Teaching Excellence

Jill Fisch and Sarah Pierce

Two members of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School faculty were recently honored with 2022 Provost’s Teaching Awards, given at the University level.

Jill Fisch, Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law, was awarded the 2022 Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching – one of 8 Law School professors to receive the award over the past 28 years. Sarah Pierce, Denise A. Rotko Associate Dean for Legal Practice Skills, received the Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence by Non-Standing Faculty.

“The Provost’s Teaching Awards for Jill and Sarah are well-deserved recognition of their remarkable dedication to their students and overall excellence in delivering their courses,” said Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law Ted Ruger. “Having two of our faculty members honored with these awards in the same year is a phenomenal achievement – especially with all the challenges faculty have faced recently in teaching continuously through the pandemic.”

Provost’s Teaching Awards

The Lindback Awards for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania were established in 1961 with the help of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation. The University of Pennsylvania generally awards eight Lindback awards each year, divided evenly between health-related disciplines and all other departments and divisions. In 1988, the Provost’s Award was established to honor excellence in teaching by non-tenured faculty and staff.

Award winners are determined by nominations and recommendations made by faculty and students in December based on certain guidelines. Two separate committees, one in the health schools and one in the non-health schools consisting of six previous award winners and four students, carefully decide among the nominees. Winners receive a Lindback Foundation scroll and a cash award.

Jill Fisch

Fisch has long been recognized for her teaching excellence in Corporations, Securities Regulations, and related topics. She has twice been awarded the Law School’s Robert A. Gorman Award for Excellence in Teaching and its LLM Teaching Award. In 2020, Fisch expanded her teaching portfolio in response to conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, stepping up to teach Civil Procedure to first-year students.

Outside of her teaching, Fisch is the Co-Director of the Institute for Law and Economics and an internationally known scholar whose work focuses on the intersection of business and law, including the role of regulation and litigation in addressing limitations in the disciplinary power of the capital markets.

Fisch is a Director of the European Corporate Governance Institute, an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute Restatement of Corporate Governance, and a former Chair of the Committee on Corporation Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. She is the author of more than 90 scholarly articles that have appeared in top law reviews.

Sarah Pierce

Pierce is renowned as a teacher of highly interactive, experiential courses. She teaches the mandatory, first-year Legal Practice Skills class and, as the Academic Director of the Capstone Program, Carey JD/MBA program, she developed and teaches three experiential Boot Camp courses that serve as the culminating educational experience for JD/MBA students. She is a previous recipient of the Law School’s Experiential Teaching Award.

Before joining the Law School faculty, Pierce was counsel at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where she practiced for 13 years focusing on corporate and financial restructurings and reorganizations, representing companies, secured lenders, investors, and buyers.

Learn more about the Law School’s esteemed faculty.