Collections

The Office of the President records group includes the records of University of Michigan Presidents Robben Fleming, 1968-1978 and 1988 (interim); Allan Smith, 1979 (interim); Harold T. Shapiro, 1980-1987; James J. Duderstadt, 1988-1996; Homer Neal, 1996-1997 (interim); Lee C. Bollinger, 1997-2001; B. Joseph White, 2002 (interim); Mary Sue Coleman (2002-2014); and Mark Schlissel (2014-present). The record group includes annual files from the Office of the President, which include topical files and schools and colleges files. Other series in the record group include supplemental files for each president, search files, committee appointment files, audio and visual materials, development files, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) files, and ephemera.

The records of the University of Michigan President contain the central files created and collected by the President and members of the President's staff. There is some content inherited from earlier presidents, but the record group effectively begins in 1967 with the administration of Robben W. Fleming and continues through successive administrations. (Records of Presidents prior to Fleming are cataloged under the name of the individual office holder).

The University of Michigan President's records are organized into the following series: Topical Files; Schools and Colleges Files; Supplemental Files; Search Files; Committee Appointment Files; Development; Facilities; Freedom of Information Act; Audio-Visual Material Files; Ephemera; Archived Website. Three first three series are major recurring series (Topical, Schools and Colleges, and Supplemental Files). The additional series (Committee Appointment; Searches; Development; Facilities; Freedom of Information Act; Audio-Visual Material Files; Ephemera; Archived Website) are not consistently created or predictably transferred.

Although the series are collectively described, the actual ordering of the boxes in the contents listing are not necessarily consecutive given the timing and sequence of transfers. For a summary bringing all boxes together under a particular series, see the Summary Contents list for a collective representation of boxes.

Interdisciplinary program created to study the theory of dispute resolution at the interpersonal, organizational, and societal levels. Records include grant proposals, annual reports, minutes of administrative planning meetings, memos, correspondence, publication drafts, and copies of the organizational newsletter. Also includes minutes, planning memos, reports, audiotapes and transcripts from seminars, conferences and workshops. Contains questionnaires completed by members of grassroots environmental organizations in 1989.

The PCMA records include grant proposals, annual reports, minutes of administrative planning meetings, memos, correspondence, publication drafts, and copies of the organizational newsletter. Also included are minutes, planning memos, reports, audiotapes and transcripts from seminars, conferences and workshops as well as a set of questionnaires completed by members of grassroots environmental organizations in 1989.

The records are divided into three series: Administrative Files, 1983-1996, Seminars and Conferences, 1986-1993, and STP Schools/MacArthur Project, 1989-1993. Each series in this record group contains audio cassette recordings from various workshops, colloquia, and conferences. For convenience, the tapes have been placed in one central location in the final box of this record group.

Central academic administrative unit of the University of Michigan which functions as chief executive assistant to the president, responsible for appointments and promotions with oversight for schools, colleges, educational units and programs; including budget planning, legislative relations, institutional research, and affirmative action policies. Central Files subgroup includes correspondence files of vice-presidents, associate and assistant vice-presidents, and other staff members within the vice-president's office.

The records of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs date from 1947 to 1997 and total more than 675 linear feet. The records are a rich source of information on the University of Michigan from the 1960s to the present. They contain a wide variety of material documenting the concerns of the administration and, to a lesser extent, the faculty and students regarding academic programs, student and faculty activities, and the administrative operations of the University of Michigan.

The records, which include the provost's files as well as the files of associate and assistant vice presidents, are arranged in three subgroups: Central Files, Staff Files, and Supplemental Files. The Central Files subgroup consists of the records maintained by the provost's office and is discussed in greater detail below. The Staff Files subgroup includes the records of assistant and associate vice presidents and of the assistants to the provost. The Supplemental Files subgroup contains material on specific topics to which a number of academic affairs staff contributed their efforts, including retreats, unit reviews, and searches. Each of the subgroups is fully described in a separate finding aid.

It should be noted that some of the records in the record group predate the founding of the Office of Academic Affairs. Such records were generally brought by vice presidents or staff members from previous positions or inherited from persons who formerly performed their duties.

The Central Files subgroup consists of 605 linear feet dating from the creation of the Office of Academic Affairs in the academic year 1961/1962 to 2012/2013. The records consist primarily of correspondence, minutes and other committee files, reports, and budget materials, reflecting the broad range of responsibilities and functions of the provost. Whereas the records of the Staff Files subgroup tend to document the process of policy formation and decision-making functions, the Central Files records more often contain finished products, such as reports and policy statements. For the researcher interested in the provost's views on a particular topic or issue, or the Office of Academic Affairs involvement in the academic and financial life of various schools and colleges, the Central Files subgroup is the single best starting point.

The records of the Central Files subgroup are broken into series by academic year, and each series consists of one or more of the following subseries: Alphabetical Files, Schools and Colleges Files, and Chronological Files. From 1961/1962 through 1973/1974 the series each consist of one subseries of Alphabetical Files. The Alphabetical Files are arranged alphabetically and include topical files as well as files regarding university academic, research, and service units.

From 1974/1975 to 1983/1984 the series are split into two subseries, Alphabetical Files and Schools and Colleges Files. The Alphabetical Files remain similar in content to previous years with the exception that files relating to academic units, namely schools, colleges, and their departments, now comprise the subseries Schools and Colleges Files. Records concerning centers, special libraries, museums, institutes, and interdisciplinary programs are filed in the Alphabetical Files subseries. The Schools and Colleges Files are arranged alphabetically by academic unit and contain materials relating to the annual budget requests, promotion and tenure decisions, internal and external reviews, dean evaluations, and changes in academic programs.

For the years 1974/1975 to 1981/1982, with the exception of 1976/1977, there is an "Index to Correspondence" located at the end of the Alphabetical Files which lists in chronological order the letters written by the vice president, the name of the recipient, the subject of the letter, and the heading under which it is filed.

From 1984/1985 to 1993/1994, 1998/1999-2008/2009 and 2010/2011-2011/2012 the series consist of three subseries: Alphabetical Files, Schools and Colleges Files, and Chronological Files. The Alphabetical Files and the Schools and Colleges Files, while becoming more voluminous over the years, remain similar in nature. The Chronological Files consist of all outgoing correspondence from the vice president and are arranged by month. The Chronological Files are useful if the researcher knows the date the vice president might have corresponded on a particular topic but is unsure of the heading used for filing in the Alphabetical Files.

The Alphabetical Files, as mentioned above, are a strong source of information on a variety of topics relating to the administration of a large university, including the university's relationship with state and federal governments, issues confronting institutions of higher education at various points in time (student unrest and affirmative action, for example), collaborative efforts with other Big Ten and area colleges and universities, and the creation and revision of university policies. The minutes of the Academic Affairs Advisory Council (AAAC) are an especially good source of information on the activities of the Office of Academic Affairs. The AAAC, composed of the deans of the schools and colleges, directors of institutes, centers, and special libraries, and the staff of the Office of Academic Affairs, was established to hold monthly meetings to discuss educational policy, planning for growth, and special studies.

Because folder titles on a particular subject may vary from year to year, researchers are advised to be imaginative in searching for information in the topical files. It should also be noted that information on any given subject can probably be found in various places in the collection.

The 2010 and 2011 series feature the addition of the Archived Website subseries. These were created to preserve the office's public website over time. The subseries document the mission, activities, policies, and individuals involved in the operation of the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs as they are presented on its public website. Content includes important news and announcements, publications (such as reports and administrative documents), and information about committees, initiatives, and events. This archived website will be captured on a regular, ongoing basis as part of the University of Michigan Web Archives, hosted at https://archive-it.org/organizations/934.

Central academic administrative unit of the University of Michigan which functions as chief executive assistant to the president, responsible for appointments and promotions with oversight for schools, colleges, educational units and programs; including budget planning, legislative relations, institutional research, and affirmative action policies. The Staff Files subgroup contains the files of individual of vice-presidents, associate and assistant vice-presidents, and other staff members within the vice-president's office.

The Staff Files subgroup of the record group Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs consists of 570 linear feet and spans the years from 1947 to 2013. The Staff Files subgroup is comprised of the records of the associate and assistant vice presidents for academic affairs. Whereas the records of the Central Files subgroup often contain finished products, such as reports and policy statements, the Staff Files subgroup tends to document the process of policy formation and other decision-making functions. Scattered through the associate and assistant vice presidents' papers, for example, are frank statements of opinion regarding various schools and programs, candidates for promotion, and the relationship between the branches of the university, as well as notes on meetings with faculty members, committee activities, and other subjects.

The Staff Files subgroup includes the records of the following past and current associate and assistant vice presidents, listed in the order in which their records first appear in the boxlist: Ernest R. Zimmermann, Carolyne K. Davis, Edward A. Dougherty, Richard A. English, Robert L. Williams, John H. Romani, Mary Ann Swain, Robert S. Holbrook, W. Allen Spivey, Robert B. Holmes, Niara Sudarkasa, Robin Jacoby, Robert Sauve, E. Kay Dawson, Susan Lipschutz, Paul Courant, Marilyn Knepp, Pamela A. Raymond, Katharine Soper, Karen Gibbons, John Godfrey, Nancy Cantor, A. Lawrence Fincher, Ralph P. Nichols, Valerie Castle, Glenda Haskell, Linda Gillum, Janet Weiss, Ben van der Plijm, Sharon Schmidt, Kathleen (Kati) Bauer, James Hilton, Stephanie Riegle, Catherine Shaw, Philip Hanlon, Teresa Sullivan, Anne Berens, Brian Konz, John King, Lester Monts, Martha E. Pollack, Lori Haskins, and Ron Fitzgerald. The records of an individual, while still in office, are received by the archives on an ongoing basis.

Central academic administrative unit of the University of Michigan which functions as chief executive assistant to the president, responsible for appointments and promotions with oversight for schools, colleges, educational units and programs; including budget planning, legislative relations, institutional research, and affirmative action policies. Supplemental Files subgroup includes material on a number of subjects that was filed separately from the vice presidents' or staff's papers when the record group was received.

The Supplemental Files subgroup of the record group Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs consists of 155 linear feet (in 159 boxes) and spans the years from 1953 to 2013. This subgroup consists of material that was not interfiled with the vice presidents' or staff's papers when the record group was received. The records generally were not created or maintained by any one staff member in the Office of Academic Affairs, but rather are the result of the examination of a particular issue or topic over a period of time by a variety of people.

There are 14 series of varying sizes which comprise this subgroup. For an alphabetical list of the series in this subgroup, please consult the Summary Contents List in the Arrangement section of the finding aid.

Papers of Pun Plamondon, activist, writer, and journalist who in 1968 co-founded the White Panther Party with John Sinclair. Papers include material related to Plamondon's political activism in the late 1960s-early 1970s, material related to the White Panthers Party, the Rainbow People's Party, and Plamondon's relationship with John Sinclair, as wells as material related to law suits against Plamondon and his trials, most notably United States v. U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, et al. and the State of Michigan v. Craig Blazier and Lawrence R. (Pun) Plamondon. Also material related to his autobiographical writings.

The Pun Plamondon papers mostly include material related to his political activism in the late 1960s-early 1970s, legal trials, and imprisonment.

The Quaker Collection consists of miscellaneous letters, diaries, and documents relating to the religious and social history of the Society of Friends in America during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Quaker collection consists of miscellaneous letters, diaries, and documents related to the religious and social history of the Society of Friends in America during the 18th and 19th centuries. These items offer insights into Quaker's daily activities and concerns, such as family life, education, and attending meetings, as well as their participation in various social reform movements, such as abolition, treatment of Native Americans, prison improvements, temperance, and pacifism. The collection also documents internal divergences of American Quakerism in the 19th century, particularly the social and doctrinal disputes that culminated in the Hicksite and Wilburite schisms.

• 1707: A manuscript copy of the death warrant of William Leddra, the last of four Quakers (including Mary Dyer) executed in Massachusetts Bay colony for their religious beliefs
• July 26, 1755: A letter from Alexander Colden to Sir William Johnson voicing frustration with Quakers who refuse to support the war effort in Pennsylvania, and an announcement of General Braddock's defeat
• August 4-12 and 17, 1761: Two accounts, one by an anonymous woman, of Quaker presence at Treaty negotiations held at Easton, Pennsylvania, between the government of Pennsylvania and the Six Nations tribes. Discussed are the negotiations, Quaker-Indian interactions, and the role of Quaker women in the Society
• [After 1770]: An account by an anonymous author of a conference with Native Americans, mostly of the Minnisink Tribe
• October 13, 1829: A letter from Phoebe Post Willis of Jericho, New York, to Isaac Post on the death of John Hicks and strife between Orthodox and Hicksite Quakers
• March 10, 1843: A letter from Ethan Foster of Westerly, Rhode Island, to Thomas B. Gould on Wilburite-Gurneyite strife in his local meeting, and the disownment of Wilbur
• [After 1863 July]: A letter describing a meeting between Abraham Lincoln and five Quaker prisoners of war, who had been forced into the Confederate army, captured by the Union, and held at Fort Delaware
• Various dates: Reports, minutes, and epistles from yearly friends meetings in America and Great Britain

A Dearborn, Michigan writer and television producer. Collection includes digital materials of the interviews and film footage used in the production of his documentary, "New beginnings: the story of the Islamic Center of America."

The Raad Alawan collection consists of digital materials of the interview and film footage used in the production of his documentary, "New beginnings: the story of the Islamic Center of America."

Rachel Ann White of Weymouth, Massachusetts, kept this diary between 1834 and 1837 while she was between the ages of 17 and 20. The diary begins with White's trip to New York City in the summer of 1834. Entries after White's return home in mid-August 1834 shorten and become more abbreviated, giving accounts of her family, social, and educational life.

Her trip to New York was spent sight-seeing and visiting with friends and family. She visited such places as Niblo's Garden Theater, a Jewish synagogue, Trinity Church, the city of Hoboken in New Jersey, Scudder's American Museum, and Castle Garden (where she saw a balloon ascension by Eugene Robinson on July 4, 1834). She described the American Museum at length in her entry of July 29, 1834, seeing such things as "all manner of birds," "beasts and fish," and a number of wax figures in a room that also contained "a great number of Indian relics consisting of canoes, paddles, ornaments…[and] the skeleton of a child found in a cave in one of our western states."

White also attended the funeral procession of the Marquis de Lafayette on June 26, 1834, and visited a relative at the Bloomingdale Asylum at the end of her trip. After visiting at the Asylum, White returned home, describing in part the damage left after the New York anti-abolitionist riots of 1834.

When back in Weymouth, she spent her time going to meetings, socializing with friends and family, taking trips to the beach, going to church, playing cards, attending lectures on temperance, quilting, and more. White mentioned her studies, which apparently included ciphers, history, and especially astronomy, the latter of which White attended several lectures on and viewed the moon through a telescope while in New York.

In 1835, White became a schoolteacher. Details regarding her social life are frequent within the volume, including a close friendship: she spoke highly of a woman named Betsey, experiencing "more joy on meeting [her] than I can express" (September 23, 1835). She wrote about Betsey's health scares that led to her death in October of 1836, for which White was present: "the cold grave has taken to its bosom, one who with a single exception, is my dearest friend. Now futurity seems a blank. I have nothing to anticipate but gloom. Oh why was she taken! Would it have been me!" (October 27, 1836).

White did not make another entry until December 26, 1836; Betsey's death affected her deeply and she has remained at home with the exception of going to meetings. The last entry on the same day mentions a debating meeting she attended: "the question was whether the signs of the times were favorable to the perpetuity of a republican form of government. Mr. Lincoln, argued, nobly in the affirmative."

Overall, entries relate to social visits, attending temperance lectures, domestic affairs, education, and entering into the profession of teaching.

The Railroad building in Québec photograph album contains 154 photographs that document a survey team operating in various remote locations in the Canadian province of Québec from May 1906 to September 1909 during the construction of the National Transcontinental Railway.

The Railroad building in Québec photograph album contains 154 photographs that document a survey team operating in various remote locations in the Canadian province of Québec from May 1906 to September 1909 during the construction of the National Transcontinental Railway.

The album (18 x 29.5 cm) has brown leather covers with "Photographs" stamped in gold on the front. Most images are dated and are arranged in roughly chronological order from May 1906 to September 1909, but there is no identification of people or places. The presence of surveying equipment in several images and the coverage of many different places on the railway’s route indicate a traveling survey team as the likely source of the photographs. The group seems to have been present at all stages of the project, from clearing the land to laying the track bed to building overpasses.

Contents consist of images of worker encampments and log cabin villages, landscapes, scenes from Québec City’s tricentennial in July 1908, railway workers and women in camp, trestle construction, unidentified towns in various stages of development, and two portraits of Native Americans. Also of interest are numerous images featuring surveying tools and equipment as well as cameras.