Sarah Rogerson Honored With M. Shanara Gilbert Award
It has been announced that Professor Sarah Rogerson, Clinical Professor of Law and Founder and Director of the Immigration Law Clinic at Albany Law School, has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Clinical Section’s M. Shanara Gilbert Award. The award will be presented during the luncheon at the Clinical Legal Education Conference in San Francisco on May 5.
Designed to honor an “emerging clinician,” this award honors a clinical professor with ten or fewer years of experience who has (1) a commitment to teaching and achieving social justice, particularly in the areas of race and the criminal justice system; (2) a passion for providing legal services and access to justice to individuals and groups most in need; (3) service to the cause of clinical legal education or to the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education; (4) an interest in international clinical legal education; and (5) an interest in the beauty of nature (which is desirable, but not required). The Clinical Section’s Awards Committee noted a consistent theme in Sarah’s nominations—that Professor Rogerson regularly goes “beyond what would be expected.”
Professor Rogerson founded the Immigration Law Clinic at Albany. After the clinic’s formation, she further broadened the scope of the clinic to serve the unmet legal needs of unaccompanied minors. The clinic provides direct legal representation and also utilizes a wide variety of other advocacy strategies. Students have drafted city council resolutions and legislation and conducted pop-up intake and referral clinics. Under Professor Rogerson’s guidance, students have created their own projects—including an innovative program that trains undergraduate students to become legal interpreters and a unique, pre-release re-entry program for those detained in the Albany County jail. Professor Rogerson is committed to increasing social justice awareness in her community through media and community education trainings. She is a weekly panelist on a local, award-winning public radio broadcast discussing issues relating to the human condition. She has also collaborated with other legal service providers and community partners to travel throughout the state of New York to conduct immigration law trainings for private attorneys, clerks, court staff and personnel, and dozens of area Board of Immigration Appeals accredited representatives. She and her students have been directly involved in recruiting volunteers (and working alongside those volunteers) to provide relief to migrants who were detained at the southern U.S. border and transported to the Albany County jail.
KJ