The UofL Women's Center will present the seventh annual Kentucky Women's Book Festival, Saturday, May 18 (the 3rd Saturday in May) at  Ekstrom Library. This event brings together Kentucky women writers and their readers.

Judith C. Owens-Lalude will open the festival with a talk on the Underground Railroad. The author drew inspiration for her novel, “The Long Walk: Slavery to Freedom,” from stories she heard about her enslaved great-grandfather and his mother, travel to her husband’s native Nigeria and books by men who had been slaves in the same Kentucky counties as her family.

Other speakers include:

• Kristen Gentry, assistant professor of creative writing at SUNY Geneseo
• Nora Rose “Rosie” Moosnick, author of “Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky”
• Judi Jennings, researcher and writer
• Bianca Spriggs, Affrilachian and performance poet who will give the luncheon keynote
• Sarah Garland, education journalist and author of "Divided We Fail: The Story of an African American Community That Ended the Era of School Desegregation"
• Erin Keane, Sheri L. Wright and Amy Tudor, who will give a poetry reading

The lunch session is the only one that requires registration and has a charge. Registration for it is required by May 15 and can be made by calling the UofL Women’s Center at 502-852-8976. The cost is $16. People who do not want to eat lunch can attend for free.

This year, one lucky festival attendee will win a $100 gift certificate from Carmichael's Bookstore!

If you're interested in volunteering, please contact Virginia Mattingly immediately.

Congratulations on finishing your Spring exams.  As a result of feedback from students after the Fall semester, we will be releasing grades slightly differently this semester.  Rather than release grades to students piecemeal as they are posted by professors, the University registrar's office will hold all grades until after the grading and posting deadline of Friday, May 10, and then release grades to students all at once.  Your Spring 2013 grades should be available on the University website on Saturday, May 11. 

Best wishes to everyone for a happy and productive Summer.

Lawlapalooza, the Louisville legal community's battle of the bands, returns to the Phoenix Hill Tavern, Thursday, October 17, 2013.

Stay tuned for more information, including band registration details. 

Professor Tony Arnold’s innovative educational methods and “unparalleled devotion to students” have won him the University of Louisville’s 2013 Trustees Award. The annual award, selected by the Board of Trustees, recognizes a faculty member for extraordinary impact on students and is considered by many to be the highest honor the University bestows on a faculty member. Arnold will receive a plaque and a $5,000 cash award and will give a speech at the University Commencement ceremonies in May 2013.

Arnold is the Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. He holds an affiliated appointment in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs and directs the Center for Land Use and Environmental Responsibility.

Twenty-nine of Arnold’s former students in law and urban planning wrote letters of support for Interim Dean Susan Duncan’s nomination of Arnold. When news of his selection was posted on Facebook, hundreds of his former students “liked” or commented on it.

The fact that Arnold remains connected with his former students, many of whom he counts as friends, says a lot about the importance of mentoring to him. He is grateful for the positive, lasting influence of his own mentors, which has motivated him to make mentoring a core part of his role as a teacher. He often goes out of his way to be available to help students. One student described Arnold as “a compassionate professor and mentor that always goes above and beyond his call of duty to see students succeed.” A former student talked about how Arnold’s belief in her helped her to overcome her under-confidence as an African American woman from a western Kentucky farm family. With his encouragement and support, she received a national fellowship from the American Association of University Women and went on to realize her dream of working on agriculture policy and justice with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC. Others wrote about how he connected them with a job or internship opportunity. Many students credited their professional and personal success to Arnold’s mentoring.

His students praised his innovative experiential-learning methods that integrate intellectual rigor with development of practical skills. They stated that his methods should be a national model for legal education and that his courses were among the best they had ever had. He teaches a Land Use and Planning Law class in which interdisciplinary teams of law and urban planning students work on service-learning projects for government agencies or nonprofit organizations. Many of these projects have actually influenced public policy, and one – an urban tree canopy plan for Louisville – won a statewide planning award. His Real Estate Transactions class is structured around simulated negotiation and drafting of complex transactional documents based on real-world examples. Student after student wrote about how they were able to use practical skills learned in Arnold’s classes in the professional world, but also were able to see issues deeply, critically, and from multiple disciplines.

Students also expressed great enthusiasm for Arnold’s field-study land and water conservation seminars, in which he organizes many extensive field trips that take students to the sites of real-world environmental issues, where they discuss them with the participants. One student wrote, “It is one thing to learn about the conservation efforts taking place at the Green River dam in the classroom; it is quite another thing to learn about them at the riverside from the people on the ground. The courses were extraordinary and Professor Arnold really highlighted the intersection of the law and extra-legal disciplines as a vehicle for collaborative problem solving.”

Arnold is not only a distinguished teacher and mentor but also an internationally renowned multidisciplinary scholar. He received the University’s top award for outstanding research and scholarship in the social sciences in 2011, and his publications have been cited by scholars, policy-makers, and professionals over 1700 times. Arnold’s students articulated the tremendous value of being taught by a prominent expert. His obvious enthusiasm for his subject matter has created a positive and effective learning environment, as well as research innovations that are influencing our ideas and institutions.

University Trustee Bruce Henderson stated that Arnold’s “approach to scholarship, teaching and practice is cutting-edge, dynamic, multi-dimensional, and practical.” Arnold states that he hopes to make a positive difference in the world, not only through his own research and public service but also through the impact that he has on the education and lives of his students.

Arnold received his Bachelor of Arts with Highest Distinction from the University of Kansas in 1987, and his Doctor of Jurisprudence with Distinction from Stanford University in 1990. After five years in law practice, he returned to Stanford Law School as a Teaching Fellow in 1995-96. He has taught at several universities and joined the University of Louisville in 2005.

 

We have one spot open to a student, free of cost, for each day of the Warns Institute, the law school's annual labor and employment CLE program.  It will be held at the Seelbach Hilton on June 13-14.  More information is available at http://www.law.louisville.edu/2013warnsinstitute.  Free attendance requires a commitment to arrive early in the morning and man the registration table.  It may also require missing parts of, or entire, lectures, but we will accommodate your preferences to assure that you hear those you are particulary interested in. If you are interested, submit an e-mail to Becky Wenning, becky.wenning@louisville.edu, copy Maggie Bratcher, margaret.bratcher@louisville.edu, and Ariana Levinson, a.levinson@louisville.edu, and include a paragraph stating why you are interested in attending.  Also state whether you prefer to attend on Thursday or Friday or are interested in attending on either day.  Please submit your statement of interest no later than 5:00 p.m. on May 20, 2013. 

Students are also welcome to attend the entire program at the reduced cost of $70, or one day of the program at the reduced cost of $35.  If you plan to register at reduced cost, please do so by contacting Maggie Bratcher at 502-852-1669.

We are excited to announce a new bar exam scholarship opportunity for UofL Law students!

The Joseph L. and Shannon A. Hamilton Law School Bar Review Fund will be used to make financial awards to students for whom payment of expenses related to Kentucky Bar Exam Review courses and related course materials would otherwise result in financial hardship.

Interested students must be currently enrolled (in good standing) or recent graduates of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.  A recent graduate is defined for this purpose as someone who completed law school within one year of the bar exam review course for which support is being sought.  Qualified students will be of high moral character, demonstrate excellent writing and analytical skills, and show a commitment to serious preparation for the Kentucky Bar Exam.  A candidate’s grades will be taken into account as one factor, but not the primary factor for consideration.  A successful candidate for an award must show that he or she cannot otherwise afford to pay for a Bar Exam Review Course and/or the Bar Exam review materials.

To be considered for a scholarship, you must submit the completed application and required documents to Dean Ballard by May 17, 2013.

Applications are available from Dean Ballard (Office 216), or you may email Dean Ballard to request an application via email.

As you finish your final exams this week, please take a look at the summary of scholarship and writing competition opportunities that have deadlines during the summer.  Information about all of these opportunities has been posted in the Docket over the last several weeks, but are now summarized for your convenience.  There is something for everyone - even graduating law students.  If you have questions, contact Dean Ballard at 852-8956.  Good Luck!

We have one spot open to a student, free of cost, for each day of the Warns Institute, the law school's annual labor and employment CLE program.  It will be held at the Seelbach Hilton on June 13-14.  More information is available at http://www.law.louisville.edu/2013warnsinstitute.  Free attendance requires a commitment to arrive early in the morning and man the registration table.  It may also require missing parts of, or entire, lectures, but we will accommodate your preferences to assure that you hear those you are particularly interested in.  If you are interested, submit an e-mail to Becky Wenning, becky.wenning@louisville.edu, copy Maggie Bratcher, margaret.bratcher@louisville.edu, and Ariana Levinson, a.levinson@louisville.edu, and include a paragraph stating why you are interested in attending on either day.  Please submit your statement of interest no later that 5:00 p.m. on May 20, 2013.

Students are also welcome to attend the entire program at the reduced cost of $70, or one day of the program at the reduced cost of $35.  If you plan to register at reduced cost, please do so by contacting Maggie Bratcher at 502-852-1669.

As you finish your final exams this week, please take a look at the summary of scholarship and writing competition opportunities that have deadlines during the summer.  Information about all of these opportunities has been posted in the Docket over the last several weeks, but are now summarized for your convenience.  There is something for everyone - even graduating law students.  If you have questions, contact Dean Ballard at 852-8956.  Good Luck!