 So, obviously, I don't have to convince you about urban planning, but why Columbia, right? And lots of students ask me, how are you different, how are you similar, right? I know you're making a very important decision. As much as I want you all to be here, really the best thing, the most important thing is the fit, right? What you want to do and what the program has to offer. I happen to have taught in two other planning programs around the country. I also happen to have had lots of experience working and leading the association of collegiate schools of planning. So I know planning quite well. I also chair the planning accreditation board currently. So I do know that. So feel free to ask questions about other programs as much as I can, I'll answer. But I do want to focus on why here, right? So I really am very proud about how dynamic and flexible our curriculum is, and I'll show you examples in a minute. And we very much, since I think in the fifties, this program with a number of faculty as champions of social, racial, and today climate justice. And then since about sixties, this program also has had very strong international components and especially now a bridging global north and global south. And last but not least, I've met a few students this morning who are very, very interested in urban science and analytics. We are among some of the leading planning programs in making headways in this direction early on. And so if I were to compare us with MIT, I'm sure some of you applied to MIT, MIT is much, much more comprehensive. We cover everything, transportation planning, you know, land use planning. If those are what you're interested in, more spatial planning, physical planning, MIT is a better place than us. I'd be completely honest, right? But on the other hand, on these areas, I think we're stronger. And in many ways, we're actually probably similar to, MIT is similar to Penn, Penn is quite comprehensive. It's got much larger faculty in terms of food time faculty. I think we're closer to GSD at Harvard that we have select strengths and we do very well in our select strengths. But I think we beat them in the sense that we're in New York, we use New York as a real laboratory, but also our graduates work a great deal in New York, which serves as a, you know, springboard for their down the road careers, right? And I think we're much stronger than Harvard, I have to say, in the urban science analytics area. And then there are also a number of programs in New York City, right? NYU, Pratt, NYU is especially strong on looking at sort of the management and public policy side of planning. And then Pratt is really strong in terms of community-based planning. I think we have, especially the Pratt side, not to the same extent, but in a way, globally. So since I joined here about six and a half years ago, and my goal has always been working with our faculty to prepare students not just for typical planning careers, right? We all know planners go work in local governments and maybe, you know, organizations of government associations, regional planning associations. We really want our students to be able to take on planning roles in the private sector, in the tech sector, and perhaps even in, you know, real estate sector. And I mean, there are lots of functions that planners can perform beyond the traditional planning jobs. My goal really is to do that. And you can talk to our alum. You can see the alum profiles. Many of our students are very successful in doing that. I will show a little bit of our alum job placement kind of data, salary data towards the end. So we have a very engaged faculty, as you can see, as everywhere in major universities, faculty is active in research, in producing up-to-day scholarship. We also, whatever, change to the format. But as you can see, these are just some examples of our adjunct faculty. Part of the reason of our relatively moderate size of full-time faculty is by design, meaning we're in New York. We have so many seasoned practitioners with a wide range of expertise. We fully engage with them. And the number of them and the actual folks do change sometimes. But many of these people have been teaching with us for extended period of time. They work in public sectors, private sector, nonprofit, designers, policymakers, lawyers, what have you. So they teach and they are also very serious about teaching. And they also connect students with internships and jobs where they work or where they know are hiring. And I work with them pretty closely. You can ask Douglas how much I do that. And you will see me in classes where I sit in when we have new instructors or new courses. So when I see we have a flexible and dynamic curriculum, these are just examples of new courses in the last two to three years. I mean, I am quite honest in saying this. I don't know other planning programs. With my fingers, with my one hand, certainly a little many who actually have that kind of agility in terms of creating new courses to not only keep up to date with what's happening out there in the profession as well as in the large society, but also just to take it into consideration of our student interest. So when you look at the courses on climate, we didn't have much at all when I first came. We had a student organization called the Green SAP, Green G SAP basically. They started with applying students and they wanted more courses on climate. Yes, we'll have it. So what our philosophy here is we let students vote with their feet. Essentially, some courses over time become stale. We need to update and if they still don't do very well, they gradually but surely are faded out. And that gives us room for new courses. So these are new courses and some are significantly refashioned old courses, but most are new courses. And so every semester at any given time, you have about 16 to 17 electives to choose from in addition to required courses. So speaking of the required courses, we are accredited by PAB. We are a two-year program. You need 60 points to graduate, very similar to 60 credits, basically. 27 out of that is required, which is actually on the low side, having known about other planning programs that can safely say that, which gives you flexibility to take other courses, right? So for the 33 points you take electives, at least 12 points will be in the concentration. And everything else, you can take it anywhere, anywhere. Literally, all the GSAP electives are open to all GSAP students. You can also take in other schools. So these are the four concentrations. All of this is in that black booklet, right? So I won't spend much time. We do have a part-time option. And if any of you is part-time, let me know. But I don't think we have many. Anyway, so this is how it's laid out for the four semesters you are here. The first two semesters, there are lots of required courses, obviously. It's to lay the foundation for you to go on and choose what you really love to do more so in the second year. I always encourage our students to explore, explore, explore in the first year. And you can sort of think about which concentration. So the point at which we ask you a little bit about concentration is at the end of our first semester, because we would like to match you for climate studio, which usually is designed with a set of different projects, as you can see from the booklets that are going around, cover different interest areas that we try to match you. Interest with the selection of the studio project. And then you can change. You can expand your interest. About 40% of our current students have a second concentration. So at the end of this fall, we ask you what exactly is your concentration or concentrations, because we want to make sure you take enough courses by the end of spring semester and you can graduate. So the opportunities across Columbia are primarily identified here up to before engineering, right? All of these other schools we have dual degree programs with. And you can certainly, some of you may have already done that, apply now before you get into either or come in the first year and apply. So that's completely your choice. You can start here or you can start there, meaning in the other program. With engineering and the Earth Institute, we do not have dual degrees, but you are more than welcome to take courses there as electives. We do share with students a list of relevant courses across campus for you to select as electives. But if you find new courses, all you need to do is to email me and I will. So I will approve or say no. So we have a very flat hierarchy in the school. That is, new courses are created quite readily with student input because we have actually a student council representing student interests and they are at faculty meetings every time. We also have this approval process. You know, you got a new course you want to count for elective, it's just me. Nobody else need to talk to, right? So we really want students to, you know, you're paying a lot. I completely sympathize with you. You're paying a lot. We're the most expensive. I know that. And we try to have as much resource as possible to students as financial aid, but there's a limit, right? So as long as you're already paying so much, we want you to get the most out of this education, right? So we'll help you find courses in data science, find courses in law school or business school for you to take. So just quickly, you know, as I mentioned, this whole, we're in architecture school as a result, we are very much anchored in the built environment with this kind of deeper and more critical understanding of the social relations and the built environment connections with the social and economic and political dimensions of the city. So the built environment concentration obviously is the single largest concentration with in terms of both the courses as well as in terms of how many students choose that, right? And you can also see, obviously we don't wanna put courses in all these black boxes and silos. They all are oftentimes interconnected, more so for some than others. So we have a number of courses that count for at least two concentrations. It's natural, right? So as you can see, we have these courses. Most electives are offered once every year in the same semester. So for the two years you're here, it's easier to get that. But some do only get offered once every other year. So what I do is when you come in this coming summer, if you decide to come in, before you register, I will hand you a two year elective rotation schedule so that you can plan for the two years you're here so you don't miss, right? We might add another elective, but we'll try almost all the time to offer the courses that we promise we'll offer. So studios with a more built environment, anchor, engage with neighborhoods last year. And then community economic development is another concentration that lots of students choose. As you can see, some of the climate courses cut in here, as well as some internationally oriented courses. And they work with local nonprofit organizations or high school in this case on their, this is not, actually, this is not a studio course. We have, so this is an opportunity for me to introduce to you the kinds of electives we have. I usually say we have three types of electives. One type is what we call knowledge based, right? Or knowledge intensive. So look at this list. If you look at the course divided cities, political economy of urban inequality, it's reading heavy, it's lecture heavy, it's examples from around the world, right? And second type of electives are what we call skill based. That is you pick up lots of practical skills. So like real estate finance and development could be some of like that. And then a third type of electives are what I call them, practicum. You do a real project or it's a case study based. So the climate justice in our own backyard, which is this course, in one year, every year it has different project. Then one year they worked with a high school in Washington Heights to design parts of the streetscape in front of the school. So we really, for a master's degree, most of our students want to be very prepared for their jobs after they're done, right? So during the school years you're here, we try to connect you and anchor the curriculum or what you learn much deeply in practice. And that's for most students, right? And engage with practice critically, right? It's not just with doing projects, but there's creativity and criticality. And then in terms of international planning and development, we also have a pretty large list. Of course it's not as large as what you see earlier in the last two concentrations, but I can assure you that no other planning programs with, perhaps with the exception of MIT and Berkeley that has this long list of international oriented courses that much I can assure you. And we very much take approach that is comparative in general, that is we're not trying to cover every world region, right? We just don't have enough faculty to do that. But what we want our students to gain through taking these classes is that, okay, I work in US or you learn all of this US but you're from, let's say Colombia or you're from India or China, I'm gonna go back, right? How do I take what I learned here and make sense of the realities on the ground? And so that's the kind of teaching that we do here in terms of the international. And so we have two students this year. Finally, we can travel again. And of course they are built environment or community development oriented, but they have a very strong international component. So this group just went to Canada to work with First Nations nonprofit organization that is trying to set up a cultural center in a sort of a location that they want our students to help with in deciding and the kind of design that best illustrate the traditions and histories of First Nations communities but also how that connect to modern day and contemporary urban realities. So this was actually just two weeks ago, yeah. And then we have a studio that looks at parts of Barcelona in Spain that were more historic in nature but the city is trying to see if this whole idea of super block could be in a way applied to some of these other neighborhoods. So this obviously is a part of a super block that's already been implemented in Barcelona in the last three to four decades. So again, just two weeks ago they were there really to see what the super park is like for people who live there, right? So our studios every year we have it depending on the size of the students, every year we have about five to six studios and Douglas helps me coordinate all of that. So four studios or so are going to be just planning students. Additional one, one report is going around is jointly with architecture and a new one this year is jointly with real estate. And then so we try to get the studio topics to be diversely kind of oriented so that satisfy students various different interests and usually about half are traveling studios, right? So this year Barcelona, Canada and then the joint studio is in Puerto Rico and we really try also to cultivate long-term relationships with communities and clients so the Puerto Rico studio has been going on for what, four years? Five years, yeah. And the studio is just the first one. This year, right? The travel always happens in the first week of March. Just before spring break. So students can then stay on if they want. Half of the school is gone anyway because architecture also have studios and they travel. So spring is usually its travels. Analytics, right? Yes, the list is not as long. Again, I can guarantee you is one of the longest among any planning programs you will see across the country. Maybe with the exception of PAN and MIT. I don't even think Berkeley has very long list. We also have a program in the school the dean might have already mentioned called computational design practice. So some of their courses we also include in our concentration which is not included here. So I actually have a little bit longer list and the kind of work. And then we have some skill-based courses that really help students from across all concentrations, right? Especially for those few who love to do some visualization and to gain some design skills since you never had any but you are interested. The fundamentals of urban digital design really helps you that, right? And then for those of you who are really into project management, that's a course. So this is urban analytics examples. Actually you can see some of these here. Advanced Spatial Analysts course or Advanced GIS class. And then our website. I know our website, the color, meaning the GESAP website, the blue color is a little bit tricky but it's a wealth of information. That website, you go to UP and you click on some of the courses. If I have time, I'll show you how to do that but you just go down to the courses. Anything that has some kind of student work markedly open up, there are all kinds of students work featured like this one is featured there. And so you can actually see what students really are doing with advanced GIS or machine learning or informatics. And this is a course now we're finally offering again but first offered in 2019 by Anthony Venke on building sensors to collect data. So the students actually made all the sensors so it's really quite interesting. I know you went to the UP lounge this morning, didn't look like this, right? It could look like this but the students really make it as a home so it looks a little more homey right now. So as I mentioned, we have multitude of layers of advising for you, right? First is Kia and myself with the general program information and oh, actually I should change this internship now. We, Douglas came on board last year so I should change that with the career one-on-one but it's down there. And the faculty advisor, you'll have the first year, we assign you somewhat randomly, second year is your thesis advisor and then we have student mentors and then we have mentorship program with alumni. So different ways of connecting with the field and the large community. And Douglas also helps us organize the career service portfolio that includes his conversation with every student one-on-one to talk about the career path, right? It's in that black booklet but we came up based on our alumni experience about 12 or 13 of them, the kind of organizations they're working in and then the kind of coursework you wanna consider. So Douglas will talk with you and he organizes a number of different kind of career panels ranging from how to put your resume, cover letter together to how to negotiate for salary. And then we also have mixers with alumni which is gonna happen in about three weeks and also we always host and then reception at the APA national conference which is happening next weekend, not this weekend. We're also taking 25 students there. We always sponsor students to go to APA conference. And you can see the second page we have these emerging rules, right? Urban tech, design firms, consulting, research organizations and doctoral studies. Every year we have at least one, maybe two students going on to doctoral studies. And those examples are exactly where they are. All right, last but not least, you want to know what you're gonna do, right? After you leave here. And how well we've been doing with that for our graduates. So this data, about 60 people came from a survey of our alum who graduated between 2013 and 2017. So five years. So we do these big five years every five years or so. So we have annual data not as good but the big survey tends to be much more comprehensive. As you can see, many students essentially, more than the majority of the students essentially get their first job within first year of their graduation. Of course, about 12% get that after one year, right? So it's a very good chance that you will find a job before you're even graduate. Douglas knows we have a number of second year students who are already offered jobs now. They've got a couple months. And a lot of them of course go from their internships to their jobs. So Douglas also helped us coordinate the internship program. And we have, in addition to the mentorship program, couple of really good fellowship programs together with agencies around the city. Once with the fund of New York City, we place anywhere between three to five fellows each year in their second year, second year student, before the second year, during the summer, you're placed as a fellow, but it's more of an internship. You work with the community board in your second year, right? Another one is Morgan Stanley Community Fellowship Program. That's very competitive and that actually comes with a higher pay and you are matched with a nonprofit housing organization in your second year. So currently in the, you can just Google, you know, Morgan Stanley Community Fellowship, you will see currently there are eight or nine together fellows and five of them are from our program. And so many of them continue that line of work because New York actually has a really vibrant nonprofit housing sector, right? So that's where they go. But I have to say, the majority of our students do go into consulting, right? This tells you, let's just be completely honest with this, we are very expensive and in the order to pay off the student loans, you got to make decent salary after you graduate. And that speaks to the fact that why we have so many more than any other sectors of graduates in consulting form largely defined in different sectors, right? Cause you can see here, I don't know why we have a separate consulting form as a bar, so I didn't create this, but I should change it. But as you can see, and I would say anywhere between 60 to 70% of our graduates end up working in New York immediately or around New York immediately. But I've been really trying to encourage our graduates and students to think about state agencies, to think about federal jobs. In fact, we get a couple of our federal alum come quite often to talk to students or serve as mentors because there's actually a lot of space for planners in federal agencies. And then increasingly, we have more students working in international organizations, mostly the kind of multilateral or bilateral kinds of organizations, but some in kind of private consulting firms in foreign locales or international locations. But personally, so in terms of, we've had students asking this question, so what kind of career services will offer for students who are interested in international work, right? So the career service office certainly does some, but more is through faculty connections. So we have myself, Professor Hibabokar, Professor Kiegel Samiento, we all work in different regions of the world. And so I also have done a lot of consulting work with the World Bank. So I help students to think about what you need to do if that's the kind of job you are interested, the kind of courses you should take. And so we offer those advice individually to students often. Salary range. So obviously this alum had worked anywhere between two years to seven years because the whole point, we did the survey close to 2020. So for the class of 2017, they already worked two years, right? Class of 2013, they've worked seven years. So obviously two to seven years, you will see the salary range. We were actually quite surprised that our students are doing very well. In fact, I would stand anytime next to our architect, faculty, architecture faculty, and tell them that our graduates make more on average than our architecture graduates. It's not a surprise. That's just the truth. Right, David? David is the Associate Director for Urban Design. So, all right, so explore, discover and connect.