Ann Arbor: Education and Research

Ann Arbor: Education and Research

Elementary and Secondary Schools

The Ann Arbor School District serves the city of Ann Arbor and parts of 8 surrounding townships covering an area of 125 square miles. The district's two conventional high schools, Pioneer and Huron, are among the highest-rated in the state of Michigan. In 2004 the district formulated a plan to build a third high school, an $85 million project to be completed in fall 2007. The alternative high school, Community High near the University of Michigan campus, enjoys tremendous popularity and places students through a lottery program. The Ann Arbor school district is administered by a nine-member non-partisan board that appoints a superintendent. The major emphasis of the system is on early childhood education, mathematics, science, and technology.

The following is a summary of data regarding the Ann Arbor public schools as of the 2003-2004 school year.

Total enrollment: 16,724

Number of facilities elementary schools: 20

junior high schools: 6

senior high schools: 5 (2 comprehensive and 3 alternative)

other: 1 preschool

Student/teacher ratio: 16:1

Teacher salaries median salary: $48,083

Funding per pupil: $11,125

The Ann Arbor area is also served by several private and religiously affiliated schools.

Public Schools Information: Ann Arbor Public Schools, 2555 South State Street, South, Ann Arbor, MI 48104; telephone (734)994-2200

Colleges and Universities

In Ann Arbor education extends to all facets of life: social, cultural, and economic. The city is home to the University of Michigan, Washtenaw Community College, Concordia College, and Cleary College; located in neighboring Ypsilanti is Eastern Michigan University.

At the heart of the Ann Arbor community is the University of Michigan, recognized as one of the nation's foremost public institutions of higher learning. According to a 2005 survey by U.S. News & World Report, the University of Michigan ranked 2nd among U.S. public universities and 22nd among all national universities. The university enrolls about 36,000 students and offers a complete range of programs leading to associate, baccalaureate, master's, and doctorate degrees in 17 schools and colleges. Primary areas of study include liberal arts, architecture and planning, art, business administration, education, engineering, music, natural resources, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, law, medicine, information and library studies, public health, and social work. Rankings vary from year to year, but several schools, namely law, medicine, business administration, and engineering routinely rank among the top programs in the nation.

Concordia College, affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, provides associate and undergraduate programs in such fields as business management, education, and theology. Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti is a full-scale state university with an enrollment of 24,000 students. The school is known for its Education program, as well as the colleges of Technology and Business. Washtenaw Community College specializes in vocational and technical training and is the site of a Robotics Repair Program. The school enrolls more than 20,000 annually and has transfer programs with the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University, and University of Michigan Dearborn.

Libraries and Research Centers

Approximately 25 libraries and research centers, maintained by a variety of organizations and agencies, are located in Ann Arbor. The Ann Arbor District Library maintains holdings of more than 425,000 materials, including more than 394,000 books and 28,000 CDs, cassette tapes, and books on tapes. There are also more than 315 CD-ROMs for checkout in the collection. In addition to the main Downtown Library, the system operates three branches (Creek, Northeast, and West), with a fourth (Pittsfield) to open soon, plus a bookmobile. In 2005 wireless internet access was added to the Downtown branch, with plans to add it to all branches; all branches currently have wired internet access through a T-1 line.

The Washtenaw County Library is the headquarters of the Huron Valley Library System. The library operates as a traditional public-use facility, and also, through its Library Learning Resource Center, as a center for organizational development to be used for training sessions, meetings, workshops and special events for County government and affiliated organizations. With holdings of more than 40,000 volumes, the library houses a facility for the blind and the physically handicapped; special services include a low-vision center, various aids for the handicapped, homebound service, volunteer taping, and a video library.

The Gerald R. Ford Library contains materials pertaining to the life and career of Gerald R. Ford, former President of the United States. Ford is a University of Michigan alumnus and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the library's affiliated Gerald R. Ford Museum is located. The non-circulating collection, which is open to the public, includes 9,000 books, 21 million pages of memos, meeting notes, and other documents, plus papers relating to the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, which were released to the public in April 2000.

The University of Michigan library system, consistently ranked among the top 10 research libraries in the country, includes facilities for all colleges within the university as well as for individual academic departments. Holdings of the 19 University Libraries total more than 7 million volumes; nearly 40 special collections include such subjects as American, British, and European literature, radical protest and reform literature, manuscripts, theater materials, and United States and Canadian government documents. In 2005 the library's Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive was launched, making available 52,000 digitized copies of videotaped testimonies to the persecution of the Nazi regime from nine worldwide Holocaust survivor and Nazi experience groups. The University of Michigan School of Business Administration maintains the Kresge Library; among the nine facilities within the Kresge Library system are the Law Library, the Bentley Historical Library, and the Transportation Institute Library.

Other libraries in Ann Arbor are affiliated with Washtenaw Community College, and corporations, hospitals, and churches.

Research centers are associated primarily with state and federal government agencies. Among the major research centers are the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, the Institute for Social Research Library, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Institute for Fisheries Research Library, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, and the Van Oosten Library of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

Public Library Information: Ann Arbor Public Library, 343 South Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2293; telephone (734)327-4200; fax (734)327-8309