Research Initiatives
Collaboration, Creativity, and Excellence

Taubman College and the University of Michigan invest in people, practices, and platforms to advance strategic initiatives that draw on expertise from across the college, the university, from industry, and with community partners. In concert with U-M’s Vision 2034 framework for leveraging our interdisciplinarity and excellence at scale, Taubman College has three strategic goals for research and creative practice:

• Leading and developing climate and low-carbon futures research and partnerships
• Developing leadership in equity-focused design and planning research and creative practice
• Prominently emphasizing the significance and role of design in research and creative practice

Collaboration, equitable partnerships, disciplinary know-how, and an integrative approach to design, research, and creative practice drive our work. 

U-M Public Design Corps

The U-M Public Design Corps is a Taubman College program offering U-M students opportunities to engage in socially driven design. The community-centric focus and hands-on approach create a unique experience outside the bounds of the traditional studio. By challenging students to apply their academic theory and training in planning, design, and spatial intelligence to actual clients in real-time, the program creates an experiential bridge from the classroom to the professional world.

Designing for social good, in collaboration with organizations, and with pressing community needs in mind can be a difficult endeavor without proper training and tools. Consequently, Taubman Public Design Corps has partnered with the University of Michigan’s Edward Ginsberg Center. Student contributors participate in Ginsberg Center workshops to establish a foundational understanding of community engagement and co-design methods. Students also receive support from mentors with experience in inclusive, community-centered design. In addition to professional practice, training, and fieldwork, qualifying students have the option to log credit hours toward architectural licensure.

U-M Arts Initiative

The U-M Arts Initiative seeks to illuminate and expand human connections, inspire collaborative creativity, and build a more just and equitable world through the arts. The initiative makes the arts central to the university’s identity and mission by expanding access to the arts on campus and beyond, activating them in student learning, and integrating the arts into research across disciplines. Underscoring U-M’s role in the arts ecosystem of the region, the initiative’s core goals include: strengthening the student experience by expanding and integrating the arts in teaching and learning; activating interdisciplinary discovery and arts research; broadening and deepening partnerships with communities and the public; and building capacity and sustainability for the arts.

Michigan Engaging Community through the Classroom

The Michigan Engaging Community through the Classroom (MECC) initiative integrates intersectoral and civically-oriented engaged learning simultaneously. It taps into existing courses and brings them together to work on related client-based projects rather than creating new courses. This approach allows existing courses to continue serving the needs of the individual programs, while also providing a vehicle for meta-disciplinary learning. This initiative coordinates and promotes collaborations among community partners with the goal of enhancing U-M’s public service and outreach mission.

MECC has worked within communities all around the state of Michigan, from the Traverse City region, to Chikaming Township, to Metro Detroit. Participating students and faculty come from nearly every college at U-M. This provides students from different majors with the unique opportunity to work and learn from each other on real-world issues. From exploring ways to provide broadband access to rural and underserved areas of Michigan, to partnering with local schools, stores, and neighborhood groups in Metro Detroit to develop affordable housing options for refugees, our projects are varied and speak to the ever-evolving community needs.

Humanities Collaboratory

The Humanities Collaboratory invests in collaborative, multi-generational, inclusive and transformational humanities scholarship that engages compelling questions for the academy and the world beyond. Born in the Office of the Provost, housed in LSA, and located in the Hatcher Graduate Library, the Humanities Collaboratory is building permanent research development infrastructure to support humanities research at the University of Michigan. The Humanities Collaboratory works to develop tools for assessment and provides 5×5 and Proposal Development grants to support innovative and ambitious forms of humanities scholarship. The Humanities Collaboratory mission is to give humanists access to significant resources to enable new kinds of work on the remarkable diversity of human experience across the globe.

Equity in Architectural Education Consortium

The Equity in Architectural Education Consortium (EAEC) leverages various resources and forms of capital to collectively reduce inequities and disparities for current students of color and other underrepresented groups in undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs of architecture. The EAEC’s shared goal is to ultimately impact the fields and disciplines where our students will take up careers. The EAEC was founded in 2018 by architecture schools, departments, and programs at: Florida International University (FIU), Hampton University, Howard University, Morgan State University (MSU), Tuskegee University, University of Michigan (U-M), University of Oklahoma (OU), and Florida A&M University (FAMU).

Bold Challenges

Bold Challenges, an Office of Vice President for Research initiative, leads events and programs to empower researchers to create dynamic teams, produce transformative discoveries, and improve the quality of life for our communities, state, nation, and world. Bold Challenges workshops and research development activities bring together diverse researchers from all three U-M campuses to spark innovative solutions to complex societal problems. In 2024, Bold Challenges had five core themes: Advancing Human Health at Scale, Adapting to Changing Environments, Creating Sustainable Energy Innovations, Improving Lives through Next Generation Infrastructure, and Building Trust and Strengthening Social Connections. 

Climate Futures

Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning is launching a new Climate Futures platform which aims to elevate our impact in discovery and education for climate action, sustainability, and environmental justice. By supporting students, faculty, staff, and partners in research and creative practice, teaching and learning, outreach and engagement, we aim to partner across and beyond the university to achieve inclusive, vibrant, and just futures. 

Climate Futures is led by architect and professor Jen Maigret. 

ArtsEngine

ArtsEngine is an interdisciplinary initiative of the U-M North Campus schools and colleges: A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design; School of Music, Theatre & Dance; College of Engineering; and School of Information. ArtsEngine’s mission is to deepen and enrich the Michigan experience by providing a framework in which curiosity, creativity, collaboration, and passion are engaged through interdisciplinary teaching, learning, research, and community. ArtsEngine promotes, expands, and enhances programs and initiatives through which students and faculty develop as interdisciplinary thinkers, outcome-driven makers, and collaborative practitioners across the arts, design, engineering, information sciences and technology.

Urban Collaboratory

The Urban Collaboratory partners with communities to solve on-the-ground challenges such as making drinking water safer, improving infrastructure, increasing access to healthy food, and much more. Collaboratory team members work directly with city stakeholders to identify their needs and develop solutions guided by smart city technology and novel urban design methods.

Sustainable Food Systems Initiative

The University of Michigan Sustainable Food Systems Initiative engages an interdisciplinary mix of students, faculty, and communities at local and global levels to learn from and build food systems that are health-promoting, economically viable, equitable, and ecologically sound.