Academic Success and Bar Support Assistant Director & Assistant Professor of Legal Practice (00006019)

This position is located at NIU Law’s new Naperville campus and will primarily focus on teaching in the Part-Time J.D. Program.

Although the PTJD Program will be located in Naperville, it will operate as one law school along with NIU Law’s DeKalb location.

Faculty at the PTJD Program are full members of the NIU Law community and will have service commitments that integrate with faculty in DeKalb. Travel to DeKalb for some service commitments, such as attending faculty meetings, is required.

This position will be expected to coordinate with and work in a collaborative relationship with the Academic Success and Bar Support faculty at the DeKalb campus.

In addition to, and in conjunction with the Legal Writing Program, NIU Law assists law students in achieving their greatest potential through the Academic Success Program (ASP). There are numerous components to ASP throughout the course of the students’ academic career at NIU Law that the Legal Writing/ASP Professors are responsible for delivering. As part of ASP, select incoming 1L students are required to participate in a Jump Start Orientation program the week prior to the 1L Orientation. These students are instructed in basic analytical and rule development skills during a week of writing-intensive course work taught and implemented by the ASP Professors.

Further, select admitted students are invited to participate in the 1L ASP based on objective criteria, including undergraduate GPA and law school admission test scores. Participation is a mandatory condition of admission for students who meet certain criteria determined by the faculty. Students participating in the program attend weekly mentor and study sessions conducted by upper-level student Graduate Assistants for their four doctrinal courses. As part of the 1L ASP, 1L students whose GPA is below 2.2 by the end of the fall semester are required to participate in the exam writing seminar, a six-week, one-hour, weekly, ungraded course taught by the ASP Professors. The writing-intensive exam writing seminar focuses on exam-writing, outlining, and study skills. Some 2L students are required to participate in Upper-Level ASP, a semester-long, one-hour, weekly, ungraded course taught by the ASP Professors. The writing-intensive Upper-Level ASP focuses on exam-writing, outlining, and study skills.

The Legal Writing/ASP Professors, together with the Director of Legal Writing and the Director of Academic Success, are responsible for the delivery of the legal writing and academic success programs at NIU Law. The Academic Success and Legal Writing programs are intentionally linked to reflect the College of Law's commitment to integrated student support, ensuring that academic skill-building and legal writing instruction reinforce one another throughout a student's development. Accordingly, this position reports directly to the Director of Law School Academic Success and Bar Programs and coordinates programmatically with the Director of Legal Writing. This is a twelve-month position within the University.

The PTJD Program’s class schedule is built around its students’ professional lives. Class formats include:

Professors will be expected to engage in and master in-person, online synchronous, and online asynchronous teaching methods.

Faculty teaching in the PTJD Program are expected to be physically present on the Naperville campus on at least three days per week during the academic year. This is not a remote position.

NIU Law values faculty members who understand and embrace the distinctive needs of non-traditional law students. Teaching effectiveness, accessibility to students, and a commitment to in-person engagement are central expectations of this role.

In addition to teaching in Naperville, faculty members are expected to attend institutional events and contribute to the broader NIU Law community, which includes Fall Orientation, Spring Commencement in DeKalb, and other key law school events.

Candidates should have a demonstrated experience with or express a willingness to master synchronous and asynchronous online legal instruction. Professors should also have a commitment to staying current on distance education best practices and emerging instructional technologies.

Preferred candidates will have either a demonstrated capacity for or expressed willingness to master the following:

The ability and willingness to remain proficient and up to date on best practices in distance education is an ongoing expectation of this position, not merely a hiring preference.