Message from the Vice Provost

Kwesi Brookins, Vice Provost for University Outreach and Engagement

Introducing Our New Assistant Provost

MSU has one of the top outreach and engagement enterprises in the country. We continue to find ways to enhance the services, technical assistance, and research that we offer to our campus community, and to the larger national and international arenas of engagement scholarship and public impact.

That is why I am excited to welcome Elyse L. Aurbach, Ph.D., our new assistant provost for University Outreach and Engagement, who will lead several of these initiatives. Her extensive experience and commitment to university-community collaborations will bring valuable expertise to UOE while also contributing to our mission of advancing the scholarship of outreach and engagement.

In this role, Dr. Aurbach will lead UOE’s campus-wide efforts to foster, promote, and advocate for community engagement and engaged scholarship within academic units and in support of engaged faculty, staff, and students. She will lead efforts to reestablish campus engagement networks and identify opportunities to build stronger cross-campus partnerships centered on public impact research, scholarship, and programs.

As a leader in outreach and engagement, Dr. Aurbach has helped advance university-community collaborations like these at the state and national levels. Most recently, she served as the director for public engagement and research in the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Michigan. While in this role, she established strategies to support university faculty in public engagement efforts, developed research-based resources and tools, and amplified research impacts university-wide.

She also served as a Civic Science Fellow with the Association for Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), of which MSU is a member. The APLU focuses on fostering a community of public and land-grant universities committed to improving the lives and livelihoods of individuals, communities, and society through the continuous advancement of public higher education.

We are thrilled that Dr. Aurbach is trading her maize and blue for green and white. Her addition to our team at UOE will enhance our standing as a national leader in the scholarship of engagement.

Kwesi Brookins,

Vice Provost for University Outreach and Engagement