Humble beginnings in rural Northern Quebec infused Gus Gosselin ‘75 with an outdoors etiquette and a conservationists’ mentality. The eldest of eight children, frugality was a theme in the Gosselin household and for Gus that extended to the natural environment around him as well.

“My father was a lineman for most of his working life. He was a lumberjack in Northern Quebec and Northern Ontario,” Gosselin said. “When I was in ninth grade, my father gained employment in Detroit for a contractor that worked for Detroit Edison.”

The entire Gosselin family shifted from Quebec to Milford, Michigan and then Detroit where Gus completed his secondary education at Cody High School. Despite his father’s increase in income in Michigan, Gosselin wasn’t sure that he would receive financial support from his family for post-secondary education and that’s when his discovery of Kettering University’s (then General Motors Institute) co-op program led him north on I-75 to Vehicle City.

From Cars to Facilities

“I went to GMI because I loved cars,” Gosselin said. “I thought that I was going to GMI to learn how to design a car, build it, go to Indianapolis and win the race and be rich and famous.”

Gosselin, a 1975 Mechanical Facilities graduate, has a passion for cars that sometimes contradicts his conservation instincts. He loves cars. He loves to drive fast. But at the same time he carpooled to school and his co-op position at GMC Truck and Coach (now “bus”) in Pontiac.

“I had gasoline on the brain way before I had perfume on the brain,” said Gosselin, emphasizing vehicles as his first love before he became interested in girls as an adolescent.   

Gosselin’s co-op responsibilities were in materials handling where he completed his thesis on the handling of unique parts in the truck division but his professional mindset was also shifting from vehicles to the greater environmental good.

“When I graduated from GMI, I really thought about going into private practice,” Gosselin said. “I wanted to be an alternate energy engineer. I’ve always had some interest in it and wherever I’ve been, I’ve done stuff to minimize energy.”

Upon graduating, Gosselin returned to GMC Truck and Coach as it was known then where he worked in the Material Handling and Plant Engineering Department. He then joined the Energy Conservation group where he performed plant-wide audits.

“I would come to work after second shift and would literally run through the plant on a bicycle or an electrical cart and would document all the machinery that was left on,” Gosselin said. “The protocol was that I would have the report on first shift and it would be distributed to line superintendents by noon. The superintendents were not happy with what was happening but we got things turned off during off hours.”

In 1980, an opportunity to pursue his passion for energy efficiency arose at the Meijers corporate headquarters. He joined Meijers as a plant engineer and also became an expert on ventilation systems as he oversaw the addition of air conditioners and refrigeration units in each of the department stores over the course of his eight-year career at the retail chain.

“I helped to develop a refrigeration system to save energy but we needed a better control system to make it as efficient as possible,” Gosselin said.

Gosselin thrived after transitioning from the automobile industry to facilities as it allowed him to focus on his passion for energy conservation,

Conservation at Michigan State University

For the past 26 years, Gosselin has worked in the Infrastructure Planning and Facilities Department at Michigan State University. He began as a maintenance engineer in 1989 and is currently the Director of Building Services.

“If there’s one change that I would like to make is to teach people to be less wasteful,” Gosselin said. “I think there’s a whole lot of savings that could be had here.”

At Michigan State, Gosselin has led efforts to reduce water consumption by installing water saving toilet fixtures, lower energy costs by utilizing efficient light bulbs and founded an alternative transportation program for students, faculty and staff on campus.

The latter was developed after Gosselin observed that up to 1,400 bikes were abandoned on campus every summer which created a huge maintenance issue for the facilities department.

“We started a program where we would collect all the abandoned bikes, take the best of the bunch and make sure they were safe and good to ride and rent them to people to use around campus.”

Gosselin developed the business model for the idea and the program has been formalized as “MSU Bikes.” Gosselin is continuously looking to improve the energy performance of facilities on campus and is usually successful as long as the payback on the investment or project is five years or less.

Gosselin is only a few years removed from retirement and is starting to look ahead beyond his facilities work at Michigan State. Despite his many years of success in energy conservation holistically in large institutions, Gosselin still maintains the same mindset that brought him to Kettering in the first place and resulted in a successful career across Michigan - a staunch mix of frugality and practicality.

“If I’m not out earning money, then I’m out spending money,” said Gosselin about his retirement. “I might as well figure something out to earn.”