Mingle with fellow Temple alumnae, enjoy a delicious brunch (complete with mimosas) and hear from Temple University’s Provost, JoAnne Epps. Provost Epps has been serving the Temple community for more than three decades as an innovative leader and distinguished educator before moving into her new role as provost. Epps has been widely regarded as an influential leader in legal education, and brings to her new role as provost the same passion, integrity and commitment to service that characterized her deanship at the Beasley School of Law.
From 2008 to 2016 as dean of the Law School, Epps was known as an outspoken advocate for legal education that emphasizes institutional responsiveness. She has been consistently recognized by National Jurist as one of the 25 most influential leaders in legal education. Her commitment to curricular innovation and experiential legal education inspired the creation of the Stephen and Sandra Sheller Center for Social Justice at Temple Law School, which introduces students to the many roles that lawyers can play in securing access to civil justice. A longtime champion for women and minorities within the legal profession, she received the 2016 Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession. The Philadelphia Bar Association awarded Epps the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Diversity Award in 2014, and the Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Award in 2009.
A native to the Philadelphia region, Epps grew up in Cheltenham, PA, and attended law school at Yale. Before joining the Temple Law School as a faculty member in 1985, she was an assistant U.S. attorney in Philadelphia and a deputy city attorney for the City of Los Angeles.