Four distinguished alumni will join the Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Academy of Law Alumni Fellows during a ceremony on April 12.
The 2024 inductees include a former airport manager and tennis executive, a longtime private practitioner, and two alumni dedicated to education and protecting the environment.
Induction into the ALAF is the highest honor the Law School can bestow on an alumnus. This year’s recipients are:
Gary L. Davis ’82. After graduating from Indiana Law, Davis started his career in Indiana before moving to the East Coast, where he began a career in airport management. He became an accredited airport executive and his varied roles would include managing airport operations at both Newark Liberty International and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airports. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Davis was responsible for standing up and managing The Port Authority’s Family Assistance Center in Newark. The center aided hundreds of Port Authority employees and families affected by the attacks. He took a two-year hiatus from airport management to serve as president and CEO of the New York Junior Tennis League, the largest youth tennis and educational program in the country. Davis now focuses on providing affordable and workforce housing in the Washington, DC area.
Renee R. McDermott ’78. McDermott began her career as a high school English and journalism teacher before enrolling in law school. While at Indiana, she served as the editor-in-chief of the Indiana Law Journal, and graduated with honors in 1978. She earned a clerkship with the Hon. Jesse E. Eschbach in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana before spending 13 years with Indianapolis law firm Barnes & Thornburg. There she pursued environmental regulatory law, with experience in both trial and appellate courts. Renee served as president of the Indiana Bar Foundation, and when she moved to North Carolina, she remained active in environmental issues, dedicating considerable time and resources to a number of local causes and initiatives. Renee passed away in March 2023 and will be inducted into the ALAF posthumously.
Ted A. Waggoner ’78. Waggoner joined the Rochester, Ind. law firm of Peterson & Morton after graduating from Indiana Law, and his career would span an incredible 45 years there as a county seat attorney focused on estate planning, probate, business, and educational law. All the while he was a dedicated alumnus of the Law School, serving the school for three decades—12 years on its Alumni Board and 18 years on its Board of Visitors—under three different deans. Deeply involved in his community, Waggoner has served as an attorney for two denominational districts, serving as lay leader of the National Conference, the Christian Church Foundation, and on the Boards of Trustees for Eureka College and the Christian Theological Seminary. He also founded and led the multi-county Community Foundation and the local Hospital Foundation.
W. William Weeks ’79. Weeks enrolled at Indiana University after graduating from West Lafayette High School in 1971. He was a member of IU’s football team and earned an undergraduate degree in history. He graduated from Indiana Law in 1979 and spent four years at the Indianapolis law firm of Sommer Barnard PC, before following his passion to become the Indiana State Director of The Nature Conservancy. Four years later he became the organization’s chief operating officer and in 1994 moved to Virginia to co-found The Nature Conservancy’s Center for Compatible Economic Development. Weeks returned to Bloomington in 2005, where he helped found the Conservation Law Center. He served as director of the center and the Law School’s Conservation Law Clinic up until 2018. He was appointed the Glenn and Donna Scolnik Clinical Chair in 2018. Weeks is the author of Beyond the Ark: Tools for an Ecosystem Approach to Conservation and was a recipient of the Law School’s Distinguished Service Award in 1997.
“The Law School is proud to welcome Gary, Renee, Ted, and Bill into our Academy of Law Alumni Fellows this spring,” said Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Each honoree has demonstrated a profound commitment to their careers, communities, families, and the legal profession, and they join Indiana Law’s most accomplished alumni as academy members.”
The induction ceremony will occur on Friday, April 12, at a ceremony inside the Indiana Memorial Union.