Four Vanderbilt Law professors–Ingrid Wuerth, Suzanna Sherry, Tracey George and Edward Cheng–received 2018 Hall-Hartman Awards for Outstanding Teaching at an awards presentation April 24.
Hall-Hartman Awards are based on a student poll administered by the student-led Vanderbilt Bar Association. The annual awards, which recognize excellent teaching of both first-year and upper-level classes, are given to one professor in each of Vanderbilt’s three first-year sections and to two professors who taught upper-level courses, with separate categories for large classes with 30 students or more and classes with fewer than 30 students.
Hall-Hartman Awards are a longstanding Vanderbilt tradition recognizing faculty whose teaching is deemed outstanding in each first-year student section and for large and small upper-level elective courses. The awards are named in honor of former professors Donald J. Hall and Paul Hartman, both of whom spent their academic careers at Vanderbilt and were revered for their teaching.
“These awards are coveted and hard to win because we have so many outstanding teachers on our faculty,” Dean Chris Guthrie said. “Professors cherish this recognition because it comes directly from the students they’ve taught this year.”
Ingrid Wuerth, who holds the Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law, was honored both for her first-year Civil Procedure class by students in Section A and for her upper-level classes on international law. A leading scholar of foreign affairs, transnational litigation and public international law, Wuerth directs Vanderbilt’s International Legal Studies Program. She has received the Hall-Hartman Award seven times in the past five years.
Suzanna Sherry, who holds the Herman O. Loewenstein Chair in Law, was honored for her first-year Civil Procedure class by students in Section B. This is the seventh time Sherry has been recognized with a Hall-Hartman Award. Her work in the area of constitutional law has earned her national recognition, and she also writes extensively on federal courts and federal court procedures. She is the author of more than 75 books and articles.
Tracey George, who holds the Charles B. Cox III and Lucy D. Cox Family Chair in Law and Liberty, was honored for her first-year Contracts class by students in Section C. George directs the law school’s Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program. 2018 is the eighth year in which George has been recognized by students with the Hall-Hartman Award.
Edward Cheng, whose research and teaching focus on evidence law, was honored by upper-level students in the category of courses with 30 students or more for his Evidence class. This is the sixth year in which Cheng—who is a co-author of a five-volume treatise, Modern Scientific Evidence, which is updated annually—has received the Hall-Hartman Award. In fall 2016, Cheng launched a podcast focusing on evidence law scholarship, Excited Utterance, which now has over 2,500 subscribers and recently broadcast its fiftieth segment.