Don Stevens was elected to the Board of Trustees on January 1, 1958. He served as chairman of the Board from 1969 to 1970. His last term as Board member expired on December 31, 1978. A native of Greenville, Michigan, Stevens was an honorary alumnus of both Michigan State University and Wayne State University. He took courses at MSU, University of Michigan, Cornell and Columbia Universities. Stevens lectured at Columbia.

Stevens was active on local, state, and national levels in the areas of education, religion, youth, employment, civil rights, and labor and industrial relations.

Stevens served as education director of the Michigan AFL-CIO. He was a member of the Legislative Advisory Committee to study Higher Education; the State Civil Service Hearing Board; the MI Youth Commission; the Michigan State University-University of Michigan-Wayne State University Labor Program Service Advisory Committee; and, director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Institute in Port Huron.

Active in Michigan labor circles for many years, Stevens served as president of local 386 Dairy Workers CIO, president for the Kent County CIO Council, and as an executive board member of the Michigan CIO Council.

Stevens also served as delegate to the 1952 United Nations Conference in France; state and national White House Conference on Education; the White House Conference on Children and Youth; and numerous advisory committees to the State Department of Public Instruction. He was a special representative of the U.S. Foreign Service in Africa in 1965.

He was also a trustee of the Michigan Council on Economic Education, as well as a member of the Wayne State University Board of Governors. In 1958, Stevens served on the Brussels World’s Fair Commission, and in 1962 he was a delegate to the President’s Conference on Occupational Safety.

During his time in office as an MSU Trustee, he lived in Okemos and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan with his wife and four children.