Dean Adams is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law. In her role as Associate Dean, she is responsible for ensuring that the academic program meets the standards of the American Bar Association. She plans the academic calendar and course schedules, advises students on academic requirements, and oversees the faculty development program.

 

Prior to taking on the role of Associate Dean, Dean Adams was the Director of the School of Law's General Practice Clinic. In that capacity, she supervised student attorneys and LLM candidates representing DC residents in a variety of legal matters, including family law, small claims, public benefits, and estate planning, and conducts community outreach education. Her advocacy and research focuses on children and families in the child welfare system.

 

Prior to joining the faculty in 2009, Dean Adams was a staff attorney at the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, where she worked on a project aimed at improving the outcomes for children in foster care as well as former foster youth. From 2006 to 2009, she taught at American University Washington College of Law as a Practitioner-in-Residence with the General Practice Clinic and then as an adjunct associate professor teaching Juvenile Law: Children’s Legal Rights.

 

Dean Adams' interest in the child welfare system began in 1997 when she interned at the Child Advocacy Unit of the DeKalb County Juvenile Court. In 1999, she was awarded a Skadden Fellowship to develop a kinship caregiver representation project at The Children’s Law Center in the District of Columbia. After the fellowship ended, she continued at the Center as an attorney and Director of the Family Permanency Project. She then worked as a Child Advocate in the New Jersey Office of the Child Advocate, where she contributed to numerous reports evaluating the performance of state agencies providing services to families and children.

 

Dean Adams received her B.A., summa cum laude, from Spelman College, and her J.D. from New York University School of Law. While in law school, she received several awards, including the Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholarship, the Derrick Bell Scholarship for Public Service, and the Bergstrom Child Welfare Law Fellowship. She also served on the editorial board of the Review of Law and Social Change and represented parents in New York Family Court as a student attorney in the Family Defense Clinic.

 

Dean Adams is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Association of Counsel for Children (NACC), as well as the Maryland Citizens Review Board for Children, to which she was appointed by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. In 2019, she was named a Fulbright Scholar by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission. She has been admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia, Maryland and Georgia.