Rural issues

Jessica Shoemaker has been recognized nationally and internationally for her expertise on pluralistic land-tenure systems and property law's power to shape human communities and natural environments. She focuses specifically on racial justice and agricultural sustainability in the American countryside and on systems of indigenous land tenure and land governance in the United States and Canada. In 2021, Shoemaker was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to analyze how property law shapes ownership of agricultural land in America. Before becoming a legal scholar, Shoemaker worked as an agricultural writer, a VISTA volunteer, a rural community outreach worker and a public-interest attorney for diverse, smallholder farmers as a Skadden Fellow with Farmers' Legal Action Group, Inc. (Updated November 2024.)

Anthony Schutz is a 2003 graduate of the College of Law and joined the faculty in 2006. During law school, he worked for Cline, Williams, Wright, Johnson and Oldfather in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was the editor-in-chief of the Nebraska Law Review. After law school, Schutz clerked for 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge C. Arlen Beam. He has taught legal research and writing and was a visiting lecturer in the Lawyering Program at the Cornell Law School. The product of a farm family in Elwood, Nebraska, Schutz's research interests include the often-intertwined subjects of agricultural law, environmental and natural resources law and state and local government. He has served as the chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Agricultural Law, is active in the American Agricultural Law Association, and is a frequent lecturer on agricultural and water law issues. (Updated November 2024.)

Richard Bischoff seeks to improve access to high-quality mental health care via the use of technology and videoconferencing. He has been on the UNL faculty since 1998, having moved to Nebraska from San Diego, Calif., where he worked as a marriage and family therapist. He applies his interest in collaborative health care and medical family therapy to Nebraska’s rural medical settings, using videoconferencing as a primary treatment delivery option to provide care to underserved populations. This strategy has increased access to mental health care for underserved rural residents and has resulted in improved perceptions about mental health problems and mental health care in the communities served. Participating student therapists receive firsthand experience with mental health care technology and working with providers and patients in rural areas. (Updated December 2024.)