For Immediate Release
Berkeley, CA—March 17, 2009… Associate Dean and Professor of Law Goodwin Liu of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law is one of five recipients of the campus’ most prestigious award for teaching, the Distinguished Teaching Award. The award winners will be honored at an April 22 ceremony in UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse.
The annual award is intended to encourage and recognize individual excellence in teaching that incites intellectual curiosity, engages students thoroughly in the enterprise of learning, and has a life-long impact. While acknowledging the fact that the Berkeley faculty comprises many outstanding teachers, the University’s Committee on Teaching is extremely selective in determining the recipients of this award: only 232 faculty have received the award since its inception in 1959.
Professor Liu came to Berkeley in 2003 after having served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. An expert in constitutional law, education policy, and civil rights, he is co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity, and a frequent commentator on law and educational policy. He says that “good teaching awakens in students a passion or personal concern they might not have known they had.” Students praise him not only for awakening that passion but also for his knowledge and preparation.
Before joining UC Berkeley, School of Law, Professor Liu was an appellate litigator at O’Melveny & Myers in Washington. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the October 2000 Term and for Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1998 to 1999. He also served as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education from 1999 to 2000, and as Senior Program Officer for higher education at the Corporation for National Service (AmeriCorps) from 1993 to 1995. Professor Liu, a Rhodes Scholar, earned his B.S. from Stanford, M.A. from Oxford, and J.D. from Yale.
To learn more about the Distinguished Teaching Award, go to: http://teaching.berkeley.edu/dta09/index.html
*Note to editors: photo available upon request
University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
For over a century, Berkeley Law has prepared lawyers to be skilled and ethical problem-solvers. The law school’s curriculum—one of the most comprehensive and innovative in the nation—offers its J.D. and advanced degree candidates a broad array of nearly 200 courses. Students collaborate with leading scholars and practitioners working on complex issues at more than a dozen interdisciplinary centers, institutes, and clinical programs within its Boalt Hall complex. For more information, visit https://www.law.berkeley.edu/