Wayne State University Overview
Wayne State University is classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a "Research University (very high research activity),” a distinction held by fewer than 100 universities in the country. WSU has earned acclaim for its more than 350 academic programs at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels and professional degrees in pharmacy, business, law, and medicine. Wayne State University has the largest single-campus medical school in the nation, connecting it to numerous specialty hospitals and research centers and training a high percentage of Michigan’s physicians.
Wayne State University is a constitutionally autonomous state-supported university. Governance of the university is vested in an eight-member Board of Governors, whose members are elected for eight-year terms by the voters of Michigan. The President of the university serves ex officio without vote and is the Board’s presiding officer. The state Constitution provides that the Board of Governors “shall have general supervision of its institution and the control and direction of all expenditures from the institution’s funds.” These provisions have been broadly interpreted by the Michigan courts to confer constitutional independence upon the university in governing its affairs.
Wayne State University enrolls more than 33,000 students, of whom 80 percent are from the metropolitan Detroit area and the remainder from outstate Michigan, other states and 90 foreign countries. The student body is 58 percent women and 47 percent minorities. Nearly 60 percent of the students attend WSU full-time. Although WSU is historically a commuter campus, the number of student residents has more than doubled as a result of the construction of three residence halls in the past five years. The student population in residences near campus has also increased dramatically.
The university is organized into 11 colleges and schools. Its full-time faculty numbers approximately 1,800 and includes nationally recognized scholars trained at universities across the United States and numerous foreign nations. The university also has a large number of talented adjunct faculty who represent professions, businesses and other organizations in the metropolitan area.
WSU is an integral part of the economic life of Southeast Michigan, and one of the largest employers in the city. It has a total annual budget of $778 million. The university’s public service programs total $43 million. Its School of Medicine shares a campus with the seven-hospital Detroit Medical Center (DMC). The university also trains medical students at 13 health care institutions in Southeast Michigan, and has residency and/or research affiliations with the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, Crittendon Hospital and Medical Center, Oakwood Heathcare System and the John D. Dingell Veterans Administration Medical Center-Detroit. WSU also has a research affiliation with Henry Ford Hospital.
Wayne State is one of three institutions that make up the University Research Corridor, an ongoing effort to transform, strengthen and diversify Michigan's economy. An independent analysis showed that the state’s three research universities helped create 68,803 Michigan jobs and produced $12.8 billion of net economic benefit in 2006. Wayne State University also created TechTown, the only research and technology park in Detroit. As a community of entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, service providers and corporate partners, TechTown’s mission is to contribute to the economic renaissance of downtown Detroit. TechTown has attracted 24 companies in industries such as alternative energy, life sciences, homeland security and advanced automotive technologies.
Committed to global education and international partnerships, Wayne State currently enrolls more than 3000 international students and scholars from more than 90 countries. Students can select from many short-term study-abroad programs in more than thirteen countries ranging from France to Ghana to China. The university also maintains over 100 articulation agreements with academic institutions around the globe, which allow faculty and students to both conduct research and study in a diversity of settings depending on their academic interests.
Wayne State University is located in the heart of Detroit’s University Cultural Center, home to the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Science Center, Detroit Historical Museum, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Orchestra Hall and the main branch of the Detroit Public Library. Wayne State offers faculty and students a culturally diverse and dynamic urban setting. The campus includes more than 100 buildings on 203 acres of landscaped green space. In addition to the residence halls, major recent additions to campus include the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, a major expansion to the Law School, and the Mort Harris Recreation and Fitness Center. Work has just begun on the new Richard J. Mazurek, M.D., Medical Education Commons and the Marvin I. Danto Engineering Development Center. The university also operates extension campuses in nearby Oakland and Macomb counties.
The university traces its origins to the Detroit Medical College, established in 1868. The various colleges then in existence, except for the Law School, were brought together as the Colleges of the City of Detroit in 1933 and renamed Wayne University in 1934. In 1937 the Law School became part of the university. Other colleges were organized throughout the university’s history: The School of Public Affairs and Social Work (1935), the College of Nursing (1945), the School of Business Administration (1946), and the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts (1985). Wayne University and its colleges became a state university in 1956.