 Hi, everybody. We're going to get started. Welcome to our webinar. We're so happy to have you participate so we can share with you what makes the Ford School such an amazing place. I'm Susan Gendi, director of student and academic services. I will introduce our panelists in just a moment but first want to let you know that we will leave some time at the end of this webinar for your questions. There are quite a few participants on the call. Please submit your questions in the chat section and we'll ask as many of them as time will allow. I also want to remind you of upcoming upcoming webinars in our series. Next Thursday, December 10 at 8am Eastern Standard Time, faculty will discuss the Ford School's approach to engage learning opportunities with research centers, our program and practical policy engagement, summer internships, and more. The following week on Wednesday, December 16 at noon Eastern Standard Time, we will discuss careers in public policy as well as the leadership coach in the Ford School provides. You will hear from Jennifer Niggemeyer, director of our graduate career services, as well as from several of our alumni. The final webinar in the series will be January 6 during which you'll have the opportunity to meet Dean Michael Barr. And I and my colleagues in the student services team can answer your questions. I also encourage you to check out our events website, as we have some incredible talks coming up that will help you get to know the Ford School and its intellectual vibrancy. Now I'm pleased to introduce our faculty panelists. Paula Lance is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, James B. Hudeck, Professor of Health Policy, Professor of Public Policy and Health Management and Policy. A social demontographer, she studies the role of public policy in improving population health and reducing social disparities in health. Brian Jacob is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy and Professor of Economics at the Ford School. He is co-director of the Youth Policy Lab. His primary fields of interest are labor economics, program evaluation, and the economics of education. Professor Jacobs current research focuses on urban school reform with a particular emphasis on standards and accountability initiatives. John Hansen is a lecturer in statistics for public policy at the Ford School. He also teaches the politics of public policy and other courses as well as a specialist in comparative political economy and political development. He examines the ways in which and the channels through which political institutions affect economic performance and human development. My first question, I will direct to Professor Lance. What makes the Ford School curriculum stand out, Professor Lance? I love talking about the Ford School curriculum, so thanks for that question. I first just want to say hi everyone and thanks for joining us today. We're really excited you're taking time out of your busy lives and busy days to learn more about our community and that you're thinking of joining us here. The Ford School, both the MPP and the MPA degrees are really their generalist degrees. They're set up to prepare people who want to have impact and influence in the broad fields of public affairs and public policy and really prepare people for a wide array of jobs and careers in the public sector and the nonprofit sector and also in the private sector, both in the U.S. and abroad. And the curricula for the MPP and the MPA degrees have some overlap and there are some differences and we're not going to get down into the weeds on that today. But in general, both of these degrees, the curricula for both of these degrees have really three pillars to prepare you for your career. The first pillar is really strong analytic training and this is training and you'll hear from my colleagues more about this in a minute, but it's training in statistical and economic analysis, but also in political analysis and ethical analysis. There's lots of different kinds of analytic skills and critical thinking skills that people who want to have impact and influence in the broad spheres of public policy and public affairs need to have. The second pillar is strong and effective communication skills and we really pride ourselves at the Ford School at how much attention and how many resources we invest in producing excellent writers and excellent verbal communicators through our program. And then the third pillar is strong management and leadership skills. So again, to have impact and influence in the world, you need the skills that will allow you to both manage resources and including people and money resources and manage organizations, but also for leadership. And at the Ford School we define leadership as having a positive influence on others, organizations, and communities, and that requires skills. So again our curriculum either you know the MPP or the MPA degree, those two curricula are designed to give people the skills they need in those three core areas, analytic skills, strong and effective communication skills and then strong management and leadership skills. The core curricula are, you know, our courses are taught by world class, wonderful faculty and a lot of practitioners we bring in to teach as well. And also there's an array of an amazing array of elective coursework both at the Ford School but also across the 19 schools and colleges at the University of Michigan that Ford School students can take to go deep in the policy issues and policy areas of greatest interest and passion to them. And then also there's just so many extracurricular or co curricular activities for Ford School students again. The University of Michigan is a very large public university I always say it's you know Ann Arbor is not the biggest town in the world, it's kind of a small, wonderful college town but the University of Michigan is big and there's so many opportunities for students again for elective coursework but also a lot of extracurricular activities that that people can get involved with to to buttress and enhance the required coursework we have in our our thoughtful core curriculum. A couple of things worth mentioning in our first of all our writing center I think the Ford School is very unique for any kind of professional school, including schools of public policy and public affairs, and that we have four writing instructors. Whose whose job is to support the writing development and success of our students. Our writing instructors are amazing they teach courses and they're also available for one on one tutorials with with all of our students, they help students with the papers that they're writing for classes but also with job application letters. And if our students want to write op eds or other world things. They even say they'll help you write your love letters if you want to bring those to them. Yeah, they're, they're amazing and they're all they're all writers themselves. They write fiction actually one of our writing instructors has an mpa degree herself and has worked in an estate legislature but she's also a poet and she just published an award winning book of poetry so again that it's an amazing and really sort of unique resource that we have for our students at the Ford School. And then the last thing I'll mention right now is our, our leadership initiative we are really at the Ford School being very explicit and very intentional about the importance of your leadership development as a student here and again we define leadership, not as being the head person running an organization or running an agency, but leadership again is having the skills and the ability to have a positive impact in a and a positive influence on others organizations and communities. So, in addition to our required coursework in this area. And a lot of elective courses in this area, we have a lot of opportunities for students to do leadership assessments and reflection on them. We are starting a program where our MPP students will have the opportunity to have some coaching executive coaching during their summer internship with our students, our students are matched with alumni and other practitioners in the air. In the area, back in the day when we could meet in person they would meet in person for support and mentoring around their capstone projects but also wider leadership, sort of development so again we're really excited about the way in which our leadership has been thoughtfully constructed but all the other layers of optional and elective opportunities we have for students to build on top of that. Thank you. Wonderful thank you that was very helpful. So analytic methods is something that the Ford School is known for. Why is this such a critical part of our curriculum, and how is it integrated throughout the curriculum. Professor Jacob you want to get us started. Sure. Well first hello. Good, good afternoon good morning good afternoon depending on where you are. Let's see. Yeah, no I think so analytics here we can define broadly. You know, I personally teach quantitative methods econometrics and statistics, but my colleagues who work in political science and sociology, and history, teach other classes some qualitative research methods classes, but throughout the curriculum we try to focus on developing analytical thinking, and that is the ability to ask critical questions to look for and assess data different kinds of data and different information whether it's quantitative or qualitative. And I think the reason why we feel this is so important is because it's likely that whatever you do when you leave the Ford School is not going to be on exactly the topics that you studied here. And even if it is the state of knowledge and the policy issues and the context will have changed. So we don't want to just give you a fish we want to teach you how to fish to borrow some someone else's metaphor. And yeah so I think that's and you'll see that like in not only the statistics and econometrics classes, but in the micro economics classes are courses you are probably a bit different than those you've taken before. So there's much less kind of rote solving algebraic problems and finding out what prices the widget, you know, in this case versus that case, but thinking critically about taxes and how taxes would influence other aspects of the economy, and how one type of tax may not have the same impact as another type of tax. And what are the various options toward government regulation and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. So, and in the, the ethics and policy making course. There's lots of case studies there are not kind of a single answer given in order to behave ethically you do a B and C, but there's lots of analytical thinking around scenarios in cases. So, yeah, so I think that's kind of an overview happy to talk more on the Q amp a. I'm going to pass it over to john Hansen colleague of mine, who is a key teacher in the quantitative course sequence, and he can give you some even even more detail about that sequence. Thank you, Brian. And thank you all for coming to our webinar today. My job is to tell you about our quantitative method sequence, which for the MPP program involves a two core sequence. And for the MP a just the first of these two courses. So part of the quantitative method sequence starts with our basic statistics class, which I teach every fall, along with one of my colleagues. And then the second course is called quantitative methods of program evaluation. Now, so all of our MPP students have to take both of these courses, and they're really designed to be not just statistics courses but the teaching of quantitative reasoning embedded in a public policy sort of context. You know, a lot of you have probably had stats before some other time maybe in high school or maybe as an undergraduate and maybe it wasn't the most exciting class that you've had. But I really think it matters in a fundamental way when the teaching of quantitative methods is embedded in things that you care about so that when teaching of stats is grounded in public policy questions and things that really matter, then you learn it in an entirely different way. And I think that's one of the reasons why our quantitative methods training at the Ford school is so strong is because we we ground it thoroughly in public policy questions. Now, in at Ford we've learned that it's best to offer two sort of versions of this sequence. So we have what's called our standard version or standard sequence which is these two courses taught in our sort of traditional methods. And then we have what's called an augmented sequence. And it's the same two courses with basically the same content, but they're taught at sort of different levels of difficulty. So the emphasis of the standard course is really to provide a very solid grounding in basic data analysis methods, the interpretation of data, the ability to think critically and evaluate data analysis that's put in front of you in some sort of decision making context, and to provide that sort of training in a way that is taught at a pace that students are very comfortable with. And so we've known that many of our students come into the program, not feeling especially, you know, confident about maybe their math skills or maybe they're not so sure that statistics is you know going to be there a cup of tea so to speak. But what we found is that you know the kind of environment with the right sort of pacing where students have a lot of opportunity to ask questions and really go over the core material in a thorough way is a very helpful style of learning for many students. And then in our augmented track where we cover all of that, all of those same topics. We sort of expand on that, and we teach in a little bit more of an accelerated fashion. The presentation is more quantitative in nature so there's more math that goes in front of students. And the pacing is such that we try to push students a little harder, especially if they're interested in making data analysis, like a core and fundamental part of what they do in their future careers. So students can self select into one of these two sequences, it's not a matter of testing or tracking or anything like that. It's really more about what environment students feel would be best for them to learn statistics, and also what their goals for learning statistics will be for their for their future. So in that augmented track, we spend a bit more time, you know, trying to teach students as, as Professor Jacob put it well to, to be the fishers because they're the ones who are going to need to learn how to do the data analysis, and have that to be sort of a fundamental part of their careers. Now, a lot of this, I don't know. Having taught here many years I know that a lot of people come into Ford a little with a little bit of trepidation. They hear about this, you know, analytic methods training and, you know, it might seem a little intimidating or scary. One thing that I want to reassure everybody about is that our program is really well designed to accommodate a whole range of different learning styles and different levels so people come in with different levels of math or different levels of quantitative training. So let me just tell you about a couple of those things in the way that we provide resources to make sure that students are supported and feel comfortable all the way through. One of the things we do is all there. First of all, all of our courses, not only have a faculty member, but a graduate student instructor who's part of the course, both of us have office hours and there's a lot of time for students to get their questions answered. We also encourage the formation of study groups so that students can work together on the problem set assignments, and so forth. Another thing that we've learned over time is very important is that when we've identified scenarios where students need a little bit of extra help. We've, we've provided a peer tutoring program that, you know, faculty will identify students and say hey would you like to take part in this peer tutoring program, and it's just a way to provide some sort of additional coaching and support. Because sometimes students feel a little bit uncomfortable asking a question of a faculty member and they say well, I should know this by now I know that so I'm too scared to ask you about it, which is a very bad approach by the way, you should always ask because we're, that's what we're here for. And, you know, but the peer tutoring is often a way to do this in a more casual environment that could be scheduled at any sort of odd hours that students want to work at and so it's often a nice way for students to learn quantitative methods. One thing I'll say is that we do have a third course of our sequence, which is not a required part of the sequence it's optional, but it's called applied econometrics, and it's really meant to flow off of the program evaluation course. And it's a range of while we teach a range of advanced estimation methods that go beyond like the traditional linear regression model so a range of causal inference techniques and working with kinds of data that don't fit the standard model of the like the cross sectional survey data set or something like that. So, I've taught that course in in recent semesters and it's a really fun class where students really come out of that feeling like they've learned a whole bunch of quantitative techniques on, and by that point in time they're actually believe it or not they want to take more. So, if that tells you anything about if we succeed at something it's about creating this interest and desire to keep going and then students asked me well what do I do next. And, and Brian, who's the director of the of the policy analysis concentration is aware of a whole bunch of courses that we can then send students to after that. So, thanks again I'm happy to talk more later with any questions you may have. Professor Hansen, can I just also when you mentioned supports. Do you mind saying just a word or two about math camp I know we get a lot of questions about that and since you are often the one who teaches that I think students would like to hear about that. Thank you Susan for reminding me about that I meant to mention our math camp so, even before the first semester begins, we have a couple weeks of one students show up and there's some orientation. And one of the things that we offer as an optional piece of your training is a math camp and that also might sound like sort of a boot camp of some type but it's really not a boot camp. I've taught the math camp several times and what it is it's a, you know we run it over several days a few hours a day. And the whole purpose is to help students sort of get back in the groove with math because, you know you've had math but maybe it's a long time ago and you know you go back to middle school and there's this algebra stuff and then maybe there's some things from high school that have faded away. And so one of the purposes of math camp is to try to you know get those brain pathways working again, remind people of things that they've once learned long ago with a very like specific focus on math methods that will show up in our quantitative sequence. So like since I teach stats, and I do the math camp like I'm prepping students for hey you know in about two weeks you're going to see this formula and I want you to understand, you know the notation here. Or I set people up to talk about things that are going to show up in their econ course. And construct a curve that has declining marginal utility or something like that. So the math camp is actually very laid back and students often have quite a good time because they get to meet each other and it's a, it's a good way to gently introduce people and bring them back into what might be a little scary but actually turns out to be just fine. Thank you. Professor Lance anything you want to add before we go on to the next question. Yes, there is one one thing I meant to mention before and I, I forgot I don't know why because it's really important. I was talking before about the three pillar core pillars in our curriculum strong analytic skills strong communication skills and strong management and leadership skills. I also wanted to say that cross cutting in both the MPP and the MPA curricula are, first of all, a strong commitment to public service. We know why people are investing and getting a master's degree in public policy or public affairs. They want to have a they want to have an impact in the world they see things about the world that are broken. They, they want a career in which they're going to commit to, again, working towards the public good so we have a strong commitment to public service. We have a very strong commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. And also, I think it's really important to mention that at the Ford School, where people come to study public policy and think about innovative policy design and policy change. We understand that public policy is a way to improve the world. But we also know that public policy is often the root cause of some of the structural problems in society, including structural racism and institutional discrimination, a lot of times, again the root underlying driver of different types of social inequality is public policy regimes that have been codified. And so again, cutting cross our curriculum is the ability to think about that what is the role of public policy and both creating social problems, but also in working to solve them. Wonderful, thank you. My last question before we open it up for questions are what are some of the other ways that students can cultivate the tools they need for influence and action. Professor Lance you want to take a stab at that again. Sure. So for the there are MPP students who are with us longer and have more elective coursework in front of them, we now have five optional policy concentrations that that students can earn and it gets flagged on your transcript. So those policy concentrations are as Professor Hanson just mentioned a moment ago the policy analysis methods concentration. So we have a concentration in social policy. I am the faculty lead on that. There's one in public and nonprofit management. There's a concentration in international policy, and then our fifth concentration is an international economic development. So I would say at least half of our students do one of these policy concentrations. Also on this large campus, there are at least 50 graduate certificate programs that students can participate in and here's where you dedicate some of your elective coursework to getting a certificate in a wide variety of areas I'm not going to list all 50 of them to you I actually can do that but some really popular certificate programs among Ford school students are first of all a certificate a graduate certificate in science, technology and public policy and we run that certificate program at the Ford school and it's it's wonderful for those of you interested in science and technology policy. There's a healthy cities certificate policy certificate program that we participate in there's one on sustainability. Another really popular one is one on community advocacy and social change again on on and on. And then we don't have enough time to get into to all of it but the vast majority of our students are really active in student organizations, participating with faculty, both at the Ford school but across campus. And on their research, which oftentimes involves working with a research center. And there are I'm not lying over 500 research centers at the University of Michigan. You could get involved with our students are really engaged with volunteer work with community work being on boards etc etc so really the sky is the limit for how you want to augment and and build upon and really enhance the the academic part of your experience at the Ford school. Great. So we'll turn it over for questions now. I do want to clarify in my opening remarks I had said that one of the one of the upcoming webinar webinar starts at 8am I apologize it's 8pm Eastern Standard Time. One of the questions we've gotten is is the Ford school is known as a community, it is a supportive community, it is a small but mighty community. How have we foster that encourage that sustain that during this pandemic. Who'd like to take a shot at that. I'll say a few things about that and then see if my colleagues want to want to chime in. Obviously, this has just been incredibly challenging and difficult time for all of us in our lives. And then also, you know, here at the Ford school. I will say that I am beyond proud of how the Ford school has come together students faculty and staff to try to weather this. So I think we have to be down with it and to stay focused on our mission of research teaching service and policy engagement but at the same time making sure that all of our community members both their physical and mental health are being prioritized for for care as well. I think there's lots we could we could say about what we've been doing but I think the main things that have made it work at the Ford school is one where we're a smaller community. So that that helps in some ways but I think more importantly, we made a commitment at the beginning for transparent communication between faculty staff and students. We also made a commitment to have our students be front and center, helping us as a community, navigate what to do next, how to do online learning the best, how to, you know, think about all the kinds of supports that students need, and helping financial support. How to think about, you know, the summer internship experience, and all of our students got summer internships last summer in the pandemic they were remote, almost all of them but it happened so again I really feel like as a community. We came together in a, in a pretty strong way it hasn't been easy, but, and we're still committed to that. We're still having our students be academically successful, and, and healthy, both psychologically and and financially, as we always are but we've, you know, really made special efforts in that area. Wonderful, thank you. I'll just add a couple of things to that. You know, as Paula mentions it's been a really tough year but we started we knew it would be tough and we started planning and, you know, early in the summer for how to address both the academic side of things you know how can we teach and deliver the same sort of high quality education that we've that we've done in the in person way, but also, you know for the social climate of the school because the community is such an important part of what we are. We definitely miss the sort of everyday casual interactions that we have just been around our building where so much of our community is built. Though we've certainly tried to replicate that and just in like one small way for example we know that students often form study groups but how would that's much harder to happen. And when we don't see each other in person they don't naturally emerge so we, you know, we help facilitate that by creating study groups and encouraging students to join them and I think that's actually been quite, you know, successful. And a number of other ways where we just try to have like ways to get together online that don't involve an actual classroom scenario but that are just more for casual interactions. Like, for example, there are some people who get together on Mondays and talk about whatever happened on the football game on Saturday, which has actually turned out to be kind of depressing this year so. Absolutely. But just a kind of thing that that we've done and you know I feel like we're still developing quite a strong sense of community. As I see the semester go on. I'll add to that I mean I think you individual faculty have expanded office hours and other kind of virtual ways to interact with students. And I mean, actually ironically I've been surprised and I talking to colleagues, other colleagues here. I think kind of attendance at virtual office hours is much higher than it was prior. And I think in some ways it's it's one of these unintended benefits of coven is that it's, you know, it might be a little bit easier and more comfortable for some students to interact with faculty. So, you know, online that in person. And we're certainly trying to make those opportunities available. The other thing I think it's worth mentioning is there's been a few different initiatives that different research groups have started at the Ford school to directly address the kind of coven pandemic, and to help state and local organizations and agencies respond to it. And that's, you know, been a really nice part of the training but also kind of a community building experience in of itself there's the coven, I think we call it CCC coven consulting core. So, you know, it's been a really nice past spring and summer, and some MPP students were working with local entities to try to help them work through all the forms that various federal agencies were requiring them to fill out to get relief funding. And that is, you know, incredibly appreciated by the local agency partners, but also I think you added to the educational and social experience of students here. Wonderful, thank you. So this next question is about the application process. There we asked for previous quantitative and analysis experience academic or professional. What would precisely be the requirement will of course taken in a semester. During undergraduate degree suffice, will it affect the selection prospects if we haven't had the opportunity to apply those skills at our current workplace, but want to learn and utilize these skills for our future professional goals. We know that is a question that comes up often. Who would like to tackle that. I'm happy to say a few words about that. The first thing to assure everyone is that you don't need to have taken statistics, or accounting or calculus or you know any, any sort of quantitative skill class before coming to the Ford School. Well, as Professor Hanson was just saying, we, we start with intro stats and, you know, take, take people where, where they are. I would say when you're filling out your application, the thing, the thing we're going to want to attempt to assess is your interest in. And, you know, fundamentally your, you know, your interest in learning quantitative and the wider array of analytic skills that we teach here. But also what has prepared you for, you know, wherever you are to build on that at the Ford School. So there's, you know, there's nothing in the admission process where we're going to be looking for did they take undergrad stats did they take, you know, math. You know, or did they take, you know, writing classes, how did they do in English classes. What, again, we're really looking for people who are interested in building on, you know, whatever experiences and prior educational experiences they've had when they when they get to the Ford School and that you're just ready to roll up your sleeves and ready to go. Now, if you've had if you have some work experience and you have experience, you know, analyzing some data using Excel spreadsheets or you, you know, have other kinds of experiences that you think showcase to us. You know, sort of where your skills are now but also your interest in building on those skills. That's what we would like to hear about in your application. Great. John, I'm going to direct this next question to you for the quantitative classes. Do you use a specific statistical software to analyze data sets. That's a great question and I'm glad you asked because one of the things that I wanted to mention but forgot about our broader training is that we offer a range of software classes as well. We have classes in data and in our and in Excel, and then we have a general course in data visualization, which works with various software platforms just focused on producing excellent visual presentation of data for our stats sequence. I think we're going to end the year of transition because we often prior to this past year we've been teaching Stata as our main software platform for these courses. But this year for a variety of reasons. We added are as a second option so either are or Stata can be used in our in our stat sequence. And in part because the marketplace is changing and more and more places are using are in workplaces, but also because this is a year where access to our computer labs would be restricted because of the coven. So and are is free and available across platforms and it just seemed like a good time to make that move. So we spent a lot of time and effort to just shift that way and I and I act to say actually in my beginning stats course this semester. I think 80% of the students are using our and so the rest using Stata. I think we had a question about testing out of the quantitative I think it was answered in the chat line but Brian, do you want to say a word about that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I wrote a quick answer in the chat. It's certainly possible, you know students that come in that have a strong background and statistics or economics. It's possible for you to test out of the intro courses and that that's something that every year, you know, a handful of students do and they either use that as an opportunity to take more advanced courses in those areas, or they use that as an opportunity to just kind of expand their skill set in other ways. It's a pretty straightforward process at the beginning when you get here you, or a few weeks ahead you talk to a faculty and there's usually a kind of placement exam you can take, which is just to check that you, you'll do have a command of like the basic topics we cover in these courses. And I think that's about it. Great, I see a question in the chat about how soon can students get involved in opportunities like poverty solutions or a volunteer experience. Paula, you want to address that? Yeah, a lot of our students just hit the ground running looking for all those kinds of experiences right when they get here and that's great. Other students want to kind of get settled, get into the rhythm of their classes, see what the workloads actually like before they think about adding on to it, working for poverty solutions, that's one of the other research centers at the Ford School or beyond. Also, I think part of the question too is about hands on experience. So, both the MPP and the MPA required curricula include a practical engaged learning experience so on the MPP side that's the summer internship that is required for everyone, to come in with work experience. We want you to do an internship that brings you to, you know, build further skills and a new kind of organization, new types of policy issues. On the MPA side, and it's a one year degree, the students do a capstone project with a client that is external to the University of Michigan. And here we think of that this primarily like a consulting gig for the MPA students. We, and I'm thick in the fun right now of trying to match our current MPA students with a capstone client where they're going to have a project that has a scope of work, and a set of deliverables like a consulting arrangement would, and they will the students will complete the capstone project winter semester some of the students will actually have that continue into into the summer and then and then graduate in in August. Wonderful. Well, we are unfortunately out of time that came quicker than I expected. I want to respect everybody's time. We may not have gotten to all of the questions so I do want to encourage students perspective students. If you have additional questions or want to talk to us send us an email fspp hyphen admissions at umich.edu. Or you could just go to the website we've got lots of information about the application process, but we're happy to answer any specific questions you may have. So I want to thank our wonderful panelists for sharing their insights and experience with us. And wish all of you a wonderful afternoon and look forward to seeing many of you at next week's webinar. Take care.