�Google�s arrival in Washtenaw County will be measured in terms of jobs, tax revenues, spinoff businesses and increased home sales.�
-U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, in the Detroit Free Press
In 2004, the University and Google formed a partnership in an unprecedented effort to digitize and index the U-M Library’s collection of seven million bound print volumes and make them discoverable through Google’s search engine.
U-M alumnus, Larry Page, president and co-founder of Google, is credited with making this initial connection out of which new opportunities continue to grow. In 2004, the University of Michigan and Google formed a partnership to digitize seven million U-M Library bound volumes and make them accessible through Google’s search engine. Through this six-year project, the University Library will also receive a high quality digital copy of the collection for its own purposes. As the sixth largest library in the U.S., U-M’s digital collection of roughly 22,000 volumes had been one of the most ambitious in the country. But at its rate of digital production before the Google partnership, it would have taken U-M more than a thousand years to digitize its collection. With Google’s help, the job will be complete in a matter of years.
On July 11, 2006 Google announced plans to locate Google’s advertising unit, AdWords, in Ann Arbor, bringing 1,000 new jobs in the area. Economic development leaders, lawmakers and others have declared the move a much-needed boost for Michigan’s economy.
U-M announced its participation in the Michigan–Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (MI-LSAMP) program, along with three other Michigan universities, in January 2006. Designed to attract and retain underrepresented minorities to science, technology, engineering and math, MI-LSAMP, is a five year, $5 million program funded by the National Science Foundation. The MI LSAMP partners: U-M, Michigan State University, Wayne State University and Western Michigan University have all committed to providing 100 percent matching funds in an effort to meet state and national needs for a trained science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce.
U-M’s effort is led by Levi Thonpson, professor of chemical engineering and director of U-M’s new Hydrogen Research Center.
The four universities hope to increase the number of underrepresented minorities earning bachelor’s degrees in STEM areas by 50 percent in five years.
Building on the success of its Spanish language website, Portal en Espa�ol, U-M launched
what is believed to be the most comprehensive university-based Spanish language news
service in the United States in fall 2005. Noticias en Espa�ol distributes stories on
groundbreaking scientific findings, consumer-oriented health and other subjects.
Its news releases are sent out nationally and internationally in
Spanish with English translation to more than 200 Hispanic serving
media, from flagship publications and wire services to
community-based weeklies. In its five-month pilot phase,
Noticias en Espa�ol helped place more than 650 stories in
publications and on radio and television.
http://www.umich.edu/news/Es/
A new recording label, Block M Records, was launched by U-M to enable School of Music faculty, staff and students to retain copyright of their musical compositions and performances while making them available worldwide. Block M Records content became available through the iTunes Music Store in March 2006.
U-M began participating in iTunes U, a partnership between Apple and schools for hosting and distributing audio and video lectures, podcasts and vodcasts. The free service allows instructors to upload podcasts for distribution to students. The School of Dentistry and the Ross School of Business are the first at U-M to offer the application.
U-M launched a National Center for Institutional Diversity to convene scholars, activists and practitioners from a variety of social institutions to develop the models, networks and tools needed for exploring the challenges and opportunities of diversity.
A new presidential initiative, Ethics in Public Life, enhances deliberation on issues of ethics. The program launched a forum series on ethical issues and a course in applied ethics. The U-M Center for Research on Learning and Teaching developed a project to encourage inclusion of ethical discussions in courses. The program also initiated discussions with student organizations on how to provide academic integrity resources for students. Visit www.umich.edu/pres/ethics.
In another presidential initiative, U-M plans to invest $2.5 million for Multidisciplinary Learning and Team Teaching over the next five years. The program will develop three multidisciplinary degree programs and three large-scale interdisciplinary courses. Currently, there are five multidisciplinary degree programs at U-M: American Culture, Global Change, Industrial Design, Urban and Regional Planning, and Women’s Studies.
ADVANCE, a project started in 2001 to improve recruitment and retention of women faculty in science and engineering, has been so successful that U-M officials have decided to make it permanent with funding commitments approved through 2011. The number of women hired annually for science and engineering faculty positions has increased three-fold since U-M first began the project with National Science Foundation funding.
The University of Michigan Library launched a new Deep Blue service that provides free online access to more than 24,000 items provided by U-M faculty, staff and students—a database that will continue to grow as researchers, scholars and artists add their work. Its fully searchable results can be accessed by the general public at http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu.