Ted Afield, Vice Dean and Mark and Evelyn Trammell Professor & Clinical Professor of Law at Georgia State, has accepted a lateral offer from Stetson. From his LinkedIn page:
As the semester and calendar year winds down, I suppose it’s a good time to share some professional news. This summer I am leaving my long-time academic home at Georgia State University College of Law to join the law faculty at Stetson University College of Law.
I have had some amazing opportunities at GSU, where I was able to lead the Philip C. Cook Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, taking over for the irreplaceable Ron Blasi and working alongside a fantastic team in Tameka Lester, Esq., Emily Yaun, Conner Watts, Bonnie Rich, and bill timm for close to a decade. I am incredibly proud of the hundreds of clients that the clinic was able to assist in reducing millions of dollars of tax liabilities during my tenure and of the fact that I’ve had the privilege of working with such bright and capable students who have gone on to be major contributors to the tax bar of Atlanta and beyond. There is nothing better for a teacher than to see your students surpass you, and I’m so pleased I have been able to see that with so many students but especially with Emily and Conner—the clinic will be in wonderful hands with them writing its next chapter. Furthermore, having the opportunity work with Courtney Anderson as her inaugural Vice Dean after serving as Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Director of Clinical Programs has been a major personal and professional highlight and a partnership that I will miss. She is as dynamic and talented of a dean as you will find anywhere. I look forward to seeing what she continues to accomplish over the course of her deanship (some of which I know she will announce soon) alongside my experiential administrative successors Kendall Kerew and Emily Torstveit Ngara, even if she has vowed to pull every last drop of administrative work from me between now and May (I am apparently not allowed to get senioritis).
While leaving one academic home for another is always bittersweet, I could not be more excited about joining the incredible community of Stetson. I grew up in Tampa, not only as a baby person but as a baby lawyer. From my earliest days of legal practice, I learned quickly that, when I didn’t know how to do something, the most effective first step was to ask a Stetson alum. While most law schools like to use the phrase “practice ready” to describe their graduates, that’s much more than a slogan at Stetson. It’s humbling to get to teach the next generation of Stetson students and to help carry forward the high standards set by their predecessors over the last 125 years. This move is admittedly a daunting one because of the large shoes Andrew Appleby has left me to try to fill, but I already feel incredibly bolstered by Ben Barros and the highly engaged and collegial faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners who have reached out to welcome me to what is obviously a very special community. We’re going to learn a lot and have a lot of fun talking tax together (I promise!)—see you soon and Happy Holidays!
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