Education Law

Liveblogging AERA: Law and Education SIG Secretary/Treasurer

By Justin Bathon

I have never exactly been that great with money. It is not a coincidence that I married an accountant. But, for some reason, the Law and Education SIG of AERA has entrusted the money to me ? starting ? well, yesterday. It is a great honor and I am looking forward to filling the position.

Couple of notes from the AERA Law and Ed. Sig Meeting, however. First, we did not give out an Emerging Scholar Award this year to the best graduate student proposal. That is a shame. I won the award last year and Joseph Oluwole, now at Montclair State, won the award the year before that. It is not only a nice resume boost, but it is also a bit of cash and the appreciation and acknowledgement from your future peers. I am really disappointed we were not able to bestow that award on anyone this year and I hope that does not happen again, ever! So, all you graduate students out there interested in legal issues in education, please submit next year and put some time into your proposal. Next year the award is going up to $300, and, as treasurer, I would really like to write that check with your name on it.  

Next, there was some concern about proposal quality. While I am not an expert, I can tell you that proposals for AERA presentations are expected to be of the highest quality. Of all the conferences I present at, when I propose to AERA I take the most time in writing the proposal. When submitting to the law SIG, it is expected that your proposal will have footnotes in proper Bluebook format (or APA), will have already completed at least some of the literature review and may even report some preliminary results of the analysis. Simply submitting an idea with no references and no literature to back it up is not sufficient for AERA purposes.

I will write more about what we might do online in another post at a later date, but there is a lot of potential development in this area.

Last, just a shameless plug for the AERA Law and Education SIG. The SIG currently has 156 active members. Not so many years ago it had only 30-ish. It is in a period of rapid growth and most of the law people that are getting professorship jobs around the country right now are members. Just this year, the SIG placed at least 3 of its young members into Assistant Professor positions at very nice universities (including me). The Law SIG is the entity that is producing the future scholars of educational law, probably more than any other entity. If you are already a member of AERA, the dues are a grand total of ? wait for it ? $5. Yep, that is all it costs to be a member of the Law and Education SIG. So join. Come to the SIG meeting. Submit a proposal. We are a really, REALLY welcoming group and a great group for young professors to get started with. Even if you are currently a professor teaching educational law, you should think about joining. For my money ? the most cutting edge scholarship in educational law right now is being produced by Law and Education SIG members and I am proud to call myself a member and assume a leadership position in the SIG.

Full post as published by Edjurist on March 27, 2008 (boomark / email).