IU McKinney's Online Innovator Award Presented to Faculty, Alumna Efforts on Pathway to the Law Pipeline Program
05/07/2020
IU McKinney Professors Carrie Hagan, Allison Martin, and Cynthia Adams, ’83, and IUPUI School of Liberal Arts Professor Erin Engels, ’99, have received the law school’s Online Innovator Award. They are being so honored for their work on the Pathway to the Law Online Pipeline Curriculum. Professor Max Huffman, IU McKinney’s Director of Online Learning, made the announcement.
This four-course sequence takes undergraduate students through courses in Introduction to Law, Introduction to Legal Writing, Logic and Legal Reasoning, and Advanced Legal Reasoning. Students also become acquainted with essential skills to earn admission to and succeed in law school, and are integrated into a larger network of law students, legal professionals, and the IU McKinney family. The American Bar Association Office of Diversity and Inclusion partnered with the law school in 2017 to co-launch the Pathway to the Law Online Pipeline Curriculum. The goal of the three-year pilot project is to create a pipeline for underrepresented students into legal education and ultimately the profession.
Professor Hagan teaches two courses: Introduction to Law, and Introduction to Legal Reasoning. She teaches the latter with Professor Engels. Professor Martin teaches Introduction to Legal Writing; Professor Adams teaches Logic and Legal Reasoning; and Professor Engels teaches Advanced Legal Reasoning with Professor Hagan. In the photo from top left are Professor Adams and Professor Hagan. From the bottom left are Professor Martin and Professor Engel.
Professor Adams received the inaugural Online Innovator award in 2016 for her innovative use of mind-mapping software in her online contract drafting course. Professor Martin was recognized in 2017 for her creation and dissemination of a mini-course teaching students how to avoid plagiarism. This course is the first of IU McKinney’s online offerings to be completed by thousands of students nationwide. Professor Frank Sullivan was honored in 2018 for his use of a group project in Securities Regulation in which students produced a video explanation of key securities law authority and its application in a real-world setting. The award was not presented in 2019.
“This is the ‘Return of the King’ award,” said Professor Huffman. “Tolkein fans may remember the phenomenon in which the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy was universally understood to be the best picture and the best in many other categories in the Academy Awards for all three years the trilogy was in theaters. But the academy, in its infinite wisdom, held off and just devoted the entire year’s award season to the ‘Return of the King,’ basically recognizing the entire trilogy at once. That’s what we’re doing here, honoring a full three years of hard work on this Pipeline Curriculum by our faculty and alumni.”
