I am pleased to announce that our guest Alumni Blogger for March is Ryan Murphy ’04. Ryan is the General Counsel at Edgerton Contractors, Inc., and is also an adjunct professor in the College of Engineering, where he teaches Engineering Law to senior- and graduate-level students.
Many thanks to our previous guests, Jason Roberts ’10 and 3L Steven Wah.
Through efforts such as the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinic (MVLC), “we are chipping away at poverty by bringing greater access to justice,” says Angela Schultz, Marquette Law School’s assistant dean for public service.
The documentable record of the clinic in providing thousands of low-income people with access to legal help earned honors at two events this week.
On Tuesday, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki presented a “Treasures of the Church” award to the clinic in recognition of the success of the Mobile Legal Clinic, which was launched in 2014 as a joint project of Marquette L
aw School, the Milwaukee Bar Association, and Milwaukee County. The recognition came as part of Archbishop’s Lenten Luncheon. The Treasures of the Church awards recognize those who have shown steadfast commitment in response to the needs of poor people.
On Thursday, the United Community Center, a large social service and education provider on the south side, recognized the MVLC as its “group volunteer of the year.”
Vicki Martin was at a national conference of community college leaders and set out to attend a workshop. But she walked into a different session than the one was looking for. That worked out well — it triggered a change in her thinking that may trigger a change in the education and job prospects for large numbers of low-income Milwaukee young adults.
Martin is president of Milwaukee Area Technical College and the session she walked into was about a program called the Tennessee Promise, which offers two years of community and technical college education with no tuition cost for high school graduates in that state.
“It really caught my imagination,” Martin said during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Eckstein Hall on Feb. 23. She decided, “This is very doable. . . . We just have to do it.”