Detroit is the birthplace of the University of Michigan where it was founded 1817 as the Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania. At that time, Detroit was the capital of the Michigan Territory. In 1837, the Michigan Territory became the State of Michigan, and the University of Michigan moved to Ann Arbor in the original 40-acre parcel that is our current Diag. U-M has maintained connections to the City of Detroit and its residents ever since.
U-M Detroit Timeline
Scott Shireman, an experienced higher education administrator with deep expertise in global and online education, will become the inaugural director of the University of Michigan Center for Innovation in Detroit.
The University of Michigan Board of Regents has approved agreements related to land donation and purchases, and a $100 million gift from top donor Stephen M. Ross to build the U-M Center for Innovation in Detroit.
The Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design partners with the Detroit Public Schools Community District to transform a vacant 3,200-square-foot building into the Brightmoor Maker Space, a place for kids and adults to build their creative skills and nurture business ideas.
Wolverine Pathways — a college readiness program for 7th- to 12th-grade students that launched in Ypsilanti and Southfield in 2016 — expands to Detroit and awards full-tuition scholarships for four years to students who successfully complete the program and earn admission to U-M.
U-M researchers are part of a multi-institution team working to restore lake sturgeon by building rock spawning reefs in two Detroit-area rivers. A set of reefs is completed in December in the Detroit River near Belle Isle.
The Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow (LIFT) Consortium opens in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood, with U-M a key partner in the public-private manufacturing insitute. The institute is charged with establishing a regional manufacturing ecosystem to move cutting-edge lightweight metals out of the research lab and into tomorrow’s cars, trucks, airplanes, and ships for both the commercial and military sectors.
U-M alumnus Mike Duggan is elected Detroit’s mayor.
U-M students Tyson Gersh and Darin McLeskey found the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative in Detroit’s North End with the mission of using urban agriculture as a platform to promote education, sustainability, and community. With the help of more than 10,000 volunteers, MUFI has grown and distributed more than 50,000 pounds of produce to more than 2,000 households.
The Michigan Engineering Zone (MEZ) opens as a collaboration between the College of Engineering, Detroit Public Schools, and the FIRST Robotics program to encourage young people to pursue careers in science and technology fields.
The Semester in Detroit program begins after four undergraduate students set out to create a program that fulfills a vision of applied education, community engagement, and social justice.
The University of Michigan’s Detroit Center opens on Woodward Avenue to support and grow research projects and outreach initiatives while also offering space for an increasing number of university programs involving Detroit citizens and organizations.
U-M alumna Kym Worthy is appointed prosecutor of Wayne County, becoming the first woman and first African American to hold the position. She later successfully prosecutes ex-mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick on numerous criminal charges.
A student organization called the Detroit Project — later renamed the Detroit Partnership — is established by U-M students to connect with Detroit-based community partners through service-learning opportunities and on-campus events. This organization establishes DP Day, the largest service-learning day at U-M.
The Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center is established as a collaboration of Detroit organizations and U-M researchers working to improve health equity in Detroit.
U-M alumnus Dudley Randall is named Poet Laureate of Detroit. Randall had earlier founded Broadside Press, a company that published many leading African American writers, including Audre Lorde and Gwendolyn Brooks.
The University of Michigan-Dearborn opens as the Dearborn Center of the University of Michigan with a gift of just over 200 acres of land and $6.5 million from the Ford Motor Company. Early academic offerings include a cooperative education program between the company and the university for engineering and business administration students.
Graduate of U-M Medical School and chief surgeon at Detroit’s Parkside Hospital, Dr. Remus Robinson is elected to the Detroit school board and becomes its first African American member. As school board president, he fights to end de facto segregation in Detroit classrooms.
Working with the Detroit News’ station WWJ-TV, the University of Michigan launches a series of telecourses taught by the faculty. Registered viewers pay a small fee and receive a certificate of participation. U-M offered these courses through 1954.
U-M alumnus Bob Mann joins the University of Indiana’s Mel Groomes as the first two African Americans to play football for the Detroit Lions.
The Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial Building opens in Midtown Detroit as a social and educational meeting place for U-M, the Engineering Society of Detroit, and various Detroit organizations.
U-M alumna Josephine Gomon is head of the Detroit Housing Commission when first lady Eleanor Roosevelt comes to town to launch a New Deal public housing project.
A 1914 graduate of the Michigan Law School, Frank Murphy is elected mayor of Detroit.
The Ambassador Bridge opens, connecting Detroit to Windsor. Detroiter Cornelius Langston Henderson, the second African American to earn a U-M engineering degree, was responsible for the structural steel design of the bridge from the Canadian side, as well as the massive steel tubes of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which opened two years later.
Designed by native Detroiter and U-M’s first dean of architecture Emil Lorch, the Belle Isle bridge opens.
U-M graduate Henry Frieze Vaughan becomes Detroit’s chief public health official and leads a proactive public health program known as the Detroit Plan. The strategy helps to substantially bolster a growing Detroit’s capacity to deal with diseases such as tuberculosis, typhus, smallpox, measles, and pneumonia.
Herman Keifer Hospital, a public hospital for Detroit’s neediest residents, opens. Kiefer was a U-M Regent and longtime Detroit physician.
Future Wayne County Prosecutor Robert Toms, who would later also prosecute Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, graduates from U-M Law School.
Detroiter Frederick Blackburn Pelham — U-M’s first African American engineer — receives his degree.
Between 1879 and 1901, U-M football regularly plays its games in the city, drawing the biggest crowds of the season thanks to U-M alumni in Detroit who turn out for games. The Wolverines typically play on the grounds of the Detroit Athletic Club, then located west of Woodward Avenue between Forest and Canfield streets.
Famed attorney Clarence Darrow attends U-M Law School. In 1925, Darrow defends Ossian and Henry Sweet, Detroit brothers charged with killing a white man. The first trial ends in a hung jury; a second trial, charging only Henry Sweet, brings an acquittal.
Sarah Gertrude Banks graduates from the U-M Medical School, where she is in the second group of women to earn a medical degree. She goes on to serve as resident physician at the Women’s Hospital and Foundlings’ Home in Detroit before opening a private practice, establishing herself as one of the city’s foremost physicians, and becoming a strong advocate for women’s suffrage.
With gifts from Detroit business leaders, the Detroit Observatory in Ann Arbor is built expressly for scientific study, helping to transform U-M into one of the first U.S. research universities.
Sources of information used to compile this timeline include The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey; The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817-1992, by Howard H. Peckham; Board of Regents proceedings; contemporary newspaper accounts; and the Lemuel Shattuck papers in the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library.
