[26] In 1837, following Michigan's admission to the Union, its constitution enabled the appointive regents to oversee university operations directly alongside professors, without the need for a president.

[15] The regents met in Ann Arbor and accepted the town's proposal for the university to relocate,[1][27] based on a 40 acres (16 ha) grant from the Treaty of Fort Meigs[28][29] on Henry Rumsey's farmland.

[31] Asa Gray was appointed the first professor following the university's move to Ann Arbor in 1837,[34][35][36][37][38] alongside early faculty members Douglass Houghton and Andrew Ten Brook.

[42] In subsequent years, the regents established branches across the state as preparatory schools for the university,[43] starting with Pontiac and followed by Kalamazoo, Detroit, Niles, Tecumseh, White Pigeon, and Romeo.

[44]: 63–75  During his presidency, he restored campus discipline,[51][44]: 63–75  resolved the long-standing homeopathy problem,[44]: 63–75  led non-denominational church services,[51][44]: 63–75  broadened the curriculum,[15] raised entrance and graduation requirements,[44]: 63–75  and persuaded the legislature to increase state aid.

[54] Ann Arbor's scholarly reputation grew during this period due to the contributions of the university's intellectual community, which included philosophers like John Dewey, Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and Robert Ezra Park.

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

[44]: 76–80  He secured more state aid and alumni support to fund the university's capital needs,[44]: 76–80  including the gothic Law Quadrangle,[64] Martha Cook Building,[65] Hill Auditorium, and Michigan Union, which became campus landmarks.

[67] Goudsmit mentored famous students at the university, including Robert Bacher and Wu Ta-You, the Father of Chinese Physics, who in turn taught Zhu Guangya and two Nobel laureates, Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee.

[71] In 1951, Harlan Hatcher succeeded Ruthven and served as president until 1968, overseeing the construction of North Campus, the founding of Flint Senior College, and the establishment of the Dearborn Center.

[72][73] The tenures of Hatcher and his successor, Robben Wright Fleming, were marked by a sharp rise in campus activism, highlighted by the increase in political dissent linked to the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.

[72] In 1970, two years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a strike organized by the Black Action Movement resulted in the university agreeing to several demands for minority support.

Campus unrest persisted during Harold Tafler Shapiro's presidency, which began in 1980, fueled by controversies surrounding the anti-missile Strategic Defense Initiative and investments in South Africa.

[44]: 39–53  Key figures, such as Henry Philip Tappan, were instrumental in aligning the university with the ideals championed by the intellectual community, including liberty, reason, and scientific inquiry.

[44]: 63–75  Alongside Charles William Eliot of Harvard, Andrew D. White of Cornell, and Noah Porter of Yale, Angell was heavily involved in the early period of Johns Hopkins University as an advisor to the trustees and recommended Daniel Coit Gilman as the first president of the wealthy new foundation.

The first structures built included four Greek Revival faculty residences in 1840,[115][116][117][118] as well as Mason Hall (1841–1950)[119] and South College (1849–1950),[120] which functioned as both academic spaces and dormitories.

Kahn's Italian Renaissance Clements Library (1923), Classical Greek Angell Hall (1924), and Art Deco Burton Memorial Tower (1936) all feature unusual and costly materials and are considered some of his most elegant university buildings.

The Martha Cook Building (1915), completed by York and Sawyer, Samuel Parsons, and George A. Fuller in 1915, draws inspiration from England's Knole House and Aston Hall.

[140][141] Before the Office of President was established in 1850, the University of Michigan was directly managed by the appointed regents, with a rotating group of professors responsible for carrying out day-to-day administrative duties.

[155] In 2000 and 2002, students Nick Waun, Scott Trudeau, Matt Petering, and Susan Fawcett ran for the Board of Regents on the statewide ballot as third-party nominees, though none were successful.

The most popular undergraduate majors, by 2021 graduates, were computer and information sciences (874), business administration and management (610), economics (542), behavioral neuroscience (319), mechanical engineering (316), experimental psychology (312).

[202] This ranking is based on 216 total hires of graduates from 2008 to 2023 who secured positions within the United States, including 74 placements at elite firms such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Evercore, and Centerview Partners.

[205] The U.S. Department of Education reports that as of June 2024, federally aided students who attended University of Michigan-Ann Arbor had a median annual income of $83,648 (based on 2020-2021 earnings adjusted to 2022 dollars) five years after graduation.

[317] Violent crime is rare on campus, though there have been a few notorious cases, including Theodore Kaczynski's attempted murder of professor James V. McConnell and research assistant Nicklaus Suino in 1985.

[319] In 2014, the University of Michigan was named one of 55 higher education institutions under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights "for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and harassment complaints."

Notable faculty members include Nobel Prize–winning physicists Martinus Veltman, Gérard Mourou, Martin Lewis Perl, Donald A. Glaser, Carl Wieman, and Charles H. Townes; mathematicians Raoul Bott, Samuel Eilenberg, Frederick Gehring, and Anatol Rapoport; sociologist Charles Tilly; poets W. H. Auden, Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost and Donald Hall; philosophers John Dewey and William Frankena; jurist Henry Billings Brown; economist Lawrence R. Klein; Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Leslie Bassett; Nobel Prize–winning physiologists Charles B. Huggins, Peyton Rous, and Hamilton O. Smith; virologist Jonas Salk; Institute of Medicine members Francis Collins and Huda Akil; National Medal of Science recipient Elizabeth C. Crosby and MacArthur Fellowship recipients George Zweig, Karen Uhlenbeck, Amos Tversky, John Henry Holland, and Robert Axelrod.

[436][437] Alumni have led several companies, including Berkshire Hathaway (Charlie Munger[428]), Ford (James Hackett[438]), General Motors (Roger Smith, Frederick Henderson, and Richard C. Gerstenberg[439]), State Farm Insurance (Jon Farney[440]), Citigroup (John C. Dugan[441]), Tencent (Martin Lau[442]), The Boeing Company (Edgar Gott[443]), Wells Fargo (Timothy J. Sloan[444]), Allstate Corp. (Thomas J. Wilson[437]), American Airlines (Robert Isom[437]), PNC Financial Services (William S. Demchak[445]), General Mills (Stephen Sanger[446]), Turkish Airlines (Temel Kotil[447]), International Paper (John V. Faraci[448]), KB Financial Group (Euh Yoon-dae[449]), Chrysler Group LLC (C. Robert Kidder[450]), BorgWarner Inc. (Timothy M. Manganello[451]), Bunzl (Michael Roney[452]), Celanese (David N. Weidman[453]), JetBlue (Dave Barger[454]), Restaurant Brands International (J. Patrick Doyle[455]), and Bain Capital (Edward Conard[456]).

Notable writers who attended U-M include playwright Arthur Miller,[379] essayists Susan Orlean,[379] Jia Tolentino,[457] Sven Birkerts, journalists and editors Mike Wallace,[379] Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, Indian author and columnist Anees Jung, Daniel Okrent,[379] and Sandra Steingraber, food critics Ruth Reichl and Gael Greene, novelists Brett Ellen Block, Elizabeth Kostova, Marge Piercy,[379] Brad Meltzer,[379] Betty Smith,[379] and Charles Major, screenwriter Judith Guest,[379] Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Theodore Roethke, National Book Award winners Keith Waldrop and Jesmyn Ward, composer/author/puppeteer Forman Brown, Alireza Jafarzadeh (a Middle East analyst, author, and TV commentator), and memoirist and self-help book author Jerry Newport.

Musical graduates include operatic soprano Jessye Norman,[379] singer Joe Dassin, multiple members of the bands Tally Hall and Vulfpeck, jazz guitarist Randy Napoleon, and Mannheim Steamroller founder Chip Davis.

In Hollywood, famous alumni include actors Michael Dunn,[379] Darren Criss, James Earl Jones,[379] and David Alan Grier;[379] actresses Lucy Liu,[379] Gilda Radner,[379] and Selma Blair[379] as well as television director Mark Cendrowski and filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan.