As Michigan’s economy slowly recovers from the recession, job opportunities still are available for students now that almost 15 percent of the state workers are slated to retire next year, said Charisse Blanks, internship and career consultant for the state of Michigan.
With the first week of classes almost to a close, many students are finalizing their schedules and buying textbooks for the semester.
Residence Halls Association, or RHA, kicked off the new year Wednesday night with their first general assembly meeting of the new semester. At the meeting, RHA members discussed MSU’s plans to offer free laundry on campus and the opening of The Vista at Shaw. RHA members were pleased about MSU’s announcement to allow free use of laundry machines for on-campus residents beginning in summer 2013. “It’s awesome,” RHA President Kelcey Gapske said.
When the days get shorter and sunlight is at a minimum, college students are especially prone to depression-like symptoms caused by the lack of sunlight, said Dennis Martell, Olin’s health education services coordinator.
As a part of fulfilling MSU’s campus-wide Energy Transition Plan, the MSU Board of Trustees unanimously passed a $7 million plan to retrofit Anthony Hall with sustainability renovations at its last meeting in December 2012.
As of Jan. 7, professors across campus have been given the option of officially switching their classes from ANGEL to MSU’s newest online learning tool, D2L. But the switch, which is optional until 2015, already is being used by many classes.
The government agency responsible for TV and radio censorship recently added a Spartan to its highest ranks.
At Tuesday’s scheduled work session, the East Lansing City Council discussed a proposed ordinance that wouldn’t allow additional hookah lounges to come to East Lansing.
In light of the new year, Fred Poston has returned to a college and field of academia he has grown up with, worked in and has previously ran — the field of agriculture.
In addition to the physical preparations for Army life, the Spartan Battalion is adding academic ones to its list. For the first time this semester, the Army ROTC program put a defense studies minor into place, which is meant to prepare students in a range of studies for a career affiliated with the military.
When music education professor Cynthia Taggart heard university professors have the least stressful jobs of any career; it made her laugh. “If professors do what the university expects of them, then the job is highly stressful,” Taggart said. “(Professors) are trying to balance our own creative scholarship with our commitment to students.”
The Steering Committee, a group of administrators and campus and faculty committee leaders, met Tuesday to discuss procedural and academic happenings at MSU.
Even though East Lansing is more than 700 miles away from Newtown, Conn., the location of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, MSU students and local organizations in East Lansing have been reflecting on the tragedy.
Last semester, people inside and outside the MSU community learned about everything — from cheese to ballroom dancing — through more than 75 Alumni Lifelong Education/Evening College noncredit courses. This semester, program changes have knocked that number down to four, a trend that might continue next fall, a program official said.
Within the hidden woodlands of MSU’s campus lies a virtually untouched resource: fishing. When the snow melts this spring, MSU students and community members finally will be able to let their fishing lines fly and cast away from the banks of the Red Cedar River— something the university had previously banned in a 1960s ordinance.
Six fewer officers are patrolling the streets of East Lansing today compared to a decade ago, a trend which also can be seen across Michigan as budget cuts hit law enforcement. In 2003, there were 64 officers with the East Lansing Police Department, or ELPD, East Lansing police Capt. Jeff Murphy said. Currently there are 58, he said.
With more than 10 sites across five continents, the crew of the new Spartans Will. 360 is setting out to show people across the globe what MSU is doing to make a difference in East Lansing.
Small businesses were saved from most automatic tax increases from the fiscal cliff thanks to a last minute deal from Congress, but some local stores and working students still might face increased taxes. If no deal had been made by the midnight deadline on Jan. 1, 97 percent of small businesses would have been hit with the tax increases. MSU economics professor Charles Ballard said most economists believe that without the deal, the economy would have plummeted further into a recession.
While high school students in the U.S. attended college fairs and opened letters from interested universities, Winnie Huang, now a psychology senior, was listening to presentations about U.S. colleges from across the globe in China when she did her college hunt.
MSU researchers found brief interruptions of even three seconds, such as the time to silence a ringing cellphone, can increase the potential for errors when completing a task. In the study led by Erik Altmann, associate professor of psychology at MSU, 300 people were asked to perform tasks on a computer, according to a university press release.