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University of Missouri School of Law Dean Paul Litton has announced three new appointments to his leadership team: Professor Erika Lietzan has been named Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development; Professor Ryan Vacca will serve as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; and Professor Carli Conklin will serve as Director of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution.
“I’m thrilled to add such accomplished scholars and teachers to our leadership team,” Dean Litton said. “Professor Lietzan brings an outstanding record of scholarship and mentoring to the position. She will support our first-rate scholars and foster a lively intellectual atmosphere in Hulston Hall. Professor Vacca is passionate about student success and will support our students inside and outside the classroom. And Professor Conklin’s innovative vision and energy will advance our leading center for dispute resolution.”
Erika Lietzan is the William H. Pittman Professor of Law and the Timothy J. Heinsz Professor of Law. She is a nationally recognized scholar in food and drug law who joined the Mizzou Law faculty in 2014. She teaches courses in health and FDA law, intellectual property, and administrative law. Her scholarship has influenced policy at the federal level, and she is widely cited in legal and regulatory circles. Professor Lietzan is a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), an independent federal agency that convenes to discuss and recommend on improvements to public administration, management, and administrative procedure, serving on its Committee on Regulation. She has also been an elected member of the American Law Institute since 2006. She has held one leadership position or another at the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI) since 2004, including a stint on its Board of Directors from 2008 to 2012.
Ryan Vacca, the John D. Lawson Professor of Law who joined the Mizzou Law faculty in 2024, is an excellent scholar in intellectual property and federal courts. Before coming to Missouri, he served on the faculty and as director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Technology at the University of Akron School of Law and on the faculty at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. He also served as a visiting professor at several law schools in the United States, Australia, and China. Vacca is known for his commitment to student success and leadership, having served as Interim Co-Dean at his previous institution.
Carli Conklin is an associate professor of law and an associate professor of constitutional democracy and former associate director at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. She earned her JD/MA and PhD in American Legal History from the University of Virginia, where she received the School of Law’s John and Madeleine Traynor prize for outstanding written work. Prof. Conklin teaches courses in lawyering, dispute resolution, and American legal history at the School of Law and courses in intellectual and legal history through the University of Missouri’s Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy and the Mizzou Honors College. In addition to her research on arbitration, Professor Conklin is working on a sequel to her award-winning book, The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era: An Intellectual History.