How Can a Mayor Enact Change Once He’s Left Office?

One of the most common complaints about politicians is their lack of connectivity with the constituents that they serve. But you certainly can’t say that about R.T. Ryback, the former mayor of Minneapolis.
That’s because he’s teaching a new course at the University of Michigan called “Mayor 101.” Within the classroom walls, students are learning from Rybeck about all of the different components that encompass being a mayor — including how to be a public leader.
Elected mayor back in 2002 R.T. Rybeck served three terms, finishing his last term in January 2014. During his tenure, he handled budget crises, worked to increase interfaith dialogue following Sept. 11 and in 2009, oversaw the opening of a new college football stadium. While his background is in architecture and journalism (having degrees and work experience in both fields), he now using his knowledge and time as mayor to teach students about urban physical development and city policy.
And although he only has political experience in Minneapolis, he encourages all his students to look at the cities around them like Rochester, Duluth and St. Paul. For Rybeck, you can learn just as much, if not more, from another city as you can from your own.
“You most often get the best ideas by getting lost in cities,” Rybeck tells City Lab. “I’ve always studied other cities and I really think that’s the best way to understand these things.”
The class has no midterms or finals, but throughout the course, students are encouraged to go out into the city and practice what they are taught. At the end of the course, students will present their own urban-development proposal.
“I’d like all the energy they would have spent cramming on a final to be spent trying to develop something that can have an impact on a current place being designed,” Rybeck explains to City Lab. “I very much want these students to use the work they’re doing to go out into the workplace. Because we need their perspective now. Not just when they graduate.”
If that change can start now, just imagine what can happen when these students reach public office.
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Shaka Senghor Doesn’t Let Mistakes Define Him

Shaka Senghor is a motivational speaker, a Director’s Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and the author of six books. At age 19, however, he shot and killed a man.
“I was a young drug dealer with a quick temper and a semi-automatic pistol,” he reveals during a TED Talk in March.

Twenty-three years ago, that was Senghor’s story. With the support of his family, mentors, literature and a newfound passion for writing, Senghor changed his narrative.

His story begins like any other American child growing up. He was a scholarship student on the honor roll with aspirations of becoming a doctor. But his parents’ separation and divorce affected his upbringing, leading him to spiral down a dark path.

As a 17-year-old drug dealer working the corner on the streets of Detroit, Senghor was shot three times. A brief trip to the hospital led him directly back to the neighborhood with a bitter outlook.

“Throughout this ordeal, no one hugged me, no one counseled me, no one told me I would be okay,” he recalls. “No one told me that I would live in fear, that I would become paranoid, or that I would react hyper-violently to being shot. No one told me that one day, I would become the person behind the trigger.”

Violence is a vicious cycle, and for criminals it’s exacerbated by an incarceration system that perpetuates recidivism rather than affording inmates opportunities to turn their lives around.

“…the majority of men and women who are incarcerated are redeemable, and the fact is, 90 percent of the men and women who are incarcerated will at some point return to the community,” Senghor notes, “and we have a role in determining what kind of men and women return to our community.”

Hostility over his situation led Senghor to continue his criminal activities behind prison walls, ultimately landing him in solitary confinement for seven and a half years. But one day, Senghor received a letter from his son, which read, ‘”My mama told me why you was in prison: murder. Dad, don’t kill. Jesus watches what you do. Pray to Him.”
The sobering realization that his son identified him as a murderer forced introspection, and for Senghor to finally confront his actions. With guidance from mentors he met inside prison, delving into texts by inspirational authors like Malcolm X, unwavering support from his family and a penchant for journaling, Senghor was afforded an opportunity to leave behind his troubled past.
In the four short years since his release, that checkered history has been replaced with a bright future.
Among his other achievements, Senghor is a 2014 W.K. Kellogg Community Leadership Network Fellow, teaches at the University of Michigan and serves as a national spokesperson for Black Male Engagement (BMe), a network of black males engaged in their communities.
His personal transformation, he adds, was possible because of three components: acknowledgement of hurting himself and others, apologizing to those he hurt and atonement for his actions. For Senghor, atoning helps at-risk youth and former inmates transform their lives.

“Anybody can have a transformation if we create the space for that to happen,” he says. “So what I’m asking today is that you envision a world where men and women aren’t held hostage to their pasts, where misdeeds and mistakes don’t define you for the rest of your life.”

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While Our Actions Sometimes Say Otherwise, This New Survey Reveals That We Really Do Care About the Earth

What do you care about more, the environment or your bottom line? As it turns out, Mother Nature is finally trumping bank account balances for most Americans.
A recent survey by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor found that Americans care (or at least say they do) more about the environment than energy affordability. In the past, many studies have asked about this subject by posing it as a trade off — a would you rather, in a sense, pitting dollars and cents over birds and bees.
This time around, the research team led by John DeCicco went about it quite differently. By clearly inquiring about the importance of energy cost and environmental impact separately from each other made respondents show their true beliefs, untainted by how they feel about the other.
By asking respondents how they feel about environmental impact, DeCicco was able to show that “roughly 60 percent of respondents said they worried a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’” about it, according to Fast Company. This even held true across multiple income levels.
What’s so groundbreaking about these results? They show that caring about the environment is a natural and popular opinion, which should put more people in support of individual and communal environmental efforts. A similar study was done in October 2013, with results coming in about even, which was impressive at the time, but this newer study shows a great trend in our collective thinking.
So whether it be oil spills or hurricanes or just hotter summer days, Americans seem to be caring more about the place around them. Which is certainly good news for the planet.
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Inspiring the Next Generation Of Energy Conservationists

If anyone ever questions the future of sustainable energy, look no further than Cindy Johengen’s fifth grade class at Allen Elementary School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
With the guidance of 32 engineering students from the University of Michigan who go by the nickname “Woven Wind,” these middle schoolers put up their own 15-foot wind turbine in their school’s backyard. MLive reports that this mini turbine — with its three three-foot-long blades — reportedly cost $600 and was just a temporary installation. (Woven Wind is working on securing permits for a permanent installation)
As for how much juice it provides, it can power small devices like cell phones. However, don’t scoff at the contraption’s tiny punch. There’s so much more to it than that.
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The student team — who usually build small-scale turbines to power rural villages in countries such as Guatemala — decided to work a little closer to home. The reason why? To educate and inspire these youngsters about sustainable energy.
“The greatest moments are when we see the ‘aha’ moments and the ideas click in their heads,” said Nick Kalweit, the lead engineer of the Woven Wind project and senior in mechanical engineering.
It’s more important than ever to teach the next generation the importance of sustainability, especially since the planet they will inherit is facing the impacts of climate change.
As Woven Wind team member Anastasia Ostrowski said, “When I was younger, growing up, I never had that education. I didn’t get the stress of renewable energies or the stress of finding ways to better our planet. These kids have a great opportunity that a lot of their education is stressed on that because of the times we’re in. Everyone is realizing that renewable [energy] is essential.”
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Why It Took A Plea From A Pizza Guy to Increase Michigan’s Higher Education Funding

As the recent news of Starbucks offering to pay for its employees college tuition reveals, higher education is not a privilege of the elite.
That’s a message education leaders in Michigan have been trying to illustrate to lawmakers as funding for higher education was reduced by about $1 billion in total cuts over the past 10 years. Back in 2011, the leader of another national chain pitched in to persuade Michigan lawmakers to include Governor Rick Snyder’s proposal for a 6 percent increase in funding higher education in the state’s 2015 budget.
“The fact that the pizza guy is coming to them to talk about higher education funding is unexpected,” said Patrick Doyle, the CEO of Domino’s Pizza.
Doyle, as a part of the Business Leaders for Michigan, argued that the state was not producing enough candidates with the skills to run and operate the online component of his Ann-Arbor-based company, which is one of the state’s biggest employers. In fact, just three in 10 adults in Michigan held a college degree—including only some, but certainly not all, of the state’s lawmakers themselves.

The Business Leaders for Michigan coalition, which is comprised of Michigan’s highest-ranking business and university leaders, contends that investing in higher education is integral to growth — just as much as population or jobs programs.

“It’s a producer of economic impact. It’s part of the overall economy,” said Doug Rothwell, president of the business leaders.

The coalition recognized higher education as an asset in its first release of the Michigan Turnaround Plan in 2009. The plan identified the state’s major strengths and areas for potential growth, which included Michigan’s higher education system as a major economic asset. Like elsewhere in the country, the group found a disparity between the available jobs and the workforce’s skills. Michigan ranks 30th for the nation’s educated workforce.

So why are they not being filled? In part, it’s because of the [lack of] college affordability,” Rothwell said.

The group began lobbying for performance-based funding as a means of increasing cash for colleges in 2011 before lawmakers allocated $21.9 million in new appropriations in 2014. Success rates are determined by such factors as graduation rates and administrative costs.

Though support has been gradual, Governor Snyder’s 2015 budget includes the largest increase to higher education funding in more than a decade. The boost — $80 million out of the $1.4 billion in funding — includes a 3.2 percent cap on tuition increases in order to receive full state funding.

Michigan’s inclusion of higher education funding is part of a greater trend sweeping the country. Only nine states have decided not to include some sort of funding increase for the 2015 budget, and 25 states have implemented policy for performance-based funding for their higher education institutions.

While performance metrics aren’t ideal for larger universities, the method does benefit all types of colleges and universities as a whole. As the Business Leaders for Michigan have illustrated, the education system is better off when higher education receives a bigger piece of the funding pie.

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Michigan Shows the Power of Venture Capital

Entrepreneurs and venture capital go hand in hand.
There’s no where that that is truer than in Michigan, where over the past five years, venture capitalism has increased by 84 percent in the state compared to a 13 percent drop nationwide, according to a report from Cassie Jones, the executive director of Michigan Venture Capital Association. Not only is Michigan ahead of the rest of the country, it also defeated its neighbors with more venture-backed deals in 2013 than Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
And the numbers only get better as venture capital-backed companies in Michigan increased by 66 percent to 103 companies. Among that, angel investment (a type of investor that’s usually found among the entrepreneur’s family and friends) is also up — with 36 companies receiving more than $9.9 million in funding.
At the University of Michigan’s Office of Technology Transfer, entrepreneurs, investor,s and innovators recently gathered to network and discuss the future of business in Michigan. The semi-annual Entrepreneurs Engage event is a sounding board and an example of what a leap of faith can do for businesses.
The focus of the event? Continuing the state’s success into the future. Among the topics of discussion are the MILE Act, angel investing, the disparity between the startup ecosystems of Detroit and Ann Arbor, and how to snatch the recent graduates of the University of Michigan.
One of the defining characteristics of Michigan’s venture capitalists (VCs) program is that the state has been involved every step of the way. While most states only help fund certain areas, the state’s Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) has focused on every area equally from early funding to university tech transfer to fund-of-funds. This is why 20 of Michigan’s 35 venture capitalist firms are Michigan born and bred.
“It’s nice, 10 to 12 years after the state implemented strategies like the 21st Century Jobs Fund, to have VCs hold up a mirror and say Michigan did so much right,” said Paula Sorrell, vice president of entrepreneurship and innovation at MEDC. “Some states fund parts, but Michigan did the entire ecosystem.” 
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