UNT to host annual law conference March 1-2

Don W. Brown, Texas commissioner of higher education and lead staff member for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, will present the keynote address at UNT's eighth annual Texas Higher Education Law Conference at noon March 1 in the Ballroom of the Gateway Center.

The UNT conference — which will run March 1-2 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. each day — is acknowledged as the state's premier legal briefing for higher education board members, administrators, legal counselors, and faculty and staff from both public and private colleges and universities.

Conference director Richard Rafes, UNT's senior vice president for administration, says some 300 representatives from more than 80 Texas colleges and universities are expected to take advantage of this year's opportunity to address the most challenging legal issues in Texas higher education today.

Fees are $250 for both days and $190 for one day only. Continuing education participants can receive education credit upon request. For registration information, call (940) 565-3628.

Rafes says participants will receive valuable and practical information from an outstanding conference faculty that includes several of the state's and nation's leading authorities on the 26 topics presented.

Again, as in past years at the conference, LeRoy Rooker, director of the U.S. Department of Education's Family Policy Compliance Office, will provide updates and discuss current Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act issues in a special conference breakout session.

The speaker at the March 2 luncheon session will be Joe B. Hairston, an attorney with the Austin law firm Walsh, Anderson, Brown, Schulze & Aldridge P.C. and co-author of The Educator's Guide to Texas School Law, second edition.

• Other session topics will include:
• What to expect from the next legislative session
• Seen but not heard — speech codes, speech zones and other campus restrictions on speech
• When conduct by a student or employee becomes front-page news
• Environmental compliance
• Current trends and real-life experiences in risk management
• Emerging legal issues in distance learning affecting higher education
• Underage students on campus
• Effects of Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action
• Managing and accommodating employees with disabilities
• Other featured speakers from around the state and throughout the nation will include:
  
• Katherine Antwi, general counsel for the Texas Commission on Human Rights
• Gerald Carney, a toxicologist with the Compliance Assurance and Enforcement Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6
• Yvette Clark, general counsel for Stephen F. Austin State University
• William Fly, university attorney for Texas State University
• Chris Griesel, staff attorney for rules for the Supreme Court of Texas
• Esther Hajdar, attorney in the general law section of the Office of the General Counsel for the University of Texas System
• Sylvia Hardman, deputy commissioner for legal services, general counsel and ethics adviser for the Texas Rehabilitation Commission
• William P. Hoye, associate vice president, deputy general counsel and associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame
• Dan Litteral, general counsel and director of academic legal services for the University of Phoenix
• Victor Mellinger, associate general counsel with the Texas Tech University System
• Laura Messina, chief of the claims section in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas
• Bill Payton, director of risk and insurance management at the University of Missouri System and former chair of the risk management committee of the Midwestern Higher Education Commission
• Robert Young, legal counsel for the Dallas County Community College District

The conference is sponsored by the UNT Center for Education Law, Administration and Policy; the College of Education; the Office of the Senior Vice President for Administration; the Office of the Vice Chancellor and General Counsel; the Department of Counseling, Development and Higher Education; the North Texas Community College Consortium; and the Texas Association of College and University Student Personnel Administrators.

BY RODDY WOLPER rwolper@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue

• $1 million gift to help fund construction of new UNT athletic center
• UNT launches e-Campus web site
• Faculty and staff can vote now for 2004 UNT Homecoming theme
• UNT students, alumna win Rotary Scholarships
• Cowboy historian to speak to Friends of the UNT Libraries
• UNT professor finds that women's civic clubs led to suffrage movement in Texas
• Familiar faces should rule at 76th Academy Awards
• Totten named to National Commission on Libraries and Information Science

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