News

Alum Brooke Bacigal (BA '20) named 2022 Schwarzman Scholar

Dec 13, 2022
From an initial pool of nearly 3,000 applicants, 151 Schwarzman Scholars were selected from 36 countries and 121 universities. We're incredibly proud to have two U-M wolverines in this elite cohort. The Schwarzman Scholars Program aims to prepare...
State & Hill

Letter from Interim Dean Watkins-Hayes

Dec 19, 2022
Greetings from Ann Arbor! It’s been my great honor–and a lot of fun–to serve as interim dean of the Ford School, an outstanding community dedicated to the public good. This edition of State & Hill focuses on education policy—the research,...
State & Hill

Education policy at the Ford School

Dec 19, 2022
Interdisciplinary, rigorous, and committed to real world impact and to mentoring: the Ford School has one of the strongest education policy programs in the country.  How did we get there? S&H asked the scholar at the front of the class, economist...
Visiting faculty

Mark Pekala

Visiting Policy Practitioner, Weiser Diplomacy Center
Ambassador Mark Pekala (BA Political Science '81) has served as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) in Paris, DCM in Tallinn, Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) in the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, and Senior Director for…
State & Hill

Dot to dot

Dec 19, 2022
The Education Policy Initiative connects researchers and policymakers—helping make good use of their one-of-a-kind secure data clearinghouse By Daniel Rivkin A recent research project examined the ties between school funding and crime in...
State & Hill

COVID-19 and education: A tough time for all

Dec 19, 2022
Ford School education researchers look for answers By Shaun Manning From early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally altered public education in the United States. Many schools introduced remote learning for at least part of the 2020-2021...
State & Hill

Data for good: Expanding college opportunity in Michigan

Dec 19, 2022
By Daniel Rivkin When the state of Michigan issued its COVID-19 stay at home order in March 2020, Youth Policy Lab (YPL) Data and Policy Fellow Ava Attari found herself in the middle of an ambitious state program. The thousands of workers who had...
State & Hill

An economic eye on equity in higher ed

Dec 19, 2022
As the first chief economist in the U.S. Department of Education, Ford School alumnus Jordan Matsudaira (PhD ’05), seeks to identify and implement policies that best promote student success—academically and financially—in higher education. Ford...