{"id":12233,"date":"2017-07-12T13:30:45","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T18:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/?p=12233"},"modified":"2017-07-12T13:30:45","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T18:30:45","slug":"professors-emeriti-continue-to-engage-and-inspire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/2017\/07\/12\/professors-emeriti-continue-to-engage-and-inspire\/","title":{"rendered":"Professors emeriti continue to engage and inspire"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mitchell Hamline’s 40 professors emeriti are a treasured source of inspiration, expertise, and connection. Here’s a look at what four of them are doing these days.<\/div>\n

Eileen Roberts: Staying connected to former students after return to private practice<\/h2>\n

Students were Eileen Roberts\u2019 favorite thing about her 24 years at William Mitchell, and she\u2019s found multiple ways in her current job to stay connected with them.<\/p>\n

She works with some former students at Dorsey & Whitney LLP, where she is Of Counsel, and she often meets one or two former students per week for lunch or coffee in downtown Minneapolis. She\u2019s in a monthly book club with several former students, and she regularly fields questions about real estate law from those she\u2019s taught.<\/p>\n

In fact, it was a chance meeting with a former student in the skyway in Minneapolis in the spring of 2013 that led to her job with Dorsey, where she works part time doing a range of real estate matters.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cStudents bring such energy to the classroom. My favorite students were the inquisitive ones. They constantly challenged me to think about real estate law differently, to dig more deeply into legal history and analysis, and to come up with better and better ways to explain both basic and complex legal principles. I had practiced real estate and land use law for nine years before I started teaching, and I\u2019d been a law clerk for two years before that, so I felt that I had a good working knowledge of real estate and land use law. Thanks to my students, though, my knowledge and understanding of real estate law deepened during my time at Mitchell because I had to explain not only how but why<\/em> real estate law works as it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Dorsey, Roberts works with clients and also does lots of CLEs and other presentations. She serves as a mentor to new Dorsey associates and also participates in Dorsey\u2019s pro bono work at the Brian Coyle Legal Clinic in Minneapolis, advising recent immigrants on legal issues. Roberts helped establish the Center for Law and Business at William Mitchell, and she has served on the center\u2019s advisory board.<\/p>\n

Roberts graduated from Mitchell in 1980. Her husband, Chuck Hoyum, was a year behind her, though the two didn\u2019t meet until decades later. Married in 2005, they live in Edina and love staying in touch with friends and taking their rescue dogs, Sophie and Roxey, for walks around the Minneapolis lakes. They also travel as often as they can, including recent trips to Charleston, S.C., and Cancun, Mexico. When they\u2019re home, Roberts enjoys gardening, reading, and cooking.<\/p>\n

She encourages former students who want to stay in touch to email her at Dorsey<\/a>. \u201cI love working at Dorsey. It\u2019s a wonderful job. I lucked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Thompson: Balancing volunteering, professional activities, and grandkids<\/h3>\n

Twenty five years ago, Peter Thompson\u2019s wife, Vicki, helped start a homeless ministry at Wayzata Community Church. Now with time on his hands, he volunteers to run it. \u201cIt\u2019s come full circle,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Thompson taught for four years at William Mitchell College of Law before moving in 1977 to Hamline University School of Law, where he spent nearly 40 years teaching and serving a stint as acting dean. He retired in 2015 and has found a balance of volunteering, continued professional work, and family.<\/p>\n

He organizes his large congregation\u2019s involvement in Families Moving Forward, a consortium of congregations that hosts a rotating nightly shelter. He recruits 80 volunteers to cover four weeks, lines up food, and, when needed, sleeps on a couch at church.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve met some really good parents and some terrific kids,\u201d says Thompson. \u201cAlmost all the parents have jobs, but they just don\u2019t pay enough. Then they get caught in some temporary issue and all of a sudden they\u2019re out of a place to live.\u201d\"\"<\/p>\n

In the professional realm, Thompson takes arbitration cases, usually two or three a month. He became an arbitrator while he taught trial skills as a \u201cway to keep in touch\u201d with how lawyers present cases. \u201cI love good lawyers and I like to see a good argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

He resolves automobile insurance claims through the American Arbitration Association\u2019s no-fault arbitration program and recently took training to chair the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority\u2019s three-arbitrator panels to settle securities disputes between stockbrokers and investors, including claims from people who lost money during the recession.<\/p>\n

Though he\u2019s no longer in the classroom, Thompson\u2019s scholarship continues to inform the field. He is updating the three-volume \u201cMediation: Law, Policy and Practice\u201d with other faculty, including Mitchell Hamline Professor James Coben, former director of the Dispute Resolution Institute. He writes annual supplements to \u201cEvidence\u201d in the Minnesota Practice Series, drawing on expertise built over years of teaching evidence and serving as reporter of the Minnesota Supreme Court committee that drafted the Minnesota Rules of Evidence.<\/p>\n

Thompson and his wife celebrated his 70th birthday in November on Captiva Island off Fort Myers, Fla., with his three children, their spouses, and nine grandchildren. Back in Minnesota, they stay on top of a complicated schedule of grandkid activities and pitch in with driving.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of hockey, a lot of soccer, and some dancing and swimming,\u201d said Thompson. On those rare days he doesn\u2019t see them, he can still stay in touch. He just learned how to FaceTime his 13-year-old granddaughter.<\/p>\n

Bobbi McAdoo: Helping son, while still staying engaged in dispute resolution<\/h3>\n

Bobbi McAdoo is glad she retired before her autistic son graduated from college. Over the last two years, she has taken on what she describes as an almost full-time job helping him line up housing, Medicaid waivers, disability income, and part-time work as an AmeriCorps public school reading tutor.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of my energy has been spent trying to figure out what his life is really going to look like,\u201d she says. \u201cMy husband and I tag team all that there is to do for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"McAdoo joined the faculty at Hamline University School of Law in 1984. She founded the respected Dispute Resolution Institute and spent a career teaching and evaluating mediation and other court-connected alternative dispute resolution choices. It was a field she embraced after working as an attorney for Dorsey & Whitney, where she saw firsthand the failure of litigation to solve many disagreements.<\/p>\n

Since retiring in 2014, she has served on a steering committee helping DRI and current director Sharon Press step into a new public engagement role. An initial grant-funded project involved facilitating conversations with stakeholders around St. Paul Public Schools\u2019 search for a new superintendent. McAdoo is working on the evaluation of that effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a world out there in conflict,\u201d says McAdoo. \u201cAnd these conflicts are not going to be solved with new laws. We need to find ways for people to talk together, really feel their perspective has been heard, and then work together for real-life solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

McAdoo also serves on an American Bar Association ADR Section committee reviewing empirical research that has been done on mediation to find evidence for recommended \u201cbest practices\u201d for mediators.<\/p>\n

As her son becomes more stable, McAdoo hopes to use her expertise to advocate for others with disabilities. For now, she serves on the board of Hampshire Country School in New Hampshire, a boarding school for boys on the autism spectrum that she credits with turning around her son’s education after he floundered at five schools in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

In part because of her son\u2019s needs, and to stay close to her grown daughter and son-in-law, McAdoo and her husband will stay in Minnesota. They have just downsized from Arden Hills to a historic condo on Ramsey Hill in St. Paul. They have renovated it, and McAdoo is excited to work in the southwest sunroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy desk is in that sunroom, along with two chairs where my husband and I will have our morning coffee,\u201d she says. \u201cI call it my Florida room because it\u2019s painted this lovely pale blue green gray.\u201d It will be a space to inspire the next chapter of her life.<\/p>\n

Doug Heidenreich: Still enjoying the classroom after more than half a century<\/h3>\n

Doug Heidenreich still finds joy in teaching, something he\u2019s been doing since 1963, when he was hired as assistant dean and professor at William Mitchell College of Law.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI very much enjoy being in the classroom with students,\u201d says Heidenreich, who graduated from Mitchell in 1961 and served as dean from 1964-1975. \u201cI may have discussed the same case 10 or even 20 times, but no matter how many times I\u2019ve gone over something, the student is looking at it for the very first time, \"\"and they\u2019ll sometimes come up with an idea that I haven\u2019t thought of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0As Mitchell Hamline\u2019s longest serving faculty member, Heidenreich teaches contracts and professional responsibility, which he says can be boiled down to the title of Spike Lee\u2019s movie \u201cDo the Right Thing,\u201d printed at the top of his syllabus.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s easy to say \u2018always do the right thing,\u201d\u2019 Heidenreich says. \u201cBut figuring out what the right thing is isn\u2019t easy. The important thing is to think about what will be your guiding principles. What will help you decide \u2018I will do something in this way\u2019 or \u2018I will refuse to do that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Heidenreich\u2019s limited responsibilities as an emeritus professor now leave him more time for long lunches with friends and other pursuits. He took annual trips to Paris until walking became difficult. His last trip was five years ago for his 80th birthday. Now he explores close to home. On most Saturdays, he and professor Colette Routel, co-director of the Indian Law Program, meet for breakfast and drive through Fort Snelling State Park to look at deer.<\/p>\n

A lover of history, Heidenreich was tapped to write William Mitchell\u2019s history for its 100th anniversary in 2000. He also explores Plantagenet and Tudor history from an armchair in his condo near the University Club in St. Paul. It\u2019s a period he has returned to over a lifetime in part because \u201cEnglish history is the history of the development of our law.\u201d<\/p>\n

And recently, he spent some time on the wrong side of the law. For the last dozen years, Heidenreich has been involved in annual re-enactments of famous gangster trials, performed in the historic courtrooms of St. Paul\u2019s Landmark Center. Last September, he acted the part of Clayton May, a Minneapolis doctor who was convicted of harboring a federal fugitive after he patched up injured gangster John Dillinger following a shootout in St. Paul.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fun to play the bad guy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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Mitchell Hamline’s 40 professors emeriti are a treasured source of inspiration, expertise, and connection. Here’s a look at what four of them are doing these days. Eileen Roberts: Staying connected to former students after return to private practice Students were Eileen Roberts\u2019 favorite thing about her 24 years at William Mitchell, and she\u2019s found multiple … <\/p>\n

Professors emeriti continue to engage and inspire<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4909,"featured_media":12252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-features","8":"category-news","9":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4909"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}