Newsroom Special Reports

MSU firsts and facts to get your conversations started

The Spartan statue. Photo by Kurt Stepnitz. Hi-res jpg

Besides the 5,200 acres on campus and 660 buildings that each new member of the MSU community will want to get to know, here are a few facts and other firsts about Michigan State:

MSU developed the process for homogenized milk; MSU Housing and Food Services dispenses about 210,000 gallons of milk a year. In addition, 22 tons of coffee are on the inventory list, as are 261,327,000 feet of toilet paper.
Two scenes of the 1999 movie “American Pie” (a lacrosse game and a choir competition) were filmed on campus; “Spartacus” director Stanley Kubrick taped the crowd noise at the 1959 MSU-Notre Dame football game in Spartan Stadium for fight scenes in the Oscar-winning movie.
MSU has the first and most extensive criminal justice program in the nation and is a world leader in cyber security, forensic science and the study of youth violence. Several years ago a crew from CBS’s “The Early Show” filmed graduate students in a class “Bugs and Bodies: The Role of Insects in Crime Scene Investigations,” combing pig corpses for insect clues that would reveal time of death.
MSU researchers developed the platinum-based compounds cisplatin and carboplatin, key components in the treatment of certain cancers, which have helped save tens of thousands of lives, including Lance Armstrong, winner of seven Tour de France cycling competitions.
The university is part of an international consortium that developed the SOAR telescope in Chile to study everything from how galaxies are formed to the origins of the Milky Way. Closer to home, astronomy education begins at Abrams Planetarium, where skywatchers can view celestial objects through telescopes or watch programs on the heavens in the hemispherical-domed sky theater.
The “Spartan” statue has a new permanent home inside the Spartan Stadium atrium; it was relocated to protect the 6,600-pound ceramic figure from the elements. An exact replica, now cast in bronze, can be found at the plaza at the north end of Demonstration Hall Field.

MSU is the first institution of higher learning in the United States dedicated to the teaching of scientific agriculture.
MSU is home to the first coupled cyclotron in the nation as part of the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.
The first university packaging-education program in the world was established at MSU in 1952, and MSU established the first College of Communications Arts in 1955.
The university created the first Honors College at any of America’s land-grant universities in 1957.
MSU’s music therapy program, established in 1944, was the first in the world designed specifically to train music therapists.

Visit the MSU home page at www.msu.edu for additional information about the university.