University of Utah : S.J. Quinney College of Law

College of Law Launches Quinney Student Fellowship Program

Posted: 11 Jun 2007 by Barry Scholl
Updated on: 11 Jun 2007

Tags: robert adler faculty quinney fellowship students 

As the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, Robert Adler has grown accustomed to finding innovative solutions to ongoing obstacles —the reality of tight budgets, for example. Observing the pressing need among his colleagues for skilled student research assistants, as well as the fact that law students are frequently cash-starved, Adler spearheaded the formation of the Quinney Student Fellowship program, which will allow a group of select students the opportunity to work closely with faculty members on a range of research, writing and service projects while receiving a stipend and partial tuition waiver.

Faced with limited discretionary funds, Adler explains that in the past faculty members typically had to make tough choices. “It’s a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he says. “You could go to one or two conferences a year or you could hire a research assistant, but usually not both. The Fellowship program is designed to leverage our money in ways that provide additional research assistance to faculty, but in a collaborative way that provides students superior educational benefit.” Adler explains that the program is economically leveraged because by providing a $2500 fellowship, the Quinney College is able to take advantage of the University’s tuition waiver program. Consequently, “The economic benefit far exceeds $2500 per semester, making it more attractive to students to do this in lieu of, say, a downtown law firm job and providing them with an experience that is more integral to their legal education,” he says.
 
Benefits to students and faculty
Eight students were chosen as Quinney Fellows for the 2007-08 year, and the same number will be chosen the following year. Adler anticipates that eventually the program may grow to encompass as many as 16 students. “The interest this first year bodes well for the future of the program,” he says. “We received more than 30 applications for the eight spots, which shows that it was competitive. That was nice for us because we could choose truly qualified people, but painful because we had many more qualified students than we had spots for the initial year.”

Applicants were selected on the basis of a writing sample, statement of interest, resume, references and other criteria. “The idea was to provide opportunities for students who had something in their skill set that suggested they had something to offer as a research collaborator with members of the faculty,” Adler explains. “Someone with an advanced degree, or someone with demonstrated research and writing abilities which may not have been demonstrated [by academic performance] during the student’s first year of law school. The main idea was to provide one-on-one research opportunities between students and faculty members that would be mutually beneficial—educational for the students and providing high-quality research assistance and ideas to the faculty.” Adler says that it’s possible these collaborations will generate publishable work on the part of the students, either by coauthoring articles with faculty, or by authoring collateral projects related to the faculty research.

Student Reaction
Deborah Feder, who is among the first group of Quinney Fellows, allows that she hasn’t yet thought much about her project, which will involve working with Professor Laura Kessler on research on how non-traditional families are treated under the law. Nonetheless, Feder believes the Fellowship will sharpen her research and analytical skills and says that she hopes working with a faculty member “will provide both mentoring and knowledge about a subject area of interest to me.” 

Ryan Oldroyd, another of the inaugural Quinney Fellows, was initially attracted to the program because of his interest in combining academia and legal practice. “I applied to law school wondering if a Ph.D. might not be a better fit, but I wanted to see what law school would be like and what level of academic involvement there would be, as opposed to practical training in the field,” he recounts. When the fellowship was announced, Oldroyd recognized immediately that it was a great opportunity to combine his dual interests in law and academia. “I feel the fellowship will be a great way to gain exposure to both fields, so it's an ideal situation for me,” he remarks.

Oldroyd will spend this summer in London working for Amnesty International. When he returns to the law school in the fall, he will be working with Professors Tony Anghie and Wayne McCormack on a variety of international law issues, which he predicts will likely include issues involving Bosnian war crimes, a topic on which McCormack is considered an expert. Oldroyd, who speaks Russian, notes that Bosnian and Russian are similar languages and believes that his Russian language skills could prove handy in this project.

Cameron Ward, another Quinney Fellow, was intrigued by the program’s potential to offer unique research opportunities. “I was particularly drawn to the Fellowship because of the opportunity to interact with professors in furthering legal scholarship,” he says. Ward is also cognizant of the fact that he will soon be in the legal workplace, and believes that working in a collaborative environment with Professor Debora Threedy will provide him a preview of life at a law firm. “The Fellowship gives me an opportunity to interact with professors on a professional level in a way that mirrors the type of interaction I hope to have in the future as an associate with partners,” he says. 

There are also financial benefits, as Ward readily allows: “Getting a legal education is not cheap and anything I can do to cut down on the costs is helpful. The Fellowship is nice because it allows me to reduce expenses while participating in a program that I believe will be very rewarding.” 
 
Debora Threedy, with whom Ward will be working next spring semester, explains that the two will collaborate to research more than 1,000 NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) requests that have been made to various federal agencies. Their project will involve developing a survey form to gather information on each case, such as the category of cultural item for which repatriation has been requested, whether there are conflicting claims to the item, what types of information (historical, archaeological, oral tradition) are being used to decide the claim, and the final disposition of the claim. Threedy believes that Ward’s work, which will include sifting through the database of the repatriation requests and filling out the survey forms, will provide him with invaluable experience.

“Some of the benefits will be analogous to what a student could receive in practice,” Threedy elaborates. “In my case, for example, developing a familiarity with the doctrinal content of NAGPRA, which would happen if the student were working on a NAGPRA case in practice; and the skill of organizing a large factual dataset — something that every litigator handling even a moderately complex case has to master.”

Threedy hastens to add that she will also benefit: “Having a research assistant will save me a lot of time in the fact-gathering stage of my research, allowing me to get to the writing part more quickly than if I had to survey all 1,000-plus cases myself,” she says. “I’m on sabbatical next spring, and if I had to read each repatriation claim myself I would not be able to start writing next year – it’s as simple as that. Now I'm hopeful that the two of us will be able to do the majority of the fact-gathering in the spring semester and I’ll be able to start writing next summer.”

In conclusion, Adler predicts that the program’s benefits will be far-reaching. “The faculty is excited at the opportunity to have not only additional resources but people they can work with and cultivate a relationship with.”

And as for the students? “They get a credential to help them and valuable one-on-one experience working alongside a professor,” Adler observes. “Yes, it provides financial benefits to the students, but more importantly it gives them a much richer interaction with a member of the faculty than they otherwise might have.”

2006-07 Quinney Fellows:

Debbie Feder, Jared Peterson, Ryan Oldroyd, Bethany Rabe, Cameron Ward, Tara Harrison, Mica McKinney, Jing Liu