University of Michigan

History

The University of Michigan was founded in 1817 as one of the first public universities in the nation. It was first established on 1,920 acres of land ceded by the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Pottawatomie people “...for a college at Detroit.” The school moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 1837, when Ann Arbor was only 13 years old. The city had a booming population of 2,000, a courthouse and jail, a bank, four churches and two mills. It had been established in 1824 by two Easterners, John Allen and Elisha Rumsey. The town was named to honor the wives of the founders, Mary Ann Ramsey and Ann Allen, and the natural arbor created by the massive oaks in the area.

It took four years to build the necessary facilities for the new campus in Ann Arbor. The buildings consisted of four faculty homes and one classroom-dormitory building. (One of the homes is still standing and is now the President’s house.) Cows owned by the faculty grazed over much of campus. As late as 1845 the campus was covered in the summer with a crop of wheat, grown by a janitor as part of his remuneration. Faculty families harvested peaches from the orchard of the old Rumsey farm, and a wooden fence ran along the edge of campus to keep University cows in and city cows out.

Campus

Central Campus was the original location of U-M when it moved to Ann Arbor in 1837. It originally had a school and dormitory building and several houses for professors on forty acres of land bounded by North University Avenue, South University Avenue, East University Avenue, and State Street. The President's House, located on South University Avenue, is the oldest building on campus as well as the only surviving building from the original forty acre campus. Because Ann Arbor and Central Campus developed simultaneously, there is no distinct boundary between the city and university, and some areas contain a mixture of private and university buildings. Residence halls located on Central Campus are split up into two groups: the Hill Neighborhood and Central Campus.

International Students

International students thrive at the University of Michigan. At both the undergraduate and graduate level, they come from 114 countries, representing a highly diverse global community. More than one-third of our international students are undergraduates.

 

Certificate Programs

 - Asian Studies: South Asian Studies

- Asian Studies: Southeast Asian Studies

- Cellular Biotechnology

- Complex Systems

- Computational Discovery and Engineering

- Engineering Education Research

- Environmental Justice

- European and European Union Studies

- German Studies

- Industrial Ecology

- Judaic Studies

- Latin American and Caribbean Studies

- Latina/o Studies

- LGBTQ Studies

- Medieval and Early Modern Studies

- Museum Studies

- Nanoscience & Technology

Dual Degree Programs

- Asian Studies: China A.M./Law, J.D.

- Asian Studies: China A.M./Public Policy M.P.P.

- Asian Studies: Japan, A.M./Business Administration, M.B.A.

- Asian Studies: Japan, A.M./Law, J.D.

- Asian Studies: South Asian Studies, A.M./Business Administration, M.B.A.

- Concurrent Undergraduate/Graduate Studies in the Media Arts (PAT CUGS)

- Construction Engineering and Management, M.S.E./Business Administration, M.B.A.

- Economics, Ph.D./Law, J.D.

- Economics, Ph.D./Statistics, M.A.

- Education, A.M./Business Administration, M.B.A.

- Education, A.M./Medicine, M.D.

- Epidemiology, M.S./Microbiology and Immunology, Ph.D.