Sunday began with church at 8:30 a.m. at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church followed by breakfast with the Breakfast Bunch.  This afternoon I worked on my speech for the University’s MLK Commemoration on Tuesday at 4:00 p.m.

Saturday I did one of my very favorite things in the whole wide world and that was to have dinner with Kitty Gay, one of my very best friends. She has been very supportive and nurturing of me as I’ve worked in this role, so that was a lovely way to end the week.

The next day I met first thing in the morning with Michele Payne and our development fellows as well as Andy Albertson, our Communications Director. We talked about a number of upcoming events to make sure we began to plan for them. That afternoon I was supposed to have some visitors for a tour of the law school and lunch, but they never showed up so that became found time to catch up on work.

Dean Nance with Clarence Jones

On the 15^th, I was invited to attend Wal-Mart’s 13^th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The theme was “Realizing the Dream: A Call to Action.” I have come to enjoy my visits to Wal-Mart’s Home Office because so many of our alums work there. It’s always fun to see them and to catch up with what’s going on in their lives. So in addition to what is typically a very good program, it’s a really wonderful time to reconnect with our alums. I was scheduled to arrive at the Wal-Mart Home Office lobby at 10:00 a.m. so that I could be signed in as a guest and escorted to my seat by Jasmine Gregory. I had a tough time finding a parking space, so I didn’t get there until about 10:15 a.m., but the program didn’t start until 11:00 a.m., so that was okay. The program consisted of: Welcome -Josephine La Fayette, VP, Diversity Programming, Wal-Mart; Special Performance -Arkansas Gospel Mass Choir; Introduction of Speaker -Sirtric Dilworth, Audit Committee Liaison, Wal-Mart; Speaker – Mr. Clarence B. Jones, Civil Rights Advocate; Special Performance -Arkansas Gospel Mass Choir; Introduction of Speaker -Raymond House, Compensation Analyst, Sam’s Club; Speaker -Dr. Fitzgerald Hill, President, Arkansas Baptist College; and Occasion – Mike Duke, Vice Chairman, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Read the rest of this entry »

The next day I had a series of meetings, in between which of course, there was the inevitable onslaught of e-mails as well as informal visits with colleagues. The first scheduled meeting was with Michele Payne in our Development and Alumni Relations Office and Susan Williams who is our Pro Bono Coordinator. That was a very pleasant meeting during which we planned an event to recognize our many students who participate in the pro bono program. Later in the afternoon I attended a meeting with the campus diversity evaluation team. This was a group of three academicians from other campuses with special expertise in the area of diversity. They were helping the University of Arkansas look at its programs and think strategically about how we might advance our diversity initiatives in a more structured and systematic manner. The team members were: Dr. Charlie Nelms, Chancellor and Professor of Education at North Carolina Central University; Dr. Nancy “Rusty” Barcelo, Vice President and Vice Provost for Equity and Diversity at the University of Minnesota; and Dr. Lester Monts, Senior Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

I have to say that when I saw the meeting on my calendar I thought, “Oh, no, not another task force,” but they were very, very sharp. They asked insightful and pointed questions and shared their insights from other campuses. It turned out to be a much more focused and interesting meeting than I had anticipated and I was really glad I was able to attend. The folks who were in my session included Dean Allen, Dean Beene, and Dean Collis Geren, along with Nancy Barcelo. Our meeting started a little bit later and ran a little bit longer than anticipated, so I missed the Faculty Senate meeting that day.

I think I mentioned in the blog posting about the trip to San Diego that while there I needed to go and get a conditioner because I’ve been losing hair. Well, I have a wonderful woman in Rogers at the salon in J.C. Penney, Lora, who is helping me both to keep and regrow my hair, so after the diversity meeting it was time to scoot out for that.

Mary Herrington

Sunday was church as usual followed by breakfast with the Breakfast Bunch at Sunset Grill in Springdale, which I’ve described before in previous blog postings. It was also a day spent unpacking from the previous week’s trip and preparing for Monday.

The next day, Monday, January 12, began with Claudia and Pilates first thing in the morning at 7:00 a.m. It was also Mary Herrington’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Mary! During the day I returned a number of phone calls because the messages had accumulated over the break and while I was on vacation. We had a faculty meeting at noon during which it was our pleasure to host John Mayer, Executive Director of the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI). He gave the faculty a terrific presentation on the way that technology is being used in legal education. For example, he talked about podcasting class lectures. Most of the students who’d used this technology indicated they found it helpful. It’s more flexible than videotaping because students can listen at any time rather than having to sit in front of a screen to watch the lecture. He also mentioned the movement towards digital textbooks. Lulu is a program that can print a 500 page book for about $19 shipped. John also demonstrated software called Instapoll which can be used in class to obtain students’ votes on various responses. It was great to have him share his knowledge of teaching technology with us. Read the rest of this entry »

Panel on "The Role of Law Schools in the Promotion of Human Rights and Legal and Curricular Reform Abroad."

Saturday morning I attended a session sponsored by the Committee on International Cooperation Program entitled, “The Role of Law Schools in the Promotion of Human Rights and Legal and Curricular Reform Abroad.”  I have to say that one of the striking things about the panelists was that they were all guys.  There were no women who could address this topic?  It made me wonder.  Some of the other audience members noticed the lack of diversity on that panel, too.  Nevertheless, I did stay for the entire session which ended at noon.  The panelists shared some very interesting stories.  They talked about the role of law schools in the promoting of values of human dignity in the international context as well as the role of U.S. law schools in participating in international efforts to promote curricular reform and provide assistance to improve the legal system abroad.

The first panel was “Should Law Schools Have a Role in Developing Fundamental Rights and Democratic Values?”  The panelists were Douglass W. Cassel, Notre Dame Law School; Michelo Hansungule, University of Pretoria, Faculty of Law, South Africa; Jennifer P. Lyman, American University; Nicolás Espejo Yaksic, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile; and the moderator was Claudio Grossman, American University.  This panel addressed whether law schools had a role in the international context in promoting fundamental values of human dignity.  Some of the issues included activism and direct participation in policy debates; the promotion of human rights and democracy and the North-South tension, litigation and the promotion of grassroots efforts, and the role of NGOs and governments; and the role of experiential learning, doctrine and theoretical studies. Read the rest of this entry »

Left to right: Professor Melling, Professor Christopher Cameron, Professor Joseph Slater

Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the fact that there was a breakfast for law deans at the same time as the Labor and Employment Law breakfast.  As it turned out though, I ran into a number of deans who sat down with me, and shared the information that was given at the Deans’ breakfast.  Next year I’ll have to be careful to monitor for that, but as I mentioned at the outset about this conference there are so many events at the same time that sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all of them.  The Labor and Employment Law breakfast is always a treat (if you can imagine breakfast at 7:00 a.m. being a treat) because these are my colleagues from the very beginning of when I entered the academy.  They have nurtured and supported me both in my role as a junior faculty member and now as dean.  One of the topics of discussion was the Restatement of Employment Law and some of the debate going on in ALI.  A number of us are ALI members and I encouraged others to attend to take part in those discussions and in shaping the restatement.  Other topics included an upcoming program this summer

Professor Paul Secunda

(which unfortunately I will have to miss because it’s at the same time as the Arkansas Bar Association) and the election of new officers for the section.  It was great comradery, informal conversation, and catching up on what’s going on in the labor and employment law world of the legal academy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Panel left to right: de Haven, Cantalupo, Rothstein and Dickerson

Today was the third day of the AALS Conference.  The first session I attended was sponsored by the Section on Education Law and co-sponsored by the Sections on Law and Mental Disability and Student Services.  The program was entitled, “Campus Violence: Prevention, Response and Liability.”  The members of the panel were Dean Darby Dickerson, Stetson University College of Law; Laura Rothstein, University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law; Nancy Cantalupo of Georgetown Law; and Helen de Haven, Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School.   While I was wandering around trying to find the session as it had been moved at the last minute to accommodate the large crowd interested in this topic, I ran into one of our alumna, Felicia Branch, who is now a member of the North Carolina Central University law faculty.  Felicia was a third year student the very first year I started teaching here.  During my tenure at the Law School, she’s the first of our alums to go on to teach in the legal academy.  It was great to see her and though she’s a Facebook friend, we hadn’t seen each other since she graduated.   So back to the panel . . . I finally (after wandering around a while) found where the session had been located.  As it turned out, it was downstairs, way back in

Dean Nance and Professor Felicia Branch

the corner, which is a bit strange for a panel on this topic, don’t you think?

The first speaker was Dean Dickerson and she took the approach that this is a risk management issue which has both law and policy aspects to it.  Her model called for identification of risks, researching the various options, and gathering data on the options and potential risks, evaluating the options, selecting the best one, implementing a plan, and then evaluation.  After each evaluation, the school should cycle through again to look at new issues that need to be addressed.  Before selecting a plan schools should remember that they will have to evaluate whatever plan is adopted and that the evaluation can be built into the plan. She shared a website with us that explains violence prevention using an environmental management model and told us about a recent report on student mental health and the law which can be found at www.jedfoundation.org/.

Read the rest of this entry »

The next day promised to be a really busy day.  There were ten events on my itinerary for the day.  It’s always a little crazy like that because in addition to the substantive sessions (for example criminal law, administrative law, agricultural law, labor law, immigration law) there are broader sessions about the academy itself.  There are also sessions on development, so it’s always sort of a scramble to try to get to the different sessions and to choose between a substantive program and, for example, curricular re-design or legal education more generally.

The conference began Wednesday morning with the welcome by John Garvey, Dean of Boston College and the presiding President of the AALS.  The plenary session that morning was on “Race and Gender in the Legal Academy” and that ran from 9:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.  I was on my way downstairs to register because they pretty much strictly enforce the fact that you have to have your badge, or at least show it, to get into the sessions (and I had to go register because as you know I skipped it the night before) and I bumped into D’lorah Hughes, one of our newest faculty members.  She is a lot of fun and has become a wonderful new addition to our law school community.  We ended up having breakfast and catching up.  So I missed that first session, but did get to the second part of that plenary session on “Race and Gender in the Legal Profession.”  In that session, the panelists reported on recent research on gender and race in the legal profession, drawing especially on new findings of the “After the J.D. Project,” and discussed how to incorporate such research into teaching programs consistent with the Carnegie Foundation’s mandate in Educating Lawyers.  The panelists for this session were Ronit Dinovitzer, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; William D. Henderson, Indiana University – Bloomington; Sam Kamin, University of Denver; Melinda S. Molina, St. John’s University; and the moderator was Bryant G. Garth, Southwestern Law School.

That afternoon, my next session started at 2:00 p.m. and that was the “Workshop on Redesigning Legal Education” and I think I’ve talked about that before on the blog.  The panelists for this session were:  Paul L. Caron, University of Cincinnati; Anne Colby, Senior Scholar, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Palo Alto, California; William D. Henderson, Indiana University, Bloomington; John Mayer, Executive Director, Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Ellen S. Podgor, Stetson University; Susan Westerberg Prager, AALS Executive Vice-President and Executive Director; Nancy B. Rapoport, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Maimon Schwarzchild, University of San Diego; and William M. Sullivan, Senior Scholar, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Palo Alto, California.    This session addressed some of the most promising – and most troublesome – possibilities in legal education; the integration of academic and skills training, the use of technology in the classroom and beyond, the assessment of student learning, the lessons that pedagogic theory offers about standard, often unexamined legal teaching methods, and the appropriate level of formality or informality between the classroom teacher and the students.

At 5:15 p.m. that evening I went to the meeting of the House of Representatives of the AALS.  Our official law school delegate to the House was Prof. Hughes.  All the Deans attend that session as well though because you find out what’s going on with the Association.  The schools all receive an agenda in advance for the business session so we pretty much know what will be covered in the meeting.  The agenda for this first business session included a call to order, adoption of the agenda, the report of Susan Westerburg Prager who is the AALS Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, as well as the report of President John Garvey, and the report of Prof. Adrian Wing who was Chair of the Membership Review Committee.  One of the most exciting things that happened during the meeting is that someone near and dear to us, Len Strickman, Dean of Florida International University College of Law, saw his law school admitted to the AALS.  Prof. Wing moved that Florida International be admitted and the vote was unanimous.  A number of the FIU faculty members were there along with Dean Strickman, who gave a brief statement about the accomplishments of the school and invited everyone to the Florida International reception that evening from 7:00-8:30 p.m. in the Marriott Hotel.

One of the things that also takes place at the first business session is the acknowledgment of members of the legal academy who have passed away during the year.  Several of those were people that I had come to know over the years.  It’s always a very solemn occasion during which the names are read while everyone stands silently.  Afterwards there is a moment of silence.

After the business meeting, there were a number of receptions including the LSAC Board of Trustees reception.  This is the first year in many years that I went as a non-volunteer with LSAC.  It was a strange feeling, but it was really good to see all of my friends – Kent Lollis of LSAC; Dan Ortiz of Virginia; Ellen Rutt of Connecticut; Athornia Steele, the new Dean at Nova; Dan Bernstein, the CEO of LSAC; Joan Van Tol, the Chief Counsel of LSAC; and a number of other good friends I made during my many years of service in the organization.

I also popped in to the Widener University School of Law reception.  I always like to go by there and say hello to my fellow Dean, Linda Ammons.  In addition, there was the Florida International University College of Law reception, and you know there was no way that I could miss that reception.  It was fun to celebrate with Len over FIU’s recent ABA accreditation and admission into AALS.  It was also great to see Danielle and a number of FIU faculty members that I’ve come to know there over the years.

I ended the evening with the University of Iowa College of Law reception.  It always feels like going home.  I really love to see everyone.  I’ve developed good friendships with some of the newer (since I graduated) faculty, including Peggie Smith, Marcella David as well as Dean Carolyn Jones.  Mike Green came to the reception.  He’s at Wake Forest now, but he was my torts teacher.  Joe Knight was there.  He is the former Dean at Seattle and is now teaching there.  He taught me commercial law or at least gave it a valiant effort.  Anyway, it’s always quite a reunion, and a fun event which capped off my evening.  Later that night there was a Deans Dessert sponsored by Cumberland School of Law and Dean John Carroll aboard the yacht America that was moored at the Grand Hyatt, but after all the receptions and sessions it was just too much so I called it an evening.