State and Hill

Distinguished sociologist Celeste Watkins-Hayes works at the intersection of inequality, public policy, and institutions, with a special focus on urban poverty and race, class, and gender studies. She’s particularly interested in the lived...

Jenna Bednar published “The Fractured Superpower: Federalism is Remaking U.S. Democracy and Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Affairs. The Coalition for Networked Information, the Association of Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE awarded Paul Courant the...

Ron Geason (MPP ’72) began his career as budget director at Carnegie Mellon with JP Crecine, the first director of IPPS. He received a PhD in 1988 in public administration and finance from The Ohio State University. From 2015–2017 he served with...

The results of the Russian aggression—starving people, murdering people—from that perspective, we have to help (people) so that they survive. But the cause, the causes are really more important. The cause is the bad political system in Russia....

This fall, after a national search, the Ford School selected Peter Vasher as the school’s director of career services. Vasher has been with the school since 2017 and served as associate director of graduate career services for three years. During...

“The line of students registering to vote on Election Day stretched across the University of Michigan campus, with students waiting for over four hours. There was a palpable sense of excitement and urgency around the election on campus. For many...

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...

Democracy in the United States and across the globe has been in decline for years, as documented with rigorous tracking methodologies. Freedom House has tracked declines in civil liberties and political rights in the U.S., for example. And the...

By Miriam Wasserman At a time when the U.S. economy is facing the highest inflation in 40 years, two former Ford School deans have a vote on the 12-person committee in charge of steering U.S. monetary policy. Michael Barr will have a vote on the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

Passing the baton A June gathering with faculty and staff celebrating Michael Barr’s first term as dean—and this photo with then-associate dean Celeste Watkins-Hayes—took on new meaning a couple of weeks later when the U.S. Senate confirmed Barr...

Governing for revolution In her 2021 book, new Ford School professor Megan Stewart describes how, during the Chinese Civil war in the 1940s, Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established a new model for governing as they took up...

For 40 years, the Ford School’s Public Policy & International Affairs (PPIA) Junior Summer Institute fellowship (formerly known as the Sloan or Woodrow Wilson fellowship)—a program designed to build diversity in public service—has provided a...

Robin Jacob on closing early childhood achievement gaps The first five years of a child’s life are considered the most critical for development. But for too many children from low-income households, learning opportunities...

All hands on deck Ford School faculty and research centers have been actively involved with the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Luke Shaefer is advising the state on how to reduce the impact on low-income families. Michael Barr, Betsey...

The fall 2016 issue of State & Hill magazine was mailed to alumni and friends of the Ford School on December 15, 2016. This edition of the magazine, titled “Innovation for the public good,” highlights faculty, students, and alumni who are...

The next edition of the Ford School's magazine, State & Hill, is in progress and we want to include your good news in the Class Notes section. If you have news (new job, promotion, award, new baby, recently married, etc.) to share with your...