Norma J. Paulus Professorship Sustainability is such a bandiedabout term that it’s hard to remember that the idea of designing environmental and natural resources law to protect local and global resources was once a radical concept. One of the pioneers in the field is Robin Morris Collin, the first law professor to teach sustainability at an American law school. Morris Collin has won a slew of awards for teaching and service, including one from Al Gore and another from the Oregon State Bar. Last year she attended the first-ever White House Environmental Justice Forum. This year she’ll deliver lectures at Arizona State University, where she graduated from law school, and at a symposium sponsored by the American Planning Association.
Along the way, Morris Collin confronted plenty of skeptics who doubted sustainability law belonged in a law school curriculum. She had to design her own textbook and materials. “If you have a constituency that understands what you’re saying and appreciates the ways you are different, that makes up for a lot of difficulties,” she said. “The fact that I had strong student support really helped me survive.” Morris Collin said she’s delighted to receive the endowed professorship. “Norma Paulus has got quite the reputation for being smart, clear-minded and tough on occasion, and I like to think I share some of those qualities.”
Robin Morris Collin
She’s a legend in Oregon politics: member of the Oregon House of Representatives; first woman to be elected Oregon secretary of state (the first woman, in fact, to be elected to any statewide office); two-term superintendent of public instruction; executive director of the Oregon Historical Society.
even though it meant she had to fit the classes in during her lunch breaks. The most exciting night of her life, she said, was when her husband, Bill, took her out to dinner and told her he’d borrowed enough money for her to quit her job and go to law school full-time.
It all started when Norma Paulus LLB’62, H’99, was working as a legal secretary at the Oregon Supreme Court. Two of the justices suggested she go to law school even though she hadn’t graduated college. One of them wrote to Dean Seward Reese at Willamette University College of Law, telling him it would be a great help if Paulus could take a class or two. She was thrilled,
“If the law school hadn’t taken a chance on me, where would I be?” Paulus said, explaining her decision to endow a professorship at Willamette. “You can’t imagine the impact that law degree had. It was the stamp of credibility.”
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