Welcome to all of our new J.D. and LLM students, and welcome back to our returning 2L and 3L students! I am delighted that you are here and excited for the year ahead.
Aside from all of our first-year J.D. and LLM students, we have some other new faces around the building. First, we are welcoming three new faculty members to the Law College, Professors Brett Stohs, Jessica Shoemaker, and Adam Thimmesch.
Professor Stohs grew up in Lincoln, attended UNL as an undergraduate and then Duke Law School, where he served as Executive Editor for the Duke Law & Technology Review. Professor Stohs also received a Master of Public Policy from the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke. Following law school, Professor Stohs practiced business law for 5 years in Washington, D.C. and then for a short time in Lincoln at the firm of Rembolt Ludtke. Professor Stohs is the Director of our new Entrepreneurship Clinic, which will begin enrolling students in January 2013. In this clinic, third-year students will advise entrepreneurs about legal issues involved in starting up a business. We are very excited to add this clinic to the Law College curriculum.
Professor Shoemaker is an Iowa native who graduated first in her class from the University of Wisconsin Law School. After law school, Professor Shoemaker clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and was then awarded a prestigious Skadden Fellowship to work for Farmers’ Legal Action Group, Inc. in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on a range of legal issues affecting farmers and rural communities. Professor Shoemaker spent the past five years as an attorney with Arnold & Porter LLP in Denver, Colorado. Professor Shoemaker teaches courses in Indian Law, Rural Development & Wind Energy and Property. She will also work with UNL’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources to help establish the University of Nebraska’s Rural Futures Institute.
Professor Thimmesch received his J.D. with highest distinction from the University of Iowa College of Law, where he was an Articles Editor for the Iowa Law Review. After law school, Professor Thimmesch practiced in the corporate group in Faegre Baker Daniels’ Minneapolis office. His practice focused on tax and business matters, including structuring and negotiating domestic and international transactions, advising clients on state, federal, and international tax matters, and handling tax disputes before the Internal Revenue Service and state taxing agencies. Professor Thimmesch teaches Individual Income Tax, Corporate Finance, and Business Associations. His scholarship focuses on the constitutional limitations imposed on state taxing power.
In addition to our new faculty, we had several new members of the administration and staff join us in the past few months. Heather Hilgers, a graduate of the Houston Law Center, is the Associate Director of Career Services, and Holly Glenn is the new staff assistant in the Career Services Office. Christine Baughman, Law College class of 2012, joins us as the Assistant Director of Admissions. Lisa Lightner joined us a few months ago as Dean Pierce’s assistant, and Tara Scott is a new member of the business staff, working with our business manager, Shelley Reed.
In addition to several new course offerings this year, we have two new dual degree programs. One is in Law & Gerontology, in association with the Gerontology Department at UNO, and another is in Law & Public Health, with UNMC in Omaha. Please speak with Dean Pierce if you are interested in pursuing a joint degree program.
There will be many speakers coming to the Law College this year, and I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity, usually over the noon hour, to learn something new and expand your horizons by attending their presentations. The Career Services Office has many employers coming to the Law College to make presentations and meet you, so I hope you will take advantage of those opportunities as well as you prepare for your careers.
We are introducing a new program this year that we call S.T.I.R. Talks. This acronym stands for "Share. Think. Inspire. Relax." A few times each semester, a faculty member will do a short and entertaining presentation in the late afternoon in the student lounge about his or her research interests. These presentations will be 18 minutes long (modeled on the TED talks that are now the rage), and will be followed by a social hour with refreshments. We hope that this will be a fun and entertaining way for the faculty to discuss with students some really interesting issues in the law, and provide an opportunity to socialize in a relaxed setting.
Another way to get to know the faculty is to participate in our TYPO program. TYPO stands for Take Your Professor Out. If you want to take one of your professors or a dean or director out to lunch, the Dean's Office would be pleased to reimburse you for up to $25. This should be enough to cover all of the cost for two students and a professor (given Lincoln's generally reasonable lunch prices) and most of the cost for larger groups. In general, there are only two requirements: 1) each lunch must include at least one professor and at least two students and 2) each student is eligible for only one free lunch. Just pick up a reimbursement form from Patty Sprague, the receptionist in the Dean’s office, before you go to lunch, and then return the completed form and an itemized receipt to Patty.
Again, welcome, and welcome back, and I wish you all the best for a great year at the College of Law. Please always feel free to stop by or email me with your questions or concerns, or just to say hello.