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Greetings,
The 2015-16 school year has officially begun!
Classes kicked off this week on Monday.
Last Wednesday, 172 new graduate students joined
the Arizona Law community. This includes 130 JD
students, 17 new LLM students, 6 new SJD students, 14
new MLS students, and 5 transfer students who will now
also obtain their degrees from Arizona. There are also
currently 286 undergraduates who are pursuing the BA in
law.
Our new students bring incredible energy and new
perspectives. I look forward to a great 2015-16 school
year, and I hope each of you will join me in welcoming
the newest members of Arizona Law.
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Orientation
begins with the welcome address to all incoming
students. | On Thursday, September 17, our Career Development
Office will host a career mixer on campus. All alumni
and friends are invited. The details and RSVP link are
in the footnotes, below.
And, of course, Homecoming-Centennial Week will be
here before you know it. If you plan to return for
Homecoming, and I hope that you will, please make your
travel plans as soon as possible -- we hear that hotel
rooms are going fast! We still have a few football
tickets for group seating at the Arizona Wildcats v.
Washington State Cougars game, and you can reserve your tickets
here.
Until
the footnotes,
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Our 172 new students come to us from 25 countries,
27 U.S. states, and 5 indigenous nations or groups.
Among us are new students from:
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Alabama |
Kansas |
South Carolina |
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Alaska |
Kazakhstan |
South Dakota |
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Arizona |
Kosovo |
South Korea |
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Australia |
Libya |
Spain |
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Bolivia |
Maine |
Taiwan |
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Brazil |
Mexico |
Tanzania |
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California |
Michigan |
Tennessee |
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Cameroon |
Montana |
Texas |
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Canada |
New Mexico |
Tunisia |
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China |
New York |
United Kingdom |
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Colorado |
New Zealand |
Utah |
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Colombia |
Nigeria |
Venezuela |
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Egypt |
North Carolina |
Vietnam |
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Florida |
Ohio |
Virginia |
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Illinois |
Oregon |
Washington |
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Israel |
Russia |
Wisconsin |
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Japan |
Saudi Arabia |
Wyoming |
Combined with the additional 8 countries and
10 additional U.S. states represented by current
graduate students, this diversity makes Arizona Law one
of the most global schools -- ever.
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Brent White, Associate Dean for Programs
and Global Initiatives, speaks with new
students.
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incoming students have earned degrees at more than 100
undergraduate institutions, and many came to us having
already obtained graduate degrees, including six PhDs.
Many of our U.S. students are Arizona residents,
including 11 students with long-standing ties to
Tucson. Many of our entering students have spent
considerable time studying and working after their
undergraduate and graduate studies. A fair number are
first-generation Americans. Some are the first
generation in their families to go to law or graduate
school. Some are the first in their families to have
attended college. A significant number are older than
30. Many came with spouses, partners, and
children.
Our student body includes new members with
significant military and public service -- three are
veterans and three are alums of Teach for America and
AmeriCorps. We have several college athletes, including
a mixed martial artist -- actually, not our first mixed
martial artist in recent years! Our new community
members are musicians and journalists. One was a
finalist in the Miss Arizona pageant. There are several
cancer survivors.
We are truly local. And truly global.
Each student arrives with life experiences,
relationships, geographies, politics, religions, and
perspectives, all of which add to a community that is
today greater, richer, broader, and deeper than it was
before last week.
These images capture a small
slice of the excitement during orientation:
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A visit from the therapy dog provides a
break between orientation
sessions.
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A
student panel discusses "Tips for Surviving and
Thriving."
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| The annual organizations
fair in full swing. |
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Former Arizona
Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Zlaket ('65)
addresses students during a panel on ethics,
civility, and professionalism in the legal
profession.
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Centennial
Snapshot -- A Welcome LWA Tradition
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What memory stands out from your first days at
Arizona Law?
One longstanding beginning-of-the-year tradition is
the Law Women's Association (LWA) Welcome Dinner.
According to Professor Barbara Atwood:
The LWA itself was
begun during the academic year of 1974-75. At that time,
the only women's organization at the law school was a
group known as the Barristers' Biddies. These women were
mostly the wives and girlfriends of law students -- and
they appeared like angels during exam time with
sandwiches and cookies. We appreciated them, but we felt
that a different sort of women's group was needed. We
held the first LWA Wine and Cheese gathering (the
precursor to the dinners now held at Andy Silverman's
house) in the 1975-76 school year. It was held at the
home of Professor Joel Finer. Joel, a single man at that
point, was happy to host, since we agreed to hang his
pictures and arrange his furniture as a quid pro quo.
Even though he had been living in the house for over a
year, he had barely unpacked. His home looked much
better after we were done.
As far as we
knew, the wine and cheese gathering was one of the first
casual social events (unconnected to graduation or some
academic lecture) at the law school in which faculty and
students mingled. It became a nice tradition -- and over
time morphed into a welcome dinner for new 1Ls during
orientation. When all of us in the LWA graduated, we
felt the immediate need to organize a women lawyers
association -- and thus the Arizona Women Lawyers
Association (AWLA) was born. The late Judge Lillian
Fisher -- already on the bench at that point -- was
quite instrumental in getting the AWLA
underway.
The College of Law library's scrapbooks have
preserved some snapshots from the 1978 welcome
dinner:  
The dinner has been held at the home of Professor
Andy Silverman and Starr Sanders for over 20 years, as
it was this year:
Lorena Hutton, the current LWA president, has
this to say about the most recent
dinner:
This year's LWA
Welcome Dinner was a great success! The Welcome Dinner
is a long-standing University of Arizona Law tradition
and a wonderful way to welcome the 1L students to
Tucson. It gives students a chance to relax after a long
few days of orientation and get to know their fellow
classmates.
Do you have photos or memories
from your time at Arizona Law? We would love to
hear from you. Please contact Emily McGovern,
Centennial Coordinator, to share your images and
stories.
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Arizona Law
Career Mixer
Please join us at the
2015 Arizona Law Career Mixer! The Arizona Law Career
Mixer will be held on the campus of the University of
Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law, on Thursday,
September 17, 2015, from 5 to 7 p.m.
Arizona Law's Career Development Office will
bring together Arizona's finest lawyers, judges, law
firms, government agencies, non-profit organizations,
alumni, faculty, and students into one evening of
conversation, connections, and camaraderie. The event
will be catered with locally sourced food by Feast and
beer from Tucson's own Dragoon Brewery. We invite you to
join us for great food and even greater company. RSVP here.
Alumni Happy
Hour in Las Vegas
Join Arizona Law and fellow Wildcats at an Arizona
Law Alumni Happy Hour in Las Vegas. Learn about what's
new at the college and catch up with other alumni in the
"Law Vegas" area. Register here.
When: Friday, September 4, 2015
Time: 4 - 6 p.m.
Where: Yard House in Time Square, 6593 Las Vegas Blvd
S., Las Vegas,
NV 89119
Tucson Recent
Grad Committee
 
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Homecoming-Centennial
Week, October 18-25
Make
plans to return to Tucson and connect with other alumni
during this year's special Homecoming-Centennial Week! Highlights
will include:
- McCormick
Society Lecture, United States Supreme Court Associate
Justice Elena Kagan, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 5:30
p.m.
- Arizona
Law Lifetime Achievement Awards Ceremony and
reception, Thursday, Oct. 22, 4 p.m.
- All-alumni
Centennial Reception on the patio, Friday, Oct. 23,
6:30 p.m.
- All-alumni
Red and Blue Barbecue, prior to football game,
Saturday, Oct. 24
- Arizona
Law seating at Arizona v. Washington State, Saturday,
Oct. 24
- All-alumni
Brunch with former deans, hosted by Dean Miller,
Sunday, Oct. 25
- Reunion-year
events (Classes of 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990,
1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010)
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Alumni
Directory
Our alumni directory is fully up and running. This
tool is meant to be a resource for all Arizona Law
alumni. If you run into classmates or colleagues who do
not know about the directory, please help us spread the
word.
All alumni have now been invited to join the
directory. If you did not receive an invite or if you
have had any trouble logging in, please let us
know.
TIP
Did you know that you can link your Facebook
and LinkedIn accounts to your alumni directory profile?
Simply click on the "Connect with Facebook" and "Connect
with LinkedIn" buttons on the homepage of the directory.
Once connected, your entry will populate with
employment information from your
LinkedIn account. A "View LinkedIn Profile"
button will also appear on your directory page, so users
can visit your LinkedIn
page directly from your directory entry.
We live to teach, and so at the start of
the new school year we turn on the teaching engine, and
hear it and feel it echoing throughout our halls. We
look forward to bringing our scholarship into the
classroom and into our relationships with students as
they engage as lawyers and scholars.
With the wonderful
new members of our community, the many returning
students across our programs, and passionate staff,
faculty, professors of practice, and the many, many
deeply committed alumni and friends of the college, we
are off to a great start.
Warmly,
Dean
& Ralph W. Bilby Professor of Law
Shaping
the next century of legal
education
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