of 2022, Wolverine athletes have won 188 medals at the Olympic Games. Michigan produced 921 venture capital-backed company founders as alumni or current students from 2006 to 2021, and these founders had raised a total of $26.7B, ranked 7th globally among universities overall. History The University of Michigan was founded on the 26 of August, 1817, as the Catholepistemiad, or the Catholcpistemiad Michigania, under an act of the Territory of Michigan. The corporate existence of the university had its rise in the Act of 1817, and has been continuous throughout all subsequent changes of its organic law. The seven-syllable Catholepistemiad was a mish-mash of Latin and Ancient Greek, which translates to roughly "School of Universal Knowledge." Established in 1817, the Catholepistemiad was not a university in the contemporary sense but rather a centralized system of schools, libraries, and other cultural institutions borrowing its model from the Imperial University of France founded by Napoleon I a decade earlier. Besides carrying on the central institution, the President and Didactoriim of the Catholepistemiad were also authorized to establish private colleges, academies, libraries, etc., throughout the Territory of Michigan. It was only after the State of Michigan entered the Union in 1837 that a new plan was adopted to focus the corporation on higher education. The charter of the Catholepistemiad is an extraordinary example of the marked French influence upon American institutions which found its inception during the course of the Revolutionary War, and continued until it began to give way to German influence in the third or fourth decade of the 19th century. Shortly after the passage of the Act of 1817, Rev. John Monteith became the first president of the Catholepistemiad, and Father Gabriel Richard, a Catholic priest, was vice president. Monteith and Richard enacted that private schools should be established in Detroit, Monroe and Mackinaw, and before the end of September, 1817, the three private schools were in operation. The cornerstone of the first school house, near the corner of Bates Street and Congress Street in Detroit, was laid on September 24, 1817. Subscriptions amounting to $5,000 payable in instalments running over several years were obtained to carry on the work. Of the total amount subscribed to start the work two-thirds came from Zion Masonic Lodge and its members. In August 1818, a private Lancasterian school taught by Lemuel Shattuck was opened in the building. These schools' tuition rates ranged from