In this month’s episode of the podcast, we talk to Professor Andrew Spiropoulos, who is the head of OCU LAW’s Center for the Study of State Constitutional Law and Government. Professor Spiropoulos talks about this year’s session of the Oklahoma Legislature and the potential effects of federal stimulus money on the future of the state’s government. He also talks about the agenda undertaken by the newly majority-Republican body.

From 2005-2006 Professor Spiropoulos was the Senior Counselor to the Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, where his duties included serving as chief policy advisor and negotiator.  Professor Spiropoulos clerked for Judge Danny Boggs of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and practiced law with the Chicago firm of Gardner, Carton & Douglas before joining the faculty. He has been a Heritage Foundation Salvatori Fellow and is an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. He was the reporter for the Uniform Interstate Enforcement of Domestic-Violence Protection Orders Act.

To listen to the podcast click below or in the sidebar at left. The podcast also is available through iTunes, Podcast Alley and Odeo.

 

 Episode 16 - June 2009: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Some OCU LAW students recently formed a new student organization to help underprivileged senior citizens make important decisions about their personal legal matters. The OCU LAW Elder Law Association hold workshops at a local senior shelter and at retirement homes to help seniors file important legal documents.

Third-year OCU LAW student Monica Tanzey said she saw a need for the organization when she held an internship at the AARP and clerked at the Oklahoma Senior Law Resource Center.

"The people I worked for said they wished there was a law student group that could help elderly people in need," Tanzey said. "After working with area senior citizens, it became clear that there is a local need for these services, and students could benefit by volunteering as well."

Tanzey said that while classroom experience is great for "learning the law, analyzing legal issues and testing" when learning the legal profession, working in the field is a necessary part of the educational process as a way to gain exprerience interacting with clients. She formed the Elder Law Association during the Fall 2008 semester and recruited about 20 fellow students. The association has held workshops at the Sunbeam Family Services senior citizen emergency shelter and has scheduled similar sessions at Grace Living Center. Sunbeam Family Services senior shelter is open to those who have been abused or neglected.

The Elder Law association plans to hold workshops throughout the summer at other local retirement centers. Law students help the elderly with issues like advanced healthcare directives, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

"These can be complex issues and the paperwork might be confusing for some people," Tanzey said.

"I’m amazed at the good we’re doing in the community."

The OCU LAW Elder Law Association was featured in Monday’s Oklahoman and has received funding from the Student Bar Association to continue operations next year.

The Credit Union Association of Oklahoma has appointed OCU LAW Alumna Carol Rolke ‘03 as its new vice president of political and regulatory affairs. She will lead the association’s legislative council during sessions of the Oklahoma legislature and will oversee regulatory and compliance services. Rolke was previously a private practitioner. 

Former Garfield County district judge and 1961 OCU LAW alumnus Richard Pickens died Sunday, June 28, after a brief illness. He was 79.

Pickens served as Garfield County district judge from 1981-1982, as presiding judge for the northwest judicial administrative district from 1982-1984 and again from 1991-1992. He was a member of the court on the judiciary trial division from 1987-1991 and was appointed by Oklahoma Governors Henry Bellmon and David Walters to the court of tax review. He served on that court from 1989-1992. 

Judge Pickens graduated from Enid High School in 1947 and attended Phillips University. Before attending OCU LAW he was manager of Long Bell Lumber Co. in Enid from 1950-1955. He served as Harper County assistant district attorney from 1967-1969 and as associate district judge in Harper County. He also was a former member of the Enid Police Civil Service Commission. He was a member of the board of trustees of Great Salt Plains Council for Boy Scouts of America, Enid Rotary Club, former member of Grand National Quail Hunt Board of Directors and a past president of Grand National Quail Club. He was named OCU LAW Distinguished Law Alumnus in 1992.

The Enid News and Eagle featured a story on Judge Pickens’ passing. It is available on their website.

Oklahoma City University Law Review volume 34 Number 1 is available now. Issues can be picked up for free in the bins located outside the student lounge in Sarkeys Law Center and in the law library in the Gold Star building across from the circulation desk. The issue contains a tribute to OCU LAW Professor Emeritus Richard E. Coulson, with articles of appreciation from OCU LAW Dean Lawrence K. Hellman, faculty members Von R. Creel, Alvin C. Harrell, Arthur G. LeFrancois, Daniel J. Morgan, Carla Spivack and Vicki Lawrence MacDougall, as well as OCU LAW student Melissa Peros. 

Katherine L. Holey serves as Editor-in-Chief. Mike Chase Ritter is Managing Editor and Joshua M. Snavely serves as Executive Editor. Amanda Warren and Christopher Wills are Resource Editors, and Lori McConnell and Bradley Michelsen are Articles Editors. Staff Editors are Heather Basler, Amanda Bullington, Dearra Johnson, Nicholas A. Johnson and John Wiggins. Vicki Lawrence MacDougall serves as Faculty Advisor, and Laana Layman is Editorial Publishing Assistant. The Oklahoma City University Law Review is an Executive Board member of the National Conference of Law Reviews.

 OCU LAW alumnus Eric L. Johnson ‘94, recently moderated the legal committee panel at the National Automotive Finance Association’s national Non-Prime Auto Financing Conference in Ft. Worth, Texas. Johnson is chairperson of the NAFA legal committee, and as panel moderator gave automotive finance industry executives an overview of the latest legal developments that impact lenders, car dealers and automotive finance companies. The panel discussed topics such as federal legislative updates, Truth in Lending Act Enforcement changes, Red Flags Rules and Guidelines, consumer debt avoidance techniques and the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcies. 

Johnson, who is a shareholder with the Oklahoma City-based firm Phillips Murrah, represents national finance companies, automobile dealers and a wide range of businesses and financial institutions, providing consumer credit compliance advice on complex federal and state laws and regulations.

Last week the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education approved the appointment of OCU LAW alumna Raquel Schmitz ‘99 as the vice chancellor for administration. Schmitz will be responsible for general agency administration, operational oversight of the chancellor’s office and overall coordination of work related to the coordinating board and agency advisory councils.

Schmitz served for five years as the chief of staff at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Okla., serving as the primary liaison between the university’s president and its faculty, staff, students, state and federal legislators and other education entities. She was responsible for managing the president’s office budget, served on the university’s executive cabinet and managing meetings and special projects for the president. She also was an English and humanities instructor at the university and has worked as the general counsel law clerk for the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.

Schmitz graduated from Oklahoma State University in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree in English and received a master’s degree in English literature from Texas Woman’s University in 1994. 

Left to right, Carol North, Deborah Tussey, Heather Daniell, Bill Conger, Dawn Grooms, Debbie Boles, Gayla DiGiusti, Laurie Jones, Nathan Gunter, Gina Rowsam and Damon Gardenhire.

OCU LAW staff and faculty met for the second Summer Salad Lunch today, planned and sponsored by Assistant Dean for Professional and Career Development Gina Rowsam and the staff of the Professional and Career Development Center. The lunches, happening periodically throughout the summer, give OCU LAW faculty, staff and students a chance to connect in a way that they do not always get during the school year. Today’s crowd enjoyed delicious chicken salad, spinach salad, bread, fresh watermelon and brownies, and had a discussion about how they have adjusted to the new OCU summer hours. In addition, everyone shared a little more about their summer plans:

Assistant Dean for Professional and Career Development Gina Rowsam is learning how to be a Dragon Boat racer. She just had her first lesson on the Oklahoma River and will be joining a dragon boat racing team made up of breast cancer survivors. 

Gayla DiGiusti, Administrative Assistant to University General Counsel Bill Conger, will be spending time at her home at Grand Lake, Okla., and "having grandma time" with her two grandkids, who are 5 and 3 years old.

PCDC Administrative Assistant Heather Daniell will move into her new apartment on Saturday. Her mom is coming from Texas to help.

Debbie Boles, PCDC Law Career Counselor, is taking a cruise to Alaska, as well as planning time with her grandchildren, Rebecca, who is 3, and Cory, who is 2. She especially enjoys watching Cory mimic everything his big sister Rebecca does.

OCU General Counsel and Distinguished Lecturer in Law Bill Conger will be traveling to Munich, Germany on June 29, and then continuing on to Freiburg, where he will teach in the OCU LAW study abroad program in Freiburg and the Netherlands. He will return to the U.S. in time to see his youngest daughter, Erin, get married on August 1, and then is traveling to Clarksdale, Miss., with some friends to attend a blues festival.

Professor of Law Deborah Tussey is traveling to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and then driving to Williamsburg, Va., to visit her mother. She will end her time on the East Coast by meeting some friends at Lake Lure, near Asheville, NC. 

Senior Communications and New Media Content Specialist Nathan Gunter kicked off the summer by attending the Kerrville Folk Music Festival in Kerrville, Texas. He is hosting a folk music house concert in his backyard next week, and then will spend the Fourth of July holiday in Washington, D.C. before flying to Ireland, where he lived for two months during college, for a week. In the meantime he is working keeping his backyard vegetable garden alive and thriving, and writing freelance pieces for the Oklahoma Gazette.

Legal Research and Writing Professor and Public Interest and Pro Bono Coordinator Laurie Jones is learning how to weld. She and her boyfriend own a vineyard in Harper County, Okla., and he built new trellises for the grapes, teaching her how to weld in the meantime. 

Legal Research and Writing Professor Maribob Lee is redecorating her "state of the art 1973 harvest gold" bathroom. She just had a new bathtub installed and is currently looking for a white five-gallon tank toilet and also sorting through 66 years of her parents’ accumulated belongings.

Assistant Dean for Communications and Marketing Damon Gardenhire has enjoyed this summer’s four-day schedule as it has allowed him to spend more time with his 7-year-old daughter. So far the pair have visited Science Museum Oklahoma, the Oklahoma City Zoo and the Oklahoma City Botanical Gardens, as well as spending a lot of time cooking, drawing, and crafting together. Damon also is getting his house ready for the newest addition to his family, a baby boy, and taking his family on vacation in the Ozarks. He also has started a project called "Auxano" with some men from his church. The group assist working poor families in starting and maintaining backyard gardens as well as tending to home repair issues that the working poor in Norman cannot always afford to have fixed.

Carol North, PCDC Data Analyst, will be performing in this summer’s performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the Poteet Theatre at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, which she says has been a rewarding experience both spiritually and artistically. She hopes to get to visit with her brother when he visits their mother in Arkansas, and will help her daughter, who graduated from OCU in May, move into her first apartment.

Faculty Support Administrative Assistant Dawn Grooms is traveling to Miami, Florida, for a vacation, and has so far enjoyed getting to spend Fridays with her daughter Chloe and grandson Quentin. She is taking a summer philosophy course and hopes to dedicate the second half of the summer to photography, which is her major. She will be traveling Route 66 as part of a collaborative project with Professor Alvin Harrell wherein she will photograph and he will write about America’s historic road. The two hope to publish the project in book form.

PCDC Summer Salad Lunches are scheduled throughout June and July. To register for one of the three remaining lunches, contact Debbie Boles in the Professional Career Development Center at (405) 208.5332 or e-mail dboles@okcu.edu.

At Monday night’s regular meeting of the Norman Board of Education, second-year evening law student Bryan Young was named the new principal of Norman North High School. Young has been with Norman North since it opened in 1997. He taught social studies until 2006, when he was named ninth grade principal. He is currently in charge of the school’s Links Crew, AP Leadership and Ninth Grade tutoring program. He was the Norman North boys soccer coach from 1997 to 2007 and was president of the Oklahoma Soccer Coaches Association from 2005 to 2006. He also served as president of the Norman Teachers’ Association from 2003 to 2005.

Young received his bachelor of science in health and sports science with a minor in history from the University of Oklahoma, and a master’s in education leadership from Southern Nazarene University. He worked on the dissertation stage of a Ph.D. in education leadership and policy studies with an emphasis in education law and finance at the University of Oklahoma. He started at OCU LAW in the fall of 2008.

Jason Brinkley, a May 2008 graduate of OCU LAW, was the youngest applicant for a Justice of the Peace position in Cooke County, Texas.

Today, he was sworn into the position.

Licensed to practice law in November 2008, he started the law firm Brinkley & Webster, PLLC, with fellow OCU LAW alumnus Ryan Webster, also a May 2008 graduate.

Brinkley was quoted in a recent Gainesville Daily Register newspaper article as saying he can bring a fresh outlook to the Commissioners Court.

“I applied for the job because I feel that I can offer a new and fresh perspective, and believe that I can use my skills to help the county find reasonable solutions to the issues facing our county in the years to come,” said Brinkley.

OCU LAW celebrates Brinkley’s accomplishment.