October 2023
A $1 million planned gift from a Maurer School of Law alumnus will refurbish and enhance one of the most iconic spaces in the Jerome Hall Law Library and on the Indiana University Bloomington campus.
The George P. Smith, II Reading Room, named to honor the donor, will be dedicated on October 27.
Smith, a 1964 graduate of the Law School, said he wanted to pay tribute to the late Colleen Kristl Pauwels, who led the Jerome Hall Law Library from 1978 through her retirement in 2011. Pauwels passed away in 2013, but her impact is felt today as much as it was when she served as director of the library.
“Being able to underwrite the Reading Room in the Law Library is both an honor and a small way for me to acknowledge the master planner of that very setting—Colleen Pauwels,” Smith said. “When the Law School was remodeled in 1986, it was Colleen who saw the Reading Room as an indispensable part of the ‘new’ library. She wanted the students to be in a comfortable and relaxed environment for studying.”
With its sunken main floor and flooded with natural light coming through floor-to-ceiling windows that rise four stories, the George P. Smith, II Reading Room will serve as an inviting space for students and researchers.
“The Reading Room is one of the most beautiful places on campus,” said Jerome Hall Law Library Director Susan deMaine. “We’re very grateful to George P. Smith, II for not only recognizing this lovely space, but also the remarkable woman—Colleen Pauwels—whose vision helped turned our Law Library into the institution it is today.”
Smith endowed a scholarship in honor of Pauwels in 2019, intended to support a first-year law student, with a preference for a student interested in law library management, intellectual property, cybersecurity, or informatics.
“My inspiration for naming a scholarship in Colleen’s honor was to recognize her sustained work ethic and her total commitment to professional excellence and patron service,” Smith said. “She was a superb administrator who seemed to know every nook and cranny in the whole law school building. She was a planner who always wanted state-of-the-art tools for students, staff, and visitors. And she had a cheerful disposition — always willing to help in any way she could.”
The Smith gift has allowed for several enhancements to the Reading Room, including new carpet, paint, standing tables, and more. The space has traditionally held numerous books along with tables and chairs for studying, but most reading materials have been made available digitally to create more room for students, deMaine said. Any remaining funds will be used for the acquisition of materials with a research and scholarly purpose for the Law Library.
“The George P. Smith, II Reading Room will serve as a vital study and community space that reminds students, faculty, and visitors of the incredible support both George and Colleen have provided our school,” said Dean Christiana Ochoa.
Smith is an internationally recognized expert in law, science, and medicine—specifically bioethics and health law. Over the course of his distinguished career, Smith has held more than 85 research appointments with institutions including: the medical schools at the universities of Chicago, Columbia, Indiana, Minnesota, Northwestern, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington, as well as the universities of Arizona State; Auckland; New Zealand; British Columbia; Cambridge; McGill; Oxford; Sydney, Australia; The Hoover Institution, The Max Planck Institute, Germany; The Rockefeller Foundation; Bellagio, Italy, Trinity College at Dublin University; Dartmouth College; The Free University of Berlin; Princeton Seminary and the divinity schools at Cambridge, Yale and Vanderbilt.
Widely published and recognized as a leading national and international scholar, Smith has a bibliography of over 316 published entries which includes 17 books; 11 book chapters; 152 law review articles; 25 monographs; 32 review essays; and 79 major papers presented at international and domestic symposia and conferences. His contributions to the legal profession were recognized by Indiana University in 1998 when he was awarded an LL.D. degree, Honoris Causa. He is listed in Who's Who in the World and Outstanding Writers of the 20th Century as well as WHO's WHO IN AMERICAN EDUCATION and WHO's WHO in AMERICAN LAW. He is a life member of the American Law Institute.
An organ donor whose gift of life inspired a career in national transplant operations and beyond. A Fort Wayne native who rose to the C-Suite of some of the country’s top medical device and health technology companies. A leading business leader who has used her legal skills to help large, complex companies mitigate risks at home and abroad. And a young alumnus who has already made his mark in his native Michigan, where he advises one of the nation’s most recognizable governors.
The four recipients of the 2023 Maurer School of Law’s Distinguished Service Awards—Macey Leigh Levan ’11, Dave Milne ’94, Kim Richardson ’06, and Alex Thibodeau ’18—have set a remarkable standard for success in their careers and communities.
They were honored Friday (Sept. 29) in a standing-room only ceremony in the DeLaney Moot Court Room.
“These awards honor graduates of the Law School who have distinguished themselves and served their communities and our school in ways that far exceed traditional business, professional, and civic duties, of which there are many,” said Dean Christiana Ochoa. Ochoa said the awards were timely given the Law School’s recent designation as the #3 school for public service in government by preLaw magazine.
“We’re just getting started when it comes to public interest law and public service,” she said. “We are going to put ourselves on the map.”
The Class of 2026, which began their studies on Aug. 15, is one for the record books, a credit to the extraordinary work of our Office of Admissions. The 1L class includes:
155students enrolled
164median LSAT
3.86median UGPA
54%women
34%minority
55%non-resident
The 3.86 median undergraduate grade point average is believed to be the highest in the school's history. A special thank you to the Hon. Kellie M. Barr '06 for speaking to the incoming class as well as administering the 1L professionalism oath.
Adding to an already impressive list of new faculty, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law is pleased to announce CJ Ryan, of the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, will join the Law School for the start of the spring 2024 semester.
In addition to his role on the Brandeis faculty, Ryan is an affiliated scholar at the American Bar Foundation.
A recognized expert in legal education, trust law, non-profit law, and the law surrounding student loans, Ryan teaches Decedents’ Estates & Trusts, Secured Transactions, and Law & Economics. He has previously taught Property, Tax, and Statistics for Lawyers. In addition to writing in the doctrinal areas in which he teaches, much of his research centers on corporate governance, the legal profession, the economics of higher education, and technology transfer.
“Maurer is a special law school,” Ryan said of his decision to move north. “From afar, I have always admired its rich history and its peerless group of scholars trained in the law & society tradition. Maurer is the kind of place where scholars and students can address why the law is the way it is and shape the conversation around what it can be. More than that, it’s a law school that trains the brightest in the next generation of lawyers—for Indiana and for the world. I’m so excited to be a part of this mission and I feel very fortunate to be joining the Maurer community.”
An interdisciplinary scholar, he has written more than 20 articles that have appeared in law reviews — such as the Alabama Law Review, Georgetown Law Review, Illinois Law Review, and SMU Law Review — specialty journals at NYU, Georgetown, and Notre Dame, and peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Legal Educationand Research in Higher Education.
“CJ is a tremendous young scholar and teacher who will bring energy and passion to Baier Hall,” said Dean Ochoa. “We’re fortunate to have brought in an outstanding group of faculty over the past year, and we’re thrilled CJ will be a part of that class.”
The Law School added seven new members to the faculty—Valena Beety, Yvette Butler, Cindy Cho, Gabrielle Goodwin, Andrew Hammond, Jenn Oliva, and Cynthia Williams—throughout 2023, resulting in one of the school’s strongest hiring seasons in history.
Ryan said he’s excited to continue his research in Bloomington. He just started a project examining the economy of trust litigation in San Francisco, using filings from every trust case heard in the courts of that county over a six-year span.
“So little is known about litigation in the trust law space, and the findings that will emerge from the study will surely shed light about what motivates parties to bring claims in the courts involving trusts,” he said.
Barbara Bernal Monnroy arrived in the United States at the age of 16, with no practical English language knowledge or skills. “Generation Zero,” as she puts it. Through hard work and perseverance, she graduated from a Florida high school with strong enough credentials to earn a place at Davis & Elkins College in rural West Virginia. She succeeded there, too, earning valedictorian honors and serving as the college’s graduation speaker.
Monnroy was the first person in her family to earn one degree, let alone three—she majored in criminology, political science, and, of all things, English—from a United States college or university. And she broke another barrier in her family’s history when she applied to and enrolled in the Indiana University Maurer School of Law as a 1L in the fall of 2022.
That incredible journey—from non-native English speaker to second-year law student in the span of six years, is one Monnroy and her family are understandably proud of. But she’s not stopping there.
In August 2023, Monnroy helped launch the First Generation Law Students Association, creating a central network of support and camaraderie for students just like her who are the first in their families to attend an institution of higher education.
Monnroy said she had attended First Generation lunches—biannual events that bring together FirstGen students once a semester—put on by the Law School, but wanted to do more.
“I think we can do a lot more to create a community,” she said. “I noticed that a lot of FirstGen students are not in affinity groups, and affinity groups are where you have your people, your community. I noticed the FirstGen students didn’t have something just for them, so I wanted to involve people with different backgrounds, from different socioeconomic statuses, from different everything, really.”
Enter the FGLA.
In its first month of existence, the organization has drawn the interest of more than two-dozen First Generation students, with more expected to join as word of the group’s formation spreads.
Supporting the needs of First Generation students is a growing trend around the country. When the Law School’s Class of 2026 began orientation the second week of August, Professor Don Gjerdingen—himself a FirstGen graduate and now the FGLA faculty advisor—gave a moving speech to the roughly 20 percent of the incoming class that are First Generation students. Gjerdingen recalled his own inspirational path from a working-class family in Minnesota to law professor.
Monnroy said the FGLA plans to host multiple events this coming year, including meet-and-greets with the student body, bring in external speakers, and meetings with FirstGen Law School alumni to forge a bond between the two communities. That connection played out in Monnroy’s first summer internship with the Hon. Jose Rodriguez ’80—another FirstGen graduate—in Miami.
“Being supportive of each other is the most important part of what we want to do,” she said. “We want to help as many people as we can, and provide whatever resources we can to help make them successful in their law school careers.”
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