Rackham Hosts Symposium Honoring 150 Years of Doctoral Research

The University of Michigan awarded its first two Ph.D. degrees in 1876, the first from a public university in the United States. On Friday, October 30, Rackham Graduate School hosted a symposium titled The Past, Present, and Future of Doctoral Research to mark the 150th anniversary of U-M’s first conferred doctorates.

The symposium provided an opportunity to explore Michigan’s doctoral history and to facilitate conversations about interdisciplinarity, access, and what lies ahead for graduate research at Michigan and elsewhere. Panelists and presenters included current Rackham Ph.D. students and Rackham alumni, members of the Michigan faculty from a range of fields, Rackham Dean Mike Solomon, and U-M President Emerita Mary Sue Coleman. Provost Laurie McCauley kicked off the daylong symposium with opening remarks.

“This anniversary honors not only the highest echelon of academic study, but its profound reverberations across the globe and across generations,” McCauley said. “That is what we celebrate today: what earning a doctorate has made possible in our graduates’ lives, and what their education has made possible in the lives of others.”

The morning included three sessions. In the first, Rackham students and recent alumni spotlighted U-M Ph.D. innovators through the years. The individuals featured were Shiho Sakanishi (Ph.D. 1929, Literature), the first Japanese librarian in the Library of Congress; Elzada Clover (Ph.D. 1935, Botany), who led the first botanical survey of the Colorado River; Arthur Burks (Ph.D. 1941, Philosophy), a lead engineer on the first general-purpose electronic computer; Samuel C.C. Ting (Ph.D. 1963, Physics), who won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics for co-discovering the subatomic J/ψ particle; Mary Frances Berry (Ph.D. 1966, American Constitutional History), a scholar, lawyer, and activist for civil rights and social justice; and David R. Williams (Ph.D. 1986, Sociology), a public-health expert on the effects of racial discrimination and social inequality.

Next, Professors Cathy Sanok, Shelly Flagel, and Ricky Punzalan joined former Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop coordinator and Rackham alumna Andrea Jones-Rooy and 2026 Ph.D. graduate Keanu Heydari to discuss the many institutional structures that have supported interdisciplinary research at Michigan and helped make connections and breakthroughs possible over the course of U-M history.

The morning closed with Dean Solomon and Professors Elizabeth Cole and Scott Page joining President Emerita Coleman to reflect on university efforts to broaden access to those interested in pursuing advanced degrees, and to examine pressures facing universities invested in graduate education today. That certainly includes Michigan, which currently has over 120 graduate programs and annually sees more than 800 students graduate with a Ph.D. In the years since Michigan’s first two doctoral graduates a century and a half ago, nearly 48,000 dissertations have been filed in fulfillment of the degree.

“When I think of what it means to mark 150 years of doctoral research at Michigan, the volume and quality of that scholarship serves as a testament to the many ways our Ph.D. recipients have shifted viewpoints, deepened understanding, and improved lives,” Dean Solomon said. “And that is something I know will continue for many years to come.”

The afternoon featured a conversation between U-M faculty members Rita Chin, Nigel Melville, and Mo Torres, and graduate students Richard Bachmann, Kate Howell, and Sophia Wushanley, who are taking part in Rackham’s Interdisciplinary Problem Solving Initiative. That initiative has focused on two areas: reparative justice—particularly with regard to understanding and documenting the historic and ongoing harms experienced by African Americans in Southeastern Michigan—and questions of ethics and equity surrounding the use of artificial intelligence.

Chin, the initiative’s faculty director, noted that the project operated under the assumption that bringing together faculty and students from disparate fields to develop approaches informed by humanistic, social science, and STEM expertise was as important to pursue as it was necessary to organize conscientiously.

“Our hypothesis was that radical interdisciplinary collaboration would need more than just conventional forms of support,” Chin said. “It would also require active facilitation, scaffolding, guidance, and patience. But this novel form of support we thought would pay off in terms of new questions, new kinds of research, and new forms of engaged learning for students.”

As the title of the symposium implied, the day was as much an opportunity to examine and celebrate Michigan’s past as it was to consider the future in an uncertain time for higher education.

“It’s my experience that this university has an inherent courage to do things,” President Emerita Coleman said. “And we have shown it over and over again in our history. Our early recognition and promotion of graduate education was so important to society as a whole and to the university. Our mission statement says we are to develop new knowledge and disseminate that knowledge. That is really part of the soul of this institution and has been for a very long time.”

Learn more about 150 Years of Doctoral Research at Michigan.
Learn more about the Rackham Interdisciplinary Problem Solving Initiative.