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MSU expands work, educational services in Detroit

December 5, 2016

Since 2009, MSU has been working with the community of Detroit to expand MSU’s educational services.

On Woodward Avenue in Detroit, MSU has a satellite center for learning centered around the needs of the city of Detroit.

“The Detroit Center is meant as a footprint for the university to provide ongoing and long-term engagement with the Detroit community and in addition to that we’re supported by a number of the colleges and units of the university,” director of the MSU Detroit Center Jena Baker-Calloway said.  

Additionally, the education at the Detroit Center is centered around the Community Music School-Detroit and the College of Education Urban Educators Cohort Program.

“The College of Music has been offering regular classes to the Detroit community, and that’s youth as well as adults, for a number of years, actually since the opening of the building in 2009,” Baker-Calloway said. “They have also added music therapy as some of the services they provide, so they have in house music therapists that actually do outreach.”

MSU Detroit’s College of Education Urban Educators Cohort Program is focused on educating students in what it’s like to work in an urban environment and how to teach “Urban Education.”

“The College of Education actually has urban teachers that come in," Baker-Calloway said. "They’re completing a fifth year in their educational program. They take classes a couple of days a week and the rest of the time they’re deployed into metropolitan school districts.”

Beyond this work, there are outreach programs that work with the community of Detroit.

The MSU Partnerships Office worked with Impact Detroit on a project in which they worked on “hands-on projects on how to improve the community,” government and public policy educator for MSU Extension Crystal Wilson said.

An example of this is a project she worked on that allowed kids to work in a park in the city of Detroit to plant flower beds, Wilson said.

More recently, MSU has announced that it plans on bringing the Eli Broad College of Business executive MBA program to Detroit.

Cheri DeClercq, the assistant dean for MBA programs in the Broad College of Business, described the program as “a MBA program designed for people that are currently working professionals, who are looking to enhance their careers.”

This program is unique to the Detroit area, DeClercq said.

“There are other schools that offer similar structured programs, but not in the Detroit market," DeClercq said. "We felt strongly that there’s so many exciting things happening in Detroit and that we need to be a part of it."

Additionally, DeClercq said while the executive MBA program is not partnered with the MSU Detroit Center that is already present in the city, they will be working with them.

DeClercq said people who are interested in the program should visit the executive MBA website for more information.

For those who are looking to apply to the Executive MBA program, DeClercq said, “You apply through Michigan State, but the executive MBA has its own application that is accessible through our website. Now students will go into the executive MBA and will be able to choose from one of those three locations.” 

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