Free and open to the public. Registration required. The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy will host this conference as one of the highlights of the school's year-long centennial celebrations.

With more than three decades of policy experience and knowing how Washington does – and doesn't – work, recently retired U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe has keen and contemporary insights on what Congressional initiatives to look for in the coming year.

Speaker: Peter Annin, Managing Director, Environmental Change Initiative at University of Notre Dame About the lecture: This presentation delves into the long history of political maneuvers and water diversion schemes that have proposed sending Great Lakes water everywhere from Akron to Arizona. Through the prism of the past, this talk analyzes the future of Great Lakes water diversion schemes, which now rests on the Great Lakes Compact released by the eight Great Lakes governors in December 2005.

The University of Michigan's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP), the Detroit School Series, and the Department of Urban Planning are sponsoring a private screening of the recent documentary about the challenges facing Detroit fire fighters. About the documentary At a time when the number of abandoned homes continues to increase along with the number of fires within the city, the number of fire fighters in Detroit continues to shrink.

Speaker: Kenneth E. Warner Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor of Public Health and Professor of Health Management and Policy, University of Michigan School of Public Health About the lecture: The anti-smoking campaign has been arguably the most effective public health initiative in the U.S. in the past half century. Still, smoking remains the nation's leading cause of preventable disease and premature death.

About the speaker Douglas N. Harris is an Associate Professor of Economics and University Endowed Chair in Public Education at Tulane University in New Orleans. About the topic: One of the worst natural disasters in the nation's history, Hurricane Katrina spawned a flurry of public policy reforms. The public school system, in particular, became one of the most radical experiments in more than a century.

Lecture by Alan Bersin, Assistant Secretary of International Affairs and Chief Diplomatic Officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

About the speaker: Dr. Dan Goldhaber is the Director of the Center for Education Data & Research and a Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.

Scott Carrell, Associate Professor of Economics at UCDavis Social interest in problems such as domestic violence is typically motivated by concerns regarding equity, rather than efficiency. However, we document that taking steps to reduce domestic violence by reporting it yields substantial benefits to external parties. Specifically, we find that while children exposed to as-yet-unreported domestic violence reduce the achievement of their classroom peers, these costs disappear completely once the parent reports the violence to the court.

Welcome new students! The official start of the school year, Welcome Week and Orientation (August 26–August 30) at the Ford School gives new students the opportunity to meet and engage with peers, faculty, and staff, and begin the process of preparing for the academic year. MPP/MPA Orientation Welcome Week helps students consider what it means to join a community like the Ford School and embark on a rigorous, professional degree path.