Navigating the University of Michigan

Today, first year engineering students begin orientation at the University of Michigan, in one of those rites-of-passage for young adults transitioning from high school to college.   The format is fairly common across American universities: students flocking with excitement to campus, sleeping a few nights in a residence hall, meeting finally with advisors, selecting a set of  fall term courses, and generally learning how to navigate their new environment.  For students at Michigan the details of this navigation are, of course, unique: what’s the Arb? what’s Michigan time? what’s a “Big Blue”? where is CC Little, or, for that matter, who was C. C. Little?   These details of college life are important, of course, but they are eventually conquered as students become used to their new home.

Yet there is another channel to navigate that requires more investment, but which is more important to students’ receiving long-term value from their time at the UM.   Students must also learn to navigate the intellectual culture.

The University of Michigan is one of a small number of selective research universities.  As well described by Jonathan Cole in The Great American University, these schools have a unique character based on core values of free inquiry, the tolerance of challenge to ideas, open communication, and the preparation of the next generation of thinkers. These values are reflected in an educational environment and curriculum in which achievement is less about learning specific facts and rather more about learning the techniques of knowledge application and creation.  It is this curriculum that undergraduates must learn to navigate during their 4 years of study.

Engineering students sometimes think they are here to learn the formulas, to learn information.  But in fact our curriculum aspires to help students learn to analyze systems, synthesize knowledge, to make judgments, and to reach decisions based on this analysis, synthesis and judgment.

Just as new students must be oriented to the buses and extracurricular opportunities at the UM, it is also essential that they be oriented to the core academic values that will undergird their educational experience.