‘Will the girl who took my shirt and left her poetry…’

A classified personal ad from the Michigan Daily.

Before social media, before dating apps, there were personal ads, a department of newspapers’ classified advertising sections that spiced up the paper’s lifeless gray columns. A dive into The Michigan Daily’s digital archive reveals an especially creative era on campus when Michigan students used the Daily’s back pages to express their emotions and connect.

  1. First geothermal facility opening on campus

    When the new golf practice facility opens its doors this fall, it will be the first geothermal facility at the University of Michigan, using the earth’s natural energy to heat and cool the space.

  2. Michigan makes sustainability a high priority

    President Coleman announced new goals and new funding for sustainability both on campus and in U-M research, including a cut in carbon emissions of 25%, a 40% reduction of waste sent to landfills and new stormwater controls to protect the Huron River.

    Related: First geothermal facility opening on campus

  3. Bailed-out banks issued riskier loans

    Banks that received federal bailout money ended up approving riskier loans and shifting capital toward risky investments after getting government help, say U-M researchers. Further, these banks were no more likely to issue loans, overall, than non-TARP banks, in contrast to the declared objective of the federal program to increase lending.

  4. 'I'm going to college!'

    How do you create a ‘culture of college’ in disadvantaged high schools?

  5. 'There's a community out there for you'

    The Spectrum Center, which serves and advocates for students of various sexual orientations, was the first of its kind on any American campus. This fall it is celebrating its 40th anniversary. How times have changed.

  6. Shaping beauty from the desert

    The inspiring story of an unlikely friendship between an American anthropologist and a Mexican artist who rediscovered an ancient way to make pottery. University of Michigan graduate Scott Petersen’s remarkable documentary describes how the men and the art saved a whole town from extinction.

The good old summertime

Some call it Bug Camp, this isolated outpost about 20 miles south of Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge. Its actual name is the U-M Biological Station, located on more than 10,000 forested acres along the south shore of Douglas Lake in Cheboygan County. Imagine a summer camp for grownup scientists. As these gorgeous images from Michigan Photography show, the BioStation delivers an extraordinary learning and research experience for U-M faculty and students, scientists, and anyone who loves nature. 

  • Into the woods

    Forests across the United States — and especially forest soils — store massive amounts of carbon, offsetting about 10% of the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions and helping to mitigate climate change. But experts warn the strength of this carbon “sink” is declining and will level off around mid-century. One way to compensate for the declining sink strength of U.S. forests is to add more trees — by actively replanting after disturbances like wildfires or by allowing forests to retake marginal croplands. (Image credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography.)

    A bunch of people wearing Michigan-branded t-shirts and other gear go walking in the woods at the U-M BioStation in Pellston, Michigan.

  • Eternal beauty

    The BioStation traces its roots to 1874, when the University decided engineering students needed a place to learn surveying. A temporary camp moved from site to site before settling down in 1908 in Pellston, Michigan. Eventually, doors opened to students of biology and botany. Today, researchers representing institutions from around the world conduct field-based research at UMBS. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.)

    Sepia toned image of Douglas Lake from the shores of the U-M BioStation.

  • Logging time

    Researchers have been logging and burning small, contiguous plots at the BioStation in a long-running experiment that seeks to approximate, on a tiny scale, the epic lumbering and wildfire disturbances that transformed the forest at the northern tip of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula and throughout the Upper Great Lakes region. The first plot was established in an aspen forest by plant ecologist Frank Gates in 1936.  (Image credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography.)

     

    Workers in orange vests and hardhats walk down a path in a barren forest after they cut down a bunch of trees in a logging operation.

  • Lake living

    Early U-M Great Lakes research was mainly concerned with fish and fisheries, but the emphasis began to shift to basic limnology, the scientific study of bodies of freshwater such as lakes, after the 1920s. (Image credit: Austin Thomason, Michigan Photography.)

    Moonlight firepit on the shores of Douglas Lake at the U-M BioStation in Pellston, Michigan.

  • A very, very fine house

    Students from multiple schools and colleges constructed the BioStation’s straw bale building as part of a green building course created by Joe Trumpey, a professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability and the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. Students have also constructed a straw bale building at the Campus Farm on the grounds of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor. (Image credit: Austin Thomason, Michigan Photography.)

    Student in green tank top and hard hat applies blobs of mud and straw to a structure in Pellston, Michigan at the U-M BioStation.

  • Burning for you

    Here, researchers execute a controlled burn of wooded land at the BioStation in 2017. The burn plots provide snapshots of different-aged forests and contain a changing mix of plant and tree species. Except for these small plots and a few pockets of old-growth trees, most of the forest at the BioStation dates to 1911, the last time the property was severely burned by post-logging wildfires. (Image credit: Roger Hart, Michigan Photography.)

    Researchers and scientists from the University Michigan stage a controlled burn of three plots of wooded land at the UM Biological Station near Pellston, Michigan. Smoky forest.

  • Walk this way

    In 2016, researchers at the BioStation installed motion-triggered “camera traps” to capture snapshots of the state’s diverse wildlife. They were mainly interested in carnivores, the meat eaters. Can anyone identify this print along the sandy shores of Douglas Lake? (Image credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography.)

    Finger points to a mysterious paw print in the sand.

  • Can you hear me now?

    It is commonly assumed that as forest ecosystems age, they accumulate and “sequester” more carbon. A recent study based at the BioStation untangled carbon cycling over two centuries and found a reality more nuanced than that. The research was published in the journal Ecological Applications.  (Image credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography.)

    A trio of young scientists in the forest at the U-M BioStation in Northern Michigan.

  • Come inside

    The indoors is as visually stimulating as the outdoors at the U-M BioStation. The largest building at camp is the Alfred H. Stockard Lakeside Laboratory with 24,000 square feet of floor space designed for biological research. (Image credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography.)

    The interior of a facility at the U-M BioStation near Pellston, Michigan.

  • If you know, you know

    We’ll let this one speak for itself.

    (Image credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography.)

    Two people take a rowboat into a Douglas Lake in Pellston, Michigan, for a moonlight experience.