Saturday, February 26, 2011

The University

 The University of Michigan was founded in 1817 about 20 years before the Michigan territory was acknowledged as a state. I'm not really sure what made people settle in this part of the country, I've heard rumors that the trapping of animals for furs did a fair bit for the economy in the past.

UofM is a large school, much bigger than any other school I've attended, with an undergraduate population of 26,000+ and a graduate population of 15,000+.  In comparison with Westminster College, there are approximately 12 undergraduates at UofM for every 1 at Westminster.  As far as Dartmouth goes, there are approximately 9 graduate students at UofM for every 1 at Dartmouth.  Participating in the activities at UofM for the last week, I am definitely happy with my choices to attend smaller private colleges, I can only imagine I would always feel lost with so many students around.  Each graduating class has over 6,000 students in it, there is no way you would ever know all those people, or get to know everyone in the years above and below you.

Students here definitely have school pride.  I think you can buy any item you desire and it would be labeled with the M and available in either the yellow or blue colors of the university.  The school mascot is a wolverine, (which I didn't know until I looked at the Wikipedia article), however I am aware that one of their rivals is the Ohio State Buckeye (Go BUCKEYES!!! - that's for you Kaitlin).  Football is big here, the stadium, also known as "The Big House" is the largest football stadium in the world! Maybe sometime I'll get to come here while it's still football season.

While here, I will do research in the Chemistry Building which has a large beautiful atrium that lets sunlight into the building, (on the few days that it isn't cloudy and snowing), as well as the BSRB which is newly opened and also has a lot of natural light entering the building.  The bottom floor of the chemistry building is for the undergraduate laboratory sections and the first floor has a variety of different size lecture halls.  I saw a lecture hall that was equivalent or larger than 3 of the largest halls at Thayer or Westminster - crazy to think of learning GenChem in that atmosphere. The second floor and higher are reserved for research labs.

The construction of the BSRB allows for offices to exist on one side of the building and the labs on the other side. The two sides are connected by foot bridges that can be cool to watch when the knowledge and people move from the offices to the labs or vice versa. To the best of my knowledge there aren't lecture halls in the BSRB, rather just professor and researchers offices and the laboratories. The bottom level that can be seen slightly in the photo contains a coffee shop and some seating, as well as meeting rooms. The basement levels are where a lot of the animal components are kept, and the security is quite tight.

Both of the buildings that I work at are located on central campus, which is the closest to my house, but the school has expanded to the point that it has 3 campuses in Ann Arbor, South, North and Central as well as two satellite campuses in Flint and Dearborn, MI.

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