This morning I taught my last class at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. In a few months, I will make the move back east, to Queen’s University Faculty of Law, located 45 minutes from the town where I grew up, and where, according to the better memories of my high school friends, I first contemplated a career in the law.
U of A was my first full-time faculty position. As they are for any junior academic, these three and half years were busy ones. For the first year and a half, I was still finishing my dissertation. This forced me to figure out, early on, how to balance teaching with writing. I have not always applied those early lessons since defending, but I am grateful to the colleagues who joined me this past term for “Friday morning writing club”. It’s like the movie The Breakfast Club, except we’re all nerds and we’re there voluntarily.
Over seven terms, I taught four different courses, which means that four times in the last three and a half years, I was teaching a course for the first time. In preparing for two of these courses, I leaned heavily on the wisdom and experience of Professor Shannon O’Byrne, who generously invited me to knock on her door as often as I needed to, which I did, practically every day those first two terms. Thanks also to the U of A students in those four classes for your patience and respect – patience and respect I did not always witness on the part of my classmates back when I was in law school. I’m grateful in particular to the two groups of students who were willing to take a chance on an experimental seminar course in corporate governance, and to provide constructive feedback on the course at the end of the term (in exchange for some free food). I’m also grateful to the Vice Deans who gave me the opportunity to teach those four courses a second, third or fourth time, allowing me to build on previous years’ preparation. In addition to teaching these courses, for three years, I coached the U of A team for the Davies’ Annual Corporate/Securities Moot Competition. My mooters taught me that if you are able to give students continuous feedback, and a chance to implement that feedback, they will exceed your highest expectations. Overall, the students at U of A made my job engaging and fun. Thank you for that.
I also benefited from the generosity of the Alberta bar. Practitioners in Edmonton and Calgary willingly gave their time to judge moot practice rounds and deliver guest lectures. This past year, I had the pleasure of hosting guest lectures by Scott Watson of Field Law in Corporations, Justice Juliana Topolniski in Corporate Securities and Keely Brown, General Counsel of the Edmonton Oilers, in Contracts. I also had a tremendous amount of help from eight lawyers and business people at AIMCo in running two mock board meetings in my corporate governance seminar.
Last but not least, I was very lucky to work with a great group of colleagues. You are too many to list, but I would like to thank you all for your encouragement and support, your indulgence of – and occasional participation in – my love of Major League Baseball, and for making me laugh. A lot. But also lucky for me, the Canadian legal academic community is small, and so I know we will have future opportunities to discuss and collaborate and laugh.
