Heritage Project

  1. August 14, 2023

    Heritage Project — How the net was won

    Douglas Van Houweling and Eric Aupperle led a group that submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation to upgrade the agency’s overloaded computing backbone.

  2. July 24, 2023

    Heritage Project — A cabin in the woods

    For more than a century, U-M students have been leaving their mark on the gray metal cabins at the U-M Biological Station.

  3. June 19, 2023

    Heritage Project — How the Michigan Union came to be

    Today people say the name Michigan Union and think only of the building. The building is the physical remnant of that early-1900s movement to forge a new ethos for the “Michigan Man.”

  4. June 5, 2023

    Heritage Project — Michigan in the making

    From the first painting of U-M’s rural campus by Jasper Cropsey in 1855 to Richard Rummell’s work in 1907 depicting a bustling landscape, U-M’s campus had become a new kind of enterprise entirely.

  5. May 22, 2023

    Heritage Project — Kelly Johnson to the rescue

    The U.S. Army Air Force wanted Clarence “Kelly” Johnson to build a top-secret jet plane that would need to fly more than 500 miles per hour to combat a new Nazi fighter. 

  6. May 1, 2023

    Heritage Project — The War of 1817

    People were vaguely aware that 1837 was the year associated with the university’s birth, although there had been some small, failed experiment with a territorial college in Detroit way back when. A new seal for U-M was designed in the 1890s that featured the year 1837. With that, the lawyerly mind of Frank Culver saw red.

  7. April 24, 2023

    Heritage Project — Professor Porta’s predictions

    Professor Albert F. Porta predicted that on Dec. 17, 1919, “the most terrific weather cataclysm experienced since human history” would begin.

  8. April 17, 2023

    Heritage Project — Angell, China and opium

    During a grand dinner in 1910 celebrating James Burrill Angell’s nearly 40-year tenure as U-M’s president, Angell touted among his accomplishments the treaty he negotiated with China regarding opium.

  9. April 10, 2023

    Heritage Project — Such horrible business

    Early one morning just before Christmas 1857, men arriving for work on the construction of a church found heaps of fresh earth next to empty graves in a little graveyard.

  10. April 3, 2023

    Heritage Project — Professor Ford

    U-M knew Jerry Ford as a star football player, earning Most Valuable Player honors as a senior in 1934. But he had never stepped on campus bearing the title he did in the spring of 1977: Professor Gerald R. Ford.