President’s Welcome
Welcome to Charlotte, the Queen City, the Largest City in North Carolina, the seat of Mecklenburg County and the 17th largest city in the US. Welcome also to the University of Michigan Club of Charlotte. While being a Big Ten Conference school in the heart of ACC and SEC country places us in the minority, we are proud to be a club of over 1,800 U-M Alumni strong in and around Charlotte and we welcome all the many friends of Michigan in the area as well.
Our club programming includes following our athletic teams, lifelong learning events, young alumni socials, community service and volunteer activities, connecting with other Big Ten Clubs, raising scholarship funds to send deserving area students to Ann Arbor and much more. These diverse events helped us to be named the Outstanding Club among the ten clubs in our region for the last two years running!
The University of Michigan Club of Charlotte is an official club of the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan. If you are a member of AAUM, then the good news is that you are already an official member of our club. We don’t charge separate membership dues. The many great events we sponsor throughout the year are primarily funded through a small percentage of the membership dues paid to AAUM by local alumni. While we welcome all U-M alumni and friends living in the Charlotte area to participate in our club activities, I encourage you to join AAUM as it directly supports our mission and is another way to connect with and support the over 500,000 of us around the world who are proud to call ourselves graduates of the University of Michigan.
We sincerely hope you come out to one or all of our activities and events. If you would like to go beyond just attending and serve on one of our committees, join our Board, or if you have ideas for future events that would be of interest to our group, please feel free to contact me.
By the way, we do have a heritage of Leaders and Best here in Mecklenburg! On May 20, 1775, the local leaders came together and signed the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence over a year ahead of the work our founding fathers did in Philadelphia!!
Hail to the Victors! Let’s Go Blue!
Tom De Vries
Board Member Emeritus
Former President