The forecast predicts that it will be a cold day with the high being 55 and the low being 36.
MSU board to vote on seeking state funds for $340 million engineering center
Michigan State University’s Board of Trustees will vote Friday on whether to ask for more state funds to finance a proposed $340 million Engineering and Digital Innovation Center. If approved, the 260,000 square foot center will house 12 learning spaces and workspace for 65 researchers. It will primarily be used by the College of Engineering, Natural Science, Arts and Letters, Broad College of Business, Communications Arts and Sciences, and Social Science. To make way for the center, the Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture Building and the abandoned Water Reservoir would be demolished. Red Cedar Road between S. Shaw Lane and Wilson Road would also be permanently closed and converted to a greenway that connects the center to the College of Engineering building. The pricey project is being considered as all campus units are being asked to trim their budgets.
MSU hockey’s Tommi Männistö earns Big Ten Star of the Week
After a five-point weekend and a near hat trick, No. 1 Michigan State hockey junior forward Tommi Männistö has been named the Big Ten’s First Star of the Week. This is the first time Männistö has earned a Big Ten weekly honor. Männistö’s weekend performance (3-2–5) helped the Spartans earn a 4-0 shutout and 6-2 victory over Northern Michigan University on the road. Both Männistö and senior forward Tiernan Shoudy (2-3–5) led the conference in points and goals last week. The Finland native scored the final goal in Game 1 of the NMU series and was dominant in Game 2. Männistö got the Spartans on the board early with a slapshot less than three minutes into the game. In the same period, Männistö increased the advantage to 2-0 with a quick shot right after a won faceoff.
Student-run startup RentEL keeps Spartans on the move
When Michigan State finance sophomore Soham Sampat noticed how often his friends struggled to find affordable rides, he decided to help the best way he could: by lending out his own car. What began as a simple favor soon turned into an idea that kept growing. Today, that idea is RentEL, a student-run car rental service with a fleet of ten vehicles and more than 200 students who have used it to get where they need to go. He started small, renting out his own car for $50 to $60 a day, but the demand rapidly grew to the point where he could hardly use his own vehicle anymore. The side hustle to help friends became a business worth building. As the requests kept coming, Sampat reinvested what he earned. He used the profits from those first rentals to buy another car, then applied for a low-interest loan through MSU Federal Credit Union. Looking ahead, Sampat plans to expand his business to other areas and universities, including Ann Arbor and his hometown, Chicago.
Graduate Employees Union seeks legal protection for graduate research assistants
The Michigan State University Graduate Employee Union was formed in 2001 to legally protect the rights of graduate students working as teaching assistants. Now, they’re trying to secure the same protections for graduate research assistants. They are doing this through the Graduate Researcher Union Drive. Their goal is to have a union contract for graduate research assistants within a year. Although it became legal for GRAs to unionize in February 2024, there are still many steps that go into securing a contract.
