Mentor Committee

Mission Statement

The mission of the SEALS Mentor Committee is to match each SEALS New Scholar with a faculty mentor in her or his subject matter area at another SEALS member or affiliate school. Mentors provide their New Scholars with advice and guidance on their presentations and their article drafts. The mentors also attend their New Scholars’ presentations at SEALS and provide them with feedback afterwards, often over coffee or a drink. New Scholars and Mentors find the experience a very rewarding way to develop new (and often lasting) relationships within the legal academy. We also draft an annual report on our activities.

Committee Members

Stacey Tovino (U. Oklahoma) (Chair) Stacey.Tovino@ou.edu
Rishi Batra (St. Mary’s)
Bruce Connolly (Ave Maria)
Brannon Denning (Samford)
Catherine Hancock (Tulane)
Colin Marks (St. Mary’s)
Jennifer Oliva (Indiana)

Important Links

SEALS Mentor Guidelines.

Annual Reports

2025 Annual Report

This year’s Mentor Committee performed the task of finding and assigning mentors for SEALS’ New Scholars. Stacey Tovino, the Chair of the Mentor Committee, continued to receive many hours of generous and gracious assistance from Missy Lonegrass, the Chair of the New Scholars Committee. Simply put, the Mentor Committee would not have been able to complete its work without Missy’s support and encouragement, her daily updates, as well as her technical assistance with SEALS’ online program. Thank you, Missy. You were one in a million during the last two years and you were one in a million this year as well!

The Mentor Committee continues to believe that matching New Scholars with senior faculty scholars and supporting their development is the heart of the SEALS experience. Finding mentors this year was much easier than last year for two main reasons. First, the Chair (Stacey Tovino) had served in this role the last two years and she knew exactly what to do this third year (with the continued assistance of Missy Lonegrass). Second, several of the Mentor Committee members, especially Catherine Hancock and Marc Roark, also were repeat Committee members and knew exactly what to do and were extraordinarily helpful.

A few potential mentors turned down the offer to serve as a mentor because they would not yet be at SEALS (due to their arrival later in the week). One idea is to set the programming for the New Scholars to the middle of the SEALS week, with the New Scholar talk panels held on, for example, Days 3 and 4 of the conference. This schedule would minimize the number of potential mentors turning down mentor service due to not arriving at SEALS yet. That said, this limitation only applied to a few potential mentors. Most mentors, when asked, readily agreed to be at the new scholars panel on the first or second day of the conference and, even, to change their travel to accommodate an earlier arrival. The Mentor Committee is sincerely grateful to all the conference registrants who agreed to be SEALS mentors during the 2025 SEALS conference in Amelia Island, Florida. We hope that all of SEALS’ New Scholars have a great SEALS experience and will return to SEALS in 2026 and beyond!

2024 Annual Report

This year’s Mentor Committee performed the task of finding and assigning mentors for SEALS’ New Scholars. Stacey Tovino, the Chair of the Mentor Committee, continued to receive many hours of generous and gracious assistance from Missy Lonegrass, the Chair of the New Scholars Committee. Simply put, the Mentor Committee would not have been able to complete its work without Missy’s support and encouragement, her daily updates, as well as her technical assistance with the SEALS’ online program. Thank you, Missy. You were one in a million last year and you remain one in a million!

The Mentor Committee continues to believe that matching New Scholars with senior faculty scholars and supporting their development is the heart of the SEALS experience. This year, each member of the Mentor Committee was asked to find three to four mentors for the three to four new scholars who were assigned to one of nine substantive panels (Civil Procedure and Torts; Constitutional and Administrative Law; Criminal Law; Race, Gender, and the Law; Constitutional Law: Power and Procedure; Corporate Law, Financial Regulation, and Tax Law; Health Law and Reproductive Justice; Law and Technology and Employment Law; and Property Law). Mentor Committee members included Rishi Batra (St. Mary’s), Bruce Connolly (Ave Maria), Brannon Denning (Samford), Catherine Hancock (Tulane), Colin Marks (St. Mary’s), Jennifer Oliva (Indiana Bloomington), Marc Roark (Tulsa), and Stacey Tovino (Oklahoma) (Chair). Each committee member secured mentors for the new scholars to which they were assigned.

Finding mentors this year was much easier than last year for two main reasons. First, the Chair (Stacey Tovino) had served in this role last year and she knew exactly what to do this year (with the continued assistance of Missy Lonegrass). Second, several of the Mentor Committee members, including Bruce Connolly, Brannon Denning, Catherine Hancock, and Marc Roark, also were repeat members and knew exactly what to do and were extraordinarily helpful. Third, the three new committee members, including Rishi Batra, Colin Marks, and Jennifer Oliva, had so many SEALS and other connections that they were easily able to find mentors for their assigned panels even though did not serve on this committee last year.

A few potential mentors turned down the offer to serve as a mentor because they would not yet be at SEALS. One idea is to set the programming for the New Scholars to the middle of the SEALS week, with the New Scholar talk panels held on, for example, Days 3 and 4 of the conference. This schedule would minimize the number of potential mentors turning down mentor service due to not arriving at SEALS yet. That said, this limitation only applied to a few potential mentors. Most mentors, when asked, readily agreed to be at the new scholars panel on the first or second day of the conference and, even, to change their travel to accommodate an earlier arrival. The Mentor Committee is sincerely grateful to all the conference registrants who agreed to be SEALS mentors during the 2024 SEALS conference in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We hope that all of SEALS’ New Scholars have a great SEALS experience and will return to SEALS in 2025 and beyond!

2023 Annual Report

This year’s Mentor Committee performed the task of finding and assigning mentors for SEALS’ New Scholars. Stacey Tovino, the Chair of the Mentor Committee, received many hours of generous and gracious assistance from Missy Lonegrass, the Chair of the New Scholars Committee. Simply put, the Mentor Committee would not have been able to complete its work without Missy’s innovative ideas, unwavering support, and constant encouragement, as well as her technical assistance with SEALS’ online program. Thank you, Missy. You are one in a million.

The Mentor Committee continues to believe that matching New Scholars with senior faculty scholars and supporting their development is the heart of the SEALS experience. The Committee’s process for matching each New Scholar with a mentor usually would be routine. For example, this year, each member of the Mentor Committee (there were 9 total this year, including the Chair) was asked to find three to four mentors for the three to four new scholars who were assigned to one of 9 substantive panels. In the end, the Mentor Committee was successful in finding mentors for all of SEALS’ New Scholars.

This year, several obstacles reduced the number of available mentors and/or made finding in-person mentors relatively difficult. First, the New Scholars panels were scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, July 24 and July 25, 2023. Many conference registrants who were potential mentors turned down Committee members’ requests because they would not be arriving at SEALS that early. For example, many potential mentors said they were not arriving until July 26, 2023, and therefore could not provide in-person mentorship on July 24 or 25, 2023.

Second, some potential mentors rejected invitations to be mentors because they said they would not be attending SEALS in person but that they would be willing to serve as remote mentors via Zoom. When they were told that Zoom was not available, they would not commit to in-person attendance. This led to Committee Members finding mentors who would be present in person even though the expertise of those agreeable mentors was only tangentially or marginally related to the topic of the New Scholars’ papers.

Third, several members of the Mentor Committee told the Chair either: (1) that they did not know they were members of the Mentor Committee despite repeated, confirmed emails; (2) that they tried but simply were unable to find mentors for the reasons listed in the immediately preceding two paragraphs; or (3) that sickness, work obligations, or family obligations that occurred during the Spring 2023 semester reduced or eliminated the time necessary to find mentors. This led to the Chair of the Mentor Committee finding mentors for well more than 50% of the New Scholars despite the fact that she was one of nine Committee members and therefore should only have been responsible for finding 11% of the mentors.

Because similar circumstances could occur in the future, the Chair of the Mentor Committee would like to offer several potential solutions. One idea is to set the programming for the New Scholars to the middle of the SEALS week, with the New Scholar talk panels held on, for example, Days 3 and 4 of the conference. This schedule would minimize the number of potential mentors turning down mentor service due to not arriving at SEALS yet or leaving SEALS too soon. A second idea is to take advantage of the significant number of people who volunteered to be mentors via Zoom but declined to be on-site, in-person mentors because of their inability to attend the SEALS meeting on the days needed (i.e., July 24 and 25, 2023) for various reasons such as not yet arriving, exhaustion due to long COVID, the need to attend family weddings, the need to attend family funerals, other summer travel, and conflicts with other responsibilities (all answers given to Committee members by rejecting potential mentors). This option would allow each New Scholar to receive feedback from a mentor albeit in a virtual fashion. A third idea is to allow the Chair of the Mentor Committee to select her own Committee members—people who are excited and committed to doing the work of the Committee—to avoid the significant problems identified in the fifth paragraph of this report.

The Mentor Committee is sincerely grateful to all the conference registrants who agreed to be SEALS mentors during the 2023 SEALS conference in Boca Raton, Florida. We hope that all of SEALS’ New Scholars have a great SEALS experience and will return to SEALS in 2024 and beyond!

2022 Annual Report

The Mentor Committee performed the task of finding and guiding the necessary number of mentors for our New Scholars, and received many hours of assistance by Missy Lonegrass and Caprice Roberts. We continue to believe that matching New Scholars with senior faculty scholars and supporting their development is the heart of the SEALS experience.

Our process for matching each New Scholar with a mentor usually is quite routine. Each member of the Mentor Committee typically locates 4 mentors for one of 8 panels. Committee members are matched with their panel based on their own areas of expertise. In the end, the Committee was successful in finding mentors for 30 New Scholars, 27 of whom participated at SEALS and three who ultimately withdrew. But the search was much more time-consuming than usual.

Two obstacles this year created a “perfect storm” of conditions that reduced the number of available mentors. First, the novel decision to schedule the New Scholars panels for Day 1 and Day 6 caused some attendees to turn down the Committee’s requests because they did not plan to arrive at SEALS as early as the evening before Day 1 or stay as late as Day 6. Second, many speakers rejected the invitations to be mentors because they would not be attending SEALS even though they were listed on the program. Some speakers in this category indicated that they would be willing to serve as remote mentors via Zoom, but when they found out that Zoom was not available, they could not commit to attending the meeting as reliable mentors, who are supposed to attend the live talks by their New Scholars.

Because similar circumstances could occur in the future, the Mentor Committee Co Chairs would like to submit three proposals. The first proposal is that the programming for the New Scholars should revert to the same “middle of the week” timing as in prior years, with the New Scholar talk panels held on Day 3 and Day 4, for example, along with the New Scholar Lunch and Next Article Discussion Groups. This traditional schedule will reinstate the privilege accorded to the scheduling for the New Scholar panels and programs in the past.

The second proposal is to ask the Board to take steps to address the problem that many people agreed to be listed on the program as speakers, but also refrained from registering for SEALS. When the disappearance of these unregistered speakers occurs without their being replaced by the moderators or program organizers, the number of potential mentors is significantly reduced. Even if the Mentor Committee continues to use the registration list as the only reliable source of mentors, the failure to replace the disappearing speakers will have a negative impact on the mentor search.

The Committee’s third proposal seeks to take advantage of the significant number of people who volunteered to be mentors via Zoom but declined to be on-site mentors because of their inability to attend the SEALS meeting, for various reasons (such as fear of COVID infection, the need to attend family weddings, or conflicts with other responsibilities). The other goal of this proposal is to insure that each New Scholar will be able get feedback from a Summer Mentor as soon as possible, rather than being forced to wait for any mentor assignment until shortly before the meeting is held, which may happen again if the Committee encounters continued obstacles in signing up the traditional on-site mentors. Here is that experimental proposal.

The Mentor Committee will solicit SEALS faculty mentors who teach and/or write in the fields related to the talk topics of the New Scholars as usual. These mentors will play the traditional role of experts who can provide specialized feedback because of their relevant background knowledge. The one duty of these “Summer Mentors” will be to provide feedback about the drafts of the New Scholars before the meeting. This feedback may be provided remotely in a Zoom session. The commitment needed from this set of mentors is only to provide this feedback and they do not need to commit to attend the meeting.

A second set of “Conference Mentors” will be solicited to attend the live talks of the New Scholars at SEALS. More specifically, they will read the New Scholar’s draft and provide feedback before the meeting, and in addition to attending the New Scholar’s talk, they will participate, if possible, in the New Scholars Lunch and other New Scholars programming. Notably, these Conference Mentors should be much easier to find because they will not need to teach or write in the fields of the talk topics chosen by the New Scholars. Their on-site role at the SEALS meeting, which they must commit to attend, will include introducing their New Scholars to other SEALS attendees in all fields and encouraging their New Scholars to join and organize panels and groups at future SEALS conferences. This networking assistance by the Conference Mentors will help to increase the number of substantive programs as the New Scholars take over leadership roles at SEALS.

The Mentor Committee is grateful to all the SEALS mentors for 2022 and we hope that all our New Scholars will have a great SEALS experience and return to SEALS in the future.

2021 Annual Report

The Mentor Committee continues to be committed to finding and guiding mentors for New Scholars, identified and managed by the fantastic Missy Lonegrass and the New Scholars Committee. We continue to believe that the Works-in-Progress panels, matching New Scholars with scholars and supporting their development, is the heart of the SEALS experience.

Our process for matching each New Scholar with a mentor is routine: each member of the Mentor Committee locates mentors for one or two panels. Members are matched with the panel or panels for which they locate mentors based on their own areas of expertise. This year, our committee of 9 volunteers, with assist from Russ Weaver, found mentors for 24 New Scholars, originally organized into 7 panels. While the pandemic continues to raise challenges, and some New Scholars had to defer for another year, the Mentor committee and the community of potential mentors remain committed to supporting the New Scholars.

We keep a list of potential mentors, identifying their subject areas of expertise, and focus on matching New Scholars to mentors with a strong subject matter connection. As always, we are successful in finding mentors because of the supportive community of SEALS potential mentors. And also as always, we are very grateful to the Chair of the New Scholars Committee, Missy Lonegrass, who has been excellent at managing panels of New Scholars (even as the configuration had to change due to the pandemic) and is a simply wonderful colleague.

2018 Annual Report

We love the process of finding and guiding mentors for the new scholars and commentators for the works-in-progress panels. We think those panels—and the matching of mentors/discussants with new or seasoned scholars—are the heart of the SEALS experience.

Our process for matching each new scholar with a mentor is now routine: each member of the Mentor Committee locates mentors for one or two panels. Members each choose the panel or panels for which they wish to locate mentors, based on their own areas of expertise. This year presented a few challenges in that fewer prospective mentors will be present at the conference for many days than in past years, but we still had an abundance of people to ask. We always face the challenge of late cancellations or additions, but we have managed to handle those relatively efficiently by keeping a roster of emergency mentors for these occasions.

We keep a list of mentors, identifying their subject areas of expertise, and we also track which mentors have worked well or not so well on our “naughty or nice” list. As per usual, we are very grateful to the Chair of the New Scholars Committee, Missy Lonegrass, who is a wizard of panel creation and is always a pleasure to deal with.

2017 Annual Report

Our process for matching each new scholar with a mentor is now routine: each member of the Mentor Committee locates mentors for one or two panels. Members each choose the panel or panels for which they wish to locate mentors, based on their own areas of expertise. We always face the challenge of late cancellations or additions, but we have managed to handle those relatively efficiently by keeping a roster of emergency mentors for these occasions. Our work with the scholars presenting at the works-in-progress panels is handled similarly, primarily by the co-chairs.

Testimonials from committee members past and present:

Professor Benjamin Barton, University of Tennessee College of Law:
I first served as a SEALs mentor in 2004 and I have served as a mentor every year since. I love getting the chance to meet a new colleague every summer. I love getting to read and comment on a draft and see the draft improve over time. I love attending the presentations and then meeting for coffee or a drink afterwards. I love that so many of my “mentees” have become SEALs regulars and dear friends. Every SEALs is now like old home week for me, as I happily watch junior scholars become senior scholars. Being a SEALs mentor is among the most gratifying experiences of my career and I look forward to it every year. Being on the Mentor Committee makes it all the better, as I get to help bring mentors and new scholars together year after year. We always say that the mentor/new scholar program is the pumping heart of the SEALs experience and that has certainly been true for me.
Professor Kathy Cerminara, Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law:
SEALS mentoring is the most rewarding of my service endeavors. Way back in 1999, I served as my school’s “young scholar” at what was then called the “SEAALS Young Scholars Workshop.” There were only a few of us, and a warm, supportive audience gave us helpful feedback. Fast-forward to today; not only has the New Scholars Program grown exponentially, but the Mentor Committee also now assigns each new scholar a mentor to provide individual feedback in addition to the audience’s. Each mentor-new scholar matchup embodies the same camaraderie and nurturing spirit as that 1999 meeting did, despite the increased number of participants. Like many mentors, I have become close friends with some of my “mentees,” and I have remained in touch with many more of them. There’s nothing like it.
Professor Caprice Roberts, Savannah Law School:
At the heart of SEALS is a genuine commitment to bring new scholars into the broader academic community. With a well oiled mentorship matching program and guaranteed new scholar panels, new scholars experience a welcoming environment to showcase works-in-progress, engage in meaningful debate, and receive productive feedback from experts in the field. The SEALS new scholars program also fosters genuine relationships that last. The mentorship and feedback I received as a new scholar altered my view of the academy for the better and inspired me to become a mentor each year as well as serve on SEALS committees that promote the advancement of new scholars. The SEALS new scholar program is a gamechanger for the development of ideas and establishment of critical connections. I wouldn’t miss SEALS for the world.
Professor Nancy Levit, UMKC School of Law:
I first served as a SEALs mentor in 2004 and I have served as a mentor every year since. I love getting the chance to meet a new colleague every summer. I love getting to read and comment on a draft and see the draft improve over time. I love attending the presentations and then meeting for coffee or a drink afterwards. I love that so many of my “mentees” have become SEALs regulars and dear friends. Every SEALs is now like old home week for me, as I happily watch junior scholars become senior scholars. Being a SEALs mentor is among the most gratifying experiences of my career and I look forward to it every year. Being on the Mentor Committee makes it all the better, as I get to help bring mentors and new scholars together year after year. We always say that the mentor/new scholar program is the pumping heart of the SEALs experience and that has certainly been true for me.

Messages

Greetings. We are back from another wonderful SEALS Conference, and the Mentor Committee would like to thank all of this year’s mentors, mentors-at-large, and new scholars. We’re also starting on next year’s program already. The New Scholar program continues to grow in popularity, and in order to make it as strong as possible it’s important for us to maintain a list of existing mentors, as well as identify new mentors who are committed to enhancing the quality of this program. If you were not a mentor this last year, you did not sign up during SEALS this year to be one, and would like to be one, please email bbarton@utk.edu with your name, your area(s) of expertise, and your contact information (phone, email, address). If you signed up to be a mentor at SEALS this year, you do not need to resend your information. If you have been a mentor, but don’t want to be one again, you can also email us that information. Again, thanks for making the SEALS New Scholar program such a big success. We think it’s one of SEALS greatest strengths.