Sophomore Justin Nelson admits that when he told his parents he was going to attend Wayne State University, they weren’t super enthusiastic. Nelson is from Muskegon and Detroit was a long way from home. Fast forward a few years, and Nelson’s parents are amazed by opportunities he’s had at Wayne State and were blown away when he recently informed them that he was awarded one of NASA’s Michigan Space Grant Consortium’s Faculty Led Fellowships for Undergraduates.

As successful college students go, there are those brilliant learners for whom every big break seems to come easily. And then there’s Wayne State University senior James Wairagu, an academic superstar who’s made a habit of actively chasing down opportunity wherever he might find it. The son of Kenyan immigrants, Wairagu has enjoyed a journey that has led him from Africa to New York to Georgia to, finally, Wayne State. Along the way, he’s chased dreams that have taken him from 20,000 feet above Earth right down into the heart of Detroit, from taking college AP courses during high school to the being on the verge of joining the M.B.A. program at the Mike Ilitch School of Business — and, if all goes according to plan, those dreams will eventually lead him to Wayne State’s School of Medicine. And lest anyone forget, Wairagu, who’s set to graduate in May with his bachelor’s in neuroscience, is only 20 years old.

Super Mario Bros. is one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. It revolutionized the gaming world in the 1980s and the most recent movie adaptation — which released on April 5 — was a box office hit. The world of Mario makes people feel a variety of emotions, but Wayne State graduate student Andrew Montano wanted to specifically study the impact of its music. Using music from the 1985 version of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Montano created his presentation, “Super Mario Bros.: A musical and psychological analysis,” which recently won first place at the Wayne State Graduate Research Symposium.

As Kevin Deegan-Krause approached the podium to introduce a very special guest at the April 28 meeting of the Wayne State University Board of Governors, an impressive graphic with a few dozen logos popped up on two large screens high above the ballroom floor inside the Student Center Building. The colorful visual featured some of the nation’s elite academic institutions — Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Brown University, Wayne State University. Yes, Wayne State. That’s because Wayne State is proudly celebrating its first-ever recipient of the Marshall Scholarship: Aaron Keathley.

After a rotation shift at Henry Ford Hospital, Wayne State University medical students Susan Wager and Nina Bourdeau watched a patient who was experiencing homelessness walk out of the hospital with only yellow hospital socks to cover his feet. Deeply concerned about the man and others like him, Wager and Bourdeau were determined to find a way for all patients to be discharged from the hospital with adequate footwear. They founded Street Kicks, a School of Medicine student organization that provides free shoes and socks to patients in need who are discharged from Henry Ford Hospital.