“It's an exciting time of the year,” says President Stanley. “These commencement days are my favorite days. It's just such a joyous occasion as these students reach the finish line and celebrate with their families and friends. I never tire of it. It's always exciting.”

As an eventful 2021 draws to a close, Stanley reflects with pride on student success initiatives and three strategic plans published this year.

“Student success is one of the pillars of our strategic plan. And for the seventh year in a row, we raised our graduation rates and that's difficult to do. My hat's off to the people who work on student success and to the students and their resilience. Even in these tough times, we're seeing a continuation of this wonderful trend. And to get the graduation rate up to over 82 percent is a huge change from years ago. It speaks to the idea that what we want to do is have every student who comes to Michigan State University leave with a Michigan State University degree. And how you make that possible and the work it takes to do that is significant, but that's our goal and we're putting it on us, not on students, but on us. If we accept you to Michigan State University, we feel it's our role to help you graduate and see you through that degree.

“Commencement represents the culmination of that. I'm also just really proud that we had as close to a normal semester as we could. It's been a challenging semester. There have been a couple of incidents that everyone knows about that have been tragic and troubling. Yet, at the same time, we brought 16,000 students back to living on campus. We conducted our classes in person as we said we would do with, of course, a mix of hybrid and online. And to successfully accomplish that, again, speaks to me to the resiliency of students and the innovation and skill of our faculty and staff to make it all work.

“And three new strategic plans address relationship violence and sexual misconduct, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and a university strategic vision that will guide us as we build excellence and impact in key areas in the years ahead. Each plan focuses on creating an environment where students, faculty, and staff can do their best work and achieve their greatest potential as MSU serves its mission here and around the world. To push them through during this time of the pandemic and have them come out as such forward thinking documents that incorporate what we've known before, what we learned during the pandemic, and what our approach to the future will be is rewarding.”

Stanley says he’s proud of MSU’s 19th Marshall Scholar Andrew McDonald, who exemplifies the brightest and best at MSU.

“Michigan State University attracts extraordinary students. I look at our Honors College and the credentials that those students have. And then, when they come to MSU, they have all these opportunities to really expand their portfolios and to really do more and accomplish more. Not only do they come here bright, but they have a chance to really spread their wings and fly here. That makes them competitive for these kinds of awards.”

The opening of renovated teaching and learning spaces in Wonders Hall last week with computer and other laboratories for College of Engineering students capped a year of exciting facility openings that will support student learning and success for many years. Student success hinges in part on having the right facilities for students to do their best work.

“Couldn't have said it better. We're developing state-of-the-art facilities for our students, faculty, and staff. And that's incredibly important. It's a competitive environment out there. Students have choices and their families have choices about where they want to attend college. And when you have an outstanding faculty to teach and you couple that with facilities that are inspirational, it makes a difference.

“The Billman Pavilion, The Eli Broad College of Business Minskoff Pavilion, the Wonders Hall renovation and our amazing STEM Teaching and Learning Facility are places where education is going to take place in new and exciting ways where students are going to learn and have opportunities for hands on experiences. I met a number of first year engineering students, a very diverse group by the way, and their excitement about being in that space and what it meant to them was contagious.”

MSU ranked number 21 on the Princeton Review’s 2022 list of top green colleges in the United States. MSU is green in more ways than one.

“You're absolutely right, and I’m so proud of that. It's a point of pride not just for us, but for our students. I think they take great pride in this. This is something they care about. They're a generation that takes these issues very seriously. They want to be impactful, and they want to be associated with an institution that cares and makes a difference. To be in the top 25 Princeton ranking is great. To be one of the top ranked Big Ten schools in this list is very important for us as well. And we're going to continue. The strategic plan contains a section on stewardship and sustainability. We’ve made a commitment to continue to do this and to work to becoming carbon neutral. There are challenges ahead to do that, but we have the ingenuity and Spartans Will to excel in this area.”

MSU's academic quality is underpinned by the excellence of our faculty members, 11 of whom earned recognition for their influential scholarship among their peers. These distinguished faculty members are ranked among the world's most cited researchers over the past decade. It's hard to have student success without our world class faculty, right?

“The two go hand in hand. Great students help attract great faculty because they have graduate and undergraduate students who help work in their labs and help demonstrate the creativity and enthusiasm that's so important. And, of course, students come because of outstanding faculty for their ability to teach and to do innovative research with the global impact.

“I'm very proud of those faculty. That is a wide world out there in terms of who you're competing against. So, to have 11 faculty who are in the top rankings in the world I think is spectacular. We'll continue to try to recruit exceptional faculty and create an environment at MSU where all faculty have the chance to be nurtured to reach those kinds of goals.”

Campus safety is another commitment to our university community. And Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police Marlon Lynch recently announced two new initiatives supporting that priority: The Police and Public Safety Advisory Committee and the SafeMSU app.

“My thanks go out to Chief Lynch in his role as vice president for public safety and chief of po...