Students

• The University of Michigan has experienced record numbers of applicants during Bollinger's administration. This fall, 5,400 new first-year students were selected from more than 24,000 applicants. Each fall, Bollinger teaches a popular undergraduate political science class about the First Amendment and free speech.
• Since his September 1997 inauguration, Bollinger has sponsored a 5K Fun Run for students and other members of the community. (The run was cancelled for the first time this year following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.)
• He also meets regularly with students, and on at least two occasions has opened his home to students. On Sept. 16, he and his wife, Jean Magnano Bollinger, invited students to the President's House to give students support and to bring a sense of normalcy back to campus following the terrorist attacks.
• This semester hundreds of students are enrolled in courses that are part of LS&A's Detroit 300 Theme Semester, a project that celebrates and studies Detroit's rich history. The special project includes some 50 classes and seminars, as well as tours, lectures, performances, exhibitions, and a film series.
• Eighty-two percent of undergraduate students graduate within six years – the highest graduation rate in the state of Michigan.

Fiscal Management

• The University of Michigan experienced unusually strong investment returns—a 43.6 percent total return on its portfolio for fiscal 2000, placing the University in the top quartile of endowment portfolios for the year, based on a survey of 279 endowments by Cambridge Associates, a Boston-based investment adviser that specializes in higher education and other nonprofit institutions across the country.
• Moody's Investors Service Inc. upgraded the University of Michigan's bond rating in 2000 to Aaa, citing the University's strong financial performance, fundraising efforts, and a conservative debt strategy. Michigan is one of only two public universities in the nation to attain this rating.
• As of June 30, 2001, U-M's endowment was valued at $3.6 billion. Last year (the most recent for which comparisons are available) the University's endowment, then at $3.5 billion, ranked 13th among endowments of higher education institutions and the fourth largest among public universities.

Life Sciences Initiative

• Launched in 1999, the Life Sciences Initiative is a campuswide effort to coordinate and expand research and teaching in such rapidly advancing fields as genomics, chemical and structural biology, cognitive neuroscience, and bioinformatics, as well as other areas of study that bear on and are influenced by the life sciences.
  
  Bollinger laid the groundwork for the Michigan's Life Sciences Initiative by appointing a 19-member Life Sciences Commission in May 1998 to assess the University's strengths and weaknesses in the life sciences in research and education.
  
  A new six-story Life Sciences Institute, which is part of the Life Sciences Initiative, is scheduled to open in spring 2003 and will serve as a hub for cross-disciplinary research and teaching in the life sciences. The University of Michigan is spending $90 million to build the institute. Another $110 million dedicated to the Life Sciences Initiative will be placed in an endowment, which will provide about $5.5 million annually for Institute operations. The institute's estimated annual base operating budget is $9.6 million.
  
  The Michigan's Health System is contributing about $150 million to the Life Sciences Initiative with the remaining $50 million coming from central administration funds. The University also seeks to attract private donations.
  
  Two outstanding scientists—Jack Dixon, chair of the Michigan's Department of Biological Chemistry, and Scott Emr, professor of cellular and molecular medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego—have been appointed co-directors of the Life Sciences Institute. Dixon began in July 2001, and Emr will join the U-M in July 2002.
  
  In September 2001, the Regents approved the schematic design for a new $220 million Biomedical Science Research Building (BSRB) as part of the Life Sciences Initiative. The approximately 470,000 gross-square-foot BSRB will house Medical School faculty and scientists in a flexible environment that will foster collaborations and intellectual innovation.
  
  The Initiative and Institute complement a broader statewide that Bollinger was instrumental in organizing — the Life Sciences Corridor. Gov. John Engler signed legislation in July 1999 to boost scientific collaborations within the state. The state is investing some $1 billion over 20 years from the state's National Tobacco Settlement to develop new technologies in the life sciences. The money will promote interconnections and collaborative work along a new life sciences corridor that builds on the research strengths of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University and the new Van Andel Institute, a nonprofit medical research center in Grand Rapids. Goals include positioning the state to be a major global center for life sciences research and business development.
  
  The University of Michigan and its scientists received the first round of grants from the State of Michigan Life Sciences Corridor in January 2000. Some of the funds are being used to develop life sciences infrastructure, including a network of five advanced technology laboratories to be used by researchers throughout the state. The University of Michigan is leading two of those five laboratories.

Fundraising

• The University has experienced steady growth in fundraising during Bollinger's administration and since 1997, has raised $963,184,715 from individual and corporate donors. In three of those four years, Michigan raised more money from alumni than any other public university.
• In FY 2001, the University received $218,114,224 in gifts, surpassing for the second year in a row the $200 million mark in fundraising.
• Bollinger played a major role in naming the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in November 1999. He also assisted in raising more than $12 million in gifts toward the School's $30 million endowment goal. Gifts to the Ford School of Public Policy include $3 million from an anonymous donor to establish a Life Sciences Policy Center, as well as leadership gifts from The Annenberg Foundation, J. Ira and Nicki Harris, and the Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation.

Research

• University of Michigan research expenditures -- more than $545 million in fiscal year 2000 -- are the highest among public universities in the United States.
  
  The total value of new multi-year research awards (funds to be spent over many years) increased from $435 million in 1997 to $654 million in 2000.
  
  In fiscal 2000, University of Michigan faculty and staff disclosed 168 new inventions, filed 115 patent applications and had 69 patents issued. The University licensed 48 technologies to companies, including eight new start-ups. During the past 14 years, more than 60 companies have been launched using technology licensed from Michigan's laboratories.
• The University of Michigan Health System received a $33.6 million grant—one of the largest of its kind in the nation—from the National Institutes of Health in March 2001 to fund its General Clinical Research Center for five more years. This is the largest grant in the University of Michigan center's 38-year history.

Defense of Affirmative Action

Bollinger has been an ardent and eloquent defender of affirmative action. In fall 1997, two affirmative action admissions lawsuits were filed against the University. Bollinger has been the motivating force behind what has become higher education's most comprehensive defense of affirmative action. He has marshaled considerable resources to defend University of Michigan's admissions policies and has garnered widespread support, internally and externally.

In May and June 2001, 142 individuals, corporations and professional associations stepped forward to file legal briefs in support of the University of Michigan appeals. Oral arguments of both appeals will be heard by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Oct. 23.

Master Plan

• Bollinger asked Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates of Philadelphia to develop a new campus master plan "to conceive of our campus as a whole and consider its place in the larger Ann Arbor community and to look at things for the future---for a hundred years from now---to consider what our University campus might be like, what its character should be." That plan is being used to inform construction decisions across campus, including those related to the Life Sciences Initiative and to the Michigan's efforts to expand its theater facilities.
  
  The Life Sciences Institute will link, physically and intellectually, the Central and Medical campuses.
  
  The Walgreen Drama Center, which will house the 600-seat Arthur Miller Theatre and several smaller student repertory theaters, will be built adjacent to the existing Power Center for the Performing Arts. The building will cost $18 million.

Other Initiatives

Arts of Citizenship

Since 1997, when the Arts of Citizenship program was introduced as part of Bollinger's inauguration, it has worked to build bridges between the University and the larger community through experimental teaching and practice-based learning, interdisciplinary research, interaction with guest artists, and projects with community partners. A recent highlight was its Underground Railroad History Project, a partnership with the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County.

Partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) performed three cycles of Shakespeare's history plays early in March to enthusiastic audiences at the Power Center for the Performing Arts. In the four plays—"Henry VI, Parts I, II and III" and "Richard III"—30 actors appeared in more than 100 roles and wore 200 costumes. The new productions were staged exclusively in the U.S. at Ann Arbor. More than 18,000 tickets were sold and theater fans flocked to Ann Arbor from 30 states and five countries.

In addition, nearly 15,000 people attended more than 75 educational events, including 40 that were free and open to the public. RSC actors and production crew members worked with K-12 students in Ann Arbor, Detroit and Ypsilanti; visited classes and conducted workshops at community colleges, Eastern Michigan University and Wayne State University; and led acting workshops for young people through Detroit's Mosaic Youth Theater, as well as for professional actors at Ann Arbor's Performance Network.

More than 225 students enrolled in the course "Staging History: Shakespeare on Legitimacy and Rebellion," coordinated by English Prof. Ralph G. Williams. The lectures were open to the public. This is the RSC's first partnership with an American public university and the first of several projects in the initial five-year collaboration among the University of Michigan, the University Musical Society and the RSC. The RSC is scheduled to return to Ann Arbor in 2003 and 2005.

President's Information Revolution Commission

Bollinger appointed the President's Information Revolution Commission to examine the University's relationship to information and communication technologies. In a report issued in April 2001, the Commission calls for creating a "living laboratory" in which all members of the University of Michigan community can use, experiment with and study new technologies. The Commission concluded that the Michigan needs to dramatically upgrade infrastructure over the next five years.

More than 1,200 instructors use University of Michigan.CourseTools, a powerful means for creating course Web sites that allow online assignments, discussions, and dissemination of course materials.

Commission on the Undergraduate Experience

Bollinger appointed the Commission on the Undergraduate Experience in May 2000 to examine how undergraduates are engaged at the University of Michigan. The Commission's report is expected to be released this fall. In an e-mail Bollinger sent to the campus community in September, he said that the Commission's deliberations have produced some excellent recommendations about ways to improve undergraduate education.

Online learning

In November 2001, the University will launch its first e-course on Fathom.com, an online source of knowledge developed from a consortium of leading cultural and educational institutions (e.g., Columbia University, University of Chicago, The New York Public Library, The British Museum, and London School of Economics and Political Science). English Professor Ralph Williams will teach "The Shakespeare You Never Knew: The First History Plays," which will draw on the Royal Shakespeare Company's March 2001 residency, as well as feature artifacts from the University Library's Shakespeare Collection. Other faculty are sharing their expertise on Fathom through brief feature stories, seminars and additional e-courses now in development. The University of Michigan joined Fathom in late 2000 as part of its commitment to explore the most effective ways to use information technology to reach wider audiences.

Globalization

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright joined the Business School's William Davidson Institute in spring 2001 as its first distinguished scholar. Albright, the highest-ranking woman in U.S. government history, is interacting with students, faculty and administrators in seminars and workshops.

Environmental Stewardship

• Michigan is committed to and is a leader in sustainability efforts. With initiatives and programs going on in almost every area of the University, including recycling, energy conservation, building design, pollution prevention, emissions reduction, alternative-fuel vehicles and storm water management. Here are a few examples:
  -- Michigan has the largest active alternative-fuel vehicle fleet of any organization in the country. All University of Michigan buses, use bio-diesel fuel, and there are 240 other vehicles that use ethanol instead of gasoline.
  -- The University of Michigan actively engages in recycling, a prime example is the Move Out Program, which reclaimed two tons of dormitory discards last year.
  -- Michigan participates in the Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star and Green Lights programs for energy-efficient building systems. Combined, these programs save 25 million kilowatt hours annually, enough energy to power 3,000 homes for a year.

Events/Celebrations

• Playwright Arthur Miller celebrated his 85th birthday and recalled his days as a Michigan student at an international symposium in his honor Oct. 26-27, 2000.
• Václav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, received an honorary degree Sept. 5, 2000.
• Former President Gerald R. Ford and Betty Ford attended the Sept. 12, 2000, dedication of the Ford School of Public Policy with Henry Kissinger delivering the keynote address.

Honors and Awards, Personal and Institutional

• o Bollinger received the 2001 Excellence in Education award in September 2001 from the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He was cited for his unwavering support of affirmative action and his eloquent articulation of the value — and importance — of diversity on the nation's college and university campuses."
• Bollinger will receive the Herbert W. Nickens, M.D., Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in November. The award is given to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to promoting justice in medical education and health care. Bollinger will receive a $10,000 award and will give the Nickens Memorial Lecture at the AAMC annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
• Trustee of the Kresge Foundation, May 2001-present.
• Board of Directors, Royal Shakespeare Company America, May 2000-present.
• Trustee, Gerald R. Ford Foundation, April 2000-present.
• Honorary Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge University, November 1999-present.
• LL.D (hon.) Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, May 1998.
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected 1992.
• The University of Michigan was one of 16 colleges and universities recognized by the Association of American Colleges and Universities for visionary campus-wide innovations in undergraduate education in December 2000.

Construction

• At their June 2001 meeting, the Regents approved Phase I of the most significant investment in Hill Auditorium's 88-year history. Hill Auditorium is slated to undergo improvements that will preserve its architectural integrity and enhance the experience of performers and audiences, as well as replace or update an aging infrastructure. The project is expected to take 18 months and will begin May 13, 2002. The projected cost is $33.5 million.
• The School of Social Work Building, which also houses the International Institute, was formally dedicated Sept. 25, 1998. The 122,000-square-foot building houses the largest social work library in the world.