A University Trailblazer in Law

Dean Cyndi Nance has focused her teaching and research on labor and employment law, poverty law, and torts. She earned her J.D. with distinction and M.A. in finance from the University of Iowa.

Prior to teaching law, Dean Nance worked as a labor educator at the University of Iowa Labor Center and was a faculty fellow in the law school. Dean Nance has presented academic papers at Yale University, University of Illinois, George Washington University Law School, and Franklin Pierce Law Center. She is licensed in Iowa and is a member of the American, National, Arkansas, and Washington County Bar Associations and the Arkansas Association of Women Lawyers.

Dean Nance is also a member of the Arkansas Bar Association's Commission on Diversity and the Lawyers Helping Lawyers Committee, Phi Delta Phi, and the W. B. Putman American Inn of Court. She is co-chair of the American Bar Association's Section of Labor Employment Law: Ethics Professional Responsibility Committee. She is a board member of the Law School Admissions Council and a board member of the Lutheran Immigration Refugee Service.

Dean Nance was a recipient of a 2007 American Association for Affirmative Action Arthur A. Fletcher Award and the 2006 NIA Professional Achievement Award. She was also honored as the 2005 Arkansas Bar Association Outstanding Lawyer-Citizen. In 2004, Dean Nance received the University of Arkansas Alumni Association's Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award for Public Service and was recognized in 2003 as a Northwest Arkansas Woman of Distinction and a Northwest Arkansas Martin Luther King Individual Achievement Award recipient. She was selected for inclusion in Who's Who in America, 2004 edition, and Who's Who of American Women, 25th Edition, 2006-07. She is past chair of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Employment Discrimination and Labor Employment Law Sections.

At the University of Arkansas, Dean Nance has served on several committees within the School of Law and the broader university community. She has been a faculty adviser to the Kappa Iota Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and adviser to the Black Law Student Association. She is also a member of Good Shepherd Lutheran church, where she serves on the Social Ministry Committee and is a reader, greeter, occasional Sunday school teacher, and former church council member.