The MSU College of Engineering recently announced a $5 million commitment for endowed scholarships from an anonymous donor.
“This donor received scholarship help when he was a student and wants to pay that spirit forward by making it possible for many more students to get that same help that he got of making sure they have the financial wherewithal to complete the journey of becoming a Spartan engineer,” says Leo Kempel, dean of the college, about what he calls a transformational gift to the college.
Another anonymous gift will help our state’s infrastructure resurgence.
Kempel is excited about welcoming Christopher Contag, a pioneer in molecular imaging, to MSU to lead initiatives as chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the IQ research institute – which has opened its new $60 million, 130,000-square-foot Bio Engineering Facility.
The college supports research in autonomous vehicles in a program called CANVAS – Connected and Autonomous Networked Vehicles for Active Safety and is part of the MSU Mobility Studio initiative. And MSU has long been recognized as a national leader in materials science and composites -- as judged by the trust that the federal program IACMI, the Institute for Advanced Composite Materials Innovation, has placed in MSU.
Kempel describes MSU’s expertise in these areas and says the College of Engineering is on the move toward the future.
“Our goal is to be seen as the fastest rising college of engineering in the nation,” says Kempel. “We’re looking at what the most challenging areas are in terms of research and teaching needs for the next 30 years.”
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