MSU, a Global and Diverse Community

For the Fall 2012 semester, there were 6,599 international students (including undergraduate, graduate, and non-degree students) from 130 countries enrolled at Michigan State University (MSU). In response to this surge of foreign students, I made a map (using MapBox) to reflect the demographic composition of the MSU’s international student population.

Of the 6,599 international students, 3712 students are from China. This created a problem when I tried to use the “Conditional Style” feature of TileMill to change the marker width of the points because there is only 1 student from many countries and it is impossible to accurately record the proportion of the total number of Chinese students and that of some other countries.

I was able to use ToolTips to make the map interactive. When users move the mouse over the points, the total number of MSU students from each country will be revealed. For instance, you can see that there are 16 MSU students from Austria.

Making the map was a challenging and fruitful experience to me. The collaboration and interaction with the follows makes this project even more meaningful because one of the purposes of making this map is to help people see that MSU is a global and diverse university, which is a community that welcomes the interaction of students from different parts of the world.