The State Bar Association of North Dakota Spring 2013 Gavel Magazine | Page 8

FROM THE DEAN Dean, UND School of Law Kathryn Rand Enhancing the FirstYear Curriculum The first year of law school provides a critical foundation for a student’s development as a future attorney. This fall, with our entering Class of 2016, we will implement a new first-year curriculum. The redesign is inspired by our new Curriculum Mission and Goals, and is the first significant change to the first-year courses at UND School of Law in more than a decade. Along with our recent adoption of an ethics/professionalism and writing requirement for all law school courses, these changes are ways in which we are working to ensure that our program of legal education produces well-rounded and practice-ready legal professionals with the necessary skill set to serve as effective, innovative, and ethical leaders in our profession and in our communities. For those of you who may remember your first-year courses at UND School of Law, you’d notice these changes: First, we flipped the amount of credit awarded for Torts I & II, so that Torts I becomes a three-credit course and Torts II becomes a two-credit course. This change was largely to balance the number of credits taken in each semester. Second, we restructured Property from the two-semester, five-credit course sequence of Property I & II into a single, four-credit Property course in the fall semester. This change allowed us to add a new course in the spring, and also allowed more focused attention on Property as a fundamental area of law at the start of a student’s legal education. Professor Jim Grijalva is taking advantage of the change to redesign the course—he received a University grant to explore “flipping the classroom” in the new Property course. The flipped classroom reverses the typical approach where students gain knowledge during class and then practice applying that knowledge to problems through homework assignments. In a flipped classroom, students spend time before class reading and listening to recorded lectures, and then spend class time working through problems under the guidance of the instructor. Third, we significantly restructured Constitutional Law. For years, it has been taught as a two-semester, five-credit course sequence of Constitutional Law I & II. We’ve noted that Constitutional Law stands out as a particularly challenging area for new law students, perhaps because of its contrast to the other fundamental areas of law which benefit from formal rules (such as Civil Procedure) or restatements (such as Torts, Property, and Contracts) or model codes (such as Criminal Law). Constitutional Law I will become a threecredit course taught in the spring semester of the first year, and Constitutional Law II will become a three-credit course taught in the fall semester of the second year. Along with Professional Responsibility, Constitutional Law II will be a required upper-level course for all students. Professor Julia Ernst, who teaches Constitutional Law I, also received a University grant to develop a “flipped classroom” approach along with other active learning techniques to help students gain greater skills in writing, critical thinking, working collaboratively and effectively in small groups, and honing their professional values. Finally, and perhaps most dramatically, we added a new course to the first-year curriculum: Professional Foundations. This innovative course will focus student learning squarely on developing the foundations of a professional persona. Students will be encouraged to cultivate a reflective mindset and the habits that are vital to the development of professional identity and the exercise of sound professional judgment. The course will explore the characteristics of a “good lawyer” and ask students to engage with that concept in their own lives and careers, using weekly interactive exercises and writing assignments. The course goals include enhancing students’ ability to be reflective and mindful of their behavior in various professional settings and helping students envision a career path that suits their sensibilities and aspirations. Another innovative feature of Professional Foundations is who will be teaching it—nearly the entire faculty will team-teach the course, each taking on one of the class sessions over the course of the semester, within a framework developed by Professors Patti Alleva and Mike McGinniss. With this redesign, our required curriculum will include: First-Year Fall • Civil Procedure (4 cr.) • Contracts I (2 cr.) • Torts I (3 cr.) • Property (4 cr.) • Lawyering Skills I (3 cr.) First-Year Spring • Constitutional Law I (3 cr.) • Torts II (2 cr.) • Criminal Law (3 cr.) • Contracts II (3 cr.) • Lawyering Skills II (2 cr.) • Professional Foundations (2 cr.) Second-Year Fall • Constitutional Law II (3 cr.) We’re excited about these changes in our program of legal education, and believe that the revised curriculum will better prepare students for their second and third years of law school, as well as for law practice after graduation. More than just restructuring of the sequence of required courses, the redesign of our first-year curriculum inspires and facilitates innovative teaching approaches that will enhance student learning. Let us know what you think—drop me a line at [email protected]! 6 The Gavel Spring 2013