Anne Lukingbeal, associate dean and dean of students at Cornell Law School, has been a mentor to women since she first came to campus 21 years ago and a role model for collegial supportiveness among women at the school and elsewhere on campus. Now she is being doubly recognized for her efforts.

She is the first winner of a Law School award named in her honor. The Anne Lukingbeal Award was established this year by the Women's Law Coalition (WLC), a student group at the Law School, to recognize those who contribute to the positive experience of women at the school. It will be given yearly.

Lukingbeal was one of five winners of the 1999 Constance E. Cook and Alice H. Cook Recognition Award, which was presented April 23 by Cornell's Advisory Committee on the Status of Women (ACSW). The other winners this year were Rachel Harris, now a graduate student in women's studies, who help revive the Women's Resource Center on campus; Judy Hart, manager of human resources at Cornell Information Technologies, who moved forward an ACSW mentoring project; Barbara Knuth, an associate professor in natural resources and role model to women students in that field; and Catherine Murray-Rust, associate university librarian and two-time chair of ACSW.

The award honors people in the Cornell community who have made positive contributions to women or women's issues. It is named in honor of Constance Cook, Cornell's first woman vice president, and the late Alice Cook, a professor emerita of Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations who was one of the first tenured female faculty members at the university as well as a founding member of the ACSW.

"It was overwhelming to get two awards so close together," said Lukingbeal. "I was especially surprised by the WLC award and deeply honored to have it named for me. It will be especially meaningful here at the Law School, and I am looking forward to nominating others for it."

Lukingbeal served on a Cornell Law School committee that conducted a gender study at the school in 1997. The findings, which were published, revealed that, in general, female students were less satisfied with their law school experience than men and tended to lose confidence while studying law. "We're not unique," Lukingbeal observed. "We share this problem with other leading law schools. We need to understand the broader issues and then decide what can be done to improve the situation."

She observed, however, that just doing the study had helped improve the climate for women at the Law School. "By paying attention to the issues, we gave them legitimacy, which has made a big difference for the women who are students now," she said.

Lukingbeal earned a B.A. at Stanford University and a J.D. at the University of California, Davis. She was a trial attorney in the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office for three years before coming to Cornell. "While I loved jury trials," she said, "I didn't like the heavy case loads -- usually 30 new cases a week."

So she and her husband, Nelson Roth, also a trial lawyer, decided to go on the job market together. "We visited Ithaca and fell in love with it," said Lukingbeal. Both of them joined the Law School in 1978, Lukingbeal as assistant dean and director of admissions and Roth as a faculty member (he is now associate university counsel for Cornell).

"The job was a perfect fit for me at the time," said Lukingbeal. "I got to spend my fall driving around New York and New England to promote the Law School to college students. The leaves were changing color, and I felt like the luckiest person in the world."

She became associate dean for admissions and student affairs at the school in 1984 and moved up to her current position in 1988. In addition to serving as dean of students, she advises the Law School's many student groups, supervises career services activities, does career counseling and is a member of four faculty committees.

And she still loves her job. "The students are the best part," she said. "They are an exceptional group of people, interesting and fun to work with."

Professionally Lukingbeal is an active member of the American Bar Association's section on Legal Education and Admission to the bar and served on the ABA's Work Group on Character and Fitness Issues. She is also affiliated with the Association of American Law Schools, the Law School Admissions Council (which administers the LSAT) and the National Association of Law Placement.