From the Provost's Desk

• Home

Friday, September 02, 2005

Welcome to campus

It’s great to begin work here as the provost and be able to welcome so many new students and faculty to campus – and to meet so many members of the MSU community. It’s even greater when it’s your first month on the job.

I’m a Michigan State grad, so I have the advantage of not having to walk around campus with a map like some of you who are new to campus. But I have to tell a story on myself. I was sitting in my office the other day, and took a look at a card in my pocket that has all of the meetings of the day on it. Typically, if the meeting is in a room somewhere else in the building, it tells where it is, with the room number in parentheses.

So I looked at my clock and it was 1:35. And I thought, “Oh no! I’m late for a 1:30 meeting.” The card said “room 438” in parentheses, so I jumped up, grabbed my stuff, and ran down the hallway of the 4th floor of the Administration Building – where my office is – looking for Room 438. As I was running down the hall, looking at the room numbers, I ran into a colleague and, half out-of-breath, asked, “Where’s 438!?”

By that point, several people had poked their heads out of their offices, and they collectively laughed when my colleague calmly responded, “438 is your office, Kim.”

And sure enough, it was everybody else who was late for the meeting; I was there at 1:30.

During the start of the new school year, many of us are making adjustments to a number of new things in our very busy lives. In my first month on campus, I’ve found that everyone has been more than willing to help when I had questions.

There are a lot of people here to help you, so don’t hesitate to ask. I think you’ll find people are pretty eager to engage. You’ll be amazed at the resources in place to assist us all in our transitions to living, studying, working – and finding our way around – on this beautiful campus.