Students Win Prestigious Fellowships

1L Angela Alexander was recently named a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People/Kellog’s Law Fellow for the summer of 2008.  Fellows are selected on the basis of a commitment to civil rights, academic record, and recommendations (Angela got a glowing one from her Civ Pro teacher, Prof. Colleen Murphy).  As a Fellow, Angela will work in the NAACP’s Baltimore headquarters on a range of civil rights issues, including voting rights and environmental justice. Angela will also work on legislative matters at the NAACP Washington Bureau, and moderate a panel at the organization’s Continuing Legal Education Seminar in Cincinnati. 

3L Nina Sa was just named a Bart Gordon Fellow with the Legal Assistance Corp. of Central Mass. (LACCM). The fellowship was established to provide civil legal services to low-income communities who may have difficulty accessing the justice system due to linguistic, racial, cultural, or disability barriers and to encourage careers in legal services.  Nina will work on individual immigration cases, systemic immigration issues, and outreach to the underserved communities. The individual client cases that the Fellow will undertake will involve VAWA self-petitions for battered immigrants, U Visas, and asylum applications. The systemic immigration issue that is most pressing in the area is the need to formulate an effective, rapid response to workplace raids. The most recent such raid in the area occurred in the town of Milford, where the Fellow will engage in targeted outreach to underserved communities including a pocket of Kichua Indians from Ecuador and a sizeable Brazilian population.  Nina will also work closely with Western Mass. Legal Services to establish protocols for a regional immigration team that will collaborate on training, litigation, and other efforts to serve clients in Central and Western Massachusetts. 

Finally, another RWU Law student just learned that she won a prestigious fellowship in the child welfare law.  2L Anina Klein will serve as a Bergstrom Fellow.  The fellowship is funded by the W. K. Kellog Foundation and its Families for Kids Initiative, and is awarded by the University of Michigan Law School’s Child Advocacy Law Clinic in Ann Arbor.  Anina will join a class of fellows from leading law schools from around the country who were selected for their exceptional commitment to, and potential in, child advocacy.

Congratulations to these RWU Law fellows!