The annual Eric ‘RicStar’ Winter Music Therapy Summer Camp is a three-day long program that features several age groups, from young children to adults. It began Thursday at the MSU Community Music School. The program caters to special needs children and adults, but it is not a requirement to be part of the camp.
The Verdehr Trio performed Wednesday evening for a crowd of professors, students and members of the community. After becoming the first violinist ever to receive a doctorate from Juilliard School in New York, Walter Verdehr pursued a career with the MSU College of Music in 1968 and has been with the university ever since. A few years later, in 1972, Verdehr and his wife, Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, created The Verdehr Trio. Adding a third musician who was changed periodically, then trio traveled all over the world to Europe, Asia and Australia and have performed in every state in the United States. 38 years later, the trio perform annually in Great Cobb Hall at Wharton Center for the MSU and the greater Lansing community.
Students looking for more variety in food soon will have an additional option this fall with Brody Square in Brody Hall, which is MSU’s next restaurant-inspired experience, similar to The Gallery in Snyder and Phillips halls. MSU’s newest residential cafeteria will feature nine different venues, including a high-tech demonstration kitchen for students to watch and participate in from 7 a.m. to midnight each day.
After months of lobbying, a new hot dog restaurant is likely to be serving beer in the near future in downtown East Lansing. After an hour and a half long discussion about the hot dog restaurant, East Lansing City Council passed a special use permit for a liquor license Tuesday for What’s Up Dawg?, 301 M.A.C. Ave. The council went through a series of conditions and amendments the restaurant must follow with the approval.
Incoming freshmen living in MSU’s east neighborhood of Akers, Hubbard and Holmes Halls will have expanded means of communication with each other and their mentors with a new, online network provided by the university. The service, called SpartanConnect, is an online social network space that officials hope complements face-to-face conversation while in a living, learning environment, said Jacob McCarthy, a spokesman for MSU Residential and Hospitality Services.
White Memorial Park featured a dedication Wednesday night at its newly made pavilion. The improvements and new constructions to the park include constructing a pavilion at its entrance, revamping the fencing at the softball field, paving of the area’s parking lots, a new interpretive nature trail that features handicap accessibility and a viewing platform that presents the park’s pond.
An MSU professor is leading a research study to combat childhood obesity, furthering the advancement of treatment for children struggling to maintain healthy lifestyles. Joe Eisenmann, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development, has been analyzing how genetics and environmental factors affect childhood obesity at the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital Healthy Weight Center, 100 Michigan St., in Grand Rapids, which opened in April.
MSU faculty members will receive $2 million from a National Institutes of Health grant in July to research why part of the immune systems of older mice are more susceptible to the flu, which could have implications for the elderly, one of the highest-risk groups for contracting the influenza virus. Elizabeth Gardner, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition, is co-leading the study with Sungjin Kim, an assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics.
A correlation between the growth of a nation’s economy and the performance of microfinance institutions, or MFIs, has been found in a study lead by an MSU researcher. MFIs are banks that offer small loans to small businesses usually with no collateral required. Christian Ahlin, an associate professor of economics at MSU, said the process begins with microcredit, which is extending small loans used to start and upgrade small business. Microfinance expands on microcredit and acts much more similarly to a bank, he said.
Several city managers from cities with Big Ten universities will meet Thursday and Friday in East Lansing. City managers from Ann Arbor, Evanston, Ill., Champagne, Ill., Iowa City, Ia. and State College, Penn., will join East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton in discussing common threads in city governments of Big Ten universities.
MSU’s Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden is hosting the Fairy and Elves Tea Party 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Thursday. Participants are asked to wear their fanciest fairy and elf attire for tea in the garden.
To celebrate Adopt-A-Shelter-Cat Month, the Capital Area Humane Society will be holding a Cat Adoption Event 12-7 p.m. on June 18. The event will be held at the Capital Area Humane Society, 7095 W. Grand River Ave., in Lansing.
The Korean Culture Camp of Eastern Michigan will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday next week at St. Thomas Aquinas School, 915 Alton St. The camp has been operating for 21 years with the goal of providing a first-hand Korean experience to adopted Korean children.
The MSU Departments of Crop and Soil Sciences and Horticulture will host a tour of the latest techniques for dealing with and eliminating persistent weeds from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday at the MSU Plant Pathology Field Lab. The day will include a breakfast of coffee and doughnuts as well as lunch and a tour of non-genetically modified soybean weed control at the MSU Plant Pathology Field Lab.
To celebrate Father’s Day, Ingham County dads will receive free admission to Potter Park Zoo on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The day will include a Keeper Talk about the role of dads in the wild and at the zoo, taking place at 2 p.m. Fathers will also have a chance to win a penguin feeding. The Magellanic penguin exhibit includes a new father of three penguin chicks born last month.
MSU Extension is working with Macomb and St. Clair counties to create a position for an MSU Extension educator to promote agricultural products in those areas. The Michigan Extension program is part of MSU, and works with federal, state and county governments to apply MSU research with other areas of Michigan. The program, along with the two counties, want to create the MSU Extension educator position to focus on economic development of agribusiness.
After 15 years of waiting, the amorphophallus titanum, or corpse flower, finally bloomed in the Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden last Friday, and filled the room with a smell so disgusting it caused headaches. The corpse flower is known as the largest flower in the world, but is actually the largest inflorescence, which is a cluster of flowers. Found only on the edges of Sumatran rainforests, the corpse flower can grow to more than six feet tall and three or four feet in diameter.
Mark Stephens, an education program coordinator in MSU’s Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resources Studies, led a two-day Fishing for the Future of the Great Lakes workshop May 15-16 at Gardner Middle School, 333 Dahlia Dr., in Lansing. Stephens, who coordinates the Project Friends Involved in Sportfishing Heritage, or Project FISH, program, said the workshop equips people to teach kids about fishing and aquatic resource stewardship.
An idea for a late-night concession stand that might turn into a full blown hot dog restaurant — with beer — will be voted on by East Lansing City Council at its meeting Tuesday night. The proposed business, What Up Dawg?, would occupy a building on M.A.C. Avenue near the St. John Student Center, 327 M.A.C. Ave., one of the prospective owners Seth Tompkins said. After the lease was signed, Tompkins began pursuing the only aspect that potentially will delay the project — a liquor license.
Sharing her past memories of obstacles growing up as an immigrant in America and her ideas for immigration policies and reform, MSU alumna Iris Gomez, Immigrants’ Protection Project of the Mass. Law Reform Institute director and author of the novel “Try to Remember,” spoke with the East Lansing community Monday evening at the Edgewood United Church. Hosted by the church, the event addressed an overview of policy reforms and unique perspectives of these reforms from local citizens and immigrants, said Barbara Thibeault, who works in the MSU School of Social Work and organized of the event.