“Teaching is a joyful enterprise for me,” says Professor Graham Strong: “one part science and one part art.”
With that well-tested formula in place, a prestigious award recognizes all that he brings to the Texas Law classroom.
Strong—a distinguished senior lecturer who teaches and writes in the fields of evidence, criminal law, and criminal procedure—is one of two recipients of The University of Texas at Austin’s 2025 Jalonick Centennial Lectureship. (Professor Gregory Brooks in the Cockrell School of Engineering is also an awardee.) The University-wide award recognizes exceptional professional-track UT faculty for sustained excellence in classroom-based teaching.
“The learning experience of our students is at the very core of our teaching mission at The University of Texas at Austin,” says Professor Jen Moon, UT’s vice provost for professional-track faculty. “The recipients of the Jalonick Centennial Lectureship award embody the University-wide impact our professional-track faculty have on teaching innovation.”
Funded by an endowment from the Jalonick family, the lectureship honors faculty who demonstrate a full-time commitment to teaching and make a significant impact on student learning through innovative and effective instructional practices. Recipients are nominated by their school leadership and selected through a competitive review process. The award includes a $5,000 stipend and the title of Jalonick Centennial Lecturer during the academic year in which it is granted.
Texas Law made an especially strong showing in this year’s field of nominees: Professor Kamela Bridges, who directs the David J. Beck Center for Legal Research, Writing and Appellate Advocacy, was also a finalist.
Strong says he is “most honored” to have been nominated by Dean Bobby Chesney. “Winning the award against those nominated from all schools at the University is, I think, a testament to the overall strength of the Law School faculty in the classroom, and our emphasis upon the teaching enterprise,” Strong says.
Strong was initially a visiting professor at Texas Law during the 2000–2001 academic year. After teaching elsewhere for more than a decade, he rejoined the Texas Law faculty in 2012. He’s been educating Texas Law students ever since and is widely respected for outstanding teaching, regularly receiving high end-of-semester ratings from students.
Teaching is a family tradition. His father was on the economics faculty at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois before beginning his diplomatic career, and his mother “long ago” taught in the international elementary school in Kabul, Afghanistan. “Having the chance to teach at Texas Law in classrooms filled each year by the best students in the nation is the perfect setting—and a joyful environment—in which to practice that science and art,” he says.
Among his creative pedagogy in the classroom, Strong uses a video he recorded of himself years ago to conduct a live direct examination of a younger Strong playing the part of virtual witness. That allows present-day Strong to demonstrate a range of evidentiary techniques available to trial lawyers who must cope with a forgetful witness.
It’s such an approach that earned Strong his recognition. “This award reinforces the University’s commitment to faculty dedicated to rejuvenating the classroom experience with innovative and experiential techniques and ongoing mentorship for students,” Moon says.
Before beginning his teaching career, Strong was a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Virginia, an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, and served both as a special assistant U.S. attorney and as a criminal defense attorney in the District of Columbia.
The Jalonick Centennial Lectureship is the latest addition to Strong’s trophy case. He has received student-selected Professor of the Year awards at Texas Law four times and was chosen as the 2022 Distinguished Senior Lecturer of the Year. Beyond the classroom, Strong chaired the Section on Clinical Legal Education for the Association of American Law Schools and proposed and initiated the formation of the Clinical Legal Education Association, among the largest independent organizations of U.S. law professors.
Within the Law School, Strong’s work is highly appreciated by leadership.
“World-class instruction is a cornerstone of the Texas Law experience,” says Chesney, “and Graham Strong is among the best of the best. I’m thrilled that he’s being recognized by the University for his excellence, innovation, and commitment to students.”
To read about Strong’s involvement in a former student’s independent study, please see our earlier story “Path to a Patent.”