Evansville Bar to collaborate with school for history video

As part of the Evansville Bar Association’s activities to commemorate its 100th anniversary, which will take place as part of their Law Day celebration in April 2011, the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation and the EBA announced today they will collaborate on a video of the last 100 years of the legal community in southwestern Indiana.

The announcement comes on the same day as an evening hardhat reception for donors who’ve contributed to the restoration of the Old Courthouse Superior Courtroom to be renamed “The Randall T. Shepard Courtroom.” That reception will include an address by Evansville native and Indiana Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard. The chief architect on the project will give tours. The $300,000 to renovate the courtroom was contributed mostly by EBA members and others in the Evansville community.

Students in Reitz High School’s award-winning “Feel the History” program, which was started by the EVSC in 2006, will produce a video using equipment donated by the EBA. Members of the Young Lawyers Section will work with the students, answering their questions about the law and giving critiques of their productions.

Among the awards for work with Feel the History include Grand Prize Winner for school districts over 20,000 in the American School Board Journal’s Magna Awards in 2009; in 2008 a team of students won first place in the Adobe School Innovation Awards and Adobe recognized Feel the History as an “Educational Success Story” featured on its website; teachers for the program, Jon Carl and Terry Hughes, were honored by the Indiana Computer Educators organization as Teacher of the Year and Technology Education Advocate in 2008; in 2007 Carl was named on the National School Boards Associations’ list of 20 to Watch, and Carl was named the Caleb Mills History Educator of the Year by the Indiana Historical Society in 2007.

Jeremy Villines, who will instruct the students, will divide them into groups to cover various issues, such as race relations and women in the law.

The video, as well as information collected by historian Bill Bartelt, who the EBA has commissioned to study the history of the first 100 years of the practice of law in Evansville, will be used as a teaching tool in classrooms. It will be available through the EBA’s website, and will also be available at the courthouse when it is completed.