Professor Mechele Dickerson Wins Massey Teaching Excellence Award

Mechelle Dickerson_2022-The-Massey-Teaching-Excellence-Award The University of Texas School of Law Professor Mechele Dickerson is our newest recipient of the Massey Teaching Excellence Award, which is given to a law professor who “epitomizes the School’s priority of providing the highest quality of teaching to its students.”

“Mechele has long been one of our finest classroom teachers. She brings energy, rigor, and compassion to every encounter with her students. Her work in the classroom has been especially timely and important in the last year, when she has designed and taught important and highly original new classes on Covid and the law,” said Ward Farnsworth, dean of the law school.

“She also led the creation of our school’s responsive programming after the murder of George Floyd and its aftermath. She’s even done a wonderful job leading mock classes for our admitted students!”

Dickerson is the Arthur L. Moller Chair in Bankruptcy Law and Practice at Texas Law. She joined the faculty in January 2006 and served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2006-2011. She also has a courtesy appointment at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and at the Liberal Arts Honors Program in the College of Liberal Arts. She has been a member of the University’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers since 2015.

Dickerson is a nationally recognized scholar and a global media expert on financial vulnerability, consumer debt and housing affordability. She is the author of Homeownership and America’s Financial Underclass: Flawed Premises, Broken Promises, New Prescriptions and she currently is completing a manuscript on the Neglected Middle Class. She has participated in congressional briefings and has testified before a congressional subcommittee on housing unaffordability.

Her current research focuses on the effect COVID-19 has had on financially vulnerable Americans and she has designed and taught COVID-19 classes for graduate and undergraduate students. She regularly teaches Remedies and Federal Civil Procedure at the School of Law and also teaches courses involving financially vulnerable Americans for the Liberal Arts Honors Program.

“What I do in the classroom enhances my research outside of the classroom, and, in my view, good teaching makes you a better scholar.”

“I was absolutely delighted when Dean Farnsworth recently told me that I would receive the Massey Teaching Excellence Award. What I do in the classroom enhances my research outside of the classroom, and, in my view, good teaching makes you a better scholar,” said Dickerson.

In the spring of 2003, the law school established the Massey Teaching Excellence Award, endowed by John H. Massey, J.D. ’66, and his wife, Elizabeth S. Massey, B.S. ’61. Since then, teaching greats such as David Rabban, Ernest Smith, Stanley Johanson, Steve Goode, Barbara Hines, Thomas O. McGarity, and Bill Powers have been named among the honorable recipients. The Massey Teaching Excellence Award is awarded each spring.

Dickerson added, “I am so grateful that the Masseys continue to support teaching at UT Law and I am honored to be the most recent recipient and to follow Bill Powers, the Dean who recruited me to join the Texas Law faculty.”