Public invited to Founders' Day Celebration, presidential inauguration, award ceremony

By Tom Oswald

The MSU community will come together to celebrate its past and its future at a Founders' Day Celebration Feb. 11, a day MSU will mark its 150th anniversary and inaugurate its 20th president, Lou Anna Kimsey Simon.

Simon will also present her first presidential address, highlighting the university's accomplishments and plans for MSU's future. The ceremony begins at 2 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Wharton Center for Performing Arts and is free and open to the public.

During the celebration ceremony, nine faculty members will receive the Distinguished Faculty Award, bringing to 418 the number so honored since the award was established in 1952.

There will be a number of other awards presented as well, including the Presidential Award for Outstanding Community Service, Distinguished Academic Staff Award, Teacher-Scholar Award, MSU Alumni Club of Mid-Michigan Quality in Undergraduate Teaching Award and Excellence-in-Teaching Citation.

Public parking for the event will be available in MSU's Parking Ramp No. 5, located behind the Communication Arts and Sciences Building. A free shuttle service will be provided from the ramp to the Wharton Center beginning at 1:30 p.m. There will be no public parking available at the Wharton Center.

In addition to the 2 p.m. ceremony, MSU will mark Founders' Day with other public events, including special campus tours and an academic symposium.

Guests can board one of five buses in the circle drive in front of the Wharton Center at 9 a.m. Buses will complete a general campus tour and stop at one of five designated buildings: Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building; Clara Bell Smith Student-Athlete Academic Center; Kresge Art Museum; MSU Museum; or the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. The tours will end at 10:30 a.m. at Wharton Center.

The academic symposium will begin at 9 a.m. in the Pasant Theatre at the Wharton Center and will feature Barbara Given, University Distinguished Professor of nursing; Bradley Sherrill, University Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy; and Mohammed Ayoob, University Distinguished Professor in James Madison College. The symposium will end at 10:30 a.m.

The symposium and 2 p.m. ceremony will be covered live online at WMSU.org, be broadcast to faculty and students who receive MSU's campus cable services and aired on 'KAR3, a cable service of WKAR-TV available to Greater Lansing/East Lansing and Meridian subscribers of Comcast cable services.

Founders' Day Celebration webcast