 I'm Weiping Wu, the Director of Master of Science in Urban Planning here at GSAP, Columbia University. And what you're seeing on the screen is the home in case you haven't been on campus before. And I'm also the Vice Provost for Academic Program at Columbia University. I just want to share that this live will be recorded. Is everyone okay with it being recorded? Thank you. Kia, are you sharing or am I sharing? I'm not able to go down the slide. I'm not sharing anymore. Okay. One second. Okay. So you obviously have already shown interest in studying urban planning. Why Columbia or why New York City, right? So there are many programs around the country and around the world. And I think some of you may come from other parts of the world beyond United States. So you might have looked at other programs. So why us, why New York City? First, I'd like to just tell you how exciting and how challenging as well being in New York City. And especially at this time, it's very difficult time. And many of you know what's going on around the world. So I appreciate you spending time with us today. So New York City is very global and recently has been welcoming, or shall we say sometimes not so welcoming to many immigrants from the world around the world. And New York residents also are quite complex in their makeups. So our students have the opportunity to study this complex city, not only in New York City, but also beyond and using the city as a real exciting lab. So you can see here the student work on digital divide, measuring the such with really big data and using urban analytics. So really both learning about skills and knowledge, but also about the city. New York also has been seeing a great deal of impact of climate change, particular in terms of sea level rise and flooding. And you might have heard about incidences in the last few years caused by the extreme weather change. So this is the terrific laboratory. And so our students have very much engaged both in and out beyond classroom with what's going on in the city, as well as what's going on around the world that is affecting the city. And another good reason for studying at Columbia is that our curriculum is very dynamic and flexible. The flexibility part I will introduce in a little bit. The dynamic part is we very much try very hard to be on top of what's happening in the city, what's happening out in the world and stay on top by introducing new courses and new knowledge and skills into our curriculum. So this is just an example of the new courses we've created in the last three and four years. And if you notice somewhere down towards the second half of the list, you see a course called Housing the Unhoused Practicum that is very much responding to the immigrant crisis or shall we say crisis in the rights to the city currently witnessed in New York City and particularly focusing on housing. So we do have these new courses. Another one is further down the list, re-imagine the city with web 3.0 is really thinking about how to use blockchain technology and other similar technologies in re-imagining urban governance and urban development perhaps more in the near future and not so much in the past or somewhat currently. Yet another wonderful thing to come to Columbia for is the extra curriculum offerings we have, right? Not only like GSOP, some of you may have attended the open house yesterday in person and you might have already seen the kind of extra curriculum activities that are happening at school. In the planning program, we have this weekly lectures in planning series and we invite scholars from around the world to speak about topics that are both very pertinent and central to our curriculum as well as more broadly expensive affecting cities. And so a little bit later after this session, you are all welcome to dial in the zone to our lecture today at 1.15 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time and to listen to a scholar from London about informal sector and development in the Philippines. So the global outlook we have here is very much reflected in our extra curricula activities. Last but not least, the exciting part of being here at GSOP and urban planning is that you can take advantage of many offerings across the campus. So first we have dual degrees, but not only dual degrees, but also courses taking electives with other programs within GSOP or taking electives across Columbia campus. And so you can see these are the schools not only offering dual degrees with us, but also are open to our students taking electives. And so for those of you who are interested in dual degrees, you can either apply now basically before January to both planning program and another program or you can come in and try it out at urban planning. And then you still are interested in the other aspect of the dual degree program come talk to us and then we'll help you with the application process. So now that you have seen what is possible at Columbia and in New York City, I wanna walk you through a little bit more specifically about our program. Our program has very long history, as you can see here, one of the earliest urban planning programs that has been established in the United States that are about 90 or so urban planning master's programs across the United States. And they are very much everywhere in different states and with somewhat different focus. And I hope to show you a little bit later some of our key strengths. And the most important thing for you now, right? It's to make a choice that really matches your interests. And so of course, I want all of you to be here, but the decision is yours and the decision is about the match. So as you can see here, since then shortly after the Second World War, we've introduced a very strong focus on social justice. And then in the 1970s, we've introduced a very strong focus on global outlook. And then more recently, we've introduced a focus on urban analytics, which I will specify a little bit later. We also have a very engaged full-time faculty. By design, our faculty full-time size is relatively moderate. So we are very different, say from MIT or Berkeley or Rutgers, who these are programs that are very comprehensive, that are much larger in terms of full-time faculty. And they cover just about every aspect of urban planning. And we are more in terms of full-time faculty aligned with our key strength areas that I will align in a few minutes. That aside, however, what we do is to take advantage of being in New York City. So in addition to the six or seven full-time faculty, we have about 40 or so adjunct faculty who are seasoned practitioners and they work in the public sector, private sector, non-profit sector, and international organizations. And they are committed to being with us. Many of them have been with us for more than a decade or two. And here is just an example of some of the adjunct faculty that are teaching in our program. And it's only about a maybe a quarter of them. As I mentioned, we have about 40. And they teach in every single kind of directions of our curriculum from community development finance to affordable housing, to line use planning, to re-imagine the city with web 3.0, decision-making with urban analytics for transparency. So a range of electives are offered by these adjunct faculty. These adjunct faculty also have very close connection with many of our students through introducing internships and employment opportunities to students about their own organizations. Sometimes of course, even hiring some of our grads. And but that's not the sole purpose of having these adjunct faculty. Really it's about connecting your learning and your growth here in the program with practice because MSUP is a professional degree. And our goal is to support you and our students to launch into meaningful careers after you graduate. So with that, I'd like to walk you through our curriculum briefly and then we'll be happy to answer questions a little bit later. So we are accredited by the Planning Accreditation Board and about 95% of our students are full-time. And so if you pursue full-time is two years and four semesters basically, we do not have any programming in the summer. We only accept new students in the fall semester because our curriculum is sequenced. And so most of our students do internships in the summer and then altogether we require 60 points and the points are very similar to credits except they take a little bit less time each week. Hence we have, some universities require 48 credits for the Master of Urban Planning program. Our 60 points is actually quite equivalent to that. So you need to take 27 points in required courses. That includes studio and thesis. So I'll introduce a little bit. And then you take 33 points in luck tips. So here's the change. You all are the lucky ones because we actually have just revised our required curriculums quite significantly and the state of New York has approved our proposal and these changes will take effect the fall of 2024, basically the next class if you decide to apply and get in. So out of the 33 points of electives, you need to take at least 12 points from the Urban Planning program, right? And generally we have electives clustered around five areas and four of them actually are our concentration areas for students that are currently in the program. And these areas also reflect the strength of our full-time faculty as well as overall faculty. And so if you speak to current students later at the session or in future opportunities, you all as new students next year will have somewhat different curriculum structure from the current students. Nonetheless, the courses are very much a similar and we are just organizing the courses differently. So the five distinctive clusters are what we have listed here and I will introduce a little bit more in a few minutes. And then, so other than the 12 points of electives you need to take in Urban Planning, you can take the other 21 required points anywhere you like. And that will include other UP electives. In fact, most of our students remain committed to taking UP classes because they are just really interesting and useful to take. Or you can take other GSAP electives. Every GSAP student is able to register for other GSAP electives. And this of course exclude some of the required courses in other programs such as studios in Master of Architecture and some of the required courses in the real estate program. So just ask us and we'll help you navigate. And then you can also take courses across Columbia. And generally we provide a list of courses of interest to planning students. But if you find another course that's not on the list you just need to let me know and we can then see the relevance and then allow students to take it as a lecture. So the elephant in the room is indeed that we are very expensive program and being completely honest. And we try very hard to provide as much financial aid as possible. So we really would like to encourage our students and offer the opportunity and flexibility for our students to really take courses across campus, engage in other activities across campus to really get the best education you can get in graduate studies while you're at Columbia. So we are also offering, we've been offering the part-time option in the last couple of years now. So if you're interested, please reach out. I will certainly be happy to review or resume to see if you are qualified to do part-time. So part-time you must have at least two full time, two year full-time or four or equivalent of a part-time experience relevant to planning prior to application. And we're not really encouraging students to take full part-time option like one course a semester. Really we're encouraging you to take half load of full-time as part-time so you can finish in four years. So here we share, I share with you the general program of study for the two years you are here. This is for full-time students. You can go to our website and download a booklet that shows how you can do it part-time and all of the descriptions of the electives, right? So the changes here, as I mentioned early, the clusters of electives, there are also two new required courses that are different from current students. So if you talk with the current students, be mindful of that. The two new courses are in the spring of first year, first one is urban political economy, the second one is urban technologies, innovations and planning institutions. I am very happy to say that our program is quite cutting edge in our required curriculum in that we try to bring in a more global, more critical and more technologically oriented perspectives to all of our students, right? Because it's required so everybody takes these courses. So the first year is very much heavy on required courses. The second year is very much heavy on your own interests and choosing electives. And planning studio in the second semester of first year is a team-based and exciting opportunity for some students. It involves traveling to other countries and places. As you can see here, a studio in Canada last spring. And then the other studios are here right around local with New York projects. So we always have real clients and real project to work on team-based studio in that spring. And here you can see really imagining public space in New York city just before, I'm sorry, just after COVID has come down. And so let me spend a little bit of time on the five distinctive clusters of electives. So built environment is probably the cluster and currently as a concentration that attracts the largest number of students because we have the largest number of electives. Also we are in a design school. So many other courses are also similarly interesting to students, but you can also see in this cluster we have courses on transportation, land use, on infrastructure, on site planning. And so it's a very broad based set of electives. In general, I tell students that our program is to prepare you to become a generalist, right? A generalist meaning you know a lot about many different topics. But some students do like to become more of a specialist. You're able to do that as well. So we give you that flexibility. And then the second cluster climate adaptation is actually a very new cluster. And it's really been developed in the last four years, three to four years, as you can see, not only we look at climate adaptation, we look at it from a social justice point of view, from just transition. So it's not so much about the science of climate change. It's really what we do as planners in the context of climate adaptation. Of course, there are basic understanding and discussion about climate change. And then the third cluster is our, reflects our long tradition on social justice, on our attention to communities of color and marginalized. And so you can see courses ranging from housing, community development, community development financing, to economic development and realistic. So it's a wide range. Again, offering students the opportunity to explore interests that are pertinent to your own. And then international planning and development, we probably have the longest list of electives among most planning programs in the United States. And let me just say really quickly, our approach to international planning really is to help you to be able to use the knowledge that you learned here at Columbia and to go back to where your home country is if you are from international origin or if you are an American student and you are engaged in international projects, you understand what questions to ask, what context to consider in your project approach, right? So we're not really trying to cover every geographical region in the world. We really try to introduce a broadly comparative frame of mind and the kind of questions you ask when you go to a different country and deal with planning or urban issue. Last but not least, rapidly growing list of electives is in urban analytics. And in fact, this list just has grown by three courses this year. So we have three new courses this year. And then so you guys, you can see we go all the way from how you are introduced informatics to how you navigate data and then to do how to do analysis with different tools. Finally, to use analytics in decision-making. We also have a couple of skills courses that are very useful to students, especially those who have not had any exposure to visualization or design. The first course is really foundational. And then the second course is very useful for students who are going into more project-based types of work. So that's that. So basically, you know that our students who come to the master's program come from all sorts of background. And they might be from architecture, urban studies, environmental studies, science, arts, you name it, everything. So we want to help you when you come in to not only just take courses but also to really grow and grow with your sort of a career aspiration. So you can see the four different mechanisms of advising and both academically and professionally. Yeah, so once you come in and we'll give you more highlights on this aspect, you can certainly ask the current students about their experience. One of which is this career service. And we are very proud that we have this full slate of career services. In fact, I believe, I know a lot of planning programs and I have taught into other planning programs. I very much believe that our career services is perhaps among the most comprehensive among the planning programs, as you can see here. One-on-one advising, which is really trying to help you think about the kind of courses you take with your career interests in mind. And then we have these workshops, networking, and then placement opportunities. And last but not least, the one-on-one mentorship program with alum. So this year we have about 35 pairs, meaning 35 second year students paired with an individual alum working in a similar setting as the student's own interest. So with that, we've kind of developed about a dozen or so career pathways to help our students think through. So you could see on the left the different kinds of careers. These are based on the career trajectories of our recent alums. And so we then suggest the kind of courses you wanna consider. And then you can see from the second page additional career pathways that we are trying to help our students not only to learn and go on to jobs that are traditionally and typically of urban planning graduates, right? Working in public sector or planning offices. We are also preparing students to work in neighboring fields or when we say affiliated or emerging roles, right? In urban tech, in real estate firm to do a research. And then inevitably every year we have a few students who wanna go on to doctor studies. And we also have a doctoral program. So we'll be happy to help our students with the questions about that trajectory. So as you can see this as the career fair last spring and for the very first time, nearly all of the different programs at GSAP are coming together to do this. We also have curriculum student life in terms of excellent student raw magazine called Urban Winning Student Magazine. And then three students become editor every year. And that's also a paid position. This is the Urban Planning Launch that essentially most of our students kind of live there when I don't encourage that, but they do hang out there quite a bit. And then there's a computer lab with 30 computers in the suite and in the classroom. So it's the space that where our students hang out at. So just really quickly, of course you are interested in how to apply and how we evaluate. As you can see, it's important that we look at your applications comprehensively. I can't emphasize enough about the importance of the personal statement. So let me just spend a second about there. It really is to say, please really try to outline why you are interested in urban planning and doesn't have to be a specific area of planning just your exposure, experience or any other kinds of understanding of the field will be very helpful. Since we are not requiring GRE, we would very much like. In fact, it's critical in your statement that you specify with some details your experience with analytical reasoning. And that could include, but not limited to, quantitative methods using statistics, GIS or big data or qualitative methods such as ethnographic or interviews and so on. Last, we do offer some married scholarship during admission that covers portions of tuition. It's fairly competitive. If you're interested, you should definitely fill out that part of the application. And then once students are matriculated, there are opportunities for teaching assistantship and the research assistantship as well as married scholarship for second year. And that actually is very new when it just started this year. And then we also, so the first three types of assistants that the planning program actually has some discretion in terms of recommending recipients. The last part, the need-based scholarship is school-wide. And so you apply and that's decided by the GSAP Financial Aid Office. So again, explore and just try to understand our program well. And then you can go to our main page, which is the first URL on top. And maybe Keon, you can shoot the URL in the chat box then so folks can get to that. And then the second link is a page you can get to from the first link. And we have pulled the resources for prospective students in a more focused way. So you'll find student work, you'll find a booklet, a program booklet in which you can see the faculty, their name, their expertise, all of the elective courses, descriptions, all of the career pathways that have introduced and so on and so forth. That contains a lot of information. So I would encourage you to do that first. And then if you still have questions to reach out and the email there is your best way of reaching us and Keon, myself, Keon is our assistant director. Sorry, I forgot to introduce you. And then we also have Douglas Woodward, our associate director for professional development and practice. All three of us will get this email and then we'll make sure we answer your questions as you go.