“How can we help?”
I heard variations of that question dozens of times during the week. The questions were grounding. They reminded me that I was surrounded by experts from around the world whose first instinct was to understand a challenge, then ask, “How can the university help?”
“How can I help?”
The annual Michigan Road Scholars Tour takes University of Michigan faculty and staff all around the state, and is guided by the university’s mission to serve the people of Michigan. Among the many different stops are nonprofits, city governments, businesses, tribal organizations, and others. The expedition is packed tight with enough presentations, tours and discussions to fill a month, yet it takes place in a mere five days.
After nearly a decade working for the unit that runs the tour, I was finally able to go last month. My colleague in the Office of Government Relations, Dana Sitzler, had run the tour for the past 20 years, and there was no bigger advocate for its importance. She felt that the university’s research and engagement efforts were often limited to the geographics of the three campuses, and her work in State Outreach traveling around Michigan confirmed this. The tour, she emphasized, immersed people in a world outside Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn.
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The 2026 Road Scholars had applied to the tour in late 2025. After an evaluation from alumni of previous tours, roughly 30 of the over 100 applicants had their first introduction to one another at a dinner in March. There, Provost Laurie McCauley remarked on how we would be representing the university to the greater state of Michigan.
Sitting at a table with a diverse group of experts is a unique experience. After introductions move to conversation, you get to hear about many amazing things that are happening across the university. It is, after all, a work event — and we all talk about our work. In this case “work” was protecting and improving healthcare, the environment, and education. Work was innovative engineering, business, medicine, and public policy.
Stops along the way
Each of the nearly 20 stops on the tour deserves far more than can be written here. We heard presentations from elected officials, educators, healthcare provers, business people, nonprofits, and tribal representatives. What we learned about Monroe, Detroit, Bay City, St. Ignace, Traverse City, Grand Rapids, Holland, and Lansing could fill a book, and yet each presentation was merely the tip of the iceberg. From their questions, it seemed as if the Road Scholars might have been content to spend entire days learning about each place.
Other times the presenters revealed a disconnect. They responded that the university’s support of students from their region was important. They want to see their young people succeed at U-M and return home.
That response suggests that the university is understood as a place young people go for education, but it also suggests that the university’s mission as an institution that serves the state isn’t. It is not just the education of students — which is certainly important — that is our mission. We are here to serve the people of Michigan not only by educating its people, but by applying university research and expertise to the challenges that face every part of the state.
Between each site was a bus ride that could last a few minutes to over three hours. And like the previous dinner, conversation turned to work. Practically, realistically, how could a faculty member from Ann Arbor support an organization from St. Ignace? How might someone from Flint connect with a tribal leader from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa? What was needed to build a collaborative bridge between Dearborn and Grand Rapids?
The Road Scholars set upon these challenges voraciously. “How can we help?” became “How can we help?”
And to this, the answers were a bit murky. If the University of Michigan had no physical presence in Northern Michigan, how would a relationship with the people of that region be maintained? If there were no established communication channels between indigenous tribes and university contacts, how do we work together?
The last day of the tour ended in Lansing where my colleague, Libby McGaughey, spoke about her work advocating for the university. She discussed obstacles, but also invited the Scholars to offer their expertise on policy to the state legislature. She was frank about the challenges that the university faces in an ongoing state budget fight. She also represented at least a partial answer to those questions that had been bandied about the Road Scholars bus.
The university has an office in Lansing, and that office is a conduit between university expertise and state government. As an institution, we may need to address how we support Northern or Western Michigan, but we do have a place in Lansing.
Credit where credit is due
Just before our final bus ride back to Ann Arbor, I took a photograph of the team that made the tour possible. Michael Rein, LaSonia Forte and Dana Sitzler had invested themselves in bringing university people to parts of Michigan they don’t often see. Their work in the preceding months had culminated in a paradoxically invigorating and exhausting experience.
Dana, the administrator of the Road Scholars, will be retiring after the 2026 tour. She and I worked together often, and because we were colleagues, I believed I understood the importance of the Road Scholars tour. Only after having had the privilege of going on the tour did I grasp its true value. I learned a lot about the state I grew up in, but I also had a chance to see university faculty and staff “in action.”
There are many disheartening things that are happening around the world, and the deluge of worrying news can cast a gray pallor over life. But in Michigan, there are bright spots. It is deeply reassuring to witness a collection of good people — a small fraction of the faculty and staff at the university — whose first instinct is to understand a problem.
And their second instinct is to ask, “How can we help?”
— By Mark Rivett, who is a business analyst in the Office of the Vice President for Government Relations and oversees technology, data analytics, and digital platforms for the office.
