COVID-19 has affected the normal rhythms of the legal academy in ways that may be particularly disruptive for early-career faculty, clinical, LRW, and other non-tenured faculty. Faculty Focus is a series of weekly conversational webinars organized around issues facing these individuals and the legal academy in general.
Each 60-minute webinar features expert advice from law school leaders followed by shared experiences from early career and non-tenured law faculty themselves. The sessions are structured to encourage conversation and connection, with opportunities for participants to crowdsource solutions and discuss common issues across schools and teaching areas.
Coming this Fall: Returning to the Not-So-Normal
The fall 2020 Faculty Focus series will focus on how to navigate the first full term since the global pandemic began, and include discussions on topics ranging from work-life balance to achieving excellence in a time of uncertainty; from understanding nuts-and-bolts aspects of teaching and learning to finding pathways to leadership. Watch this page for upcoming topics and speakers as we approach the upcoming term.
Past
Miss a session? Take a look at these previous sessions:
Week 1: Work-Life Balance and the Demands of Scholarship
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Week 2: Meeting the Needs of All Students Online
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Week 3: Excellence in Online Instruction
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Week 4: Racism, Justice, and Your Fall Classes
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Week 5: A Perspective from the Dean’s Offices
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Week 6: Effective Use of Research Assistants
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Week 6: How to Become an Excellent Teacher While Starting Your Career in a Pandemic
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Week 7: What Every Faculty Member Should be Doing This Summer
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Hosts
Darby Dickerson, AALS President and Dean, UIC John Marshall Law School
Darby Dickerson, the 2020 AALS President, has been a dean for seventeen years. She currently is Dean at the UIC John Marshall Law School and previously has served as Dean at Stetson University College of Law, Texas Tech University School of Law, and The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Her areas of expertise include higher education law and policy and legal writing. Before entering academia, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and practiced commercial litigation in Dallas. She earned her B.A. and M.A. from William & Mary and her J.D. from Vanderbilt.
Vince Rougeau, AALS President-elect and Dean, Boston College Law School
Vincent D. Rougeau has been the Dean of Boston College Law School since 2011. He is President-Elect of AALS and has previously served as a member of the AALS Executive Committee and as a member of the Council of the Boston Bar Association. A vocal advocate for change in legal education, he writes and speaks extensively on legal education reform. He has led a reorganization in leadership structure at BC Law that supports a more holistic approach to academic and student services, expands the school’s national and international recruitment of a diverse student body, and enhances the school’s commitment to experiential learning and global engagement.
Moderator
Jeff Allum, AALS Director of Research
Jeff Allum is the Director of Research & Data Analytics for AALS. In addition to moderating Faculty Focus, Dr. Allum oversees AALS’s research agenda, including Before the JD and the Study of the American Law School Dean. With more than 20 years’ experience conducting higher education and workforce research, the results of his work have been reported in Bloomberg Law, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The National Law Journal, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, to name a few. He holds an EdD in Education Policy from the George Washington University.