Academic

New Fellowship Program at Illinois

By Lawrence Solum

I am very happy to announce that the University of Illinois College of Law has just established a new fellowship program that provides a low-teaching load visiting-assistant-professor experience in combination with substantial research support.  Here are the details from the official announcement, which you can also find at this webpage: http://www.law.uiuc.edu/academics/program_iafp.asp

Illinois Academic Fellowship Program

The Illinois Academic Fellowship Program prepares future legal academics, who spend one or two years in residence at the College of Law devoted to scholarly research and writing (under the close mentorship of Illinois faculty), teaching one course per semester, and fully participating in the College's famously rich intellectual environment. By treating Illinois Academic Fellows as the virtual equivalent of tenure-track faculty (although with a light teaching load and no administrative responsibilities) and providing Fellows the support and counseling necessary to the development of a serious scholarly portfolio, we expect Fellows to be competitive for tenure-track positions at leading law schools.

Selection Criteria

Applications for the Illinois Academic Fellowship Program are invited from law school graduates, as well as Ph.D. recipients or candidates in any field who have a sustained academic interest in law's interaction with their discipline. Applicants may be students in their final year of law school or the final stage of a doctoral program, recent graduates, or persons with several years of law practice experience. The number of Fellows will vary from year to year, and Fellowship positions may be awarded for proposed scholarship in any subject matter area or using any methodological approach. Fellows will be chosen on the basis of an assessment of their potential, with appropriate support and mentoring, to obtain a tenure-track position at a leading law school. The University of Illinois is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity employer.

Scholarship and Teaching

Fellows will teach one class per semester. Depending on the interests of the Fellow, the courses may include traditional law school courses across the full range of the curriculum and/or seminars that focus on the research interests of the Fellow. Each Fellow?s teaching package will be designed to provide meaningful preparation for the academic job market and to complement the current writing projects of the Fellow, subject to the curricular needs of the College of Law.

Most importantly, Fellows will receive substantial faculty assistance with their research projects; the opportunity to present works in progress to the faculty in a workshop setting; the opportunity to attend and participate in lectures, colloquia, symposia, roundtables, and faculty workshops; faculty advice and assistance in preparing for the academic job market; and, where appropriate, pairing with a faculty mentor. Assisting Fellows in preparing a substantial piece of scholarship, with an emphasis on the ?job talk? paper, is a primary goal of the Illinois Academic Fellowship Program

The number of Fellows will be limited, to insure that each Fellow will have substantial opportunities for direct interaction with senior and junior members of the faculty. The College of Law offers a rich intellectual environment with numerous faculty workshops and specialized speaker programs, including the following:

Asian Law

Business Law and Policy

Comparative Labor and Employment Law Policy

Criminal Law and Procedure

Health Law and Policy

Intellectual Property and Technology Law

International and Comparative Law

Law and Economics

Law and Philosophy

Legal History

These programs attract a wide variety of internationally prominent academic visitors to the College. Fellows will be full participants in faculty workshops and similar programs.

Compensation and Benefits

Illinois Academic Fellows receive a salary and full benefits, including health insurance. Fellows' salary will be competitive with salaries offered by similar programs at major research universities. Fellows also receive a regular faculty office and administrative and secretarial support. The University of Illinois College of Law is located in Champaign-Urbana, which offers a variety of affordable housing options in a college-town environment with rich cultural offerings.

Application

Applications should include (i) a curriculum vitae that includes a list of academic references, (ii) a law school and/or graduate school transcript, (iii) copies of any published work in law or a related field, (iv) a statement of the applicant's research agenda, including a description of the project/s proposed for the applicant's Fellowship tenure, and (v) a cover letter indicating whether the applicant is interested in a one- or two-year fellowship. Applications will be reviewed as they are received, and Fellowship offers will be made on a rolling basis. Applications should be sent by email to:

Professor Ralph Brubaker, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, rbrubake@law.uiuc.edu

Professor Larry Solum, Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, lsolum@law.uiuc.edu

There are many fine VAP & fellowship programs, and as the 2008 Entry Level Hiring Report reveals, these post-JD/post-doc experiences are important route of entry in the the legal academy.  The Illinois Academic Fellowship Program is, I think, especially attractive because it is structured to provide meaningful teaching experience in an environment that intensely supports preparation for the academic job market.

Please feel free to email me with questions!

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 31, 2008 (boomark / email).