It was Groundhog Day in the United States and Canada. It was Crepe Day in France. It was Candlemas worldwide, from Brazil to Liechtenstein.
Black History Month began Wednesday, and Latanya Simpson, president of MSU's Black Student Alliance, said there are a number of events planned in honor of the month. A film series will begin tonight with the showing of "Sankofa" at 7 p.m.
For the past nine years, Robert Kolt has hosted a Super Bowl party in his Haslett home. But it's only when the advertisements appear that the TV volume increases and conversations go quiet, with eyes intently focused on the screen. Kolt, an MSU instructor, and about 15 other faculty members in the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing gather not to watch the game — but to grade the Super Bowl advertisements, which usually earns them national recognition in the media. "I think we were the first ones to do it, and we continue to do it," Kolt said. "The professors at Michigan State are pretty good, tough critics." But during this Sunday's game, MSU's professors won't be the only ones judging. Now advertising professionals, university professors and students worldwide can rate the advertisements themselves through an interactive Web site called MSU Ad Pulse. Richard Cole, executive vice president and chief administrative officer with the Detroit Medical Center, came up with the idea for the Web site as a way to extend the rating of the advertisements to a broader base of people. "It's just like anything — you don't know exactly what the outcome will be, but many more ideas will keep flowing," he said. Cole takes office at MSU on March 1 as the new chairman for the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing. The site — a project between MSU and Collaboration LLC, a marketing firm based in Pleasant Ridge, Mich.
Chicano History Month began Wednesday and will be recognized throughout February with a number of events, members of Movimiento Estudiantil Xicano de Aztlan said. There will be a Chicano unity dinner at 7 p.m.
Ice cream, chocolate and Spartan spirit sound more like football game fun than an engineering project. But biosystems engineering seniors Matthew Kloes, Kim Lewis, Marc Sawyers and Shelley Vecchio have found a way to incorporate flavor and fun into their senior design project, while still focusing on developing skills necessary for future careers. The four students are working to produce chocolate-covered ice cream bars formed into a Spartan block "S" shape. "It's a pretty interesting project," Kloes said.
More than half the students who graduate from four-year universities lack the skills to be considered proficient in literacy, according to a recent study from a national institute. The survey, released last month by the American Institutes for Research — a Washington, D.C.-based social science research organization — tested the literacy of 1,827 students graduating from 80 randomly selected two- and four-year universities. It covered three core areas — prose literacy, document literacy and quantitative literacy — and found that many students could not do basic tasks such as figuring out the cost-per-ounce of various food products in supermarkets. "I would never have expected that because I'm getting a good education here," said MSU psychology sophomore Julia Degreg.
By Caitlyn Kienitz For The State News The MSU Land Policy Program and MSU Extension have a new partner on campus. The Planning & Zoning Center, a Lansing-based land-use consulting firm, is moving to MSU.
Three students from separate universities each were announced winners of $10,000 fellowships Tuesday at Kellogg Center. The students were honored with the TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Research Fellowship, which was established through a $500,000 endowment by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund, or TIAA-CREF, an insurance and retirement savings provider for workers in the academic, medical, cultural and research fields. Hamilton, who died in 2003, was an MSU professor of social science and a pioneer in the field of African Diaspora, a study of the displacement and migration of African people across the globe. Hamilton's son, Bramlett Hamilton, was charged with her murder, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Name: Professor Stephen Zepf Department: Physics and Astronomy Type of research: How galaxies are formed Date of research: Zepf has been studying the origin of galaxies for about 20 years, but his current projects using the Southern Astrophysical Research, or SOAR, Telescope began about a year ago. Basics of the project: "We look at star clusters and galaxies to learn about how the whole galaxy formed," Zepf said. Zepf looks at the different wavelengths of the light emitted from star clusters. In this way, he can determine how old the clusters are and what elements are included in their compositions, which helps him determine the galaxy's age. Using Internet connections and computer programming, Zepf is able to study images of the galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SOAR Telescope. The SOAR Telescope — located at an altitude of 9,000 feet on a mountain in Chile — is an MSU project in conjunction with The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and Brazil. Two postdoctoral fellows, one graduate student and one undergraduate student assist Zepf in his research. Social impact of research: "It answers the basic questions of the universe on a big scale," Zepf said. Grants and funding: The National Science Foundation and NASA fund the project, which costs several thousand dollars per year.
Kevin Corrigan looked up and smiled after an hour of the Hospitality Association's Vegas Night Texas Hold'em tournament on Saturday night.
The first winners of a $10,000 research fellowship will be announced at noon today in the Kellogg Center's Big Ten room. The TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Research Fellowship was established through an endowment by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund, or TIAA-CREF, an insurance and retirement savings provider for workers in the academic, medical, cultural and research fields. An expert in the field of African diaspora, Hamilton was a distinguished MSU professor of social science and a TIAA-CREF board member who died in 2003.
Student government officials are taking initial steps toward creating a survey to determine student demand for additional student recreational space on campus. ASMSU, MSU's undergraduate student government, allocated $7,000 earlier this month to fund a survey of student opinions on the project, which calls for the construction of a combined IM facility and student events center.
Chris Osborne jumped at the chance to enroll in MSU's new seven-week online course in forensic entomology when she first heard about it. "It is one of the bigger and more important pieces of the pie in forensic science," said Osborne, a lifelong education student who has studied forensic science for 11 years. The three-credit online course, which is new this semester, is titled "Forensic Entomology: The Role of Insects in Crime Scene Investigations." The course focuses on a specific branch of forensic entomology known as medico-legal entomology, in which insect growth can help estimate the time of a person's death, said Richard Merritt, chairperson for the Department of Entomology and teacher of the online course. Although Merritt has a similar course on campus in the fall semester, he said he created the online class so that a wider range of people could have access to the information. Forensic entomology is the study of how insects are used in the legal system. "It's become a lot more important in crime scene investigation in the last 10 to 15 years," Merritt said. "People are very interested in insects, and how they can be used in this way is fascinating." After a person dies, insects will colonize the body within minutes to hours after death.
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon will speak at a reception in her honor at 5 p.m. today at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.
Abraham Pasternak, of Southfield, lost his father, mother and brother upon their arrival at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. West Bloomfield resident George Vine was taken to a concentration camp at 13 years old. Edith Berman, a Troy resident, would be dead today if the gas chamber she was taken into did not malfunction. In honor of the first International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, the three Holocaust survivors lit candles Friday at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. The United Nations General Assembly marked Jan.
A free public seminar, "American Policy Toward Saudi Arabia and Iran after the Invasion of Iraq," will be held at 4:30 p.m.
Students might be one step closer to receiving purified water in residence halls. A Culligan water machine will be located in the North Case Hall laundry room, tentatively beginning Feb.
A free, permission-based, campuswide text-messaging service could be available to students with cell phones if student government officials decide to pursue it.
An official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will speak at the Michigan Veterinary Conference today. Nina Marano will address the topic of "Avian Influenza: Why It Matters to Animals and Humans" at 3:30 p.m.
The university has started investigating an animal biotechnology professor's involvement with falsified research, MSU officials said. Jose Cibelli reviewed a manuscript in 2003 for a research paper led by Woo-Suk Hwang, a former professor at Seoul National University in South Korea. Hwang claimed he had cloned human stem cells, and his paper was published in the journal Science in 2004.