When Emma Renzi Wise (BA ’19) got hooked on learning about environmental policy at the Ford School, she never imagined working for the New York City Department of Sanitation. But nearly six years after leaving Ann Arbor, Wise is the community...
As vice president of regional initiatives for the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership, Tayrn MacFarlane (MBA/MPP ’08) unites local officials, business leaders, educational institutions, and community organizations from northern Indiana and...
You can’t get good government without good oversight.” That quote from U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) is a touchstone for the work of Ben Eikey (MPP ’19) and that of the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, where he serves as a manager for the...
Sociologist Jessica Gillooly (PhD ’20) has used her deep knowledge of call taking and dispatching, along with some compelling new theoretical ideas, to become one of the leading experts on this issue. Her expertise is helping inform and shape the...
Rick Scott’s (MPA ’12) journey into public service was inspired by the events of September 11, 2001. “I just remember feeling like I wanted to do something,” he recalls of his high school senior year. This feeling led him to an ROTC scholarship,...
If you ask Vincent Pinti (MPP/JD '27) why he entered the dual degree master’s of public policy and law program at the University of Michigan, he’ll tell you that he didn’t have a...
Over the past 32 years, Jennifer Niggemeier has been a supportive career coach and enthusiastic cheerleader for thousands of public policy students. Her influence has extended beyond individual mentorship to shape and advance programs and...
The economics of tariffs is surprisingly simple: they are a tax, which raises the price that buyers pay and that competing sellers inside the country can...
Moynihan: "State capacity” is hard to define and measure, and is perhaps seen as boring, but capacity is the hidden glue that holds public policy together, or, when debased, causes public policy to fall apart. If you care about the quality of...
In his last public event as U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg visited the Ford School for a conversation on investments in infrastructure. Below is an excerpt from an interview with S&H....
Have you ever disassembled a broken coffee maker or a sink, convinced you could fix it, only to end up with a jumble of parts? As a child, Terry Nguyen’s (BA ’25) curiosity about how things worked led to a broken fan, a pile of parts, and no idea...
Susan M. Collins, former dean of the Ford School and now president & CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, made a welcome return to Weill Hall in November for a public event and lunch with students. During her visit, she shared insights into...
Cavaillé: A large and growing number of voters have found in political figures like Trump, Meloni, Orban, and Le Pen a home to express their grievances over the state of the economy, their own socioeconomic status, and immigration...
Professor Elisabeth Gerber is the inaugural faculty director of the Ford School’s Online Master of Public Affairs (MPA) program, which will launch in January 2026. Read what she has to say about the new...
In an effort to spark democratic engagement on college campuses, the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy co-hosted the Big Ten Democracy Summit in February. More than 150...
Gerald R. Ford once said, “The global economy requires an unprecedented grasp of diverse viewpoints and cultural traditions.” This sentiment is woven throughout and embedded in who we are and what we do at the Ford...
Dean Watkins-Hayes, at the Congressional Breakfast in DC, with Michigan in Washington undergraduates Ajay Morelli, Malinda Brunk, Rachel Ellisen, and Isaac Davis, and Riecker Fellow Hope Wang (MPP...
Nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. lack access to reliable transportation, making it one of the country's most common forms of material hardship, say University of Michigan...
Ford School professor Betsey Stevenson has been widely sought for her insights, and concerns, about the implications of the Trump administration's proposed tariffs. Here are some of the notes Stevenson has shared with news outlets over the past few...
As the stock market faces shocks and falls from Trump's tariff policy, Marketplace has turned to the Ford School's Betsey Stevenson for an explanation of what this could mean for American workers. Stevenson told the network, “Layoffs are not the...
Reflecting on recent stock market instability, the Ford School's Betsey Stevenson told Bloomberg in an interview that, "I do think that he [Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve chairman] is going to reassure financial markets that we have a strong and...
Ford School professor Justin Wolfers explained to the New York Times why the bon market sell-off is so problematic, he said, “People feel nervous about lending us money,” and more than that, “They are saying, ‘We’ve lost our faith in America and the...
Paula Lantz highlights an “overt disconnect” between the creation of President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission and his administration's concurrent actions that reduce federal funding for public health...
As the news buzzes with discussions of President Trump’s tariffs, economists and policymakers continue weighing the potential impacts of these policies. In a new opinion article published in the New York Times, Professor Justin Wolfers argues that...
Economist Justin Wolfers says levies could have a dramatic and long-lasting impact on consumers and the U.S. economy in an interview with Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences....
In an era of rapid technological advancement, ensuring that innovation benefits everyone is urgent. Shobita Parthasarathy, professor and director of the Ford School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, studies how technological...
