Michigan State University has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Educating Character Initiative, a project of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University, for a new career development initiative that prepares students to understand how their professional work can contribute to the common good.
MSU and 49 other colleges and universities across the country received these Institutional Impact Grants to support three-year projects that advance character education for undergraduate students.
The new initiative — Discovery via Internships: Forming Spartan Character through Engaging, Reflecting, and Networking, or DISCERN — will converge character education with workforce connection to graduate career-connected Spartans who are equipped to make positive change in the world. The program seeks to help students discover a civic professional-driven approach to their future careers in a way that is not an add-on, but an integral part of their educational journey.
The program will also assess how these professional internships help students understand what it looks like to be civic leaders — not just during their time on campus but throughout their professional lives.
“The thoughtful integration of DISCERN into students’ academic journeys here at MSU will add value to not only their internships, but their professional and personal development beyond graduation,” MSU Provost Laura Lee McIntyre said. “The program’s focus on fostering ethical character formation in the context of career development will help empower future generations of Spartans to continue to advance the greater good and make a positive impact, regardless of their chosen profession.”
DISCERN will integrate with existing paid, professional internships in MSU’s arts and collections units. An average of 400 students work each year at Beal Botanical Garden, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, the MSU Museum and Wharton Center for Performing Arts, and last year alone represented 105 diverse majors from 14 MSU colleges. Students work in a range of roles in areas such as visitor engagement, communications, technology development, fabrication, programming, research and curation.
Because these internships are located on campus, they provide opportunities for students who may face barriers to traveling off campus or taking a semester away, creating more equitable access for all students to grow professionally.
“Our internships allow students to have a direct working relationship with professionals in the field, which gives them invaluable insight into the path that lies ahead,” said Kelly Stuible-Clark, senior education manager at Wharton Center for Performing Arts. “Beyond that, by representing the excellence that Wharton Center is known for, our student workers learn best practices in service to the public that are transferable to anything they may go on to do.”
University Arts and Collections spaces occupy a unique role at MSU in their service to both campus and community. As interns interface between the university context and a broader civic landscape, they learn about the possibilities and challenges in bridging character through applied problem-solving and decision-making. Although a subset of arts and collections interns go into arts-based careers, DISCERN is about teaching students to synthesize knowledge and practice in ways that ensure they become agents of change for the common good in whatever careers they ultimately pursue.
Also partnering on this program is the MSU’s Ethics Institute, which will not only provide programming for students in the project, but also incorporate the findings of this initiative into future efforts to integrate ethics into the undergraduate experience.
“The Ethics Institute is very excited about the opportunity to work directly with undergraduate students through DISCERN and to make ethics and character formation part of their career experience,” said Bree Holtz, professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations and director of the Ethics Institute. “Students are already developing important skills through these work experiences. This project will help them reflect on their values, responsibilities, and decisions that shape how they will use those skills in their future careers and contribute to the common good.”
MSU students already power the operations of campus arts and collections spaces. Since 2022, their paid internships have expanded by more than 200%. Students develop future-ready skills by collaborating across disciplines, connecting with diverse audiences and networks, and stretching their creativity.
The DISCERN program will expand upon this existing infrastructure through a framework of civic professionalism, which explores how disciplinary knowledge, work experience, and the public good connect in practice. As these interns learn by doing in creative roles situated at the interface of the university and the public, MSU will create a more explicit set of outcomes that address the traits interns are learning.
Through this program, there will also be more intentional means for student reflection on how those traits will carry into their future careers. Utilizing the career exploration and social connection app Jebbee developed by MSU alumna Stephanie Hickman Boyse, a cohort of peer mentors will engage interns in interactive reflection through short-form video prompts, asking each other questions and talking about challenges together in ways that help illuminate what they are learning about character.
The financial support for this program comes at a time in which MSU’s commitment to experiential learning and career development could not be more evident. In January 2026, the MSU Green & White Council identified Career-Connected Spartans as an initiative to ensure every MSU graduate has structured high-impact experiences that build skills, confidence, and purpose. From orientation to graduation, undergraduate students will be supported and have greater opportunities to complete multiple on- and off-campus high-impact and work-based experiences at MSU.
DISCERN’s approach will be a meaningful part of that commitment to student career development. A 2026 American Association of Colleges and Universities national survey demonstrates that this focus on developing opportunities for students to not only gain real-world experiences, but ones that are rooted in community engagement produce better outcomes than course-related experiential learning alone. In their analysis of this survey the authors point to “a clear opportunity for institutions: not necessarily to create more programs but to prioritize and scale the experiences that already demonstrate the greatest impact."
“Arts and Collections interns often talk about how their community-facing work in our spaces opens up new ways of understanding what they are learning in their majors,” said Judith Stoddart, vice provost of UAC and DISCERN project director. “Through the development of peer cohorts and a network of alumni mentors, the project will provide interns with sustained opportunities for reflecting on what that means for their lives now and in the future. As MSU works to integrate internship pathways for all students in alignment with the institution’s commitment to the common good and real-world impact, our project is a chance to experiment with how this can be done in an intentional and measurable way.”
Learn more about the impact of University Arts and Collections at artsandcollections.msu.edu.
