Good evening everyone. Michael Barr I'm the Joan and Sanford while dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy It's my great honor to be here this evening it's wonderful to see so many alumni and my 2nd time at this particular event and it's hard to become something that I look forward to a great chance to connect with old friends here in Washington D.C. and to our students some in the crowd tonight it's great to see you too. And so glad you made the trip and I hope you're having a really productive time in D.C. with the help of many alumni in the room Jennifer Elizabeth Johnson Peter Vasher and their colleagues have put together 2 fantastic days of career events for nearly 40 Ford school master students on this annual D.C. trip and I just want to say thanks to Jennifer and her team and my thanks to all of our panelists we're going to hear more about in just a moment I'm also delighted to see here but not yet on stage Liz Gerber the associate dean for research and policy engagement and I'm going to say more about Liz Gerber and her incredible impact on the Ford school and just a little bit in addition to Jennifer's team you'll see a number of other foreign school staff here tonight including 2 new faces Cindy bank a long time member of Michigan's D.C. office has come to the ford school to be the associate director for the program in practical policy engagement. She's right there in the back the bright lights are shining great right here in my eyeballs Katherine Carver is somewhere here this evening standing by the door I'm is our new events and outreach manager and I can also say she is a great soccer coach of young children. And. The team is really wonderful I think most of the other members of the team you've had a chance to meet before they're here on the staff are here to connect with alumni and find ways to recognize and celebrate your good work and you'll recognize them by their little badges on their coats in a few minutes Liz is going to introduce our fantastic lineup of guests speakers and set the stage for our event on engage learning a bit 1st I want to give you some updates on what's happening back at the ford school I'd call this state of the school kind of talk about somehow without Speaker Pelosi behind me. Clapping. It wasn't quite right let me start with our wrap up of our recently concluded victories for Michigan campaign that's our fund raising campaign our goal for the Ford school was to raise $23000000.00 and I'm proud and thrilled to tell you that we far surpassed that goal together we raised over $47000000.00 for that campaign. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK. You give a particular shout out at this point to Sue Johnson and Tony Wagner from the development team who really made this happen and to all of you of course in the alumni and friends community of the Ford school who were able to donate such fantastic gifts to the school it made a huge difference I also want to thank my predecessor Susan Collins for her leadership and energy on this. Wonderful campaign let me mention a few gifts in particular gifts that will support our students research faculty engagement for decades to come thanks to a phenomenal gift from Ron and Eileen wiser our newly launched wiser to play. The center will make the Ford school the premier place in the Midwest to study foreign affairs and one of the top centers nationally director John char and his colleagues are recruiting new professors a practice in international diplomacy the host policy simulations and establish a generous and strategic package of new student fellowships internships international trips and more it's a truly transformational opportunity for the Ford school thanks to the tremendous support from Phil and Cathy power in the power foundation our new program in practical policy engagement will make us a national leader in building constructive partnerships between policy leaders and academia and creating value for the people of Michigan and the nation Liz Gerber is the founding faculty director of the center which recalling P 3 easy because the full name is a little bit much and her vision is about the importance of engaged learning and Policy Research is essential to our future another gift I'd like to mention is one made by Hal and Carol Cone who have established a new chair for social justice at the ford school in honor of house grandparents who were killed in the Holocaust and are long time Ford School Committee Chair Jim who Dacke has established a new chair in health policy these campaign gifts I know some of them are deeply personal some members of the M.P.P. class of 2008 are here tonight when their friend and classmate Maggie Weston passed away in 2014 tragically at the age of 32 her parents and out a fund in her honor the fund provides a lasting tribute to Maggie providing fellowship and internship support to young people who are deeply committed to the same kinds of educational equity issues that Maggie champion so well and so passionately in her lifetime. Thanks to the good friend of the Ford school Hank Meyer another admirers of President Ford we established the prestigious Gerald R. Ford Presidential fellowship and we have so many other gifts I won't list them all tonight but gifts from the tree and family fun to establish new internships and gifts from Jeff Shelley and told her to establish new ways of engaging in collective action for our students you notice a theme among these fellowships a new initiatives each of them include a significant component of Applied learning engaged learning that's an integral element of our vision for the future as Liz will describe and these are just some of the many ways are alumni and friends are supporting the Ford school helping us to grow and thrive and make a bigger impact in the world briefly mention a few other highlights from a very busy year at the ford school we launched major new initiatives this year on leadership and something we're calling conversations across difference helping to bridge the deep divides in our country today we've we've we've launched and will launch officially. Starting with a 1st class next year a one year master of public affairs program for mid career professionals we've started offering concentrations for N.P.P. students in key areas from social policy to international development. And we remain a destination for some of the country's most prominent policymakers who come to lecture and teach to as the foundation policy maker in residence job at Ali and it was going to be here but I haven't seen him yet he's not lurking in the audience OK job it is Todd National Security last year and is coming back again in the winter we have 3. Foundation policy makers in residence right now with US public health expert Phyllis Meadows Fin Tech expert Adrian Harris and the honorable Sandy Levon who joins our faculty after decades of outstanding public service the United States Congress. And there's been more great news on the hiring front over the last year we've added terrific strength Brendan Nyhan who studies fake news Robert Hampshire works on smart cities it water one terror and use of negatives to study international development and most recently I don't think we've even actually formally announced this Charlotte cover Yeah who's of comparative political scientists focused on social policy will be joining us from Georgetown. I open tonight by recognizing alumni for their financial contributions and of course that's important for our school whoever it's also just as important for our alumni to give back in other ways and we're really proud to have how active our alumni really are you help us recruit students for example fully 68 alumni made calls to admitted students last spring making a personal connection and encouraging them to choose the Ford school and I'm told 88 alarms have signed up for recruitment this coming year so thank you very much and let me clap to thank those computer Thank you thank you Austin very importantly and I'll say in front of our students you hire our students for jobs and for internships you serve on the board you share advice and connections both by e-mail and during visits back to an arbor and we're deeply grateful for that we need your help and we welcome your engagement I wanted to wrap up my opening remarks tonight with a word of encouragement I know Joe Davidson was planning to be here but I'm not sure he's here yet. Joe here no Joe is a master's a La Mina journalist who covers federal workforce issues for The Washington Post and he's had a lot to write about as you can imagine the last few weeks and years I was especially struck by his column from last week describing the emotional and psychological toll of the government shutdown the disruption in trust and the stress that results from having one's professional mission threatened regardless of whether you were furloughed if you work in D.C. or aspire to a career in public service you're affected by the current political climate by the divisive and corrosive rhetoric around public institutions and public policy in general the fact is your work is important people believe in your mission they believe in public service and they believe in the analytical communication and leadership skills we're giving to the folks will believing our communities for the next 50 years to come and so please keep up the good work we're grateful for you we're rooting for you we're proud of you go blue. Thank you. And now for the main event tonight we're fortunate to be joined by one of Michigan's most distinguished faculty members our own Elizabeth Gerber she is the Jackie O. Walker collegiate professor of public policy professor of political science and research associate at the Center for Political Studies as well as the associate dean for research and engagement Liz directs our program in practical policy engagement Petri and services are soci Dean as I said for research and policy engagement She's a true partner with me along with Associate Dean Paula Lance in leading the Ford school and I really couldn't imagine our future without her listener and her doctorate at Michigan and then spent 10 years on the political science faculty at U.C. San Diego we were fortunate to recruit her back to Michigan in 2001 her influential research addresses the critical and challenging issues or regional governance intergenerational cooperation and policy to enhance transportation and economic development for that work among other things she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and I've just learned will be a D.O.J. award recipient tomorrow. This is one of the cool things you get to learn is your dean every time I see Liz in my office I learned some extra cool thing that she is doing that I didn't know anything about and I can plausibly know how she does all that and so much more She's an exemplary teacher and mentor with a deeply creative and innovative approach to education she helped reinvent our applied policy seminar course which enables our Master's students to engage with a supervised consulting project with real world clients. The A.P.S. is now the highlight of many master students' experiences at the ford school in a clear part of our new P 3 initiative as well and she's at the cutting edge using collaborative simulation software and exploring new approaches to online and hybrid learning So with that please join me in thanking him in welcoming Liz Gerber thank you but the. You. Know. I just wanted to see yeah well. I thank you Michael for the incredible touching and. You know exaggerated but they are a nice. Introduction I really appreciate it and Hi everybody I'm so happy to be here. I was standing over there listening and looking at all of these forty's of different generation love all in what you're doing in your career. I honestly like got a little weepy for a 2nd because I love the Ford school and the reason is you and teaching you and working with you and measuring all of you has been really a highlight of my not just my career but my life I would say so thank you for that and how wonderful to be here with all of you. So as Michael said the purpose of this panel is to talk a little bit about how the Ford school is thinking right now about policy engagement in general and engage learning as a core part of what we do as a school and both how current and future alumni can be involved so how many of you in our current alumni see how we did that so your alumni and how many of our future alumni actually want things so there's a good I'm not going to ask you for money but I am going to ask you to do the kind of work that my friends do which is help us with some of our learning work that is so critical to to what we do at the ford school so let me just be clear when I'm when I'm talking about and. Learning here there are a lot of ways to think about engagement policy engagement and engage learning but the way that I like to think about it and many of us at the foreign school are trying to focus on is. Direct explicit and mutually beneficial partnerships with people in organizations outside of the university who play in direct role in the education process. So there are 3 things like the applied policy seminar where we have student teams working with real world clients on real problems not just term papers by real challenges that the organizations are facing and so and then lots of other variants on that whether that's internships whether that's short term research assistant ships whether that's helping us with policy simulations and that sort of thing but it's all about the practical art of getting stuff done Phil Power who is one of the. Generous donors that is supporting a lot of the engaged learning work that we're doing at the ford school he's kind of a funny guy he's got a real personality a big personality but he actually likes to say we're going to get stuff done and that's what we're learning how to do and so because you know I can't teach you guys that you've got to teach yourself I can create situations I can create opportunities but you've got to do that learning with help and so what we're going to talk a little bit about tonight is I've got 2 of our champion Ari Plus our superstar applied policy seminar clients Dave layer and Eric BEINHART from. The Justice Department respectively talking a little bit about what they have experienced as clients with us and other universities as well in the engaged learning process and then I don't know how many excuse me. Many of you probably know some of our distinguished alumni who are also up here who in their day at the ford school were students in the applied policy seminar and so we're going to ask them to each talk a little bit about the experience that they had doing in Gauge learning that is working with the real client during their academic time at the ford school and how that's affected what they do now I will tell you from my perspective as a teacher it's the most. Rewarding kind of teaching that I can do because I well one I don't have to stand up and lecture which I don't really enjoy doing so much and nobody really likes that either. Lecturing probably not. I don't but what I do love is to be able to help students think through problem solving and problem solving on lots of different dimensions both the city the client like the hard problem but also all the soft problem solving like how do I work with my teammates how do I communicate this thing affectively How do I manage the expectations of the client that seem a bit out of out of sync with what we thought we were going to be doing and so on so from my perspective I get to watch that learning taking place but what I'm going to do now is turn it over and ask our colleagues to talk to you about how that learning took place with them and then at the end so I'm going to come back and make a plea to all of you about how you can help us do more of the engaged learning work that we're doing at the ford school so with that I'm going to turn it over to my friend and colleague Dave Lehrer from the G.A.O. and then if you guys I'm not going to stand up here and go down the road so as each one of you finishes if you just introduce yourself and then I'll come back out when I hear that they've agreed thinks thank you I'm Dave Larry thank you for having me I mean this is the director of the Education Workforce and Income Security Group A G.A.O. for though you should all know what you know is. Going to go on G.A.O. is the investigative arm of the United States Congress we do public policy research on behalf of Congress that is sourced either through direct request from a congressional committee of jurisdiction of mandate in law or we also do some work under what's called the controller general's authority the comptroller general the United States's is my boss Chris as well others of all of you know people. With respect to the gauged Why should save my primary or if we're. Retirement security financial security for. I've been to that work since about the liaison for recruiting for the University of Michigan. At G.A.O. since 2004 as well and not quite as long with the A.P.S. program but for a lot of years now and with respect to the program we see it as a partnership we get just as much out of the experience as you all do going through the program we start with a real world example this is not some kind of scenario this is a request that we expect to be doing we've already received from the Congress something we think that we have in the pipeline that's going to be a request very soon and so these are things that will feed into the work that you do in the applied policy seminar and you will feed into actual published work. Another thing that's very important is that the experience be real and so we want you all to have experience where you understand what it's like to do public policy research it you so we're going to run you through design and scoping exercise where you will scope the work you'll look at the data sources you'll reach out to experts in the area and you will read literature and academic research on the topic you'll be providing us with your experience your summary of that information and then once we have agreed on that methodology the way that that work will be applied then you'll go out and you'll do actually that work you'll collect the data and you'll analyze the data you look at the data reliability aspects you'll go out and talk to people who have real world experience about the issues that you're researching maybe individuals at university I know they contribute a lot as well I might be people at the state level it might be at the federal level could be folks who work in industry depending on the subject matter so you're going out and getting an academic sorry as anecdotal information and collecting that as well then once you've gone through done your analysis you've done your due diligence with respect to the data and the information that you've collected you'll begin to develop your message it will bring you back on line and will warrant work with you to develop that message using the tools and techniques that we apply in jail on all of our work so we will ask you to develop a message agreement document which talks about all of the things that you've learned but more importantly what that means how you're going to talk about the final results of your work in your final product will work with you to develop the final product whether that is a presentation that you'll do which is probably the most common way to G.A.O. either personally via video conferencing or more recently a lot of students have been traveling to Chicago and have been doing the presentation from there and some of the teams also in addition to the presentation will also do a written report and we're happy to work with you on that as well from the standpoint. Of how we would like to go obviously we want to be real world but we also want to be a mentoring experience so we want to work with you through the challenges that face we in to do that we schedule regular meetings I know there are several people in the audience that have worked on this project off and they're by weekly meetings will check in. We have Skype or web X. and see how things are going talk about you know the information that you're learning to have any questions about the approach that you're blind. The many things said It is a real world experience but we want the experience to be the goal of the relationship we don't want the end product to be what's driving it because what we want at the end of the days for you to have the experience of what it is like to do real world public policy analysis that's going to make a difference and to get experience that you would have frankly if you came to G.A.O.. In terms of the quickly the subject matter just I'll pick for most recent projects because I don't want to leave anyone out so these are just the most recent I'm looking at it's a state sponsored retirement programs retirement plan advice that's given through a lot of manic we called robo advisors Unisa PL scholarship programs and options to extend the labor force participation of older workers so I heard you to take advantage of this class this experience again we get probably more out of it than you all do but we just we absolutely love doing it and I believe there should be a question and answer session and as a part of this all well and there and be happy to enter into your questions that say that they're buying art and I work for the international criminal investigative training assistance program also none of this it up. We're part of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department that we have and then they have all business model and then the O.J. pays for everything else comes from basically the State Department from the International Narcotics I'm on for some hero I now and the counterterrorism bureau so so if I said to say we need to rely on a lot of inexpensive. Talent to do what we do. And so I'm a huge advocate of Capstone. Our mission in this is really to develop the capacity of a lot of developing countries. Law enforcement corrections and forensics operations deal to deal with transnational crime and terrorism and do it in a way that respects human rights and human dignity. The way we do this is by promoting sustainable as intentional develop but let me go back quickly. And 1986 when if you thought was created our name made sense because all we were doing was providing criminal investigation training and Central American countries was a mile all solid or under that was it just trains that all changed in of money well Noriega. So if you thousands when and after the US Army things and settled there and we worked with the Panamanian government to develop a new police force from scratch. So that requires a lot more than simply training it requires a lot of mentoring. Technical assistance developing policies procedures. That build a framework around of an institution that you can build upon training is obviously a part of the but it's all one part so that really big is the tops dedication to promoting sustainable institutional development there's a reason why I don't say achieves sustainable in the visual development because that's very hard to do and there are a lot of outside factors that determine whether that happens a lot of them have to do with the host country well the political dynamics in the country but anyway so for years we were promoting this sustainable one to do so with everyone for most sustainable was the decision about. USA This is it everyone does it but what does it mean what does it mean and we wanted to provide concrete example of what is the tap means when we say that we do when we promote sustainable and fears over the so we started by writing a basic concept paper and if you have the the diagram the colorful diagram there on the right. That was basically what this concept had for was about 12 minutes on laid out. It was a good start but we realized we needed much more so the question to him How are you going to do that with very limited resources the answer was through capital. Rove So we partnered with this on one caps and with the I'm not supposed to vote Syracuse on to perhaps those and the paper is the vide and is the really fleshing out the this dire. And the 4 the 4 analyses that you see in the yellow section in the middle there the 2nd part is. Looking in 7 is he tough programs that have successfully promoted sustainable institutional Well that's where Liz is capstone class was played an integral part and it did a lot of research a lot of primary research all of our paths require a tremendous amount of primary research reaching out to is he thought program managers in the field could be in the experts we strongly believe the primary research is essential to. Project the 3rd and final section was the monitoring and evaluation Sark. We have not done a good job allows our pro our programs but fortunately no one else have either so we decided that this was a good opportunity to make a bold stuff and. So the work of the 3 caps the group was phenomenal. This is the final product which was published in 2018 by the Justice Department and I don't I don't I don't like to exaggerate it but I would if somebody asked me to estimate how much. The cab so worth I would. I would say that I think the 3 tops that we could not have gotten better. If we had paid a consultant $100.00 that the dollars to do this for and I've worked with a lot of consultants are a lot of good things so. We've done 26 caps more or less These are live in a different universe and it is we rely on taps for evolving curricula or is he done programs around the world for strategic planning purposes. For all sorts of research so we're big believers and cops and whatever distinguished caps a a lot of a long life is here Paula. But again I just want to say this again and less particularly for being great partners of those and like. Hi My name's Matt made last. Week. So I came to his brother the student side so I worked with us if you win anything at all or even or slightly so you know you want them or partners in Michigan in your sports life and how wheels all that route by only resources around. The suburbs around you know one story that recently just got you and I thought being from Michigan that we get a 10 cent positive this is easy right in Reno recycling like it's in our blood and not really so it turns out Michigan has a terrible recycling rate look at this the city of Detroit I at least I can use 2015 they did not have municipal recycling your the largest city in Michigan I don't know what happened in still you're spoiled a city like D.C. We've got a giant blue bin you dump everything and so we went into this and we sort of assembled our crack H.P.'s team working with the city of Lansing You know we had the state a guy we had the Excel guy I guess I was the guy with the car so it was like my really important all that we got the car for there isn't gals I'm sorry other Edwards has yet to deal with me. But so every week we made our commute up to the Lansing and then we went to some of the townships and really the communities around because there's a lot going on but you know it's an interesting lawsuit comes up with the township What's a county What's a city things I really hadn't thought about very much I just thought the city whence I can understand that there's a very wealthy Township that's right next to it that has certain stakes so working with a really diverse group of stakeholders we got a lot of insight. And everybody's or a different you know stake in this and it was. Really valuable being a student being able to see OK here's what the see when Think things at the big giant in the room here's what the wealthy township things as someone who has the resources here is what the county thinks is the largest land holder in the area and sort of putting all these pieces together with our team. So we try to put together a kind of a model this idea that if you had a municipal recycling facility that is yours or him as a shared resource by all the stakeholders that you might get to have some of the names and so I remember we were driving down for our final presentation so we spent you know kind of throughout the area and the day we're driving down I remember is also the Ford school cookie day I don't know you guys don't do that but we had this thing where it's like you know I was like piling cookies I was mopping I got leave that day I'm like get like a whole napkins were some like driving I get like cookie like all over myself like frosting is a kind of gross and I get that only realize it until my walking into the Lansing Mary's office on my own I had like frosting all over my face. You know like I was like nervous like this is the worst case scenario and we walk and like a group of other 6 of us and we do a presentation and the whole time I'm just thinking my. Harilal you know we we did a good job like it reproduces deliverable We're up all night working on it and then I looked around the room and realized that half of what we had accomplished was bringing those people together it was a brain the city of Lansing with Rudy and township with him County and that sometimes you have these sort of extra Now these that come out of these and so yes we produced a 30 page paper Those read by you know someone hopefully but I think the greater value we had was getting all these people together and give up talking because so often that's lost and this is something I carried my own professional world so I work with. That part of energy doing appropriations work and a lot of what it is just getting the right people in the room to talk about this stuff and I think that A.P.S. really helped me learn about that and I'm really happy that this program exists and I you know a supporter of it. So happy to talk more about that but sometimes I need to getting the right people in the room going to college a lot. Thank you. Everyone can even my I'm trying to use and I'm currently now in Hamilton and I can project manager national coach order. But me all of that with my abs and how I got to that point so I remember you know a lot of last words and we get all the background in economics and how we can develop the proof that they're behind everything and then take the course for applying it right and I went into Greg Hall wanting to do government insulting landing right for him but this is like a rule that they have where I can start you know getting my money in the water a little bit and so. I think one of the things that surprised me about it was not that I could come by project it was with a county veterans affairs office and so we come in and they're trying to better outreach and how to reach out to more there are veterans and their county and so there are some clear ways that we could come in and help more targeted approaches and some better ways of communication strategies. But that wasn't I thought that would be the big part turns out that was the smaller of the book the work we did a lot more of it was dealing with the people and how you interact how you communicate back to a client and so that really became apparent that this project would know about just by the policies that you can do but actually how you got to work on the deal together to implement that policy was really important but be aware and not only that but understanding the culture of an organization and how they interact with each other so that was really helpful I was actually able to parlay that into my next job which was working for. Us more for all of our strategies but they were the client was the veterans affairs so I got that job because in the interview they asked me about the bear and the very old very understanding culture and being able to say of rank and job and really understand and there is a learning curve to not being able to ID by people properly but how you live people and I communicate that profit is very important. One of the other methods I learned in the project was that we didn't have a sales manager team and that project manager I still use some of those builds and say I've built for my team I remember we had a test that we did I can't remember. The Strengths Finder and so you know I've seen their projects go if you have everything equally and argues that no we're not going to do that we say What do you like to view what's your strengths you do that doesn't matter that 60 percent or how we're going to divvy up and actually everyone was happier that way too and so it's something actually bring to my team is where your strengths where strengths you want versus you can help and utilize today. Still find that in my current career so I was in the Veterans Affairs after that so I guess more about me after that so I worked with burns very better and better than management system so when veteran started to go outside of a network so I worked on the structure. After that and got to the I.R.S. So that's been interesting now with the budgeted. Budget of going I've been a little bit affected by that or so I went through but I. Started next election was an instructor build the finance roads bridges through getting more dead brought into the higher us off we did country by country $1000000000.00 organizations that have international locations there's actually not communication between those countries and so to protect act ab prosperity McCain channels and I view structured have occasioned. My work on a strategy and I'm currently on web application so I've got all of you to go to Iraq that go back I count you can actually log in and. Vote direct any money straight there we all have identical identity theft verification and so on and like that. But it's a great group projects and this will work if they were priest Barton generating billions of dollars so it's really cool to be part of. I'm Chris gone graduate in the class of 2014 and I enjoy the pipe of the seminar so much but I did it twice. So 1st I worked with an elf economic development coordinator for the city of Adrian Michigan and show you how real world our project was it was sold when we signed up doing a research project to help them understand equity crowdfunding attic how it could be leveraged as a tool to help their local community raise funds from within the communities support local businesses we won projects **** the Michigan legislature with considering an equity crowdfunding bill so instead of doing primarily research about this topic we became an advocate is trying to work with the city Adrian and other stakeholders to get the bill shepherded through Michigan legislature about a lot of networking relationship building skills talking with legislators and legislators and other stakeholders the state of Michigan and I was in a combination of that part of the project was that our team actually had the privilege of testifying in front of the Michigan House Commerce Committee about some of the work that we did really rewarding experience and. The bill actually was connected that you're touring during our project which is also varies of filling but we also wanted to take the project a step further because you know when a bill gets passed that's great but what happens next how people know what's the Reds How does that actually get implemented so the 2nd part of our project was working with local stakeholders and helping them develop implementation guides and guidance for local businesses and individuals who might want to invest in their own local community and then really prepared me for the real world in taking a real world issue getting flipped on its head right from week one seeing an issue from multiple sides and then she dreaded things within a very limited period of time how how to implement that into an actual solution for the local community. And my 2nd project was actually working with the G.A.O. team they've actually been looking at retirement security and specifically employee coverage with employer sponsored retirement plans so it was a very different and then the 1st project a very data intensive and I think Dave scription was right on talking to a lot of stakeholders understanding and researching the available data sources working with the data sources working with the G.A.O. experts understanding their process taking a very broad subject and scoping it down into it researchable question and then executing coming up analyzing the data coming up with our message presenting our findings and producing that So one way that that experience really shaped my professional career is that I now work at the G.A.O. Miami Senior And also there are issues team and I focused largely on human capital management in the 2020 census so this project really gave a great insight into how the G.A.O. works now every time I have a new project I go there very exactly the same process that we did on that project we get a fairly broad topic we break it down into research a question we think about the methods about how we'll answer that question we do the research take some time and then we come back develop our message and produce our report so it was a very. It's very rewarding experience and really showed. What work was like at the G 8. Thank you. Thank you thank you yes hi my name is Claire Hutchinson I am also in the class of 2014 and I'm currently on the corporate affairs team at Humana so I also fell in the same camp as Chris in that I left my A.P.'s project so much that I did it twice. And I worked with a team that worked with the heating warm fund which is in Detroit and it's a nonprofit that we're taught provides utility assistance for low income families in Michigan and they provide about 15000000 dollars annually and so when we started our projects they said to us we have tons of data tell us what to do with our data and didn't give us a lot of direction they had lots of things that they would a few Sigurd quote unquote databases or data sets that they kind of sent our way and said Help us understand our customers. And part of the fun was that they had a hub and spoke model so they had one nonprofit agency that works with about 40 different community centers within the state of Michigan and they were very focused on tell us about the people that ultimately benefit from our grants and they were kind of missing the fact that there was another step between them and the ultimate beneficiary and that was their community centers so when we started kind of working on the project we met with various groups that were responsible for providing grants directly to beneficiaries and what we quickly learned was the relationship between the nonprofit organization thought and their community partners was not very strong and so when we were kind of working with our client they were expecting us to come back and say here's all the different people that you serve and here's how you get them engaged and we kind of got to the end of our praja. And we said no the message is really you need to have better engagement with your community centers soul is really gave us a pep talk and was like you guys can go and provide like a message that isn't going to be great Nobody likes to hear you have a partner organization that's not happy with you. So we went and we kind of shared this feedback and they were really receptive because it was about the message of you know you want to alternately serve people better but we've missed a part here and as part of that and their reception to it we said there were 2 of us my copartner is actually here Christine Wagner and we work together and said we're going to do another semester and we're going to help you figure out how you kind of build this relationship between your partner innovations so as part of that we went out and collected actual data on the partner organizations and we said you know this these places provide quick funding and these places help with tax assistance and we basically were able to put together profiles of all of the different services that their partner organizations provided and then they were able to say this is the profile of the type of services that our partner provides and if we want to have a good relationship with our partner we need to know what our partner's actually doing in the community so as part of that we also provided a whole host of recommendations as to how they could improve engagement among their kind of partner agencies and that range everything from you know doing monthly call of typing a newsletter that spotlighted various different organizations and following the issues that these types of organizations would be really in tune to to understand the cyclical nature of their business. So I think that in working through that really learning from the you know if. Not fun to deliver a hard message but it is alternately going to be most important and I think that the that a lot of people set up here is we started out on one path and we ended up somewhere totally completely different. And I think that that happens to all of us in the real world like I think that everybody can highlight lots of different professional situations where you may take a job and think you're one job is going to be and you know your role is going to be very specific and it's going to finish where box that doesn't end up the way it works at the end of the day so I think that it was really wonderful opportunity to kind of continue learning working with people getting through the points. You know difficult situations and working with a wide variety of people at all to me at least serve a client in a very you know in a effective way so thank you very much thanks. Thanks. Thanks for being. Here and says it was it was really fun for me to relive some of the good and still enjoying moments and all of those so one sees me thank you for that OK I'm going to be extremely brief for you future all alumni. Another is current students. Were there any of you for some of your 1st years or are you all 2nd here so OK for your 1st years take a P.S. in the fall and I can't guarantee what will happen because that's kind of the nature as Claire said so well but you will learn a lot and it will be I think a memorable and important part of your school experience so that's for the 1st year students to be out there in the world so start thinking about ways that you can work with foreign school students as capstone type. Projects with students over the next few years and when you get your good ideas bring them to me and Cindy who's fact here and we are really excited to be able to expand the both the opportunities for A.P.'s and the number of students who are engaging in them so that's for her future alumni current alumni bring us here projects as you heard from David and Eric you know there are huge benefits to having students banding a dozen we working from their perspective a little bit outside of the day to day they can take a step back see things that you might not be able to see at capacity and ideas and energy and we can create these really great experiences so please contact me anytime. And I would love to talk even if you don't have a fully fleshed out idea if you think you have a good idea for anybody else project I don't even want to say what a good idea is because they can be so many different things but if it's something that's important to your organization that you think some students can productively work on and help you with come and talk to me about them OK or. Right so I'm worried at the time but we've got a reception Where's Elizabeth. Room Can we have just questions you think Peter and OK All right so let's take if anybody has questions for the panelists that you'd like to ask now and again well we're heading out for a reception after by any questions anybody have any questions. How about how in the world did that bill become a law in glass then like 8 weeks out that my fascination I don't know if I had much to do with that. It was a good bit just we're just bringing a lot of stakeholders together and really getting people to see the value from all sides. Like like Matt said bringing the same. Mark on our. Party you know. That's good I don't I don't think that existed 4 years ago. But enough to me or. Not I am. Sure that you know this very seriously I have cited your budget you know that we have no money but we can do what I am but. I didn't know along with when we started this program a been there for fear. That a pretty good idea of what. What our priorities were and I talked with our director you know are. Saying your. Dog was out of. This thought so. Fortunate to me it was another great faculty. They're very creative and whose those centers of very loose creativity the office that I work at a CIO The Education Workforce of income security team education the big part of that and my boss has children that went to the University of Michigan to remember the football team have played in Ann Arbor and you know it was a very easy sell for her to bring these projects and after she saw them cycle through a couple of times then it wasn't even a question anymore so it's a system now that we haven't played to be able to have this on an on a recurring basis and sometimes in the fall and again in the in the winter term so it's great. Say from from a faculty perspective what I've seen him as the more engaged the partners are in the clients are the better the experiences both for the students but also for the partners and so you know nobody has time for anything of course but it's time well spent with the students and so from the from my perspective in just observing the dynamics. You know once the once once the organization meets the students. It's it's a good thing like nobody thinks amens time students what a burden and so as Dave said you know both in the current moment working with the students but then also when the conversation comes up why should we do this again. They are there are huge benefits on both sides so sometimes getting your foot in the door just sort of making the space for it I think is sort of what I hear your question. However you can do that in your organisation it's it's it's it's kind of like you know the 2nd date is easier than the 1st state in this case because usually the 1st date goes pretty well so. If you've been considering tomorrow and see. Exactly how the class. OK I believe it's time for our reception so thank you all so much have a wonderful trail those of you mark Earth students. I hope you learn a lot and make good connections. And for all of you a lot. About me and keep in touch and go a little. More. Those green lasers you know let me just say as you go out you'll see there on the tables there are a little tense and say what's topping period if you're gathered at a table you might find somebody to get in the conversation around that day but feel free to go around talk to anyone you want to visit with the staff of the faculty with her along with other students and I have a great time thank you. Thank you Jacki.