 Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm really delighted to have you attending this first in a series of webinars to help you become more acquainted with the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. My name is Beth Soboleski. I'm the Director of Admissions and Recruiting for the school and it is my delight to be joined today by our two associate deans. So I'm joined by Paula Lance and Luke Schaefer. Paula is our Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Luke is our Associate Dean for Policy Engagement and they are going to spend some time talking to you about the resources at the school, the faculty, and we will have time at the end for questions. So I would like to invite them to join us and we'll get started. Hi everyone. I'm Paula Lance. As Beth said, I'm the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs here at the Ford School. I'm also a professor of Public Policy and I have a joint appointment in the School of Public Health and the Department of Health Management and Policy. I'm a social epidemiologist by training and a social demographer and teach courses related to policy analysis, program evaluation, and social inequalities in health. That's my main research focus. So delighted to be with you today. Thanks for joining us. Thanks Paula. Luke. Hi everyone. I'm Luke Schaefer. I'm the Associate Dean for Research and Policy Engagement. I study social welfare policy in the United States, poverty in the United States, social welfare policy. I have a joint appointment with the School of Social Work and I also run a university-wide initiative called Poverty Solutions that's housed at the Ford School and we have lots of wonderful Ford School students who work with us. Our mission is to partner with communities and policymakers to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty. I also just wanted to note that I'm at home. I have kids doing their homework and a dog on my lap and some plumbers here today. So there may be a little extra noise. So it goes these days. Absolutely. Thanks you guys. So the first question I'd like to ask you to address is, why is a master's degree in public policy important right now? Why might a student decide that this was the right time for them to go to school? So Paula, what are your thoughts about that? So I have lots of thoughts about that. I think that getting a master's degree in public policy or public affairs is without question a good investment in your future that would afford you a wide range of opportunities for jobs in the public sector, obviously, in the nonprofit sector, but also in the private sector. There's just lots of opportunities with these degrees for cool jobs that focus on the role of public policy, having a positive impact in the world. The MPP and the MPA degree are both generalist degrees, and we'll talk in a little bit about the curriculum. So they're degrees that equip people with a wide range of analytic communication and leadership skills so that students with these degrees can land lots of different places. The way we structure the curriculum at the Ford School, however, allows people not only to get the generalist training for the broad field of public policy and public affairs, but also the opportunity to go deep in areas of policy which you feel passionate about as well, whether it be social welfare policy, health policy, environmental policy, economic policy, tax, education, the list goes on. So again, it's a generalist degree, but with the opportunity to go deep and really become an expert and a specialist. As we all know right now, the world's in desperate need of people who are committed to making public policy and political institutions work better. The world right now needs people like you who are creative and innovative and entrepreneurial and also frankly I'll say people who are kind of mad and pissed off about the status quo and the ways in which things are not working so great right now and the ways in which our society and many places in the world are becoming more unequal over time rather than more equal. So, and I think it's important I'm starting us off here being really honest and saying I think it's important to recognize that public policy is an important force of good in the world. I mean I obviously believe that I wouldn't have dedicated my career to it. Public policy can be used to address complex problems and really in sort of a cliche kind of way make the world a better place. But we also have to be honest and recognize that public policy is often the root cause of structural inequalities and systemic racism and sexism and other forms of bias that we have in the world. Public policy codifies and and you know kind of creates status quo in a lot of ways that you know might not align with your values don't align with my values in many sorts of ways. So again I think it's time for us to recognize the role of public policy for good and not so good in the world and the field needs again creative, impassioned and dedicated people like you to make it all work better. Thanks Paula. Luke what would you add? Yeah gosh Paula did a great job of just highlighting I think the ways I think about this. If I'm a I love the Ford school I love our community dearly and I think it's a place where if you want to come and you do believe government and public policy can impact people's lives for good that people can policies can help people live the lives that they want to live. It's a great place for you and if you also believe that sometimes policy can have the opposite effect right and can really be a part of the problem and you want to learn more about that and understand that this is the place for you. If you want to learn how to analyze policy because one of the things I've learned is that often well-intentioned policy can go terribly wrong right and so we really need to do rigorous analysis to make sure the things that we're doing are actually having the effect that we intend because sometimes policy that is meant to help people in their lives actually has the opposite effect right and so that's why analysis is so important so that's what we're about here and you know one of the things I admire about the Ford School is so many graduates that go on to do incredibly exciting things so Steph White as a student of mine and a student of Paula's that was in the start of pictures before we got going she's gone on to a position with the state of Michigan that's helping to coordinate and get more families onto public programs that can help them across they might be on one and they're not on the other and there's huge levels of bureaucracy and she's working to streamline those it's a really exciting position I have another student at the state of Michigan who's running economic securities policy for the Department of Health and Human Services I have an appointment at that same department Paula's been working with the health side of that department so it's really about sort of digging in and bringing that evidence and research to bear and I like to think having low egos in the process right so if you're someone who wants to learn how to evaluate policy to make sure that it's doing what it should do want to learn how to actually make sure that that policy gets implemented and really want to be about the work and you know doing whatever it takes then this is this is a great home thank you both so let's sort of narrow down our focus a little bit we've talked about the field of public policy and public affairs broadly but so you know I know I get lots of questions about what makes the Ford school unique and and makes it stand out amongst various policy schools so I'd love to hear your thoughts about that I guess we'll start with Paula again on that one great thanks thanks Beth so so why the Ford school as Luke mentioned you know I too love being being at the Ford school this is a really unique community in many many ways and we can talk more about that the Ford school our masters program that's both the MPP and the the MPA are designed with our brand in mind and what's the Ford school brand it is really strong analytic training training in economics and statistics and program evaluation and political analysis and you know also an analysis from an ethical and a values based perspective on public policy so really strong analytic toolkit multi-disciplinary analytic toolkit our brand also is preparing people for the world in which communication skills are absolutely as important as your analysis skills so the Ford school is really proud that we put out people who are critical thinkers and analysts but also really great communicators and I think the best resource we have here to really underscore our commitment to that is that the Ford school has four count them for writing instructors on our faculty they all have MFA degrees they are experienced writers and they're experienced teachers of the kinds of writing that's important in the policy world memos and testimony and one pagers and policy briefs and off ads etc etc so um you know however great your writing skills are already they will be moved to the next level through your work at the Ford school and then also we have a really strong and growing focus on leadership development and leadership skills and at the Ford school we just simply define leadership as having a positive impact on others organizations and communities leadership is about influence and impact and having those skills to change organizations to deal with and improve complex problems in communities it's not about being the head honcho it's not about being the the you know top person in an organization again simply it's just about having that impact that positive impact that you want and it's probably the reason you're drawn to you know and thinking about going to graduate school anyway so those are the those are the really important aspects of our curriculum I think another thing that really is important about the Ford school is that you know first of all the University of Michigan is a really big university right there's 19 schools and colleges there are 45 000 students here and Arbor is kind of a dinky little but lovely you know midwestern college town um easy to live here easy to you know outside of a pandemic do all the fun things you want to do but the University of Michigan is a big university and but it's also a university with really low barriers between those 19 schools and colleges and so it's a very collaborative interdisciplinary people are not in their silos students can take courses at any of the other schools and colleges on campus and they do um faculty you know as Luke and I both mentioned we we have appointments in other schools I know someone on campus who has an appointment in seven different schools um that might seem like a little too much but that sort of you know the world the world doesn't function in disciplines and silos right the world is all very interconnected and so the Ford school we're one of the smallest schools and colleges um at the University of Michigan so being a small tight knit community is really good for us but we're a small tight knit community in a big university that's pretty easy to navigate and we can definitely help you do that whatever your whatever your interests are um our culture here is that faculty are incredibly accessible uh most of us are here um because we love to teach and we're so inspired and honored to be learning from the students that we have in our classrooms uh hopefully we're teaching something as well but it's a it's a two-way street especially in graduate school I mean the the learning process is you know it's it's it's bi-directional it's multi-directional um so faculty are accessible to students both in in terms of the the teaching but also their research we can't get our research done without great students joining our projects and working as research assistants and again contributing in that way um the staff at the Ford school are amazing I have never worked with such a dedicated fun and you know amazing group of people we're very student focused want to solve every problem that students have bring all of our resources to bear you know ranging from graduate career services to academic support to research support to financial support mental health and wellness support especially important right now um so you know we again it I don't know if you'll believe me when I say this but I actually feel like through through the pandemic um when we at the Ford school students faculty and staff decided early on that what we needed to do is you know make sure we had open and honest and transparent communication writing these waves of you know crisis management that started last March um being really honest with students about what's going on what are some of the plans getting student input into you know helping shape what the this year's going to look like again in the middle of a pandemic and in the middle of the most weird election stuff that's going on right and also really important issues in terms of social and racial justice going on in the world and so I I actually believe the Ford school has become tighter and more more honest and close knit community in the pandemic than before because we've just had um you know a really sincere um dedication to to communication but also our mission and our mission is serving the public good um and we all you know Ford school is not a perfect place that's for sure there's no institution that is but sort of a rally rallying around our mission and you know wanting to be there for each other and support each other through this historic unprecedented time has I think just strengthened the Ford school in really important ways. Luke things that uh we'd love to hear your thoughts as well. Yeah I think I'll just uh uh doubly emphasize the point of really taking teaching very seriously at the Ford school so after every semester there's a um teaching honor role uh that comes out among the faculty and I think sort of a place on that for classes where student evaluations suggested you really hit the mark as sort of a coveted um place I know I look for that um we didn't do it in the spring because it was such a crazy semester and I would have been on the teaching honor role and it it still bugs me that I didn't uh I didn't get to say I was that semester so um yeah in just really uh to me even all the places that I've been just the mutual respect of students and um having to be believing that we have a set of skills and knowledge to bring to the table but also that we can learn together right and I think some of your colleagues that you'll meet as you go through the program will become lifelong colleagues that you will draw on throughout your careers then just doubly emphasizing the place of this strong analytic training so you'll come in you'll learn to read research and be able to tell um what a piece of research strengths and weaknesses are you'll be able to use the tools to analyze the programs that you run right or if you're working in the legislature analyze the prison cons of particular moves that you might push um and the writing it's just like there's just no other place that I'm aware of that has multiple full-time writing instructors and I am a firm believer that however good of a writer you are you can always be a better writer right and uh continuing sort of to hone that craft which is really going to be one of the most fundamental things uh in your career in terms of getting your ideas across is uh it's just an incredible resource that I'm very proud of finally you know I'll just say again that I think um the Ford School really focuses on the applied work um as Paul and I have both said and just you know looking at the transition teams for a Biden administration having multiple people who are working on the on these transition teams advising on that right we have deep connections at the federal level we have deep connections with the state um many people working in the city of Detroit uh as well as other places so you know there's just a hands-on opportunity to really delve in and try out the skills uh in practical ways that has positive impact thanks so much Luke um so to follow up on on both of your points you know lots of students have questions about you know how do I get involved with the faculty outside of the classroom right how do I get involved in research and there are different projects and that sort of thing so you know can you can you just talk to us a little bit um about about what that looks like I know there's lots of students that work at poverty solutions and the other research centers so um I'll go over to Paula to to start with some examples and then uh we'll get Luke's thoughts as well right so I as I mentioned before faculty couldn't do the the amount and level of research that they do and also the policy engagement work that we all do without the support and help of students so um you know faculty get grants and contracts and have have money to pay students to to work with us on on projects for example I'm working on a project right now with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services that's really focused on how do we how do we finance the the growing need and important need for supportive housing for low income people who have behavioral health issues mental health issues and substance abuse issues and I have several students working with me on that on that particular project um there are also lots of opportunities um for unpaid work um I mean we like to pay students when when we can uh for sure because your time and energy and and labor are important and valued uh but there are again opportunities sometimes for um students to get involved with work that faculty are doing that you know we we do um unpaid um ourselves and but it's important in in the world one thing I do want to mention is that Ford Ford School faculty are value evaluated every year for their teaching for their professional service work for their research but also their policy engagement work we are expected as as faculty to be out in the real world and to be listening to policymakers and practitioners and finding out what kind of research and evidence and and data do you need um to to do your work and then um you know when we do research trying to translate it to policymakers and practitioners so can it can have that impact so we involve students in a lot of that um and let me just you know with with COVID let me just give you an example of how um some Ford School students um uh and I tried to be of service to the state health department when COVID hit in March um I reached out to um you know the um Dr. Jenae Caldoon who's the chief medical officer of the state of Michigan um really like the head epidemiologist and health health officer for for the state those of you who are from Michigan you've seen her on television almost every day but I reached out to her and and said look what do you what can we do to be helpful can I have a whole group of students at the Ford School who want to provide service want to provide you know research um quick summaries of what are other states doing what are other countries doing that seems to be working can we help you and she came back immediately and said I would like a memo and you know gave like five different topics I would like a memo on how um racial disparities are emerging from the data in other states again early in the pandemic um as the data were coming out we could see that this was going to be a problem what do we know about that what have some other countries done with elect you know with apps and and technology for controlling the virus um so etc etc but um uh you know it was a way in which board school students could take those important you know quick policy analysis quick research scan sort of skills and craft a really good memo in like 48 hours for a person who's dealing with a crisis um on the ground so we were we were really happy and proud to be serving the state in that way and still are right now thank you Paula Luke I know like I said I know poverty solutions has lots of opportunities for students so we'd love to hear about that yeah um so uh as I mentioned briefly poverty solutions is a university initiative but we're housed at the Ford school and because of what we do is so policy relevant we have tons of Ford school students who work with us as research assistants so many are paid hourly for their work we have some GSRAs for students have been working with us for a while we have independent studies so I'm just going to give you a few examples so that the mission of poverty solutions is really uh this engaged work of wanting to get out of the ivory tower and partner with communities and policymakers to find new ways to prevent an alleviate poverty um so we think of poverty really as a a set of interlink systems that don't work as they should for families whether it be housing and education jobs transportation and we really want to try to tackle those systems in ways that have ripple effects for families one of our our biggest sort of clusters of work is in the city of Detroit so we have formed with Mayor Duggan's team a partnership on economic mobility where we have a number of very sort of targeted strategic efforts to tackle some of the issues that the city faces so for example one of my staff members is the digital inclusion director for the city of Detroit so he technically works for me but through sort of a shared staffing partnership he sits at city hall and has students who work with them and they're trying to tackle the digital divide in the city in the city where it's as prominent as it is anywhere else before COVID hit they were doing incredibly innovative stuff around library laptop rentals and having some of the most progressive policies around accessing laptops from library getting training to be up and running on them for the longest periods of time as well as internet connection and since then you know since COVID hit there was a big push around getting devices to DPSCD students and so Josh our team member on this was a part of the a big a big part of the effort to get devices and internet access to every student in the city was about a $23 million initiative some of our other work has been around housing and so tax foreclosure is a major reason why Detroiters lose their home there are a lot of issues related to unconstitutionally high tax assessments and then there are some resources through what's called the poverty property tax exemption that are on the books where Detroiters can actually be relieved of tax liability and those are incredibly difficult to get and there's a lot of red tape around them so a student in public health was actually one of our champions around some changes that were approved by city council in the city to make that process much more streamlined and we had partners both among legal advocates and quick and loans a community trust fund is actually big been a big proponent of this of just spreading the word and doing everything we can in evidence-based ways to get people signed up for that the last I checked we had increased the number of families who were getting that that tax exemption that relieved some of their taxes which means they can't be foreclosed on because they didn't pay the taxes we were up about 30 40 percent so that's a lot of people's lives as we were doing that work though we saw that there was a major issue with home repair right so as families were staying in their homes we saw significant challenges in terms of bruce in terms of furnaces windows and having people embedded at the city meant that some of our board school students and one of our fellows were able to really dig in and see that there were some programs to help people with their homes but there was no strategy there was no sort of coherence to it and so Ryan Ruggiero actually a recent MPP graduate sort of led the way and sort of helping understand that landscape and identifying some ways which now the city has changed the way it does home repair services and supports and in the process she actually built a home repair resource guide right which was simply sort of a a document about what was out there and I was you know sort of surprised that this this guide in the city of Detroit it just simply says these are the programs if you have one of these problems with your with your home that you can get some financial help with and it's been like one of our biggest best-selling publications of course we you know we don't we don't charge for it but we we made a couple 100 copies and like we were out of them within a day because people saw that as such a useful resource we see it as a way to sort of build the relationship right it's useful to people but it also allows us to deepen our partnership and really look at policy another thing that we recently did in Detroit was a project that you can check out on our our website poverty.umich.edu where Ford school students were instrumental called investing in us we were asked a lot about whether or not we would do community forums to find out what the priorities of Detroiters were for policy change sort of what they wanted to prioritize in terms of people investments in the city and rather than do new community forums we thought maybe we will just look at what's already out there and it turns out over the last eight years there's been something like 400 different community forums that have sort of asked Detroiters what are your priorities for your community what are your priorities for your families and a lot of these things just get you know written and then they go on a shelf somewhere so in what we think is the very first time anyone's done this we actually collected all of them we coded them for consistency and we wrote a report that relies on the voices of Detroiters and we're using that to help set our agenda for policy change in the city and and one of the things that really came out of that report which is something that we've been working on a bit is not just understanding sort of the resource side of the equation so there's you know interest in jobs obviously transportation comes up but the costs of of living right so the not just the resources but the costs really came up over and over again the cost of housing the cost of things like auto insurance right where the city actually has for many unintended reasons the highest auto insurance costs in the entire nation I think probably the world and and so that's helping to sort of drive our agenda as we go forward so that we're not just sort of assuming as scholars we know exactly what the issues are people face and what their priorities are but we start with listening right and try to let our agenda be shaped by what we hear yeah and I'd like to mention that even that Luke and I both have talked about work we've been doing with the Michigan State government and Luke's work in Detroit and I've in the past done a lot of work in Detroit I just really want to underscore that the faculty at the Ford school are working all over the world and bringing students into that work with them we're because we are a public university in a fairly large state and do feel a commitment to provide you know service to our in our own backyard so to speak we do a lot of work in in the state but it is not limited to that again our faculty and students and alumni go off to do important work all over the planet that's right in fact I would say ball that's one of the places that we've really just really grown in prominence of the last couple years and I know I certainly enjoyed it when former secretary of states Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton both joined as a part of our sort of diplomacy series and there's you know just incredible work being done not just in Michigan but yeah all over the world and it's one of the great things that I enjoy being a part of because I get to learn about those things even though that's not an area of my expertise thank you both that was really true so let's just hop over to the the questions and that we have come in and chat so the first one is one that I know I hear a lot but would love to have you you both answer so it's from a student who says you know I have a BA in political science and not a lot of quantitative background so you know how do I prepare for the quantitative coursework well we you know we take everyone as they come the strongest students we had a few years ago was a dance major coming in so with no no social science really you know so whatever your background and preparation is you know you you will be fine we will get you through um there is um um math camp math camp um before the semester starts if you feel you know before you take statistics in the fall you need a refresher on just basic algebra um what is what is a probability anyway you know we that's an option for you um and we certainly can give you know people some readings to do if you want to kind of brush up or you've never taken economics before but really our core curriculum is designed um to take people where they are they are introductory know if you've had statistics in the past or economics we have waiver exams we don't want you retaking things you already know um and we help people prepare for those exams so they can pass them and then they have extra room in their in their course of study for for electives thank you um so there's a couple of questions in here about dual degrees and um as you both know dual degrees is a big part of the work that we do um there's a question about doing sort of a student initiated dual degree right with a program that's not um one of the formal programs and there's also a question about joining after you they've started their first year at the Ford School so um you know both of those things are are perfectly acceptable but would love to hear your you talk about that a little bit Luke do you want me to do this this is more on the I you know I have thoughts on dual degrees which I would share but I might defer to you to start out on that question yeah so um one third of the MPP students at the Ford School are doing a dual degree of some sort uh as I mentioned before you know there's 19 schools and colleges and within them there are just you know dozens and dozens of other professional degrees that combine really nicely with the masters of public policy I think the most common ones we see here are dual we're doing an MPP and an MBA or a JD or the master of social work or the master of public health but I mean the the sky's the limit and we do have some formal established degree dual degree programs but it's also the case that students can can come and say I want to do something you know that no one's done before but I want to combine my technical kind of generalist training and public policy with this other specific area of interest for me like Middle Eastern studies or or something else and we can we can make that work you don't have to know this going in um it's actually the case it works better if people people doing the dual degree start in one of the programs for the first year because then they get to know their other the the enter in a cohort and they get to know people and they take the first year course sequence in that cohort and then the second year they start the second program and again they're in a cohort and they get to know the people over there rather than sort of going back and forth all the time so you could come and start in the Ford school um and or in another degree program and then decide later you know you wanted to apply for that that second one maybe some of you are already at Michigan doing a an initial degree and want to apply to Ford for a dual degree week we can make that happen yeah to me I think the question is I like the idea of coming and then uh adding a degree um I think there are questions of just being certain as to what it is you're getting with a dual degree that you don't get with just one degree so as Paula mentioned at the start one of the great things about Michigan is our our boundaries are pretty open across departments so um can you come to the Ford school and take some classes and get some skills out of you know to enhance your skill set at the business school or the school of public health um or is there a very specific reason why a dual degree helps you get to where you want to go in a way that a single master's degree uh doesn't and so those are the the questions that I just you know encourage people to really think about talk about um even come is uh if that is an option for you start the program and then see okay does it really make sense for me to add on another year to my training in do this dual degree or not yeah I I agree with Luke it's not um it's not a foregone conclusion that that two master's degrees is better than one um you know it's it's gotta provide some value added to you for your career goals so uh like Luke I spend a lot of time talking to students to see do you know do you really need this um a second degree to accomplish what you you want to I also ask people nosy questions they don't have to answer if they don't want to but I do ask them how much are you in debt already what's your student loan situation and you know are you gonna have to go more in debt to get that second degree um and again is it gonna is it gonna be worth that to achieve your your career goals sometimes yes I mean some people people who want to be practice law need a JD and they can't you know can't just do that with an MPP um you know and there are there's a different skill set and a different sort of credentialing that goes along with some dual degree combinations that really might be necessary for people for the career goals they have but I'll just tell you honestly I've talked some people out of it because I just didn't think there was the value added there and certainly not to go another you know X number of dollars into debt perfect so there's a few questions in here particularly related to education policy um folks that are interested in a variety of different aspects so just wondering if you guys would talk a little bit about you know sort of our education policy the folks sort of teaching in that arena um as well sure Luke hey uh education is a strength for us uh we've got just really terrific people who are working in the space um we have the education policy initiative uh which is sort of one of our our centers that does tremendous work in this area and faculty including Kevin Stang, Sudinarski, Brian Jacob who are really leaders we have research on higher education so you know one of the great innovations from work coming out of the Ford School has been what became the go blue guarantee at Michigan started as a Hale Scholarship where we saw in Michigan that high performing low-income students actually don't apply to the University of Michigan at higher rates even though they they could get in because they don't think they can afford it and that's partially because sort of you know undergraduate degrees are you know financial aid is just very confusing um and uh and so but in fact actually a lot of students would get a better deal at the University of Michigan than a lot of the places that they applied to and the Hale Scholarship uh was an experiment where we did a real you know rigorous evaluation that found that uh if you change the way you communicate and you just sent out basically like a statement saying if you apply and you get into the University of Michigan you will receive a full tuition grant for all four years and doing just that even though that was actually what they would have gotten to begin with had a massive effect on the number of low-income high-performing students that applied and really changed the the landscape of the of the student body um we also you know our faculty have focused on career and technical education and understanding when do those programs sort of at the high school level positively impact sort of trajectories some are used jobs so we have faculty that have done some of the top research and understanding how some are used jobs programs made positively impact and under what circumstances so you know there's a strength in the work and I think a lot of that will come down you know many people will take a class like program evaluation and a lot of the examples I think will come from educational policy okay let me just yeah I just want to note that for for the MPP degree we we have the option of a policy concentration so we have five different areas in which you could get a policy concentration and one of those areas is social policy and we do have a lot of students who are interested in education policy using education policy courses to fulfill that social policy uh concentration so um and other people you to get the social policy concentration might take a health policy class and an education policy class and a poverty related class you can social policy is a big big sort of area but again there's so many offerings in education policy here and a lot of students just you know take them as electives and then all of a sudden they have the social policy concentration so I know I am cognizant of the fact that we are running out of time um but there's and and we probably won't get to all the questions but we'll we'll give you an opportunity to let you know how to follow up on those but one question that I think would be great to address in the little bit of time we have left is um about the ability to take classes outside of the Ford school across the university and if you know what your thoughts are if there's classes that you've seen that students have particularly really loved and how that sort of plays into and enhances the education for our students. For the MPP degree you're actually required to take four credits at least four credits outside of the Ford school and people have no no problem doing that so again this this is a big big university and our students have such a wide array of interests that they're taking classes all over campus um a lot of the business school the law school has some pretty pretty interesting courses that um intentionally bring people from lots of different backgrounds to solve um it's the complex problem solving problem initiative our students enjoy that and again again all over campus um students are are taking classes and also the the graduate school at the University of Michigan Rackham graduate school has last I counted 50 different graduate certificate programs um where if you take classes and these are usually across multiple schools and colleges you can have another designation on your transcript which is that you earned a certificate in a certain area um the most popular two certificate programs on campus for Ford school students are one in science technology and public policy which we run out of the Ford school and then the other one is on um I might not get the name exactly right but it's on community organizing and social justice work that's a very that's a very popular certificate program among Ford school students but again there's 50 of them and sky's the limit perfect thank you so I see we're at time so we did have one quick quick thing that there was a request to see Luke's puppy he's been very well behaved today he was napping so he might be a little unimpressed this is this is wilson he uh he's a covid dog uh came to us from texas on a love train and uh he is the most lovely dog unless he thinks you're gonna um uh have any have any negative effect on the 11 year old uh in our home so then he turns into Pooja I love it um so unfortunately we are at the end of our time oh Ford school mascot that would be great we have we definitely have a lot of dog lovers at the Ford school I will I will note that um so I just wanted to mention we're gonna have our next webinar on December 3rd um I think Paul is going to join us for that one as well and we're going to talk about the the the tools for influence and uh the you learn as part of the the Ford school degree um I dropped in the chat uh and the FSPP admissions mailbox mailbox address if you have follow-up questions and I see that Paula has put her contact information in as well yeah the first one has a typo use the second yes it's a z not an s correct um and I see Luke has done that as well so very much appreciate that you guys um we so appreciate your time to our prospective students that have joined us today and um hope that you can join us for future ones or or reach out uh we have appointments on our calendars if you want to have individual conversations as well so just thank you all so much I hope everybody has a one for for those of us in the U.S. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and um just thank you again for your time and we will hopefully hear from you again thanks Paula and Luke take care everybody thanks and I'm sincere if we didn't get to so many good questions in the chat box so please we are we are we want to engage with you we want to have conversations so please reach out I'm around and would love to love to talk with any of you about anything 100% all right guys hopefully next time see ya