William H. Bowen School of Law honors Faculty Excellence winners

March 27 - April 2, 2023

By Angelita Faller

 

The UA Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law has honored five faculty members as the winners of the 2023 Faculty Excellence Awards.

 

Bowen has selected andré cummings, Nick Kahn-Fogel, Suzanne Penn, Kelly Terry, and Aaron Schwabach as its top professors of the year. 

 

The university-wide Faculty Excellence winners will be revealed during a 5:30 p.m.  ceremony on April 6 in the auditorium in the Engineering and Information Technology Building. 

 

More information about the winners:

 

Faculty Excellence Award for Public Service

 

Suzanne Penn is an assistant professor of clinical legal education at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Penn has provided life-changing legal services to underrepresented Arkansas for years.   

 

In 2014, Penn suggested the idea of creating a clinical experience for law students in the Delta region of Arkansas, which has long been underserved by attorneys and is home to many individuals unable to afford an attorney even if one was available. The Delta project consists of two different courses: The Delta Experience course and the Delta Clinic course. The Delta Experience course is a two-week, two-credit summer intersession course open to all students who have completed their first year. 

 

Faculty Excellence Award for Teaching

 

Nicholas Kahn-Fogel is the distinguished professor in constitutional law at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Students comment on his rigorous but nurturing and intellectually challenging classes.

 

Kahn-Fogel uses a modified version of the Socratic Method in most of his in-class instruction, in which he randomly calls on students. This increases the likelihood that all students will have the opportunity to engage in class discussion. Recommendations from students have positively commented on this. 

 

Faculty Excellence Award for Research and Creative Endeavors

 

Kelly Terry is the Ben J. Altheimer professor of law, director of externship programs and pro bono opportunities, and the associate dean of experiential learning and clinical programs at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Her research has been influential in the area of experiential legal education. 

 

Terry works to provide law faculty with the theory and best practices to make a legal education more beneficial for students. Over the last five years, Terry has published three books on best practices when it comes to course design, curriculum integration, teaching methods, and assessment of student learning in a legal education. Law professors from around the country have praised and noted these bodies of work. She has also received national recognition for her work. 

 

Faculty Excellence Award for Social Justice

 

André Douglas Pond Cummings is the Charles C. Baum professor of law and associate dean for faculty development at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Along with Professor Anastasia Boles, he founded and directs the Center for Racial Justice and Criminal Justice Reform at the law school. 

 

The center was launched in September 2021 to advance racial equity, access to justice, and fairness in Arkansas and the region through academic legal research. The mission of the center aligns with Bowen’s core values of access to justice, public service, and professionalism. Boles and cummings have secured more than $1.3 million dollars in grants and gifts for the center from organizations such as the Walmart Foundation, Winthrop Rockefeller, and Building Black Communities just to name a few. 

 

Faculty Excellence Award for Rising Faculty

 

Aaron Schwabach is an associate professor of law at the William H. Bowen Law School of Law. Schwabach has been praised by his colleagues at the law school particularly in the development of the new Master of Study in Law degree (M.S.L.). 

 

The M.S.L. degree provides legal training for non-lawyers who wish to develop legal expertise that will aid them in their current jobs or facilitate career advancement. Schwabach drafted all the materials needed for the American Bar Association to acquiesce to the degree, which the association did in February 2021.