Suzanne Thorpe (’89), professor of legal research instruction at the Law School, has been named a recipient of the University of Minnesota 2015 President's Award for Outstanding Service. The award, established in 1997 to honor those whose service to the University community has "gone well beyond the regular duties of a faculty or staff member," is presented to approximately 12 individuals each year.

"This is a wonderful honor," Thorpe said. "I am so grateful to the individuals who nominated and selected me for this distinguished award."

John W. Mooty, who graduated first in his Law School class (’44) and became a first-class leader in law, business and philanthropy, died April 17, 2015, in Edina, Minn. He was 92.

The Burton Foundation has announced that Andrea Miller (’15) is the winner of a 2015 Distinguished Legal Writing Award—one of just 10 students from U.S. law schools to be so honored. Miller is both a J.D. candidate at the Law School and a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Minnesota's Department of Psychology. Her winning paper is entitled "The Separate Spheres Ideology: An Improved Empirical and Litigation Approach to Family Responsibilities Discrimination."

The ABA's Section of Dispute Resolution has announced that Ron Ousky (’82), who lives and practices in Edina, Minn., will receive the Individual Lawyer as Problem Solver Award for 2015. This award, first presented in 2002, is given to a member of the legal profession who has exhibited extraordinary skill and creativity in promoting the concept of the lawyer as problem solver or in effectively resolving problems at the individual, institutional, community, state, national, or international level.

The Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost has announced that Professor Alexandra B. Klass has been named a Distinguished McKnight University Professor—one of just five University of Minnesota faculty members to receive the distinction this year. The Distinguished McKnight University Professorship program recognizes the University's "highest-achieving mid-career faculty who have recently attained full professor status...

Four Law School students are engaged in research projects that have been awarded grants from the University's Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences. Each academic year, the Consortium, via its Intramural Research Awards program, requests proposals from graduate and professional students who wish to study and/or ameliorate the societal implications of problems in the fields of health, the environment, and the life sciences. This year, 34 proposals from students in 26 programs across the University were received.

National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell announced at a meeting of team owners yesterday that B. Todd Jones (’83), currently the director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), will take a position with the league when he departs the ATF, as previously announced, at the end of this month.

The Law School's Robins Kaplan Civil Practice Clinic, in collaboration with Minneapolis attorney David Wilson and Wilson Law Group, has won a motion for partial summary judgment in a case that hinges on the issue of whether a sponsoring relative owes an ongoing duty of support to a family that the sponsoring relative brought to the United States.

Thomas Hale-Kupiec, who is on track to receive his J.D. in December with a dual concentration in health law and intellectual property law, has been awarded first place in the 2014-15 National Student Writing Competition hosted by the Richmond Journal of Law and Technology. Hale-Kupiec received a prize of $1,500 for his paper, "Differential Liability: How Neuromodulators and Emerging Technologies Have Achieved Windfalls in Tort Liability Claims." The paper will be published in a forthcoming edition of the journal, which is based at the University of Richmond (Va.) School of Law.

Rosalyn Park, who graduated cum laude from the Law School in 2002, has been appointed director of the Women's Human Rights Program for The Advocates for Human Rights, an international nonprofit organization based in Minneapolis.