Courses
Health Law, Products Liability, Torts


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Biography
Associate Dean Dark joined the faculty at the Howard University School of Law in the fall of 2001 where she teaches Torts, Products Liability, Advanced Torts and Health Law. She has been Associate Dean for Academic Affairs since July 2005 and also serves on a teaching team on Bioethics at the Howard University Medical School.

Associate Dean Dark served in the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) in Portland, Oregon, where she was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Civil Division and Supervisor of the Community Relations Unit. For her work, both as supervisor of the CRU and the litigation that she handled, Professor Dark received three Special Achievement Awards in official recognition of her achievements and contributions to the Department of Justice. In 1997, she received the 1997 Public Service Award to honor her contributions as a federal employee both on and off the job.

Prior to joining the USAO, Professor Dark was on the faculty of the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond, in Richmond, VA. She joined the T.C. Williams faculty in 1984, where she taught Torts, Products Liability, Antitrust and Gender and the Law. She was the recipient of the University of Richmond’s Distinguished Educator Award in 1990 and 1993 and the Distinguished Faculty Award by the Virginia Women Attorneys Association Foundation in 1991. At Howard, she received the Warren Rosmarin Professor Of Law Excellence Award in Teaching and Service and the Graduate Students Award for faculty of the year. She is listed in Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in Legal Education, Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.

Her primary areas of scholarship are on torts, legal education, and incorporating issues of race, gender and race into teaching. She has been a frequent presenter at national conferences and many law schools on diversity and teaching methodology.

Associate Dean Dark has worked on Fair Housing issues for many years. She has offered her personal story as a victim of housing discrimination in a videotape titled “Who Can Ever Get Use to This?” Hope Fair Housing in Wheaton, Illinois produced this videotape. In 1997, she was one of the recipients of the National Fair Housing Alliance’s Awards for Excellence in recognition of her role in the promotion of equal housing opportunity for all. She also received a Hope for People Award in 1991 for her work on Fair Housing Matters from Hope Fair Housing. Currently, she is a member of the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity that is co-chaired by former Secretaries of HUD Henry Cisneros and Jack Kemp.

Associate Dean Dark is very active in the community where she lives. For example, in Portland, Oregon, she established a Saturday School Program for primary school-age children at the Urban League of Portland for which she received an award as the Outstanding Volunteer in the Urban League’s Education Department in 1997.

She was named United Way-Multnomah Volunteer of the Year by the United Way based on her work with the Saturday School program. She also established a Children’s Book Fair (directed at preschool and school age children up to 8th grade) for the Urban League’s annual event known as “Do The Right Thing” Day, which encourages children who are in school and are doing the right thing. This Book Fair continues on an annual basis in Portland now sponsored by the Multnomah County Library. In Montgomery County where she and her family currently live, she is working on a project to combine health care services and domestic violence legal services.

In the field of health, she was a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Northwest Health Foundation in Portland, Oregon. She also was the Chair of the Grants committee for that foundation which gave out about $2 million dollars in grants to nonprofit and governmental organizations to improve the health of Oregon and Southwest Washington residents. She was Chair of the Montgomery County Commission on Health which is the only citizen commission in Montgomery County concerned with public health and a member of the Montgomery County Advisory Board for Montgomery Cares Program. The Montgomery Cares program is a unique public/private partnership to provide primary care services to uninsured adults in the county.

Associate Dean Dark is a member of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Bars and an associate member of the Virginia Bar. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree Magna Cum Laude from Upsala College, in East Orange, New Jersey and her Juris Doctor from Rutgers University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey.

Publications

Professional Contributions

updated: May 11, 2011