SAMUEL L. STANLEY JR.

MARQUETTE — After 123 years of Michigan State University in the Upper Peninsula, the school president has come to visit for the first time in an official capacity.

MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D., came to introduce himself and see firsthand the work that MSU’s Extension programs have been doing.

“I wanted to see some things myself. There’s no substitute,” Stanley said. “I talk about the great work MSU does in Extension with concrete examples and want to find out what I can do to help them, what are the areas that they think we can improve the programs we have?”

The more than 100-year-old relationship between MSU and the U.P. is as strong as ever as MSU has four Extension programs located throughout the region. MSU also had a record-high 135 students from the U.P. this past year, with 245 students accepted to attend this coming school year.

“A big part of our Extension concept is really listening to the community,” he said. “We’re not coming in and saying we need to do this for you, it’s coming and saying, ‘What do you think we need to do and how do we work together to develop a plan to do that?’ I think that’s been the tradition for Extension, I think you saw that in our work in Flint, when they had their water crisis, we came in not to tell people what to do but how can we help be of assistance. We’re here, we’re ready to help, we really appreciate the students we have from the U.P., (and) we want to recruit more students to Michigan State University.”