From the roaring Motor City to the backwoods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, stretching along the west coast’s sandy dunes, all the way to the mighty Mackinac Bridge — MSU has an economic and educational impact that can be found in each of Michigan’s 13 regions.

The MI Spartan Impact interactive website, a report conceptualized by MSU’s Office of the Vice President for Governmental Affairs, shows how MSU’s alumni, students, research and extension projects are vast and diverse.

According to the report, with about 36,000 enrolled Michigan students, more than 225,000 alumni living in the state and a total economic impact of more than $4 billion, Vice President for Governmental Affairs Mark Burnham said the impact MSU has on the state is more extensive than many other Michigan colleges.

“A lot of that stems from our land-grant mission and land-grant roots — including agriculture, but not only agriculture,” he said. “We’ve learned the lessons of how to work with local communities through our agriculture roots, but we actually (continue) that effort across many, many different types of (disciplines.)”

He said MSU’s outreach also encompasses the medical, environmental, fine arts and business realms.
The recently published report, which took about a year to compile, sheds light on many areas potentially unknown to many MSU community members, Burnham said.

He said the report reveals just the “tip of the iceberg” of everything MSU is involved in, and he hopes to see its list of projects expand.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around everything at once,” he said. “It helps people understand at least in some way how (far) MSU is reaching in the state, not only East Lansing.”