Policy Topics

Writing

Showing 1 - 30 of 228 results
Visiting faculty

Julian Brave NoiseCat

Visiting Fellow, Center for Racial Justice
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen and a descendant of the Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie. he is a writer and filmmaker currently based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of We Survived the Night and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and more.
Core faculty

Beth Chimera

Writing Instructor
Beth Chimera is a writing instructor at the Ford School. In addition to offering individual writing-center tutorial hours to graduate and undergraduate students, she teaches the "Introduction to Policy Writing" first-year graduate course and the…
Core faculty

Alex L. Ralph

Writing Instructor & Teaching Professor
Alex Ralph is a writing instructor at the Ford School. Previous to the Ford School, he taught for over a decade in the Sweetland Center for Writing and the English Department at the University of Michigan. In 2009 he received the English Department's…
Core faculty

Molly Spencer

Writing Instructor
Molly Spencer is a writing instructor, the author of two poetry collections, If the House (U. of Wisc. Press) and Hinge (SIU Press), and many essays and book reviews. Prior to her writing career, she worked in public sector project management and legislative relations. She holds degrees in economics, public policy, and writing.
News

PPIA students reflect on their summer of study and social life 

Aug 2, 2023
What are the dynamics of inequity in labor markets? How do we determine appropriate categories for people in a multicultural society?  How is the U.S. approach to ethnicity and nationality different from what they are doing in Europe?  These were...
State & Hill

Molly Spencer: from Invitatory

May 3, 2023
Ford School writing instructor Molly Spencer's poetry collection, Invitatory, was selected as a 2022 New Measure Poetry Prize Winner. It is Spencer's third collection, joining If the House (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) and Hinge (SIU Press,...
State & Hill

From grounded to global

May 3, 2023
"One positive international experience can flip a switch, change a student's academic and professional trajectory. You never know what that experience might be," says Dan Ellis, assistant director of the International Policy Center (IPC). He and...
State & Hill

Global Fordies make the school a bigger, better place

May 3, 2023
By Daniel Rivkin Akiho Nagano (MPP '23) and Mayu Ueno (MPP '24) were speaking in a corridor at Weill Hall, sharing thoughts about past jobs, future jobs, and their families. Roaming the halls, you can hear similar conversations, in their case in...
State & Hill

The Ford School: On the map

May 3, 2023
Here are just a few of the international learning opportunities that Ford School undergraduate and graduate students have undertaken since 2020—travel courses, research projects, internships, externships, and simulations—all preparing students for...
News

Writing Center's Spencer wins poetry prize

Feb 9, 2023
Ford School writing instructor Molly Spencer’s poetry collection, Invitatory, was selected as a 2022 New Measure Poetry Prize Winner. It is Spencer ‘s third collection, joining If the House (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) and Hinge (SIU Press,...
In the Media

Ralph reports on local leaders' theory of change in Cincinnati

Aug 23, 2022 Soapbox Cincinnati
Writing instructor Alex Ralph spoke to four nonprofit leaders in Cincinnati "to understand what drew them to their work and how, obstacles and all, they try to implement their theory of change." "These four leaders form a kind of Greek chorus,"...
State & Hill

(In)Exorable: A poem by Yazier Henry

Dec 13, 2021
Earth spirit burns, an internal fire. The shadow lives on in the body, just as it does in the memories of the blood. Gasping for air, struggling, desperate to find life’s fragile lines under the relentless weight of...
News

Watkins-Hayes on the transformative power of HIV/AIDS activism

Dec 2, 2021
On World Aids Day, Celeste Watkins-Hayes participated in a discussion at The City Club of Cleveland, on the importance of activism and community leadership to confront the inequalities perpetuated by HIV/AIDS and useful lessons that can apply to...
In the Media

Wolfers weighs in on gender imbalance on college campuses

Nov 29, 2021 The New York Times
Justin Wolfers penned an opinion piece for the New York Times, sharing his views on the striking gender imbalance on college campuses these days: roughly three women students for every two men.  “The simple mathematics of more women than men...
News

Watkins-Hayes earns ASA’s Distinguished Scholarly Book Award

Jun 18, 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy and incoming associate dean for academic affairs, for receiving the Distinguished Scholarly Book Award from the American Sociological Association....
News

Kalena Thomhave (MPP ‘21) awarded the Peter Eckstein Prize

May 10, 2021
Recent Ford School graduate Kalena Thomhave (MPP ‘21) is the 2021 winner of the Peter Eckstein Prize for Interdisciplinary Research for her comprehensive analysis of the challenges faced by the U.S. Unemployment Insurance (UI) system during the...
In the Media

Molly Spencer discusses poetry during the COVID-19 pandemic

Jan 18, 2021 Michigan Radio
While COVID-19 has made traditional forms of sharing poetry more difficult, Molly Spencer comments that "one of the gifts of this time, if we have to be in a time where we can't gather...the internet...has connected poets who otherwise wouldn't be...
State & Hill

Even so, the first bird

May 22, 2020
By Molly Spencer, writing instructor at the Ford School In the west, etched and bony light of moonset. East, warm breath of sun              fleshing the sky. Nothing will ever be as legible as these hills, still black with their faith...

New BA minor opens policy education to more U-M students

Dec 10, 2019
Starting fall 2020, the Ford School will offer University of Michigan undergraduates a 16-credit minor in public policy.  The minor will have a competitive application process that will go live in April 2020. The school expects to enroll around...

Workshop series helps Ford students with communication skills

Feb 21, 2019
Even the best policies still need to be communicated well in order to be effective. But what’s the best way to tell a story and make it part of the public conversation?Getting Stuff Done: Communications Skills Series is aimed at helping Ford School...