 Welcome to GSAP and welcome to Urban Planning Program at GSAP. I'm Wei Ping Wu, the program director for the Masters of Science in Urban Planning. And in this hour, first I will make a really quick presentation about the program, the curriculum, but also answer a number of questions many of you have posted. Then I will invite a number of our current students to answer your questions and engage in a more lively discussion. So here's GSAP, our home. And but first I would like to say welcome to New York. And we are very excited about opportunities that New York offers to studying urban planning. And some of you are interested, like this is a huge city. What do you do? What do you observe? How are students engaged with the city? And there's Columbia University. And New York has had a quite unique and long history of urban planning as you might know. Zoning, for instance, originated in New York City in 1996. And today in one of our courses, Zoning, and we continue to look at not only the history, but how the city deals with the zoning issues. And it's a very unique process of making changes and what we call the EULERP process. That's just an example. New York also is situated at a very critical point that will intersect with the sea level rise, as well as efforts to live with that. So in fact, last night we had a very provocative lecture by one of the top thinkers on urban issues, Professor Richard. We talked about how some of the designs, for instance, rebuilt by design, may be problematic. So in both the classroom as well as beyond the classroom, New York is a major case study for our students, topics for studios, topics for theses. For instance, we're looking at also New York as one of the most divided or unequal cities, not only in the United States, perhaps around the world. So here's a happy group of students doing studio project in our very neighborhood backyard Harlem. So urban planning at Columbia, much parallel to the history of Columbia, the university has a long history. As you can see here, if you're interested, obviously we can share some of these history with you in more detail later. And currently we have a number of core faculties who are very active in scholarship, in generating new knowledge, any working with students, not only in courses, but also in research. So I would like to introduce to you our core faculty here and our general strength, as you can tell also from the expertise areas of these core faculty members, are in four areas. And then I will identify those a little bit later in detail. These are built environment, community and economic development, international planning and development and urban analytics. So these faculty, core faculty teach very much in the core curriculum, meaning the core courses, but they also take on research assistance every one of them every year. So a number of our students get to work with them and later on I can ask one of our current students to tell you a little bit more about her experience working with the faculty. We are also really very proud because we're in New York where in the thick of planning practice, we have a wonderful group and community of adjunct faculty. We number them roughly in the mid 30s, which is quite large and they are full-time practitioners in New York and beyond. They are in private sector, public sector, nonprofit sector and some have had experience and continue to in international institutions. So I'm just listing a few of them as an example as you can see the kind of work they're engaged in in their day jobs and then at night, primarily at night and sometimes during the day they come in and teach both some of the core courses such as studios, such as planning law and economics for urban planners as well as many, many electives and they teach courses on economic development, on social entrepreneurship, on mega projects in global cities, on infrastructure policy in developing countries and globally, many, many different topics. And so we are able to create a lot of agility in the curriculum through this group of very active practitioners who are very much connected to practice and so, and our students really enjoy that connection as well, not only in terms of learning knowledge that is grounded in practice but also in getting opportunities for internships and potentially jobs and so some of you may be interested in that and will be happy to connect you with some of these adjunct faculty if you want to sit in a class or so that's just reached out to us. And very quickly, the program is accredited by the Planning Accreditation Board. It's a two year with 60 points and we are very glad to say that our curriculum is very flexible in that the required courses are less than half of the credits and then in the electives 33 of points of them, at least 12 points need to be in the concentration and then everything else that you can take courses across GSAP and Columbia and then I will ask some of our student panel members to talk a little bit more about that a little bit later. As I mentioned, we have four concentrations and so here I know some of you have questions about how different, how similar we are at Columbia Urban Planning from other planning programs. So let me just take the example of MIT's planning program as a comparison. So MIT has much, much larger full time faculty and it covers really every single almost topics in planning and they are able to do so because of their large full time faculty. We are, on the other hand, really take advantage of our agility, our location in New York City, our location in the design school to focus more on the built environment, our first concentration, community and economic development. In fact, that concentration is our highlight, you know, focus area for addressing social justice issues. Nonetheless, the social justice theme cuts across the entire curriculum, particularly through the core curriculum. We also are very, very proud of our international and global outlook and in that concentration we have number of courses that take a largely comparative perspective. That is to say, we don't necessarily focus on particular regions we do, for instance, have a course on China but mostly we are helping our students to understand sometimes different cities in different regions face similar planning or urban challenges and they may or may not take the same approaches in their solutions or responses because local context matters and because local governance structure matters. We are also in this concentration look at some of the cross cutting global themes such as climate change and such as the movement of people in terms of immigration. And then last and our most recent concentration, urban analytics is a growing strength of not only the program but also the school. We are very strong in terms of using data science, visualization and urban tech in looking critically at how data may or may not improve urban operation as well as access by different groups of urban residents to services and to other types of urban amenities. And so this, so with these four concentrations most of our students essentially you can see the first year students very much focus on core courses and the studio for instance is a very intensive experience in the second semester of first year and about half of the students actually get to travel overseas to do travel studios and then in their second year they really can have a lot of freedom in taking courses both related to their concentration and beyond. So the first contact point with the concentrations would be just before the end of your first semester and first year here because at that time we pitched the different studio projects to students and then students would need to tell us in the program about their general interest in whichever concentration or to some of our students actually almost half of our students choose two concentrations and we have a single faculty member for each concentration as advisor. So at the end of fall semester or first year they have a contact. Then we generally encourage our students to really explore the curriculum and so by the end of second year fall semester they will not need to tell us exactly their concentration is or concentrations are. So there's quite a bit of flexibility. There's a lot of exploration but our students by their second year when they are doing either thesis or capstone they are quite certain about their directions of somewhat what we call specialty. And then we also offer a number of dual degrees and I know some of you have asked questions about other types of dual degrees. At this point we don't have other types of dual degrees besides what we have on the screen. It's actually quite a bit. In fact I think our program is probably has probably the largest number of a dual degree arrangements with both programs within GSAP as well as schools across Columbia. So every year we have about a half dozen students or up to about eight or nine every year who are pursuing dual degree program. We have asked one of our current students to address that in a little bit later. So here I want to just highlight really quickly the kind of courses that we have in each concentration. So every single semester when our students are ready to register for next semester we give them these concentration course lists. And then just before the enroll at orientation I also give them a two year schedule of elective courses so that they can plan for the two years they are here. So these are just some examples so stay tuned because we have new courses almost every semester so this list may get upgraded when you come in. And so you can see the global opportunities our students have are beyond classroom. This is studio in Rio in Brazil, studio in Hong Kong and then studio in Chile on different topics. So when we do studios each spring we try to make sure the five or six studios cover a range of topics so that our students who want to specialize somewhat can have their choices. And then GSAP also offers additional global opportunities through the summer workshop program. And here are the courses related to build environment concentration. We have actually a number of courses that cut across concentrations such as in this here you can see not quite in this here. I'll give you an example in a little bit. And these are some works our students have done in our studio related to build environment. As you can see we quite a number of our students have architectural background and has very high level of visual competency. Throughout our program however we really also enhance our students basic skills, right? Visual competency, writing, we have a course on writing. We have course on project management. So in addition to these focus on different concentrations we have a cross cutting set of a skill based courses to help our students. And these are just some examples. And then our third concentration, community and economic development. And so you can see here a number of different courses and some are on politics and some are on infrastructure and various different kinds of courses across the board. And these are some works, examples, work examples our students have done in their studio work. This is on Hong Kong in terms of looking at how communities can get together through an online platform and our studio project in Harlem paying particular attention to how different kinds of social economic dynamics play out throughout time in this neighborhood. And last but not least are our urban analytics courses. So for instance the digital restructuring of urban space could easily also qualify for a build environment concentration. We're working towards that direction to have more courses that can have this cross cutting coverages in our curriculum. And these are some again work examples by our students in using big data, sometimes in combination with conventional data to look at geographical patterns of really important planning issues. So the urban analytics concentration has these courses and projects within courses that are not sort of situated in a vacuum, rather they are very much related to very important questions in planning, some such as climate change, sea level rise, for instance this one here, measuring social vulnerability in flooding events in New York City. So we are also, so in addition to curriculum and connection with practices and to research as well as global outlook, we spend a great deal of time helping and working with our students on their next step, right? We call in a way cradle to graves, not to graves, right? At least students to professional transition. So we have a number of different programs in addition to sort of course related visits to different institutions. So this image you see is a course related trip to Washington DC visiting some international organizations and studio related contacts with New York City agencies. We organize alumni panels to really reflect on their different career paths in public, private, and nonprofit sectors as well as at local, state, federal, and international levels. And our very active international student organization also organize their own career activities reflecting on the path of international students, particularly those from China after school. And then every year we organize a career fair, it's more of information types of interview. We have again, employers from public, private, and nonprofit sectors and local and federal levels to come in and talk to our students about what they are engaged in and our students have opportunity to engage in some informational interviews. And these are not meant to be career fairs that will actually turn into jobs, rather they are opportunities to explore further and practice. And we do, though, have seen internships materialize through these job and career fairs. And so you see different organizations presenting or present at different career fairs. We then organize our students to visit both public agencies as well as private consulting firms in trying to really get better contact and a better understanding of their work. And last but not least, we do a great deal helping our students with writing resume, putting together a cover letter. And then we have a online platform called Engage that posts different jobs and internship opportunities in real time and updated regularly throughout the year. And here is just an example of the placements of some of our recent graduates. And obviously this is far from comprehensive, but you do see many of our graduates do work in New York and beyond and many of them do work in private sector and many of them do work outside of the United States. And then, last, we connect our students with alumni frequently. We have a mentorship program in which current students and alumni work on one kind of a relationship and then we host receptions with alumni and students at annual conferences of American Planning Association and other events, for instance, yesterday evening with the talk. So last, I just wanna quickly say that you are here for two years. It's not only education, it's a wonderful community of students and student life is very active and lively and the Student Program Council organizes tongue-hold meetings to try to connect students to other initiatives across the school and to get student feedback on curriculum, student clubs and organizations to organize volunteer work. This is our very nice home, the UP lounge plus classroom, plus you can't see the classroom or the computer lab, but this is end of year show. And in the foreground, you can see the data analytics work examples from last semester. Really fascinating kinds of work they're doing with making sensors, taking sensors out to collect data, bring data back for analysis. And then we have a student magazine called Urban and it's very, very active in terms of putting together timely and important coverage on planning issues. And this is our class and I wanna say every year we have about 50 or so students and they are very diverse from all walks of life, from all different majors and undergraduate, all the way from arts to biology to philosophy to what have you, everything. So if you're interested in urban planning, you should contact and get in touch with us and we will be happy to answer any questions you have. So for that, I want to then now introduce four of our current students and who will then answer some of the questions and many of you have posted and maybe I can introduce them, actually I will have them introduce themselves was probably is better way to go. Hi everyone, my name is Emily Yonker and I'm a dual degree urban planning and historic preservation student. This is my third year in the program. Okay, yeah. I'm Connor Allerton. I'm a second year urban planning student. Hi, my name is Yinning Lei and I'm a second year urban planning student. So Yinning is from China. Yeah, I'm from China. My name's Garrett Raya. Second year urban planning student from San Diego, California. Urban Informatics concentration. Good. All right, so we have, so what I will do is probably I will ask a question, just sort of maybe point, you know, ask one of you to answer it first and then everyone else will want to address that chip in. So maybe Garrett, so what do you think makes GSAP's urban planning unique, right? So when you were applying, you probably looked at other programs. So why did you pick this program over those offered by other universities? Okay. Yeah, so I was really attracted to the Urban Informatics concentration and not so much, I guess, that there was a formal concentration but the courses that were available in it and proposed in the schedule really interested me. I have a background in economics but I was doing some planning work before coming out here and wanted to do something that was a little more quantitative and kind of technically challenging compared to what I was doing previously. And then I got some good advice to look at the different programs, alumni kind of on LinkedIn and kind of evaluate the jobs they were falling into and that kind of sealed the deal for me with choosing this program. Not just I was attracted to certain jobs that alumni were falling into but kind of the breadth of jobs. And I felt like it was, I could graduate and still like have a good foundation and be agile and kind of go into different industries. Anyone else? As an international student, I think the fact of studying New York City is definitely very appealing to me and the program here is definitely the best place to practice our urban planning skills in a world leading city, I guess. All right, so maybe I can ask Connor, what are your favorite or least favorite aspects of the program? Well, I'll start with favorites. I also, I'm originally from New York City and part of why I came to the program is because I wanted to stay New York-centric and I think the program really offers a really great breadth of expertise surrounding New York City specifically. I think that in most of my courses so far, I've been able to sort of take the knowledge that I'm gaining in that course and sort of direct it toward New York or look at New York-specific contexts. I think that's been really helpful just to, for me to feel like I can kind of build my own expertise through that. I think that's one aspect that I've really enjoyed. Also, I feel like we've spoken about sort of the diversity of backgrounds in the program that's really opened my perspective. I think coming from undergrad, it was easy to find it kind of fall into like a homogeneity of ideas in my circles. And I think I've been able to have like really interesting conversations with other students in class and outside, just differing of opinions and being able to just discuss over like any subject matter, kind of expand my perspectives on like a sort of international stage and more local. Yeah, I really appreciate the student body at the program. I think, yeah, it's really helped me. Least favorite, I don't know. I don't know how much to think about. I think, I don't know. I feel like there's certain things that kind of come with pluses and minuses. I think that one thing that Wayping has mentioned is how the faculty structure in that we have a smaller full-time faculty but more adjuncts, but maybe to some extent I'd see that as it would be more favorable to have more full-time faculty, but at the same time having people coming in and out so frequently really gives you this like sort of experience that you wouldn't otherwise have when you have the same people making up the majority of the program and have been there for so long. You have these different sort of perspectives and ideas coming in and out that really help to evolve the program pretty quickly. So I guess I can turn that negative into a positive. That's a good way of putting it. Really, it's a balance in that sense. So maybe I can ask Emily, so how do you think the program is preparing you for real-world practice speaking from experience in the program? Because you also worked before you came to the program, right? Yeah, so actually I worked for six years before I came to GSAP. I studied photography in my undergraduate degree and I worked in the architecture and planning industry, but when I came back to school it was kind of a different type of work that we were going to be doing and I think the studio experience was probably the most effective course in preparing for the real-world practice in urban planning. I was in the studio that went to Hong Kong and the way that the studio is set up is we're given a client and it's a real-world client who is actually going to be interacting with and who's actually going to be reading whatever plans and proposals that we make. And when we went to Hong Kong we were able to meet with the director of the Urban Renewal Authority, the director of the MTR which is the transit authority and other very high-level people within the planning realm in Hong Kong and also to meet with people who were part of the communities that were being affected by the projects that we were looking at. So we were able to get kind of both of those perspectives and put together recommendations for how that community can move forward. All right, so maybe Yiling, maybe I can ask you because you came from a non-planning background, right? So to what extent do students in the MSUP program have experience in another field and are able to apply this outside knowledge lessons in urban planning itself? Yes, I came from an engineering background. I studied civil engineering during my undergraduate studies. I think, first of all, I think the urban planning field is very broad. It is like the, it has something with the real estate development. It's also, it's tightly connected to engineering itself. I didn't take any engineering courses that overlapped with urban planning in this program honestly, but I do take a real estate course. That is, from my perspective, combine both urban planning and real estate development. And I think it is very interesting to learn the real estate development from an urban planners perspective. And this is what I think that can apply the outside knowledge lessons in urban planning itself because I learned something about real estate development before during my undergrad student, but mostly from an engineer's perspective. And now I can learn about something that is totally different, but still in the same process, but from another perspective. Anybody else wants to chime in on that? Yeah, sure, I'll chime in. I think, so I, in the U.S., I think there's not that many undergrad degrees specifically in urban planning. And our school is very international and itself with the program is very international, so in a lot of classes, you kind of learn the different perspectives, not only in how cities have developed in different places across the world, but kind of how different disciplines look at urban planning problems on from economics. And so it kind of has that lens and something more like empirically driven. And we have architects that really lean towards design and stuff. And so your education is not just in the classroom and the readings you have, but it's a lot of just getting exposure to different disciplines through conversations you have with your fellow students. So maybe I can ask any of you to address how you choose your concentration. What kind of exposure you had during your first year and did you make any change after first year in terms of your concentration? I think I came into the program expecting to do a lot more international development focused work and I'm still kind of on the fence about how I feel about doing international development work, but in my first year, I kind of targeted two of the international development concentration courses, the introduction to international development and it was the history of urban slums or urban informality. And I'm also currently in a studio that is paired with the historic preservation program where we traveled to Sierra Leone and did some work with World Monuments Fund. So I'm still dappling in that as a career path. However, I'm still, I still wish that I did some of the other concentrations and took more courses in them. Okay. Also, yeah, so some, I just kind of refers back to the favor and lease favorite aspects of the program. I don't know if you want to go back there, but I will. So this program I think comparatively is very flexible. So you're compared to other schools, you really are able to explore different concentrations in your time here. We do have like core curriculum though, that is front heavy. So you will have to take those in the first year and kind of be smart about the decisions you make for your elective classes in your first year. So I encourage you to really think about that and strategize. And then my favorite aspect of the program is actually what Connor said was his lease favorite. I think, since I'll just jump in there. The different faculty we have here part-time, they're really respected and kind of renowned in their fields and their niches. And so if you're thinking about careers after, we have career services here, but a lot of the professors are like really encouraging and want to help and kind of offer their assistance. And like if you're interested in the field that they're working in or doing something similar to them, they're really enthusiastic about the opportunity of you kind of joining with them and them finding you a spot in it. And so I think schools where they're mostly full-time faculty, they're kind of more stuck in academia and you don't get that kind of opportunity that we have here. Yeah, maybe let me just add really quickly to this point. I also as a faculty see this as a strength because for instance we have a group of students who want to address more issues related to climate change and resilience and we are going to look into planning two new courses for next year. And the way that we go is either through student interests or our faculty identification. And then I go out there really very strategically look for really qualified seasoned practitioners possibly already having had some teaching experience. And so when they first come in I usually work with them quite extensively on their syllabus, on their teaching sort of skills, the kind of techniques they can use. And so our adjunct faculty is a very committed group. And so they really don't just come in and they leave and they really engage with students extensively. And many of them that end up serving as readers for our students' thesis and capstones. So obviously we cannot keep just adding courses. We do have to let some courses go. So generally the agility comes through also students voting with their feet. So certain topics become less of interest to students as well as the coverage being not quite as updated. We do start rotating them into every other year and then or potentially some would not be offered. But that also is in a way, it's advantage that because we're supplemented by a lot of courses beyond GSAP that our students can take. I don't think anybody asked those questions that I just wanted to kind of say that almost all our students have taken one course at least one beyond planning or beyond GSAP, right? So all right, let's, here maybe I can get Connor to answer this question. What role do social justice design and ecological reform have in the urban planning program? Just whatever your thought is. Right, well I think, I guess to think more broadly about social justice and reform in the program, I think like you mentioned, community development probably has the strongest highlight of social justice in of the concentrations, but I think that it is something that, and that's what drew me, that's part of what drew me to the program and what drew me to concentrate in community development. But I do think that it is sort of something that has become kind of sort of threaded throughout the program as a whole. I find that especially, it's driven by both faculty and students, this interest in kind of considering social justice and sort of these injustices that we see in cities across the globe kind of becoming relevant in whatever topic you're specifically addressing in that course. I think that while my courses that I've elected have sort of had this emphasis on social justice, I haven't had an experience where I felt like that was left out of the conversation. I think that both students and faculty kind of bring that to the table actively. There's always an opportunity where that becomes addressed. I mean, I've been in more in classes like Professor Buakar's Unspatial Exclusion and Planning that was very explicitly about social justice and the ways in which planning has historically served as tools of exclusion for certain populations, but then there's other opportunities where you might be talking about something very technical, but you can always bring into the conversation, who does this impact? How does it impacting those people? Like how can we transform the practice itself to better include these conversations? And I think that I feel like I've really been able to explore those questions to my courses. Anybody else, yeah? Yes, I want to add to that. I think social justice is a very high level topic that is covered in almost every concentration courses. For example, in some data analytics related courses, we talked about how data scientists will interpret their findings to the communities and to ordinary citizens who don't have any knowledge about the data. There will be a social justice issue if their data scientists intentionally like to interpret it in a different way, and which will not benefit their residents. And also in community planning, community development concentration, we would talk about spatial social justice. That is also a very hard issue in urban planning. And also in history courses, we'll talk about the social justice issues during the history of planning. Great, so let's move on a little bit to talk about your student life during the two years or here, broadly speaking, student life. So maybe I can ask Emily or anybody else to talk about, I know Yin-Ning as well, how can graduate students participate in the school's research and teaching activities as assistants, yeah? So most of the research and teaching assistant programs go to second year students in a rare incidence. They might go to a first year urban planning student. However, I don't think I've seen that happen. And usually, I believe it's based on kind of merit. So if you do really well in your first year and professors recognize the way that you work with other students and the way that you take the lead on things, then you will apply in the summer. Everyone is open to apply to the position. You write a cover letter, send in your resume, and at the end of the summer, the assistantships are assigned. And so I've been a teaching assistant for Wei Ping for the past, well, year and a half. And that's allowed me to do a variety of things that are more program-related, like overall program activities, a lot of, and also doing some work, teaching a workshop in a video workshop that kind of went along with the studio course. Yes, I worked as a research assistant for Professor Lance Freeman this semester. Yes, I think their application only has well explained the application process. And I also want to say that if you are really interested in their research field that the professor may have, you can, actually every professor in this program is really responsive. You can email him saying that you are very interested in your research and can I have, like, participate in your research projects that you are currently working on. Actually, I did this in the first semester. So can you tell us a little bit what you do with Professor Freeman in terms of the research? Oh, okay. For this semester, I assisted him in working on a case study of a disabled accessible public space. Yes. Okay, good. So maybe I can ask, well, I think all of you did some internship or other activities during the summer, but maybe I can ask Garrett that I know you were fighting fire somewhere in the summer between the first and second year. So basically, the question is what are students encouraged to do in the summer, between the first and second year of the program? Yeah, so we have workshops here that are kind of more research oriented. You can pair up with faculty and do something really exciting. A lot of them is international based, which is really cool. I did an internship, which I think is pretty encouraged here as well, back home. And I think the program itself really just encourages you to continue to explore and treat the summer as an educational opportunity for yourself. And so that could be getting an internship, doing strictly urban planning or zoning code or something like that, or maybe kind of exploring a skill you picked up during the school year and maybe doing data analysis or something that might not be particularly in urban planning context, but kind of building the skills in a real world environment. And then maybe you'll transfer that into a job in urban planning. Yeah. Anyone else wants to add to that? Okay. So maybe I can ask Connor, because I know you are in the fellowship program with the community board right now. So can you tell us, so the question is, do students attend to work and internship part-time, role throughout the semester, right? Can you tell us what you do and how you sort of juggle that with school, right? And the editorship of urban. Right. Yeah, there are a couple of positions right now. And I think that the program does have a lot, like it is very flexible in curriculum, but also in, it's a professional program, it's a graduate program, so it's not the same as undergrad where you're kind of isolated to one thing for those four years. I think you're given that flexibility to work and do school at the same time. Right now, I am part of the community planning fellowship where I'm partnered with a community board. My community board is Manhattan Community Board 11 in East Harlem, and you're assigned, and the program takes students from multiple schools, but there's five of us from Columbia, where, and you're assigned a specific project on the community board. So I'm looking at a proposal, or potential sort of investigation and proposal of a business improvement district in East Harlem. And I spend one day a week in the office and I work remotely as well. And I feel that it really, it does, like I have a lot of space to do something like that in the program. I think that I'm able to balance my schoolwork and opportunities like that pretty smoothly. Yeah, I think it, and it feels like a really good balance I'm able to take what I'm learning in my courses and apply it to how I go about my project. You know, there's a lot of independence in the program, in the fellowship. So I'm able to really like take my own perspective and kind of be treated almost as like this consultant position, which feels very professional, but also getting that real world experience and applying it to my courses as well. I think it's like a mutually beneficial experience. And I do the Urban Magazine, which has been a lot of fun. And it's like a nice break from regular coursework or work with the program. And it's, you know, I think it's a really great platform for students. And yeah, I'm a great, I'm a huge advocate for the magazine. We're excited that this, if like, just to touch on it this semester, we're looking at the theme is obsolescence and we're looking at ways in which planning practices have become obsolete in the face of things like climate change. And so it's continually very relevant to the practice. Students from across the program are encouraged to submit and it becomes this really cool sort of combination of different perspectives and opinions from students. So let me just add really quickly to what Connor has said. So Emily and Yin-Ying and Connor and everybody, lots of students in the program are able to take on either the teaching assistantship or research assistant. We have about 18, a single semester position every year in the program. Generally we're giving two second year students. And then we recommend to the New York Community Fellowship Program four to five students. As Connor was saying, there are five of them now. And then the Urban Magazine editors or three of them are also somewhat paid position. And so then there are all kinds of hourly kinds of work opportunities. So some are in the Center for Spatial Research and in Earth Institute. I know Mike, our program manager, also our own alum, worked in the School of Public Health during the summer, so there are lots of opportunities. I think almost, I would say, 50 to 60% of our students while studying full time has some other form of engagement of either learning or practice oriented engagement with the rest of the world. So maybe I can ask Emily, so what kind of support do you get as a dual degree student? So yes, I am a dual degree student. I would say, so the way that the program worked for me was in my first year, I started doing the urban planning program, so I was really embedded into my class in urban planning and I did the core courses with them. And I took a few electives within the historic preservation program that year just to kind of get to know the other people in that program and to start thinking about the concepts there. However, in my second year, it was kind of a big transition because the historic preservation program has a lot of core requirements and your first semester there is completely historic preservation, so it kind of sweeps you up and puts you into this whole, another kind of discipline where you have to kind of learn a new thing. But I tried to stay connected to the urban planning program and I saw advisement from professors in both programs and I continued to do so and to keep in touch with the students from both programs to kind of stay connected. And now in my final year, I am doing a combined thesis with both historic preservation and urban planning and that's been great because I have a lot of support from the other advisies of my thesis advisor in urban planning and also from the historic preservation program and those two advisies work together to give me feedback. Okay, great. So moving on to housing. So maybe I can ask Garrett or Yi Ning because one is a domestic student and international how, how did you find your housing handled and what might be some challenges or opportunities? Yeah, so I am housed through Columbia, the university housing and it's something that you should really consider. I think especially if you're not from the city and evaluate and look at your options, I think it's pretty competitive and so that was I think like a concern for me from being from Southern California and my whole life and kind of knowing the city's well and being well connected socially. So it was a big plus for me that I'd be able to get kind of set up here and not have to worry so much about that. Yeah. Yeah, I also lived in their university housing. I think compared to other programs which are much bigger than ours, the application is very smooth. Almost every international student who applied for university housing can get an apartment or dormitories through their application. Yeah. Very good. Our last question I think, yeah, okay. Maybe for everyone is that what's your plan when you graduate, right? So the question is actually what fields do graduates tend to enter upon completion of the program and where do you hope to find employment? So maybe I can ask you both in terms of like what kind of work, like maybe what sector, right? Or where do you expect to look for work? Maybe everyone? Okay, I guess I'll begin. The first thing that came to mind when reading this question right now is that two of our professors that co-teach a course that the three of us are in are from the program, they're graduates, but professionally they're grade A data scientists that currently don't really intersect a whole lot with urban planning but they have that strong background and they kind of have their foundation and data science from this program and have really just evolved from it and so I think that kind of touches on the quality of the program and the things you're learning here can really do well in other industries and sectors and that was that kind of flexibility really drew me to the program and kind of like reflecting back on my process of looking out where alums go and what fields. Personally, I love urban issues and kind of trying to help others and the disadvantaged and so I would love to see myself kind of intersecting with urban planning if not immediately after graduation, not too long after but I'm also really interested in technology and data science and those opportunities are out there. For me, I did an internship at a parks advocacy group during their summer, so I kind of grew the interest in the parks and open spaces and also environment so I would like to pursue my career in that field and also for the parks and open spaces and actually a vulnerable infrastructure, comparatively vulnerable infrastructure in China compared to housing and other infrastructures like transportation. So I want to apply what I have learned here maybe like three years or five years later in my hometown. I think for me, I wanna stay in New York. Just for the rest of my life, yes, huge fan. But I think part of the question like where do graduates geographically find employment? I think that generally with planning programs because they are kind of geographically specific. Like I mentioned previously, I've been able to build like a solid foundation of knowledge around planning issues in New York City and so hopefully I will explore that and well one of my focuses or like passions I guess is housing and like affordable housing specifically and I took a course this semester, it was a half semester course on affordable housing in high demand cities and I was taught by Pernima Kapoor and Adam Weinstein who are the former head of the Department of City Planning in the city and the CEO of the largest affordable housing nonprofit in the country. And so they've been a great resource for me. I've been in conversation with them about exploring opportunities after the program and they're so well connected. They have so much great advice for you. So far they've been like go to the public sector because that's a place where you can find so much exposure early on and they're always hiring. So we'll see what happens, but I think public sector, nonprofit, New York locally, yeah. Good, great. I think going back to what Garrett said earlier about looking at everyone's LinkedIn page who graduated from Columbia and seeing that there was like a really broad range of things speaks really well to the fact that in this program you learn a lot of different skill sets that you can apply in a lot of different places. And also from my background working in photography, I have an understanding of freelance work and kind of like kind of a consulting mindset. So that's something I'm interested in. I'm also interested in remaining in academia and doing more long-term research projects. Like Connor, I'm also interested in affordable housing issues and have become pretty involved with like the local affordable housing tenant advocacy kind of community here. So yeah, I know, I mean, I'm just really encouraged by our students' comments. I also wanted to final comment to say that another really strong point of this program is we want our students to be prepared not only for traditional roles as planners, but also emerging roles. And that could be in planning organizations or beyond. So we actually recently did alumni survey many of our alumni work in law firms, real estate development firms, and data science startups, but very much connected to urban issues, to planning issues. And so we want our students to be able to have the core skill sets that can be applied to planning challenges across different sectors of jobs. And as I would say, that's a really strong identity now of our program. So again, thank you for joining us for this past hour. And I would encourage you to get in touch with us, either with our director of admission or our program manager. You can find us on the website. We have an excellent information booklet of the program right on the program landing page of the website. And if you want to visit us, get in touch. And if you have time, you are in New York. Next Tuesday we have an in-person open house in which students get to, you know, those of you who have time get to sit in some classes and really experience what the program is like. So so long and hope to hear from you and good luck with your applications.