SALT Honors 2017 Junior Faculty Teaching Award Winners
Join us in honoring Professor Katie Eyer and Professor Lua Yuille at the SALT Annual Awards Celebration on January 5, 2018 in San Diego
SALT is proud to recognize Associate Professor Katie Eyer (Rutgers) and Associate Professor Lua Yuille (University of Kansas) as its 2017 Junior Faculty Teaching Award winners. The award recognizes outstanding recent entrants into legal education who demonstrate commitment to justice, equality and academic excellence. It is designed to honor emerging teachers and support outstanding individuals new to the legal academy. This award also recognizes law teachers who exemplify SALT values though SALT membership and participation in SALT activities. The awards will be presented during SALT’s Annual Awards Celebration on Friday, January 5, 2018, at California Western School of Law in San Diego.
Professor Katie Eyer is a leading scholar in anti-discrimination law through her research and teaching. She has written broadly about the Fourteenth Amendment, including the history and evolution of rational basis review, colorblindness, the intent doctrine, and liberty interests under due process. Professor Eyer is also an advocate for LGBTQ rights and sexual identity rights inside and outside the academy. For instance, she serves on the Legal Advisory Board of the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, which provides health and wellness services to the local LGBTQ community, and she regularly consults with attorneys bringing LGBTQ employment discrimination claims.
Professor Eyer is also an excellent teacher. The student evaluations from her courses attest to her ability to explain difficult concepts clearly, and to her nurturing demeanor in the classroom. She receives high marks whether teaching Civil Procedure, Employment Law, or her course in Sexuality, Gender Identity, and the Law
Professor Lua Yuille is committed to inclusive legal education and the adoption of teaching methods that enhance inclusivity and respect for diversity in the classroom. Regardless of the subject area–whether Property, Immigration Law, Business Organizations, or Corporate Governance–Professor Yuille manages to elevate social justice ideals and critical thought while taking an interdisciplinary approach to the teaching and learning process. This year she was selected as an inaugural Diversity Scholar in the KU Center for Teaching Excellence. The Diversity Scholars Program was developed to promote “broad faculty adoption of teaching methods, strategies, and course materials that enhance inclusivity and respect for diversity in KU classes.”
Professor Yuille’s scholarship is similarly creative, thoughtful, interdisciplinary and always focused on justice. Her recent article Individuals, Corporations, and the Pedagogy of Citizenship, 63 U. Kan. L. Rev. 903 (2015), “examines access to and experiences in the market for citizenship (write large to include legal, cultural, social, and political) across three broad categories: Black Americans, immigrants, and corporations,” asking, “What is the lesson taught by these disparate experiences?” In both her teaching and her research, Professor Yuille powerfully reveals “law as a societal pedagogy.”
Each of these outstanding professors has demonstrated tremendous commitment to SALT’s principles of justice, diversity, and academic excellence early in their careers, and SALT is honored to recognize their achievements.
We congratulate Professors Katie Eyer and Lua Yuille and their institutions, Rutgers School of Law and University of Kansas School of Law!