Looking back on when she was an Iowa Law student, Vinita Singh (18JD) recalls not only the quality of her professors as scholars, but also how accessible they were to students. 

“I definitely felt there was a very strong culture of collegiality and intellectual inquiry throughout my time there,” said Singh. “Paired with the collegiality [were] the accessibility of professors and their very clear desire to be supportive of the student body, not only in terms of our professional goals, but also in terms of our personal lives.”

After law school, Singh worked in private practice at Kirkland and Ellis in Chicago before earning an LLM in national security at the Georgetown University Law Center. 

This fall, Singh is moving into an office down the hall from many of her former professors as the next Iowa Law Faculty Fellow. She knows from example the type of professor she wants to become: “I want to be a resource for students to help them succeed, both personally and professionally.”

Singh will be the third Faculty Fellow since Iowa Law reintroduced the program in 2020. During the two-year fellowship, early-career faculty serve as visiting assistant professors, teaching one course, and also receive scholarly and career mentorship from a panel of faculty members. 

Christopher Mathis, who recently completed his fellowship and is starting as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, says the fellowship is “unmatched” for its commitment to junior faculty development.

In addition to providing feedback on teaching and scholarship, colleagues advised Mathis on the dynamics of beginning a career in academia. “That was, I think, an even more valuable lesson than what you may be teaching,” Mathis noted. 

Mathis’ scholarship focuses on higher education, including issues of access. He will be teaching Tort Law this fall at Maryland Carey, with a focus on repair and redress of harms. 

Singh is interested in the intersection of business and national security, such as the security implications of international trade, financial transactions, and foreign investment in the United States. After working in private practice, she is looking forward to the intellectual freedom of academia.

As Mathis launches into the next phase of his career, he reflects on his time as a Faculty Fellow. “If you want to be a law professor,” he said, “the Iowa Law School’s Faculty Fellowship is the place where you should strongly consider applying.”