Student centered legal education - RALS

Big thanks to Mark Osler for organizing and Rob Vischer for hosting the RALS conference at St. Thomas this week. There were many excellent panels and presentations, including by MOJ’ers John Breen, Susan Stabile, Amy Uelman, and Rob Vischer. Titled “Religious Identity in a Time of Challenge for Law Schools,” the theme that tied the conference together for me was refreshing and intentional emphasis on students. With strong faculty governance many law schools (and I suspect many institutions of higher educaiton) have created cultures around faculty prefences and comfort. As a quick example, if you were to study the course offerings at a given schools, the number of credit hours devoted to different subjects, and the frequency of courses offerings, I suspect the organizing principle would be faculty desire. The market is forcing law schools to move toward a more student centric model, but the transition will often be painful as faculty members are asked to leave their comfort zones, perhaps teaching more, changing teaching pedogogy, teaching different subjects, advising students in a more intense way than in the past, etc. The Deans Panel and panels on Employment and Student Well-Being; Scholarship; and The Challenge of Pope Francis were testimony to the successes achieved and the challenges and obstacles that still remain in this cultural transformaton. A key to success is, as Dean Tacha and others said, the building of community, especially among the faculty, that is other regarding, centered on the students, their education, well being, and professional formation.