Richmond students excel in high-level academic competition.
Beating a rival university is always sweet, but for Erica Giovanni, L’10, the victory came not on the football field or basketball court, but in a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C.
During her first year in Richmond’s School of Law, Giovanni’s legal team won the American Association of Justice regional competition, defeating the University of Virginia in the final round of the 16-team event.
“It’s always good when Richmond beats U.Va.,” says Giovanni, president of the law school’s Trial Advocacy Board.
From the courtroom to the computer lab, the dance studio to the debate hall, hundreds of the University’s students excel in academic competitions, where they proudly build Richmond’s strong academic reputation.
“It’s a tremendous amount of work on the part of the students,” notes John Paul Jones, professor of law and faculty adviser of the law school’s Moot Court Board. “It says they have the ability to juggle more than one ball—keeping their grades up while putting a considerable amount of effort into something like this.”
Prize-winning Research
Richmond has long been a place where undergraduate students engage in research with faculty. Each spring, much of that
research goes on display at the Arts and
Sciences Student Research Symposium
in the Modlin Center.
The symposium began in 1986, with 20 to 30 presentations, and has grown steadily to more than 200 participants this year as exhibits spilled over into the Gottwald Center for the Sciences. It started with science, but now stretches across other disciplines, including art and music. Students present posters, papers, and other works in one-hour sessions throughout the day. The event culminates with a banquet, where four prizes are given in different categories of student research. Additional prizes go to faculty members who mentored the winning students.
“I try to make it a symposium in the tradition of the Greeks, of Plato,” says faculty sponsor Dr. William Ross, professor of mathematics. “It is a chance for our faculty to engage students about what they have done, and for students to engage each other.”
The regional and national competitions for law students also provide great networking opportunities because the judges are generally prominent lawyers. “If you’re interested in being noticed as a student with an exceptional grasp of patent law, one way to demonstrate that is to represent your law school in the patent law moot court,” Jones says.
Giovanni has benefited already. “As I was interviewing and applying for jobs, that’s what employers wanted to talk about,” says the future trial lawyer. “Not the grades, but the practical experience” from moot court competitions. “It absolutely helps in the job market.”
Jones also has noticed a distinct esprit de corps among moot court teammates. The many hours of preparation and competition develop “a cadre of alumni who have a special relationship to the school,” he says. “Many of them turn around and contribute time and money to support future contests.”
Ethics Bowl
When a politician faces a difficult question, a typical ploy is to dodge it by answering a different question altogether.
“If you do that in the Ethics Bowl, you will be penalized,” says Dr. Terry Price, professor and associate dean for academic affairs in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies. “The idea is for students to model good, ethical behavior in debate.”
A couple of months before the annual contest, the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics gives student teams a dozen cases involving ethical questions. The cases range from policy matters, such as health care reform, to questions taken right off the talk show circuit—such as “Is synthetically produced meat morally preferable to animal-grown meat?”
“It differs from debate in that teams are not trying to argue either side,” Price says. Instead, they are trying to come to the right conclusion. “There is no incentive to disagree, but there is a real incentive to demonstrate deeper reasoning.” Judges assign scores based on the clarity and intelligibility of teams’ presentations. The teams with the highest scores meet in a series of elimination matches, including the final one before an audience.
This year Richmond sent a team of four students to the Southeastern Regional Ethics Bowl in St. Petersburg, Fla. Richmond has reached the semifinals of the national Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, but winning is not really the point, according to Price. “The skill it teaches is how to locate where the ethical issue actually is, and then apply sound reasoning to the case. It leaves them room to change their minds, hone their arguments, and understand why some reasons work and others do not.”
Colette Connor, ’04, vividly recalls one of the cases. “A photojournalist took a picture of a vulture in Africa, and the vulture was 10 feet away from a starving baby,” she says. “It was a very powerful picture, but it led to some debate over why the journalist was taking the picture and not helping the child.”
(Top) Richmond’s dancers have been selected to perform in the closing gala of the American College Dance Festival in five of the past six years. (Middle) Danielle Taylor, ’13, and James Farr, ’10, hone their debating skills. (Bottom) From the left, Cosmin Pancratov, ’10, Yigit Aytan, ’12, and Matt Der, ’10, placed seventh among 161 mid-Atlantic teams in computer programming.
Connor spent her senior year on the Ethics Bowl team and became an assistant coach the following year while working at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies. She now practices law at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C. She says her Ethics Bowl experience helped prepare her for a legal career by teaching her how to think on her feet and consider all sides of an issue. “The ethical problems and cases are fascinating and really difficult,” says Connor, who returned to campus to judge a regional competition last year. “It was a very good team-building experience, which is part of what we study at the leadership school, but it was also intellectually challenging and fun.”
The Big Dance
Myra Daleng, director of dance in the Department of Theatre and Dance, sees similar benefits for the University’s competitive dancers.
“We are such a family, and the dancers are incredibly supportive of each other,” she says. “The camaraderie is so beautiful. We spend many hours together, and they build lifelong friendships. I saw that when 50 alumni returned this year for the 25th anniversary performance in the Modlin Center. They stay in touch with each other and with me.”
For Rachel Chikowski, ’09, preparing for the American College Dance Festival provided welcome relief from her intensive studies as a pre-med biology major. “I have always been interested in science, and I have always danced,” she says. “Dance is really therapeutic for me. As soon as I walked into the dance studio, I would just forget about all the stress of school and life. I think that’s what happens to most dancers. You’re so involved in your body and the choreography.”
Chikowski, who was dance captain, attended four consecutive American College Dance Festivals with her mentor, Daleng. “You come through an entire year of training and practicing for hours on end. Then, at the time of the festival, you can appreciate all the hard work,” Chikowski says. “It was the highlight of my college career.”
For the past nine years, Richmond has participated in the festival, which is judged by nationally recognized choreographers and dancers. Of more than 50 pieces performed each year, about 10 are selected for the closing dance gala. And in the past six years, Richmond has been invited to perform in the gala five times. Daleng emphasizes that the festival focuses on nurturing talent, not promoting competition, but she was overjoyed when this year’s group was chosen. The winning dance routine was created by Robert Battle, an internationally known choreographer who has done pieces for the UR dancers to premier in each of the past five years.
The Festival requires student-choreographed pieces as well, and Hannah Rolfes, ’10, spent up to 20 hours a week, outside her normal dance class schedule, preparing “Tangent Relations” for this year’s festival. After the gala, Rolfes became the first student to graduate from UR as a dance major. She credits Daleng for pushing her to perform at a higher level.
“She lit a fire under me,” says Rolfes, who transferred from Montclair State University in New Jersey. “I was a new student, but Myra and Anne Van Gelder (assistant director of dance) let me choreograph a piece. It’s an honor to have people trust you to perform.”
Walk-ons welcome
In 2003, the University’s debate team qualified for the National Debate Tournament, starting a seven-year winning streak.
“That would be equivalent to the basketball team making it to the NCAA tournament every year,” says Dr. Kevin Kuswa, director of debate. The achievement is all the more remarkable because Kuswa maintains an open-door recruiting policy. “Anyone who is interested can give it a try—no experience necessary,” he says. “That’s not the case at a lot of the big schools. They only have varsity programs.” But at Richmond some of the best debaters start out as walk-ons with no high school debating experience. Kuswa works with dozens of students competing on three levels—varsity, junior varsity, and novice. And while most of the debaters are majoring in political science or English, a few—such as senior Callie Dowdy, ’10—come from the sciences.
Lifelong Lessons
Tim Finchem, R’69, commissioner of the PGA Tour, was a star debater at Richmond. He includes his UR connection in his executive biography at PGA.com, noting he attended the University on a debate scholarship.
“The debate coach was Dr. Bert Bradley, and he was a very highly regarded coach on a national level,” Finchem recalls. “He taught me a great deal, and I will always be indebted to him.” Debate conveyed four lifelong lessons to Finchem: “One, consider both sides of an issue. Two, outline your arguments of the case. Three, think on your feet. And four, connect with the listener.”
Finchem (pictured above between Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus) still savors winning the U.S. Naval Academy Invitational in 1967, when the topic was whether the United States should reduce its foreign policy commitments. “We were on the negative (side of the question), and the University of Miami was on the affirmative, and their plan was to get out of Vietnam, which at that point in time was a fairly unpopular position, especially at the U.S. Naval Academy. That may be the reason we won.”
“She decided in her first year that she wanted to improve her public-speaking skills, and she came by out of the blue,” Kuswa recalls. “She improved really quickly, got to the junior varsity level by the end of her first year. Now I would consider her a strong varsity debater. She and her partner have done very well this year. I would say they are one of the top 20 teams in the mid-Atlantic.”
Last year, the duo of Liz Lauzon, ’09, and Ashley Fortner, ’11, placed 40th among two-person debate teams at the National Debate Tournament. Now Lauzon is pursuing a master’s degree in public diplomacy on a full scholarship at the University of Southern California. She also helps coach the USC debate teams.
Focusing on Richmond’s best debaters probably would push its teams even higher, but Kuswa has no intention of trading his walk-on policy for taller trophies. “We’d rather make it available to everyone, rather than only try to compete at the very highest level.”
Another point of emphasis is “the connection between debate and academics,” he says. “We really work hard on getting our students to do well in their classes, and work on papers that might connect to their debating.” Those students often present to the Student Research Symposium. (See “Prize-winning Research”) “That’s the kind of thing we encourage,” Kuswa says. “We also have a number of debaters who go on to graduate school in communications.”
One of them is Flemming Schneider, ’08, a graduate student in communications studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He credits debate with enhancing his research skills, which improved his studies in political science and religion. He learned to ask the right questions. “What is the important issue and why? How is the credibility of a source established? How are different claims compared and weighed? When is conceding arguments strategic?” All of those considerations made him a better student.
Dark horse glory
Dr. Barry Lawson, associate professor of computer science, marvels at the tenacity and success of Richmond students who compete in a contest sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery.
The ACM competition is the computer industry’s equivalent of football’s Bowl Championship Series. But instead of tackling large athletes, the students tackle big computer programming problems.
In the mid-Atlantic region alone, Lawson says, “Our students are competing against teams like Virginia Tech, Duke, Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, and the University of Maryland. We’re a liberal arts college. The fact that we have teams who compete so strongly against teams from much larger computer science programs says a lot about the quality of our students.”
The contest employs personal computers, but the key to winning the ACM is teamwork. The best teams bring together a mixture of computer, mathematical, and problem-solving skills. “It’s more than a programming contest. It’s really a problem-solving contest,” says Lawson, who sponsors the team along with Dr. Lewis Barnett, associate professor of computer science. Students attempt to solve eight complex problems in only five hours, so time management is critical. With only one computer allowed per team, some students work by hand on other problems.
Spiders vs. Spiders
The University’s interscholastic competitions are augmented by several contests held on campus each spring.
Organizers downplay the competitive nature of the Student Research Symposium, which features undergraduate research from the School of Arts and Sciences, but students and faculty mentors do compete for cash prizes. (See “Prize-winning Research” above.)
Another spring contest is the McWick Case Competition, which since 1998 has challenged business majors taking a capstone course in strategic management. It is sponsored by alumnus, Kathleen McBride, B’76. (See “Enterprising Spiders”.)
“Teams of students are given a business case one week before the competition,” says Dr. Jeffrey Harrison, professor of management in the Robins School of Business. “They evaluate the company and its competitive situation, and they present a strategic plan.” Teams that advance through three rounds are then judged by leaders from the business community.
Yet another spring competition is the Business Pitch Competition, an annual event that invites students from all undergraduate schools to showcase their entrepreneurial ideas. First place pays $3,500.
This year’s problems were “rather nasty,” Lawson says, but the “We R UR” team of Yigit Aytan, ’12, Matt Der, ’10, and Cosmin Pancratov, ’10, solved three of them—good enough to place seventh among 161 mid-Atlantic teams. Only the top seven teams solved three or more problems.
The emphasis on problem-solving prepares students for job interviews, Lawson notes. “We’ve had several students go on to work at Microsoft or Google, and in the interview process, they were presented with problems they have never seen before, just to see how they would react, to see if they can think on the fly.” That was the case for Mike Pohl, ’07, a software engineer at Google in Pittsburgh. The ACM and another national contest—the Putnam Mathematical Competition—“will help you get into the interview process,” he says.
Pohl’s fondest ACM memory is competing against Virginia Tech and other universities with larger computer science programs during his first year. “We weren’t supposed to beat anybody, but we won the local competition,” he says. “I think it kind of caught everybody off guard.”
Trials by fire
Each year, scores of Richmond law students refine their legal skills in various types of moot court competition—client counseling, negotiation, mediation, trial practice, and appellate practice.
“Although in moot court you’re playing with fake scenarios, it is a chance to get in the courtroom and get in front of real judges and research other parts of the law you wouldn’t get to otherwise,” says Jaime Wisegarver, L’10, president of the Moot Court Board.
This has been a good year for her teammates. At the regional Spong Moot Court Tournament at the College of William & Mary, the team of Andriana Shultz, L’10, and Tricia Dunlap, L’11, finished second. Shultz was named “Best Oral Advocate,” while Dunlap was the runner-up. They also won first prize for their written brief.
“What the Moot Court Board has done really well is getting a lot of our students involved, and getting a lot of exposure for the University, especially when you have folks like Andi and Tricia doing so well,” Wisegarver says. About 26 students competed in moot court this year, while another 65 first-year law students took part in an in-house competition designed to prepare them for moot court competition next year.
Five Richmond students reached the quarterfinals of the prestigious Jessup International Law Moot Court competition sponsored by Tulane University. Kyle McLaughlin, L’10, and Ben Hoover, L’10, reached the final round and won second prize for their written brief. In addition, Hoover was named “Best Oral Advocate.” Meanwhile, the team of Tony Bessette, L’10, Matt Hull, L’10, and Laurel Huerkamp, L’10, won first prize for their written brief, with the highest score in that competition’s 18-year history.
Jones says the competition helps students develop greater poise and self-confidence. “The students who return from a Moot Court competition now have considerable experience in making an argument, both in writing and on their feet, to an appellate court,” he notes.
The Trial Advocacy Board has nearly 50 participants—more than triple the number of participants during Giovanni’s first year of law school. In early March, the team posted its third top-four finish of the year. “Schools that never would have known us, now know who we are, and to look out for us when they see us in competition,” she says.
Like their counterparts in the Ethics Bowl, the fledgling lawyers put a premium on how they represent the University. “Part of our success is how we interact with people when we meet them at competitions,” Giovanni says. “When you come in and are encouraging and polite, you’re helping your reputation in the law school community.”
That reputation is particularly strong at admiralty moot court competitions. Admiralty law is the branch of international law that regulates the private maritime industry. Richmond’s admiralty moot court program ranks among the top five in the nation with Jones steady at the helm.
Chip Jones is a freelance writer in Richmond.
Send comments about this story to krhodes@richmond.edu.
