Yablon, McBride, Kasieta Named 2022 UW Law Teachers of the Year
Each spring, University of Wisconsin Law School celebrates excellence in teaching through its Teacher of the Year awards. UW Law School’s annual teaching awards demonstrate the value placed on excellent teaching. Our faculty engage and inspire UW Law students through thoughtful pedagogy, and we are proud to honor them for this important work. The honorees for outstanding classroom, clinical and adjunct instruction in 2022 include:
Robert Yablon, Classroom Teacher of the Year.
Yablon is an associate professor of law and faculty co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative (learn more on page 22). His research interests include political and election law, constitutional law, federal and state courts, and statutory interpretation. This is Yablon’s second win; he also received the award in 2018.
Erin McBride, Clinical Teacher of the Year.
McBride is director of the Government and Legislative Clinic and Native Nations Externship Program at the Law School. She teaches the regulatory state and legislative procedure and provides students with the opportunity to observe and participate in the many facets of governmental law, policy, legislation and tribal governance.
Robert “Bob” Kasieta, Adjunct Teacher of the Year.
Kasieta has been teaching at the Law School as an adjunct professor since 2003. He is a certified civil trial specialist by the National Board of Trial Advocates and devotes a great deal of time to legal education, teaching many courses for lawyers and law students alike.
Heinz Klug Awarded Ronald Pipkin Service Award
Professor Heinz Klug has been honored with the Law and Society Association’s 2023 Ronald Pipkin Service Award for sustained and extraordinary service to the association.
“I was truly honored to be recognized by the Law and Society Association for my service to the association, which has been my academic home for nearly 30 years,” Klug said.
Anne Smith Receives Chancellor’s Entrepreneurial Achievement Award
Anne Smith was among four innovators who received the 2023 Chancellor’s Entrepreneurial Achievement Awards. Established in 2011, the awards recognize individuals with ties to the University of Wisconsin– Madison who further the Wisconsin Idea through outstanding accomplishments in entrepreneurship. Honorees have achieved entrepreneurial success that contributes to economic growth and social good, offers models for the UW community and inspires the campus culture of entrepreneurship.
In 2009, Smith co-founded the UW Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic, which engages law students to provide free legal services to early-stage Wisconsin companies. Since its founding, the clinic has worked with 2,500 businesses across 30 Wisconsin counties, which combined have raised hundreds of millions in venture capital. It serves approximately 300 clients annually.
Eric Taylor Receives 2023 University Staff Recognition Award
Eric Taylor, evening reference librarian and acquisitions assistant in the UW Law Library, has been honored with a 2023 University Staff Recognition Award. Taylor has worked for the UW Law Library since 1989.
“I am very grateful to have work I enjoy so much,” he said. “I work with a fine group of people in the Library. It has been a high point and an honor to have helped a generation of law students with their studies and research as they worked toward their law degrees. My whole experience at the UW Law Library and the Law School has been rich and rewarding.”
Additionally, four UW Law employees were recognized on the Roll of Fame: Darryl Berney, IT senior support specialist; Justin Boehm, human resources manager; Adam Bushcott, main office manager; and Scout Slava-Ross, library circulation services assistant.
UW Law Hosts Hurst Summer Institute
The 12th Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History was a bright surge of activity at UW Law this summer – June 18-30, 2023.
The biennial event, sponsored by the American Society for Legal History (ASLH), was chaired by Sarah Barringer Gordon, Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, and Michelle McKinley, the Bernard B. Kliks Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law.
Fellows (in alphabetical order): Dilyara Agisheva, Harvard Law School; Evelyn Atkinson, Tulane Law School; Jilene Chua, Johns Hopkins University; Saumyashree Ghosh, Princeton University; Linda Kinstler, University of California, Berkeley; David Korostyshevsky, Colorado State University; Michael McGovern, Princeton University; Yukako Otori, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies; Doris Morgan Rueda, Stanford Law School; Ari Schriber, University of Toronto; Maham K. Theisen, Brandeis University; and Charlotte Whatley, University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Learn more on the Hurst Institute’s webpage.
Steph Tai Named Associate Dean at Nelson Institute
Professor Steph Tai has been named the new associate dean for education and faculty affairs at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
“Environmental problems are inherently interdisciplinary, and I look forward to strengthening our existing interdisciplinary synergies in research and education, as well as fostering new ones,” Tai said.
Tai, whose scholarly research examines the interactions between environmental and health sciences and administrative law, holds affiliations with the Nelson Institute and the Wisconsin Energy Institute. They have been with University of Wisconsin–Madison since 2006, climbing the ranks from assistant to associate to full professor five years ago.
The Nelson Institute confronts global environmental challenges through research, education and public programs. The associate dean role acts as the institute’s de facto department chair, as well as the curriculum director, the leader for all undergraduate and graduate programs, the key point for Nelson faculty promotions and awards and more.
UW Law Library Wins 2023 AALL Award for Work on Tribal Laws Pilot Project
The University of Wisconsin Law Library has won the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) 2023 Public Access to Government Information Award for the Digital Publication of Tribal Laws Pilot Project, in partnership with the National Indian Law Library, the Open Law Library, the UW Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians. This pilot project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, worked with Native Nations to make their laws publicly available using a customizable publishing platform that offers tribes full ownership and control over their content. Four tribes, including Wisconsin’s Stockbridge-Munsee and Lac Courte Oreilles, have already openly published their laws using this platform, and several others are in development.