{"id":17666,"date":"2021-07-01T09:45:49","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T14:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/?p=17666"},"modified":"2021-07-01T09:53:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T14:53:00","slug":"mitchell-hamline-honors-retiring-professors-janus-juergens-and-ver-steegh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/2021\/07\/01\/mitchell-hamline-honors-retiring-professors-janus-juergens-and-ver-steegh\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitchell Hamline honors retiring professors Janus, Juergens, and Ver Steegh"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Professors (L-R) Ver Steegh, Janus, and Juergens<\/p><\/div>\n

Eric Janus, Ann Juergens, and Nancy Ver Steegh have worked at Mitchell Hamline and its predecessor schools for more than 90 years combined. With their retirements this week, their legacies include not just being experts in their fields of study but also having been part of bringing two major changes to fruition: The very combination that created Mitchell Hamline, along with a new, first-in-the-nation way of offering legal education through online learning.<\/p>\n

The trio\u2019s paths crossed multiple times during their tenures: Janus and Juergens both started at William Mitchell in 1984, both rooted in clinical education that offers students chances to do real-world legal work. Janus was clinical director at that time; Juergens became clinic co-director in 1989. Both worked to integrate skills and clinic work throughout the school\u2019s entire curriculum.<\/p>\n

Then later, when Janus was serving as Mitchell\u2019s president and dean, Ver Steegh served five years as vice dean (the title later became associate dean) in the years leading up to the combination with Hamline Law and the introduction of the Hybrid (now blended learning) program.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eric Janus<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"When Eric Janus became president and dean of the law school in 2007, that school was William Mitchell College of Law. When he stepped down, it was set to become the newly constituted Mitchell Hamline School of Law.<\/p>\n

Overseeing that combination with Hamline University School of Law \u2013 a move that had percolated for a decade in a time of declining law school enrollment nationwide \u2013 ranks as one of Janus\u2019 most proud accomplishments. The other was starting the nation\u2019s first on-campus\/online program at an ABA-approved law school. The Hybrid program has continued to innovate and is now known as the blended-learning enrollment option.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnline helped us survive that downturn,\u201d Janus said. \u201cBut it also brought the school back to its roots.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legacy of Mitchell’s predecessor schools was as a night school for part-time students, but there had been persistent drops in night enrollment \u2013 from about half of all students to just a fifth. \u201cThe fact that we were a night school was important to the soul of the school,\u201d Janus said. \u201cTo have it decline so much was a disappointment. But with Hybrid, we were speaking to that history. We said \u2018let\u2019s reimagine night law school for the 21st<\/sup> Century.\u2019”<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery law school had to figure out online learning during COVID, but even six years ago, there was so much hesitancy in legal education to be online. That made this even more of an accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

As president and dean, Janus also oversaw a $25 million campaign to raise funds for endowed chairs and scholarships, which helped support the work of the school\u2019s faculty. \u201cThe strength of this school has been the way it\u2019s combined the need for academic scholarship with the need for clinical education that puts students into real-world legal situations,\u201d he said. \u201cI love that we\u2019re a place where the idea of justice isn\u2019t just a theory. It\u2019s something you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Janus is a Peace Corps alum, amateur photographer, and former math major whose focus on mental health law, especially around civil commitment, came about in part because of his pre-law-school work at Legal Aid. There, he became the go-to attorney for matters related to people being psychiatrically committed. He helped rewrite Minnesota\u2019s laws around such commitments in the early 1980s. When the state moved in the 1990s to civilly commit sex offenders, even after they\u2019d served time for their criminal convictions, Janus was at Mitchell and started working to challenge the constitutionality of those laws. He\u2019s testified before legislative committees and was invited to a series of East Coast gatherings during the Obama administration to discuss how to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay \u2013 like civil commitment, a form of preventative detention.<\/p>\n

He was part of a lawsuit that was litigated for 10 years, challenging Minnesota\u2019s sex offender laws. Later, a federal court judge ruled the state\u2019s program was unconstitutional; working with the ACLU, Janus filed amicus briefs, supporting that challenge in the 8th Circuit and US Supreme Court. The core of the district court’s decision was overturned in the Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n

As he departs, Janus hopes the school\u2019s work continues to strengthen what he calls Mitchell Hamline\u2019s soul: A school that casts students and teachers as both critical observers and active participants in the legal system, helping them transform into skilled and ethical legal professionals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve trained the judges, public defenders, county attorneys, and plenty of elected officials who have all added to the quality of civic life in Minnesota,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope that continues to be our focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ann Juergens<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Sitting amidst the books and material still to be carted away as Ann Juergens recently cleaned out her office was an easy-to-miss group photo taped to a file cabinet.<\/p>\n

The photo is from 1995, when the school sent Juergens to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. It\u2019s the conference where then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered the now-famous line that \u201chuman rights are women\u2019s rights, and women\u2019s rights are human rights.\u201d Juergens was in the room for that speech. \u201cIt was thrilling,\u201d she remembered.<\/p>\n

Juergens has long championed clinical education and teaching legal skills in law school \u2013 and she\u2019s an expert on housing law. All of these are rooted in her work to advance feminist approaches to legal issues. Even outside her scholarship, Juergens often agitated at William Mitchell, then Mitchell Hamline, for pay equity and more benefits for both faculty and staff with families. There were fewer women when she started at Mitchell in 1984. But an early associate dean, C. Paul Jones, had learned at a previous job that he could hire the highest performing people \u2013 often women \u2013 if he allowed them to work less than full-time. This led him to hire Rosalie Wahl as the first woman professor at Mitchell, a position she left only when she was appointed the first woman to Minnesota\u2019s Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Her own small firm practice and litigation work, including jury trials and an argument before the California Supreme Court, led her to becoming co-director of Mitchell\u2019s clinics in 1989. \u201cI was the right person at the right time with the right skills,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

At the time, clinical education \u2013 while a benchmark of Mitchell\u2019s history \u2013 wasn\u2019t fully integrated throughout the law school the way Juergens thought it should be. She was among those pushing for more clinicians in tenure-track positions. And she helped better integrate clinics and skills teaching throughout the school. \u201cSkills like interviewing and negotiation started to be taught in earlier classes for students, which meant we didn\u2019t have to use precious time on that when they got to our clinics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe students loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was still a time when that kind of real-world experience learning had a low reputation in legal education, she recalls. But as more people interacted with Mitchell students, \u201cthey couldn\u2019t believe the sophistication of the issues they were dealing with in their clinical work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had thought we were putting students on simple, dog-bite-litigation-type cases. But we were dealing with core needs, even life or death. Anything around housing, for example, can be a life-or-death matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she departs, Juergens hopes that clinical work remains part of Mitchell Hamline\u2019s DNA. \u201cI know I\u2019ve made a difference in clients and students\u2019 lives,\u201d she added. \u201cI\u2019ve been quite lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nancy Ver Steegh<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"During her 40 year career \u2013 19 of which have been spent at William Mitchell and Mitchell Hamline – Nancy Ver Steegh is amazed by the changes she\u2019s seen in family law where she\u2019s focused her work: domestic violence.<\/p>\n

She initially worked on matters related to how police respond to domestic violence calls. More recently, she\u2019s focused on child custody decision making, helping develop ways for judges to handle such cases when domestic violence is involved. \u201cCourts have different approaches now and understand the effect domestic violence has on children,\u201d she said. \u201cSocial science research has been key to changing legal responses to domestic violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been gratifying to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a senior fellow for Mitchell Hamline\u2019s Dispute Resolution Institute, Ver Steegh says she’s always tried to teach students the important role lawyers play in society in preventing and resolving conflict. \u201cI remind them that legal education isn\u2019t just about amassing facts and knowledge \u2013 it\u2019s about developing judgement and people skills to know when and how to use that knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her time at Mitchell Hamline also included being part of Janus\u2019 leadership team for five years as vice dean\/associate dean. \u201cThose were trying times for the law school,\u201d Ver Steegh recalled. \u201cApplications were going down and the school was struggling financially. But we fortunately used those challenging times to innovate in a way I think has positioned us even better for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’d been experimenting with online learning and knew there were people out there who wanted to go to law school but couldn\u2019t move to do so. We found a way to let people attend from just about anywhere.\u201d William Mitchell launched its hybrid learning model, which as since become known as the blended learning option, shortly after Ver Steegh\u2019s time as associate dean. The school then combined with Hamline University School of Law.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the school will continue to innovate while keeping its core values. We offer flexible but rigorous education, practical experience, and a focus on access to justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there are plenty of ways to implement those values \u2013 it\u2019ll be fun to see where it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In early June, Mitchell Hamline\u2019s board of trustees granted faculty emerita status to Juergens and Ver Steegh, and president and dean emeritus status to Janus. All three plan to continue work on projects, including research and writing. Janus will continue to direct the Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center he established at Mitchell Hamline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Janus, Ann Juergens, and Nancy Ver Steegh have worked at Mitchell Hamline and its predecessor schools for more than 90 years combined. With their retirements this week, their legacies include not just being experts in their fields of study but also having been part of bringing two major changes to fruition: The very combination … <\/p>\n

Mitchell Hamline honors retiring professors Janus, Juergens, and Ver Steegh<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5668,"featured_media":17673,"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":[3,22,5],"tags":[37,230,228,229,227],"class_list":{"0":"post-17666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-features","8":"category-history-center","9":"category-news","10":"tag-ann-juergens","11":"tag-emeritus","12":"tag-eric-janus","13":"tag-nancy-ver-steegh","14":"tag-retirements","15":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17666","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\/5668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}