Professor receives national honor from Society of American Law Teachers


KU Law Professor Lua Yuille

LAWRENCE – A University of Kansas School of Law professor committed to inclusive legal education has won the 2017 Junior Faculty Teaching Award from the Society of American Law Teachers.

Lua Yuille, associate professor of law, will be honored Friday, Jan. 5, during SALT’s annual awards celebration in San Diego, along with fellow recipient Katie Eyer of Rutgers Law School.

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.

“Lua challenges her students to think critically, and she does so in creative and thoughtful ways,” said Stephen Mazza, dean of the law school. “National recognition of her talents is great for the school and well-deserved. We’re very proud of her.”

Regardless of the subject area – whether property, immigration law, business organizations or corporate governance – Yuille elevates social justice ideals and critical thought while taking an interdisciplinary approach to the teaching and learning process. In 2017, she was selected as an inaugural Diversity Scholar in the KU Center for Teaching Excellence. The Diversity Scholars Program promotes “broad faculty adoption of teaching methods, strategies and course materials that enhance inclusivity and respect for diversity in KU classes.”

Yuille’s scholarship is creative, thoughtful, interdisciplinary and always focused on justice. Her recent article, “Individuals, Corporations, and the Pedagogy of Citizenship” in the Kansas Law Review, examines access to and experiences in the market for citizenship across three broad categories: black Americans, immigrants and corporations, asking, “What is the lesson taught by these disparate experiences?”

Yuille joined the law school faculty in 2013 and is an affiliate faculty member of KU’s Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies. Prior to her arrival at KU, Yuille was a William H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Law and a visiting professor at the University of Oregon School of Law.

Before entering academia, Yuille enjoyed a diverse professional career. She served as a law clerk for Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and an extern for Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck of the Southern District of New York. She was a socioeconomic development lawyer in Latin America and spent nearly a decade at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York, where she developed a diverse generalist practice that emphasized Latin American corporate matters and domestic mergers and acquisitions, capital markets and securities transactions. She also maintained a pro bono immigration litigation practice.

Yuille received her juris doctor from Columbia University School of Law, where she was one of two undergraduate students in the nation chosen to begin law school in the Advanced Interdisciplinary Legal Education Program. She also was one of two Columbia Law students selected for doctoral level research at the prestigious European University Institute near Florence, Italy. She earned an undergraduate degree, with honors, from the Johns Hopkins University and a graduate diploma in international studies from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Bologna Center.

Wed, 01/03/2018

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Mindie Paget

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