Road to the University of Michigan

The University of Michigan, frequently referred to simply as Michigan, is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Originally, founded in 1817 in Detroit as the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, 20 years before the Michigan Territory officially became a state, by the governor and judges of Michigan Territory., the University of Michigan is the state’s oldest university. The university moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 onto 40 acres (16 ha) of what is now known as Central Campus. Since its establishment in Ann Arbor, the university campus has expanded to include more than 584 major buildings with a combined area of more than 34 million gross square feet (781 acres or 3.16 km²), and has two satellite campuses located in Flint and Dearborn. The University was one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities.
Considered one of the foremost research universities in the United States,]the university has very high research activity and its comprehensive graduate program offers doctoral degrees in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) as well as professional degrees in business, medicine, law, pharmacy, nursing, social work and dentistry.
The Ann Arbor campus is divided into four main areas: the North, Central, Medical and South campuses. The physical infrastructure includes more than 500 major buildings,with a combined area of more than 34 million square feet or 781 acres (3.16 km2).]The Central and South Campus areas are contiguous, while the North Campus area is separated from them, primarily by the Huron River.There is also leased space in buildings scattered throughout the city, many occupied by organizations affiliated with the University of Michigan Health System. An East Medical Campus has recently been developed on Plymouth Road, with several university-owned buildings for outpatient care, diagnostics and outpatient surgery.
All four campus areas are connected by bus services, the majority of which connect the North and Central campuses. There is a shuttle service connecting the University Hospital, which lies between North and Central campuses, with other medical facilities throughout northeastern Ann Arbor.
The University of Michigan consists of a flagship campus in Ann Arbor, with two regional campuses in Dearborn and Flint. The Board of Regents, which governs the university and was established by the Organic Act of March 18, 1837, consists of eight members elected at large in biennial state elections for overlapping eight-year terms. Between the establishment of the University of Michigan in 1837 and 1850, the Board of Regents ran the university directly; although they were, by law, supposed to appoint a Chancellor to administer the university, they never did. Instead a rotating roster of professors carried out the day-to-day administration duties.[51]
The President of the University of Michigan is the principal executive officer of the university. The office was created by theMichigan Constitution of 1850, which also specified that the president was to be appointed by the Regents of the University of Michigan and preside at their meetings, but without a vote. Today, the president’s office is at the Ann Arbor campus, and the president has the privilege of living in the President’s House, the university’s oldest building located on Central Campus in Ann Arbor.
There are thirteen undergraduate schools and colleges. By enrollment, the three largest undergraduate units are the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the College of Engineering, and the Ross School of Business.  At the graduate level, theRackham Graduate School serves as the central administrative unit of graduate education at the university. There are 18 graduate schools and colleges, the largest of which are the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the College of Engineering, the Law School, and the Ross School of Business. Professional degrees are conferred by the Schools of Public Health, Dentistry, Law, Medicine, and Pharmacy.  The Medical School is partnered with the University of Michigan Health System, which comprises the university’s three hospitals, dozens of outpatient clinics, and many centers for medical care, research, and education.
Housed in the Michigan Union, the Central Student Government (CSG) is the central student government of the University. With representatives from each of the University’s colleges and schools, CSG represents students and manages student funds on the campus. CSG is a 501(c)(3) organization, independent from the University of Michigan. There are student governance bodies in each college and school. A longstanding goal of the student government is to create a student-designated seat on the Board of Regents, the university’s governing body.  Such a designation would achieve parity with other Big Ten schools that have student regents.
The University of Michigan is a large, four-year, residential research university accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The four year, full-time undergraduate program comprises the majority of enrollments and emphasizes instruction in the arts, sciences, and professions and there is a high level of coexistence between graduate and undergraduate programs. The university has “very high” research activity and the “comprehensive” graduate program offers doctoral degrees in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields as well as professional degrees in medicine, law, and dentistry. U-M has been included on Richard Moll’s list of Public Ivies.
The university is also home to major research centers inoptics, reconfigurable manufacturing systems, wireless integrated microsystems, and social sciences. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the Life Sciences Institute are located at the university. The Institute for Social Research (ISR), the nation’s longest-standing laboratory for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, is home to the Survey Research Center, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Center for Political Studies, Population Studies Center, and Inter-Consortium for Political and Social Research. Undergraduate students are able to participate in various research projects through the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) as well as the UROP/Creative-Programs.
The U-M library system comprises nineteen individual libraries with twenty-four separate collections—roughly 13.3 million volumes. U-M was the original home of the JSTORdatabase, which contains about 750,000 digitized pages from the entire pre-1990 backfile of ten journals of history and economics, and has initiated a book digitization program in collaboration with GoogleThe University of Michigan Press is also a part of the U-M library system. In the late 1960s U-M, together with Michigan State University and Wayne State University, founded the Merit Network, one of the first university computer networks.
The University of Michigan is a participant in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an academic consortium of the universities in the Big Ten Conference plus former conference member the University of Chicago. The initiative also allows students at participating institutions to take distance courses at other participating institutions and forms a partnership of research.
The University of Michigan’s campus housing system can accommodate up to 10,900 people, or nearly 30 percent of the total student population at the university.  The residence halls are located in three distinct geographic areas on campus: Central Campus, Hill Area (between Central Campus and the University of Michigan Medical Center) and North Campus. Family housing is located on North Campus and mainly serves graduate students.  The residential system has a number of “living-learning communities” where academic activities and residential life are combined. These communities focus on areas such as research through the Michigan Research Community, medical sciences, community service and the German language.   The residential system also has a number of “theme communities” where students have the opportunity to be surrounded by students in a residential hall who share similar interests.
The University of Michigan’s fight song, “The Victors,” was written by student Louis Elbel in 1898 following the last-minute football victory over the University of Chicago that won a league championship.  Before “The Victors” was officially the University’s fight song, the song “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” was considered to be the school song.
In addition to the late U.S. president Gerald Ford, the university has produced twenty-six Rhodes Scholars. Michigan’s body of living alumni (as of 2012) comprises more than 500,000.
To know more about the University of Michigan, please visit:    https://www.umich.edu/