Virtual Spring Preview: Faculty Panel

00:02 Susan: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back if you saw this morning's session, or welcome if you are just joining us. This is the Faculty Panel at the Ford School's Virtual Spring Preview. In a moment, I'll introduce our panelists. But first, we ask that you tell us where you're logging in from in the chat box. That gives us a sense to know where you're all coming from. And also, after a short while, we're gonna turn it over to your questions. So please use the Q&A box on the right to ask a question. If you're comfortable asking it live, please indicate that by adding the word 'Live.' When we're ready to take your question, we'll unmute you, and you can read it to one of the panelists. Otherwise, I'm happy to read the questions to you. For you, rather.

00:56 Susan: Don't forget to visit our Future Fordies page where we will post all the webinars both of today, and previous, and next week's sessions as well. So without further ado, I would like to introduce our panelists. John Ciorciari is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Ford School's Weiser Diplomacy Center and International Policy Center. He holds a bachelor's and law degree from Harvard and a master's in philosophy. A master's and doctorate from Oxford, where he was a Fullbright scholar. John Hanson is a specialist in comparative political economy and political development. He holds a master in economics and a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. Betsey Stevenson is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. She is also a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Stevenson earned her BA in economics and mathematics from Wellesley College and a master and PhD in economics from Harvard.

02:11 Susan: Robert Hampshire is an associate professor of public policy, a research associate professor in the U of M Transportation Research Institute's Human Factors Group, as well as in the Michigan Institute for Data Science. He is an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering. He received his PhD in operations research and financial engineering from Princeton University. And last, but certainly not least, is Megan Tompkins-Stange, an assistant professor of public policy at the Ford School. She received her undergrad and PhD in education policy and organization studies from Stanford University. Thank you, faculty. Now, I'd like each of you just to take a minute or two to tell us a little bit about the classes that you routinely teach at the Ford School. We can go in the same order. If you would, John Ciorciari? 

03:14 John Ciorciari: Sure. Thanks, Susan. And welcome, everybody. It's nice to meet you in this forum. I teach classes on foreign policy, international affairs, and international law. One of them is a course, a section of 510, the politics and public policy course. Mine focuses mostly on foreign policy process and the design and the function of international institutions. I also teach a section of our course in values and ethics in public policy. Mine is mostly about ethics in international affairs. So we're looking at a wide range of questions, from questions about who should be entitled to asylum or refugee protections, to what kind of distributive burdens should be borne in relation to mitigation from climate change. We're looking at questions about aid delivery and humanitarian assistance. Who has a duty and to what extent, and what happens when, in implementation there are hurdles, such as a rebel group trying to steal some of the aid for their own purposes. Or having to make difficult choices, like we do now with COVID-19, about the allocation of scarce resources.

04:26 JC: The third course I'm teaching, which I'm teaching right now, is a course called Peace Building. That's about different aspects of the policy challenges for post-conflict or fragile states that are trying to move from periods of mass repression or war into a more sustainable peace. We look at military peace-keeping and policing. We look at the development of democratic institutions and early election processes. We look at economic reconstruction. And lastly, we are discussing now transitional justice and the various forms that it may take. And so all of these courses link to the broader array of co-curricular activities that we run through the International Policy Center and the Weiser Diplomacy Center that Susan mentioned. I'm certainly happy to take questions on that later. Thank you.

05:12 Susan: Thank you, John. John Hanson, please.

05:16 John Hanson: Greetings to all of you out there. I wish I could see you in person. My role as an instructor here in the Ford School involves teaching in our quantitative methods sequence. So I teach the first course which is statistics, and then also the third course which is our optional part of our sequence called Applied Econometrics. And to support that, I also help teach a course on using the statistical software's data, which is a lab-based course, hands-on and applied work where students learn the software and then also apply it to working on a research project. One of my other courses is a section of the 510 course, which is the politics of public policy making. My version of the course takes a comparative perspective on the policy making process. My training is in comparative political science, and so we look at how different policies are made in different political, institutional, cultural contexts, and the way in which these contextual factors matter for the policy making process. Thank you.

06:22 Susan: Wonderful. Betsey? 

[pause]

06:32 Susan: Betsey, I think you're on mute. I think you're muted.

06:38 Betsey Stevenson: Yeah, I was muted. [chuckle] Sorry about that. Well, welcome everyone. It's great to talk with you. I focus on teaching how to use the tools of economics to make good decisions. And my focus at the Ford School... My Ford School courses, right now, is on making the decisions, and you guessed it, in the policy arena. So trying to think about how we use the tools of economics to evaluate the tradeoffs among different policies to do a good job of predicting the kinds of outcomes we might expect, and thinking through the right tools for the right crisis. This is an important skill always, but I'm seeing all these tools come into use right now in our current public health crisis, which of course is all tangled up now in an economic crisis as well. We will talk about issues like, "How do you think about the value of a statistical life? How should we consider policies that cost a lot but have the potential to save a lot of lives? How do we think about them?" We'll think about unemployment insurance. "What are the tradeoffs in designing an unemployment insurance system? How does it work best and what are some of the snafus that you can run into?" And we think a lot about health insurance and how insurance systems work. So it's really all about taking the kind of tools you will learn in your very first econ class. And then, when you come into my classroom, we get down and dirty in trying to make good policy advice, an analysis, for a range of situations.

08:34 Susan: Thank you, Betsey. Robert? 

08:37 Robert Hampshire: Yeah. Welcome, everyone. Looking forward to seeing you guys here in the fall and teaching you. I teach a course currently called Smart Cities and the Future of Mobility where we're really trying to grapple with how technology, particularly around transportation, autonomous vehicles, ride share, new bus systems impacts society and how policy makers can understand those and harness the energy of that, but also mitigate some of the barriers. We take what I call a systems approach, mainly that there's feedback between different areas in our society. We see that now between public health, the economy, jobs, food, education, and really try to put forth the analytic framework using tools of systems analysis and systems thinking to really understand how not to make siloed policies and how not to have unintended consequences. And so that's one of the courses I teach right now. So, thank you.

09:44 Susan: Wonderful. Megan? Megan, you're muted as well.

09:51 Megan Tompkins-Stange: Amateur hour here. Sorry.

09:55 S?: That's okay.

09:56 MT: It's so nice to meet all of you guys virtually. I look forward to, hopefully, meeting many of you in person, fingers crossed, in the fall. I teach two classes in our master's core. One is public management, which basically trains new leaders in how to function within a public policy setting. So my version of the course... And you might have been able to ascertain that each course has a slightly different flavor in terms of the content depending on the professor who is teaching it. Mine tends to focus on public-private partnerships between the government and the non-profit sector, and looking at issues like, "What happens when a non-profit has been a source of innovation and it has a great social program that the federal government wants to scale? What are some of the issues with that in terms of fundraising, in terms of securing leadership, community support?" These sorts of things. So that's one of my courses I teach each year. I also teach a version of our values and ethics class as well, where we're looking at normative questions about, "What should be the moral and ethical decisions that are involved in public policy?" And again, my version of that class has a flavor of looking at the ethics and politics of public service. So, things about volunteering, humanitarian aid, charity, philanthropy in particular. So those are the two that I tend to teach on a yearly basis.

11:27 Susan: Wonderful. Thank you, all. As Dean Barr talked about in the previous session, one of the hallmarks of the Ford School is obviously our academics, but how we engage in the world with organizations, policy makers. So if you could each tell us a little bit, take a minute or two to tell us about how you and/or your students are working with policy makers. Why don't we flip it around and start with Megan this time? 

[chuckle]

12:00 MT: Well, my research is on the role of large, elite philanthropic foundations and their influence in public policy, particularly as it ascertains to education policies. So K-12 public education mostly in the US, although I'm starting to look a little bit comparatively at France as well. And so right now, it's a very timely issue as people are talking about, "What should philanthropy be doing in this time and space with COVID?" On the one hand, there's an argument that the government should be providing for all public needs in terms of alleviating concerns to people who are affected by this virus, people who are affected by losing their jobs. At the same time, philanthropy is unaccountable to citizens in a way that the government is. So there's concerns about if philanthropy were to step in and pay for all the masks, for example, would that be sustainable in the long term? Would the state become dependent on that private health? 

13:01 MT: There's also a concern that greater intervention by a philanthropy now could lead to more influence for foundations in the future. And again, concerns about democratic accountability, the role of private donors in determining public needs and having an amplified voice without the attendant accountability mechanisms that apply to elected officials. So I talk with journalists, I work with individual foundations, I work with individual donors, just helping them think about some of these ideas and encouraging them to make more grants now, more unrestricted grants that allow for more flexibility for non-profits that are really getting down into the frontlines of COVID and providing more support than they normally would on a regular basis.

13:47 Susan: Thank you. Robert? 

13:52 RH: Sure. So I've been engaging Ford School students like you guys, yourselves, or prospective students. You can look forward to work with me on projects around equity and access as it relates to the transportation system. So we have a large multi-university program that I'm leading. We've been working directly with cities around the country to try to understand how some of the new technologies will impact equity and areas of disadvantage and where the opportunity areas and zones are. From San Francisco to Detroit to Nashville, DC, we have a consortium of about 15 or so cities right now. So we're on the ground working directly with policy makers on decisions around how access and equity are impacted by mobility. We're also leading a large data science institute about algorithmic justice and fairness. So, how the data science may be used and misused currently to perpetuate basically structural racism. And so I have several Ford School students who are engaging with me on trying to understand what kind of accountability mechanisms and procurement processes that cities and states should use to make sure they're vetting these data science tools. And so we're having a lot of fun, so I look forward to working with you guys. Thank you.

15:25 Susan: Wonderful. Betsey? 

15:31 BS: I'll unmute myself this time before I start talking. [chuckle] Let me actually start with my policy engagement and the current situation. So I was Chief Economist at US Department of Labor in 2010, and then went back to the Obama Administration as a member of the Council of Economic Advisors in his second term. So a lot of the kinds of situations we're seeing right now and the tools we need to use to fight it were some of the things I worked on in the 2008 recession. And so I've been very engaged in what we need to be doing in terms of stimulus, in terms of both monetary and fiscal policy response. I wrote an article with Justin Wolfers in The New York Times, what feels like ages ago, maybe two weeks ago, on what we needed in a stimulus bill. And then worked behind the scenes with some members of Congress in terms of and flesh some of that stuff out. And a lot of what we suggested did show up in the CARES Act.

16:39 BS: I've also been working at the state and local level. So I've been doing bi-weekly webinars with a 100 to 200 state senators and representatives, just giving them some advice on what should be happening at the state level. And I don't usually even talk about my... I do sometimes a little bit of consulting on the side and that's not usually what we think about in the academic sphere. But right now, I have a lot of companies calling me trying to figure out how to get access to these small business loans and just very confused about how the CARES package work. So, I've been doing some work for companies with that. And then some pro bono volunteer work with small non-profits that are facing the same kind of situation. How do we get access to these, essentially, grants 'cause they are forgivable loans if you meet certain conditions. And so, making sure that non-profits can tap into that money, meet the conditions and make sure it turns into a grant from the government. There'll be another round of stimulus. So, already starting to think about that and really engaging a lot with the press, as well as with state and national policy makers on what we should be doing next.

18:07 BS: All of this comes out of my... What's my background? I'm a labor economist. I do research on how people tend to respond to public policy decisions in the labor market and in their personal lives. So, a lot of my work is on the family. So there's some really big questions coming out of this, research questions around, "What does it mean to be in the labor market, out of the labor market and unemployed?" That I'm trying to wrap my head around and figure out how we get some data. You might have seen that we had the biggest increase in unemployment today that we've seen since 19... The biggest one month increase since 1975. And what was interesting though about it, it was almost all people on temporary layoff. So, that's a really big difference between that and, say, permanent separations. And then finally, something that seems a little bit not relevant right now, but will become relevant again, is I've been doing some work on machine artificial intelligence and what kinds of tasks are gonna be taken from us in the labor force by technology.

19:27 Susan: Wow. I look forward to all these answers... [laughter] John Hanson.

19:33 JH: Yeah. So, a lot of my research is on international development, looking across countries, the role of institutions in economic development, and that's led my research to be about the nature of state capacity or the degree to which the governmental apparatus can be effective in implementing policies through its territory. And that research has had a lot of interest in the broader development community, so it's created some opportunities to engage with policy makers at the World Bank, or with organizations such as an organization called CLEAR based in Mexico City, which is working to develop monitoring and program evaluation capacities within governmental bureaucracies. So that's just been a way to connect research to actual practice out in the world. With my students I'd like to have research opportunities that have their own research where they can focus on questions that are of interest to them. So for example in the course I teach on STATA, I encourage students to collect data from organizations that they would like to work with, and, do research that is useful to those organizations if possible. So that's just another way we can try to connect our classroom learning to practice in the real world.

20:56 Susan: Wonderful. John Ciorciari please.

21:00 JC: Yeah. One of the things that I really emphasize for us at the New Diplomacy Center is policy engagement alongside practical training and foreign affairs and so, a part of the way that we engage with policy makers is to have them regularly on campus, which all of us on your screen have contributed to in various ways. This fall we had a particularly good series of speakers on international affairs as part of our launch of the Diplomacy Center. We had Secretary Rice, Secretary Clinton, Samantha Power, and many others. And, one theme that came up often in their remarks that we've explored in greater detail throughout the year relates to the course I teach on peace building.

21:40 JC: And that's what's gonna happen in Afghanistan at a time when the United States is seeking to withdraw partially or wholly, and when there's still a very delicate balance of influence in that war-torn country. And so, in November we had a group of retired US Ambassadors with expertise on Afghanistan and the surrounding region come talk to us at the Ford School about ways forward. In December, a practitioner in residence named Javed Ali, a former National Security Council employee and I, organized with a Ford School master's student Ryan Van Wie, a forum on defense and diplomacy in Afghanistan.

22:22 JC: And we did that at the Meridian International Center in Washington, and had policy makers and think-tank types and academics come from the US, from Afghanistan, from other partner countries. We had a closed door extended dialogue with a group of Afghan diplomats who were visiting. On the basis of those conversations about how the peace process could be advanced most fruitfully in Afghanistan, we wrote a couple of op-eds and policy papers in January. We then had had some more diplomats come visit the Ford School; Susan Dominus a retired state department official came to talk about her experience trying to manage public diplomacy in Afghanistan.

23:03 JC: We've continued to work on research projects. Ryan and a PhD student named Jake Waldron and others, are working on an array of projects that they've been able to present at conferences with support from our International Policy Center or Diplomacy Center, and those concern questions about what kinds of counter-insurgency tactics work best. What are the kind of conditions that are conducive to being able to build durable democratic institutions in factious countries like Afghanistan? And just yesterday, as part of our regular series of brown bag conversations, over lunch we had a kind of a web-based lunch conversation about the new peace agreement that the Trump administration has inked with the Taliban.

23:50 JC: And, we usually have... For most of our brown bag talks we invite people to come from other universities or think tanks or from official agencies. But sometimes we like to highlight the expertise that's within your ranks as MPP students, or MPA students. It happens that we have a couple of people who have lengthy service in the US military in Afghanistan. We also have a former Afghan official within our class. And so we organized a round table conversation to draw from our own collective knowledge about the country to critique that agreement. And we continue to work on the research side of things. And, as I noted it's... It's something that I'm interested in and connects with my interest in post-conflict politics. And so, this is an area where we would expect to see a continuing stream of engagement opportunities for you if you join the Ford School. And it's just one example. There are many other projects in international affairs that you could sign on to if you're interested.

24:55 Susan: Wonderful. We're gonna now open it up for the participants' questions, and I'd like to thank them, those who are joining us from near and far, from coast to coast in the US and across the globe. The first question comes from my Mia Amira calling in from Arlington, Virginia, and she would like to ask her question herself. Mia? 

25:16 Mia: Hi, my name's Mia. I'm currently working in child welfare policy, but interested in migration, refugee Studies and international diplomacy. And, I'm coming in with a little bit of quantitative experience already, so, I wanted to know if there were opportunities to hone our skills through teaching other students, and or applied work with research centers or other organizations outside of the Ford School. You've started to address some of this too in your last answer. So, building on that with some examples would be great.

25:55 Susan: John Hanson, do you wanna take that question? 

25:58 JH: Yeah, sure, I'll give it a start. We have a number of research policy centers in the Ford School in addition to the International Policy Center that often have students engaged in long-term research projects. So Education Policy Center has a lot of people working, the state and local policy center sponsors a lot of survey-based research and talks about those things. Poverty Solutions, also has major research initiatives ongoing that involve students working for them. So there's a lot of opportunities through those and, of course, individual faculty members often have their own research projects that are grant funded, which they'll have long-term research support from students working on. And of course, we're located at a huge university and so a number of students are working at various places around campus through the Institute for Social Research or at other schools where there are a number of opportunities available.

27:00 JH: You also mentioned helping other students. And as one of the stats teachers in our program, we're always looking for graduate students who can help with our courses. There's graduate student instructors and a range of tutors that we have helping students with our stat sequence. So that's a really great way for students who have some quantitative skills to help others, but also in the process refine their own skills because nothing beats having to teach something as a way to have to learn it better.

27:38 Susan: John? 

27:40 JH: Yeah, I just wanted to comment on my question in so far as she's interested in poverty reduction and international affairs. We have quite a number of faculty who work in that area broadly in international political economy or international development. They have been very successful in research and in raising grants and so they often have students work with them, and not just in Ann Arbor but in the field. I've had a number of students whom I work with who have gone to spend the summer overseas to do field research as part of things like randomized control trials of development interventions in Africa or in Southeast Asia. We also have funding available through our various centers and through the Ford School generally for internships and research initiatives of that kind. Right now, we have students who are doing work in Indonesia and another who now has had to go online but who is doing work in Russia. We've had a number of students last summer who worked in places from India to Mexico to Bulgaria engaged in issues around social development. And so in addition to the on-campus offerings, we have a pretty rich array of opportunities to support student initiatives to build those skills in the field.

29:01 Susan: Wonderful, thank you. Megan? 

29:04 MT: Really briefly, and I know this doesn't address Mia's questions specifically, but for those of you who are interested in qualitative research in addition to quantitative, there's also a number of opportunities to get involved with research that is interview-based, ethnography, that sort of thing. I always have one or two research assistants who are my master's students that I get to know in class that then help me with my research, whether that's coding data, doing interviews, that sort of thing. Even helping me think about the conceptualization of a piece or a book. I think a lot of the faculty here are very committed to working with students and providing those learning opportunities as partners in the research.

29:43 Susan: Great, thank you. We've got several questions about the Weiser Diplomacy Center and the Weiser Diplomacy Center Fellowship. Greg Garrison is going to ask his question now. Greg? 

29:58 RH: It's Gage and thank you all for being here today. I guess this is for both the Johns. Could you give us your pitch as to why someone interested in national affairs should come to the Ford School? 

30:18 JC: I'll be happy to start. Let me say thank you for your question Gage, and I'm glad there's a lot of interest on the line about the Diplomacy Center. It's relatively new, but it's a new part of a large university that has a really strong tradition in international affairs. I mentioned in the opening speakers series and the fact that all those folks were willing quickly to come to Ann Arbor is an indication of the recognition that the University of Michigan has long been churning out top people who wind up working in international affairs. This gives us an opportunity to bring some of those activities together, to hire new professors of practice in diplomacy, to be able to bring a regular stream of people to campus for visits like the seminars that I mentioned, and of course to fund the fellowships and other activities, including some of those overseas ventures that I mentioned.

31:11 JC: Why here instead of going to Walsh or [31:13] ____ or [31:14] ____ or Fletcher or Kennedy or some of the other large schools that have lots of people working on foreign affairs? I think there are a couple of reasons. One reason and, to me, the most important reason is the kind of community that you'll have here at Ford. We are inside of a large university but we are a relatively small close-knit, very supportive community. This is a place where the people who teach you will know you by your first name, know where you're from, know about your career interests, understand them and invest time and effort to mentor you.

31:48 JH: We will not have as many foreign affairs elective courses as some of the other schools do. We won't have as many people in your class working on foreign affairs as some of the others do. That can be constraining in some respects, but on balance, it's probably an advantage in that we can provide a lot of per capita support financially and in other ways to our students. And we also have a very, very strong record of placing people in excellent foreign affairs jobs. And so if you come here, you will get to see a list of speakers and visitors comparable to what you will anywhere. But you won't be in a room full of 250 people trying to scrape your way to a row where you can see their face. You'll be in a small seminar room with them asking your own questions in a group full of 15. So there's a great opportunity at Michigan to have a combination of world-class access to the kind of resources that UM can afford with this intimacy and person-to-person investment that we can do by virtue of our size.

32:56 JH: Should I add to that briefly? I mean, if anything, John is under-selling the Weiser Diplomacy Center's activities. It's amazing what they have available in terms of the number of people who are coming through, experts in the field. I just wanna add really briefly, we've got a nice core of faculty who work on issues related to economic development, a number of faculty hires in recent years, in addition to people who are already here. So if those of you who are interested in matters related to development, there's a lot of great people to work with.

33:32 BS: Actually, I'll just add something. I'm gonna say this like an economist, but obviously, when you're trying to think about what program to go to, you gotta compare it to what your option is. So that's the obvious thing. But I think it's important to think about the trajectory a program's on and not just look at its past, because first of all, you're gonna get the education you get based on what they're offering today, and then also your ability to draw on that program after you leave to draw on its reputation will also depend on its trajectory. And I think as John just said, John was under-selling the Weiser Center. I think that's right, the thing has just really come out of the box on fire and the trajectory is just straight up.

34:27 BS: So when you're thinking about where to go, take a look at the trajectory other places are on compared to the Ford School, and you'll see that the Ford School... The development economists we've hired, that's been the last couple of years, really building a strong connection between both foreign policy and that strength of the Ford School in social policy analysis, building that into the foreign... Into the developing countries' context to try to build on our strengths across the two. So I think that there's a lot that's going on at the Ford School that would make you particularly strong policy-trained person in foreign policy.

35:24 Susan: Okay, following up on that, what would you say is the best way to engage in research with faculty, specifically faculty on this panel? Does the small size of the Ford School affect the interactions you have with students? Robert? 

35:44 BS: I can... Oh go ahead, Robert.

35:46 RH: Let me just say a little bit about that, then I'll pass it to Betsy. So I currently have roughly about 10 Ford School students doing research assistantships with me right now, and the way that came about, some of them were from my class, and so in classes there are relatively small, intimate settings where faculty can get to know the students and that led to research assistantships. And then also what's led to that are just postings. And so there's a nice sort of fluid way in which students and faculty can kind of engage. And for me, and I think most folks here at Ford are quite open, so send me an email, come to my office hours, let's have a conversation, and that could lead to a paid RA-ship. So I think it's quite interactive, and the place is small enough so that you can have that one-on-one attention. So Betsy probably has more to say.

36:54 BS: Thank you. Yeah, well, I was gonna say the same thing. I do think the small size helps. I have, I think only ever worked with students who were my former students, and that's 'cause it gives me a chance to know them and know their work interests and know their work styles so I know that it's a good fit. But I always hire out of my class for paid RA-ships and I... I think that the small size means that you can easily get to know people, and if you have a particular interest, even the cold emails I get from students I can actually read because there's not that many students, it's not like we have 10,000 students, and I'm inundated with hundreds of them, hundreds of cold emails. So there are lots of opportunities and it's really what you make of it and what you bring into the classroom and what kind of background that you bring and try to find where you have a good fit between both your current skills and the skills you're hoping to build.

38:20 Susan: Perfect. Anybody else wanna take that? If not, we can go on to the next question. Okay. How do courses balance between focus on specific policy areas as compared to building a general set of skills that can apply across disciplines, both in terms of the set of classes required for the MPA, and I imagine for the MPP as well, and within single courses? 

38:52 BS: Can I ask a clarifying question? What do you mean across disciplines? Because I think of disciplines as having sets of tools. So what would it mean to be a general set of the tools of a sociologist, political scientist, and economist? Or is it that you're... Do you have a... I didn't fully understand the question.

38:52 Susan: I'm not sure the person wanted us to ask it, which is fine, so yeah, assuming it's across disciplines, the economist versus the political sciences, what is that interplay like? 

38:52 BS: Well, let me just start by saying that I do think every discipline has a unique set of tools that they use to approach problems, and a unique set of perspectives, I think that one of the... I really believe in having strong disciplinary approaches and one of the things I like about the Ford School is we do have people who are steeped in their own discipline with those of rigorous tools they were trained with, but then can communicate with people across disciplines. I think communicating across disciplines is incredibly important and one of the things you'll see as you might encounter something where you're gonna think about housing policy, and you'll think about it in my class and all I teach you the tools that economists use to think through housing problems and then you might go into another class where you might be thinking about it more as a sociologist and using the kinds of tools that sociologists use. And then you might go into your ethics class and start thinking about it from a completely different perspective in terms of the ethics. So there, it's we're gonna... Big broad issues like housing or health care, you're gonna see in multiple classes, but you're gonna see different tool kits.

41:13 BS: And then I think that the goal is by the end of your degree you've integrated your tool kit, so you know how to use all the tools, right? And so when we got to build a house, we don't just use our hammer, we use all the tools we have and that the goal is that you build the right house when you know which tool to use for which job. And so, that's what we're gonna try to teach you. I think that's the point of interdisciplinary background, and the fact that all of us exist in this interdisciplinary space means that we know how to think through how some of the other disciplines are gonna approach a particular problem, but our expertise is in, in our disciplinary approach.

42:00 Susan: John Ciorciari? 

42:04 JC: I appreciate Betsy's, the tool kit metaphor. Certainly, we do try to cultivate different kinds of intellectual and academic and professional skills. And Megan mentioned earlier that there's a rich qualitative research presence in the Ford School, and she and I both teach sections of values and ethics. And so, to your question about how much is it geared toward general applicability and how much is sort of substance-specific in different courses you might take, you heard Megan say that her course and her section of values and ethics focuses on public service in various dimensions. Mine focuses on ethics and international affairs, but we talk to each other about our courses, and we try to ensure that both courses provide people with a set of applied to ethical approaches that can be deployed in a whole variety of settings. And so it might be that you're a little bit more interested in the substantive applications in the section that I'm teaching or that Megan is teaching, but both of us have an aim of providing tools that you can use for a wide array of purposes.

43:08 JC: And similarly, John teaches a comparative version of the class on politics, of public policy. I teach one more focused on foreign policy, but again, we talk to each other and we try to set certain foundations, things like stakeholder analysis and the importance of framing and the non-automaticity of implementation of policies that have been legitimated, those are general lessons that you will see in any section of 510, but depending on your interest, we wanna give you enough of a menu of choice, so that if you really want to add to that some comparative applications, you can do it in John's section, if you're really interested in foreign policy or crisis management, you can come take my section. So we're trying to provide some of the benefits of both of the things that you mentioned.

43:57 MT: May I state one other thing about that? Just another example, I agree with what everyone has said, and I think a lot of us on the Ford School faculty, because we are fundamentally, a very interdisciplinary faculty, in terms of our discipline and training, a lot of us view our role as teaching students how to essentially twist the conceptual lenses that you are looking at these problems with. So, in my management class, for example, I'm gonna teach students about public goods economics and what's the role of the government versus the role, the non-profit sector in providing public goods? But I'm also going to talk about it from a more normative perspective, in terms of how do we include the voices of vulnerable communities in a non-profit that's trying to make a change in society and I'm gonna talk about the fundamental rigorous concepts of leadership from political science and sociology perspective, and then I'm also gonna bring in a black feminist perspective and think about Black Lives Matter. So it's a mix of all these different things, trying not to just narrowly focus in on one discipline, but realizing how we all bring these different ideas to there and how do you critically analyze them and integrate them in such a way that you can apply them to very applied topical policy areas.

45:12 Susan: Wonderful, thank you. Okay, I think we're out of time for questions, unfortunately, but if any of you would like to give any closing thoughts very briefly, now is your chance.

45:29 JC: Please come to the Ford School. We would love to work with you and we're really excited about the chance to engage with you over the next few years.

45:35 BS: Go ahead.

45:39 JH: Okay, just really quickly, you've heard of, probably heard a lot about our community here and its size and everything, and it's not a lie, but it's a great place to be. You'll enjoy living here, you'll enjoy being here.

45:53 RH: And I would like to also say that please feel free, you can contact me directly. I know there's a lot of people on the line, but you have my last name there, Hampshire, you can look up my email address. I'll try to respond. And I also like say, I'm one of the co-leads for our diversity, equity and inclusion program, so I'm one of the co-leads for the school, so that's something that's critically important for the school and for the role that students and faculty play and staff. So, please do reach out to me if you have any further questions, thank you.

45:53 BS: Good luck making your decision. I hope to see you at the Ford School. And let me just say that we are all living through very historic times right now with a lot of uncertainty, but the one thing that I feel very confident of is no matter what happens, the Ford School community is gonna be a warm and wonderful place to be next 12. So I hope you join in.

47:00 MT: And then just echoing what John said earlier, when people ask me what I like about the Ford School, I always say it's like a small liberal arts college in the context of this huge resource-rich university, it really does feel, we have students over to our houses sometimes, we have a lot of community oriented events, not right now, but in general. And I think the relationships that both students build with one another, but also with faculty and staff are really, really important and special here, in a way that I haven't experienced at other places I've worked at. So just wanted to put it in one last plug for that.

47:39 Susan: Thank you, thank you to the panelists, and thank you to all the participants. If you're interested in hearing from other faculty, just email the admissions team, and we will put you in touch with them. We're gonna have our third panel at 1 o'clock with staff from the gradual career services team, and students to discuss the resources that are available at the Ford School to help you. We're now gonna take a 15 minute break before we re-convene. During this time, if you'd like to talk live with current students, please join us in the meeting room, in the chat box, it's indicated in the chat box. Otherwise, we'll see you at 1:00. Bye everybody.