From its first days in the frontier town of Detroit in 1817, the University of Michigan has had some form of governing board. But it would take nearly a century for a woman to disrupt the all-male leadership of the institution.
Esther Marsh Cram, an 1898 graduate of U-M, was 57 years old when a friend and fellow Michigan alum — Gov. Fred W. Green — appointed her to fill a seat on the Board of Regents after Benjamin S. Hanchett resigned in September 1929.
“The women of Michigan rightly feel that they are entitled to representation on the Board of Regents of our university. Over 2,500 women are attending the university, and surely there are problems connected with their attendance that will be settled best with the advice of a woman alumnae on the Board of Regents,” Green said.
“The friendship of a lifetime convinces me Mrs. Cram will ably represent the women of Michigan on this board and will make a capable and intelligent regent.”
The first women were admitted to U-M in 1870. As a student, Cram, then Esther Hewitt Marsh, followed in the footsteps of her father, Augustus, who earned degrees in 1855 and 1858. After graduating, she taught history in several Michigan high schools before resigning in 1909 to raise her son.
“I consider this appointment as a great honor to the womanhood of Michigan,” Cram said. “I also consider it a matter for intense study and application.”
Cram joined the board at a tenuous time. President Clarence Cook Little had resigned in January 1929 — before the regents could fire him — after 39 months as U-M’s chief executive. Alexander G. Ruthven, a longtime faculty member who was dean of administration, was managing the presidential duties.
Cram’s first vote was historic: She and her fellow regents unanimously elected Ruthven as the university’s seventh president.
Her inaugural meeting also led to the first of many appointments that drew upon her gender. Cram was appointed the regent member of the Michigan League Board of Governors and tasked to work with Ruthven to recommend a new dean of women.
“I believe that it is the duty of any woman coming up on the Board of Regents to cooperate to the best of her ability, to weigh pros and cons concerning any measure that may come up for consideration, and to cast a vote as conscientiously as any other regent,” she said.
Cram’s appointment ran through 1935, and Michigan voters elected her to a second eight-year term. She resigned in early 1943 because of health problems.
Her colleagues praised her record of service.
“As an alumna of Michigan, the interests of the institution, and particularly those of its women students, were close to her heart,” they said in a resolution, “and her loyalty and sense of responsibility led her to devote much time and energy to active participation in the councils of the alumnae, the Michigan League, and the women’s residences.”
— Kim Clarke, Office of the President
