Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper has filed an appeal contesting the $30 million agreement to share Fisk University's Stieglitz art collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. Cooper says rulings by Davidson County Chancery Court and the Tennessee Court of Appeals judges approving the sale could have an impact on the management of other charitable gifts throughout Tennessee.

The former administrative manager of Vanderbilt University Law School is in an Arkansas jail facing charges of stealing more than $60,000 from the school. University officials said they fired James Hunt last fall after receiving an anonymous tip that some funds had gone missing.

Hunt's online professional profile reads he handled everything from budgets to vendor negotiations at the law school. Hunt also recently made headlines in a Nashville magazine for opening a club in Central Mexico.

Lipscomb University is beefing up its array of services catering to its graduates who are 55 and older by creating the Senior Alumni Program, which will comprise a number of existing initiatives with some new offerings. Longtime alumni relations employee Amy Hamar will oversee the push.

Kevin Johnson, vice chairman of the department of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has been promoted to chair following a national search. The DBMI claims to be the largest of its kind in the country and is home to more than 70 faculty and a number of R&D projects.

“Dr. Johnson is a “triple threat,” the go-to person internationally at the intersection of informatics’ clinical medicine and health services research,” said William Stead, M.D., associate vice chancellor for Health Affairs and Chief Strategy and Information Officer. “He will take the DBMI to the next stage, fully developing our bioinformatics capability while strengthening areas such as consumer personalized medicine tools and evaluation.”

Fisk University two weeks ago got the reprieve it wanted from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Now, writes Pierce Greenberg, administrators' priorities are clear: Raise more than $8 million by the end of June and keep up the size of their student body.

“Fisk is a market leader among HBCU in annual fundraising. But it doesn’t help to have raised $5.1 million in the annual fund every year if the kids who are coming here can’t really afford it and need larger scholarships,” O’Leary said.

The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Tuesday that Fisk University's $30 million plan to share some of its Stieglitz Collection of art with Arkansas' Crystal Bridges Museum can go ahead and that the financially strapped school does not have to set aside $20 million as had been decreed a year ago by Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle. State officials, who have tried to block the move, say they are assessing their options.

David Segal at The New York Times takes an in-depth look at the increasing frustration with law schools' overemphasis on theoretical education, which leaves law firms to pick up the real-world training of new graduates. Case in point: A Philadelphia firm's four-month course during which associates get a reduced salary and aren't allowed to bill clients. Also featured in the piece is former Vanderbilt Law School dean Edward Rubin, who pushed new ideas during his '05-'09 tenure.

“Some members of the faculty got a little overstressed by all the change,” Professor Rubin says. “Planning a new course, you have to move out of your comfort zone a little in terms of teaching. And there is always the fear that your school will wind up being seen as an oddball place.”

Another problem he encountered: there are few incentives for law professors to excel at teaching. It might earn them the admiration of students, but it won’t win them any professional goodies, like tenure, a higher salary, prestige or competing offers from better schools. For those, a professor must publish law review articles, the ticket to punch for any upwardly mobile scholar.