The President of the University of Michigan is the principal executive officer of the University of Michigan. The office was created by the Michigan Constitution of 1850, which also specified that the president was to be appointed by the Regents of the University of Michigan and preside at their meetings, but without a vote. Between the establishment of the University of Michigan in 1837 and 1850, the Board of Regents ran the university directly; although they were, by law, supposed to appoint a Chancellor to administer the university, they never did, and instead a rotating roster of professors carried out the day-to-day administration duties.
While the modern office was created in 1850, the University of Michigan itself now traces its date of founding to 1817, when its precursor, the University of Michigania, was founded. The only president of that institution, Rev. John Monteith, is listed below, but is not officially considered to have been a president of the University of Michigan.
The first President of the University of Michigan was Henry Philip Tappan. The position had originally been offered to Henry Barnard, but he declined, and Tappan and John Hiram Lathrop (then Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison) were nominated as new choices, after which Tappan was unanimously elected. Barnard later succeeded Lathrop at Wisconsin.
The 14th and current President of the University of Michigan is Mark S. Schlissel, appointed in 2014. Of the previous presidents:
List of Presidents of the University of Michigan
Source: (Bentley Historical Library 2004)