President's Message

Our Vision & Plan

This year, we launched our Vision 2034, a vision that was built on the storied traditions of our university, and looks to the ethos, the interdisciplinarity, the unrivaled excellence and the unmatched capabilities that we can provide. Guided by that vision, we will become the defining public university, educating learners, advancing society and making groundbreaking discoveries that impact the greatest challenges facing humanity.

Vision 2034 is focused on four key impact areas — Life-Changing Education; Sustainability and Climate Action; Human Health and Well-Being; and Democracy, Civic and Global Engagement — and it includes commitments to essential areas of growth and engagement including:

• A purpose-driven education and student experience;
• Research, discovery, scholarship and artificial intelligence;
• Community health support, prevention and performance;
• Arts and creative expression;
• Diversity, equity and inclusion;
• Facility and staff engagement and experience; and
• Innovation, partnerships and economic development

In concert with Vision 2034, we also launched Campus Plan 2050, which will guide long-term strategic investments in our physical environment that modernizes existing academic facilities and develops new ones. Through Campus Plan 2050, we will create a physical environment that strengthens connections throughout the Ann Arbor campus community and provides spaces and places for engagement and collaboration.

Arts, Research & Innovation

The arts remain a high priority, for they infuse all aspects of our lives, provoking thought and meaning, deepening our understanding and opening our eyes. We are in the second year of our Arts Initiative, through which we seek to not only make the arts central to the university’s identity and mission, but to increase imagination, inspire creativity and fire learning and discovery. As one of the nation’s foremost public universities, we must be as exceptional in the arts as we are excellent in the sciences.

As this report demonstrates, our impact in research, discovery, innovation and economic impact is growing. This year, the U-M Institute for Social Research received the largest research grant in university history, $195 million, to extend our Health and Retirement Study through 2029. We were also chosen to lead a $30 million complex-particle center, studying advanced materials and additive manufacturing.

Our total research expenditures continue to set records with $2.04 billion in FY 2024. Twenty-eight startup companies were launched in support of U-M’s research activities, and we also generated a record-breaking 615 new inventions.

Coupled with those efforts, we announced a new initiative with the Detroit Regional Chamber called Innovate Michigan, through which we hope to foster innovation, technological advancement and economic growth from Detroit to Ann Arbor.

Continued Growth

In Detroit itself, we have begun construction on the U-M Center for Innovation. When it opens, which we anticipate will be in the spring of 2027, UMCI will be a 200,000-square-foot, world-class research, education and entrepreneurship center, one that educates and retains exceptional talent, one that drives innovation and economic growth and job creation and one that empowers Detroiters to dream bigger dreams, and transform their dreams into realities.

In Ann Arbor, we broke ground on the Central Campus Residential Project at South Fifth, which will add 2,300 beds by the summer of 2026. The project will meet the needs of our growing student population and be transformative for both our central campus and the undergraduate experience.

And that housing will be needed, since this fall U-M garnered a record enrollment of almost 53,000 students, making us the largest and most sought-after public research institution in the state. More than 50 percent of the nearly 9,000 students in our incoming class are from the state of Michigan, but they also include students from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., five territories and 62 countries. Our numbers are also up at UM-Dearborn and UM-Flint. At Dearborn, the number of full-time, first-year students is up by almost five percent, and Flint recorded a gain of nearly six-and-a-half percent.

Making History

As we excelled in admissions, we have been victorious in athletics. This year, we won our 12th national college football championship, our first since 1997, and we remain the winningest college football program in the country.

Last summer, we had 48 U-M Olympians and Paralympians, including 11 who also completed for U-M this past year. Numerous Wolverines won medals, including Charlie Swanson, who earned a gold as part of the men’s swimming mixed 4x100-meter relay; Abby Dent, who earned a silver on the Canadian rowing team; Chuck Akoi, who won a silver with the USA wheelchair rugby team; and Paul Juda and Fred Richard, who were part of the USA’s historic bronze-winning men’s gymnastics team.

Launching Our Campaign

Finally, in fall 2024, we launched our Look to Michigan campaign, the most ambitious and innovative effort we have initiated as a university.

This $7 billion campaign will eventually touch every part of our campus and community, and each school, college, campus and unit will have its own unique goals. Many will focus on student support, research and innovation or other priorities, but together, we will be guided on the impact areas and institutional priorities we described in our Vision 2034 report.

It’s an ambitious goal, a goal worthy of us as a great university, a goal worthy of our aspirations and dreams.

Reaching this goal — and sustaining our achievement, our strength and our ambition — will be thanks to the incredible generosity and capability of the Michigan family. They’ve already done so much for our university this year, and you can read more about it in the VP for Development’s Report.

At the foundation of all our efforts — those we have accomplished and those we look to achieve — is the financial strength of the university, and you can find more details about that in the Chief Financial Officer’s Report.

We can look forward to the next fiscal year with anticipation and confidence, committed to learn, to discover, to grow, to achieve — to change our nation and to lift our society.

Sincerely,