Professor Karin Mika presented at the Legal Writing Institute December Workshop, held on December 10th at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.  The title of her presentation was, “Necessary Distractions:  How technology has changed the way our students learn.”  The presentation discussed the decreasing attention spans of all of us, and gave suggestions as to how classroom delivery must change in order to accommodate decreased attention spans.  Professor Mika also gave suggestions (as she usually does) about how technology should be incorporated into the classroom experience.

On December 9th, Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio presented at the American Society of International Law- International Criminal Law Interest Group Workshop at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.  Professor Sterio’s paper, which was selected from a competitive call for papers, was entitled “The Karadzic Genocide Conviction: Inferences, Knowledge, and Intent.”

On December 7, 2016, Professor Kevin O’Neill was interviewed (via Skype) for a television program produced at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. The program, called Wingspan, explores regional and national political issues. Professor O’Neill was interviewed to provide a First Amendment perspective on campus hate speech, political correctness, and ideological polarization.

At Professor Mead’s urging, Toledo City Council unanimously repealed several local restrictions on charitable solicitation Tuesday evening.  First, Toledo repealed a law that requires any nonprofit seeking donations to apply for a permit every month.  Toledo’s permit law and other municipal regulations of charities had been discussed by Professor Mead on the Nonprofit Law Professor Blog, (where he serves as contributing editor) and at a presentation to a national research conference on nonprofit organizations in November.

Second, Toledo repealed a set of restrictions on panhandling, making it the fourth Ohio city (following Akron, Dayton, and Fairlawn) since May to repeal an anti-panhandling law.  The argument against the anti-panhandling law drew on a series of Professor Mead’s articles as well as a lawsuit against the City of Akron that was co-counseled by the Cleveland-Marshall Civil Litigation Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

Professor Matthew W. Green Jr. presented at the Northeast Ohio Faculty Colloquium on Friday, December 9^th at the Blue Canyon Restaurant in Twinsburg, OH.  The title of Professor Green’s talk was “Same-Sex Sex and Immutable Traits: Employment Discrimination after Obergefell v. Hodges.”

Professor Mark Sundahl joined two other panelists in Austin, Texas on Friday, November 4 to debate the challenges and solutions that face the U.S. government in regulating the emerging asteroid mining industry.  The panel was rounded out by Bob Richards, owner of Moon Express, and Laura Montgomery, the former lead lawyer at the FAA for licensing the launching and reetry of space vehicles.  The panel was organized and moderated by the General Counsel of Deep Space Enterprises, one of the driving forces behind this new industry.  As U.S. entrepreneurs continue to create companies engaged in non-traditional space activities, such as asteroid mining, the U.S. government faces the challenge of regulating these activities in a way that meets international obligations and facilitates U.S. industry, while minimizing any regulatory burdens.

Professor Mark Sundahl was recently appointed to Hague Space Resources Governance Working Groupto participate in an international effort to explore an international approach to regulating the extraction of natural resources from the Moon and other celestial bodies.  The Working Group was created by the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University in the Netherlands to address the legal issues that promise to arise as private companies (as well as governments) move forward with plans to harvest precious metals from near-Earth asteroids and extract water and other natural resources needed to support a permanent human presence on the Moon and Mars.

On October 14, Professors Carole Heyward and Carolyn Broering-Jacobs presented at the Southern Clinical Conference at the Charlotte Law School in Charlotte, North Carolina.  The title of their talk was Creating Assessment Tools for Faculty, Students, and Site Supervisors. During the workshop, Professors Heyward and Broering-Jacobs explored ways to assess student performance at project, course, and program levels using self-evaluation, peer evaluation, and faculty evaluation. They discussed ways that peer- and self-assessment tools can be used most effectively, proposed methods for creating assessment instruments, and described how these tools could be converted into feedback instruments as well.  Before the workshop, they conducted a survey of clinical and externship faculty to gather information about their use of various assessment tools.  At the start of the workshop, Professors Hayward and Broering-Jacobs shared the results of their survey and used the results as a starting point for discussion of assessment opportunities and tools.