On September 16 at the Santa Clara University Faculty Dinner following the University Convocation, Santa Clara Law Visiting Professor Sunwolf received the University Award for Recent Achievement in Scholarship.
First presented in the year 2000, the award was created at the suggestion of the University Research Committee, which is responsible for soliciting nominations and making recommendations to the Provost. The purpose of this award is to recognize a tenured faculty member or senior lecturer whose scholarly or creative work over the previous five years, while teaching at Santa Clara University, represents a major contribution to a field of knowledge or to the arts.
"This award is a well-deserved recognition for the example you have set for your students and colleagues as a teaching scholar," wrote University President Paul Locatelli, S.J. in his letter. "You are indeed a scholar of unusual breadth and depth. Your productivity in the past five years has been truly astonishing, including the publication of five books and some 22 journal articles and book chapters. The colleagues who nominated you note, she ‘has established herself in the past five years as one of the country’s top scholars of legal communication.’"
"An expert on small-group communication as well as an attorney, you have written path-breaking work on jury communication," Locatelli continued. "You also helped found a new interdisciplinary academic journal on storytelling. As a teacher and pro bono consultant, you have shared your scholarship and its applications with attorneys, judges, and law students around the country."
Author of Practical Jury Dynamics: From individual juror reasoning to group decision-making (Lexis-Nexis Publishing, 2004), Sunwolf is former civil and criminal trial attorney, appellate lawyer, and training director for Colorado’s Public Defender Office. She earned a J.D. from University of Denver College of Law, and a Ph.D., and M.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara. She currently serves on the faculties of the NationalCriminalDefenseCollege, MercerLawSchool, Santa Clara University School of Law, and the Bryan Shechmeister Death PenaltyCollege, and she annually teaches at continuing education programs throughout the country. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Communication Research, Communication Studies, Storytelling, Self and Society, The Handbook of Applied Communication Research, and The Jury Expert. Her research interests focus on jury deliberations, creativity processes in groups, and social influence during group decision making. An expert on jury deliberations and persuasion, her award-winning research examines the dynamics of what really happens inside jury rooms. She is the originator of Decisional Regret Theory, which explains how deliberating jurors attempt to reduce the anxiety of anticipated verdict-regret by telling one another counterfactual stories about the trial.
"The law school community congratulates Sunwolf on this outstanding recognition from the University," said Santa Clara Law Dean Donald Polden. "We are so fortunate to have as a visiting professor this nationally recognized leader, scholar, teacher, and researcher."
For more information on Sunwolf, see http://law.scu.edu/faculty/profile/sunwolf.cfm.
