USD President's Report and Honor Roll of Donors 1993

NIEVA VAN LEER

How do you help a country write its constitution ?Very jud iciously, says S iegan . "I urge these new governments to give stronger constitutional pro tec- tion to property rights, entrepreneurship and contracts," he says, " because I believe such protection gives nations the greatest hope fo r switching from a backward economy to a modern economy." Not everyone at USO counsels heads of state. Some devote themselves to people who are large ly unseen and unheeded. Bob Fellme th, Price Professo r of Public Interes t Law, has worked fo r decades to uphold the rights of uno rga- nized and underrepresented publics. These days, Fellmeth is tackling a tough challenge: safeguarding the health and welfare of children. His Children's Advocacy Institute is taking on a range of iss ues - from deadbeat parents to lead paint poisoning - on beh alf of young citizens who, as Fellmeth puts it, "fall to the bottom of the priority list because they can 't vo te and they can't afford lobbyists." This year, CAI established the Child Advocacy C linic with a grant from the U .S. Department of Education to give law students direct experience v ith children's issues (see story on page 9). Migrant workers, another underrepresented group, are the foc us of an ambi- tious health care program at the Philip Y. Hahn School of Nursing- a new migrant health care option in the family nurse practitioner track of the master of science in nursing program (see story on page 13) . Many USO scholars seek common-sense solutions to problems that have largely been ignored. Perri Bomar, a professor in the School of Nursing, is searching fo r new preventive health reg imens fo r African-American women who suffer from hypertension and obes ity. Bomar, named a "1992 Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation Scholar" by the American Nurses Foundation , has found ev idence that unique cultu ral and environmental barriers inhibit African-American women from changing their phys ical ac tivity, choice of food and other lifestyle patterns. "This ANF-sup- ported study will help us find out what those barriers are, and wh at nurses can do to help this underserved population overcome them," Bomar says. When students work alongs ide professors like Bomar, or like biology professor Marie Simov ich, who is now collaborating with the U.S. Navy to study ve rnal pools at Miramar Naval Air Station (see story on page 15) , they pick up more than knowledge, says S ister Furay. "When a fac ulty member communica tes enthusiasm and dedication fo r his or her discipline, the students learn to love that discipline," says the provost. "Values are caught, not taught, and that includes intellectual values. " THE GIFT OF MENTORING Tom Iannacone has discovered over time that life in a collegiate sports pro- gram brings unexpected rewards. Naturally, the USO athletic director and his teams enj oy winning, and of course, they take pride in the strong academic records of USO athletes, who

with the client that makes you want to work and advo- cate, not just be their lawyer," says Nieva van Leer, a third-year law student who was a child in foster care for I I years and went on to social work and child abuse investigations. "In juvenile law, you're rep- resenting a class of people who really don't have their own voice," adds third-year law student Frances Quevedo. In addition to taking the introductory course "Child Rights and Remedies," the students each work on a pro- ject with an attorney from CAI or from the Child Advocacy Division of the San Diego Public Defender's Office. Every project poten- tially results in legislative changes, regulatory changes or decisions in individual cases. The range of current projects is wide, from inves- tigating procedures that would make eligible new- borns automatically regis- tered for Medi-Cal benefits to helping draft new rules governing the commitment of minors who are depen- dents or wards to psychiatric hospitals. "The students are getting a combination of experience that is unique in lawyering," says Sharon Kalemkiarian, Children's Advocacy Clinic faculty member and super- vising attorney of the clinic. "They are able to work on larger policy issues and also to experience in the trench- es what's happening to chil- dren. Most attorneys can go their whole life and never experience both sides of that picture." Van Leer sums up the expe- rience simply: "This is exact- ly what I want to do when I grow up," she says. "I want to be a kid's lawyer."

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determine the course of a person's future, says Fellmeth, who is also USD's Price Professor of Public Interest Law. Yet, there is a critical need for competent advo- cates in this specialty. The Child Advocacy Clinic was established in the I993 fall semester to call attention to the field and to train skilled advocates. Operating through the Children's Advocacy Institute with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the clinic provides law stu- dents with direct legal expe- rience in dependency court proceedings as well as in developing public policy relating to children. Ten stu- dents have signed up for a two-semester commitment - twice as long as most clinical courses - and

Fellmeth expects the clinic to accommodate 16-20 stu- dents eventually. This first group of students is extraor- dinarily promising, he says, each with a remarkable background and commit- ment to the program. "These students are working to leverage change for chil- dren across the whole spec- trum of child issues - child care, health, safety, custody and abuse," he says. "And they are leveraging change with policy advocates. They are learning not just how to represent children, but potentially how to make a career being child advo- cates." The advocates-in-training are enthusiastic about this prospect. "Working for chil- dren as an attorney, there's a deep caring, a type of bond

By their very nature, some decisions in court are more important than others, says Robert C. Fellmeth, execu- tive director of the Children's Advocacy Institute at USD's School of Law. A decision that results in a child being protected from molestation is one. A decision that allows a child to receive financial support so he or she is not hungry is another. In fact, much of juvenile law concerns decisions that may