finish their winter seasons and those who won’t get to compete in spring sports.
“Yet in some ways it feels small in comparison to the life and death issues that so many people around the country are facing with loved ones in nursing homes they can’t visit and loved ones on ventilators in hospitals. While we worry about athletics, we also have to keep in mind the context. Athletics is like the icing on the cake, and we have to worry about the cake right now.”
While student-athletes are off campus, the department is still able to provide services for them like remote academic support and training services, strength coaches sharing ideas for home workouts, and Zoom meetings with coaches and position coaches.
“We have students literally spread out across the world. Spartan athletes come to us from places like Korea, Japan, Spain, and South America. And there are students who are still living in East Lansing. Whether they’re here in East Lansing continuing to live in our on-campus housing or whether they’re on the other side of the world, we’re trying to electronically make sure they’re all well taken care of.”
One silver lining in the horrible cloud of dealing with the pandemic is the chance for coaches and staff to reconnect with their families. Athletics, like many other professions, can be a never-ending cycle where when one season ends, the next immediately begins. For now, that has slowed down, which provides an opportunity for a battery recharge.
“As Coach Mel Tucker says when we return, we’ll be firing on all cylinders and relentlessly pressing ahead.
“And I say to our wonderful world of supporters that Spartan Athletics will be back. We’ll be back stronger than ever. We’re excited about the fall and the upcoming year. Immediately, though, I encourage people to follow the advice from medical experts and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Stay inside. Stay home. Don’t be tempted, and let’s all get through this together and come out on the other side. We can celebrate then. We need to take care of business now and make sure everyone stays healthy.”
Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. has restructured the administration of the colleges of Human Medicine, Nursing and Osteopathic Medicine, as well as the university’s health clinics, to be better aligned in patient care, education and research.
The change included promoting Norman J. Beauchamp Jr. to the new position of executive vice president for health sciences overseeing the colleges of Human Medicine, Nursing and Osteopathic Medicine as well as clinical practices.
Beauchamp is leading MSU’s response to the novel coronavirus outbreak.
“We need to take this very seriously,” says Beauchamp. “Sometimes in trying to give people optimism, we lose the fact that part of the reason for optimism is that if we take it seriously and adhere to the recommendations, that’s when we can be optimistic that we will have a good outcome.
“This is very different from an optimism that would cause people not to take this seriously. Then you will need to be very concerned because we won’t have the type of success some communities have had in the battle against the coronavirus.”
Beauchamp encourages us all to perform random acts of kindness in these perilous times to help assuage the fear, anxiety, and worry many citizens are feeling. He says he’s struck by how the community is coming together.
“We’re bringing together all those involved in providing health care and making sure we’re all using best practices and working together. And we’re mobilizing strengths across the university, like our top ranked supply chain program. How do you get resources to people when they need them?”
Beauchamp touts the volunteerism ethos MSU students and the “desire to give back” they’re showing in the community. And he credits university physician Dave Weismantel, MSU IQ leader Chris Contag, and Jeff Dwyer’s team at MSU Extension, among many others, for their efforts in coming together to battle the virus.
He talks about interacting with the Lansing Economic Area Partnership (LEAP), the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce, Sparrow, McLaren and many others.
“One of the key things that a university is designed to do is to serve the community. It’s been inspirational how people have come together in difficult times. LEAP and the Chamber came together with MSU to bring together the community’s strengths to solve some of the challenges we’re facing. It’s really been a wonderful coming together.”
Dr. Beauchamp describes planning efforts to establish drive-through testing on campus and the potential to use dorms, Kellogg Center, and athletic facilities as field hospitals.
“When this comes, Spartans will be ready. I’m really pleased that we’re getting way out in front of this.”
Beauchamp celebrates food industry workers and emphasizes the importance of following the guidelines. He talks about the development of telehealth, which can help diagnose and treat COVID-19.
And he wants us all to have hope.
“Our community and state have done a really terrific job responding. Adhere to the guidelines, be kind and thoughtful to each other, and volunteer when you can. We will absolutely come through this on the other side as a community.
“And our community should know that MSU is working really hard to support the community, which is really the call of a university.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, You Tube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
“Much of my research has focused on the kinds of learning that students are doing in social media and online spaces, like the kinds of communication practices they're doing and the kinds of community building and interactions they're having with other students and with their teachers in these online spaces,” says Greenhow.
“I've both taught online and in person. I've looked at how different online technologies like video conferencing and robot technologies can be integrated into students' online learning for more effectiveness. I look at the ways we can marry the technologies that are available to us: social media, online platforms, and robots - with the kinds of learning and teaching needs that we have today.”
What are some challenges and opportunities for faculty and students as they transition to online-only instruction?
“There are a number of challenges in just making sure that your students have access to high speed internet and devices like laptops and iPads that are going to work for online education. One challenge is just figuring out who has what and then getting resources to the people who need it. But a second layer of challenges is if teachers and students have no experience with online learning, you can't just take your in-person class and put it in an online setting. You have to rethink your goals for teaching. What is it you hope your students will learn?
“It's not just about putting your textbook online and expecting students are going to have the same level of engagement and learning as they did in a face-to-face class where all of that student-to-student interaction and student-instructor interaction are baked in. Now you have to be more thoughtful about how you are going to get students to interact in small groups with you, the instructor. What kinds of things do you have to rethink to make the learning as engaging and effective as possible?”
How effective can online learning be?
“Online learning can be as effective as face-to-face learning if done right. It's not an absolute that online learning is a less effective form of learning. But you have to be smart about it.”
Greenhow says it’s important that students and teachers interact with each other, even if digitally.
“One of the challenges of online learning is when students feel disconnected from their classmates and teacher. And when students feel disconnected, they disengage and they're at a higher risk of dropping out. Online learning is done by yourself at your own pace, with little interaction, so there's a much greater risk of you feeling isolated and disengaged and confused, and maybe you drop out. We want to avoid that.
“My main point is you have to be thoughtful about how you are going to create a social community oriented interactive environment for students online as you would do in a classroom setting.”
Overall Greenhow advises we all stay calm.
“If students are stressed out or confused or just generally struggling, communication, communication, communication. And the same thing with teachers. Teachers, reach out to your students, ask them how they're doing, be available as much as you can. There is going to be a steep learning curve, especially in K-12 education; most schools haven't prepared for this. We're trying to turn to online on a dime and it's challenging.
That's what I'm doing with my students. I had a course plan that was packed with content and assignments and after this all happened, as the world keeps changing, I've had to rethink things and say, ‘Okay, what can we reasonably expect from each other given our current situation?’ And then I also had to think about, ‘Okay, I've got all of these assignments here, but what are the most critical assignments? And what can perhaps I reduce or eliminate just to give people some space to catch their breath and catch up?’
“Hybridization of instruction might be where we're headed, where we're taking the best of online learning and we're taking the best of in person learning and we're expanding opportunities for education for all students and teachers. There are a lot of students who can't come to school, or for various reasons have to participate online. If we can come up with a more effective hybrid model, we might actually meet all students better where they are.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
“Two of the most critical things that are determined based on the census are the number of legislative seats for each state. They're used to draw congressional and state legislative districts. The other thing is, frankly, federal funding,” says Sue Webster. She's a community liaison in Michigan State University's Offices of Government Relations and Student Affairs and Services. “When you're thinking about federal monies, which go to local hospitals, fire departments, schools, roads, and many other resources, those are based on census data. So that's why it's so important for each community to get involved.”
What do we need to do and when do we need to do it?
“It can be completed online, which many people are utilizing. There's a degree of comfort with working on things online for those of us that are well versed in it. But if you would prefer to send in a form by mail you can do that, and you can also call in.”
Do students report they live in East Lansing? Or their hometown?
“You should report yourself living in the community where you've been for at least six months. In the case of students who have been living on campus, for the first time the Census Bureau is allowing the institution to upload that data - in essence, counting all of the students who live on campus. Even if they've moved home, they will be counted as having been here.
“We have students who live off campus and they may have opted to go home. We want them to be aware that they should count themselves still living in this particular community because they've been here for six months or more.
“It’s important to understand why this is critical and why we're doing it and how it's mandated by the US constitution. One of the things I hear a lot is the question about citizenship. Who should fill this out? If they are, for instance, international students or people who have different citizenship statuses? The census does not inquire about citizenship. It doesn't ask if anyone in your home is a citizen or if you're a citizen. Non-citizens need to be counted. Everybody should be counted. When we're looking at overall numbers, we're looking at services needed in a community. It's really important to make sure everyone is counted.
“The answers that are provided can't be shared with law enforcement. And you're not going to be asked for your social security number, money, or donations. This is not being asked on behalf of any political party. No one should be asking about credit card numbers or banks or anything like that.”
Learn more at msu.edu/census2020.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
One forecast: A Goldman Sachs announcement to be on guard for a stock market correction and the coronavirus. Taxes are on the agenda.
Finally, the podcast welcomes a report concluding that a new effort to improve the state's lowest-performing schools show modest but positive results and researchers are looking ahead to an 18-month checkup.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. Find MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, You Tube, and wherever you get your podcasts.
“It’s an honor for me to have coached at my alma mater and worked for such a great university all these years; it’s really something I'm very, very grateful for,’ Saxton says. “There were only two Big Ten teams that sponsored soccer when I started. And now there are over 330 Division 1 teams including all the Power Five conferences that sponsor women's soccer. That growth has been incredible and been fun to be a part of.
“And then, here on campus, just the evolution of our athletics department and our university over the years has been incredible. When I played here, I finished in '82, we played on what is now the football practice field. We were lucky enough to move down to a beautiful space at Old College Field in the mid '80s. I’ve watched that space grow and improve. It’s a spectacular place for college athletics. We have our own stadium, we have lights. It's been just year after year growth and support from the university. We really appreciate it.”
Saxton talks about the special partnership he and men’s soccer coach Damon Rensing share and how it helps both programs.
“It's been great for our student athletes primarily because, unlike what we might hear at other universities, there's really a great deal of support between the two teams and a great relationship. That's evolved out of the fact that Damon and I both grew out of the coaching tree of Joe Baum.”
Saxton talks about the rise of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team. He says there isn’t much difference in coaching strategy between men’s and women’s soccer. And he talks about the team’s offseason regimen and looks ahead to the season next fall.
“It really doesn't matter how tall you are. Speed certainly matters, without a doubt, and yet technique and the ability to maneuver the ball - what you can do with the ball - is most important of all. We were able to, with the development in the women's game in the United States, to recruit very skillful student athletes.”
Saxton adds that the top priority for his team is academics.
“It's a team goal that's right in your face when you walk into our locker room. We have goals in different areas; in community service, what we do on the field, our preparation for training, but academics is at the top. And it's been a tradition I'm very proud of. I'm a graduate of our College of Education. I was a teacher. I believe I still am a teacher. I think we, as coaches, regardless of the level we're competing in, we're in the education business. I take that very, very seriously. I'm very, very proud of the tradition we have within our program.
“We let our players know when we recruit them, when they come in, that this is what we're all about. You're getting a great degree here at Michigan State and you're also getting to compete in intercollegiate athletics in one of the great conferences in the country. They go hand in hand, but academics is always first and our student athletes know that.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
He talks about the history of the program and the Joe Baum coaching tree. And he says there’s a strong sense of alumni connectivity that permeates the program.
“I played for Joe and then was his assistant for 10 years and then took over as head coach. Over the last, I think 42 years, 43 years, we've only had two head coaches for men’s soccer at MSU. Soccer in this country, especially in the state of Michigan, has really grown and we've been able to pull in a lot of talented players from the state of Michigan and the Midwest. That combination has really been successful.”
Rensing tells Stanley and Beekman about the importance of MSU’s facilities to the program and about how the growth of professional soccer is affecting it, too. He says the Big Ten does play a more defensive-oriented style than teams from other parts of the country, and he explains why the U.S. men haven’t yet become more competitive in international competition like the U.S. women have.
“I think it's all relative,” he says. “I think we've certainly really grown a lot. Unfortunately we started a lot further behind the Italys, the Brazils, the Germanys, the Spains. And they're also growing. And I think the other thing that makes it a little bit difficult is in our domestic league, they play to win and their goal is to win championships. If they can bring in a Brazilian player that takes maybe the opportunity of a young American player, that can come into play too.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
“Provost is an old military term, and most people aren't too familiar with it outside of the college setting,” Sullivan says. “The provost is the chief academic officer, which means the provost is ultimately responsible for the faculty from hiring to retirement and for the students from admission to graduation.”
While Sullivan sees the physical changes to campus since her return to her alma mater, she’s also sensing a mindset change.
“The new buildings are quite exciting. That's different. But Michigan State was about this size when I was an undergraduate, and that all feels very familiar, including the fact that this campus never feels crowded despite the number of people who are on it every day. And I think that's partly because of the beautiful grounds, which have always been to me one of the distinguishing factors about Michigan State.
“One of the really important changes has been a mindset change from the university as the sieve that is essentially involved in a weeding out function for those who are not worthy to be here. That’s the old phrase about, ‘Look to your right, look to your left. Only one of you will be here.’ I think that's changed to the view that if you got admitted, we have a responsibility to make it possible for you to succeed. And I know President Stanley has an important student success agenda. I think that's a real difference, and it shows up in lots of things. It shows up in the ways we teach, greater attention paid to advising, and generally just making it easier for students to figure out what it is they need to do to graduate. That's different. I would say when I was here it was more a matter of, ‘Here's a maze. Let's see if you're bright enough to run it.’
“I'd say it also involves the mindset change all the way down to the individual student. Faculty members need to think about the problems students are having in learning and try to help them overcome those problems. That's often hard. If you're a faculty member, you're really gifted in a subject. You don't really see why it's not obvious to everybody else. So you have to try and put yourself in the students' shoes. And for the students, it means shifting from a mindset which says, ‘I'm having trouble at this so I'm not naturally good at it, so I should quit this field and go do something else.’ Instead, we'd like students to think, ‘This is hard, but I've done hard things. I can learn this and persevere in the kinds of difficult courses that often lead to more rewarding majors.’"
Sullivan says MSU’s land grant mission has “always been near and dear to my heart. It calls out a mission of service to our community through research-based outreach. How does that connect between the faculty member and the student? How does that provide for a richer experience for our students?
“Michigan State's one of the top schools in the country in terms of service learning, which means an integration of outreach into the community with your classroom work. Faculty members here have become very good at looking for ways to help their students apply their knowledge in a real setting. That's also good for the student. It helps them see immediately how their knowledge can be applied. And it also helps them think about, ‘Oh, is this a field in which I might want to pursue work after graduation?’ It works for everybody.”
The trio discusses the importance of study abroad to the student experience, too. And in summary, Sullivan adds:
“I think the Land Grant Mission really permeates life here at MSU in a way it does not at many schools. I think there's a real sense of mission here that we do something different and that we give a chance to the students who might not otherwise have had a chance. I think there's also just the huge variety of subjects you can study at Michigan State, an exceptionally broad range really. And that offers students an opportunity. They don't have to major in a field to take a course in an area that might not even be available to them somewhere else. And then there's the great diversity of the student body. You rub shoulders with students from 100 foreign countries as well as 50 states in the union. It gives you a real opportunity to think and interact with people who may not think and interact the same way you do.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
The conversation begins with their thoughts on a challenging time for racial tension on campus.
“It has been a challenging year, but in some ways it's been a typical year in that these things continually happen, and it's not just at MSU,” says Wray. “I have to address it in class because my students are concerned about it and I'm concerned about it as well. But when my students are raising it on the tail of these various incidents, oftentimes what we're going to do in class that day goes out the window.
“The classroom is one of the best places to discuss these issues with students because you build personal relationships with them.”
“Some of the content of the courses I'm teaching right now intersects with these questions,” adds Chambliss. “Sometimes we're talking about them directly. Sometimes we are talking about them indirectly. It's a way for them to process. I'm always mindful of the fact that from the students of color perspective, this isn't necessarily a shock. Like it's not necessarily like, ‘Oh, I can't imagine how this happened.’ They can totally imagine how it happened. Having the discussions is a reflection of growth. Students of all colors see this as wrong.
“And the struggle, I think, for the institution is to think through how are they going to respond to the real concerns that students of color have and make a culture where students of color don't have to worry about constantly being on guard around these thoughtless, insensitive, hurtful actions. It’s really interesting for us as educators to be trying to create a space where these conversations can happen and people of all colors feel OK about talking about this. I often say this in class. We're all here to learn and we're trying to build the capacity to be better people, right? To have the kind of society that we say we want.”
Wray and Chambliss have creative approaches to teaching and telling stories of Black American history.
“Every month is Black History Month to me,” Chambliss says. “There's this sort of branding problem in my mind when it comes to the celebration of black history.”
“Like Julian, I'm a bit conflicted about it because every month is Black History Month and black history is American history,” adds Wray.” Despite the branding issues, Black History Month provides an opportunity to highlight some things and do a little bit of myth-busting. I hope it will continue to evolve; that's what some of us are constantly doing. We're trying to force it in some ways to evolve into this other broader year long discussion.
“The great thing about teaching in the film realm is those times when I see that light bulb go off for a student I’ve often had in class for four years. And that, just in terms of teaching, feels great. It feels like I got one today,” he says with a smile.
“Comics are a cognitively complex medium for students,” Chambliss adds. “I actually often spend a lot of time talking to them about how to read a comic or the idea of reading one because a lot of students actually have a lot of anxiety about reading a comic because they've never really read them before. And the way comics handle time, the way comics handle space, the way comics handle the question of identity is really interesting because they have such a long legacy. You have opportunities to explore a lot of different kinds of issues. Like last semester, I taught a class that was readings in popular lit, but the class was basically black comics. It was depictions of blackness in comics.”
Both scholars tell how they use Birth of a Nation, which they both describe as perhaps the most racist movie of all time, in their classes. And for those who only consider books and writing papers as a way to teach and learn, particularly in traditional English classes, Wray and Chambliss share their views on how hip hop culture, music, film, and comics are equally and probably increasingly important.
“I can give a plug to our English Department where I often say we are not your parents' English department,” Wray quips. “Our current world is books and films and comics and hip hop.
“And we have to in some ways respond to what is. We can't be cultural Luddites in that way. Hip hop is here, hip hop has been here, hip hop is critical to social, cultural, racial, gender dynamics, and film. We just cannot afford to ignore that as part of our educational mission.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. Find MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D., appointed Tanya Jachimiak as the new associate vice president of the Office for Civil Rights and Title IX Education and Compliance, effective Feb. 3.
In this position, she will provide leadership and oversight of MSU’s Prevention, Outreach and Education Department and Office of Institutional Equity and Resolution Office.
“The infrastructure in place at MSU is impressive,” says Jachimiak. “MSU is poised to be a leader in this area, especially through prevention and making sure we have a fair, impartial, and prompt response to incidents on campus.”
Jachimiak is reviewing and assessing the policies and practices currently in place at MSU. She’s requiring POE and OIE “to develop diversity action plans and make sure that, when there are open positions, ensuring that we have a recruiting plan in place to make sure we have a diverse applicant pool to fill any of our positions.
“I’m going to be looking for ways for us to improve. I’m committed to continual self-assessment and improvement in all areas.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. Find MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, You Tube, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Opinions from the latest State of the State Survey
Michigan consumers are more positive about their personal finances than they’ve been in nearly two decades, and by some measures, the most upbeat of the century, the latest State of the State Survey finds.
Those interviewed between June 13 and Nov. 3 said they consider themselves better off financially than a year ago, comfortable with their current household finances and confident they’ll be better off next year as well.
Michigan adults also cooled slightly toward President Donald Trump as the year ended, and gave Gov. Gretchen Whitmer her opening SOSS marks of “fair.”
While a positive economic outlook typically bodes well for an incumbent president, Trump’s ratings “are not all that great,” said State of the State Director Charles Ballard, a Michigan State University economics professor.
His favorable ratings – excellent and good choices combined, stood at 31 percent. “Almost exactly half gave him a rating of poor,” Ballard said.
Michigan’s residents answering the State of the State Survey (SOSS) also weighed in on their confidence in government – state, local and federal. Trust in local, state and federal government all dipped slightly.
SOSS results were outlined on IPPSR’s latest State of the State Podcast. Hosts IPPSR Director Matt Grossmann, Associate Director Arnold Weinfeld and SOSS Director Charles Ballard, an MSU economics professor, were January’s podcasters.
As Trump seeks re-election in 2020, under a third of Michigan’s residents – 31.4 percent – gave President Donald Trump a combined rating of “good” or “excellent.” Those marks are down from 33.9 percent “good” or “excellent” recorded in the survey completed just about a year ago.
In the latest phone survey, 50.3 percent of Michigan’s citizens ranked Trump’s ratings as “poor.” Another 18.3 percent gave the president, a Republican, a “fair” rating.
Among those answering questions about their trust in all levels of government, their trust in local government is higher now than in most of the century, Ballard said. Nearly 44 percent of those responding said they could trust local government “most of the time.”
The high mark came in 2002 when 46.9 percent of them said they could trust local government nearly all or most of the time.
In this survey, 21.3 percent of those responding said they could trust state government most of the time and 49.5 percent some of the time. Trust in state government reached a high point in 2002, when 36.2 percent of those answering the survey said they trusted their state officials.
Those who say they seldom or never trust their federal government outnumber those who indicate they trust federal government nearly all or most of the time by a three-to-one margin, Ballard says.
“Trust in the federal government is far below the all-time high, which came shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001” when terrorists flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, Ballard notes.
Trump stands at 15.6 percent “excellent,” compared to Whitmer’s 5.7 percent. Michigan gives Trump an 18.3 percent “fair” rating, and Whitmer a 46.1 percent “fair” mark. Trump’s “poor” marks are more than three times Whitmer’s 14.9 percent assessment.
“Trump wins more extreme responses than the first-term governor. He has a higher percentage of excellent ratings, but also a higher percentage of poor grades,” Ballard says. “The differences are even starker when you look at attitudes by race, sex and party affiliation.”
Women favor Whitmer over Trump. Among Black Michigan residents, 34.3 percent give Whitmer “good” or “excellent” performance marks. Trump wins 3.2 percent favorable marks from the demographic.
Trump wins high marks from nearly three-quarters of Republicans responding to the survey. More than half of Democrats responding – 56.8 percent – gave Whitmer favorable marks. Under 2 percent – 1.8 percent – of Democrats gave Trump high marks.
Independents rated them similarly. With a ±3.2 percent margin of error, 34.9 percent of Independents ranked Whitmer highly. In the latest SOSS measure, 33.8 percent of Independents ranked Trump highly.
Among those answering SOSS interviewers, 62 percent – just below the all-time high reading of 64.1 percent in 1999 – called their current finances “excellent” or “good.” Just 18 percent called their finances worse than a year ago, the lowest reading since 1999, Ballard says.
SOSS recorded 47.4 calling their households better off than a year ago. “Those ratings are among the best of this century,” Ballard says.
“Those who predicted they’ll be better off a year from now was also one of the best in more than a decade,” he says. In the latest SOSS, 63.2 percent forecast they’ll be financially better off in 2020, below the state’s 70.5 percent peak of optimism in 2001, before the state entered a slide to recession.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. Find MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Joseph talks about how the game has changed over the course of her almost 30 years at the helm of Spartan Softball. And she talks about the challenges of being a team in the north.
“It’s problematic, no doubt,” says Joseph. “Our kids are tougher and more resilient by facing the challenges. We don’t let it be an excuse.”
Joseph describes her career path from growing up in Flint to coaching the Spartans. And she talks about how she believes intercollegiate athletics is the best leadership training for young women outside the military.
“There are very few coaching jobs better than Michigan State University that have both world-class academics and Power 5 athletics. Employers like to hire college athletes because they tend to be a little tougher and they’re not quitters.”
Joseph talks about how today’s players are much better “from the neck down,” but are “softer than ever from the neck up. They don’t come to us with the same toughness they used to.”
She explains why the ball is yellow and previews the coming season.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. Find MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Boss talks about the challenges inherent in being a northern team in a warm weather sport. “We tend to recruit tougher kids who are used to the weather challenges,” Boss says.
Coach Boss talks about the heated infield at McLane Baseball Stadium that helps with weather challenges.
Boss talks about his career path from growing up in Lansing to becoming head baseball coach at MSU. He explains how he strategically uses his 11.7 scholarships and how the Major League Baseball draft differs from NFL and NBA drafts.
He describes how the personal growth he saw in his players during a donor-sponsored trip to the Dominican Republic. And he previews the coming season.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. You can find MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Steve Esquith is dean of Michigan State University’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities. He talks with MSU President Samuel L. Stanley, Jr. MD and Spartans Athletic Director Bill Beekman about the “common good” mission of the college.
“We think there are some basic things that the arts and humanities can contribute to society,” says Esquith.
He talks about the college’s excellent placement rate. “Parents are often pleased to hear about our graduation and placement rates,” he quips.
For each of the past six years, 100 percent of RCAH graduates have found jobs or enrolled in grad school. That percentage is best among colleges at MSU.
Esquith says RCAH greatly exceeded its fundraising goal in the university’s recent campaign. And he details the advantages offered by a residential college.
“In living together, the students encounter people who are different from themselves. A mark of our success in the college is our diversity. Richness of other cultures is not just something they read about in textbooks.”
“What you’re doing is such a powerful answer to the question of how the humanities are relevant to what’s going on in the world,” says Stanley. “You provide a powerful answer to that question.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. Find MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Students in the U.S. and Finland participating in a new project-based learning model are not only learning more, but becoming more engaged in class, research from Michigan State University shows.
It’s an approach schools everywhere should adopt, the researchers say, to ensure the next generation of students is prepared to solve the scientific problems of their time.
They explain powerful early findings from their ongoing international experiment in a new book for educators, policymakers and researchers. "Learning Science: The Value of Crafting Engagement in Science Environments," will be available in February 2020 from Yale University Press.
“When students are encouraged to use their imagination, figure out phenomena in the world and solve problems, they develop knowledge they can use in their lives and they actually become more excited about what they are learning,” says Joseph Krajcik, co-author and director of the CREATE for STEM Institute at MSU. “Now that we have seen the impact of these changes, we are hoping to help many more teachers rethink how their students experience science.”
Krajcik, co-author Barbara Schneider and their team used a $3.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop and study teaching and learning materials for high school physics and chemistry based on the principles of the Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS.
Unlike traditional instruction requiring students to memorize facts, NGSS emphasizes deep understanding of core scientific ideas and the practices of real scientists as students make sense of the world in which they live.
The project, one of many cutting-edge efforts at MSU to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education represents a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
Though Finland is known globally for its high student achievement, its schools face the same challenges as in the U.S.: disinterest in science class and fewer young people willing to pursue STEM careers.
Researchers have established a professional learning community with teachers and scholars in both nations. They provide engaging curriculum materials and ongoing professional learning for participating teachers.
The impact of the project is assessed through classroom observations and pre- and post-tests. Students and teachers also respond to surveys — often administered in real-time via cell phones — to capture what they are doing in science class and how they feel about it.
"Learning Science: The Value of Crafting Engagement in Science Environments" was written based on field tests with over 1,000 students in Michigan and takes readers inside many of the collaborating teachers’ real classrooms. Since then, research has expanded to over 7,000 students in multiple states and Finland with very promising results.
Leaders hope to make the curriculum units available free to schools in the future.
“Through our research, we are completely changing how students experience gateway subjects in science, so they don’t feel isolated or discouraged,” says Schneider, the John A. Hannah University Distinguished professor of education and sociology at MSU. “With growing evidence of what works, we are ready to provide teachers with the necessary tools to make a profound impact on the next generation of learners.”
Jari Lavonen and Kateriina Salmela-Aro, both of University of Helsinki, co-authored "Learning Science: The Value of Crafting Engagement in Science Environments" with Krajcik and Schneider.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
“Automotive cybersecurity is an area we don’t understand well in the social sciences. While there are groups of computer scientists and engineers digging into some of the issues, the social aspects are extremely relevant and under-examined,” says Thomas Holt, professor of criminal justice at MSU. “As the technology gets greater market share, it’s critical to get ahead of the curve before there are issues we can’t rein in.”
As vehicles become smarter and more connected to WiFi networks, hackers will have more opportunities to breach vehicle systems. Connecting your smartphone through a USB port can give a hacker backdoor access to data from both your phone and your car; additionally, Google Android users who can download apps from unverified sites are even more at-risk.
The research – published in the Journal of Crime and Justice – applied Routine Activities Theory, used a popular criminal justice framework, to current forms of vehicle security and provided recommendations for manufacturers and owners to improve safety.
“The risk with vehicles isn’t just personal data – though that is still a real concern,” Holt says. “Say the car is compromised and a hacker alters certain alert systems that tell a driver when tire pressure is low or so the emergency brake sensory systems don’t kick in. That could lead to loss of life.”
The theory Holt applied says that in order for a criminal to act three things need to come together: a motivated offender, a suitable target and a lack of guardian. In the context of vehicle security, he said that motivators and targets are clear, but the presence of a guardian was where vehicles fell short.
“Where we found holes was surprising: there’s no one technically responsible for these vehicles’ central computer systems,” Holt says. “The automotive and equipment manufacturers need to recognize that as it stands, they serve as the guardians in the space, and the onus is on them. They need to take the lead in thinking more critically about data flows, software vendors and how to communicate security with dealerships.”
Holt explains that in a traditional automotive context, an equipment failure would lead to a recall of the vehicle to fix the problem. However, cybersecurity is entirely different.
“It’s critical to think beyond thresholds and recalls because cybersecurity isn’t a recoverable problem, but rather one that requires constant system patching updates, installations and new codes written,” Holt says. “This is more complicated but needs to be an active guardian process.”
Similar to how smart phone manufacturers release security updates, the only way to disrupt the current problem is to have guardians that are consistently, actively updating system software.
“Not everyone updates their smartphones when they’re supposed to, but customers need to realize that to a certain extent, manufacturers can only do so much. The customer must have a role in protecting their cars as well,” Holt says. “We can’t expect every vehicle owner to go to a dealership every time there’s a security update. But once the guardians find a way to make it more accessible, they’ll be the ones responsible for protecting their vehicles – and themselves.”
Holt says that it won’t be long before all vehicles have smart capabilities. He fears that it will take too many tragic stories of accidents or breaches to get people to act.
“We need to improve the presence of software guardians and better resources; we also need to think about developing policies to protect users, vehicles and customers,” Holt says. “There are real benefits to smart cars and autonomous features, but we need to get ahead of the risks before those benefits are lost.”
Caroline Brooks wrote this report.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870. Find MSU Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
A university-wide social norms marketing campaign has reduced high-risk drinking and adverse outcomes of drinking, according to a new study from Michigan State University in the Journal of American College Health.
MSU's social norms campaign was created to educate MSU students about actual drinking behavior on campus. When misperceptions are corrected, behavior will change to be more consistent with the actual norm says Dennis Martell, director of MSU Health Promotion.
“The social norms marketing approach assumes that most people conform to the perceived standards of the social groups to which they belong but, in actuality, what’s perceived is often not reality,” he says. “MSU has almost 20 years of evidence that shows that high-risk drinking and perceptions about drinking have changed on campus. The general misperception is that college-aged students party a lot and make questionable decisions, but the reality is that most students who choose to drink do so responsibly.”
Martell and his co-authors analyzed survey data collected every two years since 2000 and found that perceived drinking norms declined along with measures of actual drinking intensity and frequency. For example, the percentage of students who drank eight or more drinks declined from 27.8% in 2000 to 16.5% in 2014 – a 41% decline.
“The results are remarkable because students are continually bombarded with messages that encourage drinking,” says Larry Hembroff, director of research and evaluation for the National Social Norms Center at MSU and lead author. “Our campaign consists of materials posted around campus with facts that counter the myths of student drinking; the messages are simple, but they’ve worked.”
One surprising finding is how powerful the messages about using various protective behavior strategies while drinking have been at reducing negative alcohol-related incidents, Hembroff said. Examples of protective behavior strategies are using a designated driver, alternating drinks with water or a non-alcoholic beverage, eating food before or during drinking events, and watching out for friends.
he study found that the percentage of students who reported driving after drinking declined 58.5%. And driving after five or more drinks declined 83.3%.
In addition to helping change the culture of alcohol use at MSU, Martell leads the National Social Norms Center, or NSNC, which provides resources and research on social norms to 12 universities in the U.S. The NSNC was established at MSU in 2016 through a grant from the Anheuser-Busch Foundation.
“Our vision is to help universities standardize the process of the social norm application on their campuses,” Martell says. “We now have the research that shows increasing the use of these approaches not only can make a difference in alcohol-related behaviors that take place on campus but can address additional health concerns as well.
“MSU is recognized as a leader when it comes to changing the culture of alcohol use on campus,” Martell says. “The Anheuser-Busch Foundation’s support helps broaden the success of our programs and allows us to work with other universities.”
Adam Warrington, vice president of Better World at Anheuser-Busch, values the relationship with MSU.
“As the industry leader, Anheuser-Busch is committed to fostering a culture of responsible drinking behaviors and working with likeminded partners who share in our values,” he says. “We’re excited to continue our work with MSU and the NSNC as we work to ensure that every experience with one of our products is a positive one.”
Kim Ward wrote this report.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
Michigan State University’s Center for Economic Analysis sees further growth in the Michigan economy in 2020. This comes from the MSU Economic Forecast Model that tracks and projects the economies of the state of Michigan and the metropolitan areas of Detroit-Warren-Dearborn and Lansing-East Lansing.
The model forecasts employment and wages by industry, economic output and total personal incomes based on economic conditions and projections at the national and regional levels.
On multiple occasions in this past year, it looked like a recession was just on the horizon. Leading indicators that have proved to be good predictors of a recession consistently triggered recessionary concerns. But many of those old predictors just don’t seem to work in this information-driven economy. The one predictor that trumps all – growth in gross domestic product – continues to point to further growth.
Regardless, parts of the economy are not doing so well. Manufacturing, in particular, had a rough year, leaving many to claim we are in the midst of a manufacturing recession. However, the national data suggest that while manufacturing activity has weakened, it is not in decline.
Trade relations were in the news throughout 2019. It’s hard to keep track, but the U.S. has imposed 10% to 25% tariffs on about $524 billion of imported goods from a slew of countries and commodities. (The U.S. imports about $3.1 billion annually.) It appears that the U.S. tariffs have not led to their intended effects of reducing imports and advancing domestic production. Rather, since the first quarter of 2017, imports have increased almost 4% over exports, exacerbating the long-term trade imbalance.
Consumers remain the driving force of this economy. Consumer expenditures make up about two-thirds of the overall economy and consumers remain poised to spend. Consumer debt remains stable and confidence remains high – giving consumers greater reign on spending. First indications of the holiday spending reinforce this conjecture.
Threats to the national economy abound from inside and outside the U.S. China’s explosive economic growth continues its slow ebb, though it remains robust compared to the U.S. The International Monetary Fund has reduced global outlook projections twice this year and projects the European Union to grow at its slowest rate since 2013. Of the EU countries, Germany’s economy, steeped in manufacturing, has lagged the rest of the EU. However, recent projections are for a modest boost, tempered by slowing global growth – but growth, nonetheless.
While 2019 is projected to tack on 2.2 million jobs nationally, the researchers predict 2020 will only add on 1.44 million new jobs. Manufacturing sectors are expected to shed jobs and retail sectors are expected to remain flat in light of productivity gains that allow more to be done with less workers. Other service sector jobs are expected to continue to grow at a stable rate, just south of their long-term trends.
As the only comprehensive state and regional economic forecast estimates that are accessible without a subscription, the MSU Economic Forecast Model is an important resource for businesses and residents wanting to know where the economy is going.
The full forecast details and numbers can be found on the MSU Center for Economic Analysis website at www.cea.msu.edu.
Layne Cameron wrote this report.
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
“I actually got my start as an academic here in East Lansing,” says Knake. “I spent a decade on the faculty at the MSU College of Law. That was after graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, practicing law for a few years, both in private practice and government work, and then realizing what I wanted to do most was become a law professor. I'll always be grateful for that start.
“in 2016, I transitioned to a position at the University of Houston, a wonderful opportunity that I think came up, in part, because of the great beginnings I had here at Michigan State. At the same time, I was raising kids and as they were getting older, we weren't really sure at first whether they would transition to join me in Texas full-time. What we've decided is best for our family is for our children to stay in East Lansing and continue to be raised here.
“And it's part of why I care so much about the university. It's where I got my start as an academic. East Lansing, because of the Michigan State community, is a wonderful place to raise your children.”
Knake is an internationally recognized expert on legal ethics. What does that mean, and how will that skill set help you steward MSU?
“I always approach any situation from the perspective of being trained as a lawyer. And I think that is useful in any setting, but perhaps, especially the setting that the board finds itself in now. How the board will go forward on the question of the investigation that the attorney general has been conducting regarding the Nassar abuse and the release of 6,000 some documents is an immediate concern for me.
“My training and perspective I think also gives me, not only just as a lawyer but as an academic, a broader perspective of what the role of a university is and especially what is the role of a land grant institution, in educating students for the 21st century. It's that combination of background and my legal ethics work from a lawyering perspective, but also my legal ethics work as a member of an academic community.”
What are some of your short-term goals as a trustee of Michigan State University?
“One of my most important goals is learning everything I can about the university that I didn't already know. Absolutely spending a decade here as a faculty member, I learned a lot, but that was really just in the context of the law college. And there's so much more going on in this campus. As a community member here, raising my children on this campus, they learned to walk at the Spartan Marching Band practices. As toddlers, they fed the ducks on the Red Cedar River, they went to the child development lab for preschool. I learned a lot about the university from that perspective, too. But there's just so much more.
“And so, an immediate priority for me and something that I've already begun doing, is just learning more about the campus very broadly. Another priority for me, is helping the board move forward on the concerns that are ongoing from the survivor community, from the attorney general, from the broader Michigan State community. How do we learn the lessons that need to be learned from the Nassar abuse and the fallout and apply those going forward to make sure that something like that never happens again?
“We need to address the ongoing sexual misconduct that's happening on this campus. We've seen in the most recent survey, which I commend the administration for making it public and transparent, what we can do to make Michigan State a leader for all colleges and universities. The concerns about safety on campus are not unique here, but I see Michigan State as having a unique opportunity to learn from really difficult lessons, and hopefully, not only bring this campus community forward to be a safer place for everyone, but also, to do so for institutions of higher education across the country.”
What about some of your long-term goals?
“First, having the history of being a land grant institution, which from the time that President Abraham Lincoln signed the legislation into being to create a university like this, MSU was meant to expand educational opportunities very broadly. And that's something that you see today, both in terms of the diversity of who our student body is, but also, the wide range of things that one can study coming onto this campus.
“Another strength I see that relates to my long-term goals, is the incredible community of loyal alumni. No matter where I go in the world, and I've traveled the globe presenting my research as a scholar, everywhere I go, there is a connection to someone who has very strong ties to Michigan State. And at a time where many institutions of higher education are having to ask very difficult questions about budget and about pedagogy, do we put more courses online? Do we try to target different demographics or groups? How do we compete with the various pressures related to economics and technological change in the 21st century?
I see an institution like Michigan State really uniquely poised to address those challenges, both because of our historical legacy, and also, because of having such a wide sweeping alumni base that spans the globe. And so for me, a long-term goal for Michigan State would see this being a campus that will continue to grow and thrive as a community where students come here not just to develop a specialized expertise so that they could go on for their chosen career or occupation, but also, so that they come together and experience life with people they've never met before, different cultures, different backgrounds, and live together in a community preparing them to then go on to wherever they are next and not just have a professional expertise, but also, understand what it means to be a citizen, a member of a community filled with people that have all kinds of different views and all kinds of different perspectives on how we move forward.
“So, I want to see Michigan State be an institution that continues to grow in that way. And so, a long-term priority is certainly anything that furthers that. And one of the big things I think relates to the short-term priorities we already talked about, making this campus as safe and welcoming as possible.”
How has the law profession evolved and what kind of a legal profession are you sending students out into? What are their challenges and opportunities?
“One of the biggest challenges for legal education today is making sure that our students are prepared to deliver legal services in the way the public needs them. And so part of that has to do with affordability and legal services that the public can afford that also match what it costs to go to law school. I think it also has to do with education about what lawyers can do.
“One of the main reasons why individuals and individual households that face legal problems don't use lawyers is they don't actually recognize that they have a problem a lawyer could help solve. That's an information gap that I have studied, researched, and written about extensively. How can we make legal services more accessible, affordable, and widely adopted by the greater community?
“And then I think legal education is not immune to any of the other pressures that various professional schools are facing right now with respect to increased competition and the changes that we see in terms of technology in disrupting some of the legal jobs that some of us that might've graduated a few years ago held. For example, as a young associate, I did a lot of document review that involved boxes of documents and a warehouse and yellow legal pads. And that was very time consuming. And a lot of that can now be done through technology tools.
“Because those kinds of jobs have been disrupted, though, I don't think it in any way suggests that we don't have a need for lawyers. In fact, I think the need for someone who has a strong legal education, who understands the Constitution in this country, who understands the laws as they should be applied and how to reform them when needed, who understands how to go out and see an injustice and if there isn't a legal remedy, understands how to advocate for change. Those are all things that law students learn, and we need more people learning about those things. So, I'm very optimistic about the market for legal education.”
Knake says it’s an honor to server on the MSU Board of Trustees.
“I am so grateful to Gov. Whitmer for the opportunity because it gives me a chance to take on a role of volunteer service and give back to a community that I care about very deeply, in part, because it is where I got my start as an academic. Spending a decade at the law school here set me up for many other professional opportunities. I will always be indebted to Michigan State for that.
“MSU is a place where my children have grown up, and I want them to continue to think of this campus as their home and to see it thrive. It's not very often that one gets a chance to give back in such a tangible way to an institution that has given so much, both personally and professionally. I'm quite humbled and honored to be able to do that over the next few years.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
“In Flint we're still on filtered and bottled water, but that's for a good reason,” says Hanna-Attisha. “It's because our pipes are being replaced and we are almost done with that. But by the end of 2019 all of the lead pipes in Flint will have been replaced, which is pretty incredible. We'll only be the third city in the country that has replaced their lead pipes. Lansing, Michigan is one of those cities. Madison, Wisconsin is another. And then it will be Flint.”
Dr. Mona talks about the mission of the Michigan State University, Hurley Children's Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative “to limit the impact of this crisis and really to serve as a model for the nation.
CREDIT IAIN BOGLE MSU UNIVERSITY ADVANCEMENT
“It is a recommitment to the children of Flint and it's a recommitment by two institutions, MSU and Hurley, that had already been in Flint for over a century. And this is another way that we put our heads together with many other partners to do something else, to really flip the story for Flint kids.
“I think the biggest lesson of our story is that you don't have to help Flint. You don't have to come to Flint. You don't have to donate or send bottled water. Although we'd gladly accept all contributions, especially to our initiative or to our Flint kids fund. But the eye-opening lesson of the story is that there are Flints everywhere. There are children all over this nation that really wake up to some of the same nightmares as our Flint kids, be it poverty or crumbling infrastructure or poor schools or lost opportunity. These are things that are threatening the future and the health and development of our nation's children all over.”
Dr. Mona wrote the book What The Eyes Don't See.
“When I went to medical school here at Michigan State University, I never intended to write a book. My work and my mission has always been to directly care for children and to improve public health. But then again, I never imagined really being at the center of one of our greatest, most emblematic and environmental public health disasters.
“The story needs to be told - not only the story of the crisis - but really the story of the resistance that was built and the hope that we are building every day. So really there was no other option than to write the story so that we can improve the lives of children.”
Dr. Mona says What the Eyes Don’t See is about more than Flint.
CREDIT RUSS WHITE MSU TODAY
“It's about people, places and problems we choose not to see everywhere. And what I hope that readers get is this incredible sense of power that they have to open their eyes and each other's eyes to injustices happening all around us. It's not enough to be awake. We have to find it within us to act, to take action. And especially when we can build teams around us. There are injustices everywhere and we have the power within us to make a difference.
“I love to quote one of my favorite people, abolitionist Frederick Douglas, who over 150 years ago said, ‘It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.’ And in the city well known for building strong cars, we are really setting a model on how you build strong children.”
Dr. Hanna-Attisha says she also wrote the book to share her own immigration story.
“I'm a first-generation immigrant. I came to this country when I was four. I'm Iraqi American. And we came to this country for what all immigrants come to this country for: freedom and democracy and the American dream. I wake up every day blessed and privileged to be a recipient of that American dream. But there are little kids that look just like me and have that same color of skin as me who are no longer afforded that opportunity. And in a sense, it's as if we've corroded that American dream.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is featured in a Rising to the Challenge piece in the fall issue of Spartan, the Michigan State University Alumni Magazine.
Gov. Whitmer tells Spartan editor Paula Davenport that her average day begins around 5:00 a.m. “whether it's necessary or not, that's when I get up and start moving. As governor, I can spend a 12-hour day in the office or I am frequently out on the road.”
She adds that it’s still hard at times to believe she’s governor.
“It took a little while when people would talk about the governor in my presence before I realized they were talking about me,” she laughs. “The Capitol is one of the most beautiful buildings we have in Michigan. And the fact that I get to spend time there working on issues that matter to people and to our state's future is incredibly inspiring and humbling at the same time.”
Whitmer tells Davenport how her gender impacts her role.
“I do think that we lead differently. Studies have shown that women in public service, in the political realm, spend more time on issues like education and healthcare and get less concerned about credit and more concerned about making sure we have results that are important. I think it’s important to show other women that we are up to taking on executive positions and leadership positions. I hear from parents of daughters all the time how much they like having a chief executive who is female to show that anything's possible for their daughters.”
Governor Whitmer says one of the biggest threats to Michigan is “the lack of investment in the education of our people and the infrastructure that we all rely on. That is the most important work that we have to do. Our roads and our bridges are dangerous and it's getting more dangerous and more expensive every day we don't actually address it.
“And we've short changed everything from our universities to our K-12 system in order to triage this aging infrastructure. And as a consequence, we're behind where we should be in terms of outcomes for kids, in terms of the skill gap, and of course in terms of infrastructure that supports a modern mobility system and modern day economy. These are the biggest challenges and they're not just challenges for us as a state or for our people as individuals, but they’re homeland security challenges as well.
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Hear Gov. Whitmer's May 3, 2019 MSU commencement address
“The good news is none of this is inherently partisan and I'm hopeful that even in a divided government we can find our common ground around solutions on those fronts.”
The governor is a proud Spartan alumna.
“My years at MSU where some of the best of my life. I went there as a freshman thinking I would become a sports broadcaster and then an internship at the Capitol changed the whole trajectory for me. I got my law degree and I was practicing law and that's when the opportunity to run for the State House came up. All the years that I was in the legislature I was fortunate to represent East Lansing and consequently my alma mater. After having two degrees there I think the relationships and the education, the perspective I got from my time at MSU is something that has benefited me as a mom, as a Michigander, and as a public servant.
“We have an incredible nation of Spartans around the world that are connected and fiercely identify with the university and represent grit and determination and problem solving. It's something that is always with me in everything that I do and that's why I will always be so invested in making sure that Michigan State University is successful.”
How will Governor Whitmer know if her administration is a success?
“Success will be measured in terms of, have we started to address our infrastructure issues? Can Michiganders have confidence in the quality of the water they're giving to their families at the dinner table? And have we made strides in closing the skills gap and raising quality of life for people in this state? And will I have contributed in a positive way to the perception of public service and to reminding folks that we're Michiganders first and foremost before partisans? I want people to be able to say their governor was looking out for them.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870.