Here’s the announcement from GW Law:
https://www.law.gwu.edu/10-scholars-join-gw-law-community-teach-first-year-students
Ten Scholars Join the GW Law Community to Teach First-Year Students
August 01, 2022
GW Law is excited to announce the appointment of ten new full-time faculty members to join the Fundamentals of Lawyering Program. The new FL faculty join Interim Director Iselin Gambert and Associate Director Anita Singh as full-time members of the GW Law faculty. The FL program introduces first-year students to the skills necessary for a successful transition from the classroom to the law firm, boardroom, courtroom, and the many other settings where law is practiced.
These ten professors join our experienced community of scholars to teach 1Ls the critical lawyering skills they will need in practice.
Cori Alonso-Yoder
Natalia Blinkova
Leslie Callahan
Katya Cronin
Robin Juni
Cheryl Kettler
Brooke Ellinwood McDonough
Robert Parrish
Jennifer Wimsatt Pusateri
Erika N. Pont
Why GW Law?
Cori Alonso Yoder
Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“I am so pleased to be joining GW Law and its community of distinguished scholars, dedicated professionals, and accomplished students. Teaching with the Fundamentals of Lawyering Program to equip students in exploring a sense of place and purpose in the law while developing their professional skills is particularly thrilling to me.”
Natalia Blinkova
Acting Writing Center Coordinator; Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“As for why I chose to stay at GW — that part is easy! I love shepherding our wonderfully talented students through their 1L experience, introducing them to the critical lawyering skills they will need in practice, and helping them think through what kind of lawyers they would like to become. I also feel like I’ve found a home among the FL faculty, who are the most collaborative, forward-thinking, and supportive group of professionals I have ever encountered.”
Leslie Callahan
Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“I’m thrilled to join GW Law’s innovative ‘Fundamentals of Lawyering Program’ which is at the forefront of our profession in preparing students to excel in the workplace. The Fundamentals program integrates traditional research and writing skills with a broader array of skills such as client counseling, all while providing the opportunity for professional identity formation. GW Law’s program is truly unique among top law schools and I cannot wait to begin working with this extraordinary group of professionals!”
Katya Cronin
Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“GW Law’s Fundamentals of Lawyering Program is on the cutting edge of legal experiential education and I am thrilled to work side by side with its many accomplished and dedicated faculty members who share a commitment to excellence in teaching, student well-being, and rigorous and impactful scholarship.”
Robin Juni
Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“GW Law is a special place. I’m thrilled to be teaching Fundamentals of Lawyering, in particular, because the whole community is invested in and supportive of the groundwork we lay in FL that allows students to pursue any of the countless opportunities GW Law offers to become the lawyers they want to be.”
Cheryl A. Kettler
Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“I have had the pleasure of teaching at GW Law for six of the last seven years. During that time, I have worked with numerous highly talented and energetic first-year law students. Their enthusiasm for learning has made teaching here very rewarding. Moreover, GW Law has offered me opportunities to work with esteemed faculty, generous adjuncts, dedicated Dean’s Fellows, the Writing Center’s earnestly caring Writing Fellows, our various journals’ many writers, and the Inns of Court student members and advisors. Visitors at other schools are lucky if they engage with a few colleagues. Here, they are part of a larger community.
The fundamentals of lawyering are more than the name of a course at GW Law. They are ingrained in curriculum, extracurricular activity, and the culture of the law school. By bringing people together to support our first-year law students, we ensure they leave here with a network of support and the skills to face the challenges of practice.”
Brooke Ellinwood McDonough
Acting Coordinator of Scholarly Writing and Co-Coordinator of Problem Development; Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“For nearly thirty years, GW has been part of my life. In the ‘90s, I was an undergrad. In the ‘00s, a law student. In the ‘10s an adjunct and visiting professor. From those experiences, I have a deeply rooted appreciation for the unique contributions that the school has on its students and the larger community, and seek to carry on that tradition for the next generation as I enter my fourth decade with GW.”
Robert Parrish
Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“I chose GW Law because of its Fundamentals of Lawyering program and the unique opportunity it presents to be a small part of an innovative program that has the potential to be a model for law schools across the nation.”
Jennifer Wimsatt Pusateri
Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“GW Law students are special. They have a grit and practicality about them that makes them a joy to teach. I’m excited to continue teaching them the skills they need to develop into successful lawyers as part of the Fundamentals of Lawyering program.”
Erika N. Pont
Interim Associate Director, Fundamentals of Lawyering Program; Coordinator of the Dean’s Fellow Program; Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
“I joke that I “grew up” at GW Law: first as a student and Deans Fellow, then as an adjunct professor for over a decade, and finally as full-time faculty in the Fundamentals of Lawyering Program. I chose to teach at GW Law for many of the same reasons I chose to attend GW Law as a student: an unparalleled location in Washington, DC, a uniquely talented and collegial student body, and an institutional commitment to graduating “practice ready” lawyers. Joining the Fundamentals of Lawyering faculty is a dream come true. I’m grateful for the opportunity to build on GW Law’s rich foundation of professional development and experiential learning. It’s an honor to help develop and teach our 1L students this innovative curriculum that’s designed to prepare our students to serve clients, impact their community, and better their profession — and to be their healthiest happiest selves in the process.”
Fundamentals of Lawyering
At GW Law, the Fundamentals of Lawyering Program introduces first-year students to the skills that will advance them from the classroom to the law firm, boardroom, courtroom, and the many other settings where law is practiced. The FL Program, an innovative yearlong course for 1Ls which works hand-in-hand with Inns of Court, was launched in fall of 2019. The centerpiece of the most significant reform of GW Law’s first-year curriculum in a generation, the six-credit course was designed to reflect the changing practice of law and gives graduates the essential lawyering skills employers value most.
First-year students work with a faculty drawn from law firms of all sizes, governmental agencies, and nonprofits to learn what it takes to succeed in a profession that demands the highest commitment to adherence to the rule of law and delivering justice. Our faculty members bring decades of experience building relationships with clients and meeting their needs with creativity and skill.
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Here’s Cori’s full bio from the GW Law website:
Cori Alonso-Yoder
- Title:
- Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
- Address:
- The George Washington University Law School
2000 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
Ana Corina “Cori” Alonso-Yoder is an Associate Professor in the Fundamentals of Lawyering. Prior to joining the GW Law faculty, professor Alonso-Yoder was a visiting assistant professor at Howard University School of Law. She has also instructed students on lawyering skills in the Immigrant Justice Clinic at American University Washington College and as the former director of the Federal Legislation Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center.
Professor Alonso-Yoder is a nationally recognized scholar on immigration legislation and the impacts of state, local, and federal laws on immigrant communities. As an expert in health policy for immigrants, she has lectured in interdisciplinary settings including at the Pediatric Academic Society, Georgetown University School of Medicine, the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences, and the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences. Professor Alonso-Yoder’s commentary on immigrants’ rights has been featured by ABC News, The Hill, Law360, and the Washington Post, among others. She also regularly comments on Supreme Court decisions that affect the statutory and constitutional rights of noncitizens for the George Washington Law Review online. Her legal scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in Denver Law Review, American University Legislation and Policy Brief, and Rutgers Law Review.
In her public interest legal practice, Professor Alonso-Yoder has worked on a variety of equal justice issues, with a special emphasis on advocacy for LGBT and HIV-positive immigrants. Prior to teaching, Professor Alonso-Yoder was the supervising attorney at Whitman-Walker Health, the country’s longest serving medical-legal partnership. Early in her legal career, Professor Alonso-Yoder represented low-income immigrants in family law and immigration matters at Ayuda. While there, she established an innovative project to meet the civil legal needs of notario fraud victims and coordinated with local stakeholders to enact legislation to protect consumers. In her work to promote immigrants’ rights, she has collaborated on transnational labor policy and worker outreach in central Mexico, provided legal orientation and advice and counsel to inmates in U.S. immigration detention facilities, and served as an assistant to the chair of the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva. Her service to the Latino community has been recognized with the Hispanic Law Conference’s 2020 Edward Bou Award and the DC Courts’ 2016 Legal Community Award. She is actively involved in board service with the immigrant advocacy organizations La Clínica del Pueblo and Centro de los Derechos del Migrante.
Professor Alonso-Yoder holds an AB magna cum laude from Georgetown University and a JD cum laude from American University Washington College of Law, where she was awarded a full-tuition public interest merit scholarship. Born in Mexico, she grew up in Denver, Colorado and speaks English, French, and Spanish.
Education
AB, Georgetown University; JD, American University Washington College of Law
Congrats, Cori, my friend! What a great use of your skills as a practical scholar and nonprofit law “guru.” And, what a great step for GW to focus first-year students on the practical skills needed to practice law (and lead a successful life) and the many, diverse, critically important opportunities for improving our nation and defending and advancing our democracy that effective, ethical, values-based lawyering presents!
Values like fairness, scholarship, timeliness, respect, and teamwork should be at the core of legal education! Cori and the other “practical scholars” described above are the embodiment of those values!
I have suggested that a legal education system that turned out some of the grossly dishonest and unethical lawyers behind Trump’s “big lie” and cowardly far-right politicos who advocate for the destruction of democracy and for “the new Jim Crow” needs to take a hard internal look — particularly in the area of legal ethics. Exposing students to those like Cori who used their skills to interact with and help some of the most vulnerable in society — and thereby to improve rather than undermine our nation — is a significant step toward “values-based” legal education.
It’s also important that a versatile immigration and human rights practical scholar like Cori be part of this innovative, forward-looking approach to legal education.
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
08-18-22