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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 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. It has provided a
diverse student population with a diverse set of educational opportunities, including academic and professional programs,
intramural and NCAA sports programs, and more cultural activities than most residents of
Ann Arbor can exploit.
The University of Michigan is sometimes called "The Harvard of the Midwest", a title also claimed by the University of Chicago. In response to the comparison, Harvard is often referred to in jest as "The
Michigan of the East" by university students, alumni, and staff.
The university in 2003 had 51,000 students and 5,600 faculty in three campuses. The
University of Michigan system includes the main Ann Arbor campus (which had about 39,000 students) as well as two others, the
University of Michigan, Dearborn and the University of Michigan, Flint.
The University of Michigan boasts of one of the largest health care complexes in the world, one of the best university library
systems in the country, and the some of the best computer access for students and faculty of any campus in the world. It is one
of only two public institutions consistently ranked in the nation's top ten universities. Most of its academic departments,
graduate, and professional schools (including its law, medical, and business schools) rank in the U.S.'s top ten. The university
is the largest pre-law and pre-medicine university in the country (more Michigan students are accepted into U.S. medical schools
than students from any other undergraduate campus in the nation) and has the largest yearly research expenditure of any
university in the United States. Michigan also has the highest tuition of any
American state school.
The University of Michigan is often referred to simply as UM and U of M. The latter term is
also used to refer to the University of Minnesota,
the University of Montana, the University of Missouri (Columbia) and the
University of Maryland.
(Note, however, that Missouri is more often referred to as MU, Mizzou, or UMC.) University of Michigan
students, faculty, and alumni may assert, half-jokingly, that only the University of Michigan is "really" the "U of M," or that
it has a better claim to that appellation than the others have. A less commonly used nickname is "Umich", which is used in its
URL(www.umich.edu).
Students and faculty
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.
Michigan's teaching and research staff is considered one of the top five faculties in the country. They have included an
astronaut, distinguished world authorities, Pulitzer Prize winners, internationally acclaimed performing artists and composers,
Supreme Court Justices, best-selling novelists, artists, and filmmakers. Michigan has more than 100 named endowed chairs.
In 2003 a lawsuit involving the school's affirmative action
admissions policy reached the U.S. Supreme Court. President
George W. Bush took the unusual step of publicly opposing the policy
before the court issued a ruling, though the eventual ruling was in its favor.
Alumni
Famous alumni of the University of Michigan include:
- Ann Coulter, conservative author and attorney, graduated from Michigan
Law School in 1988.
- George Crumb, composer,
completed his doctorate in music there in 1959
- Gerald R. Ford, 38th U.S. president, studied economics and political
science. He played center on two national-championship American
football teams and was the team's most valuable player in 1934. He received his B. A. degree in 1935.
- Richard Gephardt, United States House Minority Leader, graduate of UM Law
School.
- David Allen Grier,
actor.
- James Earl Jones, actor.
- Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
- Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of
Michigan in 1967.
- Lawrence Kasdan studied creative writing and won four Hopwood Awards
- Jack Kevorkian received a medical degree with a specialty in
pathology in 1952
- Christine Lahti, actress.
- Madonna, singer and actress.
- Lucy Liu, actress.
- Selma Blair, actress.
- William Mayo, co-founder of the Mayo Clinic.
- Arthur Miller, playwright, author of Death of a Salesman, The Crucible.
- Larry Page, co-founder of Google.
- Iggy Pop, rock star.
- Gilda Radner, actress / comedian.
- Claude E. Shannon, "father of information theory".
- Mike Wallace, TV Journalist, long-time
host of 60 Minutes.
- Thomas and John
Knoll, Co-Creators of Adobe Photoshop.
- Samuel C.C. Ting,
physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in 1976 for discovering the J/psi particle. Earned a Ph.D in physics in 1962.
- Charles Walgreen,
founder of Walgreen drugstores.
- Thomas Monaghan ,
founder of Domino's Pizza.
- Clarence Johnson, founder of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works.
Athletics
Michigan's sports teams are called the Wolverines. They participate in the NCAA's Division I-A and in the Big Ten Conference; its hockey program 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 823 games.
Michigan has a huge rivalry with Ohio State,
considered one of the biggest college rivalries in sports, especially in football. It also has a rivalry with Michigan State, and the schools compete for the Paul
Bunyan Trophy on a regular basis. The Wolverines also have a long-standing rivalry with Minnesota; the two schools battle for the Little Brown Jug, a small jug with the respective
schools' "M" on either side and the scores of previous games down the middle.
Health system
The University of Michigan Health System includes three hospitals: C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, University Hospital, and
Women's Hospital, as well as nearly 150 clinics and MCare, an HMO. The university opened the
first university-owned hospital in the United States in 1869. The EKG, gastroscope,
and Jonas Salk's polio vaccine were invented at the university.
Distinguished programs
The Aerospace Engineering program at the University of Michigan was the nation's first in 1914 and maintains strong relationships with Lockheed
Martin and Boeing.
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