The University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) is the liberal arts and sciences school of the University of Michigan. The college was established in 1841.
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History
The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts was originally designated the Literary Department and was the core of the University of Michigan. From 1841 to 1874, the faculty elected a president that communicated with the regents about department needs. In 1875, Henry Simmons Frieze became the first of the deans of LSA.
Departments
The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts consists of three divisions: the Humanities Division, the Natural Sciences Division, and the Social Sciences Division.
Humanities Division
The Humanities Division consists of the following academic departments and units:
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Department of American Culture
Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
Frankel Center for Judaic Studies
Department of Classical Studies
Department of Comparative Literature
Department of English Language and Literatures
Department of Film, Television, and Media
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Department of History
Department of the History of Art
Institute for the Humanities
Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
Department of Middle East Studies
Department of Philosophy
Residential College
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Natural Sciences Division
The Natural Sciences Division consists of the following academic departments and units:
Applied Physics Program
Department of Astronomy
Biological Station
Department of Chemistry
Center for the Study of Complex Systems
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Department of Mathematics
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Museum of Paleontology
Department of Physics
Department of Biophysics
Department of Program in the Environment
Department of Statistics
Social Sciences Division
The Social Sciences Division consists of the following academic departments and units:
Department of Anthropology
Department of Communication and Media
Department of Economics
Department of History
International Institute
Department of Linguistics
Museum of Anthropological Archaeology
Department of Organizational Studies
Department of Political Science
Department of Psychology
Department of Sociology
Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science
Department of Women’s and Gender Studies
Deans
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Helen Zell Writers' Program
The Helen Zell Writers' Program is a two-year, fully funded Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing within the University of Michigan's English Department. Students in the program concentrate in either fiction or poetry. In 2013, Helen Zell gave $50 million to support the graduate writing program, which was renamed for her.
Alumni and former students include Jesmyn Ward, Celeste Ng, Brit Bennett, Danez Smith, Vievee Francis, and Chigozie Obioma.
Residential College
The Residential College (RC) is a Michigan Living-Learning Program and academic unit within the Humanities Division of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
Founded in 1967, the Residential College began as an experiment in residential education, designed to create a smaller liberal arts community within the resources of a large research university. The program was developed by a planning committee of faculty that included Theodore Newcomb, Carl Cohen, and Bradford Perkins. Since its founding, the RC has emphasized student-centered, interdisciplinary liberal arts education and active engagement in the learning process.
RC students take courses throughout LSA as well as specially designed RC courses, many of which are seminar courses with fewer than fifteen students. Until 2025, RC courses included written evaluations on transcripts alongside traditional grades. The program also includes dedicated academic advising, arts studios for ceramics, darkroom photography, screen-printing, and other visual arts, theater and gallery spaces, and a community garden, all housed within East Quadrangle.
RC students live together in East Quadrangle during their first and second years, creating a residential community in which classrooms, faculty offices, advising, arts spaces, and student living spaces are located within the same building. Because the RC is part of LSA, its students also complete LSA academic requirements and may pursue majors throughout the college. The RC offers four interdisciplinary majors: Arts and Ideas in the Humanities, Creative Writing and Literature, Drama, and Social Theory and Practice. These majors are housed within the Residential College but are open to all LSA students.
Students in the RC are required to complete four credits of language beyond the 16-credit LSA requirement. Most students do so during their first three semesters through the RC's Intensive Immersion Language Program. Each RC language path consists of two pass/fail eight-credit courses similar to language immersion, followed by a four-credit readings course. Intensive Japanese at the RC has no reading course, and its semi-immersion curriculum consists of two ten-credit courses. Other languages offered include Spanish, French, German, and Russian. At the end of the intensive language sequence, students receive a certificate of language proficiency on their official college transcript.