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University Of Michigan

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public coeducational university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is the oldest and main campus of the University of Michigan, which also includes branches University of Michigan-Dearborn and University of Michigan-Flint. It usually referred to simply as the University of Michigan, UM, or (the) U of M (which may also refer to the University of Minnesota, the University of Missouri, the University of Montana, or the University of Maryland).
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor


MottoArtes, Scientia, Veritas
(Latin, "Arts, science, truth")
Established 1817
School type Public University
President Mary Sue Coleman
Location Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Enrollment 25,000 undergraduate,
14,000 graduate
Faculty 4,196
Endowment US$4.2 billion
Campus Ann Arbor, 3,177 acres; (12.86 km²) Total, 20,965 acres (84.84 km²) (inclusive of arboretums)
Sports teams Teams are called the Wolverines. 12 men's varsity teams, 14 women's; 2 each men's and women's club varsity teams. UM Athletics
Website www.umich.edu


History

The nineteenth century

The University of Michigan was established in 1817 by the Michigan Territorial legislature as one of the United States' first public universities on 1,920 acres (8 km²) of land ceded by the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi people "…for a college at Detroit." The school moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 1837, only 13 years after the latter city had been founded. The first university president, Henry Tappan, was appointed in 1851. Tappan was a former professor of philosophy at New York University, and was recommended for the post by George Bancroft, a former United States Secretary of War and a noted historian. Tappan modeled the university’s curriculum on the broad range of subjects taught at German universities (the so-called "research model"), rather than the classical models (the so-called "recitation" model) employed at institutions such as Harvard and Yale. Michigan’s curriculum grew into a model for other universities, including Johns Hopkins. By 1865-66, the university’s enrollment bulged to 1,205 students, many of the new enrollees veterans of the Civil War. In the July 1866 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Professor F.H. Hedge depicted the university as the model public institution of higher education for the growing nation. Michigan began to draw students from across the United States and abroad, and its student body included African Americans. In 1867, maize and blue were voted class colors, and in 1868, the Chronicle, a forerunner of The Michigan Daily, was founded. The school’s first female student, Madelon Louisa Stockwell of Kalamazoo, Michigan, was admitted in 1870; by 1882, Michigan’s alumnae included the president of Wellesley College, Alice Freeman. The growing student body also led to unruliness. In 1872, Ann Arbor hosted 49 saloons, and the spectacle of student intoxication and public donnybrooks concerned school administrators and state politicians. Harper’s Weekly published an article in July 1887 that noted the school’s "broad and liberal spirit" and the wide-ranging freedoms of its students. In 1871, James B. Angell, president of the University of Vermont, was appointed president of Michigan, a position that he held until 1909. Angell aggressively expanded the school’s curriculum to include and expand professional studies in dentistry, architecture, engineering, government, and medicine. In 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Angell a special minister to China to negotiate the immigration of Chinese laborers. Angell’s publicity efforts abroad eventually prompted a large influx foreign students to the university. Michigan also began to draw renowned faculty, including pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who taught at the school from 1884 to 1894, and Thomas M. Cooley, who left the university when he was appointed the first chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission by President Grover Cleveland. Cleveland once stated, "When I was in office and needed help I usually turned to the University of Michigan." Forty-seven of the university’s alumni served in the U.S. Congress during Cleveland’s two administrations. Michigan faculty members also were instrumental in the founding and early leadership of Cornell University, which recruited Michigan history professor C.K. Adams to serve as its president in 1885. As of 2005, six Michigan administrators or faculty members have been appointed president of Cornell.

1900-1950

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw a construction boom on campus that included facilities to house the dental and pharmacy programs, a chemistry building, a building for the study of natural sciences, the Martha Cook residence hall, Hill Auditorium, and large hospital and library complexes. University President Marion Leroy Burton continued the construction boom through the 1920s, including the construction of Michigan Stadium. Burton’s tenure also saw the advent of major field research initiatives in Africa, South America, the South Pacific, and the Middle East. Burton raised admissions standards and sought to heighten the academic rigors of the university’s courses, while taming the often-rowdy social lives of his students. In 1924, Burton made the nominating speech at the Republican National Convention for Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts for president. Shortly after his place in the national spotlight, Burton died of a heart attack. The memorial bell tower that bears his name remains a prominent campus landmark. Burton was succeeded by C.C. Little, a highly divisive figure who, among other things, offended Roman Catholics with his vocal endorsements of contraception. The 1930s saw a major crackdown on the consumption of alcohol and the rowdiness that had characterized student life practically from inception. In February 1931, local police raided five fraternities, finding liquor and arresting of 79 students, including the captain of the football team and Michigan Daily editors. During the Great Depression, ritual and widespread freshman hazing all but ceased. Long known as a "dressy campus," student attire became less formal. Fraternities and sororities became less prominent in student life, as their finances and memberships went into steep decline. The school’s position as a prominent research university gained momentum in 1920 with a formal reorganization of the College of Engineering and the formation of an advisory committee of 100 industrialists to guide academic research initiatives. During World War II, the university grew into a true research powerhouse, undertaking major initiatives on behalf of the U.S. Navy and contributing to weapons development with breakthroughs including the V.T. Fuse, depth bombs, the PT boat and radar jammers. By 1950, university enrollment had reached 21,000, 7,700 of which was comprised of veterans supported by the G.I. Bill.

1951-present

Harlan H. Hatcher, an administrator at Ohio State University who once aspired to be a novelist, was appointed university president in 1951. Hatcher fostered early construction in the school’s nascent North Campus, and created an Honors College for five percent of entering freshmen. As the Cold War and the Space Race took shape, Michigan became a principal recipient of government research grants, and its researchers were on the vanguard of exploring peacetime uses for atomic power. During Hatcher’s administration, the Institute for Social Research, an ambitious ongoing effort focused on research and applications of social science, received its own building. In a 1966 report by the American Council on Education, the university was rated first or second in the nation in graduate teaching of all 28 disciplines surveyed. Strangely, the beginning of Hatcher’s presidency saw the university in the national spotlight over the first-ever "panty raid," an event cheered on by hundreds of students and chronicled by the national press, including Life Magazine. Hatcher’s legacy is marked, however, by a much more serious controversy: his suspension of three faculty members – Chandler Davis, Clement Markert, and Mark Nicholson – under pressure from Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities. Davis ultimately was sentenced to prison for contempt, a conviction that he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. During the 1960s, numerous Michigan faculty members served in the administrations of presidents Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy. During their administrations, 15 alumni served in the Senate and House of Representatives. On October 14, 1960, Kennedy announced his intention to form the Peace Corps in a speech on the steps of the Michigan Union. By 1966, 332 alumni were serving in the Corps. Though frequently attributed to Michigan students, it was actually Kennedy who referred to Harvard as "The Michigan of the East". In a commencement address at Michigan Stadium on May 22, 1964, Johnson first announced his intentions to pursue his Great Society reforms. But perhaps the enduring legacy of the era was the sharp rise in campus activism. The campus tumult of the 1960s was to some extent foreshadowed during World War I, when disputes arose between faculty, administrators, and students over issues including military instruction and teaching of the German language. In the 1930s, student groups had formed to promote socialism, labor, isolationism, and pacifism, as well as interest in the Spanish Civil War. Political dissent, largely mollified by campus consensus during World War II, returned to Michigan with a vengeance during the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. On March 24, 1964, a group of faculty held the nation’s first "teach-in" to protest American policy in Southeast Asia. 2,500 students attended the event. A series of 1966 sit-ins by Voice, the campus political party of Students for a Democratic Society, prompted the administration to ban sit-ins, a move that, in turn, led 1,500 students to conduct a one-hour sit-in in the administration building. In September 1969, a 12,000-student march followed a Michigan football game; on October 15, 1969, 20,000 rallied against the war in Michigan Stadium. Radicals adopted increasingly confrontational tactics, including an episode in which members of the Jesse James Gang, an SDS offshoot, locked themselves in a room with an on-campus military recruiter and refused to release him. Hatcher’s successor, Robben Fleming – an experienced labor negotiator and former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin – is credited by university historian Howard Peckham for preventing the campus from experiencing the violent outbreaks seen at other universities. Low minority enrollment was also a cause of unrest. In March 1970, the Black Action Movement, an umbrella name for a coalition of student groups, sponsored a campus-wide strike to protest low minority enrollment and to build support for an African American Studies department. The strike included picket lines that prevented entrance to university buildings, and was widely observed by students and faculty. Eight days after the strike began, the university granted many of BAM’s demands. Campus activism also changed the character of student social life. By 1973, only 4.7 percent of the student body participated in fraternities and sororities. The university’s student government fell one vote short of approving a marijuana co-op that was based on the premise of high-quantity purchases and free distribution. Such attitudes persist in the university’s annual Hash Bash. During the 1970s, severe budget constraints hindered to some extent the university’s physical development and academic standing. For the previous 50 years, all major academic surveys had listed Michigan as one of the nation’s top five universities, a standing that began to diminish. For instance, the student-faculty ratio at the Michigan Law School became the highest of any elite law school in the country. The university’s financial condition improved under the leadership of President Harold Shapiro during the 1980s. Shapiro, a former economics professor, completed a distinguished tenure at Michigan and was appointed president of Princeton University. The university again saw a surge in funds devoted to research in the social and physical sciences, although campus controversy arose over involvement in the anti-missile Strategic Defense Initiative and investments in South Africa. During the 1980s and 1990s, the university devoted substantial resources to renovating its massive hospital complex and improving the academic facilities on the school’s North Campus. In the past decade, roughly $2.5 billion has been budgeted and expended toward such construction, with approximately another $1.7 billion in construction projects (17 new buildings) underway, or in the planning stages for completion by end of the decade. Recently, the university has constructed over 1 million square feet of academic and laboratory space devoted to the life sciences (LSI).
President James Duderstadt, whose tenure ran from 1988 to 1995, was a nuclear engineer and former engineering dean who emphasized uses for computer and information technology. Duderstadt facilitated achievements in the campus’s physical growth and fundraising efforts, but was pushed out of office due to political infighting within the university’s polarized governing board. His successor Lee Bollinger had a relatively brief tenure before departing to lead Columbia University. In recent rankings, more than 70% of Michigan's more than 200 major programs, departments and schools are ranked in the top 10 nationally, and more than 90% of all programs/departments are ranked in the top 20 nationally (http://www.umich.edu/%7Eoapainfo/TABLES/PDF/UMAA_Rankings.pdf). A recent global ranking positions the university in the top 20 academically. Thus, in 2003/2004, the university had the unusual distinction of placing second in the director's cup for aggregate athletic achievement, and also led the nation in Fulbright scholars and teaching assistants.

In fiction

Literature/Collected stories

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Arbor#Ann_Arbor_in_literature Ann Arbor in literature) Contains stories in, near, or centered around Ann Arbor and the university Tom Grace's Series with Nolan Kilkenny as sleuth and scientific investigator.

Film

  • Lawrence Kasdan's "The Big Chill" chronicles an informal reunion of Michigan alumni after a former roommate's suicide.

Academics

The University of Michigan hosts of one of the largest health care complexes in the world (UMHS), and one of the largest university library systems in the country (ULS). The library system comprises 24 separate collections, and roughly 7.96 million volumes, 8.8 million microforms, and 18 million graphical objects. The collection grows at the rate of 150,000 volumes, or roughly 2.5 miles, per year. The University was the original home of the JSTOR database, about 750,000 pages digitised from the entire pre-1990 backfile of ten journals of history and economics. The university recently entered into a path-breaking book digitization program with Google. The university was at the center of the development of one of the first university networks and has made major contributions to the mathematics of information theory (Claude Shannon), the construction of the precursor to the National Science Foundation backbone ("NSF") (the history of the Merit network may be found at (PDF)), as well as the NSF backbone, the virtual memory model, and computer databases. Michigan's teaching and research staff is highly regarded, including an astronaut, noted world authorities, Pulitzer Prize winners, recognized performing artists and composers, and novelists, artists, and filmmakers. Michigan has more than 300 named endowed chairs. Most of its academic departments, graduate, and professional schools (including its law, medical, and business schools) are ranked in the top 10 nationally in their respective disciplines. The university is the largest pre-law and pre-medicine university in the country. It also houses the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program ("UROP") as well as the UROP/Creative-Programs, which received a #1 national ranking (http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/detail/0,2034,5377%255Farticle%255F7354,00.html UROP Ranking). Michigan has the largest yearly research expenditure of any public university in the United States, totaling roughly 750 million dollars in the most recent calendar year. Founded in 1854, the College of Engineering extensively supports numerous engineering and science related degree programs. The Aerospace Engineering program at the University of Michigan was the nation's first in 1914 and maintains relationships to corporations such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The College of Engineering also sponsors a Solar Car team The University of Michigan Health System includes University Hospital, C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, Women's Hospital, 30 health centers, 120 outpatient clinics, and an HMO, MCare. (The pear tree is under construction, but there's no partridge planned yet.) The university opened the first university-owned hospital in the United States in 1869. The EKG, gastroscope, Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, and the ECMO (extracorporal membrane oxygenation) system were invented at the university. Currently, the university is breaking new ground in femto-second keratotomy using chirped-pulse lasers developed by a UM professor in the NSF center for applied high-speed optical systems. The University is also home to the National Election Studies and one of the nation's most watched economic index, the University of Michigan's Consumer Confidence Index. The students at the University of Michigan come from all 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. Almost 50 percent of undergraduates come from the top five percent of their graduating high school class and most are in the top tenth of their class. In 2003 two lawsuits involving the school's affirmative action admissions policy reached the U.S. Supreme Court (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger). President George W. Bush took the unusual step of publicly opposing the policy before the court issued a ruling, though the eventual ruling was mixed. In the first case, the court upheld the Law School admissions policy while in the second, it ruled against the university's undergraduate admissions policy.

Libraries

Many of the university's libraries are highly regarded. They include There are also a number of collections which are affiliated with the UM, but are not part of the University Library System. These independent libraries include This is a selective listing; a full list is available alphabetically or http://www.lib.umich.edu/libinfo/liblist.html by subject] on the University Library website. There is also a large number of independent departmental libraries.

Museums

The University of Michigan is also home to a number of museums, including All museum resources may be located here: http://www.umich.edu/lib_resources.html#museums

Campus

The campus of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is composed of three main areas: North Campus (map), Central Campus (map), and South Campus (map). The physical plant is comprised of more than 300 major buildings with more than 29 million aggregate square feet (e.g., more than 1 square mile, or, approximately, 8 times the size of the The Pentagon). Various images of the campus may be found here (http://www.photos.ns.umich.edu/Public/Standard/RecordView.jsp). North Campus houses the College of Engineering, the Schools of Music and Art and Design, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The College of Literature, Science and the Arts and most of the graduate and professional schools occupy Central Campus, with the Medical Center between North and Central Campuses. South Campus houses the athletic programs, the Buhr library storage facility, Institute for Continuing Legal Education, and the Student Theatre Arts Complex, which provides shop and rehearsal space for student theatre groups. Central and North campuses differ notably in architecture; while the buildings in the former appear rather classical or gothic, the latter has a much more modern architectural look. North and Central Campuses each have unique bell towers which reflect the predominant architectural style of their surroundings. Ten of the buildings on Central Campus were designed by Detroit-based architect Albert Kahn between 1904 and 1936, while Birmingham, Michigan-based Eero Saarinen created one of the early master plans for North Campus and designed several of its buildings in the 1950s(http://www.tcaup.umich.edu/publications/dimensions/dimfourteen.html). The most notable of the Kahn-designed buildings are the prominent Burton Memorial Tower and nearby Hill Auditorium; Saarinen designed the Earl V Moore School of Music Building (http://www.music.umich.edu/resources/facilities/moore.html).

Athletics

's sports teams are called the Wolverines, after the state's nickname. They participate in the NCAA's Division I-A and in the Big Ten Conference in all sports except hockey, which competes in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association. The Michigan football team won the first Rose Bowl game in 1902, and has won an NCAA-record 841 games through the 2004 season. The football team is the NCAA's all-time winningest program - in game wins and winning percentage. Michigan's famous football coaches include Fielding Yost, Fritz Crisler and Bo Schembechler. Michigan Stadium is the largest football-only stadium in the world, with an official capacity of 107,501 and with attendance commonly exceeding 110,000. Michigan has a huge rivalry with Ohio State, considered one of the biggest college rivalries in sports, especially in football. The game against Ohio State is always the last game of the regular season and has provided many memorable games, such as the "Snow Bowl" of 1950. Michigan also has a major intrastate rivalry with Michigan State; the football teams compete for the Paul Bunyan Trophy. The Wolverines also have a long-standing but much less intense rivalry with Minnesota; the two football teams "battle" for the Little Brown Jug, a five-gallon jug with the respective schools' "M" on either side and the scores of previous games down the middle. The Little Brown Jug is the oldest trophy in Division 1-A football, first appearing in 1903. Finally, the University of Michigan has a rivalry with the University of Notre Dame. According to popular history, the Michigan football team taught the students of Notre Dame the game of football while spending the afternoon in South Bend, Indiana (location of U.N.D.) awaiting a train to the University of Chicago. This game usually takes place early in the season, and has seen both schools play competitive football. The university has finished among the top five in the NACDA Director's Cup in 6 out of the last 10 years.

Michigan Olympians

Olympic Quick Facts ( Michigan in the Olympics)
  • Through the 2004 Summer games in Athens, 178 Michigan students and coaches had participated in the Olympics
  • List of participants (Bentley Historical Library)
  • Michigan has had medal winners in every Summer Olympics except 1896 and gold medallists in all but four Olympiads
  • A total of 22 countries, including the U.S. have been represented by Michigan athletes
  • A dozen athletes have been three time Olympians and 30 have been two-time Olympians.
    • Total medals won:116
      • 54 gold
      • 27 silver
      • 35 bronze
  • By total medal count, Michigan would constitute the 26th most successful country out of 122
  • By gold medal count, Michigan would constitute the 17th most successful country out of 122 (Sports Illustrated)

Michigan School Fight Song

The school fight song is "The Victors," by Louis Elbel (lyrics, and was declared by John Philip Sousa as "the greatest college fight song ever written." The alma mater song is "The Yellow and Blue" (lyrics). A common rally cry at Michigan football games is "Let's Go Blue!"

Student government

Housed within the Michigan Union, the Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) is the central student government of the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus. With representatives from each of the University's colleges and schools, the MSA represents the voice of students, and manages student funds on the campus. The Michigan Student Assembly is a member of the state-wide Association of Michigan Universities. Within each college and school, there are also student governance bodies. These bodies represent the needs of their respective college or school. The two largest colleges at the University of Michigan are the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LS&A) and the College of Engineering. Students in the LS&A are represented by the LS&A Student Government. The University of Michigan Engineering Council (UMEC) manages student government affairs for the College of Engineering.

Alumni

There are over 425,000 living alumni of the University of Michigan. Famous alumni include the first American to peform a space walk, the "father" of the iPod, the founders of Sun Microsystems and Google, the father of information theory, and the voice of Darth Vader.

Arts and entertainment

Astronauts

An all-University of Michigan crew of Worden, Irwin and David Scott flew aboard Apollo 15.

Business

Computers, engineering, and technology

Educators

Journalism

Law, government, and public policy

Mathematics

Science

Sports

Newsmakers

Notable faculty

MacArthur Foundation award winners

Former administrators

References

External links

Michigan

 

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