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KU Law students win grants, committed to serving rural Kansas
LAWRENCE – Two third-year students at the University of Kansas School of Law will receive Rural Law Practice Grants from the Kansas Farm Bureau Legal Foundation. Mary McMullen and Luke Sunderland intend to practice in rural Kansas after graduation, bringing legal information and advocacy to those with limited access to resources. A maximum of three students each year can win the $16,500 grant.
KU professor David Slusky selected to direct national organization for health economists
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas scholar David Slusky has been selected as the next executive director of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), a professional organization for health economics research in the United States. ASHEcon holds an annual research conference and publishes the American Journal of Health Economics. Slusky will continue in his appointment as the De-Min and Chin-Sha Wu Associate Professor of Economics at KU while he serves ASHEcon as its executive director.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Sydney Halas, School of Law, 785-864-2338, [email protected], @kulawschool
KU Law students win grants, committed to serving rural Kansas
LAWRENCE – Two third-year students at the University of Kansas School of Law will receive grants from the Kansas Farm Bureau Legal Foundation. Mary McMullen and Luke Sunderland are recipients of the foundation’s Rural Law Practice Grant.
The grant is awarded to law students who intend to practice in rural Kansas after graduation, bringing legal information and advocacy to those with limited access to resources. A maximum of three students each year can win the $16,500 grant.
“Serving rural Kansas in the law is important to me because rural Kansas needs lawyers and better access to justice, and I felt that was a need I could contribute to,” said McMullen, who plans to practice in the Leavenworth area. “I also feel that a legal career in rural Kansas will give me greater autonomy with my decision making in how I practice law, and I will experience a wider breadth of legal issues.”
Practicing in rural Kansas provides a unique opportunity for young lawyers to experience a vast array of legal matters early in their careers. Sunderland, who plans to practice in the Sabetha area, said he plans to focus his rural practice after graduation on real estate contracts and estate law, agriculture-related law, and law related to schools and municipalities.
“The types of legal issues in a rural area are immense, as a rural attorney is really the first point of contact for most every public or private legal issue,” Sunderland said.
The program helps fill an overwhelming need for practicing attorneys in rural Kansas, said Heather Spielmaker, assistant dean for career services at KU Law.
“We are so proud that the Career Services Office was able to offer support for these students as they found their way to this important work,” Spielmaker said.
Both grant winners see value in rural Kansas beyond their legal careers. As a mother of three, McMullen knew the advantages rural Kansas would offer not only to her, but to her young family.
“Rural Kansas is a great place for my children to experience their upbringing,” McMullen said. “There is a lot to explore, and you learn a lot about taking care of not just yourself, but your whole community. I want my children to learn that sense of community and responsibility to others at a young age.”
Sunderland’s family has lived in rural Kansas for over 150 years. He looks forward to bringing advocacy to the community and facilitating cooperation and growth in the area.
“My wife and I really enjoy the community and can count many friends and family there,” Sunderland said. “Rural practice presents a real blank-slate opportunity to create what one wants to. This opens up an exciting opportunity to challenge myself and carve out a career that is rewarding.”
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Contact: David Slusky, Department of Economics, [email protected]
KU professor David Slusky selected to direct national organization for health economists
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas scholar David Slusky has been selected as the next executive director of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), a professional organization for health economics research in the United States. ASHEcon holds an annual research conference, publishes the American Journal of Health Economics, and organizes numerous webinars and virtual seminars.
Slusky will continue in his appointment as the De-Min and Chin-Sha Wu Associate Professor of Economics at KU while he serves ASHEcon as its executive director, a part-time administrative position typically held by a tenured faculty member.
Previously, Slusky has served the organization in numerous roles, including as a session organizer, a discussant, a session chair, a 2021 program chair (for the area of socioeconomic status and health), and as a co-editor and then the editor of the ASHEcon newsletter.
Beyond ASHEcon, he is a co-founder and co-organizer of the Electronic Health Economics Colloquium, for which he recently successfully negotiated a partnership with ASHEcon for the spring. He is also the founder and the lead organizer of the Kansas Health Economics Conference, for which he was awarded a multiyear National Science Foundation grant. Slusky is also a co-editor at the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, serving in a managing editor capacity.
Within KU, Slusky from 2019 to 2021 served as an associate chair and the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Economics, where he created new undergraduate certificates in microeconomics and macroeconomics and worked with the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science to create an economics track of their interdisciplinary computing bachelor’s degree. He also participated in the 2019-2020 Senior Administrative Fellows cohort. Additionally, before graduate school, he spent three years as a management consultant at Oliver Wyman, working on strategy, risk assessment and regulatory compliance.
As ASHEcon executive director, Slusky will be responsible for conference planning, leadership and administration, budget and finance, communications, staff supervision, program development and overseeing day-to-day operations of the organization.
The position was previously held by Deborah Freund, professor and president emerita at Claremont Graduate University.
“I love ASHEcon. It is an integral part of my professional life and has been ever since I became a member since 2013. It is the greatest concentration of my friends, collaborators and role models. It is an honor and privilege to be able to serve the organization in a senior capacity,” Slusky said.
Slusky joined KU’s economics department in 2015, specializing in health economics and labor economics. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Population Health at KU Medical Center. His research has spanned topics ranging from marginal hospital admission and women’s preventative health to Uber’s effect on ambulance use and the Flint water crisis. While at KU, Slusky has won numerous awards and prizes including the 2020 Byron T. Shutz Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Ekstein Prize for Best 2017-2018 article in the Eastern Economic Journal, and he delivered the Seaver Lecture for the Humanities Program at KU in 2020.
Before coming to KU, Slusky earned a master’s degree and doctorate in economics from Princeton University, where he was awarded the Towbes Prize for Outstanding Teaching, and a bachelor’s degree in physics with distinction and international studies with distinction, magna cum laude, from Yale University, where he was awarded the DeForest Pioneers Prize for Distinguished Creative Achievement in Physics, and the Branford College Fellows’ Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
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