The following email was sent to students on September 3, 2025. It is published here for your convenience.

Dear Students,

Welcome to the second week of the fall semester!

The beginning of a semester is the perfect time to reflect on a form of history I love: “origin stories.” Fortunately, our campus is teeming with them. Some are making headlines, like a technology called histotripsy, which destroys tumors with ultrasound waves. Others are subtler and more personal: the chance encounter that became a lifelong friendship or the hobby that morphed into a future career.

Nestled among our historic architecture is a landscape brimming with storied beginnings. Our university – your university – is a major player in the origin story of the modern social sciences. It is the birthplace of the Peace Corps and “bendable concrete.” It is the place where the world learned that a safe and potent vaccine would make polio a thing of the past.  And now, it is part of an important new story: yours.

All of these otherwise very different stories have one thing in common, besides happening beneath the banner of the maize and blue. They feature people crossing borders and stepping into unfamiliar territory. For you, that might mean joining a new social group. It might mean venturing into an emerging scientific field, or merely a new part of campus. It might mean pushing past the boundaries of your experience, habits, and comfort.

This year, I hope you will embrace the spirit of crossing thresholds. Attend a performance from the School of Music, Theatre & Dance or the University Musical Society. Explore the U-M Museum of Art, the Detroit Observatory, or Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum. Meet a friend for coffee or join a student organization. Try dining alone. Go to the library, check out an old-fashioned book, and read it on the grass in the Diag. Attend an event at the inaugural Michigan Arts Festival. And talk to people who see the world differently, no matter how jarring it might be at first.

If you do all this, if you push the borders of the familiar and embrace all this university has to offer, you may discover there are many origin stories here waiting to become part of your own. May this semester be the genesis of something memorable, meaningful, and uniquely yours.

With warm regards,
Laurie K. McCauley, DDS, MS, PhD
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
William K. and Mary Anne Najjar Professor