About Western Michigan University

Western Michigan University (WMU) is a public research university in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was traditional in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo. Its enrollment, as of the Fall 2019 semester, was 21,470. It is classified among “R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity”.

The university’s energetic teams compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and are known as the Western Michigan Broncos. They compete in the Mid-American Conference for most sports.

Kalamazoo /ˌkæləməˈzuː/ is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. As of the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a population of 335,340 as of 2015. Kalamazoo is equidistant from the major American cities of Chicago and Detroit, each less than 150 miles (240 kilometers) away.

One of Kalamazoo’s most notable features is the Kalamazoo Mall, an external pedestrian shopping mall. The city created the mall in 1959 by closing portion of Burdick Street to auto traffic, although two of the mall’s four blocks have been reopened to auto traffic in the past 1999. Kalamazoo is house to Western Michigan University, a large public university, Kalamazoo College, a private forward looking arts college, and Kalamazoo Valley Community College, a two-year community college.