We have had tremendous success over the last couple of months in our fundraising efforts to support student success at MSU. Our Student Success Development team works with Undergrad Ed, Student Affairs, and Health and Wellness to fundraise for a huge number of efforts. They have the largest fundraising goal of any academic unit in the current campaign, and they are on track to meet those goals.
Throughout December and January, the Student Success Development team has collaborated with our units to secure funding to continue the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) in MSU’s Farmworker Student Services. They have secured two large grants from the Gilbert Family Foundation to support both Detroit M.A.D.E. Scholars Program and the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities. They have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the direct-to-student needs that are addressed by MSU’s Retention Team, and they have raised more than a million dollars for scholarships and cohort programs.
Central to these successes has been our increasingly effective ability to tell our story. Earlier this month, Dr. Renata Opoczynski, assistant provost for Undergraduate Student Success, and I had the opportunity to join members of the Student Success Development Team for an event in Dallas, Texas. The Dallas-Ft. Worth Spartans alumni group coordinates the activities of nearly 5,000 Spartan alumni in the area. The event provided us the opportunity to share with them the “Far Better World” that MSU now offers to undergraduates because of our intense focus on supporting every student to learn, thrive, and graduate. Their excitement about our vision and their enthusiasm for the work was obvious, and it was a privilege to be able to tell them about the many great things happening at MSU.
A week later, I joined about half a dozen MSU colleagues in Washington, D.C. for the annual meeting of Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU). Dozens of institutions like MSU – research universities that have large numbers of undergraduate students – meet each year to share their work and collaborate to improve their institutions. MSU was featured at a presentation on experiential learning and our efforts to support students to explore their major and career options. I am always impressed by how far MSU has come over the last decade and how far ahead we are in transforming MSU into a student success leader.
Thank you all for your work leading this transformation and telling this story. I also know that many of you have contributed to these fundraising efforts, which I think says a great deal about both your commitment to our students’ success and your trust that your resources are being used well.