A growing MSU department could have a new home above the 50 yard line if the MSU Board of Trustees approves an $810,000 budget to build an office in Spartan Stadium.
The stadium also will play host to the Boys & Girls Club of Lansing's fundraising Super Bowl Party during the big game on Feb. 5.
The funding proposal to expand Career Services and Placement is one of many spending measures that will be put before the board at its Friday meeting and would furnish students with a new place to impress prospective employers.
The move is part of an existing plan to expand the department's space on campus. Other career services offices are located in the Lear Corp. Career Services Center in the Eli Broad College of Business and the Student Services Building. The plan calls for the new office to concentrate on students in communication, science and technology fields.
"The center at Student Services is dated," said Theda Rudd, associate director of the department. "The new office will be more modernized to reflect our seriousness about career placement."
When the plan was first envisioned, the stadium was not yet under construction, but its completion offered a possible home for the office.
University Engineer Bob Nestle said the second and third floors of the addition to Spartan Stadium had always been planned as offices, but officials did not know during construction which departments would occupy the space.
For this reason, about 6,100 square feet were left empty. Nestle estimated it would take months to complete the proposed career services office.
"It's enclosed but completely unfinished," said Nestle, adding that the work should be done by mid-2006 if the project is approved. "From the inside, you can see the exposed studs on the back side of the perimeter walls. It's a bare concrete slab."
The offices that were planned from the start are close to completion.
If approved, the department would share space with the MSU Alumni Association and University Development — something Rudd said is a good fit.
"It's a total relationship with campus," Rudd said. "We work together currently to form a lifetime connection between students and alumni who might wish to hire them.
Meanwhile, above the department's possible new digs, the fourth-floor club level will be transformed into a football festival when it hosts the Boys & Girls Club of Lansing's Super Bowl Party on Feb. 5.
Sandra Kowalk, the club's director of development, said the annual event is one of three major fundraisers the club holds to fund programs at their facility in south Lansing.
"This is the coolest thing we've done," Kowalk said.
The event will include hors d'oeuvres and flat-screen, high-definition televisions to show the game.
The event also will include a cash bar, Kowalk said, even though the university does not have a permanent liquor license for the venue.
Alcohol had been served in the building during home football games on a temporary license, which is still under review, according to university officials.
Rick Atkinson, MSU's assistant athletics director, said the space has long been envisioned as a rental location to raise extra money for the university.
"We've been very busy," he said, adding that the location has already hosted events for University Development and end-of-season banquets for athletic teams.
The 18,500-square-foot space can be rented for $4,000 to $5,000, he said, although the price varies by the number of people, the hours they're there and the amount of cleanup afterwards.
Kowalk said the cost to rent the space for the party was covered by a donation from Spartan Motors Inc. and said the club picked the location to do something special to commemorate the Super Bowl's location in Detroit.
