Leaving a Legacy in the Students you Support

Engineering entrepreneur Dr. Thomas Wielenga says part of his legacy lies in the MSU students he has supported to provide them with research experiences as undergraduates.

February 23, 2022

Dr. Thomas Wielenga is a distinguished alumnus of the College of Engineering. He is president of Engineering Insight LLC, and if you drive an SUV, you can thank him for the anti-rollover braking system for which he holds the patent. He is the creative mind behind an endowed professorship, and a distinguished scholarship program at MSU. In February of 2022, he had the opportunity to share his thoughts about legacies with a group of fellow alumni, donors and friends at Winter University in Florida. Here are Dr. Wielenga’s thoughts:

Like many of you here, I went to MSU a long time ago. I worked hard during life and had a measure of success. As we get older, you may start to wonder, like me, about your legacy. What am I going to leave behind that will outlive me?

For many of us this will be family, and our friends. Much of our legacy will be in the memories of our friends and relatives. Some of us will have added to the success of companies, technologies, societies or religious groups. Some of us will be able to leave sums of money or businesses to our descendants.

Part of the reason for this meeting, you might expect, is for us to consider MSU as part of our legacy. I have had the means and privilege of being able to leave something behind, here at MSU, a place that did so much to prepare me for the world. While it is gratifying to have your name on a building (I don’t), or have a professorship named after you (I do), I discovered another, possibly more significant way to add to a legacy and do it in an effective way. It was born out of an experience I had at MSU. When I was a sophomore, I was able to land a job as a teacher’s assistant for a professor that morphed into a research assistantship. The professor was doing exciting work in the computer simulation of dynamic systems, a field just emerging at the time and in which I eventually became an expert.

Now some of the best students in the world enroll in MSU’s Honors College. The Honors College spans all departments in the university. It is world renowned. Some of these students have scholarships and some don’t. The idea is this: give these super smart students a job doing research with a professor at the sophomore level. They get a job and the learning experiences that go along with it. The professor gets a student to help them do research that doesn’t cost them anything. Once hooked, the professor can’t live without them and hires them for their junior and senior years doing additional research. The student gets direct contact with a professor that will mentor them and recommend them for jobs or higher education. And the student learns how to work hard and balance life, scholarship and work.

This money is effectively seed money that bears fruit for both the students and the professor.  And it is relatively cheap. You can support one amazing student for around $5,000 for the year. I have done this for groups of students for several years and feel it is a good way to invest in a person that will be some part of your legacy. And some part of a professor’s research is also part of your legacy.

I recommend you consider this yourself for an honor’s college student or perhaps any student in the department most dear to you. As part of your legacy, you can “adopt a genius” and put them to work. You won’t get a plaque with your name on it, but the effects of your gift will be imprinted on a person’s soul and it will outlive you.

Read on for two Wielenga scholars’ Winter University presentations: Mariam Sayed and Jorge Flores Garcia.

LEARN MORE about support for students by contacting the Advancement Office in your college, unit or region, or by contacting Senior Director of Development for Scholarships and Fellowships Jennifer Bertram at bertram9@msu.edu or by calling (517) 432-7330.

Alumni, Research, Students

Honors College, University Scholarships