The Law School’s pioneering Center for New Americans (CNA) has announced that Deepinder Singh Mayell will become the director of its Education and Outreach Program in January. The program engages law students, along with the CNA’s law firm and nonprofit partners, in collaborative projects that teach noncitizens about their legal rights and train lawyers to provide high-quality pro bono representation to immigrants.

David Wippman, the 10th dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, announced today that he will be stepping down at the end of the current academic year to accept a position as president of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Wippman, who grew up in Minnesota and was previously a professor and associate dean at Cornell Law School and vice provost for international relations at Cornell University, has been the Law School’s dean since July 1, 2008.

In a message to alumni and friends, he said:

Griffin Ferry, who is on track to receive his J.D. from the Law School next May, has been named the winner of the 2015 International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Student Writing Competition. The competition is sponsored by the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law, the American Society of International Law’s Lieber Society, and the IHL program of the American Red Cross.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has appointed Tracy M. Smith (’88) to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, effective Feb. 2, 2016. She will replace Judge John P. Smith (no relation), who is retiring. Tracy Smith has been the University of Minnesota’s deputy general counsel since 2013, after serving as an associate in the general counsel’s office since 1994. She previously clerked for Judge Max Rosenn of the U.S.

Following a remarkable second round of litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court, the immigration case of Moones Mellouli came to a definitive end last week when an immigration court dismissed with prejudice all deportation proceedings against him after federal authorities promised the Supreme Court that they would never again seek to deport him, or any other immigrant, on the basis of drug convictions that have no proven connection to substances controlled under federal law.

Minnesota Lawyer has announced that the litigation team that achieved a victory at the U.S. Supreme Court this past June in the case of Mellouli v. Holder will be among the magazine’s 2015 Attorneys of the Year honorees. The team consisted of faculty and students from the Law School’s Center for New Americans; pro bono lawyers from the firm of Faegre Baker Daniels; and attorneys from the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

The New Yorker magazine published a profile this week of Nelson Kargbo, a refugee and former child soldier from Sierra Leone who was successfully represented in his immigration case by law students with the Law School’s Center for New Americans, in partnership with Dorsey & Whitney and ACLU-MN.

The board of directors of the Minneapolis-based Robina Foundation has awarded generous grants of support to three important, ongoing initiatives at the Law School: the Robina Public Interest Scholars Program; the Bridge Fellowship Program; and the research being conducted by the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice into sentencing law and policy.