Administration

Royal Furgeson is the former Senior U.S. District Judge in the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. Prior to taking Senior Status, he served in the El Paso, Midland, and San Antonio Divisions of the Western District of Texas. He served as a federal judge for over eighteen years.

A native of Lubbock, Judge Furgeson graduated from Texas Tech University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and earned his law degree at the University of Texas School of Law, where he was an Associate Editor of the Texas Law Review. After law school, he served the U.S. Army for two years, attaining the rank of Captain. Following a tour in Vietnam, he returned to Lubbock as law clerk to the Honorable Halbert O. Woodward.

Before taking the bench, he was a practicing lawyer for twenty-four years with the Kemp Smith firm in El Paso, Texas. He is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a member of the American Law Institute, and Board Certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in Civil Trial Law. While in private practice, he was general campaign chair and president of the El Paso United Way, president of the El Paso chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, and president of the El Paso Bar Association.

During his time on the bench, in addition to his ongoing district court obligations, he was a panel judge on the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, President of the Federal Judges Association, and a member of the Judicial Branch Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He has also served as chair of the Judicial Resources Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

He has been honored on numerous occasions, including the Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Texas Tech Alumni Association, the West Texas Legal Legend Award by the Texas Tech University School of Law, the 2010 Distinguished Counselor Award by the State Bar of Texas Antitrust and Business Litigation Section, the Luke Soules Award by the State Bar of Texas Litigation Section, the Leon Green Award by the Texas Law Review, and the Faculty Award by the University of Texas School of Law.

Ellen S. Pryor graduated from Ursuline Academy of Dallas in 1974, from Rice University in 1978, and from the University of Texas School of Law in 1982. At the University of Texas School of Law, Professor Pryor served as Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Law Review, and received the "Am Jur" award for highest grades in the first year courses Torts, Property, Contracts, and Civil Procedure. She was also a member of the honor societies Chancellors and Order of the Coif. She received awards for outstanding student, student most likely to contribute to legal scholarship, and best student law review note. Following graduation, she served as judicial clerk for the Honorable Carl McGowan of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She then returned to her hometown of Dallas and worked for a civil litigation firm for four years. During that time, she received the Dallas Bar Association's Pro Bono Award of the Year, and the State Bar of Texas' Frank Scurlock Award for Delivery of Legal Services to the Poor.

She joined the faculty of the SMU Dedman School of Law in 1986, where she taught torts, advanced torts, insurance, and courses in professional responsibility. From Summer 2005 to Summer 2011, Professor Pryor served as an Associate Provost in the Office of the Provost, SMU. In Fall 2010 she was the D&L Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor, Pepperdine University School of Law. At SMU, she received the law school's Don Smart teaching award, the University's Rotunda teaching award, and the University's United Methodist Church Scholar-Teacher of the Year award. She was an inaugural recipient of the University's Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor Award, and in 2005 was named a Piper Professor by the Minne Piper Foundation in the State of Texas.

Professor Pryor has recently begun work as Co-Reporter, along with Professor Kenneth Simons of Boston University School of Law, for the American Law Institute's Restatement (Third) of Torts: Intentional Harm to Persons. She has also served as Associate Reporter for Chapter 10 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Physical and Emotional Harm, and as Coordinating Reporter for the Restatement Third project.

She has been a co-author of several casebooks, and her writings in the area of torts, insurance, and compensation theory have appeared in, among other journals, the Harvard Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Journal of Legal Studies, George Washington Law Review, Maryland Law Review, Texas Law Review, Tulane Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, and the University of Chicago Press.

In 2006, she was named as the 20th annual recipient of the Robert B. MacKay Law Professor Award from the Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section of the American Bar Association; the award recognizes "a commitment to the advancement of justice, scholarship, and the legal profession as demonstrated by outstanding contributions to the fields of tort and insurance law."

He previously served as Associate Dean for Administration and Finance, and held the Ernest W. Clemens Professorship for Corporate and Securities Law at the St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. He was the founding director of the Center for Latina/Latino Legal Studies at St. Mary’s.

Born and raised in the Texas Panhandle, Professor Valencia is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School. Following law school, he practiced law with Jones, Day in Dallas for 5 years, in the areas of commercial litigation and corporate bankruptcy.

He joined the St. Mary’s law faculty in 1995. He was appointed by President Clinton as one of 16 White House Fellows for 1999-2000, and worked in the White House Office of Chief of Staff, focusing primarily on race, civil rights, immigration, and Hispanic education issues. He is the lead author of Mexican Americans and the Law: ¡El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido!

Valencia has received the 2012 Equality Texas Becky Cross Anchor Award in recognition of work with and support of LBGTQ students; the 2008 Distinguished Faculty Award from St. Mary’s Law School; and the Outstanding Legal Achievement Award (2003 and 2006) from the Mexican American Bar Association of San Antonio. He has served, by appointment, on: the Supreme Court of Texas Task Force for Gender Fairness; several committees of the Law School Admission Council; and the Council on Legal Education Opportunity.

For the previous 18 years, Greenan served as a senior member of the staff at SMU Dedman School of Law, where her responsibilities included Director of the Public Interest Program and Director of Academic Skills Success Program. She served as advisor and mentor to multiple student organizations.

A native of South Texas, Greenan obtained a B.A. degree in Spanish, a B.S. degree in Child Development and Family Relations, and a Master of Education in Guidance and Counseling. She then received her J.D. degree from the University of Minnesota. After graduation from law school as a Reginald Huber Smith Fellow, she moved to Texas and worked for Legal Aid and Legal Services in Laredo and Dallas. She next spent several years at the law firm of Haynes & Boone, where she coordinated the firm’s pro bono program in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth. She then accepted a position as Director of the Private Bar Involvement Program for Legal Services of North Texas.

In 1995, she joined the SMU Dedman School of Law as Director of the Public Interest Program, and also became the Director of the Academic Skills Success Program. In addition, while at SMU, she served as Director of Programming and Administration for the Appellate Judges Education Institute.

Greenan’s extensive civic and law-related involvement includes pro bono work with Catholic Charities Immigration Services, Dallas Legal Hospice, and Lawyers Against Domestic Violence; member and President of Lawyers for Affordable Housing; Board of Directors of National Legal Aid and Defender Association; and Board of Directors of Legal Services of North Texas. She has been a Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation and the Dallas Bar Foundation, and has been a member of the Dallas Bar Association’s Pro Bono Activities Committee and Minority Participation Committee, and the Dallas Hispanic Bar Association. She received the 2004 Women’s Advocacy Award from Legal Aid of Northwest Texas.

Edward Hart is a native of Valdosta, Georgia, where he graduated from Valdosta State University in 1992 before going on to the New England School of Law, graduating in 1999. He earned his Master's in Library Science from Simmons College in 2002 and an LLM in European Union from Northumbria University in 2006. He started his library career while attending NESL as a student assistant and later served as the Acquisitions and Collections Management Librarian (2000-2005). He then moved to the University of Florida where he started as Acquisitions Librarian (2005-2008) before his promotion to Head of Technical Services (2008-2013). While at University of Florida he also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law teaching Advanced Legal Research.

Hart is the author of the chapter “Technical Services 2.0” in Law Libraries in Digital Age.  He has published several articles that have appeared in such journals as International Journal of Legal Information, Legal Information Management, and Journal of Southern Legal History.

He has been a member of the American Association of Law Libraries since 2000. He was a Fellow of the AALL's first Leadership Academy in 2007. He served as president of the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries in 2012-13 and is currently the Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect of the Government Documents – Special Interest Section as well as Vice-Chair of the AALL Committee on Indexing of Legal Periodical Literature.

James graduated magna cum laude from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2003 with a B.A. in Professional and Technical Writing and a B.A. in Criminal Justice. She received her J.D. in 2008 with honors from University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She received the National Association of Women’s Lawyers Outstanding Woman Graduate award. She was also named Bowen Student Representative for the National Academy of Trial Lawyers, member of Bowen and BLSA mock teams, and academic success lead mentor.

While still in undergraduate school, she worked as a paralegal at the Little Rock law firm of Mitchell, William, Selig, Gates & Woodyard, P.L.L.C. She joined the firm as an associate after graduation. Her practice experience included the areas of business and commercial litigation, business tort, bankruptcy, and employment discrimination.

She served as the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Scholarships at the University of Arkansas Little Rock William H. Bowen College of Law since 2011, after serving for several years as Assistant Dean for Student Affairs. She joined the UNT Dallas College of Law in June 2013.

After graduation, Robinowich remained connected to St. Mary’s working as the Associate Director of the Summer Skills Enhancement Program for St. Mary’s University School of Law. In 2009, he took the position of Clinical Fellow for the Center for Legal and Social Justice (CLSJ) at St. Mary’s, and continued to work with students in the Summer Skills Enhancement Program. As a Clinical Fellow, Robinowich practiced and lectured in a variety of areas of law including consumer law, probate law, wills and estates, bankruptcy, family law, and Social Security law. He taught St. Mary’s law students to practice in these areas of law as well. He also played an integral role in setting up the CLSJ’s office and procedures at Haven for Hope, the local transitional homeless shelter. During his time as a Clinical Fellow, Robinowich also worked with the Community Justice Program to initiate the Criminal Warrants Clinic, and provided legal presentations for the Parenting Order Legal Clinic and other organizations.

In 2011, Robinowich became the Associate Director of Academic and Student Affairs. In this position he worked with other faculty and staff to create and implement a new and robust academic support program at St. Mary’s University School of Law. In 2013 he became Director of Academic Support for St. Mary’s University School of Law and continued to serve students’ needs in the areas of academic support and student affairs. He also taught a course in consumer bankruptcy law.

Robinowich has published an article, From Admission to Bar Passage: Extending a Helping Hand to Students at St. Mary’s University School of Law, 14 SCHOLAR 107 (2011). He has also presented at national conferences including the Association of American Law Schools Midyear Meeting - Workshop On Measuring Learning Gains, Orlando, Florida; the 2015 Rapid Insight Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the 2015 Association of Academic Support Educators Conference, Chicago, Illinois; and the 2nd Annual Southwestern Consortium of Academic Support Professionals Workshop, San Antonio, Texas.

After completing high school in Mannheim Germany, in 1982, she attended college at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia and Hagerstown Community College in Hagerstown, Maryland. She received an Associate of Arts in English/Communications in May of 1985 from Hagerstown Community College. After living in the Republic of Panama for three years, serving as a civilian communications liaison for the United States Army, she resumed her education at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts. She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English/Communications in January of 1994 and a Masters in Education in May of 1996 from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Jarrell earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Public Affairs in January of 2007 from The University of Texas at Dallas. Jarrell is a published scholar in the fields of succession planning and city governance and a proud member of Alpha Chi, Phi Lambda Theta, and past-president of Pi Alpha Alpha. Jarrell is also a member of several professional organizations to include the Texas Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, the Southern Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, and is currently serving on the federal compliance committee for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Donahue graduated with high honors from Chicago-Kent College of Law and served as a law clerk for a federal district court judge before embarking on her career in education and assessment. She is passionate about the potential of formative assessment to drive student learning and about the deliberate alignment of what is taught and tested with what is needed to practice law.

She is an expert in the development and delivery of legal assessments, with experience building learning outcomes, test specifications, and summative and formative exams, as well as managing software development teams building software for test question banking, exam building, secure exam delivery, and score reporting. In her time at BARBRI, she authored a comprehensive set of skills-based National Legal Education Outcomes to serve as the backbone for law school formative assessments and remediation materials, and served as one of the four co-founders of BARBRI’s Center for Educational Development, a think tank focused on the future of legal education.

Donahue is also a past Program Director and lead editor of the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), a 200-question multiple-choice exam used by nearly every U.S. state and territory as a component of the bar exam. In her seven years at the National Conference of Bar Examiners, she edited test questions for all drafting committees of the MBE as well as for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, planned the transitions of those exams from external development by a vendor to in-house development, and managed the business side development of logistical processes and related software for question banking, editorial version control, exam building, answer sheet scanning and quality control, and score reporting to all jurisdictions. She also has experience in K-12 assessment as an IS Manager for Data Recognition Corporation, where her team developed the company’s first web-based secure online assessment tools for the delivery of formative and summative exams.

She regularly serves as a consultant for law schools and has presented at legal education conferences on the subjects of quality question drafting, exam building, grading with outcome-based scoring rubrics, and developing learning outcomes and formative assessment programs. She has coached more than a hundred law professors in the United States and abroad in drafting and editing quality learning outcomes, test questions, and grading rubrics. She has published assessment-related articles in The Bar Examiner and the Journal of Legal Education, and co-authored a chapter in The Handbook of Test Security, eds. James Wollack & John Fremer (Routledge Books: 2013).

She holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts and Science in Human Services, with certification in Alternative Dispute Resolution, from UNT Denton, and an Associates in Arts from Mountain View College. She is currently pursuing her MBA from Northwood University’s DeVos Graduate School.

Doss graduated summa cum laude from the University of Central Missouri with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. During her time there, she served as secretary of the Student Government, Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life Leadership Academy Fellow, and Legislative Intern in the Missouri State House of Representatives. She graduated cum laude with her Juris Doctor from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 2013 where she served as the Managing Editor of the Journal of Food Law and Policy. She was also a member of the Board of Advocates, a Peer Mentor, Chair of the Business Law Society, and received the W.B. Putman American Inn of Court Pupil Award. Her experiences during law school included an externship in Walmart’s legal department and work as a student attorney for the University of Arkansas School of Law Civil Clinic. As a student attorney, she assisted clients enforce their rights in wage and hour cases. Doss is licensed to practice in Texas state courts, as well as the Northern & Eastern District Courts of Texas. She has represented clients at pre-trials, mediations, hearings on various motions and final trials in eight counties in Texas.

She joined the UNT Dallas College of Law in October of 2015.

Littrell also co-founded a legal assessment consulting and software development company and served as the Manager of Testing Services at the National Conference of Bar Examiners, where she led the scheduling, quality control, production, and delivery of all exams, and managed test security and administration services for all U.S. boards of bar examiners. Prior to her work in assessment, she spent 10 years with a complex litigation team and worked in business management, banking, and securities. She holds a Paralegal Certificate from an ABA approved program and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Economics.

After graduation from the University of Texas at Arlington and service in Vietnam as a U.S. Army airborne infantry officer, Professor Ellis graduated from SMU Law School, where he was chief counsel for the SMU legal clinic and served on the board of editors for the Journal of Air Law and Commerce. Professor Ellis has tried over 175 jury trials, is Board Certified in Personal Injury and Civil Trial Law, has earned membership of the American Board of Trial Advocates and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and has taught in the trial advocacy program at SMU.

Throughout his career, he has been committed to community service, professional development, the bar association, and access to justice. He has served as President of the Dallas Bar Association, the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers, and the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association. His contributions also include serving on the boards of the State Bar and Dallas Bar Associations; Legal Services of North Texas; Dallas Legal Hospice; Dallas Habitat for Humanity; Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation; and the Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism.

His many awards include the Dallas Bar Association’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Justice Award; Dallas Lawyers Auxiliary Justinian Award; Texas Bar Foundation’s Dan Price Memorial Award; UTA Distinguished Alumni; Nancy Garms Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions to Law-Focused Education; and the Dallas Trial Lawyers Distinguished Community Involvement Award.

Patterson is a former President of the Association of Attorney-Mediators, and former Presiding Judge of the Dallas County Civil District Judges. He served on the Texas Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Mediation that drafted Ethical Guidelines for Mediators adopted by the Supreme Court in 2005. In 2006 he received a Presidential Commendation from the State Bar of Texas for leadership in improving justice in Texas. Patterson received the Judge Merrill Hartman Pro Bono Judge of the Year Award from the State Bar of Texas; the Dallas Bar Lisa Blue and Fred Baron Access to Justice Award in 2013; and the first Award of Excellence granted by the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers Foundation in 2003. The American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) named Patterson Judge of the Year in 1999. He served as a member of the Board of the Dallas Bar Association from 2002 through 2004.