- AALS News – Summer 2020
- President’s Message: Change
- Spotlight on Sections: Property Law
- Spotlight on Sections: Civil Rights
- AALS Debuts Faculty Focus Webinar Series
- Law School Deans Create Antiracist Clearinghouse
- 2021 Annual Meeting Will Be Virtual
- Explore the Latest Journal of Legal Education
- Journal of Legal Education and Miami Law Host Virtual Symposium
- Update Your Bio in the Directory of Law Teachers
- View Past Issues of AALS News
This summer, AALS presented Faculty Focus, a webinar series aimed at early-career faculty, clinical, legal research and writing, and other non-tenured faculty for whom the challenges of the pandemic response may be particularly disruptive.
Faculty Focus was a series of weekly conversational webinars hosted by AALS President Darby Dickerson (UIC John Marshall Law School) and President-elect Vince Rougeau (Boston College Law School), and moderated by AALS Director of Research Jeff Allum. Each 60-minute session featured expert advice from law school leaders on that week’s topic, followed by shared experiences from early career and non-tenured law faculty peers, providing a wide variety of perspectives on issues that ranged from pandemic-specific to about the academy in general.
The sessions were structured to encourage conversation and connection, with opportunities for participants to crowdsource solutions and discuss common issues across schools and teaching areas.
The summer series covered the following topics:
- Work-Life Balance and the Demands of Scholarship
- Meeting the Needs of All Students Online
- Excellence in Online Instruction
- Racism, Justice, and Your Fall Classes
- A Perspective from the Deans Office
- Effective Use of Research Assistants
- How to Become an Excellent Teacher While Starting Your Career in a Pandemic
- What Every Faculty Member Should Be Doing This Summer
Each session was recorded live and is now available to stream on the AALS website. See www.aals.org/events/faculty-focus/ to access the archive.
Attendee feedback throughout the series was positive, with many attendees returning for new topics in subsequent weeks. One attendee said specifically about week six: “I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten so much useful information from a single panel.” A strong majority of attendees who submitted evaluations after each week’s session reported that they would recommend the series to others.
Though Faculty Focus is currently on a break, the series will return in the fall with webinars centered around “Returning to the Not-So-Normal.” The content of the series will again be geared toward early career faculty, but all are welcome to attend. Learn more at www.aals.org/events/faculty-focus/.