{"id":41703,"date":"2017-06-23T09:56:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T13:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/?p=41703"},"modified":"2017-06-23T09:56:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T13:56:27","slug":"a-very-different-path-to-excellence","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/record\/articles\/2017\/a-very-different-path-to-excellence\/","title":{"rendered":"A Very Different Path to Excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"

School of Law\u2019s Gary Lawson wins a Metcalf Award.<\/h2>\n

\"gary-lawson\"Faculty members nominated for a Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching<\/a> must submit a statement about their classroom methods. Gary Lawson<\/a>\u2019s was unusual.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to say that my approach to teaching results from years of careful study of pedagogy, observation of students, and reflection on results, followed by constant refinements in techniques. But that would be wildly false,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI do what I do because I am what I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson, the School of Law\u2019s Philip S. Beck Professor of Law, and one of this year\u2019s recipients of a Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, is autistic. Things that are easy for others are hard for him, and vice versa. He can be oblivious to his surroundings. His west-facing office high up in the Law Tower has a terrific view, but he\u2019s never opened the shade.<\/p>\n

Lawson always knew he was different, but he didn\u2019t have a name for what set him apart until a dozen years ago, when one of his two children was diagnosed as autistic. \u201cOh, that\u2019s what that is,\u201d he remembers thinking. \u201cI\u2019ve got that\u2014duh.\u201d He still hasn\u2019t bothered to get a formal diagnosis of his place on the autism spectrum, because he believes that a diagnosis wouldn\u2019t change a thing.<\/p>\n

Besides, none of this matters to most of his students or peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is as well known for his sharp intellect and spot-on legal analysis as he is for his unassuming personal style and quirky sense of humor,\u201d says Maureen A. O\u2019Rourke, dean of the School of Law. \u201cHe is a wonderful colleague, a prolific scholar, and an award-winning teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor both courses I took with him, Professor Lawson replied to all of my emails in less than 15 minutes,\u201d Beatriz C. Men\u00e9ndez (\u201917) wrote in her Metcalf nomination letter, \u201cand not only that, Professor Lawson would follow up with me in person and via email, without me asking, with more examples, if he believed they would make the concept clearer for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Lawson is not so good at is relating informally to others in social settings. \u201cPut me at a cocktail party without my wife to hide behind, and I will literally\u2014not figuratively\u2014go into a corner somewhere and stand until it\u2019s over.\u201d For a law professor, that can be a problem, as he learned when he started teaching at Northwestern in 1988.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has for a century-plus been the norm that what you are supposed to do in a law school class is a back-and-forth, where the students are actively participating and you are, through clever and thoughtful questioning, drawing them out,\u201d he says. \u201cIt became very obvious to me very early on that that wasn\u2019t going to work. So I just started doing it my way.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Lawson is terrific at scholarship, and he is exceptional when it comes to making connections within vast oceans of material, at synthesizing complex ideas in an accessible fashion. He teaches the best way he can\u2014by lecturing, a practice that he says made him an outlier, in fact\u2014\u201cwildly so\u201d\u2014at Northwestern.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was considered very odd,\u201d he says. \u201cI know, because people told me, that when I was hired here it was a big issue. \u2018My gosh, he lectures in first year. Can we really have that?\u2019 Even today I know, because I have heard them say so, there are people on this faculty who don\u2019t consider that law teaching.<\/p>\n

\"Read<\/a><\/p>\n

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