The um3detroit event on May 9 at the Gem Theater in Detroit features talks by U-M President Mark Schlissel and U-M alumni Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Wendy Jackson, managing director of the Detroit Program for the Kresge Foundation.

It was Jevona Watson’s dream to have a coffee shop in the Fitzgerald neighborhood in northwest Detroit, a place she calls home. A matching Motor City Match grant in 2016 helped take the first steps toward her dream. Watson began searching for support and resources as she was getting the shop ready to open. She landed on the University of Michigan’s Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project.

The University of Michigan has inducted two new members to its Detroiter Hall of Fame — Cynthia Stephens and Charles Adams — and also recognized Dexter Mason as an emerging leader in the city plus honored Barbara Israel as a faculty member who has shown outstanding service to the community.

June Manning Thomas is Centennial Professor of Urban Planning and Regional Development at University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning today, but in the early 1990s her niece was living next to an overgrown lot in Detroit. That vacant plot got her thinking and asking questions: How had that land gone undeveloped for so long? Who had failed her niece and other black Detroiters?

Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, a Detroit native and resident, graduated from U-M in 2005 with a BSE in computer engineering. “Like you,” he told the Kessler Scholars, “I attended the University of Michigan on scholarship. A scholarship prepares you and positions you for a new set of opportunities. Be open to those opportunities and possibilities.”

Ahmina Maxey was shocked when the incinerator closed in late March. “It was so abrupt,” she said. “The incinerator (owner) has the best poker face I’ve ever seen because… they were pretending it was going to be open for 20 more years.”

Kimberly Dowdell, a lecturer at U-M’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, decided to become an architect at a young age in an effort to repair Detroit’s disinvested building stock. Her firm, Century Partners, redevelops single-family homes in Detroit with an eye toward stabilizing and revitalizing residential neighborhoods.

Selden Standard is known for its sleek interior, its celebrity chef Andy Hollyday and the beautiful food served within its sleek walls on Second Avenue in Detroit. Let’s just say that its Roasted Cauliflower and Charred Octopus have earned rave reviews from foodies locally and around the nation.

Over twelve years ago, University of Michigan undergraduate Rachael Tanner asked herself a simple question: Why doesn’t U-M provide substantive opportunities for students to engage with Detroit?  Her urban studies professor, Stephen Ward, was intrigued by her motivation and encouraged her to write up her ideas for her final class project.