Elon University School of Law announced the appointment of three new faculty members on August 24. Sonya C. Garza and David S. Levine will serve as assistant professors of law, specializing in family law and intellectual property law respectively, and Roland Smith, a member of the faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, will serve as professor of leadership, a visiting faculty position for the 2009-10 academic year.
NEW FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES
Sonya Garza
Assistant Professor of Law
Garza joins the Elon law faculty after serving on the faculty of the New England School of Law since 2005, where she taught Constitutional Law, Family Law, and Children and the Law. She has also served as assistant professor of law at Texas Tech University School of Law. She previously practiced in the Family Law Section of Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. in Houston, Texas, and in the Labor and Employment and Litigation Sections of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, in Washington, D.C. In 2008, she was selected as a Research Fellow for the National Data Archive for Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University. She received a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Texas-Austin. She received her law degree from Stanford Law School in 2000, where she was the Note Editor of the Stanford Law Review, Board Member of both the Stanford Latino Law Students Association and Women of Stanford Law, and a Committee Member of the Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation Auction.
David Levine
Assistant Professor of Law
Levine, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School (CIS), focuses his scholarship on the operation of intellectual property law at the intersection of technology and public life and intellectual property law’s impact on public transparency. Levine founded and hosts Hearsay Culture on KZSU-FM (Stanford University), a technology and intellectual property law interview radio show and podcast that was chosen as one of the top five podcasts in the American Bar Association’s Blawg 100 of 2008. Prior to becoming a law professor, Levine gained extensive intellectual property, entertainment and commercial litigation experience as an associate in the Manhattan offices of Pryor Cashman LLP and Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP and as an assistant corporation counsel for the City of New York. Levine comes to Elon after serving as a resident fellow at CIS and an assistant professor at Charlotte School of Law. He holds a bachelor of science degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University and a law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Roland Smith
Professor of Leadership
Smith is a Senior Faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), leading the Center’s legal sector practice group. He is one of the lead designers and trainers for CCL and is the lead researcher relative to legal sector initiatives. He is experienced in working with in-house counsel, executive committees, practice groups and regional law offices. Smith leads CCL’s current research focused on senior lawyer-leaders, having published “The Changing Nature of Leadership in Law Firms” in 2009. In addition to his work with attorneys, Smith has provided leadership training for doctors, scientists, engineers, accountants and corporate executives. He has taught entrepreneurship, organizational behavior and human resource management at The College of Idaho. Smith received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boise State University and his doctorate in Organizational Learning from the University of Idaho.
Click here for more information about the faculty at Elon University School of Law.