Dean's Message

Welcome. We hope you find our website helpful in understanding our programs, faculty, courses, and resources. Words and images, however, are not always enough. We encourage you to plan a visit if you are considering Taubman College.

Taubman College is dedicated to the professional education of architects, urban planners, and urban designers. Advanced and research degrees are offered through two doctoral programs. There is also an undergraduate pre-professional Bachelor of Science program in architecture. We are proud to be a part of one of the premier institutions of higher education and research in the world. The University of Michigan is a major international seat of learning, with multiple centers of academic excellence at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. There is cutting edge research and scholarship in every academic field, including world renowned faculty.

The College is committed to enduring values and emerging imperatives. There is a long and venerable tradition of design, scholarship, community service, and research. Modern architectural research, especially in building technology, was essentially founded at the University of Michigan in the middle of the last century. The long-term interest in design and tectonics is matched by a more recent interest in urbanism from both an urban planning and urban design perspective. Issues that compel us include aesthetics, social equity, sustainability, real estate development, globalism, and community design and planning, especially in nearby Detroit, where we have opened a design center.

Since receiving the largest endowment gift ever given a school of architecture and urban planning in 1999, we have hired many faculty members, started a Master of Urban Design Program and a Real Estate Development Certificate Program, mounted one of the world’s most robust visiting professor programs, increased financial aid to students, opened new international programs, and enhanced our facilities. The number of student applicants and enrollees has increased, along with our curricular offerings and the size and caliber of our faculty and staff. In short, Taubman College is on a roll!

Our student body and faculty are composed of women and men of diverse backgrounds, from different regions of the state, the nation, and the world, as well as from different cultures and religions, races, and sexual orientations. We encourage and support lively inquiry and discourse on all issues that affect the built environment and the people who live in it. Together we work to maintain an atmosphere that strives to be simultaneously critical and tolerant, competitive and friendly, serious and fun. We try to teach, research, practice, and serve in ways that have meaningful impact and true consequence to the community, the region, society, and the world. Come join us and add your voice to this quest.

Douglas S. Kelbaugh