Interim Dean of the Winston College of Law

Paula Schaefer is Interim Dean and Art Stolnitz Distinguished Professor of Law. She joined the law school faculty in 2008 and served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2019 to 2023. She also served as the inaugural director of the Winston Fellows program. Named for distinguished alumnus Frank Winston (’52), the Winston Fellowship is awarded to outstanding students committed to careers in public interest law and business law.

She regularly teaches Professional Responsibility and Civil Procedure-In Practice. She has also taught Lawyering & Professionalism, Semester in Residence Seminar, E-Discovery, Behavioral Legal Ethics, and Pre-Trial Litigation.

Schaefer’s scholarship explores issues concerning attorney ethics, fiduciary duty, and the legal profession. In addition to authoring numerous law review articles on these topics, she is co-author of the books Professional Responsibility in the Life of the Lawyer and Developing Professional Skills: Professional Responsibility. She is the author of Developing Professional Skills: Civil Procedure and the forthcoming book Civil Procedure for the Real World.  She also researches and writes about legal education, focusing on professionalism and professional identity development issues. She was one of many authors of the book Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World.

An active member of the American Association of Law Schools, Schaefer is currently the chair of the Shared Governance Section and is a past chair of the Professional Responsibility Section. She is a Subject Matter Expert for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, regularly speaks on attorney ethics topics to various audiences, and is a contributing author to the Knoxville Bar Association’s “Schooled in Ethics” column. At Winston Law, she has received the Harold Warner Outstanding Teacher Award, the Bass, Berry & Sims Award for Outstanding Service to the Bench and Bar, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Service to the Institution.

Prior to becoming a professor, she practiced in the area of business litigation at Shook, Hardy & Bacon and Bryan Cave in Kansas City, Missouri. After law school, she clerked for Ann K. Covington, the first woman to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court. She has two sons, Henry and Ben.

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Associate Dean Michael J. Higdon teaches and writes in the areas of Constitutional Law; Sexuality, Gender and the Law; Wills & Trusts; and Family Law. His scholarship in these areas has been published in several journals, including the Alabama Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the George Washington Law Review, the Georgia Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, the Iowa Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, and the Wake Forest Law Review, just to name a few. In 2023, he became an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Higdon received the J.D. in 2001 from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (“UNLV”), graduating first in his class and receiving the James E. Rogers Award for outstanding academic achievement. While in law school, he served as editor-in-chief of the Nevada Law Journal. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Procter Hug, Jr. of the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Since joining the faculty in 2009, Higdon has received a number of awards, including the Carden Award for Outstanding Service to the Institution, the W. Allen Separk Faculty Scholarship Award, the Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship. Over the course of his career, the student body has also recognized him as professor of the year three different times – once when one he was a faculty member at UNLV and twice through the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award here at the University of Tennessee.

He previously served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Development for four years. He has also served as Faculty Fellow in the Provost’s Office of Faculty Affairs, recently represented the University of Tennessee as one of its delegates in the SEC Academic Development Leadership Program, and currently serves as a program coordinator for the University’s Leadership Development Program as well as its Faculty Mentoring Certificate Program.

Associate Dean for Faculty Development

Associate Dean Zack Buck specializes in health law, and his scholarship examines the enforcement of laws that affect health and health care in the United States. Most recently, his writing has focused on the corporatization of American medicine, the regulation of pharmaceutical drug prices and hospitals, and the intersection between healthcare finance and medical quality.

His work has been published in the California Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Ohio State Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Maryland Law Review, and Florida State Law Review, among others. Buck has also been quoted in national outlets such as CNN, USA Today, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times, and is a frequent contributor to the online journal, Jotwell.

Since joining the faculty in 2016, Dean Buck has won student-selected awards for his teaching, recognized both as the Winston College of Law’s teacher of the year with the 2019 Harold Warner Outstanding Teacher Award, and the 2023 Outstanding Teacher as part of the Physician Executive MBA Program at the Haslam College of Business. He has had his scholarship recognized by receiving the Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence (2016), the Wilkinson Junior Research Professorship (2017), the John Reginald Hill Faculty Scholar Award (2022), and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship (2023). He was also the recipient of the 2019 Forrest W. Lacy Award for outstanding contributions to Winston Law’s moot court program. 

Dean Buck holds a BA in Political Science and Journalism from Miami University (OH), a Masters in Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He has taught at Mercer University School of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law, and at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and he formerly practiced complex commercial litigation at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago.

Associate Dean for Access and Community Engagement

Associate Dean Rosenbaum joined Winston Law in 2013 from Stanford Law School, where she was a Thomas C. Grey Fellow. She received her bachelor’s degree from Santa Clara University. While there, she took a semester to study at American University in Washington D.C., and interned at the White House during the impeachment proceedings of President Clinton. Dean Rosenbaum received her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law (now UC Law San Francisco), where she served on the Hastings Law Journal, as a counselor for the Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center’s Workers’ Rights Clinic, and as an intern for the California State Assembly, Committee on Public Safety. After graduation, Dean Rosenbaum clerked for two federal judges appointed to chair the Judicial Conference Standing Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure: Judge David F. Levi of the Eastern District of California and Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Following her clerkships, she worked as an associate in the San Francisco office of Bingham McCutchen, where she enjoyed a diverse practice focused on both civil and criminal complex litigation.

Dean Rosenbaum was a first generation undergraduate and law student. She has been a faculty advisor for Vols for Vets, Winston Law’s veteran student organization, since its founding in 2017. She engages in advocacy on behalf of the transgender community, and she contributed a chapter on transgender students’ experiences with the juvenile justice system in the book, Critical Guide to Civil Procedure. Dean Rosenbaum’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in American legal education. She is an Academic Fellow for the National Civil Justice Institute.

Assistant Dean for Student Affairs

Assistant Dean John A. Robinson, Jr. brings more than twenty years of executive leadership experience in higher education administration, specializing in student affairs, student success, organizational leadership, and institutional transformation. His work has focused on designing and implementing integrated student support systems that strengthen academic achievement, student well-being, leadership development, and post-graduate success. Throughout his career, Robinson has led strategic initiatives that unite academic affairs and student affairs to improve the student experience while advancing institutional priorities.

Before joining the Winston College of Law, Robinson served as Executive Director of Student Affairs and Academic Services at The Citadel, where he led the creation and implementation of the institution’s first Division of Student Affairs and Academic Services. He provided executive leadership for advising, academic support, disability services, orientation, career services, student engagement, recreation, wellness, and behavioral intervention while serving on the Provost’s senior leadership team. He also chaired the institution’s Student Behavior Assessment Team, co-led the institution’s Advising and Student Success SACSCOC-approved Quality Enhancement Plan, helped establish Student Success Facilitator positions with academic schools, and led student success initiatives that contributed to a 25 percent increase in retention among academically underserved students. Prior to The Citadel, Robinson held executive leadership positions at Texas Southern University, the University of Houston, and Villanova University, where he supervised large multidisciplinary organizations, managed complex operations and budgets, and led numerous student success, strategic planning, and organizational change initiatives.

Robinson has served as an adjunct faculty member teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in Legal and Ethical Environment of Business, Sport Law, and Leadership in Organizations. His private legal practice included roles as arbitrator and mediator in both public and private commerce law. His legal practice also provided advocacy for students and families, in collaboration with primary, secondary, and higher education institutions, to design and implement appropriate Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and academic accommodations. He is an active member of the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA), NASPA—Student Affairs Professionals in Higher Education, and the International Ombuds Association.

Robinson earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Columbia University, a Master of Business Administration in Organization Development from Villanova University, and a Juris Doctor from Tulane University School of Law. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas and licensed to practice in both State and Federal courts. He has dedicated his career to creating student-centered environments that promote academic excellence, professional development, and institutional success.

Associate Dean for Library and Technology Services

Scott Childs joined Winston Law in 2011 from the University of North Carolina School of Law where he was the deputy director at the Katherine R. Everett Law Library and a Clinical Professor of Law since 2007. At UNC Law, he served as assistant director for public services since 2001, managing law library public services and coordinating the advanced legal research courses.

Prior to joining the staff at UNC Law, Childs served as head of reference at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and was both a reference librarian and headed the collection development at  Cornell Law School.

Professor Childs began his legal career with the Legal Services Corporation of Alabama, serving as a Staff Attorney and then as a Senior Staff Attorney until 1995.

Assistant Dean for Finance, Administration and Operations

David Price joined the Winston College of Law in July 2022 and oversees the business office.