 Good evening, wherever you are based in the world, we have people joining us from all over today and I'm very excited to meet you all and to share information about our PhD program in urban planning. My name is Tom Slater. I'm the director of the PhD program and also professor of urban planning here at Columbia. I joined this university last year after 14 years at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and five years at the University of Bristol before that. By training, I'm an urban geographer, but my work is very interdisciplinary and also very community engaged, and I'm broadly interested in urban inequalities in whatever form they appear, whatever manifestation. I'm probably best known for my work on gentrification and displacement, but over the last decade or so, I've sort of moved away from that as I've developed a strong interest in the phenomenon of what's known as territorial stigmatization. So, for example, how people are discredited, devalued, treated differently because of the places with which they are associated. I also have long standing interests in questions of housing justice. Most recently I've been working on how questions of stigmatization and housing intersect in the city of Cape Town in South Africa. In a moment, I'm just going to ask my colleagues to introduce themselves. But the format for today is I'm going to cover some of the basics of our program give you a sense as to what it's what it's like here what it's all about the kinds of things that we cover, what to expect. And then I move into general information about the admissions process. I should probably start with an apology because many of you have written to me to ask for individual meetings or written to one of my colleagues to ask for an individual meeting. You'll probably realize that we don't do that simply because there are so many of you who are interested in studying here, which is of course wonderful to see. But it does make it difficult to answer and meet you individually online. So this is why we do a group session and also many of your questions are similar. So after I've gone over the program and introduced my colleagues there'll be an opportunity for you to ask questions and you're welcome to do that in the chat, and you're welcome to do that in person after I've given an overview. So it's not in person by opening your camera and talking to us if you want to. So that's that's an introducing myself let me just give you a sense as to like if you're thinking why should I come to Columbia right there are many urban planning PhD programs to choose from all over the world. What is it about this place, what is it that we do here, maybe what do we do differently and what are we particularly proud of here. So let me share some of those things with you. The first thing is that this is a very dynamic and flexible curriculum. I'll give you a sense in a moment as to what kind of courses that you have to take and the kind of courses that we offer not just in GSAP the school that you will be based in but across the institution. Another thing about us is that although most of us have a background in urban planning here, the people that will be teaching you. All of us are very we read widely across disciplines we're always going to conferences that are interdisciplinary. We engage with people whether it be academics or practitioners who have different perspectives different approaches to studying cities and thinking about our problems in cities and how they might be addressed. So I think one of the things that really makes Columbia distinctive is how interdisciplinary we are in our approach to out to what we teach, and that feeds through to not just the PhD program that you're interested in but also our master's program and the PhD and the master's programs here. There's a lot of dialogue between those by the way so you're part of a large graduate student community and urban planning when you come here. Another thing which I think characterizes our program is the focus on social justice racial justice and climate justice in urban contexts. These are areas of specialization that we share as faculty. And I think broadly this amounts to a critical approach to the study of urban planning. And if I reflect and think about the PhD students that we have here all of them take a critical approach to their work, by which I mean they're asking very broad questions, even though they're focused on specific topics and regions and contexts. They're asking broad questions about, for example, urban planning for whom urbanization for whom urbanization against him questions of who decides democratic and political questions come into the kind of work that we teach here, and the kind of work that our students are doing. More recently, with the appointment of my colleague Anthony who I'll introduce you to in a moment we've developed a specialization in urban science and analytics. And Anthony will tell you a little bit about that in a moment when I introduce him but that's an emerging strength that we have also Columbia. Another thing that I think it's important for you to understand as people who are thinking of applying here is how international our focus is so we have comparative perspectives and knowledges that we're interested in and we're interested in drawing upon to understand cities to understand planning to understand the world. We're interested in the bridge and learn across and between the global north and the global south. Although we simply cannot cover every region of the world we're interested in what we can learn, particularly from context which are often off the map in terms of urban planning debates. And so, not only our own teaching but in terms of the kinds of speakers that we bring in and I'll tell you more about these programs in a minute. We want to learn as much as we can from different parts of the world about this thing called urban planning and different knowledges different and often marginalized forms of knowledge we're interested in bringing back into how we understand and think about and train people who go into academia in in planning. Take pride in the fact that we really prepare students for whatever career that they may have in mind. Right, so most people come and do a PhD with us because they're interested in an academic career but that's not always what people end up going into. Some people go into more specific research focus careers that maybe don't involve teaching others go into professional practice in planning. So we'd like to think that we prepare people well for these careers and we give advice and the university itself has excellent resources for helping you along with this particular process because I'm sure you're already asking yourselves why should I do a PhD and it's important to think about where you might want to be in five, six years time as you're going through that process. And to bear in mind here about Columbia is the wider institution. It's a quite remarkable place to be in terms of the intellectual environment. One of the things that I've noticed about Columbia I've been here for just over a year there's always something exciting happening intellectually there's always amazing speakers who come to the city. There's always exciting events to attend. And often you can find yourself in something which you don't know much about and you find it's completely riveting and amazing and that's one of the really remarkable things about Columbia. Of course it's difficult to ignore the fact that we're in New York City as well which is one of the most remarkable places to be an urbanist, whatever your field of specialization. So it's an incredible inspiring environment in which to be to be training as an urban planning scholar. And finally, the PhD student community here, like I said, I've only been here for just over a year. And one of the things which I've been so delighted to see is how our PhD students are very much. I think the best way to describe them as a tight unit. They are quite amazing the friendships, the bonds, the networks and the way that they work together to get the best out of each other and the program. We are quite amazing our group of students here and it's just so exciting to see how they support each other they look after each other. And ultimately that makes their studies much richer and more inspiring and a pleasure to be part of. Okay, so that's one thing which I've really noticed about this place and I think it's a pretty special atmosphere that our students have created. Another reason perhaps the most important reason is we have some wonderful faculty, I have some amazing colleagues. Here's just some photographs of the kind of work that they're producing, but I think having introduced myself. I will now invite our colleagues just to speak for a couple of minutes about who they are and what what the work they do is all about so I will hand over to my colleagues and hopefully somebody will volunteer to go first. Hi, I can go first. Hi everyone. Welcome. My name is Hiba Boakar. I'm associate professor in the urban planning program. I teach mostly theory classes, the master's, the planning history and theory for masters I teach the advanced theory planning theory course for the PhD and a few electives on related on issues of crisis or issues of segregation exclusion in cities. My research is on cities in conflict and post conflict cities and the role of planning that plays in issues of constructions of what is peers what what is war, and the role that religious organizations play in shaping cities. My field site is Beirut Middle East but I theorize from there about the for close futures of that that shape our current moment in terms of like whether it's a future of war or future of climate crisis or future of a pandemic and how that shapes or how does that affect how we think about planning and urbanization processes in general. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about my particular I also need that I found and direct the post conflict cities lab and G sub and we've been doing work in different parts of the country and many students are affiliated with it doing their own projects and we think comparatively and but also bringing questions also to think about New York, not only like thinking between the global north and global south and this is one of the features of our program is that we the center, the production of knowledge by thinking particularly between the geographies of not only cities here but cities in the global south and how to think about like informality conflict contestation climate crisis gentrification across these geographies. Welcome, I happy to answer a particular question. Thank you have a I'll just pick somebody to go next Hugo. Hey, nice to meet you, everyone. I'm Hugo Sarmiento, I'm an assistant professor here in urban planning, I've been here for a couple years now, going into my third year. So my, my work is focused on the housing and land use strategies that cities are developing in response to the climate crisis. New York City has been Latin America, Colombian cities in particular, but with the Medellin colleague, where there's a lot of experimentation and these strategies. But since I've been here in New York, I've also started to develop a project here in the city as Tom mentioned, New York City is this vast urban lab in which you can explore all kinds of different dimensions and facets of urban planning. Working here with communities impacted by rising sea levels and flooding and studying their, their community based responses to these climate risk. I rely on also on political economy, critically engaging some of the dominant paradigms in climate research. So resilience theory, sociological systems theory, really trying to deconstruct and unpack what those conceptual frameworks have to offer in our, in our understanding of the climate crisis. Let's see what else I in my work, I try to center the role of communities, grassroots efforts and certain planning practices and shaping these strategies and cities. Let's see I have an affiliation here with the climate school with the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes and help advise on some of their programs and classes on related topics. And here in urban planning I teach planning methods also teach electives on politically urban political ecology and climate adaptation in a global context. And yeah, again, it's very nice to meet you all and I'm happy to take any questions if you have them. Excited to see where we go from here. Thank you who the way pink. Hi, thanks Tom. Welcome all way pink. I've been here for this is my eighth year. I also direct the masters program in urban planning and my own work is primarily located in East Asia and China and I look at how migration and organization affect migrants who come to cities in terms of their housing experience settlement experience. I also look at how local governments manage land and through land also financing urban infrastructure and I also have some other projects. But, you know, increasingly with the doctors students that advice. I'm also supporting them to look at some of the emerging technologies. How they are used in urban governance and also engagement of various different citizen tree. So, I have been teaching the doctoral corollachium on applied qualitative methods but now in my capacity also as vice provost for academic programs in Columbia. I continue to advise doctor students I also have to apologize to a lot of you on the screen who might have written to me by email I simply do not have the time to respond individually. And I think Tom will talk about this later that generally, if you are best served to approach Tom as the program director. Thank you for kind of questions related to the program. Thank you. Thanks for a thing and Anthony. Hi everyone, I'm Anthony banking and amongst my colleagues I think I'm the self-professed murder geek as Tom kind of alluded to just a few minutes ago, I'll admit I really do hang out with our IT department quite a bit. While my doctoral training, you know happened when the smart cities discussion rose began and subsequently fell. I still look at how we use digital data and computational social science tools to understand the city so you know, in my classes like we've, we talk about everything from blockchain big data AI and of course all the discontents I'm really more interested in what we do with the data and how we apply it back to urbanism and meaningful ways. Like many of you I have a background in urban design so I'm also interested in how we apply imagination and a social lens to those critiques. Specifically, I think a trademark of my work is that I engage urban technology through the lens of critical making so instead of just always relying on data sets that are readily available I'm really interested in both, how do we create the data through networks or other means but how do we apply other epistemologies to understand the city in ways that I think are more meaningful to us in kind of more equitable ways such as thinking about lived experiences affect embodied data the lived experience and what that might mean for, you know, larger efforts towards policy but also advocacy. As I said I'm also a designer so some of the questions I look at are also related to how we think about the built environment how we enumerate aspects of design. Somehow by coincidence I think I'm the Americanist amongst my colleagues just because by chance a lot of my projects now are in the US. So I've been doing a lot of work in southeastern Michigan, and American Gulf South, of course New York City. I'm also affiliated with the data science Institute so have a connection with colleagues across the Institute across the university that are working with data science in different ways in the different disciplines, as well as being a co director. There's many of us so that sounds much fancier than it is of the Center for smart streets games which is a multi university NSF supported initiative. So there's engagement, you know with engineering as well as some of the others who are also self professed nerds and I look forward to the conversation that we'll have as we continue with this discussion. Thanks to all my colleagues I hope, just by their introductions there you've got a sense is the sheer breadth and depth of the kind of work that we do, but we're very happy to answer questions if you want to put them in the chat or even afterwards. After I've just concluded my short introduction here. Let me just move on to the next slide so I mentioned the dynamic and flexible curriculum. And this means that in the first two years the foundational years of the PhD program. We have courses which we require that you take. And I won't give a description of all of these because I think it's probably best if you have any questions to ask about them but broadly speaking, what these courses do is that they provide you with both the theoretical and methodological foundations which we consider to be absolutely crucial for any student in urban planning. And what we do is usually these these take these take the form of kind of small group settings where often they're like pre assigned readings and we have really fantastic often intense and exciting discussions about particular particular readings, or even particular approaches, whether they be theoretical or methodological approaches. So those are the required courses. We also require that you have in the first two years of your program here that you take additional courses in research methods which could be either in GSAP the school or even beyond GSAP as well. And we also have courses which we require that you take that are related to your research specialty. Right, so you come here usually with, you know, a clear idea as to the kind of urban planning themes that you're most interested in. And we advise that you take three or more courses related to what you see as becoming your research specialist specialty. Okay, so those are the courses that we require we also recommend that you take a couple of courses that are offered to our master's students in the master's program again important foundational courses the history and theory of planning, and also GIS geographical information systems. In the first two years we do have some requirements but we consider those to be absolutely essential for any student moving forward once once you go go past those first two years. And in fact what you often tend to see is that some really exciting research ideas come from students taking these particular foundational courses. We have communities across Columbia to take classes right I already alluded to that in the previous slide but we have obviously a very exciting and vibrant and dynamic intellectual environment right in this, in this part of the world. And there we go we have, I mean this this is actually like this is not like a full list of all the departments and all of the programs in which you can take courses across the institution. It's that we encourage and advise that you look broadly because as we are all interdisciplinary we like to think we lead by example and that means that you'll go and explore courses for example in anthropology and sociology and public health. Right, so these are the kinds of things which we think is so important for any doctoral student and urban planning to have as broad a perspective as possible because often debates happening in other disciplines can make you think about the work that you're doing in urban planning and then also you might think well hang on a second, we've been reading this and urban planning, I can bring that into an anthropology setting. And often you'll find that you can get really exciting conversations and even eventually collaborations with students in doctoral programs in other parts of the institution or in master's programs even. So there are opportunities across this place for really exciting intellectual endeavors. So that's just just an example of the kinds of schools and programs that you might be and disciplines that you might be interested in having a look at. In terms of resources and support here well all of the student we admit three students a year it's a small program it's a competitive program. But in a sense that the small size of the program is actually its strength because I talked about the strength of the community that forms among the students students who are admitted to the program are offered a full scholarship for at least five years. And the second and third and fourth year of that scholarship at the moment we require students to be teaching and research fellows right so you have teaching obligations or research obligations in the form of what's called a fellowship when you are a recipient of a full scholarship. We also offer annual summer stipends which are available to help with any research that you are with whatever research that you are doing some some of you may be interested for example doing international field work and that summer stipend may help towards that. Also we have research workshops which a student led. So we actually have among the PhD students they they bring themselves together and they invite us along to talk about an idea they've had to talk about a current problem they may have with their work that they want to sort of, you know, workshop if you like and have a sense as to you know whether they might be heading in an interesting direction or not or what they might consider by airing it among their peers. The second year doctoral students are in charge of the programming of a really thriving series called the lecture in planning series, lips, and pretty much every fortnight speaker external to Columbia, sometimes international is invited into GSAP to to give a lecture as part of this series. And not only do they do that and it's always an interesting occasion to hear just the exciting work going on from urban planning professors elsewhere, but they also tend to come along and listen to what the students are doing and offer their time and just engage with the PhD students as part of that invitation to give a lecture in that series. Also students take workshops that are aligned with professional development in whatever way in whatever form that may take. And also here at Columbia there's opportunities for collaboration with faculty, right so that might be who eventually becomes your advisor or it might be somebody else who you don't even know who that is right now. There are opportunities to actually get involved in even larger even small research projects during your time as a student here, and you will hear about those as part of the program right because once you're here embedded in this context, then you get to, you know, you get to see what kind of opportunities there are more broadly to get to actually get some research experience that may or may not be related to the PhD project that you're pursuing. Right the application process let me just go over this briefly for you and this is really why we're all here right I'm sure you want to know more about like okay how do I apply what kinds of things might you be looking for so this is real the kind of crunch time of this session right. So application and review process the deadline is the most important thing December 14 2023 okay so just under a month away. And I'm going to give you in a moment some sort of top tips which I brought to this reflecting on last year's application process, but let me just give you a sense as to what's required so we are asking students to provide evidence on critical thinking right recall about 10 minutes ago I talked about the critical ethos of the program. Okay, we're really interested in questioning, not just particular policies and particular planning strategies but thinking about the status of the field thinking about how we might move forward urban planning as a discipline. Maybe we might do that okay, so thinking about how we can create better and fairer cities, but also think about how we can create a better and fairer discipline as well right so critical thinking and independent research to provide evidence on those things is really important. Writing ability is important for those of you who don't have English as a first language I do recommend if you have the ability to do so to get your application text checked before you submit it. I was quite surprised last year how there were some applications which maybe hadn't had the chance to do that, for whatever reason but if you can just get somebody to check over your application it does. It does help the application obviously, but also we asked for a writing sample. So it could be, well first of all, nothing too long because we won't have time to read it if you send something that's just, you know, 200 pages don't do that right. I hope for example send your entire master's thesis or something just don't do that we're not going to be able to read it, but a small example of your writing that gives us a sense is the kind of writer that you are a kind of scholarship, which you bring to this environment, something sort of snappy and punchy that's really kind of engaging and riveting whatever that may be, if you can offer that then that makes certainly a more interesting application. So this is a personal statement I'll give you in a moment some top tips about this, but this is really the chance for you to share your academic journey so far the preparation that you've had for a PhD program and urban planning. And that means that you need to talk about topical or theoretical areas of interest. As part of that process you should also tell us about your experience with analytical reasoning, including but not limited to quantitative methods GIS data analytics or qualitative methods depending on what kind of scholar you are what kind of approach that you take. But we like to see what kind of things that you've done what did you find out how did you go about doing those things what have you learned where are you going. That's the kind of language which you should be thinking of when you write that personal statement. The review process now this is an important thing here. One of the things that's maybe is a little different from the way that some other programs in the United States in urban planning PhDs operate a different way of operating is that we do not match students with professors from the day that they walk into the institution. Okay, the the matching process doesn't happen until year three, and often like far into year three. Okay, so for the first two years, at least, of the program, you do not have a specific advisor for your studies. That's because we feel that it's really important for you to get to know each of us to understand the kind of project to get your intellectual development to a point where you really have nailed down the project first before we match it to the project. Okay, so by saying this what I'm trying to say is, don't put in as part of your application don't don't don't put in like this research proposal that sort of got a very tight refined methodology that sort of identifies a specific person to work with because we're looking for here. We're looking for students who who are committed to the program more broadly who are interested in being part of an urban planning PhD program rather than working specifically with an advisor from the day that they arrive here. So we review these applications collectively, when once they're all in, then we have a discussion with the shortlisted finalists in February, which will be on zoom, and then following that process we make offers and we put people on a waitlist and so the timeframe for this March, April roughly. Again, we can answer any questions that you may have about this process in a moment. So reacting on last year's applications, I wanted to share a few top tips. For those of you applying and preparing a personal statement, which is probably the most important part of your application. Okay, and these are things that you might want to ask yourself as you're writing that statement. Again, there's no one way to do this. Okay, that's an important thing to recognize but these are things which, when I reflect on the best applications that came in last year. So the offers that we made to the student, what was it that made their applications stand out. And it's these questions which those applicants had really nailed. Okay, why you, why now, why Columbia. Okay, why does the field of urban planning need you and your work. Right. That's a really important question for you to be considering anyway, regardless of what program that you're applying to. What have you done so far that is directly relevant to the field of urban planning. Where are you going so let's just say that you did a piece of interesting research that became your master's dissertation. Let's think about this so what was it that really kind of that got you really excited about taking your research further. What is it that you want to pick up on and take forward. What are the debates that are happening in the field, what are the problems that are out there that you think really have to be addressed in academic urban planning. Okay, so what have you done so far that's directly relevant. Where are you going. What are the broad research themes context and debates that interest you. Okay, like I said we're not looking for a refined research proposal it's not a grant application it's an application to a PhD program. And that means that we like to see students who really kind of know the discipline, who are thinking about urban planning but also maybe thinking about some of the, the sort of gaps in knowledge that might exist. Things that we need to know more about areas of inquiry that really inspire you and motivate you and make you think, I really need more knowledge. The world needs more knowledge on this particular theme. And also a blend of theoretical and empirical interest is important. Okay, the strongest applications combined both right so there was definitely an empirical interest and interest in doing research on a particular theme in a particular setting for example, or set of themes. Also, there was an interest in thinking well, there's a body of knowledge out there. And actually, I think there's more things that we need to know about right there's we can move this forward there's debates which need further empirical work. What are these theoretical debates and how would further work, move those forward so those kinds of things are questions to ask yourself. The best applications to any program. It's clear that the applicant has actually talked to their letter writers about why they're doing this, what kind of scholar they want to become and why they're applying for a PhD, so that the person who's writing your letters of recommendation can actually really speak to that application so it should be considered a dialogue that then goes into an application between you and the people you've identified to write letters for you. Okay, so the best letters the most exciting letters which made me think, wow, this is a really remarkable applicant showed that that student to take in the initiative to really talk through the applications and then get somebody to support them through the letters of support, and therefore it's really important to talk to your letter writers.