Today’s weather forecast is predicting cloudy with showers and areas of patchy fog with a high of 37 degrees and a low of 32 degrees. For the rest of the weekend, it looks like it will be higher 30s with overcast skies.

Students present their work at seventh annual Diversity Research Showcase

Michigan State hosted its seventh annual Diversity Research Showcase featuring MSU undergraduate student work on issues relating to diversity that advance inclusion. The event, which was done in partnership with 10 different MSU associations, was part of the university’s week-long Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Celebration.

The showcase featured more than 35 presentations by over 50 students from 10 different MSU colleges. Attendees and presenters could attend in person at the MSU Union or online.

There were three ways students could share their presentations to the public and judges: through an asynchronous online format, oral presentations and in person with handmade poster boards.

Springticipation brings MSU students face-to-face with over 200 student organizations

Over 200 registered student organizations, or RSOs, gathered at the STEM Teaching and Learning Facility last Thursday to advertise and showcase their respective organizations at MSU’s annual Springticipation.

A smaller-scale version of the fall semester’s Sparticipation, Springticipation featured a wide variety of social, professional and cultural RSOs for students to discover and sign up for.

For students representing their RSOs, Springticipation’s packed rooms meant countless opportunities to hand out flyers, catch students’ attention and get prospective members added to mailing lists.

While people continued to fill the STEM building’s second and third floors, students interested in the Springticipation cultural engagement showcase on the first floor were treated to various musical, dance and poetry performances.

MSU hosts scholar Anthony Jack for discussion on health, income disparity in higher education

For many class instructors, defining ‘office hours’ may not seem like the most important piece of information to include in a syllabus at the beginning of a semester. Yet according to Boston University Faculty Director and Associate Professor Dr. Anthony Jack, oversights like this can often create barriers in education for students coming from lower-income communities.

Jack gave a talk at Michigan State University last Thursday as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Celebration that ran throughout the week. The talk, titled “Revisiting the Beloved Community: Health Colleges’ Supporting our most vulnerable as we work for Health Equity,” focused on the ways in which differences in students’ backgrounds can influence how they navigate college curriculum.

According to Jack, 14% of undergraduate students at the most competitive colleges in the U.S. come from the bottom half of the income distribution. And while colleges and universities have enacted ways for students coming from lower income backgrounds to seek higher education without the barrier of money, praising them as institutions increasing access reflects a limited civic imagination because colleges tend to still fall short.

Jack’s work and personal experience in this field led him to both write a book and coin the term “The Privileged Poor.” The term is used to describe a demographic of lower-income undergraduate students who come to college after attending boarding and/or preparatory schools. Much of Jack’s research compared this group of students to what he calls the “Doubly Disadvantaged,” or lower-income undergraduate students who come from local high schools.

Jack also explained ways in which colleges and universities can better support students from lower-income backgrounds, and much of it comes in the form of examining the specific situations they’ve come from and what they may have been through.

Based on original reporting by Kaspar Haehnle, Emilio Perez Ibarguen and Jack Williams.

Here is the MSU home Athletic line-up for the weekend…

Today

• Hockey will play Minnesota at 6 P.M. at Munn Ice Arena
• Wrestling will go up against Wisconsin at 7 P.M.

Tomorrow

• Women’s Basketball will vs. Michigan at noon
• Hockey will play Minnesota again at 4 P.M.

Sunday,

• Gymnastics goes against Iowa at 1 P.M.