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Big Sable Lighthouse. Photo by Rob Alway.
Michigan State University President Kevin M. Guskiewicz and a delegation of faculty and administrators will be visiting Ludington State Park this week as part of the inaugural Spartan Bus Tour. The tour includes more than a dozen places around the state where MSU is partnering with local communities.
“The purpose is twofold,” said Guskiewicz, who led a similar, successful bus tour while chancellor at the University of North Carolina.
“It’s for the faculty and staff to get out there and see those communities and learn from each of the stops. And it’s also to show Michiganders out in those communities that this is a proudly public university that is solving some of the grand challenges of our time right here in the Great Lakes State.”
The inaugural Spartan Bus Tour will make 15 stops in 13 cities and towns from Oct. 21-23, with Guskiewicz and about 50 faculty and administrators on board. As they go from stop to stop, they’ll gain a deeper understanding of Michigan and, in many cases, get an up-close look at how MSU’s groundbreaking research and teaching is changing the state for the better.
For example, the tour will visit Arcadia Bluffs Golf Club in Manistee County, which takes part in the Michigan Turfgrass Environmental Stewardship Program that was developed by MSU’s top-ranked turfgrass management program. Participants also stop at Muskegon High School where educators from MSU’s long-running, No. 1-ranked elementary and secondary education programs are putting their training into action on behalf of Michigan’s children.
At MSU’s Grand Rapids Innovation Park, which attracts new medical companies to the area, including one where health care professionals are deploying the nation’s first total-body PET/CT scanner for better cancer diagnosis and treatment, the tour will hear about how Spartans are taking research from the bench to the bedside through partnerships with clinicians.
For one, a collaboration between MSU and Corewell Health alone has generated more than $24 million of joint research initiatives in the community, addressing challenges such as traumatic brain injuries in children and creating new therapies for coronary artery disease. The partnership has even identified a rare genetic condition, now known as Bachmann-Bupp syndrome, and discovered a successful treatment that earned MSU and Corewell Health colleagues an Inventor of the Year award in 2023.
“It’s only made possible due to this collaboration,” said Paula Schuiteman-Bishop, vice president of research for Corewell Health, which also teams with students in MSU’s College of Human Medicine on research projects.
“We know this partnership is going to lead to the development of new treatments, drugs and use of medical devices that will benefit our patients here in west Michigan. This is what allows us to drive the best quality patient care around.”
Before learning about the work in human health being done by more than 200 MSU research faculty and staff in Grand Rapids, the Spartan Bus Tour will share a glimpse of how the university benefits the health of Michigan crops, too. Guskiewicz and the rest of the group will visit the 137-acre Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center (NMHRC) in Traverse City to see how MSU partners with local fruit growers in the heart of cherry country. They’ll visit the station’s lab, tour the orchards and meet with farmers to hear about the value that MSU research brings to the community on issues ranging from soil health and irrigation to pest management and climate change.
“It’s a two-way street: Growers come to us with Challenge X, Y or Z and I turn to my fruit team around the state and address those issues,” said Nikki Rothwell, MSU Extension specialist and NMHRC coordinator. “It’s really a beautiful public-private partnership. This research center is working closely with the industry here and across the state to come up with solutions.”
To get an even broader sense of Michigan’s diverse economy, the tour will visit a few businesses, including an Amish-owned canning company that earned MSU’s 2024 Value-Added Agricultural Award and the Zeeland headquarters of MillerKnoll, a leading global manufacturer of office furniture.
Along the way, the tour will stop at a few of Michigan’s iconic outdoor recreation landmarks, too, including the 284-foot-high Dune Climb in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and the Lake Michigan beach in Ludington State Park, home to the picturesque Big Sable Point Lighthouse.
While at the beach in Ludington, tour participants will meet with a multidisciplinary team of Spartans led by Ethan Theuerkauf, an assistant professor and coastal geomorphologist who will present research on coastal erosion done in collaboration with lakeshore communities in Michigan and other Great Lakes states.
There also will be time to experience various aspects of Michigan’s rich culture. The tour will visit the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways in Mt. Pleasant to explore the state’s Native American heritage, for example, and the Muskegon Museum of Art, which features one of the finest studio glass collections in the Midwest and is undergoing a $15 million expansion to add several large gallery spaces.
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