Ranked a top nine public law school in the nation, No. 27 among all law schools according to U.S. News & World Report and No. 23 on the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University continues to be a premier choice for law school students around the country.

Once again, ASU Law welcomes the most highly credentialed class in its history. The 271 incoming fall 2019 JD students have a median LSAT score of 164 and a median GPA of 3.81, up from last year’s 163 and 3.76. The group hails from more than 130 undergraduate institutions, 38 states and eight countries. In addition to setting records for entering credentials, ASU Law also set its all-time record for JD applications at more than 3,700 (more than a 10% increase), while nationally, applications were down 1.5%. Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law incoming fall 2019 students participate in orientation on Monday at the Beus Center for Law and Society on the Downtown Phoenix campus. Download Full Image

“We recognize that LSAT and GPA, although useful predictors of law school success, are not perfect. A far stronger indicator is actual performance in law school,” said Andrew Jaynes, assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at ASU Law.

A total of 299 students will be taking first-year JD classes, 28 of whom are part of ASU Law’s Master of Legal Studies Honors (MLSH) program. The MLSH is an innovative program that allows students an opportunity to gain admission to the JD program through classroom performance.

At ASU Law, students have the opportunity to tailor their education from over 250 unique courses to match their interests.

“Today’s law student is looking for a unique law school experience and to learn from professors that have real-world experience,” ASU Law Dean Douglas Sylvester said. “Additionally, outcomes are an important criteria in their selection process. At ASU Law we don’t think providing a top-notch legal education is enough. We were No. 15 last year in employment, and with a dedicated career services department we continue to make employment after law school a priority.”

ASU Law also offers a number of programs and externships, more than any other law school, that are led and supported by faculty, staff and other experts who are passionately focused on student success. Rising second-year JD candidate Anthony Studnicka knows this firsthand as he spent this past summer working with the Arizona Coyotes.

“The experience has been nothing short of incredible. I believe what sets ASU Law apart is the abundance of resources set in place to help students succeed not only inside, but outside of the classroom,” Studnicka said. “From resume help to assistance with externship placement, ASU Law really wants their students to succeed in the real world, and if you as a student take the time to utilize the resources, success is possible for anyone.”

ASU Law is also proud to announce that nine new faculty join the team this year to continue to bridge theory and practice. In the past three years, ASU Law has added 22 faculty to its roster. Last year, Gregg Leslie, executive director of ASU Law’s First Amendment Clinic and professor of practice, began his inaugural year with ASU Law. A year later he now sees the impact a comprehensive law school can have on its students and the surrounding community.

“The clinic students have had several opportunities to apply their legal knowledge to help those with First Amendment-related issues,” Leslie said. “It’s been wonderful seeing the students gain experience while helping journalists and other speakers gain access to information or fight for their rights. We’ve been working with clients trying to obtain police records and sealed documents in a criminal prosecution over border crossings, defending against penalties for printing court records, and fighting libel suits. These opportunities provide vital hands-on experience that will help these students greatly as they move on to law firm jobs.”

ASU Law also continues to see diversity in its incoming student group. This year the law school welcomes a majority of female students in its JD class at 52%, up from 48% last year. Over 30% of the new incoming JD students identify as a racial or ethnic minority (up from 21% last year), and over 10% of students identify as LGBTQ+. Additionally, 63% of the class (up from 57% last year) comes from outside of Arizona, solidifying ASU Law’s position as a destination law school for students around the country and the world.

The law school also offers nearly 50 student organizations that students can participate in, many appealing to diverse personal and career interests. These organizations include the Women Law Students’ Association, the Federalist Society, Asian Pacific American Law Students, Diverse Students Coalition, Environmental Law Society, Black Law Students Association and many others.

For individuals who want to expand their knowledge of the U.S. legal system to enhance their career opportunities without becoming an attorney, ASU Law offers a one-year Master of Legal Studies (MLS) degree. MLS program enrollment also increased with 32 MLS on-ground students and 143 MLS online students. The MLS graduate program continues to identify trending industry needs to provide students with new focus areas of legal study, such as the construction law and gaming and governance law programs, all without becoming a lawyer. The Master of Sports Law and Business program also welcomes 54 new students, including those who are part of the Veterans Sports Law and Business program. Additionally, the Masters of Law (LLM) program will welcome eight new admits.

The 2019–20 school year is about to begin, and with new beginnings come new faces on the Arizona State University campuses.

The School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies is happy to welcome its new faculty members to the team. As the school continues to thrive, new opportunities for research and studies are opening up to include some incredible colleagues. New faculty at ASU's School of Historical Philosophical and Religious Studies. Starting in the top left and reading left to right: Shamara Wyllie Alhassan, Kimberly Allar, Richard Amesbury, Evan Berry, Lei Duan, James Dupey, Blake Hartung, James Hrdlicka, Kathleen Kole de Peralta, Peter Kung, Jacqueline Willy Romero and Ryan Wolfson-Ford. Download Full Image

Shamara Wyllie Alhassan

Assistant professor, religious studies

Shamara Wyllie Alhassan is joining the school from Rhode Island where she has been living for the last six years. She has been the recipient of many awards including the African and African Diaspora Studies Dissertation Fellowship at Boston College, Cogut Institutes for the Humanities Dissertation Fellowship at Brown University, as well as a Fulbright scholarship, to name a few.

Her research focuses on Rastafari studies, womanism, Africana spiritual practices, Africana philosophy and diaspora studies, among other interests. She has been widely published in national reviews, journals, anthologies and documentaries for her research in Rastafari women, the Pan-African world and Caribbean studies. She attended Brown University, where she received her PhD in Africana studies.

Kimberly Allar

Clinical assistant professor, history

Kimberly Allar will be joining the school’s World War II studies program after spending a year as an adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. Her research looks at the recruitment and training of guards who worked in concentration camps and killing centers from 1933–1945.

Articles she has written have been published by German and American distributors and she is working on her second book which looks at the role of atrocity, war, gender, memory and the law. She holds a PhD in history and genocide studies from Clark University.

Richard Amesbury

Professor and school director, religious studies

Richard Amesbury is the school’s new director. Ahead of coming to the school, he was at Clemson University for two years, where he was professor of philosophy and religious studies and chair of the department of philosophy and religion. Before that, he was professor of ethics in the theology faculty of the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

He is the author of two books, “Faith and Human Rights: Christianity and the Global Struggle for Human Dignity,” and “Morality and Social Criticism: The Force of Reasons in Discursive Practice,” with two more under contract with University of Notre Dame Press and Columbia University Press. In addition, he sits on multiple committees and boards and is the religion and law editor for Religious Studies Review. Amesbury holds a PhD in religion from Claremont Graduate University.

Evan Berry

Assistant professor, religious studies

Evan Berry joins the school from American University where he was an associate professor of philosophy and religion, graduate programs director and an affiliate faculty in global environmental politics and in Latin American and Latino studies. He is the recipient of many awards including the Rachel Carson Center Writing Fellowship and U.S. Department of State Office of Religion and Global Affairs Franklin Fellow.

His research and publications explore religion and climate change along with social conflict in contemporary Latin America, climate politics and religion and nature. Berry received his PhD in religious studies from University of California, Santa Barbara.

Lei Duan

Lecturer, history

Lei Duan joins the faculty at ASU after serving as a postdoctoral scholar and lecturer at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. He is trained as a historian of China and Asia and is currently working on a book entitled “Arming and Disarming: The Culture and Politics of Guns in Modern China,” which is under contract with University of Michigan Press.

He is the recipient of research and travel grants and research fellowships from a great number of institutions including the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, American Historical Association, Princeton University and Harvard University. Duan holds a PhD in history from Syracuse University.

James Dupey

Clinical assistant professor, history

James Dupey is a 2018 ASU alumnus (where he received his PhD) and arrives back to ASU from Eastern Washington University where he has been teaching for a year. His research primarily focuses on North American history, religion, economic history and print culture.

He has published his research in “Journal of the Civil War Era,” and “Journal of Southern Religion,” and speaks at many conferences across the country.

Blake Hartung

Instructor, religious studies

Blake Hartung is a religious studies instructor in the school. His research focuses on Christianity in the late antique near Eastern and Western Asia, biblical exegesis and reception history, early Christian liturgical poems and homilies and archaeology and manuscript studies.

He is the recipient of many honors and awards including the Swenson Family Fellowship in Eastern Christian Manuscript Studies, Mellon Vatican Film Library Research Fellowship and Saint Louis University Conference Presentation Grant, among others. He holds a PhD in historical theology with a concentration in early Christianity from Saint Louis University.

James Hrdlicka

Postdoctoral scholar, political history and leadership program

James Hrdlicka is joining ASU after two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was affiliated with the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy. He spent the past year in Boston, curating an exhibition on early American constitutions and writing the catalogue that will accompany the exhibition when it opens at the New York Historical Society in February 2020.

He has been published in such journals as “The New England Quarterly.” Hrdlicka received his PhD in philosophy and history from the University of Virginia.

Kathleen Kole de Peralta

Clinical assistant professor, history

Kathleen Kole de Peralta is arriving from Idaho State University. She is a historian who integrates the history of medicine and environment on early-modern Iberia and Peru to investigate the relationship between environment and health and uses digital humanities to make open-access projects.

Her co-authored book, “Murder and Martyrdom in Spanish Florida: Don Juan and the Guale Uprising of 1597,” came out in 2017 from the American Museum of Natural History. She holds a PhD in Latin American history from the University of Notre Dame.

Peter Kung

Associate professor, philosophy

Peter Kung is an associate professor of philosophy in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. His research focuses on thought experiments, the exploration of imagination and its connection to modality as well as skeptical challenges in traditional epistemology.

He is the recipient of the Henry M. MacCracken Fellowship at New York University and honorable mention for the Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. Kung received his PhD in philosophy from New York University.

Jacqueline Willy Romero

Instructor, history

Jacqueline Willy Romero moves into her new role of instructor of history after teaching for two years at ASU while completing her PhD. She has received multiple travel awards, fellowships and research awards in recent years and has been published in “American Catholic Studies.”

Her research focuses on the 19th century United States, with an emphasis on women and religion. Primarily interested in how women have historically made their choices, Romero looks further into cases of "problematic women" who had done both a lot of good and a lot of harm as historical agents. She received her PhD in history from ASU.

Ryan Wolfson-Ford

Lecturer, history and Asian studies

Arriving from Marist College, Ryan Wolfson-Ford is joining the history faculty as lecturer of history and Asian studies. His work focuses on Laos during the Vietnam War and asks what role did the Lao play in the course of events and why did they believe certain ideologies at the time?

Currently he is working on publishing with Manchester University Press and has appeared in journals such as South East Asia Research, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and Interpretative Studies on Southeast Asian Culture. He holds a PhD in history from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University is honored to welcome Stacy L. Leeds as the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Distinguished Visiting Indian Law Professor. Leeds is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and carved her place in history when she was named the dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law in 2011, becoming the first Native American woman to be appointed to such position. Currently, she is the vice chancellor for economic development, dean emeritus and a professor at the University of Arkansas, and she will teach federal Indian law this fall as part of ASU Law’s Indian Legal Program.

“We are very honored to have Vice Chancellor Stacy Leeds as the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Distinguished Visiting Indian Law Professor,” said Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, professor and faculty director for ASU Law’s Indian Legal Program and director of the Indian Legal Clinic. “We believe she will be a great addition to our team this fall and a wonderful resource for our students. From the Indian Child Welfare Act to opioid litigation to tribal agriculture, she has combined scholarship and practice to advance and defend Indian rights.” Stacy Leeds, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community distinguished visiting Indian law professor with Judge William Canby Jr. (at left) and Larry Roberts, professor of practice at ASU Law at the NALSA Moot Court Finals. Download Full Image

Leeds has a passion and dedication to Indian law, and a determination to help inform Indian law policy and the next generation of lawyers.

However, she did not always know this would be her path. As a child she grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and went on to become an all-state basketball player for Muskogee High School. She then enrolled at Washington University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree while also participating as a student athlete playing basketball and tennis.

“I knew I wanted to go to law school when a lightbulb moment occurred during my junior year of my undergraduate studies,” Leeds said. “I took a grad school course in social work where the final project involved mock testimony before Congress on Indian child welfare issues. I was hooked by the process, the research and the oral advocacy.”

She obtained two law degrees — a Master of Laws degree from the University of Wisconsin and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Tulsa — and later obtained an MBA while a professor at the University of Kansas.

Currently, she divides her time between downtown Fayetteville near the University of Arkansas campus and Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. With her visiting professorship at ASU Law, she will travel to its Downtown Phoenix campus throughout the fall semester.

“ASU Law is at the top of the Indian law field, and it’s an honor to be a part of the program. It is also very meaningful that the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community continues to invest in law students by providing new opportunities and access to new mentors,” Leeds said.

ASU Law’s Indian Legal Program was established in 1988 and, through its connections to each of Arizona’s federally recognized 22 tribes, is home to one of the highest concentrations of Native American students and Indian law students in the nation. Leeds joins a team of other nationally recognized faculty who are leading scholars in their fields.

Stacy L. Leeds, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Distinguished Visiting Indian Law Professor at ASU Law.

Leeds has been connected to ASU Law for many years. Several of the students she has taught in prelaw programs or otherwise mentored have started their careers at ASU Law. Leeds also delivered the keynote at ASU Law’s William C. Canby Jr. Lecture Series in 2013, and she served as a championship-round judge at the National Native American Law Student Association (NNALSA) Moot Court Competition when ASU Law hosted the annual event in 2018.

“I look forward to getting to know the students and actively participating in their professional development,” Leeds said. “I know that I will also enjoy the full scale of the Indian Law program, which will include interaction with tribes and the Indian law bar in the region.”

Leeds has also made a significant impact in the Native legal community. Previously, she has served as a justice for the Cherokee Nation’s Supreme Court as the first woman and youngest person to be appointed. Leeds also served as a judge for six other Native nations, as a member of the Board of Directors of the National American Indian Court Judges Association, and as chair of the American Bar Association Judicial Division’s Tribal Courts Council.

“I have had the greatest professional privilege anyone could ever hope for: repeatedly being in jobs where I felt like I was in exactly the right place at the right time. When that type of alignment occurs, that’s the point of maximum impact,” Leeds said. “I have been fortunate to experience that many times, not limited to, but certainly including my time as a law school dean and as justice on the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court.”

When further reflecting on her time as the first female Native American law dean, she is proud and encouraged to see additional women ascending to higher roles in academia.

“It was truly an honor with big responsibility, and I am so thrilled that 'only' Native woman has now been amended to 'first' Native woman with the recent appointment of my colleague Dean Elizabeth Kronk at the University of Utah. There will be many to follow and I will celebrate them all. I am keenly aware that my opportunities have been possible because other people opened doors for me and took chances on me,” Leeds said.

Opportunities are exactly what she hopes future law students take advantage of during their time in law school. Her advice is simple: keep an open mind and seize every opportunity as to where your career may take you.

“Studying law will give you immeasurable skills that can translate across so many endeavors. If you embrace that, you will never be bored,” Leeds said.

To fellow Native women studying law, she notes that most Native law students are majority women and increasingly so.

“It will take a few more years for that trend to fundamentally change the landscape of Indian country, but soon most of the Native lawyers will be women in the legal profession and by consequence, many more women will be tribal leaders,” Leeds said. “My advice for Native women is this: Get ready— it’s going to be a wild ride. You can’t always control the timing of your opportunities, but you can control how well-prepared you’ll be.”

Heat sinks, used to regulate the temperature of electronic devices, are more pertinent now than ever, especially with the increased demand for personal devices such as laptop computers.

Without the cooling provided by heat sinks, electrical components would overheat and these types of devices would see significantly decreased longevity. Heat-sink manufacturing technology hasn’t changed much over time, but metal 3D printing could change that. The 3D-printed aluminum heat sink was designed by ASU students Faizan Ejaz, Munku Kang and Gokul Chandrasekaran. Photo courtesy of Beomjin Kwon Download Full Image

The 18th Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems challenged students to find innovative ways to take advantage of modern-day manufacturing technologies to design heat sinks in a new way.

The conference, which invited industry leaders along with university students and faculty to network and discuss advances in heat-transfer technology, hosted a student heat-sink design competition mainly sponsored by General Electric. A team of students from the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University placed among the top five finalists out of 21 teams worldwide.

Instead of designing the heat sink to be manufactured traditionally using casting, metal extrusion and other similar technologies, students were tasked with designing a heat sink using metal 3D-printing technology. This process of manufacturing in which objects are built layer-by-layer is referred to as additive manufacturing.

The ASU team consisted of three mechanical engineering doctoral students — Faizan Ejaz, Munku Kang and Gokul Chandrasekaran — under the guidance of Assistant Professor Beomjin Kwon. Their design utilized 3D-printing technology to create designs that would otherwise be impossible to manufacture.

“There are some features that you cannot make with conventional methods,” Ejaz said. “If you want to make a cylindrical honeycomb structure, you cannot manufacture it without requiring other expensive postprocessing steps. … With the advent of additive manufacturing, now we have access to manufacturing very complex geometries.”

Additive manufacturing allows engineers to create more complex designs, providing a larger surface area on the heat sink. This allows for more hot air from the electrical components to flow across the heat sink without necessarily compromising its efficiency, a design restriction prevalent in traditional manufacturing.

“In many cases, we have to compromise between the manufacturing constraints and the device performance,” Kwon said. “So in real experiments, we do not have a truly optimized device. But additive manufacturing now eliminates many design constraints imposed by traditional techniques. We can think about further optimized design compared to traditional heat-transfer devices.”

The team used concepts from their engineering classes to come up with ways to make the most of their newfound design freedom and maximize efficiency, eventually settling on a design that swirled the air as it flowed, promoting better air mixing and inducing turbulence, which led to enhanced heat transfer.

In addition to applying classroom concepts in a real-world scenario, the team had the opportunity to work in uncharted territory for heat-sink manufacturing and acquire skills in creative design.

“The design freedom you get while applying additive manufacturing techniques is immense,” Chandrasekaran said. “The competition was more about providing innovative solutions to the problem than applying the traditional approach we already know.”

The top five finalists of the heat-sink design competition presented their designs at the IEEE ITherm conference in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Beomjin Kwon

The other finalists included teams from Purdue University, the University of Maryland, Trinity College Dublin and Pennsylvania State University.

“Everybody got to see our designs,” Ejaz said. “All five designs of the top teams were incredible, and each one had its own unique design style and unique approach to the problem, so we got to learn a lot about different ideas and how to think better.”

The competition also gave students the opportunity to work directly with industry leaders from GE and receive feedback and guidance on their designs.

GE set up video conferences with students who made it past the first round of the competition and assisted them in designing their heat sinks. Once the final designs were submitted, GE 3D-printed the heat sinks with aluminum and tested them. The top five finalists received admission to the conference and presented their designs.

“The competition helps you to explore your design capabilities and your potential to work in a team,” Ejaz said. “But the best thing about this competition is that you are working directly with GE and they are helping you to become leaders in metal 3D manufacturing.”

The ASU team’s accomplishments open up new opportunities for future research at the university using smart technologies such as machine learning to optimize designs.

“In this competition, we came up with a design from our intuition and based on our experience, and based on student effort,” Kwon said. “But I think the future work will be about how to produce the device's design in a smart way, in a more systematic way.”

The 2019 Next Generation Leader cohort at the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University has graduated from its 10-month intensive leadership training program.

After finishing their yearlong placements in organizations relevant to their goals, this year’s Next Generation Leaders now head back to their home environments to implement their Leadership Action Plans — putting the values-driven leadership skills honed during their time with the McCain Institute into practice to bring about positive change. The McCain Institute's Next Generation Leaders (NGLs) 2019 Cohort pose with Lt. Jack McCain before the graduation ceremony at the McCain Institute. The ten NGLs completed the 10-month intensive leadership training program and will implement their Leadership Action Plans in their home environments to bring about positive change. Download Full Image

“I’m extremely proud to join a global network of outstanding character-driven leaders and advocates for core values of security, economic opportunity, freedom and human dignity,” Next Generation Leader Sokayna El-Allam said. Originally from Morocco, El-Allam’s Leadership Action Plan involves collaborating with local and international stakeholders and launching entrepreneurial initiatives that focus on international development and human rights.

On leave from active duty in the Navy, Lt. John S. McCain IV used his keynote address to tell the graduates, “When I read each of the biographies and exploits of you, the graduates, and now that I’ve gotten to sit down with you, I get to know a diverse, daring and driven group of experts in their respective fields.”

McCain also added three pillars of advice for the graduates: “First, be a good person. Second, do your job. Third, be a smart heretic or foster them.”

Leadership Action Plans from some of the other graduating Next Generation Leaders include:

• Modou Sowe, The Gambia: Seeks to build competent leadership and professional skills to support women and youth in the agricultural value chain for sustainable development while indirectly supporting the government’s efforts to address its challenges of food insecurity, high dependency ratio and the unemployment of women and youth.

• Abdalaziz Alhamza, Syria: Seeks to empower the next generation of Syrians to become compassionate and informed leaders in their own communities and to rebuild the country based on the principles of freedom, dignity, truth, justice, unity and peace.

• Aliz Pocsuvalszki, Hungary: Seeks to focus on education through challenging the long-standing practice of school segregation and to work toward a better, more inclusive system which guarantees access to education to all marginalized groups in Hungary.

“We are extremely proud of the accomplishments of our 2019 cohort and have full confidence that they will take on the implementation phase of their Leadership Action Plans with great passion and determination,” said Ambassador Michael Polt, the program’s senior director.

The 2019 Catalyst Grant winners were also announced at the Next Generation Leaders graduation. Catalyst Grants support and encourage top achievement in the implementation of an Next Generation Leaders' Leadership Action Plan. An annual monetary award of up to $5,000, the grant goes toward increasing the impact an action plan in his or her home environment. The grant winners were:

• Dael Dervishi, Albania, Next Generation Leader cohort 2017

• Edlira Gjoni, Albania, Next Generation Leader cohort 2018

• Erkaiym Mambetalieva, Kyrgyzstan, Next Generation Leader cohort 2018

• Konstantin Popkov, Russia, Next Generation Leader cohort 2015

Partners and supporters in the Next Generation Leader program include:

Placement sites: East-West Institute, DigitalUndivided, Border Network for Human Rights, Denver International Airport, Cry3Con at ASU, City Year New Orleans, the Public Service Academy at ASU, Center for Court Innovation, Community Alliance with Family Farmers and the Department of Health and Human Services

Sponsors: ASU’s President’s Office, Baltic American Freedom Foundation, OCP S.A., Robert Bosch Stiftung, Starr Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Freeport-McMoRan