The office of state Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr., D-East Lansing, has a panoramic photo of Breslin Center and a front page of the men’s basketball NCAA Championship in 2000 — the year Hertel graduated from MSU.

Hertel, a James Madison College alumnus, now has a big responsibility as he represents the MSU community in the state Senate.

The senator is a member of the Senate’s Higher Education subcommittee for appropriations, the panel that helps determine the funding MSU receives from the state.

One of his priorities, he said, is to work for an affordable higher education and minimize student debt.

“The (student) debt affects our entire economy,” Hertel said. “We are not growing like we should.”

Hertel said having students with such debt is creating an exodus from the state.

“Michigan is losing graduates at an alarming rate,” Hertel said.

According to an article published in Forbes Magazine, Michigan has the third largest exodus of people in the nation, just behind Illinois and New York.

Hertel also recognized he would face difficulties as a member of the minority party in the Senate’s Higher Education subcommittee.

“We are committed to fight for higher education,” Hertel said. “We need to fund our universities better.”

However, funding for higher education this year might be in jeopardy with $532 million less revenue estimated for the 2016 fiscal budget, because of $224 million worth of tax credits cashed by an unidentified business in December.

Hertel also said he would work to achieve equality for women in the workplace and to eradicate discrimination in the state.

“Michigan is still a place where women make 72 cents (for every dollar that) a man does for the same job, and that’s not right,” Hertel said. “I look at these issues not as women’s issues but as family issues.”

The expanded version of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act will be reintroduced in this session, Hertel said.

The act failed to pass in the last lame duck session.

“It will be reintroduced,” Hertel said. “I know that because I’ve had discussions.”

Hertel comes from a political family. His father, Curtis Hertel Sr., was a state representative.

One of his uncles, Dennis Hertel, served in Congress while another uncle, John Hertel, served as a state senator.

Hertel said he was inspired by the way his relatives served the state.

“People have a lot of mistrust in the government,” Hertel said. “I truly believe Michigan can change.”