Second Annual Emerita Chancellor & Dean Mary Kay Kane Excellence Awards

Dear UC Law SF Community,

As part of her estate, Emerita Chancellor & Dean Mary Kay Kane generously endowed a fund to support faculty. Using the annual payout from that fund, the College created three awards to honor Dean Kane’s legacy of service, scholarly, and teaching excellence at UC Law by recognizing faculty who have excelled in those areas. On October 23, 2024, from 12:30-1:30pm, we will celebrate the winners of the second annual Kane Excellence Awards, identified below. Please join us for the celebration and join me in congratulating this year’s winners!

Service Excellence Award

Brittany Glidden, Clinical Professor and Faculty Co-Director of the Social Justice Center
Professor Glidden was nominated to be recognized in both the teaching and service categories. Though, like other award winners this year, Professor Glidden’s excellence exceeds the bounds of any single award category, the selection committee particularly wanted to recognize Professor Glidden’s truly extraordinary service work creating a robust pro bono orientation and community on our campus over the years. For many years, Professor Glidden served as Director of Pro Bono at UC Law while also maintaining a regular teaching schedule. She was instrumental in advocating for, hiring, and mentoring our wonderful new Director of Pro Bono Programs, and she and her colleague Associate Dean for Experiential Learning Gail Silverstein created the Social Justice Center to create an umbrella set of programming aimed to building community and helping the law school achieve the public service element of its mission. Professor Glidden is also one of most effective intuitional citizens. Her contributions are too numerous to list in full, but she has, among many other things, played important roles in recent years evaluating and recommending changes to our first-year writing program and designing a long-term assessment plan for the College, educating peer faculty members about student development (including, for example, co-anchoring a faculty teaching colloquium on developing students as self-directed learners), and supporting the clinical community in which she is embedded. Professor Glidden has also created or helped launch some of the most innovative and exciting courses at UC Law SF, including the Corporate Counsel Externship Program and the Judicial Writing Seminar, the latter of which is a companion to the Judicial Externship Program. As one of the persons who nominated Professor Glidden for this award noted: “She does all this with a smile on her face and an infectious laugh. Everyone who works with her loves her!” The committee agreed and is delighted to recognize Professor Glidden’s many accomplishments via an award named after Dean Kane, whose legacy Professor Glidden’s work upholds and honors.

Margaret Greer (’15), Professor of Practice and Director of Bar Passage Support
Professor Greer creates and oversees the law school’s bar success programming. As any recent graduate can attest, Professor Greer’s programming is all-encompassing. It includes, pre-graduation, management of our AdaptiBar partnership, co-curricular programs, and group and individual student advising. Post-graduation, Professor Greer’s programming includes substantive lectures and feedback on practice bar exam essays, bar mentorship programs, and individual advising tailored to each graduate’s circumstances and post-graduation commercial bar course progress. The selection committee recognized Professor Greer’s work as extraordinary because of the way she skillfully translates bar success expertise into programs and individual student support and because her remarkably extensive efforts positively impact every single student at and graduate of the College. Professor Greer is highly collaborative. She coordinates closely not only with other faculty members but also with departments such as the Office for Academic Skills Instruction & Support, the Career Development Office, Student Services, and the Disability Resource Program. Professor Greer is also a talented classroom teacher, having helped to develop and taught in the College’s Critical Studies curriculum, and having expertly taught other doctrinal courses including Legal Ethics: Law & Process and, this year, a new Advanced Sack version of Remedies (with last year’s Kane Award winner Lois Schwartz). Professor Greer has also co-authored scholarship on the determinants of success on the bar exam, and she has led faculty teaching colloquia on bar success pedagogy. In short, Professor Greer is a remarkable institutional citizen whose efforts quietly benefit fellow faculty members, student-facing departments, and, of course, all our students and graduates. In post-exam survey responses each year, our graduates consistently describe Professor Greer’s efforts and guidance as central to their success. The selection committee agreed.

Scholarly Excellence and Contributions to Intellectual Life Award

Dave Owen, Associate Dean for Research and Harry Sunderland ’61 Professor of Law
Dean Owen is one of UC Law SF’s most gifted, innovative, and enthusiastic classroom professors (having won the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence in 2017) and is also one of the College’s most quietly competent and capable institutional citizens. He is being recognized this year for his contributions to scholarly excellence and the intellectual life of the law school, but like other Kane Award winners could have been recognized in multiple categories. Dean Owen’s award-winning and impactful scholarship has made him a leading voice nationally on such environmental law topics as water resource management. His most recent article, The Water District and the State, is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, and in recent years his research has been published in the Duke Law Journal and Stanford Law Review (twice). Six of his articles have been recognized by peer scholars as among the top environmental law articles in the years in which they were published. In terms of contributions to the intellectual life of the College, what makes Dean Owen particularly deserving of recognition are his extensive efforts to build and maintain a robust scholarly community on campus, not only by serving as Associate Dean for Research since last year, but also by volunteering to take on the role of Faculty Director of Scholarly Publications, which, along with Associate Director Jennifer Ta, he has ably led since 2021; by generously mentoring and providing thoughtful counsel to fellow research faculty, including by reviewing and commenting on their work; by creating opportunities for faculty to share their research with each other and with scholars nationally; and by hosting or participating in innumerable scholarly events on campus, even before he became research dean. Dean Owen approaches the project of scholarly community building with good cheer and wry but kind humor. He mixes scholarly rigor with a joyfulness about the research element of the law school’s mission that colleagues and students find inspiring.

Reuel Schiller, the Hon. Roger J. Traynor Chair and Professor of Law
Professor Schiller is one of our most successful classroom teachers (having won the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence in 2000) with a long history of institutional service excellence, including stints in what we now call the “Dean of Students” role (formerly, Associate Academic Dean) and in the Associate Dean for Research Role and as an active participant in faculty governance. But we honor Professor Schiller this year for his contributions to scholarship and intellectual life at the College. As one person who nominated Professor Schiller for this award noted: “I can’t think of anyone who contributes more to our intellectual life than Reuel Schiller.” Professor Schiller’s scholarship focuses on American legal history, administrative law, and labor and employment law. His book Forging Rivals: Race, Class, Law, and the Collapse of Postwar Liberalism, won the American Society for Legal History’s John Phillip Reid Award. He was also recognized in 2008 with the ABA Administrative Law Section’s Scholarship Award. Like Dean Owen, this year’s other award winner in this category, Professor Schiller’s selfless and enthusiastic dedication to mentoring colleagues is legendary and, given Professor Schiller’s long tenure at the College, has positively impacted generations of scholars here at UC Law and nationally. Indeed, mentorship has been a defining feature of Professor Schiller’s work on the national stage, including through his co-editorship of Cambridge University Press’s Studies in Legal History book series and his work as convener of the American Society for Legal History’s Johnson Fellowship for first book authors. In a running theme this year among honorees, Professor Schiller approaches this rigorous and labor-intensive work with a ready smile and self-deprecating humor that delights colleagues and students.

Teaching Excellence Award (Full-Time Faculty)

Abe Cable, Professor of Law, Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair, Faculty Director of Online Legal Education, and Faculty Director of the Center for Business Law
Professor Cable is an accomplished scholar and–as his many titles suggest–one of our most effective institutional citizens. Though he, too, could have been recognized this year and was, indeed, nominated in multiple Kane Award categories, the selection committee honors Professor Cable this year for his teaching excellence. Professor Cable teaches in the innovative Startup Legal Garage program and also teaches core bar classes, including Business Associations and Legal Ethics. He regularly receives glowing feedback from students for his effective teaching techniques. What makes him truly extraordinary, though, is that he has prioritized the community aspects of creating a vibrant teaching culture by integrating his teaching, scholarship, and service work through the Center for Business Law, in his role as Business Law Concentration Advisor, and by serving as Faculty Director of Online Legal Education. Quietly, without fanfare, Professor Cable has taken a leading role ensuring that our distance education resources are up to date, that faculty creating online courses have an expert sounding board, and that we stay current on best practices. He assumed responsibility for developing the faculty’s collective expertise in online pedagogy just before the pandemic forced us to move our entire curriculum online and he has kept us current with evolving best practices since that time, as evidenced by the rave reviews he gets for his own asynchronous version of the Business Associations course he created and teaches.

Heather Field, Stephen A. Lind Professor of Law and Senior Co-Director of the Center on Tax Law
Professor Field is a productive tax scholar and one of the law school’s most dedicated and skillful institutional citizens, having served in a variety of leadership roles. Though she, too, could have been honored as carrying on Dean Kane’s legacy of all-around excellence in any of this year’s categories, the selection committee this year chose to recognize Professor Field for her teaching excellence. Professor Field won the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence in 2008 and her teaching contributions have only grown over the ensuring years. Professor Field is one of our most highly rated faculty in student end-of-semester evaluations. What makes Professor Field most extraordinary is the way she has contributed to a culture of teaching excellence. She produces important scholarship about pedagogy that has proved useful as a practical matter here at UC Law SF, including scholarship on professional identity formation. She has also led faculty teaching colloquia on active learning and on efficient ways to handle formative assessment in large classes. And she functions as the backbone of a tax community on campus that requires constant care and allows her to weave together her interests in teaching, scholarship, student support, and alumni engagement. Professor Field ably serves as the faculty advisor for the Tax Concentration, which is one of our most successful concentrations in terms of student participation numbers and support for student post-graduation employment. And she serves as Senior Faculty Director (with Co-Director and Professor of Law Manoj Viswanathan) of the Center on Tax Law, which has produced an IRS-grant-funded clinic run by Associate Clinical Professor Amy Spivey, alumni donations to support scholarships, and an intellectual life that connects current students, scholars nationally, and our own alumni. Professor Field’s efforts have been so successful that last year she had 25+ tax concentrators enrolled in her year-long capstone seminar writing Academic Regulation 703 papers – a feat of teaching athleticism. It’s clear that Professor Field truly loves teaching, and that she has connected her teaching to scholarship and service in exactly the ways the Kane Award was designed to recognize.

Teaching Excellence (Part-Time Faculty)

Marsha Berzon, Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Adjunct Professor at UC Law SF
When he was a member of our faculty, former California Supreme Court Associate Justice Joe Grodin created a unique seminar that we now call Current Constitutional Cases, with the aim of teaching students the art of judging and constitutional decision-making. Roughly 15 years ago, Judge Berzon joined the faculty as an adjunct professor and co-teacher in this course. After Justice Grodin retired from teaching, Judge Berzon continued to teach the course with other judges, including, most recently, California State Appellate Court Justice Therese Stewart and, starting this year, United States District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts. The selection committee particularly wanted to honor Judge Berzon’s commitment to developing students’ writing skills. Seeing a generational shift in the amount of supervised writing experience students had before matriculating in law school, Judge Berzon rolled up her proverbial sleeves and redoubled her efforts to maintain high standards and mentor students with a combination of candor and patience that the committee thought made her especially deserving of the Kane Award this year. In end of semester course evaluations, Judge Berzon’s students describe her as “phenomenal” and credit her with having helped to “transform” their legal writing and their understanding of constitutional law. Like other winners recognized this year, Judge Berzon’s contributions to UC Law SF go well beyond the domain of teaching. For example, she has regularly participated in events such as post-bar passage swearing in ceremonies. Judge Berzon has inspired generations of law students with her teaching, wise counsel, and example.

John Dean (‘79), Mediator and Adjunct Professor at UC Law SF
During his four-decade career, Professor Dean has regularly served as an instructor or panelist in continuing legal education programs for lawyers with a focus on negotiation, mediation, ADR, and ethics, including programs sponsored or endorsed by the ABA, Practicing Law Institute, and various state bar organizations. For the past two decades, he has been a pillar of our Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution teaching community. Among other things, he has taught hundreds of law students how to negotiate, earning rave reviews each semester for his ability to make the material engaging, connect the skills he is teaching to practice narratives, and provide clear and kind feedback. As one student noted, Professor Dean “is an absolute rock star!” Professor Dean has also trained new Negotiation faculty, participated in CNDR practitioner focused programs, and, most recently, agreed to serve as the CNDR Senior Faculty Mentor for the current academic year. Like other award winners this year, his teaching and law school service work are remarkable for their longevity, consistency, breadth, depth and impact. The selection committee was delighted to have this opportunity to recognize and honor Professor Dean’s decades of teaching excellence in the broadest sense – building a teaching community dedicated to the highest standards.

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This year’s selection committee included Chancellor & Dean David Faigman, Provost & Academic Dean Morris Ratner, Associate Dean for Research Dave Owen (who recused himself from the voting on the winners in the category in which he is being honored), Faculty Executive Committee Chair and prior-year Kane Excellence Award winner Scott Dodson, and two additional award winners from last year, Professor of Law Jo Carrillo and Associate Dean and Professor of Practice Jennifer Freeland.

I know I speak on behalf of the entire selection committee when I say that our extraordinary cohort of second annual Kane Award winners reflects the best of the qualities, skills, and commitments that Dean Kane made central features of her own professional life as a leader, intellectual giant, and teacher.

Again, please join us to celebrate this year’s winners on October 23!

All best,

Morris A. Ratner
Provost & Academic Dean
Professor of Law
UC Law San Francisco