I have been the Executive Director of the Space, Cyber, and National Security Law program at the University of Nebraska College of Law since September of 2012 – almost 13 years. Starting this summer, I’m fully stepping away from my administrative leadership role within the Space Law program and have been offered a full time Lecturer teaching position with the College.
In 2022 I took on the role of Director of Externships but held on to my Executive Directorship in space law. However, now is the time to focus more fully on teaching and contributing to this community in different ways. As our Externship program’s inaugural Director (a title I will keep) I have developed a new experiential learning curriculum for law students. I teach the general externship course, the nonprofit board service course, and my real passion project, a ‘Public Speaking for Attorneys’ class. This year I’ll also bring my space law expertise into the classroom teaching ‘U.S. Space Law and Policy.’ I will continue my research, which is centered on space law and (starting now) experiential legal education, spanning multiple grants and several articles presently in progress. I am so excited to focus the entirety of my work directly on serving our students and this scholarly community.
This is all to say, I’ll still be a part of the Space, Cyber, and National Security Law Program, teaching and researching, but will leave behind the critical work of managing, promoting, and developing it. Our faculty Director, Professor Jack Beard, and our Associate Director Lauren Bydalek, have the task well in hand. It’s been a pleasure to work with this team over the past few years. They’ll be supported by Dean Tasha Everman, who has stepped in to help support Lauren’s work, as well as serve as a resource to our alumni and students. Tasha is longtime supporter of the space law program and I’m so touched by her willingness to shift back into a more active role in the program.
In reflecting on my personal growth in light of this transition, I assembled this ridiculous collage of University stock photos of me, ranging the past 13 years. These are roughly in order, with the first program team shot from maybe 2013(?) at the end. Sadly, no “official” photos were taken of me while I had blue or purple hair, or my shaved head. Wonder why? Ha!
As pictured, this program has aged right alongside me… and my children. I was hired during the program’s fourth year, just six months after having my first child, Max. In truth, I am finding this transition as meaningful as watching him finish elementary school in 2022. It’s bittersweet: good, hard, and necessary all at once. Noting, he nailed his first year of middle school and change is good.
Being an academic program director is like being the captain of a fleet of ships. Maybe 3 or 4 you know well and can steer without issue. The rest of the fleet you maybe have no experience in but it’s your job to keep everything going the right direction. Directors have the privilege of being both the “person who says no” and the leader who “gets to say yes,” they must develop their own expertise and merit in the field, be the institutional hype-person, a grant-writer and a budget master, a political strategist, the one who has the tough conversations, the scape goat and the figurehead, and the one who is always thinking about how every decisions will impact every stakeholder from current students to alumni to donors to grant administers to University administrators.
It’s a dynamic, complex, and demanding gig, with very few outside measures for success – a program could always be better, bigger, or stronger depending on how you measure it, and there is always someone there to tell you how they think you should be doing it.
I couldn’t have asked for a better training-turned-proving ground. I will still administer our externship program as the part of teaching the course, with the goal of growing it. However, this internal focus is a substantial shift from my role within the Space, Cyber, and National Security Law program.
I’ll be forever grateful to the founding director, Professor Matt Schaefer, for giving me the chance back in the summer of 2012, and to Dean Richard Moberly and Dean Molly Brummond for being my supporters and guides for so many years here. To our other faculty, alumni, and partners – thank you for your trust, cooperation, energy, and interest over the years. I don’t even have the words.
I will still be in D.C. this fall at our conference, but this time only as a panel moderator. Not as an organizer, point person, student guide, or host.
I’ll do my best to stay in my chair.
Elsbeth Magilton 
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