Erin Winters
Section Director
I would like to use this column to highlight the recent work of the Section’s Resources on Outcomes and Assessments and Adjunct Faculty Committees.
The Section’s Resources on Outcomes and Assessments Committee is currently hard at work on an original draft of a sourcebook on outcomes and assessments. As you may be aware, the standards related to outcomes and assessments will go to the ABA House of Delegates for concurrence at its February Midyear Meeting. The Committee plans to launch the sourcebook in the Spring, in an effort to provide guidance and best practices. The Committee also plans to gather resources and templates to share, and host webinars. Please watch for another update in the Winter issue of Syllabus.
The Section’s Adjunct Faculty Committee completed its survey of best practices on the use of adjunct faculty at law schools over the summer and published the summary report. A similar survey was last conducted in 2010.
The goal of the report, which concludes that Adjuncts continue to be a central part of the American law school educational system, is to provide data that law schools will find useful in the on-going evaluation of their respective programs of legal education as they make efforts to improve the delivery of their curriculum and strengthen the relationship between adjuncts and full-time faculty and administration. Sixty-Five law schools completed the survey, and several highlights are summarized below:
- Skills courses are the courses most often taught by adjuncts
- Most schools actively solicit and identify specific people as candidates to teach as adjuncts
- The law school’s associate dean for academic affairs is most often responsible for hiring decisions related to adjuncts
- Almost all schools provide adjuncts with syllabus and IT support
- Most adjuncts are evaluated solely by student evaluations
- There is very little visiting of adjunct taught courses by faculty or administrators
- Most schools have no maximum number of courses taught by an adjunct each year
I hope you will join me in thanking the members of these committees, listed below, for the time and expertise they have so generously given to their work. They care deeply about legal education and their contributions are greatly appreciated.
Adjunct Faculty Committee
David Lander (Co-Chair), Professor of Practice, St. Louis University School of Law
Lawrence Ponoroff (Co-Chair), Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus. Tulane University Law School
William Snape, Assistant Dean of Adjunct Faculty Affairs, American University Washington College of Law
Resources on Outcomes and Assessments Committee
Zachariah J. DeMeola (Co-Chair), Director of Strategic Initiatives, Law School Admission Council
Sandra L. Simpson (Co-Chair), Director of Experiential Learning & Institutional Assessment and Professor, Gonzaga University School of Law and Communications Director, Institute for Law Teaching and Learning
Elizabeth Anderson, PhD, Founder, Embraced Wisdom Resource Group, LLC
Joshua Aaron Jones, Legal Writing Professor, California Western School of Law
Paula J. Manning, Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Student Learning and Assessment, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law
Jerome M. Organ, Professor & Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Kelly S. Terry, Associate Dean & Professor, University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law and Co-Director, Institute for Law Teaching and Learning
In keeping with the theme of thankfulness, I want to thank you – our Section members – for your support of the Section. May this holiday season bring you much gratitude and joy.