March 25-29

This week at DGS and Pre-Law, I finished a flyer for social media for DGS. I made it in hopes that they could either give them to the students during summer registration or they could use them next semester if they decide to do a social media push. I sent it to the director of admissions so I may be making edits. I also made further TV lobby slides for National and International Scholarships (NISP). NISP gives me information and wants me to format it in an appealing way. I also went to the DGS and Pre-Law staff meetings. At the DGS meeting, we talked about summer registration, and I saw how they were improving their system from last summer. It was neat to see the changes and how the advisors continue to be innovative and student-centered. Like usual, I kept up with the social media pages for both pre-law and DGS and added appropriate entries to the news feed for DGS. I also worked on a blog post for the Pre-Law blog. I am writing a post for later in April about networking tips. Dean Bloomquist of Chicago Loyola School of Law came back in March and I went to hear her talk with interested students. She talked about networking so my post is inspired and based on some of the suggestions to the students. One of the Pre-Law advisors is doing a presentation in April but she says she always has technical difficulties so I went to the room and checked out the technology so that I can teach her how to use it.

This week, I read Leaving the Law: Occupational and Career Mobility of Law School Graduates. This paper explores the reasons why people who have a law degree do not practice law. Less than 2% of people who graduates law school are not practicing law but wished they were practicing law. There are also people who only work in law part-time and the reason they do this is because they could not find a job that worked for them. Less than 1% of law school graduates have given up finding a job because they have worked so hard to find one but couldn't. Around 2% of law school graduates are looking for jobs but can't find one. However, in 1993, 16% of law school graduates were employed but were not in the law profession. One reason why people with law degrees do not practice law is because they are not interested in it as a career any longer. Also, those who do not practice report that there was not a job in the field. Women do report leaving the profession for family matters. I think these are all reasonable but important for students considering law to think about. I recently had a conversation about women in the law field and how many leave the profession to have a family. One of the pre-law advisors left practice so that she could raiser her family. We discussed the societal implications of women leaving their practice to have families. I think it is hard for a 22 year old to decide between law school and starting a family when they don't know where they will be in their life in 7-8 years. Putting in time and effort towards getting a law degree and then stopping so that a family can be raised is a real issue. 

This week, I spent about 1.5 hours in staff meetings, 1.5 hours working on the news feed, 45 minutes updating and posting to the the pre-law and DGS social media pages, 1 hour and 15 minutes reading and blogging, 15 minutes checking the technology for the pre-law advisor, 2 hours designing the NISP powerpoint, 1 hour and 15 minutes creating the social media handout

Baker, J. G. & Jorgensen, B. K. (2000). Leaving the law: Occupational and career mobility of law school graduates. Journal of Legal Education, 50(1), 16-34. 

March 11-15

This week at DGS and Pre-Law, I spent about 45 minutes posting information to the Pre-Law and DGS facebook pages, Twitter accounts, news feeds, and calendars. I shadowed one of the Pre-Law advisors in an appointment with a student. This was a first-time appointment so it was good to hear how an advising appointment goes when the student is not in the process of applying to law school yet or if they are going to apply at all. I also went to the Pre-Law staff meeting and the DGS staff meeting. At the DGS staff meeting, the Business Minor advisors talked with us about changes to the minor, which will be helpful to me because many of the chemistry students want a business minor. I also worked on Pre-Law and DGS social media quarter sheets in hopes of presenting them to some of the staff to see if they will want to use them in the future to hand out to students. This quarter sheet would be passed out to students when they come in for appointments. I also worked on the National and International Scholarship PowerPoint slides. I was asked to take information and format it in a feasible way.

Posting to social media: 1 hour
Staff Meetings: 1 hour 45 minutes
Shadowed and debriefed: 1 hour
National and International Scholarships PowerPoints: 2 hours
Pre-Law and DGS social media quarter sheets: 1 hour
Reading and Blogging: 1 hour


This week, I read Exploring the Use of Blogs as Learning Spaces in the Higher Education Sector (Williams, 2004). The article discusses  some of the benefits to blogging, such as active learning, chances for critical thought, and a chance to thoroughly and thoughtfully carry conversations with others. The article also presents data on two MBA courses that used a blog to promote dialogue on issues related to the classes they were in. Overall, the students enjoyed the blog and would like to see more blogs being used in future classes. However, some students were hesitant to contribute to the blog because they were nervous about posting and what others would think of their post. The blog at Pre-Law does not act now as a forum for dialogue, but it does act as a form of knowledge dissemination. I wonder if the blog would get more followers if it was a place for dialogue and students could talk to each about law school, share news with each other, etc. I have a hard time believing though that students would go out of their way to post to each other, for potentially the same reasons as Williams and Jacbos (2004) finds that the MBA students are nervous to post. Also, I think students would be unmotivated to post information to the blog because that would require going through the process of posting. I think this could work if students were reading news on law school, but overall I do not think it would be successful.


Williams, J. B. & Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 20(2), 232-247. 

March 4-8

 This week at Pre-Law and DGS, I maintained the Pre-Law and DGS Facebook pages with upcoming events and news. I also posted more information to the DGS Newsfeed, calendar, and Pre-Law Twitter. I went to a Pre-Law event which hosted the Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Loyola Law School in Chicago. The event introduced Loyola's Law School to interested students and the students got the chance to ask her questions. I also checked in on several student records. I could not meet with many of them because they are on probation but I analyzed their records to determine how I would advise them on their situation. I also went to the Pre-Law Staff meeting.

I spent about 2 hours reading and blogging, 1 hour and 15 minutes at the Pre-Law event, 3 hours posting news to the various social media forums, 1 hour and 30 minutes reviewing student files, 30 minutes at the Pre-Law meeting, 45 minutes doing administrative things (emails, preparing for meeting, etc.), 2 hours brainstorming ways to get the DGS Facebook and Twitter page off the ground to start either this summer during summer registration of this coming fall.



This week, I read
A Forked River Runs Through Law School: Toward Understanding Race, Gender, Age, and Related Gaps in Law School Performance and Bar Passage. 
The Bar Passage Study collected data on law school GPAs and Bar passages rates for law students. One of the findings is that minority students have lower Bar passage rates and they also have lower GPAs coming out of law school. These students also graduate at lower rates than white students. Barriers such as language, lower social capital, discrimination on campus, first-year law school events (getting married, getting sick etc.) and family all contribute to the lower success in law school. Women face barriers with law school at the entrance. They score lower on the LSAT compared to men but they do better in undergrad and in law school. Law students who are older have first-year GPAs that are lower than traditional aged law students. Law students with disabilities or with lower SES scored lower on the LSAT. One interesting finding is that when LSAT scores, GPA of law school and GPA of undergrad are held constant, the law school ranking does not influence the likelihood that a student will pass the bar exam. The main point of this article is that law schools do not help close the education gap that disadvantaged groups of students experience as they leave their undergraduate education and enter law school. I don't think this is shocking but it is troubling. Like the recent news on financial aid says, law school is getting more expensive, and this could also possibly put the disadvantaged students at an even further disadvantage of completing law school. Clydesdale suggests that law schools diversify their faculty because students do better in classes with a faculty member from a disadvantaged background. However, I question where these faculty members are going to come from if they aren't completing school as successfully as white students. Also, it appeared that rankings did not ultimately impact the results of the Bar exam.This relates back to the first article I talked about by Kamin (2006). Rankings matter to students.....but should they really matter if, assuming grades and LSAT scores are the same, they are going to get the same score on the Bar anyways?  It is clear that the educational achievement gap is present not just in primary, secondary, and higher education, but it prevails in law school as well. I don't think this should be surprising to educators. 

I also read Retention Issues in Legal Education: The Roles of Undergraduate Educators of Academic Support in the Law School. This article gives suggestions on how law schools and undergraduate institutions can support their students better. Law schools identified a need to help students when they were starting to see a decline in applications so they were forced to take students with lower academic success.  The article exposes a flaw in the undergraduate curriculum claiming that institutions do not prepare students for the writing and communication skills necessary for law school. From my experience with advising, there are students who do well enough on the ACT or AP exam and therefore already completed their composition one requirement. Thus, those students are already down one English class that could have helped them towards law school. I did a fair amount of writing during undergrad but I imagine that different majors require different amounts of writing so many students do not experience much writing. Therefore, the article suggests that undergraduates take more courses on writing, that they have practice in standardized testing, and that institutions start helping young people gain basic skills. The article also describes academic support programs that have been established at law schools to help support students. These programs facilitate workshops, help students develop skills, and provide tutors for students. The article also identifies a need for collaboration between law schools and undergraduate institutions so that students are better prepared for law school. From what I can see, our Pre-Law advising office has many great relationships with law schools. Many deans of law schools visit on our campus to meet with groups of students to talk about their law school and how to get in. I am unsure however about what universities are doing to improve the level of writing ability of its graduates. The pre-law office does promote classes that help improve skills needed for law school, but it is ultimately the student's responsibility to enroll in those courses. However, I will agree that there are structural forces in place, such as students being able to be exempted from the composition one course, that do not force graduates to be better writers.

Calleros, C. R. (2008). Enhancing the pipeline of diverse K-12 and college students to law school: The HNBA multi-tier mentoring program. Journal of Legal Education, 58(3), 327-240.

         

         Clydesdale, T. T. (2004). A forked river runs through law school: Toward understanding race, gender, age, and related gaps in law school performance and bar passage. Law & Social Inquiry, 29(4), 711-769. 

Feb 25-Mar 1

This week at DGS and Pre-Law, I went to a Financial Aid presentation. The presentation was given by two Financial Aid advisors and it was incredibly informative. They talked about the "Satisfactory Academic Progress" (SAP) that students must be making towards a degree or else their aid was taken away from them. The policies and petition processes involved in SAP were discussed. This presentation was specifically for advisors across campus. I also posted news to the DGS newsfeed and webtools calendar. Both systems are not intuitive and are difficult to make aesthetically pleasing, so I worked with the honors director to attempt to improve the way that it looks. The webtools calendar and news feed went live this week so now at least the work I put in to it will be seen. I also updated the Pre-Law and DGS webpages with relevant news and pertinent deadlines. With the help of the pre-law advisor, we crafted a message to the admitted students inviting them to join the Pre-Law facebook page.(There is an admitted student U of I facebook page) We want more followers for Pre-Law on Facebook but asking the admitted students to join the page is tricky because the advisors get calls from parents wanting their freshman to meet with them. However, the freshman are not allowed to make an appointment until after they have gone to a pre-law orientation workshop. Therefore, we had to balance inviting them to join without suggesting that meeting with advisors is a good step to take. I worked with the pre-law advisor and graduate intern on getting information out to all advisors across campus about an upcoming webinar on financial aid I also attended the DGS and Pre-Law staff meetings. Finally, I updated the PowerPoint that plays in the CCAAS lobby (that thing is never 100% correct). One of the staff members showed me an article about a DGS student who is on the Illini Chess Team. The team made it to the national championships. I emailed this student to see if he is interested in being highlighted on the powerpoint. He has agreed, which is exciting.

I read Toward Promoting Diversity in Legal Education: A Model Program for At-Risk High School Students which discussed a program that was a collaboration between law students and high-school students. The law students would mentor the high-school students while introducing them to the law profession. This was in hopes of motivating these students to get through school and go to college.The 4 week program is called Law High. The program has not collected data to determine if it has been effective in its mission. They do not really want to gather data either because it would cost money, they do not want to put the students through the study, and they are not sure how they would define success in the program. I think it would be hard in the current economic environment for a program like this to be sustained over time without data to prove its worth. On the other hand, the program only costed $250 because the law school students volunteered their time. The $250 was spent on food for the high school students. I think this program is a great example of a way for universities and institutions to collaborate together, especially on such a low cost project. This article was written in 1999 and mentions issues of affirmative action, which, as we discussed in class, has been in the news recently. If diversity is an issue at the undergraduate level, then it most certainly must with law school applicants and attendees. I wonder how much a program like this helps to ameliorate the structural forces in place that disadvantages students of color in access to higher education. I think, like other programs, this is one that only breaks the surface. However, at the very least, some of these at-risk high school students will have heard for perhaps the first time, that they could be successful in college, and that could be exactly what one student needs to get to college. 
 
I spent about 1 hour and 30 minutes at the Financial Aid presentation, 1 hour and 30 minutes in staff meetings, 1 hour and 30 minutes updating the PowerPoint and corresponding with the DGS student, 2 hours editing the news feed, 2 hours gathering information and preparing the webtools calendar, and 1 hour and 30 minutes doing social media outreach. I also spent 40 minutes reading and blogging.