8
B R I E F S
FLOWERS USING INTERIM STINT TO DRIVE GROWTH AND
INNOVATION IN CENTER FOR EXCELLENCE IN ADVOCACY
Emilia Soliman
B Y G E O RGE THURLOW
Professor of Law Roberta Kemp Flowers has taken the helm
of the Center for Excellence in Advocacy as its interim
director for the 2019-2020 academic year. She previously
served as the Center’s first director from 1999 to 2007.
Flowers, a professor at the College of Law since 1991, came to
Stetson as a former prosecutor — at both the state (in Colorado)
and federal (in Florida) levels — to teach Trial Advocacy. She has
since expanded her teaching to include courses such as Evidence
and Criminal Law, as well as a focus on issues in ethics and
professionalism and how those connect to Elder Law.
During her previous tenure as director, one of her biggest
accomplishments was bringing together Trial Team, Moot
Court, and the new (at the time) Alternative Dispute
Resolution (ADR) Team under one roof to work together to
achieve more than any single team could have done alone. She
also brought in Trial Team alumni to help coach teams. Along
with her work on the competition teams, Flowers led efforts to
add course offerings to the J.D. program, such as the tethered
Trial Advocacy/Evidence course.
In her time away from the Center, Flowers became increasingly
involved with Elder Law issues. Her interest in the area comes
from a passion for ethics and professionalism, as well as her
understanding of issues surrounding exploitation from her time
as a prosecutor. She dedicates a lot of her time to providing
trainings around the country on these topics and currently serves
on the board of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.
With her return to the Center for Excellence in Advocacy,
Flowers has set a number of ambitious goals. One of the biggest
is fundraising to build a new Advocacy Center that would bring
everyone involved in Stetson’s advocacy programs — including
the Social Justice Advocacy Concentration and other
programs — into one space.
Another significant goal is, of course, to find and hire the next
director and assistant director for the Center. For these roles,
Flowers is looking for visionaries who will maintain the program’s
current national reputation and expand it even further. She
currently is in the beginning stages of the interview process, and
she hopes to have a new director in place by the summer.
In addition to those overarching goals, Flowers is focused on
hosting student competitions and two major conferences — the
Reimagining Advocacy conference and the Educating Advocates:
Teaching Advocacy Skills (EATS) conference. The Reimagining
Advocacy conference was held on campus Nov. 8 and 9 and
brought more than 30 speakers from around the country to
explore the future of legal advocacy and advocacy education. The
EATS conference in the spring will focus on training professors
how to teach advocacy courses.
Flowers is also working with Director of Trial Programs and
Professor of Practice Julia A. Metts to develop programs to train
adjunct professors in trial advocacy from around the country how
to be better educators. The two are also developing trainings for
state and territorial bar associations, especially in the U.S. Virgin
Islands, where they conducted a conference during the summer.
Despite everything on her plate, Flowers will remain focused on
the academic Advocacy program during her time as interim
director. She wants to grow the LL.M. and concentration
programs, including building a pipeline from participation to
obtaining jobs in litigation. She aims to expand course offerings,
including more tethered courses and those that are a semester long.
Though she will be back in the Center for Excellence in Advocacy
for only a year, Flowers is going full throttle to maintain Stetson’s
No. 1 national ranking in trial advocacy and to continue to find
ways to improve the advocacy program as a whole.