LAST YEAR, Boston College Law School established two new awards for faculty scholarship and innovation inside or outside of the classroom.
The 2023 Faculty Prize for Excellence in Scholarship has been awarded to Associate Professor and Provost Faculty Fellow Bijal Shah for two articles, “Administrative Subordination” (forthcoming from the University of Chicago Law Review) and “Statute-Focused Presidential Administration” from the George Washington Law Review (2022). According to Associate Dean for Faculty and Global Programs Katie Young, the award is given “on the basis of a piece of scholarship published or accepted for publication during the previous year.” The scholarship can include books, law review articles, book chapters, peer reviewed journal articles, and other scholarly submissions. The selection criteria the committee considers includes the clarity or novelty of the argument, the evidence marshaled, inter-disciplinary or cross-field collaborations, and other general indicators of excellence in scholarship.
The 2023 Faculty Prize for Innovation in Pedagogy has been awarded to Professor and Faculty Fellow Lisa Alexander for innovations in her course “Housing Law & Policy Colloquium/Seminar,” which combined theory and practice and distinctive academic and practitioner perspectives and presentations. The Faculty Prize for Innovation in Pedagogy was created in order to recognize initiatives undertaken by Boston College Law School faculty. According to Young, such initiatives include “the introduction of distinctive technology in the classroom; new approaches to clinical and experiential learning; informed methods for discussion of challenging topics, such as race and the law and other disciplines of learning; adaptations to particular student needs or concerns, such as first-generation law students; and other innovations.”
Last year, the inaugural Excellence in Scholarship award was given to Founders Professor Mary Bilder, and the award for Innovation in Pedagogy was given to the team of faculty and
students who designed and executed the 1L course on Critical Perspectives in Law and Professional Identity.