By selecting Professor John Bickers and Professor Kenneth Katkin as a Professor of the Year, the Salmon P. Chase College of Law graduating Class of 2023 is recognizing the classroom engagement and enthusiasm of two professors who, by coincidence, both teach Constitutional Law.
Why students selected them
• Professor Bickers immediately engages students in the classroom topic of the day through related theme music that plays as they enter the room. When the music ends, class begins, typically highlighted by a robust question-and-answer exchange in the Socratic method of legal education or with mock Supreme Court hearings, with students taking on roles of lawyers and justices.
• Professor Katkin engages students through a storytelling-like teaching style that often frames the law of a Supreme Court case with the history that surrounded it. He gladly remains after classes to discuss students’ academic interests with them, and conducts review sessions that often continue for more than four hours.
About Professor Bickers
Professor Bickers has been a member of the Chase faculty since 2006 and serves as associate dean for faculty development, responsible for promoting legal research and scholarship among faculty members. Prior to joining the faculty, he taught law classes at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and was a lawyer in the Army Judge Advocate General Corps. As a JAG officer, he practiced as a prosecutor, a defense attorney and an administrative law attorney.
About Professor Katkin
Professor Katkin appears frequently in local and regional media as an analyst for current legal issues and trials. Prior to coming to Chase in 2000, he litigated constitutional and telecommunications law cases with the Washington, D.C., firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Before entering private practice, he was a law clerk for Judge David M. Ebel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, at Denver
As Professor of the Year
• Professors Bickers and Katkin will be grand marshals of the Chase commencement ceremony, May 5 on the Northern Kentucky University campus, leading the academic procession and reading names of students receiving degrees.
