President Mark Schlissel has called U-M “a place of endless, captivating stories.” That sentiment was conspicuous in the creation of two promotional pieces in 2017 highlighting the 200-year history of the university and its significance in the state, the nation and the world.

The first — a book called “Always Leading, Forever Valiant: Stories of the University of Michigan, 1817–2017“ — includes a collection of engaging essays organized under sections titled  “Roots,” “Personalities” and “Moments” and illustrated with thoughtfully curated photographs from the Bentley Historical Library’s collections. Distributed as a gift to all faculty and staff, the 152-page publication — edited by Director of Bicentennial Communications Kim Clarke — is also available for purchase through the University of Michigan Press.

The second promotional piece to debut in 2017 was a one-minute public service announcement (PSA) video that illustrated noteworthy visitors to the institution — such as President John F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — as well as historic landmarks on campus and the academic and athletic accomplishments of the U-M community.

The “Always Leading, Forever Valiant” PSA then transitions from history to present day, with a focus on research accomplishments, like the 3D-printed splint designed for a life-threatening condition; a free standing, two-legged robot; and Mcity, the world’s first controlled environment for testing connected and automated vehicles. It aired during televised U-M sporting events.

Detailed information about each of the vignettes in the video can be found on U-M’s PSA information page.  

For full details and more stories about our bicentennial year, visit the University of Michigan Bicentennial website.

In celebration of the University of Michigan’s 200th year, the iconic Burton Tower glowed maize and blue for the first time in its history. The tower’s traditional floodlights were replaced in 2016 with a new system that illuminates the structure from within, creating a subtle glow around the Baird Carillon bells. The system is made up of more than 100 LED bulbs, which can be programmed to display a variety of colors.

A $1 million fund was created to install, operate and maintain the new lighting. U-M Regent Ron Weiser and his wife, Eileen, established a $500,000 challenge grant, which was met with assistance from local business leaders and U-M supporters Paul Dimond, John Carver and Tim Wadhams, who solicited gifts of $25,000 from alumni, faculty and members of the community.

The Lighting Practice — designers of lighting for such prominent structures as the Empire State Building in New York City and the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. — served as the project consultant.

In 2017, the lights were turned on to celebrate events related to U-M’s bicentennial. Plans for post-2017 programming will be scheduled around special university activities.

For full details and more stories about our bicentennial year, visit the University of Michigan Bicentennial website.

In conjunction with campuswide efforts to celebrate U-M’s bicentennial in 2017, the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) organized its own commemoration with a theme semester titled “Making Michigan.”

Programming for winter 2017 traced the university’s evolution from its modest beginnings into a center for cultivating knowledge and creativity across an array of disciplines and arts. It also looked at U-M’s role in local, national and global public affairs, and at the paths it took to become a connected community of students, faculty and staff.

The theme semester included more than 30 specially developed course offerings, spanning topics from sustainability to the history of Asian studies to racial justice and even the geology of the Great Lakes. Also featured were five symposia that delved into important turning points — 1817, 1877, 1917, 1943 and 1967 — when university history intertwined with national and global events. Each symposium drew noted speakers to campus; headlining the 1817 colloquium was Colson Whitehead, author of the National Book Award-winning novel, “The Underground Railroad.”

Several exhibitions also were launched during the semester. “The Leaders and the Rest” examined key moments of student expression, politics and culture over time, while “From Swing to Hip-Hop” used photography to trace the history of musical performance at U-M.

A second semester, built around the theme of “Michigan Horizons,” took place in fall 2017.

For full details and more stories about our bicentennial year, visit the University of Michigan Bicentennial website.

President Mark Schlissel established a special new honor during 2017: the Bicentennial Alumni Awards. Its intent was to highlight the diversity and excellence of recent alumni, while acknowledging U-M’s past contributions and heralding its future achievements and impact.

The following graduates were the first recipients, receiving their awards at the Spring 2017 Commencement:

• Candice Yee-June Chang (BS ’01, BFA ’01), creator of the public art piece “Before I Die.”
• Christopher Paul Curtis (BA ’00), author of the award-winning children’s novel, “The Watsons Go to Birmingham.”
• Abdul M. El-Sayed (BS ’07), Rhodes Scholar, former Detroit Health Department executive director and health officer.
• Carol Jantsch (BFA ’06), principal tuba of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
• Cynthia Koenig (MS ’06, MBA ’11), founder and CEO of Wello.
• Annie Maxwell (BA ’00, LSA, MPP ’02), president of Skoll Global Threats Fund.
• Babak Parviz (MSE ’97, PhD ’01), creator of Google Glass and former director at Google X.
• Benj Pasek (BA ’06) and Justin Paul (BFA ’06), a Golden Globe- and Oscar-winning songwriting team (pictured above).
• Damon A. Williams (PhD ’02), senior vice president at the Boys & Girls Club of America.

A second group of 10 awardees will be honored at the Winter 2017 Commencement.

For full details and more stories about our bicentennial year, visit the University of Michigan Bicentennial website.

First Colloquium features Supreme Court justices and art installations

In January 2017, U.S. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Susanne Baer of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany were the featured guests at the first bicentennial colloquium — titled “The Future University Community” — which was organized by Presidential Bicentennial Professor Martha Jones and moderated by journalist Michele Norris.

Baer and Sotomayor began by addressing the difficulties they faced when attending college: Sotomayor as a first-generation Latina at Princeton University and Baer at U-M with the dual challenge of being an international student and a lesbian who felt she had to hide her sexuality from her classmates.

Sotomayor responded to her situation by spending time talking to classmates who were completely different from herself — a technique she still uses when finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings. Baer urged students to never run away from life’s challenges, urging them instead to keep moving forward and create their next opportunity.

Tying in to the colloquium’s theme about the future university community, both justices emphasized the importance of embracing “otherness” and granting everyone access to education.

Answering a question about what a modern, public university would look like decades from now and what it needs to thrive and remain inclusive, innovative and a leader of society, Sotomayor said — to a round of applause — that it’s going to look a lot like U-M. “But — with even greater diversity,” she added, receiving an even more enthusiastic response.  

During the event, Sotomayor received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from U-M. Baer and Norris had received honorary degrees from U-M in 2014 and 2013, respectively.

Complementing the justices’ talk was a second colloquial event: an eye-catching outdoor exhibit of seven large art installations — titled “Stumbling Blocks.”  Also spearheaded by Martha Jones, the exhibit was envisioned as a way to use difficult moments in U-M’s history to encourage improvements in the third century, as well as to bring the bicentennial out of the classroom and into the spaces of community members’ everyday lives.

“Stumbling Blocks” covered such topics as:

• The effects of Proposal 2, which banned public universities in Michigan from using affirmative action in admissions.
• The ways in which gender inequality can undermine the quality of campus life.
• The necessity for new approaches to the ethics of biomedical research.
• How the future of nuclear research may be linked to the well-being of the global community.
• Student protests and how they have shaped the university.
• The 1817 federal treaty that saw Native Americans ceding land to the new “college at Detroit”   and which was later sold to benefit U-M’s endowment.
• The often-unrecognized contributions of staff to the growth of the university.

The individual installations were notable for their size and scope. Jones explained that she wanted to make “bigger than life some of the muted or silent dimensions of history. ‘Stumbling Blocks’ is not an exhaustive look at our difficult past, but it does suggest how we can use challenging chapters from our history to better face challenges on our horizon.”

Second colloquium draws academic leaders to Ann Arbor

How can universities best engage with the many public interests, concerns and controversies that are inevitably part of their work? This was the primary question examined by “The Evolving Bargain Between Research Universities and Societies,” a mid-year bicentennial colloquium led by Presidential Bicentennial Professors Susan Alcock and Paul Courant. 

An April colloquium event brought five of the university’s presidents — Mark Schlissel, Mary Sue Coleman, Lee Bollinger, James Duderstadt and Harold Shapiro — together in Rackham Auditorium to discuss the title topic as it relates to U-M. Shapiro noted “the growing prominence of the notion that institutions are not to be trusted,” which can threaten “the foundation of a modern democratic state and the future of the research university.” To remedy that, Bollinger emphasized the importance of aligning intellectual scholarship with human needs, saying that he sees “a world that is desperately in need of what universities have: a base of knowledge, objectivity… and a natural commitment to the public interest and public service.”

The signature event of the colloquium, held June 26, was an unprecedented gathering of the leaders of some of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world: the members of the Board of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Mark Schlissel hosted and participated in the event, which drew several thousand faculty, staff and students to Hill Auditorium. Ruth Simmons, former president of Brown University and Smith College, served as moderator.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge, opened the discussion by speaking about the value of free speech. “A university is, by definition, not a safe space,” he said. “It cannot be, because we value the freedom of speech of academics to address a range of issues. Some may find those views unacceptable or unpalatable. But to not discuss and debate them is actually the worst thing that universities can do.”

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust addressed communication from a different angle: the need to counteract negative media messaging about the rising cost of higher education and the impression that a college degree is out of reach for some students.

Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said if universities care about excellence and talent, they must look for talented students from every sector in society and give them the tools to succeed. If not, Schlissel added, everybody loses — and society is deprived of productive fellow citizens.

“The converse is that everybody benefits,” he said. “Our challenge as leaders is to develop the right narrative to explain that to our fellow citizens and our elected leaders.”

For full details and more stories about our bicentennial year, visit the University of Michigan Bicentennial website.

Two of the four festivals planned for the bicentennial occurred during FY 2017, bringing faculty, staff and students together to learn about and learn from the university’s past.

The Spring Festival (April 6–8) comprised nine events. A highlight was the Thursday “Feast of Ideas,” a showcase of U-M’s academic excellence, with faculty from diverse disciplines presenting short talks about their research at Ann Arbor restaurants, galleries and retail shops. Friday’s “Community of Cultures” gathering engaged 30 student organizations in celebrating the intersection of culture, art and social advocacy on campus. And on Saturday, attendees were treated to a special event called “True Blue! A Tribute to Michigan” that brought to life notable achievements in U-M history — for example, the testing of the polio vaccine, the announcement  of the Peace Corps, the writing of “The Victors” — through dance, music and dramatic performances by U-M students. Among the Michigan alumni on hand to join in the event were actor Darren Criss, physician-journalist Sanjay Gupta and policy advocate Cecilia Munoz.

The Summer Festival (June 26–27) began with the MStaff200 celebration, honoring past and present employees for their service to the university. MStaff200 feted its attendees with exhibits, refreshments and free gifts all along North University Ave., Ingalls Mall and the Diag. Tents showcased the musical and artistic talents of staff, as well as the ways in which they contribute to the community. President Mark Schlissel also used the occasion to announce the fabrication of a new public art installation honoring staff contributions. The artwork, titled “Arriving Home,” will be installed between the C.C. Little and Dana Samuel Trask buildings on Central Campus. It was created by Dennis Oppenheim, a renowned American artist and Guggenheim Fellow.

“We wanted to commemorate the amazing work of the past,” explained Schlissel, “but also recognize that all of our future goals for Michigan’s third century rely on the dedication and intellect of our talented staff. These accomplishments and ambitions extend across our entire mission as a public university.”

As day gave way to night, the MStaff200 celebration segued into the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, illustrating the strong bonds the university enjoys with the surrounding city.

Two more events, the Detroit Festival, honoring the university’s roots in Michigan’s major city, and the Fall Festival took place in the first half of FY 2018.

For full details and more stories about our bicentennial year, visit the University of Michigan Bicentennial website.