Introduction

The Arts at the University of Michigan: A Benchmarking Report provides a picture of the Arts at the University of Michigan (U-M). Over the course of a year and a half (2024-2025), the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) and ArtsEngine staff partnered with Arts Initiative (AIM) staff to illustrate the arts ecosystem at U-M.

Nationally, the arts tend to be data poor and uniquely difficult to quantify. This paucity of comparable information results in the arts often being undervalued on campus. This project endeavors to:

  • provide a landscape analysis of the arts at U-M, establishing benchmarks for longitudinal analysis

  • make clear the value of the arts, as well as the unique set of skills students who engage with the arts acquire, and how those skills benefit their lives, careers, and communities

  • contribute to metadata standards that benefit the arts in higher education as a field, specifically: a model protocol for both quantifying and describing the arts landscape across higher education, thus enabling deeper arts impacts research and informing best practices for “accounting” for the arts on campus

This report represents a second phase of the project, augmenting an initial report “Arts Data Pilot for the University of Michigan” completed in 2023.

For the initial quantitative study represented in that 2023 report, a2ru and a seasoned advisory team of arts researchers and evaluators as well as U-M staff and students endeavored to map the university’s considerable arts assets— including both formal and informal arts experiences. The purpose of the project was to understand “what we have” in order to inform strategic planning around arts gaps and needs, as well as to prevent the duplication of arts efforts. The pilot explored existing data on a series of indicators, such as gallery and performance spaces, degrees offered, funding for arts faculty, course offerings, partnerships with arts organizations, student groups devoted to the arts—anything we could find to quantify the arts on campus. Challenges identified in the pilot project generated questions for this current report, such as how to contend with the lack of available, uniform, quantifiable data.

Embarking on Phase 2, we looked for climate surveys that included arts questions we might draw on. We found that existing campus-wide surveys (such as ASSET and UMAY) touch on areas AIM also addresses, such as feelings of mental wellness, inclusion, and belonging. However, they rarely have arts-specific questions we could pull out in the way that the National Endowment for the Arts creates their Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) from census data.

As a result, this second phase expands the scope of the project, utilizing surveys, focus groups, and interviews to provide a more comprehensive picture, beginning to fill gaps that could not be covered with the available data. For example, in Phase II we do a deep dive into student engagement with the arts through the lens of student groups; more importantly, we partner with the Arts Engagement Project, an ongoing, longitudinal survey of a cohort of students from Freshman to Senior year.

This report augments insights from the pilot work, expanding evidence of the “how and why” of the value of the arts. For example, we demonstrate that the arts are crucial for students, and we offer support for the importance of the arts for the university’s reputation. We also begin to unpack how the arts units and organizations at U-M are not only nationally recognized for their leadership; they are also pillars of the arts experience locally.

The report includes sections such as the student experience, staff experience, and the landscape of arts research. The sections are grounded in different questions, represent diverse scopes and methods, and were written by various contributing teams. They are presented here in full to best convey their insights. A Summary Report is available.

With this report, we hope to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the arts at the university. In turn, we hope this information will not only help university leadership here and across higher education to understand the full picture of the arts on campus, but also inspire them to support and strengthen these invaluable assets.

  • This report was written by Veronica Stanich (a2ru), Maryrose Flanigan (a2ru), and Deb Mexicotte (ArtsEngine), with contributions and guidance from Alison Rivett (Arts Initiative).

    Two student teams—including Krithika Balaji (survey design, statistical analyses and interpretation, data visualization and synthesis, and report design) and Umang Bhojani (survey design, distribution, and synthesis) for the Arts Initiative and Mya Dobbs, Nathaniel Liganor, Sarosh Manzur, and Cindy Ye (survey design and distribution, statistical analyses and interpretation, and data visualization and synthesis) for the Arts Engagement Project—were integral to the project. All students are graduates of U-M’s School of Information.

    Gabriel Harp, now Director of Research and Creative Practice at Taubman College, was co-investigator for the first iteration Arts Engagement Project 2010-2015; with Jack Bowman and Mengdan Yuan, graduate researchers who contributed significantly to the 2010-2015 AEP analysis reported here.

Context and History

Insights

  1. The arts have always been important to U-M, both as professional training ground and as opportunity for all students.

  2. Decentralization at U-M has been a challenge as well as an asset to the growth of the arts.

  3. The Arts Initiative, established in 2019, builds on numerous previous organized efforts to support the arts at U-M.

CONTEXT AND HISTORY

Connecting the Arts Across Campus

The Arts at the University of Michigan is a rich ecosystem, with inflection points in its history building towards today’s more connected and comprehensive story.

One of those major inflection points is the $20M presidential Arts Initiative, launched in 2019. The campus-wide investment had predecessors in the early 1990’s with the provost-backed Arts at Michigan initiative, the Public Goods Council in the early 2000’s, a subsequent Arts Consortium meeting from 2016- 2019, and many other councils and convenings. Notably, the North Campus deans organized their arts integration activities around the Arts on Earth collaboration in 2007–which was renamed ArtsEngine in 2009.

The history of the institution is punctuated by the founding of schools, colleges, museums, galleries, and performing arts units over the course of more than 150 years, illustrated in the timeline below. Difficult to illustrate but no less important is the story of all the students, faculty, and staff who animate this history. The arts asset mapping team has endeavored to tell that story with faculty and staff interviews, artistic research reports, and the Arts Engagement Project, which measures and chronicles the experiences of students and their connections to the arts. The arts at U-M has storied strengths, but there is a historical push and pull between centralization and fragmentation.

The current Arts Initiative elevates and coordinates the arts assets across a very large and decentralized university. This focused collaboration at the highest level of the university is new, reflecting a trend at other research-intensive institutions across the country such as Stanford Arts, UVA Arts (University of Virginia), Harvard Arts, and the University of Maryland’s Arts for All, among many others.

Timeline

CONTEXT AND HISTORY

The Origins of Arts Units, Consolidating on North Campus

Making the arts a priority was evident from U-M’s early history—the arts have been an integral part of the University’s identity and the student experience nearly since it began awarding degrees in the 1840s. Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA) was the first college founded, reflecting the value that engagement with the arts was considered part of a well-rounded education. By 1905, LSA students were able to have music classes count toward their degree. The first department of fine arts was founded in 1910 and the arts were broadly included in the curriculum. The School of Music was founded as a stand-alone entity in 1929, though music classes were available since the 1880s. Meanwhile the arts were accessible to a wide segment of the student body and Ann Arbor community as a social organization and convening force; for example, the Civic Theater was a feature at the Union in the 1930s.

By mid-century the university was headed to a professionalization of the arts. The School of Music moved out of LSA and formed its own unit in 1964. Dance (1974) and Drama (1984) followed to consolidate in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance (SMTD) on North Campus. With the move of the arts units, an “arts district” was created on North Campus. In a recent interview, former Provost Lester Monts noted that when many arts activities migrated to North Campus, central campus lost a lot of the look and feel of the arts—one would rarely see students walking across central campus with a cello case, for example. However, members of the U-M community adapted; they created additional avenues for making and viewing the arts, which led to more overall arts activity and greater interdisciplinary approaches. For example, the Residential College established a robust music, performing, and visual arts program to fulfill its mission to serve as a small liberal arts college within the larger university. Each unit, from the International Institute to the School of Dentistry, eventually established a gallery.

CONTEXT AND HISTORY

Arts Integration at the 21st Century: Strong and Decentralized

The decentralization of the arts at U-M positively led to strong, albeit unconnected, components which have an opportunity to be synthesized with the holistic nature of an arts initiative. Arts leaders past and present know it’s important at U-M to harness the power of decentralization for the collective. (“Could Michigan Medicine’s Life Sciences Orchestra really have been founded in a top-down structure?” observed Provost Emeritus Paul Courant). And, the decentralized entities are strong. For example, The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) and the University Musical Society (UMS) are world class, contributing not only to the university’s culture but to the entire region.

Even more, the 21st century has brought efforts to intentionally integrate the arts across teaching and research. ArtsEngine, an institutional commitment to bringing the arts and engineering into active conversation, exemplifies these integration efforts.

‘Arts Integration’ has been the byword of these initiatives from the beginning; demonstrating the myriad ways the arts are intertwined with other areas of research and practice, with which research universities are richly, almost ridiculously endowed, seemed the best path to establishing the arts’ centrality. Integration seemed the best path to stimulate appreciation and support for arts programs. Of doubtless inherent value, then, arts integration is also a means to the end of buoying the arts’ fragile place at research universities and thereby, aspirationally, in society.”

—Former SMTD Dean Christopher Kendall, upon establishing ArtsEngine with Dean David Munson (Engineering), Dean Bryan Rogers (Art & Design), and Dean Douglas Kelbaugh (Architecture & Urban Planning).

  • Arts on Earth began in 2006, the year after I came to the University of Michigan as dean of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, looking to get some distance from the recently re-elected W and seeking an improvement over Washington DC for raising our three young children. The move meant losing easy proximity to my two Washington ensembles, but U-M promised so much in the higher education environment for the arts. As a practicing artist myself, their critical if precarious place in contemporary culture was an article of faith; a great research university like Michigan might offer the best hope to establish their wider viability. 

    Within months of our arrival in Ann Arbor, Bryan Rogers, late dean of the School of Art and Design, and Doug Kelbaugh, then Dean of the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning, joined me in a determination to launch an arts-led initiative for the University. Dean Rogers liked to describe our plan, with possible irony, as “world domination,” but we recognized that getting any significant traction at an institution that considered itself responsible for addressing the world’s biggest and most challenging issues would be a challenge. 

    We arts deans were soon joined by Dave Munson, the dean of CoE, who was himself a strong advocate for the place of the arts at the University; he believed they were essential, to begin with, for engineering students to cultivate their creativity. The considerable resources and clout of this other North Campus unit substantially bankrolled our initiative while also heavily effecting its direction. 

    In the first years, we had focused our efforts on big, all-campus activities with titles reflecting our intention of engaging the widest possible array of disciplines in art-focused intellectual/experiential events: Arts and the Environment, Arts and Mind, Arts and War, Arts and Health, etc. These projects were big undertakings, to varying degrees successful at energizing and legitimizing the arts in the fabric of large campus concerns. But they were to an extent ephemeral, in the nature of much of the arts, so we devoted additional effort to establishing more long-range, student-oriented programs including the inter-arts curriculum and the North Campus living-learning community, “Living Arts.” 

    In our enthusiasm, we may not have been sufficiently cognizant of already existing U-M efforts around the arts, especially those supported heroically from Fleming by Senior Vice Provost Lester Monts. Also, the title “Arts on Earth” (with “art” notably embedded in the middle of “Earth”) had raised a few hackles among those who saw it as too parochially “Western” in its concerns to claim a global moniker. We began rethinking of ourselves as a specifically North Campus project, renaming the initiative ArtsEngine. 

    In May of 2011, we presented a Rackham-funded Michigan Meeting, drawing students, faculty, and administrators, including deans and university presidents, from across the country, to examine the role of the arts in higher education. From that heady gathering, the national initiative a2ru was born. Although a national organization, Michigan continues to play a leadership role and provide an institutional base for the enterprise. 

    “Arts Integration” has been the byword of these initiatives from the beginning; demonstrating the myriad ways the arts are intertwined with other areas of research and practice, with which research universities are richly, almost ridiculously endowed, seemed the best path to establishing the arts’ centrality. Integration seemed the best path to stimulate appreciation and support for arts programs. Of doubtless inherent value, then, arts integration is also a means to the end of buoying the arts’ fragile place at research universities and thereby, aspirationally, in society. 

    At the same time, there runs the parallel path of asserting “Arts for arts’ sake.” Certainly not mutually exclusive, there has nevertheless been points of diverging interests, in the history of ArtsEngine and a2ru, between celebrating the arts for their perceived value in relation to other domains of knowledge and practice, or simply on their own terms, as valuable in and of themselves. In retrospect, and somewhat surprisingly to me, it has seemed that the former has actually been a harder argument in the community of the University than the latter. 

    For the current U-M arts initiative, then, it’s worth considering whether, while disciplinary integration of the arts in the extra-arts ought certainly to be pursued at every opportunity, it should be secondary: should the initiative be principally conceived in artistic terms?

    What does this mean in articulating a framework for a significant investment in a signature arts initiative? First, a critical Michigan attribute should be recognized: there is no other major research university that has U-M’s established, overall strengths in the arts, has made such a substantial, historical investment in its artistic resources. This is cause for institutional pride and celebration. It may be that the best way the institution could benefit reputationally from its arts assets would be simply to increase investment in these units. Though this won’t sell as the framework for a signature U-M Arts Initiative, it is foundational – and prefabricated - in constructing an initiative. 

    Second, the power of the arts at Michigan lies not just in the quality of the 5+ separate programs, but in the collective. Ideally, an initiative would be replete with integration among the arts units to leverage this opportunity. Once the unifying fact is established that Michigan already boasts unparalleled strengths in the arts, an initiative might look like a cluster of specific projects that essentially manifests this central reality. I’ve advocated for encouraging Michigan as a center for installation art in which the aural is integral - merging art, music and engineering – using the Stearns Collection as an existing asset that can represent a history of sound-producing objects and a home for new artwork in this realm. 

    Another direction for an initiative that may be worth considering may be at the intersection of the arts and policy, engaging the resources – and asking for more – of the arts and the Ford School of Public Policy. This is an area of urgency, as the arts are both acutely stressed by the pandemic and looking at potentially improving prospects in the new Democratic administration. You may have seen Jason Farago’s piece in Sunday’s NY Times (Can the Arts Bring Us Back? Yes, if We Bring Them Back First.), which presents some intriguing possibilities for major institutional leadership in advancing national support for the arts. A U-M initiative along these lines could open opportunities to seek Mellon and other funding to match U-M administration support. It could also situate the University – and its arts programs – at the center of a national discourse. 

    Whichever ways the Initiative develops, it represents a marvelous and timely opportunity for the arts to further strengthen their position at the University of Michigan. I wish those tasked with envisioning the initiative the very best success. 

    – Christopher Kendall

2010 brought a proposal to convene a Michigan Meeting (a series of annual interdisciplinary meetings sponsored by the Rackham School of Graduate Studies that provide a visible and viable venue to address topics of interdisciplinary and global importance) on the topic of the arts in the context of a research university. Its stated purpose was “to establish the University of Michigan as a leader in the emerging national conversation about better integrating art-making and the arts into the research university – not as decoration or amenity, but as an essential means of understanding, analyzing, and envisioning.” Having already established the on-campus arts- integration mechanism ArtsEngine, the outcome of that meeting was the national organization the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), signalling the university’s commitment and leadership role in the arts in research.

With Lester Monts as the first Vice Provost for the Arts until he retired in 2014, and Sara Blair named Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs, Arts, and Humanities in 2023, the 2000s brought several movements to integrate the arts more broadly into the life of the campus. Student organizations based on the arts proliferated, from glee clubs to film appreciation societies with more than 240 student groups devoted to arts topics–16% of the 1500 registered groups (Arts Data Pilot, 2023). By the time the Arts Initiative received its charge in 2019, to “determine what an arts initiative at the University of Michigan should be,” the arts had become abundant, dispersed, and varied, extending well beyond the limits of the highly ranked arts units.

Within the campus context of the current Arts Initiative there are both strong professional offerings and a desire to serve all students with arts classes and opportunities for arts experiences. We know that 70% of all students across campus at U-M engaged in the arts in some manner (data from Student Life Research, 2025), and may choose U-M because they know they can continue engaging with the arts to learn, support their wellbeing, form deep connections with other students, and explore ways to improve society. This represents an opportunity for U-M to leverage its reputation as an arts-centered, comprehensive university, and indeed, today the university’s mission includes achieving ”preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values.”

Leading up to the establishment of the Arts Initiative, there have been numerous coordinated efforts to understand, articulate, and advocate for the value of the arts at U-M. Since the 1990s, these efforts have included:

  • The Provost’s Advisory Council on the Arts (and Humanities)

  • The U-M Advisory Council on Humanities and the Arts

  • The U-M Council on Engaged Learning and the Arts

  • Council for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and the Arts

  • Council on Arts Engagement (for Students and Faculty) at U-M

  • U-M Arts Council

  • Very Important Group of Arts Leaders at U-M (VIGALUM)

  • U-M Working Group on Arts and Arts Integration

  • Provost’s Working Group on Arts and Humanities

  • The Arts Consortium

  • By Maryrose Flanigan and Alison Rivett

    Timeline: Krithika Balaji

    Data visualizations: Krithika Balaji

Role of the Arts at U-M

U-M’s Look to Michigan recognizes the arts as essential, and commits the institution to: establishing the university as a leading institution for the arts, encouraging greater arts participation, inspiring arts-focused research and curriculum, and developing the service mission of the arts.

Across the various populations in the U-M community, we find different perspectives on the role of the arts, echoing those different aspects that Vision 2034 articulates. What unites these perspectives is an affirmation of the arts’ importance; there is broad agreement that the arts are integral not only to teaching, learning, and research, but also to being human.

Insights

  1. The arts have a range of self- reported impacts on students; these include providing more and better social connections, a sense of expanded possibilities, and relaxation. Students also report improved communication, time management, and critical thinking skills along with a host of other increased capacities as a result of their engagement with the arts.

  2. Faculty and staff report that arts participation has positive intellectual, aesthetic, spiritual, emotional, and social impacts for them.

  3. The arts enhance students’ social lives through greater involvement, more and better social connections, and stronger bonds with others. The arts can be a wellness mechanism for students, providing them opportunities to connect, reflect, and restore.

  4. Long-time campus arts staff and directors understand the arts at U-M as a vital avenue for student development, a site for engaging in challenging subject matter, a venue for shared communal experiences including connection to the surrounding community, and an engine for creativity and innovation

ROLE OF THE ARTS AT U-M

Students

U-M students report that the arts play a vital role both in their college experience broadly and in their personal, academic, and social development.

The Arts Engagement Project, a longitudinal online survey study of precursors, behaviors, identities, activities, and expectations of undergraduate students engaging in the arts at U-M Ann Arbor during their time in college, was first implemented between 2010 and 2015. A second round of the study, launched in 2023, enables us to draw on those earlier conclusions about the role of the arts for students with a degree of confidence, despite a relatively smaller (but growing) sample size in the second round.

Two questions directly asked about the role the arts played both in their college experience and in their personal development:

  1. What role did the arts play in your college experience, both positive and negative?

  2. What role did the arts play in your development as a person, friend, colleague, and student during college?

College Experience

In response to the first question, “What role did the arts play in your college experience, both positive and negative?” students largely reported the positive role the arts played in their college experiences. The major topic areas, Expanded Possibilities and Relaxation and More and Better Social Connections comprised about 85% of responses. In addition, some students engaged in the arts primarily through their classroom experience (Educational), while some indicated that the arts played, at best, only a Small Role in their college experience. Responses to the question are represented in a “topic tree” (see Figure 3.1).

While there were some negative comments about engaging in the arts in college, these comments were often part of a more overall positive response or were used as point-counterpoint in a response. This ambivalence is present in the responses to a few different questions, suggesting that there is a diversity of experience. When students did indicate a negative role for the arts, it typically stemmed from frustration at not achieving as good grades or outcomes from their arts endeavors, the time the arts required adversely affecting their other coursework grades or focus, or that arts participation steered them to consider or choose what they perceived to be potentially less secure or lower-paying jobs in an arts field. Students also expressed regret about being unable to engage in the arts in college as much as they wanted, for any number of reasons.

In one of the largest topic response areas, students reported that the arts Expanded Possibilities and Relaxation by offering needed breaks from classwork, broadening their worldview, encouraging exploration and creative expression, and personally enriching their lives.

The arts provided a space for sanity and creative problem solving. A nice escape from academic and business-related works, while still building professional, positive, and useful life skills.”

It helped me learn more about different cultures. For example, I have attended a lot of cultural dance performances during my time here.”

Figure 3.1. From the Arts Engagement Project 2023-25 student survey: Tree visualization of the College Experience topic model. The four main topic branches remain the same as the 2010-2015 round of the study: Expanded Possibilities and Relaxation, More and Better Social Connections, Educational, and Small Role. Compared to the 2010-15 topic tree, responses in the More and Better Social Connections subcategory increased from 43% to 49%, causing an increase in the total percentage of Positive responses.

The arts were always a good balance from the very intense science courses I had to take for my major. I have always felt that creativity was completely necessary for life and Michigan has reinforced this with its encouragement.”

The arts provided a relief from academic responsibilities, but also an outlet for creativity when there was no space for it in the classroom.”