When mechanical engineering sophomore Yizheng Wang came to study at MSU from China, he knew he wouldn’t be able to bring everything he needed.
Assistant professor Lisa Cook began her first day of work Monday — at the White House. Cook was selected as a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors.
In 1992, Betty MacDowell was fresh off of a doctoral degree from MSU when the idea struck. She had heard about an effort on the East Coast to archive local stained glass windows, and after completing a dissertation about female stained glass artists in Michigan, she decided to start a similar project on her own.
As the university moves forward with a master plan for campus living accommodations, a newly revamped and renovated Emmons Hall will open up to students for the first time later this month.
For the past few months, Tom March has helped collect usable school supplies left behind in desks and file cabinets from MSU’s campus.
A group of MSU professors has partnered with East Lansing-based marketing company Netvantage to begin Every Child is Yours, a program to increase awareness for volunteer opportunities in Greater Lansing. Every Child Is Yours is targeted toward presenting volunteer opportunities to the millennial generation, or those between the ages of 18-30.
An MSU professor plans to study new and improved ways of online fundraising, research that could have implications for the university’s donation and fundraising efforts. Rick Wash, an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, will use a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, or NSF, to explore crowd funding sites — applications that provide researchers or project sponsors with an outlet to receive donations geared specifically to their project. “I look at these sites as an electronic system that matches two sides,” Wash said. Examples of popular crowd funding sites range from dating sites to job-searching outlets, but Wash said the tactic also can be applied to various forms of university and college fundraising. Using computer simulations of different funding websites, Wash plans to develop the best possible approach to crowd funding, a tactic that he eventually hopes to apply to an MSU-themed donation site. On the site, students or people associated with the university could post various projects or ideas, and interested donors could contribute funding. The method even could extend to research projects being conducted at the university. “This is actually giving power to the donor,” said the university’s director of annual giving Kathleen Deneau, when discussing the potential for crowd funding at MSU.
Even as health care costs at institutions across the country climb, university officials said this week that employee benefits have remained stable this year at MSU.
During the past year, a nonstop series of natural disasters, political uprisings and economic devastation occurred throughout the world.
Caryl Sortwell didn’t have any first-hand experience with Parkinson’s disease when she began her research, but the relationships she’s made since then have kept her motivated to work toward a cure. Sortwell, an MSU professor in translational science and molecular medicine, is working with the school’s College of Human Medicine, Van Andel Research Institute and the Translational Genomics Research Institute to see if the drug Fasudil could not only deal with the symptoms of Parkinson’s, but treat the progression of the disease as well. The team’s work is being sponsored in-part by a $400,000 grant from the Michael J.
The MSU College of Engineering is moving forward with its plans to launch a new environmental engineering major this fall. Students who previously only had the opportunity to take a concentration in the field now will have the chance to earn an undergraduate degree, with very little deviation from the previous specialization’s benchmarks. “The class requirements for the concentration as opposed to the degree are really pretty similar,” said Richard Lyles, a professor and the associate chairman for undergraduate studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The university had offered graduate programs in environmental engineering for more than four decades, but new demand from employers for environmental engineers pushed them to move the undergraduate degree program forward. Increased student interest also necessitated the creation of the program. “As the demand for graduates increases, there are employers interested in hiring these people,” said Tom Voice, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who spearheaded the undergraduate degree program’s creation.
Monday, Muslims around the world exchanged the phrase “Ramadan mubarak,” meaning “blessed Ramadan” in Arabic. The new moon was sighted, which signals the start of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar.
More students are entering MSU’s full-time Masters of Business Administration, or MBA, program with less work experience than in years prior, a trend that could change expectations of employers as younger graduates enter the job market.
At 7 p.m. Friday, about 100 yellow-clad performers marched onto the stage at the MSU Community Music School auditorium and launched into a rendition of “Be Our Guest,” from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”
Professor of teacher education Charles Anderson brought together more than 50 educators, researchers and policymakers last week for the Learning Progressions Footprint Conference in Washington, D.C.
The normally quiet first floor corridor of Bessey Hall turned into a bustling exhibition Thursday, as more than 200 people packed the building for MSU’s first annual Summer University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum. More than 125 student research projects and poster boards lined the narrow hallway during the event’s two-hour walk-through session, many drawing large crowds.
When considering applicants for the Victory Congressional Internship program — a new leadership program that gives lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender college students a chance at a Washington, D.C., internship — Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute, or GLLI, Program Director Samir Luther said he and his fellow reviewers did not limit their acceptance only to students with aspirations of working in public office. They looked for students with an appetite for leadership, he said, and MSU social relations and policy senior Mitchell Rivard demonstrated that hunger. “It’s rare to find young people who already have so much experience while they’re still in college,” Luther said.
Two MSU students spent their summer exploring Michigan’s lower peninsula hoping to develop a better understanding of natural disasters.
Offices and departments at MSU are working to become more environmentally friendly, as the university ramps up its sustainability efforts and looks to fall in line with other schools across the nation. MSU is one of about 284 U.S.
Aspiring thespians have the opportunity to show off their talents to the Greater Lansing community this week during MSU Community Music School’s, or CMS, Music Theatre Camp.