Tracey E. George has been appointed to the Tarkington Chair in Teaching Excellence.
George has taught numerous courses in her teaching career, including Contracts, for which she has won four teaching prizes, Evidence and The Life of the Law. She and colleague Suzanna Sherry created The Life of the Law class, which is required for all incoming J.D. and LL.M. students, and co-authored the course textbook, What Every Law Student Really Needs to Know: An Introduction to the Study of Law (Aspen, 2009). George also has written a casebook and statutory supplement for Contracts, K: A Common Law Approach to Contract Law (Aspen, 2012), with UCLA Law Professor Russell Korobkin.
George is professor of law, professor of political science, and director of the law school’s Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program. A Truman Scholar who holds an undergraduate degree in political science and economics from Southern Methodist University, a law degree from Stanford, and a master’s in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, George clerked for Judge Francis D. Murnaghan Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then litigated with the small Washington, D.C., firm Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin, which specialized in white collar criminal defense, government investigations and complex civil litigation. Her first teaching post was at the University of Missouri in Columbia from 1996 to 2001. She then joined the Northwestern University faculty as a tenured professor in 2001, holding the Benjamin Mazur Research Professorship from 2002 through 2003. She joined Vanderbilt in 2003.
George is the fourth member of Vanderbilt’s law faculty to hold the chair. Previous holders of the chair are Thomas McCoy, Richard Nagareda and Michael Vandenbergh.
The chair was endowed in 1998 by Carlton B. Tarkington ’63 (BS’59), who was Vanderbilt Law School’s 2011 Distinguished Alumnus. Tarkington retired from a successful career as an executive with West Publishing and then founded Edinburgh Investments, an investment banking firm, in 1996. He has since founded two banks, the Bank of Bellevue and PrimeTrust Bank, which merged with Bank of the South in 2006. Tarkington served on the law school’s Board of Advisors when it was known as the National Council. He also endowed the law school’s Tarkington Suite, which includes the library’s reading room, a computer lab and a computer room.
“I am grateful to the Tarkingtons and so honored to hold the chair previously held by my colleagues, Mike Vandenbergh, Richard Nagareda and Tom McCoy,” George said. “I owe any teaching success I have enjoyed to our gifted students and to my colleagues, who are truly devoted to our teaching mission.”
“Tracey is an outstanding teacher even among a faculty of outstanding teachers,” said Lisa Bressman, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law. “Tracey’s students speak of her dedication to and enthusiasm for teaching long after they leave her classroom. That dedication and enthusiasm is reflected in every class discussion, every interaction outside the classroom, and in the very course materials she has developed with her talented co-authors for the benefit not only of her own students but all law students. I am honored to have her as my colleague and delighted to see her receive this important recognition.”
