Buies Creek, N.C.-Professor William “Woody” Woodruff, of Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, is the recipient of a 2009 Dean’s Excellence in Teaching award. The awards were presented on Saturday, May 9, at a luncheon held in the Alumni Room of Marshbanks Dining Hall.
Woodruff’s law career officially began when, as an army field artillery officer, he was selected by the Judge Advocate General to attend law school at the Army’s expense. He graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Law and served as an Army Judge Advocate. After reaching the rank of colonel, Woodruff retired from the Army in 1992 and became a faculty member of the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law.
“In one sense, Woody has always been a teacher,” said Melissa Essary, dean of the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law. “As a combat arms officer, he taught his soldiers the tactics, skills and techniques necessary to survive on the battlefield and successfully accomplish their mission. As an Army lawyer, he mentored young attorneys in their roles as soldier-lawyers and taught graduate level legal education courses to military attorneys as a member of the faculty of the Judge Advocate General’s School and the Department of Justice.”
Woodruff, who teaches trial advocacy at Campbell, spends extracurricular hours with trial teams engaged in competition. His work with the law faculty of Wismar University in Germany to develop clinical education courses in the primarily lecture- dominated German law curriculum led to two recent articles, one in the English language version of the “German Law Journal” and another in the leading German language legal periodical, “Juristen Zeitung.”
Photo Copy: Professor Woody Woodruff, left, receives the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching award for the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law from Dr. Jerry M. Wallace, president of Campbell University. (Photo by Bennett Scarborough)