Posted on in Research Centers

Exciting additions at the Ford School

The new school year has begun and we are excited to have both new students and new faculty members joining us. Additionally, we have expanded our research centers and outreach efforts substantially. One new resource for students at the Ford School is the  Program in Practical Policy Engagement.

The Program in Practical Policy Engagement was made possible by a $1.5 million gift from the Power Foundation.

Headed by Professor Elisabeth Gerber and Associate Director Cindy Bank, P3E is a university-wide resource housed at the Ford School, where it can leverage existing expertise and interdisciplinary approach to generate policy-relevant research, analysis and learning, as well as improvements in organizational practice. It has three goals:

  1. Create engaged learning opportunities for students by facilitating collaborations with organizations at the state, local, national and international levels. At its core, it hopes to provide students with a deeper understanding of how their work can add public value.
  2. Support efforts by faculty and students to conduct policy and operational research that is timely, practical and policy-relevant.
  3. Generate policy impact by developing and implementing cutting-edge techniques to translate research into practical policy action.

“The Program in Practical Policy Engagement is just that. It’s practical, as distinguished from theoretical. It’s about public policy, aimed at adding value, and it’s about engagement, providing ways for U-M students, faculty and staff to engage directly in making things better,” said Philip Power, former U-M Regent and longtime university donor. “It’s a direct extension of the obligations of a public university to improve our society. One vitally important aspect of the program is its emphasis on helping students and organizations learn practical ways to get things done—something too often overlooked by purely theoretical approaches to learning.”

P3E programming will focus on helping students through mentoring and networking. This past week they hosted the first student pitch competition, which allowed 2nd year students in the MPP program who had just completed their internship to pitch the highlights of their internship experience to a distinguished panel of judges with a chance to win prize money. If you are interested in watching the pitch presentations, you can find them on the Ford School website. This is the first in many opportunities for students in engage with P3E.

Posted on in News

New faculty members and other news

It has been a busy few weeks at the Ford School. We are excited to announce the addition of two new assistant professors for this fall. For those of you interested in international policy, we’ve added tremendous strength in the area of international development. Two outstanding scholars will join the Ford School this fall as assistant professors, both with expertise in international development.

Yusuf Neggers is a postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. His research examines questions at the intersection of development economics and political economy, with a particular focus on the connections between political and bureaucratic accountability and the quality of public services.

Eduardo Montero is completing his PhD in Economics at Harvard University. Originally from San José, Costa Rica, Montero’s interests are in development economics, political economy, and economic history. His research focuses on how variation in institutional arrangements, such as property rights regimes, affect development in Central America and Central Africa.

Many of our faculty have been quoted in a variety of publications recently as well. If you have not yet discovered the news page on the Ford School website, I would encourage you to check it out. We are proud of and excited about the work our faculty is doing. You can find news updates here.

You can also follow other Ford School news via Twitter, Facebook or other social media platforms.

Posted on in News

Check out our speaker series!

We have had a wonderful array of speakers this month at the Ford School. The range of topics is illustrative of the breadth of faculty and student policy interests here. I wanted to highlight a couple that I attended and found extremely interesting.

On January 31st (so almost February!), we co-hosted a panel discussion entitled Beyond the Wall: The Human Toll of Border Crossings. The panelists included Brooke Jarvis, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and the author of Unclaimed, an investigative narrative about an unidentified migrant bed-bound in a San Diego hospital for 16 years and the networks of immigrant families searching for their missing loved ones. She was joined by Jason De León, an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a long-term anthropological study of undocumented migration between Mexico and the United States that uses ethnography, archaeology and forensic science to understand this clandestine social process. In recognition of his work on this project, De León was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2017. The third panelist was Ann Lin, an associate professor at the Ford School. She teaches courses on public policy implementation, gender and politics, qualitative research methods and immigration. Lin is currently studying potential immigration policies and the beliefs of American immigrants with a special focus on Arab Americans.

In their really moving discussion, the panel shed light on the true human cost of undocumented migration, including many lives lost in crossing the desert, family members who disappear and are never heard from again as well the many abuses endured by these migrants.

On Monday, February 19th, as part of our Citi Foundation lecture series, we hosted Ana Navarro. If that name sounds familiar to you, you may have heard her on many different news programs. Ana is a GOP strategist and political contributor to CNN, ABC News, and Telemundo.

Ana frequently appears in the media, sought after by Meet the Press, Bill Maher’s Real Time, Anderson Cooper 360, and The View, to name a few. She is in touch with the political issues people are talking about, and in presentations, she discusses the latest hot button issues in politics, giving audiences an insider’s view of the upcoming elections and a roadmap for where the country is headed.

In her wide ranging and entertaining talk, Ana discussed topics such as the state of both the Democratic and Republican parties, the upcoming mid-term elections, gun control, tax reform and immigration policy. Her candor in assessing the situation of the U.S., while sometimes a bit depressing, was refreshing and educational.

If you have not yet checked out the events section of our website, I would encourage you to do so. You can find links to the video stream of past events as well as the schedule of upcoming speakers. Take a look!

Posted on in Guest posts, Student Life

The Dow Sustainability Fellowship program

Garcia Montufar, Diego

 

This post is written by Diego Garcia Montufar. Diego is pursuing a dual master’s degree program in public policy and applied economics

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One of the highlights of my experience at the Ford School was my work through the Dow Sustainability Fellowship. Dow fellows engage in an interdisciplinary team project with students from other schools and departments from across UM and attend seminars by academics, practitioners, and other sustainability experts. The fellowship highlights the importance of collaboration across disciplines to devise actionable sustainability solutions at local and global levels.

My team, composed of students from the schools of Public Policy and Environment and Sustainability, assessed barriers to ridesharing and carsharing in HOPE Village, a neighborhood in the city of Detroit. Shared-use mobility services such as ridesharing and carsharing are changing the transportation landscape across the world and providing people with access to opportunities such as jobs and education. These mobility services, however, have mostly been targeted to high-end consumers and have the potential to exclude low-resourced, low-density communities. By focusing on a neighborhood in Detroit, my team hoped to understand whether shared-use mobility services could contribute to satisfy the transportation needs of communities where public transportation is wanting, and to identify the challenges and barriers that prevent people from using them.

As a policy student interested in qualitative research methods, I was responsible for designing the questionnaires that we used to conduct focus groups in HOPE Village. A key part of my job was amplifying the voices and opinions of residents, and using their insights to inform the recommendations to our local partner. My teammates conducted research in areas like transportation policy, focusing on successful ridesharing and carsharing programs across the US, while others incorporated their business and environmental expertise to our work. In addition, we received enormous support from our local partner, Focus: HOPE and from Ford School faculty like Elisabeth Gerber, a transportation policy expert.

The focus groups we conducted revealed that the most significant barriers to shared-use mobility services in HOPE Village were access to credit, security concerns, and a lack of outreach and inclusion from shared-use mobility companies. Many of these barriers could be addressed by adequate policy responses, but others depend on the strategies employed by shared-used mobility companies to penetrate different neighborhoods and areas. Our findings confirmed that an interdisciplinary approach like the one espoused by the Dow Sustainability Fellowship could in fact contribute to major changes in the transportation landscape and make shared-use mobility services more accessible and equitable. Many cities across the US have acknowledged this; the city of Detroit has launched an Office of Mobility Innovation, and the city of San Francisco is currently conducting a series of studies on Emerging Mobility Services and Technologies to inform future policy options and pilot programs, taking community collaboration and equitable access as some of its guiding principles.

My experience as a Dow Fellow serves as a strong reminder of why I chose to study public policy in the first place: policy problems are multifaceted, and their solutions must draw from multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, health sciences, and others. Programs like the Dow Sustainability Fellowship are an opportunity for Ford and other UM students to put their knowledge in practice and contribute to solutions that can improve the quality of life for present and future generations while safeguarding our planet.

Posted on in Student Life

Get involved: Center for Social Impact Board Fellowship Program

Amelia Esenstad

Amelia Esenstad is a first year MPP student. She is participating in the CSI Board Fellows program. Thanks to Amelia for sharing her experience with us!

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One of the strengths of the Ford School is its connection between the academics of public policy and their real-world application. There are many opportunities here at UM to build on classroom and personal experience, including policy talks, student organizations, and other volunteer opportunities. For me, the Center for Social Impact (CSI) Board Fellowship Program has been a valuable way to further develop my leadership skills and connect with the local Ann Arbor community.

CSI’s Board Fellowship Program places UM graduate students across disciplines as board members of local nonprofits in Southeast Michigan. The program helps students build skills in project management and leadership through a board-level project and other trainings and workshops all while contributing to the mission and vision of the organization. Since 2003, the program has placed over 450 students on the board of 175 local nonprofits.

I’m serving on the board of Apple Playschools, a local nonprofit preschool with nature-focused and bilingual programs, helping to develop a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic plan. As part of my project, I’ve collaborated with the Executive Director and conducted research on best practices in the early childhood education field. Though I had previous nonprofit experience as a staff member and volunteer, working with Apple Playschools has been a great chance to see how a nonprofit board functions – what kinds of decisions the board is faced with making, how does the board address competing priorities, and more.

My peers in the program are working on an exciting collection of projects, ranging from advocacy guides to board governance to capital campaigns. We’ve been able to learn from each other and share recommendations, particularly through the recommended accompanying course at the Ross School of Business called “Governance of Nonprofit Organizations” which focuses on the responsibilities of nonprofit boards and unique challenges of nonprofit board leadership. Taken together, the course and board placement are a great blend of learning, then applying, the information and strategies for successful board leadership.

Participating in the Board Fellows program has been a highlight of my first year at the Ford School. I am excited to continue building on this experience throughout the rest of my time at Ford and with future board service and nonprofit leadership roles.

Posted on in News, Research Centers

MLK panel photo

In the U.S., Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This federal holiday is set aside to celebrate the life and accomplishments of the great civil rights leader. At the Ford School, we were fortunate to be able to attend a program to look at innovative programs for youth and young adults featuring an outstanding panel of experts.

Broderick Johnson, a former Obama Administration Cabinet Secretary and Director of the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force, Luke Shaefer, Director of Poverty Solutions, and Brian Jacob, co-director of the Youth Policy Lab as well as the Education Policy Initiative, talked about mentoring and summer youth employment programs aimed at low income urban youth.  Although these programs have only been in operation for a few years, the initial evidence indicates that they are having a positive impact on the populations they seek to serve. However, as all of the panelists acknowledged, the programs have room to grow and develop. As a school, we are very proud and excited of the applied research being conducted by our research centers, seeking to make an impact on issues of poverty and inequality.

We were also excited to learn that Broderick will be joining us as a Towsley Policy Maker in Residence for the Winter 2019 semester and he will be teaching a class on mass incarceration. For any of you who are interested in learning more about this panel or exploring issues related to poverty alleviation and social inequality, you might want to take some time to watch the video of the panel.

Posted on in FAQ's

Applying for Fall 2018?

We are pleased to see applications from prospective students for our masters’ programs for the Fall 2018 semester beginning to arrive. If you are currently working on your application, we wanted to provide some information and direction that may be helpful.

Submission Deadline
The deadline to apply for one of our masters’ programs is Monday, January 15, 2018 by 11:59 p.m. EST.  We understand that sometimes letters of recommendation, transcripts, test scores, etc. may be a little late. We will be as flexible as possible, but you must ensure that your application is submitted by January 15, 2018. Our team is in the process of reviewing submitted applications to ensure that they are complete and updating the status of the application.

The application is available online through the Rackham Graduate School website.

Transcripts
For the purpose of the admission review, you may upload unofficial copies of transcripts from your degree-granting institution(s) with your online application for the admissions committee to review. You are also welcome to upload unofficial transcripts from any other institutions you may have attended, but you are not required to do so. All transcripts need to be uploaded as one document. We do ask that you provide it in a format that is easy to understand. Some applicants have used advising report formats that are difficult to follow.

Friend Account
When you begin your application, you are prompted to create a friend account, which enables you to access your application. Applicants sometimes get locked out of this account and need to have it reset. If you experience this situation, you should contact the Rackham Admissions office. You can either email rackadmis@umich.edu or you can call 734-764-8129. We are unable to unlock friend accounts, so you must contact Rackham directly.

Application Fee Waivers
The Ford School is able to provide application fee waivers to individuals who have participated in the following programs:

– Teach For America
– Peace Corps (at least three months removed from their service)
– AmeriCorps (at least three months removed from their service)
– Active U.S. Military
– U.S. Military Veterans

To request these fee waivers, complete the Ford School’s volunteer service form. After requests are submitted, applicants receive an email from fspp-admissions@umich.edu asking for a Letter of Verification from their organization (Letters of Verification must include dates of service). Upon receipt of the Letter of Verification and subsequent approval of the request for fee waiver, applicants will receive their fee waiver code via email with additional instructions. If you are applying for a fee waiver from either Rackham or the Ford School, please allow at least a week for processing.

The Rackham Graduate School offers fee waivers to graduate students with financial need, Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) alumni, and current AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, and Vista volunteers. To receive your Rackham fee waiver approval in a timely manner, please follow Rackham’s Instructions for fee waiver requests.

Detailed information about necessary application materials can be found on our application checklist page, as well as information for International Applicants. As always, please be sure to contact us with any questions at fspp-admissions@umich.edu or by calling 734-764-0453.

Posted on in Guest posts

Interested in science and technology policy?

A number of students in our masters’ programs are interested in policy issues that are related to science and technology, including areas such as energy policy, environmental policy, health care, etc. One way to get a little deeper training in this area is through our graduate certificate in science, technology and public policy (STPP). Below is more information from our STPP program administrator, Caroline Walsh

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Are you interested in influencing science and technology policy? Are you concerned that U.S. research funding is at risk? Do you wonder how scientists and governments will navigate the ethical challenges of CRISPR/Cas9 technology? Do you want to use science and technology to help citizens in the developing world? Are you interested in a science or engineering career outside the lab? The STPP Program provides you with tools to think through these questions and prepare you for a career that engages with science and technology policy.

Launched in 2006, STPP is a well-regarded and uniquely interdisciplinary graduate certificate program dedicated to training students on politics and policy related to science and technology. Masters and PhD students in good academic standing from across University of Michigan’s campus are eligible to apply. The STPP Program currently enrolls 51 students from a variety of backgrounds including engineering, biomedical sciences, public health, physics, chemistry, social sciences, law, business, environmental science, and public policy. Over the past 11 years, the program has successfully graduated 81 students who have gone on to shape science and technology policy by working in government, non-governmental organizations, industry, and academia.

Our course content reaches across multiple disciplines and is concerned with cutting-edge questions that arise at the intersection of science, technology, policy, and society:

  • Should governments regulate potentially transformative emerging science and technology, such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and autonomous vehicles, and if so, how?
  • How should governments balance science and values as they make public policies?
  • Can we do better science, and develop better technologies, to ensure social benefit?
  • How can scientists and engineers better engage the public and policymakers?

The STPP graduate certificate program is dedicated to training students to: 1) contribute, as science or technology experts themselves, in the policymaking process; 2) engage in science and technology policy analysis (through thinktanks, industry, or academia); and 3) participate in the politics and policy of science and technology (as government officials or members of non-governmental organizations). STPP students enjoy a competitive advantage when applying for science and technology policy jobs and fellowships; preferential access to STPP courses; access to scholars and practitioners invited through STPP’s lecture series and other events; access to supplementary funding through the STPP Student Career Development Grant; networking opportunities; and more!

Posted on in News

A couple of opportunities to learn more about the Ford School

Tomorrow, November 30th, our admissions team will be hosting a webinar about our masters’ programs beginning at 11:30 a.m. EST, which will cover both the structure and content of the program as well as the application process. If you are interested, you can find instructions on how to participate here: http://fordschool.umich.edu/graduate-fairs

We will record the webinar and make it available on the website as well. Also, for any applicants who would like guidance from a current masters’ student, you may want to consider participating in our Pipeline Initiative, which pairs a prospective student with a current student who will serve as a mentor through the application process. The priority registration deadline for this program is this Friday, December 1st. More info about pipeline is available on this page: http://fordschool.umich.edu/mpp-mpa/admissions

As always, our admission team is always happy to answer your questions. Please feel free to email us at fspp-admissions@umich.edu or call our office at 734-764-0453. Thanks!

Posted on in Guest posts

Reclaiming My Time: Leveraging Professional Development Funds by Lee Taylor-Penn, MPH/MPA student

lee cropped

While the Ford School of Public Policy offers a rigorous curriculum, they also recognize that not all learning takes place in the classroom. For that reason, they offer $500 in professional development funding per year to each graduate student. This year, I used a portion of my professional development funding to attend The Women’s Convention in Detroit, Michigan from October 27th to 29th.

Founded by the organizers of the Women’s March, the Women’s Convention brought together activists, politicians, and women* for a weekend of learning, movement building, and artistic expression. When I arrived on Friday morning, I was overwhelmed by the palpable energy of the more than 4,000 conference attendees. The main hall was filled with thousands of people from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico that had come together with a shared intention to “reclaim our time” through resistance and action.

As a straight, cis-gender, white woman, I was thrilled to see diversity in race, age, gender, and ability represented in the attendees, panelists, and keynote speakers. It was clear that the organizers had prioritized intersectionality—the belief that we all have overlapping identities that affect our life experience. The focus on intersectionality gave attendees an avenue to better understand other’s experience of power and oppression and how they could use their privilege to fight for equality for all women.

The highlight of the conference was the keynote speech by Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-California) on Saturday. A tireless advocate for women, children, and people of color, Congresswoman Waters focused her speech on sexual assault and harassment, centering on the recent #metoo movement.  She spoke about the cost of silence, saying “We cannot afford to be shut down or shut up by any man.” I was struck by her passionate rallying cry to “keep up the resistance” and “provide the leadership” for the progressive movement. Throughout her speech, she received several standing ovations and she ended her talk by leading a chant to “Impeach 45.”

The conference offered a multitude of panels on topics including community organizing and advocacy, public speaking, equitable labor policies, incarceration, and much more. Here is a brief overview of a few of the panels I attended:

  • Future(s) of Work—what the growth of the food and domestic industry means for women and economic security
  • Leverage Local Power: Winning on the Inside—lobbying and grassroots strategies to affect change
  • This is What Democracy Looks Like! Engaging New Voters in 2018—voter engagement and the changing demographics of the Democratic party

Through these workshops, I learned organizing tactics and strategies to build power in my local community and I gained a better understanding of the challenges to creating transformational change. I was also inspired to run for political office, and I hope to one day run for city council or as a state representative. I am grateful to the Ford School for providing me with the opportunity to hear from the women that are changing our nation for the better!

The word “women” refers to significantly female-identified people, including trans women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people.