Although it is one of the largest universities in the nation, students have found the MSU community might be connected by less than the popularized six degrees of separation.
According to the findings from an experiment conducted by assistant professor of sociology Neal and the students in his Contemporary Communities class, MSU students and faculty are connected by four degrees of separation.
“What I asked the students to do was to send an email to a personal acquaintance of theirs and have that person send it to an acquaintance of them,” Neal said.
Down the line, the students had to try to get the message to two predetermined faculty members by using a chain of personal acquaintances, he said.
The experiment was based on the six degrees of separation theory, he said. The theory states that everybody is connected to everybody else through a series of six personal acquaintances, Neal said.
All 20 members of the class participated in the experiment, and some even were able to reach the target faculty members within about 10 minutes, he said.
“The students in my class don’t personally know the faculty members,” Neal said. “But they know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows the faculty member.”
Trying to reach the specific faculty members through a network of acquaintances came with its share of difficulties, however, said psychology junior Emily Jarvis, a member of the class.
“My first attempt to send it to the second contact wasn’t successful because the person I sent the email to didn’t even get it,” she said.
Jarvis said she had no clue who to make contact with to reach the second faculty target, so she emailed one of her professors on a whim.
“I sent it to my interior design professor, and apparently they’re in the same department,” Jarvis said. “I was really surprised that it got there that quickly.”
She said she reached both target faculty members through two degrees of separation, lower than the class average. Students taking a variety of different classes allows them the opportunity to meet and make connections with more people, Jarvis said.
The experiment began at the beginning of the semester, and it won’t formally conclude until next week, Neal said.
Human biology junior Matt Jackson believes MSU is well connected despite its size, he said.
“There’s a lot of connectivity,” Jackson said.
“It’s hard not to know somebody who knows somebody else on campus that you’ve met through a class or something.”
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