Five Faculty Members Win 2025 Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Service

Dean William M. Treanor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Professor Urska Velikonja presented the Frank F. Flegal Award for Excellence in Teaching to Professor Deborah Epstein, the Adjunct Professor of the Year Awards to Arjun S. Sethi, F’03, and John T. Dundon, and the Steven Goldberg Faculty Service Award to Professor J. Peter Byrne and Professor Wallace J. Mlyniec, L’70.

2025 Frank F. Flegal Excellence in Teaching Award

Deborah Epstein, Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Gender, Violence, and the Law

A leading advocate for survivors of domestic violence, Professor Deborah Epstein joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 1991. She has directed the Law Center’s Domestic Violence Clinic since 1993 and co-chaired the design and implementation of the D.C. Superior Court’s Domestic Violence Division. Epstein was also recognized for her contributions to clinical pedagogy, having created more than 100 experiential courses and developed the curricular principles that guide Georgetown Law’s experiential learning program during her tenure as associate dean for experiential learning from 2005 to 2012.

Epstein’s colleagues praised her dedication to student-centered clinical education and her mentorship of hundreds of clinicians at Georgetown Law and other law schools nationwide. “Deborah taught future clinical teachers everything there is to know about the nature of legal scholarship,” wrote Professor Robin L. West in a tribute read at the award ceremony.

In accepting the award, Epstein reflected on her role as a “teacher of teachers” and expressed gratitude for the collaboration of her colleagues and teaching partners. “Only at Georgetown could I have developed into the kind of teacher that I am today,” she said.

Adjunct Professor of the Year Awards

Every year, hundreds of practicing lawyers teach at the Law Center as adjunct professors, enabling Georgetown Law to offer some of the most wide-ranging J.D. and LL.M. courses in the country. This year’s Adjunct Professor of the Year Awards were presented to civil rights lawyer Arjun S. Sethi and attorney and language instructor John T. Dundon.

Arjun S. Sethi, F’03

Community activist, author and civil rights lawyer Arjun S. Sethi joined Georgetown Law as an adjunct professor in 2016 and teaches “Policing in the 21st Century: Law Enforcement, Technology and Surveillance.” A 2003 graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Sethi is an expert on policing, the war on terror and racial and religious profiling and serves as co-chair of the American Bar Association’s National Committee on Homeland Security, Terrorism and Treatment of Enemy Combatants.

Students said they were particularly appreciative of the collegial learning environment that Sethi creates. One student wrote that the “hospitable” nature of Sethi’s classroom facilitated “fraught conversations on highly emotional topics with people whose perspectives differed from mine.”

In accepting the award, Sethi called upon the next generation of legal professionals to safeguard democratic norms and the rule of law. “I teach law students with the hope that they will speak out,” he said.

John T. Dundon

Following a career in private practice, attorney John T. Dundon joined Georgetown Law’s Center for Legal English in 2019, dedicating his academic career to serving international law students and English-language learners as an instructor in legal English, research, writing and other foundational topics.

His students noted that Dundon not only instructs them in the principles of legal English, but also provides guidance on the norms of real-world practice. “He provides useful advice beyond the class curriculum, including insights into real-life working experiences in the United States and the U.S. work culture,” wrote one student.

Dundon, who is currently pursuing a doctorate in sociolinguistics focused on the intersections of law and language through Georgetown University’s Linguistics Department, accepted the award on behalf of his international LL.M. students and his legal English colleagues. “One kind of diversity that I think we should all stick up for is the value of having brilliant international lawyers among us every day,” he said.

Steven Goldberg Faculty Service Award

J. Peter Byrne, John Hampton Baumgartner, Jr. Professor of Real Property Law

Since joining the Law Center faculty in 1985, Professor J. Peter Byrne has instructed innumerable students in courses on property, land use, constitutional law and higher education law and policy. Byrne’s decades of service to Georgetown Law also include a number of leadership roles: He serves as faculty director for the Georgetown Climate Center and the Environmental Law and Policy Program and served as associate dean for the J.D. program from 1997-2000.

“For decades, Peter has embodied exceptional dedication to service in support of the Law Center community,” said Treanor, who also praised Byrne as a “giant” in the field of property law.

Byrne, who will retire at the end of the school year, noted that he hopes to remain of service to the campus community as a professor emeritus. “We are a spectacularly large, diverse and active community, but we also have the capacity for intimacy with one another,” he said. “That is a strength that can help us persevere in challenging times.”

Wallace J. Mlyniec, L’70, Lupo-Ricci Professor of Clinical Legal Studies

A pioneer of clinical education and a national expert on juvenile justice, Professor Wallace J. Mlyniec joined the Georgetown faculty in 1973 as the founding director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic, a role he held until 2015. Mlyniec now serves as the clinic’s senior counsel and previously served as the associate dean for Georgetown Law’s clinical programs and public interest programs from 1986 until 2005. Most recently, he was academic co-director for Center for Transnational Legal Studies in London.

“When we talk about the ways in which clinical education really transforms its students and helps them grow, not just as lawyers, but as people who know how to make change, that’s [Wally’s legacy],” said Treanor in presenting the award.

Mlyniec, who will also retire this year, reflected on his decades of connection to the Law Center. A graduate of the Georgetown Law class of 1970, he recalled his days of student activism and Georgetown Law’s ongoing commitment to the Jesuit values of contemplation in action and serving as people for others. “By living with those concepts, Georgetown has offered me more than I could ever repay,” he said.