The University of Texas at Austin’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE) recently honored Justice Center staff attorney Meg Clifford for her contributions to “HT/UT College to Career: Law,” a prelaw undergraduate scholars program for students at the University of Texas at Austin and Huston-Tillotson University.
HT/UT College to Career: Law (formerly known as Discover Law) is a collaboration between Texas Law, Huston-Tillotson University, and UT Austin, and is housed in DDCE’s Longhorn Center for Academic Excellence. Participating undergraduates attend a 5 week summer program on legal reasoning and writing, the legal profession and legal careers, the law school admissions process, and the law school experience. HT/UT College to Career: Law also includes supplemental activities and mentoring over the next academic year. Its primary goal is to increase the numbers of undergraduate students of color at UT Austin and Huston-Tillotson University who apply to and are accepted into law school.
DDCE’s Dr. Eric Dieter, the HT/UT College to Career: Law program director, presented the 2018 “Student Service Power Partner Award” to Justice Center research attorney Clifford at the closing reception for the summer 2018 undergraduate cohort. Clifford has been a major force in the program for the last three years, developing the summer programing and curriculum and helping to recruit other Texas Law faculty and staff to teach the undergraduates. This summer, participating members of the Texas Law community included Dean Ward Farnsworth; Professors Mechele Dickerson, Kathryn Dyer, Susan Klein, Sanford Levinson, David Sokolow, Elissa Steglich, Jordan Steiker, and Beth Youngdale; Dean of Students Elizabeth Bangs, and Brandi Welch and Rick Garza of the Student Affairs Office; and Sam Riley and Mario Villa of the Admissions Office. Helping judge oral arguments were Kaycee Crisp, Ariel Dulitzky, Joseph Noel, Wayne Schiess, and Lei Zhang.