It’s not good-bye -- it’s just see you later

It was such a privilege to work in a university setting as a professor and the Director of Paralegal Studies. I had an opportunity to tackle so many fun and interesting challenges: setting up a brand-new legal program; developing compelling and experiential legal skills curriculum for the students; understanding the needs of a diverse classroom which included everyone from a suburban teen to a working single mother to a retiree to an Army veteran; meeting paralegal educators from all over the country and learning about learning, teaching and leadership at our wonderful conferences; recruiting, training and collaborating with our wonderful staff, instructors and advisory committee.

There were so many days on my way to work, while I was running through my class lecture in my head, I was counting my blessings that I got to teach, and loving the Daemen campus where I would often see deer and foxes wandering around. Of course, in addition to the fun of being in front of a classroom, there were the less glamorous challenges of obtaining the initial program approval from the American Bar Association (ABA), which meant learning how to do all levels of assessment — on the effectiveness of the curriculum, the instructors, the career support. Thanks to training from the ABA, the Daemen office for Institutional Effectiveness, and the national educators group, the American Association for Paralegal Educators, I learned how to gather and analyze qualitative and quantitative data in order to evaluate the program. I was thrilled to obtain and keep the ABA program approval (considered a gold star for legal programs!). And imagine my delight when in 2020 the paralegal program was ranked 17th in the nation by Bachelor’s Degree Center.

observing and meeting the needs of the students for spuport and services outside of the classroom — mentoring, career counseling, networking, clinical learning, field trips, and speakers from our legal community.