Centers and Clinics

Faculty & Fellows


Center on Children and Families

I. Activities
II. Faculty
III. Scholarship
IV. Links
V. Conference/ Events
VI. Advisory Board
VII. Working Paper
VIII. Juvenile Justice Project
IX. Contact

The quality and diversity of faculty involved in the Center on Children and Families is unmatched anywhere in the country. The center is headed by a director and two co-directors, and its faculty is composed of a strong group of associate directors from the Levin College of Law and other colleges/centers at the University of Florida.

Director

Nancy E. Dowd

Chesterfield Smith Professor; Co-Director, Center on Children and Families

Background: B.A., University of Connecticut; M.A., University of Illinois; J.D., Loyola University of Chicago. Phi Beta Kappa; Phi Kappa Phi; Alpha Lambda Delta; Mortar Board. Teacher of the Year. Recipient, Rockefeller Foundation Grant. Expertise: Constitutional Law, Family Law, Gender and the Law.

Co-Director

Shani M. King

Assistant Professor; Associate Director, Center on Children and Families

Background: B.A., Brown University; J.D., Harvard University. Former staff attorney at Legal Services for Children, Inc. in San Francisco, California. Former litigation associate at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason and Silberberg, PC., and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, LLP in New York, New York. Expertise: Family Law and Children's Rights.

Director of Research

Lauren Fasig

JD/Ph.D., Director of Research, Center on Children and Families

Dr. Fasig coordinates the Center's multidisciplinary projects and works closely with other faculty to provide a behavioral science perspective in considerations of child and family legal issues.

Background: B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; JD with Honors, University of Florida Levin College of Law; Ph.D., University of Florida. Former SPSSI James Marshall Public Policy Scholar. Founding Director of the SRCD Office for Policy and Communications, Washington, DC. Expertise: Child Development, Child and Family Policy, Child Welfare, Juvenile Justice, Behavioral Science and Law.

Program Coordinator

Debbie Willis provides administrative support and event coordination for the center.

Associate Directors:

Curriculum

Iris Burke is a clinical professor, was managing attorney in a legal services program before joining the College of Law in 1980. Since 1989, she has been a supervising attorney in UF law's clinical programs providing assistance to poor families in divorce and custody cases. She is particularly interested in issues of access to justice.

ADR

Robin Davis is a legal skills professor with expertise in the field of Mediation, having mediated over 2000 cases. Prior to joining the faculty, she was ADR Director for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, and she is currently serving her fourth term as appointee on the Florida Supreme Court Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution Rules and Policy.

Appellate Advocacy

Joe Jackson

legal skills professor; Expertise: Legal Research and Writing, Constitutional Law, Legal Rights of the Homeless, Anti-Gay Discrimination.

Child Advocacy

Meshon Rawls is legal skills professor and is the director of the Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic. She supervises third-year law students who represent children in a variety of cases, including delinquency, dependency, school discipline, special education and child custody.

Constitutional and Civil Rights Scholarship

Sharon E. Rush is Irving Cypen Professor of Law and co-founder of the Center for Race and Race Relations. She specializes in constitutional law, with particular emphasis on equality and children's issues. She is author of Loving Across the Color Line: A White Adoptive Mother Learns About Race (2000) (nominated for the NAACP Image Award) and numerous articles on racial equality for children.

Youth Education and Multidisciplinary Practice

Monique Haughton Worrell is a legal skills professor and founding supervisor of the Child Welfare Clinic. A UF law graduate, and former public interest law fellow at the United States Immigration Court, she represented children and families as an assistant public defender and in private practice, and served the NYC Childrens Services as a protective investigating officer before joining the UF faculty in 2002.

Affiliated Faculty

Jonathan R. Cohen

Professor; Associate Director, Institute for Dispute ResolutionExpertise: Negotiation, Dispute Resolution, Ethics, Evidence.

Pat Dilley

ProfessorExpertise: Social Security, Deferred Compensation, Individual Income/ Corporate Taxation, International Taxation, Advanced Employee Benefit Law, Retirement Income Policy.

Joan Flocks

Professor, Director, Social Policy Division; Affiliate faculty with the Center for Latin American Studies and the School of Natural Resources and Environment; Expertise: Environmental Justice, Poverty Law, Community-Based Participatory Research, Immigrant Groups in the Southeast

Jeffrey T. Grater

Senior Legal Skills Professor; Expertise: Family Law and Practice, Mediation.

Berta E. Hernandez-Truyol

Levin Mabie and Levin Professor; Expertise: International Law, International Human Rights, Issues of Race, Gender, and Culture in the Law, Dispute Resolution.

Lea Johnston

Assistant Professor; Expertise: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Immigration.

Dawn Jourdan

Assistant Professor; Expertise: Growth management law, land use law, and affordable housing.

Karen Keroak

Licensed Clinical Social Worker and supervisor for Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic. She supervises undergraduate and graduate social work students through interdisciplinary collaboration with third-year law students who represent children. As a lecturer, and faculty member of Florida State University School of Social Work, she coordinates the Gainesville Parttime M.S.W. Program.

Winston Nagan

Samuel T. Dell Research Scholar Professor of Law, Affiliate Professor of Anthropology Founding Director, Institute for Human; Expertise: International Human Rights, National Security Law, Legal Theory, International Law, International Courts, Ethnic Conflict, Human Rights of Indigenous People.

Kenneth B. Nunn

Professor; Expertise: Race and its Impact on Criminal Justice System, Criminal Law and Procedure, Race Relations, Civil Rights, Public Interest Law, Critical Race Theory, Legal Semiotics, Sociology of Law, Law and Cultural Studies.

Juan Perea

Cone, Wagner, Nugent, Johnson, Hazouri & Roth Professor of Law; Expertise: Employment Law, Constitutional Law, Professional Responsibility, Critical Theory of History Seminar, Civil Procedure, Race and Race Relations.

Tom Oakland

Professor; Educational Psychology College of Education

Peggy F. Schrieber

Senior Legal Skills Professor; Expertise: Florida Family Law, Domestic Violence, Unbundled Legal Services and Pro Se Litigants in Family Court.

Connie Shehan

Professor and Chair; Sociology, Sociology of the Family, Gender and Gender Stratification

Lee-ford Tritt

Associate Professor; Director of Center for Estate and Elder Law Planning and Estates and Trusts Practice Certificate Program; Expertise: Wealth Management, Estate Planning, Administration of Trusts and Estates, Transfer Tax Matters and Charitable Giving.

Adjuncts
Emeritus
Barbara Bennett Woodhouse

David H. Levin Chair in Family Law; Professor; Director, Center on Children and Families and Family Law Certificate Program

Expertise: Family, Children's and Constitutional Law, Children's Rights.

Fellows

The Center provides opportunities for research, mentoring and advocacy to a talented group of "Fellows" (second-year and third-year law students) selected each year through a competitive process.

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