 Okay, now that we've got some of those formalities out of the way, we'll go ahead and get started. So my name is Beth Zabalski, I'm the director of admissions at the Ford School. And I'm really happy to have a chance to talk with you guys today. I have some of my colleagues on the call as well, so I'm going to give them a chance to say hello. You've obviously already met Trish, who's kind of our right-handed admissions person, so you want to say hi, Trish? Hi, everyone. Nice to see you. My name is Trish Shire, and I am the recruiting and PBI coordinator at the Ford School. Nice to see you. Amy. Hi, all. I am Amy Flanagan, so I'm the BA program coordinator and basically do all the advising of the current Ford students. Thank you. Hello. Is Avery here? Hello. Okay. Hi. Could I speak to Frank? Did you have a question? All right. Camille, do you want to say hi? Yeah. Hi, everyone. My name is Camille. I'm a senior in the Ford School, studying public policy, but my focus area is in social justice, intersectionality and public policy. I, along with Jonah, am one of the peer advisors for the Ford School this year. So Jonah and I are available if you have any questions about the program. I want to get a student perspective, but we also help out some of the current students on all the different questions that they may have about the Ford School. We definitely encourage you to apply and ask us any questions you have. Thanks, Camille. And Jonah. Hi, everybody. My name is Jonah Jacobs. I'm a senior studying public policy at the Ford School. My focus area is international conflict and cooperation. And as Camille said, we're the VA peer advisors and here to answer any questions you have about the program, what it's like to be in Ford. And yeah, just, just here for you in any way you need. Thanks, you guys appreciate it. So I'm going to go ahead and have a short PowerPoint. I'm sure that you guys are probably as sick as I am looking at PowerPoints right now, but I'm going to share my screen with you really quickly. Just to go over some information. And hopefully I will find it quickly. We should have pulled it up sooner. Sorry, you guys. And one second, let me just, I promise I will not take very long to find this. Well, I could be lying that delay. All right, so I'm sure you mostly know the basics about the VA program, right? It's an upper division program. You join us in that you apply in winter semester of your sophomore year. And then join us for your junior and senior years of the program. It's a, it's a small program. So we have an entering class of about 80 students is very much intended to be a liberal arts program. We don't, we don't view it as a pre professional program, but a liberal arts program. So you would take the same, you know, similar distributions to what you would if you were in a major in Alice in a. We really want you to take classes across of your social sciences. But within that we're trying really hard to talk to students about not just theory and problems, but also potential solutions and how you evaluate both the problems and their solutions. You'll see the core coursework includes classes and econ political science and stats. But within that you have the opportunity through the focus area and through your electives to tailor the degree to your policy area of interest. You already heard me say the other two bullets on the slide. So the the BA program was launched in 2007. And we really launched the prop that the undergraduate program for a couple of different reasons. I mentioned the interdisciplinary approach so policy problems do not fit neatly into academic disciplines right so any public problem that you're dealing with is not solely a sociological problem right or an economic problem but it has overlaps in applications across those different social sciences, but you need to understand the social sciences and the theories, including those to to come up with really good solutions to public problems. So I'm assuming that the distributions are pretty much the same as an else in a because econ 101 and 102 are prerequisites for our program, those get counted a little bit differently. But stats 250 will still take care of your qr requirement. We do have the same fourth term proficiency in foreign language as an Allison a, and, and the, as I mentioned the distribution credits. So this is a list of our required courses mentioned that they would be across social sciences right so 320 is a more political science influence class right talking about political institutions and politics. The 330 classes are microeconomics class econ 101 is a prereq for that stats 250. For those of you that might be interested in taking you're welcome to take that before you come to forward but you don't have to. So that's something you can take once you arrive. We require values and ethics class so we have a variety of different topics within values and ethics that students can take but you do need to take a class related to values and ethics. We have an applied learning seminar so that's a class that you take in the fall semester of junior year, looking at a particular policy topic and the whole classes together for that. So this is the 479 class, which is a version of program evaluation. You take a policy seminar, each of your two years so one as a junior and one as a senior and we have a variety of different. You'll see some of those topics a little bit later in the slide show. So we try to allow students to take the policy seminar that would be most aligned with their interests and you guys and you and our students fill out a survey to sort of rank those. And then six additional elective classes within the Ford school and a focus area that we'll talk about a little bit more. We do often hear students say well can I do you know with with all these requirements and stuff can I do study abroad can I do a study away term we very much encourage that. We'll see the last, you know, last winter this winter have been a little challenging in that arena, but hopefully we'll, we'll get back to normal before too much longer I hope. So certainly spending time that the winter semester junior is probably the time the majority of students take that study abroad term. So we put in students who've done Michigan or Washington, some do it before they come to Ford but others do after they are students at Ford so certainly that is, it is something that we encourage you to incorporate if you're interested. So the policy seminars so those are really small classes we try to cap those at about 20 students on a particular policy issue taught by a faculty member within the Ford school really intended to be in an in depth look at a particular policy topic. Allowing your students to apply a variety of different skills that they've learned along the way so many of the classes have visiting, you know, guest lecturers and that sort of thing policymakers. Some kind of final paper. So trying to really give you that in depth experience with that policy so. So here's a list of the policy seminars for the last couple of years. You can see that we try to cover a range of both internationally focused and more domestically focused topics. Unfortunately, because of the capacity within the policy centers were only able to allow students to take one as a junior and one as a senior but hopefully there's there's a seminar that that speaks to your interest somewhere along the way. And these are some of the policy electives that have been offered this past year. So you can see there's quite an array of those as well. Some that are more skills based right this data class, the Excel class others that are more topical. So, trying to give students the opportunity to bring those classes into both their focus area or just into their electives. So the focus area that I keep referring to what does that mean. So I kind of think of the focus area as maybe a major within a major which sounds a little cliche but really it's an opportunity for you to learn more in depth about a topic that's of interest to you. You'll see in a minute when we look at some of the listings some some are relatively broadly defined others are really quite narrowly defined so it's it's kind of up to you. And how you couch that. And I'm going to, I'm going to ask Camille and Jonah to jump in here in just a second because they work really closely with the students on this particular area. But it's really intended to help you develop. As the slide says depth and breadth of knowledge in a particular area, you can incorporate an Alison a minor as part of the focus area so Camille and Jonah do you want to, you know, talk both about your focus area and it's sort of about how you work with students around that. Camille you want to kick us off. Sure. So like I mentioned earlier my focus area is social justice intersectionality and public policy. So I wanted to look at the ways in which public policy affects people of different identities. So whether that be through education criminal justice. So I wanted to look at the areas of policy environment. And so that's sort of how I designed my focus area. And so my four courses come from political science, public policy and sociology. So it's a really sort of wide variety of classes that I get to take. I don't know if you remember about yours but basically the way that we advise students is just to take a general topic that you're interested in within public policy. It can be the policy of a specific region, or a specific type of policy like healthcare policy, or the way policy interacts with another area like the media. So you can really make it whatever you're interested in and it's a really great way to explore courses outside of the Ford school as well. So if you're like interested in things outside of public policy but you're still sort of wanting to major in public policy the focus area is a great way to sort of like kill two birds with one stone. I could echo everything Camille said the focus area is one of my favorite parts of the, the BA program because it really allows you to take initiative on your academic experience and pursue an area of public policy that you're interested in as an academic discipline or if it is goes beyond that and, you know, interacts with your postgraduate plans and professional or your continuing graduate school. And so my focus area as I said earlier is international conflict and cooperation, which is a pretty broad area but really will allowed me to kind of explore my interest in like global geopolitics, which is a lot of courses concerning but the rest of the university also offers, you know, a wide variety of classes that support that so I'm kind of a history nerd to and so I got to include a history course about war and Greek and Roman civilization into my focus area, which is, you know, not exactly what you would normally find in like a public policy curriculum but because it gets to, as Beth said talk about the depth and breadth of knowledge and an area of interest, you know the focus area really allows you to to explore that and see what the rest of the university has to offer. And like Camille said, most of our advice to students creating their focus areas is to err on the side of a general area of policy interest that, once you've defined you can kind of explore through a variety of unique and specific lenses that creates just a very, very unique academic experience for you. So here's an example of some of the various focus areas that we've seen from students over the over the years you can kind of see for yourself that, you know, some of them urban policy right a pretty broadly defined topic, as opposed to maybe urban policy and human rights in the Middle East right so you do have that flexibility. And there's it's it's a it's a process right so Camille and Jonah held a session for our junior class. Last month that talked them through starting the focus area of proposal process. We were interviewed by faculty on our BA program committee so you get lots of feedback along the way and, you know, it's kind of a living document right because, you know, not all classes are always offered when you know I mean some semesters they might not offer the classes that you were hoping for so, but it's stuff it's it's a pretty integral part I think of the BA program as as Jonah and Camille have said. So what do you do with a BA and public policy. That's probably you know I mean that's, that's the question that we hear a lot. I think the answer is, you know, in many ways, a lot of the same things you would do with a major and many other areas of the university right so you're getting this really terrific liberal arts education. You definitely have to go a lot of different places. You definitely have a good percentage of students that go on to graduate education, either, you know, straight out of undergraduate or after a couple of years of work experience so, you know, law school policy degree public health, all popular paths for our graduates. We've definitely seen every year. A handful of students that have gone on to a program like teacher America or America for where they have the opportunity to put some of those policy skills that they've learned an undergraduate to work. But you know consulting has become really quite popular I think with our grads. We have programs public sector consulting but can be more broadly defined. And those obviously for those with more of an international interest something like teaching English abroad or a piece for something like that so really a wide array of different paths we do have a career closer at the Ford School Gail Tien who works very closely with our students puts together a newsletter our students have access to the board careers database of job and internship opportunities so providing good support for our students and both, you know, if you want to do an intern internships are not a required component of the program, but many of our students will do those between junior and senior year, but also obviously for those that are looking for jobs after graduation. So lots of good resources for that. So why might you decide to choose that pursue the BA program so we talked a lot about that they're liberal arts degrees. But the way most Ellis and a major structure you're looking really in depth at a particular discipline whereas we're trying to look across discipline so so a little bit different approach. We do very much value developing the analytical skills within our students so thinking about ways to sort of measure both the, you know, the solutions that you're proposing and how effective they've been. Our faculty are very interdisciplinary nature many of our faculty members have joint appointments. You can see with a wide variety of schools and colleges across campus, as well as our what we call professors practice so folks that have been you know coming to school to teach after a career, a distinguished career doing something else. I mentioned that I mentioned the career services of Dizer so our Office of Student and Academic Services is very well prepared to support our students. I'll let Amy say a little bit about what the work she does with students, but you know we mentioned our peer advisors. We're getting center at the Ford school that is only for Ford school students for faculty members who make you can make individual appointments with them to what help you want papers resumes etc so GSIs in our pool classes so we try to provide really a well rounded set of support services so that so our students can thrive in our environment. It's a small school right so I mentioned that we admit about 80 students per class so I don't. At any one point we have about 160 undergraduate students, our master's program is about 250 so by University of Michigan standards we're really quite a small place. So I think that does help our students develop a little different set of relationships with each other and with their faculty members. We have a lot of research centers at the Ford school and a variety of ways for our students to come involved in those. We've had just a terrific slate of speakers this fall and I expect that will continue into the winter. Some of them brought in by the school generally some by some of our research centers so and almost all of our speakers are open to students across campus so I would encourage you to take a look at those and see if there's any questions that you'd be interested in listening to. But our students oftentimes, at least in normal days have a chance to meet with those, those faculty, those speakers when they come to campus student organization so you know so it's a pretty thriving student community I think while all. Right that's our home base right there on the corner of Hill Street, Street and State Street that all of our classes are offered there. There's a lab spaces for study that sort of thing so it's a pretty convenient location. I mentioned some of the guest speakers so this is a listing just from this fall, this, this, this the past couple of months so you can see really a wide array of topics. You know, our dean is co chair of the democracy and debate semester this fall semester so you can definitely see a bent toward that kind of a speaker but pretty interesting group of folks, we do have all school events. So, again, a really wonderful community to be part of. So why might somebody choose not to be in the fourth school. So I, you know, I get a lot of questions so we do not allow students to double majors so students in the fourth school are, you know, public policy majors, many of our students minor. Some students do more than one minor, but, but we don't allow double majors. Some students really are, they really want to do that honor species and that's not something that we can support an RBA program so that might be a reason. Or, you know, you're really interested in a PhD program in history, for example, right so you might want to stay in your history major so. So some of the reasons that you know some of the things to consider as you think about whether or not it's a program that you want to apply to the admissions. So the deadline to apply is to have a word first, the application is up now. It's pretty straightforward, we have three short essays and I'll show you that just a little bit. But, but pretty pretty straightforward application process. We do try to balance both academics and extracurriculars. Recognizing the extracurriculars in this current environment can be challenging. Right, that's going to be broadly defined and I know, you know, with grace in the winter semester coming becoming past bail and that you may have concerns about that. We're going to work with students around all of that stuff because we know those are issues that are completely outside of your control. So the prerequisites are listed here I had mentioned you found 101 and 102 one other social science some of you may have taken pub call 201, although probably not because I think it's meeting at this time. So, but there's, you know, any of the social science classes that meet distribution, and then a recent ethnicity course and the prerequisites have to be done before you matriculate into the program in the fall. And that's going to be done before the application deadline, and we try to get decisions out of the students. We usually are successful getting them out in March but certainly by the beginning of April. So I mentioned the application, the, the bottom of the slide here are the essays that we asked you to write so we asked you to write a short essay about working with diverse an essay about sort of how this major would align with your academic and career interests. And then we asked you to talk about a policy issue that you find interesting. That, you know, there's not a particular set of policy issues that we asked you to write about so it could be something that's really important to you personally. It could be something that you've written on for another class you feel well versed in. There's, there's not really a right answer about what policy topic to choose for that. But we do ask you to it's intended to be, it's not intended to be an opinion piece right it's intended to be an analytical piece. So while you're certainly welcome to have a stance on how policy issues should be handled. It's also important to recognize folks on the other side, if you will, so spending some time thinking about the counter arguments to whatever you want. And one other thing that I'll mention that we do ask you for a resume. The resume does not have to be the same resume that you would submit for a job right you can definitely spend some time. You can definitely use some space to talk about your strict curriculars. If it goes up over to a couple of pages that's perfectly fine. So feel free to be a little more expansive and the information you include include on your resume than you might in some other circumstances. So that's the admissions process generally Trish Amy meal Jonah anything that you'd like to any advice or information that you'd like to throw in before we go to questions. So I will just mention on the application side, you know Beth said that patients do February 1 we don't do rolling admissions. So if you are very eager and you want to get it in this week, that's great. But it's not going to get reviewed until after the application deadline. So there's really no huge benefit to you other than how we piece of mind and getting it done. But you know, we we typically offer a form of like working with current students we're still kind of fleshing out what that's going to look like for this year, especially with the semester in January starting a little later. But so basically my point is that you don't have to get applications submitted as early as possible so as long as it's in by the February 1 deadline, you're all set. So this slide gives you some ways to to have to reach out to us if you have questions after this information session. Our website was recently redone so hopefully it's informational for you and you may be able you're able to find information easily. I mentioned our peer advisors you're welcome to make appointments to talk with them. Both Trish and I have appointment links on our calendar so if you go to the website and you go to the undergraduate admissions page you can you can find links to those calendars. And you're always welcome to send an email to our fspp dash admissions mailbox and will will respond to those inquiries as well so lots of different ways to connect with us. So with that, I'm going to stop sharing my screen. And.