Finley Named Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The appointment of Lucinda M. Finley, Frank Raichle Professor of Trial and Appellate Advocacy in the University at Buffalo's Law School, as UB's vice provost for faculty affairs was announced today by Satish K. Tripathi, the university's provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

Finley, whose appointment is effective Feb. 1, "will be responsible for coordinating the faculty promotion/tenure review process, and creating and delivering services that assist in faculty retention, underrepresented faculty recruitment, faculty development, special faculty-hiring initiatives and faculty-recognition programs. In addition, the Center for Teaching and Learning Resources will report to the vice provost for faculty affairs."

"I am very pleased and excited to announce Professor Finley's appointment as vice provost for faculty affairs," said UB Provost Satish Tripathi. "Professor Finley's experience as a teacher, endowed chair, as well as her national prominence as a legal scholar, has provided her with exceptional preparation for her new leadership role at the University at Buffalo."

Finley has been a UB faculty member since 1990. In addition to her endowed professorship, the first ever given at the UB Law School, she has served since 1990 as director of the school's Baldy Center Program on Gender, Law & Social Policy; director of its legal research and writing program from 1993-96; director of the concentration in civil litigation from 1997 to the present, and faculty advisor to the Moot Court Program and director of National Moot Court Teams from 1998 to the present.

Her research and teaching have focused on torts; mass tort litigation; constitutional torts, including civil rights legislation; litigation practice; appellate advocacy, gender and the law; feminist jurisprudence, and reproductive rights.

Finley has served as a distinguished visiting professor at the DePaul University College of Law, a women's health policy fellow at the Center for Research on Women & Gender at the University of

Illinois-Chicago, a fellow in the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College and a visiting lecturer and Parsons Fellow at the University of Sydney (Australia) Faculty of Law. Prior to joining UB, she was associate professor of law at Yale University.

An active participant in litigation and legislative advocacy, Finley has argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

She is the author of numerous amicus curiae briefs, including a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of several women's health and women's rights advocacy organizations, and has presented legislative testimony before U.S. Senate committees, the New York State legislature and the Connecticut legislature.

Author of "Tort Law & Practice," Finley has written more than 20 articles and book chapters, and has lectured by invitation at more than 75 conferences, faculty workshops and law schools in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany and Italy.

She holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Barnard College and a doctor of jurisprudence degree from Columbia University.

Finley lives in Buffalo.