student engagement

Devin Judge-Lord's winter course tasked students with examining the role of movement art in policy debates while addressing a central question: what constitutes a "successful" protest movement?

Ford School students Margaret Peterman (BA ‘27) and Edra Timmerman (BA ‘26) won awards for their performance at the Indiana University–Bloomington Hamilton Lugar School's 2026 Midwest Model European Union (MMEU) competition.

Thirteen graduate and undergraduate students shared takeaways from their summer internships at the Ford School’s 8th Annual Policy Pitch Competition. In a TEDTalk style presentation, students gave three minute speeches highlighting their policy impac...

The University of Michigan is wrapping the Year of Democracy, Civic Empowerment, and Global Engagement, a campuswide initiative to strengthen democratic practices and encourage active civic participation. But its work isn’t slowing.

Grant writing and proposal development, once useful skills, have become essential for international development professionals, according to Ford School lecturer Amy Beck Harris. “As international organizations undergo sweeping changes, the actual ski...

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 stud...

As the political polarization in America rises, navigating across differences to find common ground—and policy solutions—has never been more important. This semester, four students—Rebecca Coyne (MPP ‘26), Ella Kinder (BA '25), Breah Marie Willy (BA ...

A group of Ford School graduate students were recognized for their research on furthering constructive dialogue as part of the Year of Democracy's three-day symposium to investigate the relationship between information and democracy.

This fall, Michigan State Representative Dylan Wegela tasked a group of Ford School students to research the implications of artificial intelligence and surveillance in the workplace. Their project is part of a 2-credit experiential learning opportun...

Ford School alumni and students played a key part in upholding democracy during the 2022 midterms—running for office, knocking on doors, and working at polling stations, up and down the ballot, across Michigan and around the country. Several Ford...

Member institutions of the Big Ten Conference are partnering on a voting challenge to spur civic engagement and encourage more students across the nation to head to the polls on Election Day. The Big Ten Voting Challenge is a nonpartisan initiative t...