This post, by Russell McClain, Dean for Diversity and Inclusion and Director for the Academic Achievement Program at The University of Maryland Carey School of Law, is part of the series that recognizes the history of AASE.
I am honored to have an opportunity to join in celebrating ten years of the Association of Academic Support Educators. As I reflect on AASE’s impact, I am drawn to its commitment to diversity and equity.
As many of you already know, academic support is deeply rooted in law schools’ efforts to diversify the legal profession. On the heels of affirmative action policies of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, academic support programs grew organically as professors, administrators, and others worked to support people from historically underrepresented communities who struggled to fit into an academic and professional environment that was not created with them in mind.
“Do you remember Boulder?” the saying goes. In the 90s, representatives of these disparate, home-grown, academic support efforts converged at an LSAC conference in Colorado, and the profession of academic support was born. AASE stands on the shoulders of those “Boulder” folks—Kent Lollis, Paul Bateman, Okianer Christian Dark, Linda Feldman, Rod Fong, Jenny Kamita, Joanne Harvest Koren, Kris Knaplund, Paula Lustbader, Ruth Ann McKinney, David Nadvordney, Martha Peters, Vernellia Randall, and Laurie Zimet—and upon other early work by Charles Calleros, Amy Jarmon, Herb Ramy, Michael Hunter Schwartz, Thorny Steele, Ellen Suni, Charlotte Taylor, Dennis Tonsing, and Ricardo Villarosa. (To anyone I may have missed, please know that I did my best here.) I think it is impossible to celebrate AASE without first acknowledging the foundation laid by these trailblazers, and, second, recognizing that their focus was on how to help students of color succeed in law school. AASE was created with the intention of building on this foundational work. We are stewards of a compelling legacy.
In light of this history, I was delighted when AASE created the Vice President for Diversity board position. I was even more delighted when AASE leadership committed to ensuring the inclusion of diversity and equity-focused programming at each of its conferences, and then to hosting biennial conferences focused exclusively on diversity-related issues in academic support.
Early AASE conferences in Chicago and Baltimore underscored this genuine commitment and showed the range of AASE members whose scholarly interests focused deeply on issues of equity. I hope as we emerge from post(ish)-pandemic cocoons, we see these efforts continue.
As we celebrate ten years of AASE, I encourage all of us to recommit ourselves to equity in legal education. Our work often (and necessarily) calls on us to focus on how to study, outline, and take exams, and we increasingly are drawn to place our attention on bar passage. (When, oh when, will we see NextGen bar questions?) And it is all too easy to forget where our roots are planted.
But we ignore race, identity, and belonging at our own peril. We must remember that law school is not a place made for students of color (or poor people or women or LGBTQIA+ identities or religious minorities—or basically anyone not white, heterosexual, cisgender men—for that matter). The law school environment can be hostile and undermine these students’ ability to achieve the excellence of which they already are capable. Our academic support is meant to reveal this excellence, and reinvigorating our commitment to helping students from marginalized groups realize their innate potential will help us be and do better. We are more than traders in academic skills, bar passage, and study habits—important as those things are. We are purveyors of growth mindset, bulwarks against stereotype threat, sowers of academic and social belonging, defenders from impostor syndrome, and catalysts of self-efficacy and high aspirations.
Happy birthday, AASE! I am proud of you and of all the people whose efforts help all of our students—and particularly the most vulnerable of them—succeed. You are all amazing!
