Office of Academic Administration and Student Affairs:
News & announcements from Asst. Dean Stephen D. Sowle for the week of November 27, 2000

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Spring 2001 Registration -- Update.  Due to difficulties in finalizing plans for certain courses, distribution of the preliminary schedule of classes for Spring 2001 will be delayed until approximately Monday, November 27. The schedule will be distributed outside the third floor cafeteria and on the Law School's Intranet site (http://ck.kentlaw.edu). The final schedule and Registration Bulletin will be distributed no later than Thursday, November 30 and will also be available on the Intranet site.  Registration, which will again take place exclusively online, will begin Friday, December 1, at 9:00 a.m. and will end on Monday, December 4 at 9:00 p.m. You may register at any time during that period. After the end of the registration period, the registration requests will be processed according to each student’s registration priority. In other words, registration will not be conducted on a first-come, first-served basis; as long as you register during the designated period, you will have an equal chance of being admitted to a class as other students within your registration priority group.

List of Recommended Courses.  A list of recommended upper-level courses adopted by the faculty is linked to this page.

Academic Calendar Reminder: Last Week of Classes.  The class schedule for the last week of the semester is as follows:

Monday, November 27:   Monday classes meet (Labor Day make-up)
Tuesday, November 28:   Monday classes meet (Yom Kippur make-up)
Wednesday, November 29:  Thursday classes meet (Thanksgiving make-up)
Thursday, November 30:   Friday classes meet (Thanksgiving make-up)
Friday, December 1:  Make-up Day
Saturday, December 2:  Saturday Trial Advocacy sections meet

Read period starts Saturday, December 2.  Exams start Thursday, December 7 and end Tuesday, December 19.

Exams on Computer.  If you have signed up to take one or more of your exams on computer (either a lab computer or your own laptop), please read the announcement linked to this page.

Availability of Professors' Old Exams.  Many professors make their old exams available for students to review.  Exams dating from 1992 and before are bound in volumes available in the 10th floor reading room in the Library.  Exams after 1992 were scanned into the online eLOISe system, which is temporarily unavailable due to the recent network conversion.  While the eLOISe system is down, copies of post-1992 exams are available in the Document Center on the 9th floor of the Library.

Reengineering Civil Court Process for Credit or Cash.  Scholarships and job opportunities are available for a Spring 2001 course to be taught by Chicago-Kent Professor Ronald Staudt and by Professor Charles Owen of IIT's Institute of Design. The Justice Web Collaboratory:  Public Access to Justice Systems and Systematic Design Workshop will be worth 4 credit hours. Law students may audit the course or take it for credit. Professor Staud't permission is required to take the course. Chicago-Kent and the National Center for State Courts are partners in the Justice Web Collaboratory -- a national Internet project designed to support judges use of the web and improve access to justice using the tools of the Internet.  For 18 months beginning in Fall 2000, the Law School, the Institute of Design, and the National Center for State Courts will study and propose a redesign of the complex civil court processes. The target of this study and design project is the construction of a consumer-based model for public access to justice. This represents a bold attempt to harness the power of the Internet and the most advanced process design technologies to fundamentally re-engineer civil court processes in which self-represented litigants seek to access judicial services.  The consumer-based approach will better meet the needs of not only self-represented litigants, but also the needs of lawyers, judges, court staff and others involved in the judicial process. In the Spring 2001 Systematic Design Workshop, interdisciplinary teams of graduate students from the Institute of Design and law students from Chicago-Kent will continue the research begun in the Fall 2000 Justice Web Collaboratory IPRO.  The Spring Workshop introduces students to the application of Structured Planning methods to complex design problems at the system level. Teams will investigate the pro se litigation process in the courts of Illinois, Colorado, California and Delaware and will develop proposals for improving the quality of the process for litigants and the courts. Team techniques are emphasized, and formatted information handling and computer-supported structuring processes are used at appropriate stages of project definition, information development, structuring, concept development and communication.  An emphasis will be placed on the integration of new information and communication technologies. Classes are scheduled for Tuesday and Friday afternoons from 2:00-6:00 p.m. at the Institute of Design, located at 350 N. LaSalle. Scholarships and employment opportunities are available.  Students are also encouraged to enroll in ID 529 Structured Planning, either for credit or audit. For additional information about this course and the available opportunities, contact Todd Pedwell (tpedwell@kentlaw.edu)or Professor Staudt (rstaudt@kentlaw.edu).

Joke of the Week.  A panda walks into a bar and orders a sandwich. When he finishes, he pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter dead. As the panda stands up to leave, the bartender shouts, "Hey! Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you didn't pay for your sandwich!" The panda shouts back, "Hey, I'm a panda -- look it up!" The bartender opens his dictionary to "panda" and reads: "A bear-like black and white animal native to mountainous regions of China and Tibet. Eats shoots and leaves."


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