MSU Today with Russ White

Kirk Heinze broadcasts from the always festive and informative occasion of the Michigan Recycling Coalition's 37th Annual Recycling Conference. The theme this year is Looking Back To Move Forward. Kirk opens the broadcast with Kerrin O'Brien. She is the executive director of The Michigan Recycling Coalition. 

Each year honeybee colonies in the United States decline an additional 30 percent, according to research published by the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership and Apiary Inspectors of America. But did you know honeybees and other pollinators produce more than 30 percent of the world's food supply? Last year, Ford launched a global beekeeping program with honeybee hives at its Dearborn World Headquarters. And now Ford has partnered with Michigan State University to help the university with its Heroes to Hives Program. 

Set dial for potentially long legislative summer, IPPSR podcasters predict

Michigan must harness new technologies to do battle with drug traffickers and the opioid crisis, a Michigan State University criminal justice researcher says in a new report sponsored by the university’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.

Michigan State University has published a first of its kind study, published in the journal Beverages, that shows the respectable economic impact of burgeoning beer and craft beer's entire value chain on the state of Michigan.

Trey Malone, MSU agricultural economist, is the study's lead author. 

It’s called by many names—engagement, extension, outreach—and it’s at the very core of MSU’s Land Grant mission.  It is when university educators and researchers work directly with citizens to advance knowledge and transform lives.

Such was a paradigm case when two, very talented Troy High School students connected with Dr. Grant Gunn, assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences.

The Michigan State University College of Music welcomed alumnus Joe Zenas as the keynote speaker at its 2019 spring commencement exercises. Zenas is the chief executive officer of Thinkwell, a design and production agency headquartered in Los Angeles with offices and studios in Beijing, Abu Dhabi, Montréal, and Riyadh. 

“We were pretty excited last month, during Earth Month actually, when our company was named the Energy Star partner of the year, one of many across the country,” says Consumers Energy spokesperson Brian Wheeler. “We work every day to help our customers use a little bit less energy than they need to and cut down on energy waste. 

Thank you, President Udpa. It's an honor to be back today amongst Spartans. Congratulations to the graduating class of 2019. Today, most of you are accomplishing something I wasn't able to do. You're graduating in only four years. Despite going to summer school every year I was here, it somehow took me four and a half years to graduate. I guess you could say football gave me a hangover. In light of it taking me four and a half years to graduate, I thought I'd quickly share four and a half specific truths that I learned while I was here as a student, truths that in the seven years since my graduation, I've discovered to be exactly that, true.

All right. Well, thank you so much. I am incredibly honored to be with all of you today, and I want to start by thanking President Udpa, Provost Youatt, distinguished deans, faculty, staff, friends, family. Most importantly, the class of 2019. My years at Michigan State were some of the best of my life, so much freedom, and not so much responsibility. I loved living on campus at Wonders Hall. I made friends here at MSU that still keep me grounded today. I continue to debate which is superior, Crunchies nugs or tots. Regardless, they have the finest ranch in the world. 

“We are the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. We refer to it as EGLE,” the department’s director Liesl Clark tells Kirk Heinze.  “The connection between our beautiful Great Lakes, our environment, and our energy component is foundational to what we do. It's part of all that happens in the department and is connected to our core mission of protecting public health and the environment. We know that a name change is really just a name change, and the work goes on. We're excited to do it. I'm proud of the folks that I'm working with.”

“I never expected to be a teacher. I really never did,” says retiring MSU hall of fame broadcast educator Gary Reid. Forty-four years later, he has impacted hundreds of broadcast and communications-related careers.

Reid tells how his predecessor, the father of the classic rock radio format Fred Jacobs, “put his job on the line for me,” and he describes the tremendous change in students he’s observed over the years.

It’s a startling statistic: At least 20 veterans take their own lives every day.

There’s a suicide epidemic among veterans, and mental health professionals aren’t equipped to handle it, argue Michigan State University social workers and veterans.

But a new MSU program could change that. 

“I like to split things that we are doing into two buckets,” says Acting Michigan State University President Satish Udpa. “In the first bucket, we are looking at things that we can do to heal the campus. We want to right the ship and we want to make sure that the amount of negativity that we saw on this campus comes down. So, things like apologizing to the survivors, that was one of the first things we did. 

Laura Dillon is a professor of computer science and engineering at Michigan State University. Forbes recently wrote about the important work she is doing with the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Their research into the public and academic forces preventing women from participating more fully in technology based careers has been critical to both economically empowering women and filling open tech jobs.

“AgBioResearch is the overarching organization within Michigan State University that has responsibility for most of the food, agriculture, and natural resources research within the university,” Doug Buhler, assistant vice president of research and innovation at Michigan State University and director of MSU AgBioResearch, tells Kirk Heinze in a wide ranging conversation focusing on some of the rigorous, timely, and impactful research underway at MSU.