1. Turning an economic eye on education

    As the first chief economist in the U.S. Dept. of Education, Ford School alumnus Jordan Matsudaira, PhD ’05, seeks to best promote academic and financial success for students in higher education. Ford professor Kevin Stange has a one-year appointment alongside Matsudaira.

  2. From industrial wasteland to urban lure

    As president/CEO of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, Mark Wallace, MPP ’04, oversees ‘the best riverwalk in the country.’ With $1.8 billion in investments over two decades, visitors have gone from essentially zero to 3 million.

  3. Crowdsourcing a time machine

    U-M’s Clements Library holds some 60,000 picture postcards dating to the late-19th/early-20th centuries. Vintage photos and scrawled notes open a fascinating window into Michigan’s past. Help make this historic trove digitally searchable.

  4. Biden’s intended nominee for Fed’s top banking regulator: U-M Ford School Dean Michael Barr

    If confirmed, Barr would step down and take an unpaid leave of absence from U-M, retaining his faculty appointments in public policy and law and planning to return to the faculty after serving his term on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

  5. Two-thirds of local leaders see Michigan moving in the wrong direction

    The combined crises of the past year have darkened the attitudes of local government leaders, according to the first results of U-M’s 2021 Michigan Public Policy Survey.

  6. Private sector action may be linchpin to conservative support on climate change

    Study: Conservatives are more supportive of private-sector action than public-sector action, while liberals are more supportive of government regulations than private-sector action or a carbon tax.

  7. The prisoner’s dilemma

    In 1978, U-M political scientist Robert Axelrod recruited contestants for a baffling test of brains that would resonate across fields from international relations to evolutionary biology.

  8. Getting schooled

    Ford School grad Leah Ouellet, BA ’13, knew that helping to build a school in Malawi would create value there. But it was her students in Detroit who really won.

  9. One hand washes the other

    What happens to those tiny bars of hotel soap on check-out? Ford School grad Erin Zaikis, AB ’10, recycles and redistributes them.