December 2010
FOR PIPELINE DIVERSITY PROGRAM
TALLAHASSEE — Jacksonville attorney Wayne Hogan, a 1972 graduate of Florida State University College of Law, has received honorable mention recognition for the American Bar Association’s (ABA) 2011 Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Award for Excellence in Pipeline Diversity.
The award is given to organizations or individuals who have shown innovation and leadership in diversifying the educational pipeline to the legal profession. The ABA Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline will recognize Hogan’s contributions Friday, February 11 at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Atlanta.
The ABA is honoring Hogan for his support of the Summer for Undergraduates Program – a signature program of the College of Law. The program exposes students, particularly those from groups historically underrepresented in the legal profession, to the joys and rigors of legal education. The 60 students selected annually for the program attend a month of simulated law school at no charge, including room and board, and receive a $500 stipend. Participants experience intensive instruction, legal writing training and exposure to legal professionals from a variety of fields.
In 2000, Hogan and his wife, Patricia, endowed the Summer for Undergraduates Program, which allows the law school to permanently maintain the program size at 60 students per year. Additionally, Hogan has nurtured the program and is a hands-on participant each summer. In recent years, he has coordinated sessions at the Florida Capitol so he could introduce students to Florida policymakers.
“The summer program literally changed my life and is the main reason I am a practicing attorney today,” said Shenika Harris, a 2004 College of Law graduate and assistant general counsel at the Florida Department of Transportation. “What the Hogans have provided is not just measured in dollars and lives touched, but also in degrees, as in ‘juris doctor degrees.’ Of the 25 students in my 1998 Summer Program Class, more than half went on to law school and two of them graduated with me from The Florida State University College of Law six years later.”
“I am profoundly grateful to Wayne and Pat for endowing the summer program and making it a permanent part of the law school
’s offerings,” said Dean Don Weidner. “They change people’s lives by opening up new vistas.”
Hogan is a partner in the firm of Terrell • Hogan, the largest trial firm in North Florida representing only injury and accident victims. He specializes in all areas of personal injury law.
“This recognition is really for the program, for Dean Weidner, who conceived it, and for the staff and participants who made it successful,” said Hogan. “While Pat and I have been glad to help, the award for excellence goes to the Summer for Undergraduates Program itself.”
For more information about Florida State’s Summer for Undergraduates Program, visit http://www.law.fsu.edu/summer_undergraduates/.
