Living and Working at Michigan State University

Single graduate students can live in the Owen Graduate Center, made up of two seven-story residence halls connected by a one-story building which contains lounges, a lobby, rooms, and administration offices. For married students there are more than 2,000 furnished apartments. In addition, the Lansing-East Lansing area provides a full range of apartments, cooperatives, condominiums, and single-family residences. Entering international students are strongly urged to look for on-campus housing. For those students who wish to live off campus, Graduate Economics Organization members can give advice on how and where other students have found apartments.

Michigan is a state with four distinct seasons, offering the usual outdoor opportunities of each season. Surrounded by the upper Great Lakes, the state has long been attractive to boaters, campers, hikers, and winter sports enthusiasts. Michigan is an exceptionally pleasant state in which to live and work.

East Lansing is contiguous to the City of Lansing and is part of a metropolitan area with a population of approximately 400,000. The Lansing-East Lansing area economy rests on a base consisting of three comparatively different segments: state government (Lansing is the state capital), the automobile industry (General Motors), and Michigan State University.

Michigan State University, with an annual enrollment of more than 40,000 students, is one of the largest universities in the country, and has all of the amenities for the student that accompany a large university Several performing arts series bring major orchestras, dance, theater, and chamber music to the campus. The area has several excellent theater and music groups. The university provides several swimming pools, an indoor skating rink, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, and two 18-hole golf courses, as well as a wide range of other recreation opportunities. MSU is a member of the Big Ten athletic conference and fields varsity teams in 25 men's and women's sports.

The libraries in the MSU library system house more than three million volumes, and are especially strong in documents and data sources for economic research. The MSU Computer Laboratory provides mainframe computing and large numbers of micro computers for student use. As a service to its students the Economics Department provides access to a number of micros and accompanying word processing and statistical software. Perhaps the most valuable research aid to economics graduate students is the accessible and active MSU economics faculty who are conducting numerous research projects at any time. A large number of co-authored research papers by faculty and graduate students have been produced in recent years. Graduate students in economics at MSU also benefit by the presence of a large number of economists in other departments and schools who work on topics related to those of interest to members of the department. Faculty and students interact with colleagues in the College of Business, the Departments of Agricultural Economics, Forestry, Fisheries and Wildlife, Resource Development, Transportation, Marketing, Finance, and Accounting, and the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations.

All graduate students in economics are members of the Graduate Economics Organization. The group organizes social functions for graduate students, represents graduate students on departmental committees, and presents members' concerns to the department and university.