FAMU Alumni News

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Rattler Nation

FAMU law reaches Destination Accreditation

Once again the Rattler spirit has prevailed over misleading headlines, vicious internet rumor-mongering, and the damage inflicted by FAMU’s previous interim administration.

Yesterday, the American Bar Association’s Council on Legal Education Opportunity granted full accreditation to FAMU’s law school. With the decision, the ABA confirmed that the FAMU College of Law meets the same federally-mandated quality standards as the ones at UF, FSU, and the University Miami.

FAMU law has weathered more political attacks and slanted media reports than any other in Florida’s history.

The law school was founded in 1949 on FAMU’s main campus in Tallahassee. After graduating 57 lawyers, it was closed by the Florida Legislature in 1968. Lawmakers then sent FAMU law’s library collection to a newly created law school at the majority-white Florida State University.

For the next three decades, Rattlers fought the reverse that wrong. However, the Board of Regents stood in the way and blocked the law school’s reestablishment.

Leaders such as former President Frederick S. Humphries and then-State Rep. Al Lawson finally succeeded in going above the BOR’s head and persuading the legislature to restore the law school in 2000. The deal was intertwined with the politics of the state’s decision to build a medical school at FSU and a College of Law at FIU.

The reestablished FAMU College of Law opened its doors in 2002 and is now housed in a state-of-the-art facility at 201 Beggs Avenue in downtown Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood.

Despite its optimistic start, the new law school fell to a low point under former Interim President Castell Bryant. The Bryant administration withheld $5 million from the school’s budget and permitted it to slide into instability. Faculty also faced difficulty getting paid as a result of the Castell-inflicted payroll system meltdown.

In 2007, newly-installed President James Ammons made the law school a top academic priority and immediately began repairing the damage Castell left behind. During his first months in office, he quickly restored the money that she had kept from the school.

Through offering top-dollar for talent, Ammons lured LeRoy Pernell, who had served as Northern Illinois University’s College of Law dean for 10 years, to head FAMU’s law school. Pernell, in turn, assembled a high-caliber administrative and faculty team of his own.

With the influx of state money, FAMU’s law professors were able to beef up their bar exam prep courses. Soon, students began performing better on the test.

Despite misleading news coverage, the ABA did its job to look at the facts about FAMU’s bar passage rates. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of FAMU law students pass the test. According to Pernell, the school’s overall passage rate is about 80 percent.

FAMU law now has a long list of impressive academic accomplishments. It is ranked as the #1 most diverse law school in America, has a program that pipelines its graduates into employment positions at the prestigious Akerman Senterfitt law firm, and houses an innovative Center for International Law and Justice.

From left to right: Vincent Johnson, Marcus Todd and Tyree McNeal put their computer skills to work at Nims Middle School.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Florida A&M University (FAMU) Rattler Academic Summer Institute in partnership with Smith-Williams Foundation, Inc. is not your average summer camp.

“The goal of the program is to provide the inspiration for students to seek careers in fields they may have once thought to be unattainable,” said Kirk Gavin director of the Rattler Summer Institute. “We want to expose students to new areas of study and to encourage interest not previously considered.”

The institute, part of the FAMU College Reach Out Program (CROP), utilizes certified teachers to incorporate non-traditional teaching methods to boost students FACT skills and provide character development activities for students in grades six to 10.

Students are given pre- and post-exams to gage the level of improvement and provide feedback on how to improve next year’s program. The students receive tutoring in math, science, reading, language arts and writing.

There is also an apprenticeship component of the program that exposes students to career opportunities such as computer technology; small engine repair; bicycle repair; aviation; the Divas Program; and banking.

Students are currently putting their computer technology skills to the test at Nims Middle School and Bond Elementary School where they are refurbishing computers in the schools’ labs as a part of a community service project.

Students that complete each community service project will each receive a computer themselves.

Soloman Stevens, an 11-year-old sixth grade student at Woodville Elementary, is excited about receiving his laptop at the end of the program, but even more excited about the experience.

“I like helping people and making them feel better,” he said. “We get to learn how to fix computers, and we take fields trips.”

Richard Ash, a 14-year-old eighth grade student at Swift Creek Middle School, agrees with Stevens.

“Learning how the computers work is a lot of fun,” he said. “I also learned about myself and how I can do a lot more than I thought. I’m having a real good time.”

Students in the institute have elected to start a “GranPal” program, where each student will partner with an elderly resident in Tallahassee and serve as a companion.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Huan Chen, a doctoral graduate student at the Florida A&M University (FAMU) Environmental Sciences Institute (ESI), has been selected by an international panel of experts to attend an international course on Bioinformatics and Comparative Genome Analysis.

Bioinformatics applies computer and information technology to manage and analyze organism genomes and other biological data. It is heavily based on computer analyses and programming.

Only 24 individuals were invited to the course out of 138 applicants from around the world. No more than six individuals from one country are allowed to attend. Chen is one of only three applicants chosen from the United States. The highly selective course will be held in Hong Kong in August.

“I feel very fortunate and honored to have been selected from among the outstanding applicants,” Chen said.

During the course, Chen hopes to experience a deep immersion in bioinformatics and be able to apply what she learns through the course to her Ph.D. research. Chen’s research focuses on Bdellovibrio (BALOs). Although BALOs are ill-defined, known information about one species of BALO show their potential to produce unique antibiotics and other compounds that could be used to fight bacterial infections in humans.

Chen is also pursuing the use of the BALOs to reduce human pathogens in oysters, a favorite food, to make the shellfish safer for human consumption.

This course will enable Chen to be involved in the forefront of her work with BALOs.

The workshop sponsors cover the attendee’s course tuition and fees, lodging and meals for the two-week course. The workshop sponsors include the Institut de Pasteur, a private non-profit foundation that contributes to the prevention and treatment of disease, through research, education, and public health activities, and the European Molecular Biology Organization, a focal point for the vast network of molecular biology research in Europe.

A primary objective of the course is to encourage multidisciplinary practices by introducing advanced fundamental problem-solving procedures in bioinformatics; their application in genome analyses; and recent knowledge acquired from genomes studies and perspectives.

The course is aimed for motivated Ph.D. and post-doctoral students and young assistant professors at public institutions particularly, but not exclusively, from Asia, Australia, Africa and South America. Students and faculty must have a background in mathematics, statistics, biology or computing and are involved in bioinformatics and genomes studies.

Chen received the M.S. degree from ESI last fall with a 4.0 GPA and was admitted into the Ph.D. program in January. She has a B.S. degree in computer science from Huazhong Agricultural University in Hubei, China. Chen attributes this background as an asset in her selection to the course as bioinformatics is heavily based in computer analyses and programming. She says that the academic programs have well prepared her for the challenge of the rigorous course.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Florida Region has scheduled its annual conference for Saturday, July 25, on Florida A&M University’s (FAMU) campus. The theme for the one-day conference is Florida Region Game Day in the Summertime.

The conference will include a morning-prayer service at the eternal flame on FAMU’s campus at 8:30 a.m. followed by workshops beginning at 9:15 a.m.  A luncheon is scheduled with FAMU President James H. Ammons as the keynote speaker.  Following the luncheon, a business meeting is scheduled for 2:30 p.m.

The Residence Inn at the Marriott located at 600 Gaines Street, Tallahassee is the host hotel.  To make reservations, call 1-800-331-3131 and request the FAMU Florida Region Room Block.  The registration fee for the conference is $60.  For more information, contact Seabon Dixon, vice president of the Florida Region at (904) 859-5229.