Jason Poulos (B.S. ‘92, J.D. ‘97)
Jason Poulos (B.S. ‘92, J.D. ‘97) is the first adjunct faculty member to receive the new Roy M. Sobelson Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching.
“I am tremendously honored to receive this inaugural award for adjunct teaching,” said Poulos. “It represents the culmination of 15 years of passionate and dedicated participation in the professional training and development of future GSU-educated lawyers, and it exemplifies the excellence in adjunct training engendered by its namesake.”
The award is named after Professor of Law Emeritus, Roy M. Sobelson, who joined the law school in 1985 and retired in 2018 after an illustrious 33-year career. The award is for an adjunct professor who demonstrates excellence in teaching through their pedagogy, commitment to students and innovative coursework.
Poulos began his teaching career at Georgia State Law in 2010, with the Lawyering Advocacy program. In 2017, he designed and launched a course called Corporate Compliance. The course was built on his experience as a corporate compliance professional in the legal field.
“After having taught in Professor Milich's lawyering advocacy program for almost 10 years, I wanted to take legal education to a new level,” he said.
While working a full-time position as assistant general counsel at Cox Enterprises, Poulos drafted a comprehensive plan for the new course and shepherded it through the curriculum committee with assistance from Professor Anne Tucker.
The course is modeled after real-world scenarios to give students practical experience in the classroom, and Poulos brings in high-profile practitioners as guest speakers, from assistant U.S. attorneys to privacy professionals from the big five accounting firms.
“With regard to every single thing we discuss in this class, I could pull a direct example out of my briefcase on any given day,” he said.
Some of Poulos’ former students said they use the skills they’ve learned in his class on a day-to-day basis. This feedback fuels his commitment to training Georgia State Law students.
Poulous quotes the late author Kurt Vonnegut to illustrate his continued interest in training students to be highly regarded professionals, “the very best thing you can be in life is a teacher, provided that you are crazy in love with what you teach.”