Baylor Law School to Hold Commencement Exercises July 31
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President Ken Starr to participate in ceremony
Baylor University Law School will hold its summer commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, July 31, in Jones Concert Hall at the Glennis McCrary Music Building on the Baylor campus.
The Honorable Ed Kinkeade, United States District Court Judge for the Northern District of Texas will serve as keynote speaker. Additionally, Terah Moxley, the highest-ranking student in the graduating class, will deliver student remarks.
Baylor President Ken Starr and Baylor Law School Dean Brad Toben also will participate in the program and will award juris doctor degrees to the 44 graduates.
Kinkeade earned his undergraduate degree in 1973 and his law degree in 1974 at Baylor University. He earned a master of laws degree from the University of Virginia. He was in private practice as an attorney from 1974 to 1980, first with the firm of Dennis G. Brewer, Inc., and then he became a partner at the firm of Power and Kinkeade in Irving.
In 1981, he left private practice at the age of 29, when he was elected judge of County Criminal Court No. 10 in Dallas. Eight months later, he was appointed judge of the 194th Judicial District Court. After seven years on the district bench, Kinkeade was appointed to the Court of Appeals, Fifth District, in 1988 by then-Texas Gov. William P. Clements. He was appointed to the federal bench of the Northern District of Texas in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
An adjunct professor of law, Judge Kinkeade has taught Professional Responsibility at Baylor Law School. He also teaches legal ethics at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. He has co-authored two books, Kinkeade & McColloch's Texas Penal Code Annotated and A Practical Guide to Texas Evidence: Objections, Responses, Rules and Practice Commentary and numerous law review articles. In 2004, Texas Wesleyan University awarded Judge Kinkeade an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree, and that same year Dallas Baptist University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree.
In addition to his law career, Judge Kinkeade is active in his community, having served as chairman of the board of trustees of the Baylor Medical Health Care System. He also served on the Baylor Medical Center at Irving board of trustees, the Dallas Mayor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Alcoholism, the Baylor University Alumni Association, the Dallas Volunteer Center, the board of the Downtown YMCA, and as a charter member of the Board of Irving Schools Foundation.
Judge Kinkeade was named Outstanding Young Alumnus of Baylor University in 1988, and received the W.R. White Meritorious Service Award from the Baylor Alumni Association in 2003. As a volunteer, Judge Kinkeade trained his yellow lab, Bo, as a pet therapy dog, and he and Bo work with disabled patients at various health care facilities.
He is a charter member of the Fellowship Church, which his family and other individuals started in 1989 as a mission of Irving's First Baptist Church. Fellowship Church now has five locations and an attendance near 22,000 each weekend.
His wife, Melissa, also a Baylor graduate, teaches reading for Irving ISD., and was named Teacher of the Year for the district in 2008-2009. They have two children - Mandy, a Baylor graduate, and Brad, who received his bachelor's degree from Baylor and is a member of the graduating class.
Assisting Starr and Toben in awarding degrees during the commencement program will be Leah W. Jackson, professor of law and associate dean.
Hooding the graduates will be Larry T. Bates, professor of law, and James Wren, associate professor of law. Brian Cooper Brisco, who will receive his law degree during commencement, will deliver the invocation.
A reception for graduates and their guests will take place immediately after commencement at the Sheila and Walter Umphrey Law Center.
Media contact: Julie Carlson, Baylor Law School director of communications, (254) 710-6681