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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s call for new cell phone restrictions in schools led Michigan legislators to reintroduce House Bill 4141. In a new opinion piece for Bridge Michigan, Ford School Professor Brian Jacob and Justin E Heinze, associate...
Research shows that high-quality preschool education has the power to positively impact a child’s growth and development, even far into adulthood. However, as costs increase and high demand creates long wait times, many children across the country...
“There’s really very little thought going into what to cut, when to cut, and how much to cut. It’s kind of slash and burn,” said the Ford School's Brian Jacob on the major funding and employment cuts happening across the Department of Education and...
Michigan Advance has observed ways in which political trends and ideologies of Michiganders are representative of the broader national population. “It’s not just that we’re a swing state, but we’re kind of a microcosm of the country and our politics...
As federal policymakers consider the future of the U.S. Department of Education, a new interactive data tool from Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan shows the allocation of federal education funds to local school districts – making the...
The Ford School's Brian Jacob recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal regarding his 2023 research survey on the use of technology in classrooms. Jacob's survey was conducted among 1,000 educators and showed technology is used for completing...
"I just don’t think we know yet" says Brian Jacob, Ford School professor, on the effectiveness of technology use in classrooms. As screen time has increased in classrooms research still shows mixed results on student...
Education Week has announced the annual 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, which highlights scholars who made significant contributions to educational practice and policy in the past year.Three Ford School faculty members have been...
Research conducted by the Ford School's Sarah Cohodes has been cited for "defining education in 2024." The 74 network, a non-profit education news service, highlighted Cohodes' research among 11 other studies as some of the "biggest discoveries from...
Mental health and marriage timing Decades of research document powerful associations between parents’ characteristics and children’s marital behaviors. “Parental mental health strongly shapes or disrupts family life and long-term opportunities for...
