Richard Alderman announced that the Consumer Law Project has received $24,000 from the Texas Bar Foundation and $10,000 from Consumer Credit Counseling Service to prepare an educational video for high school students. The video project is designed to teach graduating high school seniors some basic everyday law and also provide some financial information to help them better deal with the realities of budgeting and credit. It is a joint effort of the Consumer Law Project, the State Bar Law Focused Education and Consumer Credit Counseling Service. It is believed that this is the first time any such project had been undertaken by a law school. The tape, with lesson plans, should be available to schools in Fall 2000. He also received a “Richard Alderman Day” award from the Houston City Council for his efforts to educate the public about the law.

Christine Hurt will be speaking at “Moving On: Preparing Students for Life After the First Year” a conference sponsored by The Legal Writing Institute July 19-22, 2000, in Seattle Washington, at The Seattle University School of Law. The title of the presentation is “Teaching to the  E-Generation: The Interactive Citation Workstation.”

M.H. “Butch” Cersonsky’s article: Deposit Agreements Between Banks and their Customers-A Wall of protection or a wall with a false Foundation?, 31 Tex. Tech. Rev. 1 (2000), won the “outstanding lead article award” for volume 31 of the Texas Tech. Law Review.

Tony Chase was the keynote speaker at the 20th Annual Denton County NAACP Annual Banquet on March 23, 2000. On March 27, he will speak about seller financing for minority broadcasters at the Rainbow Push National Conference on Broadcasting and Telecommunications in Washington, D.C. He was also elected to the board of directors of Leap Wireless International (NASDAQ), an international wireless service provider. March 18, it was announced in the Houston Business Journal and the Wall Street Journal that he purchased eleven radio stations from Clear Channel Communications, Inc. (NYSE).

Sandy Gaines has been making the most of being in Europe for the semester as a senior Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. In addition to teaching a class on trade and environment to 25 students, he conducted a two-day seminar on trade and environment for eight Danish Ph.D. students. On March 27, he gave a 3-hour class on trade and environment as a guest lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. He was invited by the Environmental Law Working Group of the European University Institute in Florence to speak to researchers there on April 4 about the recent decision in the WTO on shrimp trade and sea turtle protection. On April 24-26, he has been invited to participate in and speak at a “retreat” of environmental law professors and graduate students at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. A week later, May 3-6, he will be hosted by the University of Oslo law faculty. In Oslo he will lead a one-day seminar on trade and environment for Norwegian government officials and scholars, and talk to faculty and students on U.S. environmental law. Meanwhile, back in the western hemisphere, he has been invited to join the editorial board of the "Boletin Mexicano de Derecho Comparado", published by the Instituto de Investigacionec Juridicas of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (one of the most important law reviews of its kind in Mexico and Latin America.)

Sandra Guerra completed work on an entry entitled “Informal Dispositions” for the Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice (MacMillan Publishers) edited by Joshua Dressler. She also gave a guest lecture on the rules of evidence in a criminal case at the High School for Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement on April 5th.

Ellen Marrus testified before the Texas State Senate Jurisprudence Committee on child support and visitation enforcement. Additionally, she has been appointed to the National Juvenile Justice Committee and will serve as the coordinator for the Southwest Regional Juvenile Justice Center.

Douglas Moll has received the University of Houston’s prestigious Enron Teaching Excellence Award for the 1999-2000 academic year.

Tom Oldham and M. Melli’s book Child Support: The Next Frontier will be published by the University of Michigan Press during April.

Michael A. Olivas spoke before the Jewish Community Center of San Antonio on “Hate Speech on the Internet,” and at Trinity University on “Immigration Reform” in late March. He spoke on “Why to Become a Law Professor/ and Why not” at the South Texas College of Law/ People of Color Regional Conference. The Journal of Legal Education published his “Paying for a Law degree: Trends in Student Borrowing and the Ability to Repay Debt,” at 49 J. Leg. Educ. 333 (1999), issued in March, 2000, while the College Board published his co-authored study, Prepaying & Saving for College: Opportunities and Issues. He delivered a paper with the title “Border Mythologies” at the Harvard University/ David Rockefeller Institute for Latin American Studies conference held in Cambridge that will be published in a volume by the Harvard University Press in 2001. He also published a book review of  Sometimes There is No Other Side in 71 J. of Higher Education 258 (March/April, 2000).

Jordan Paust’s writings were cited in United States v. Laden, S.N.D.Y. (March 2000) and The Prosecutor v. Akayesu, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, ICTR-96-4-T (2 September, 1998). His The Documents Supplement for International Law and Litigation in the U.S. (West Publishing, American Casebook Series 2000) has been printed.

Yale Rosenberg received the University of Houston Enron Teaching Excellence Award for Full Professor.

Ronald Turner’s article, “HIV/AIDS, the Workplace, and Federal Appeals Courts’ Construction of the ADA” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the AIDS & Public Policy Journal. He has been selected to serve as the chair for the 2000 Southeast/Southwest Scholars of Color Conference that will be held at the University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville.