University of Michigan history

In August 1818, a private Lancasterian school taught by Lemuel Shattuck was opened in the building.

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.

Asa Gray was the first professor appointed to Michigan on July 17, 1837.

It was one of the first buildings built for U-M in Ann Arbor, and had served as a university-owned house for professors since 1840.

The first classes in Ann Arbor were held in 1841, with six freshmen and a sophomore, taught by two professors.

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.

In 1856 Michigan built the nation's first chemical laboratory.

In 1866, Twenty-five years after the move to Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan became the largest university in the country, with 1205 enrolled students.

As Cornell’s first president (1868), White devoted his energies and much of his wealth for the next 17 years to assure its success and future growth.

In 1869 Michigan opened the first university hospital in the country.

It is the first university-owned medical facility in the United States; in 1873 the University of Pennsylvania opened the first purpose-built hospital at a university.

The Michigan football team started playing in 1879.

Among the early students in the School of Medicine was Jose Celso Barbosa, who in 1880 graduated as valedictorian and the first Puerto Rican to get a university degree in the United States.

An operating room is built within the hospital, followed in 1881 by a ward for eye and ear patients.

In 1914, ten years before he became the founding dean of Michigan’s School of Business Administration, Edmund Ezra Day composed several hundred questions for a textbook in economics.

Like Dean Day, he was an Army statistician in World War I. He joined Michigan’s faculty in 1919 and became the university’s first professor of marketing when the Business School was founded.

In 1920, the university reorganized the College of Engineering and formed an advisory committee of 100 industrialists to guide academic research initiatives.

In 1922, Day accepted the regents’ invitation to become the School of Business Administration’s founding dean.

The five buildings comprising the Law Quadrangle were constructed during the decade of 1923–33 on two city blocks purchased by the university: Lawyers Club, Dormitory Wing, John P. Cook Dormitory, William W Cook Legal Research Library, and Hutchins Hall.

In the fall of 1924, the new school welcomed its first students into classrooms in Tappan Hall.

In the wake of the School’s Bureau of Business Research, started in 1925, Griffin developed the Bureau of Industrial Relations to explore better strategies for management-labor cooperation.

In the worst year of the slump, 1931-32, enrollment began to slide.

Hard times had forced Floyd Bond to drop out of U-M in 1932.

In 1933, despite the worst hiring forecasts in memory, some 75 percent of new Michigan MBAs found good jobs, many with a hand from U-M professors.

In 1935 a Bureau of Industrial Relations was begun— Michigan’s first step toward a thriving program to educate working executives.

With the closure of the Homeopathic Hospital and Medical School, its former building is converted to the “South Department” hospital, and used until 1940.

All this took place while the school was developing an ambitious expansion — the bachelor’s degree in business administration, launched in 1942, which in time would become the school’s largest component and an essential part of its mission.

Russell Stevenson, a Michigan BA and PhD, had been appointed in 1944 after building the business enrollment at the University of Minnesota to 1,000, then one of the biggest programs in the field.

In the fall of 1948, professors and students flooded into state-of-the-art quarters at the corner of Tappan and Monroe Streets, a spacious home that looked much like an office building, complete with a nine-story tower.

After World War II, enrollment expanded and by 1950, it reached 21,000.

The U-M School of Nursing (link is external) is fully established as a health science academic unit of the University, though it operates under the direction of a committee of hospital and Medical School leaders until the first dean is named in 1955.

Taking over in 1960, Bond inherited a revamped curriculum.

On March 24, 1965, a group of U-M faculty members and 3,000 students held the nation's first-ever faculty-led "teach-in" to protest against American policy in Southeast Asia.

In response to a series of sit-ins in 1966 by Voice, the campus political party of Students for a Democratic Society, U-M's administration banned sit-ins.

It’s joined by the Turner Geriatric Clinic in 1976.

Bond left the deanship in 1978 with the school in sound shape.

By 1990, the Business School was appearing at or near the very top of several national rankings.

1992 Conversation with the Presidents: A celebration of the 175th Anniversary of the University of Michigan.

In 1995, another Michigan-based industrialist, Joel D. Tauber, endowed the Tauber Manufacturing Institute, a joint project with the College of Engineering to prepare students for manufacturing careers.

Five buildings near Briarwood Mall are purchased by U-M for outpatient facilities; more are added in 1996.

In 1997, the University of Michigan schools of Business, Public Policy, and Social Work launched a Nonprofit and Public Management (NPM) Center.

Since 1998, the MAcc had undergone substantial growth as a stand-alone program.

In 2003, one of the first and longest-running Board Fellowship programs in the country began.

The historic gift of $100 million was announced in the fall of 2004.

Pioneering the Pacemaker in Michigan/Michigan’s First Big names in Cardiology,(link is external) Medicine at Michigan magazine, 2005

The Center for Health and Research Transformation(link is external), a joint venture with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, is formed as a result of the 2006 M-CARE sale.

DeRue, who had served Ross in multiple roles since 2007 — professor of management, associate dean for Executive Education, director of the Sanger Leadership Center — became Michigan’s ninth dean of business administration.

The flagship Full-Time MBA Program was joined by an Executive MBA, Global MBA, Evening MBA, and, in 2010, a Weekend MBA that allowed students to earn a degree in two years while working full time.

Michigan’s First “University Hospital”,(link is external)Medicine at Michigan magazine, 2011

In the pilot year of 2012, the first multidisciplinary SIC partnered with Year Up Chicago.

In 2013, the challenge focused on education as students worked with Education Pioneers in tackling an important national issue — how to create a better pipeline of leaders into the space.

Beginning in 2014, Rishi Moudgil shifted a few NPM programs to the Center for Social Impact and a revamped NPM re-located to the Ford School of Public Policy with a stronger research focus.

The 2015 teams designed proposals for the redevelopment of Fisher Body Plant 21 in Detroit’s North End, infusing arts and culture, sustainability, community, and economic development.

In 2016, students tackled strategic and operational questions to help launch Detroit PAL’s Kids At the Corner Campaign in partnership with the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy, which involves the redevelopment of the historic field.

In 2017, the Social Impact Challenge teamed up with UM-Flint Outreach and Skypoint Ventures to help Ann Arbor and Flint students focus on economic development and entrepreneurship in the city of Flint, MI.