By Alejandra Navarro

The Vietnam War was an uncertain time for our nation, but for Lucy V. Katz, the war and events taking place around it - student protests, the Kent State University tragedy, and the movement for racial equality - only furthered her dedication to justice, peace, and equality. And, it gave her career direction.

"At that time, nobody would talk about going to work for a corporation," says Dr. Katz, smiling at her generation's idealism. "Even though people did, it was just in the air that you do something good and meaningful."

That she did. After graduating from Smith College, she attended New York University Law School and became an attorney, often representing welfare recipients and women and children in difficult divorce and custody situations. Later, she became a professor in the Charles F. Dolan School of Business, developing the curriculum in law and ethics for the Management Department, and co-founding the Women's Studies Program.

Today, Vietnam has surfaced again as an influence on her career. This time, Dr. Katz is investigating the legal conflicts in Vietnam and similar countries, and more important, how their governments and multinational businesses are using arbitration to resolve international business disputes. "This is a way for former socialist countries to participate in the global economy," says Dr. Katz, who visited Vietnam in 2004 and Cuba the year before.

As the newly named Robert C. Wright Professor of Business Law, Ethics, and Dispute Resolution, Dr. Katz hopes her research on the benefits of dispute resolution will lead to greater creative management within the legal systems of other emerging nations.

Dr. Katz's worldview, her sense of social justice, and her ambition originated with her parents. "Those ideas were always in the air," she says. Her father was active in the Jewish community, which had - and still has - a strong connection to other marginalized groups. Unlike other mothers in her Long Island neighborhood, Dr. Katz's mother remained a teacher while raising her children, paving the way for her daughter's career.

That career began at the Center for Social Welfare in New York City, a national legal services agency that argued test cases and worked to ensure that public welfare laws were interpreted correctly. When she moved to Connecticut in 1972, she joined Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport, handling family law cases. "I was really lucky to land in that firm," Dr. Katz says of the firm that had a strong commitment to civil rights and social justice. In 1976, she brought a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She lost her case, despite winning in the lower courts, but her arguments were well received by the dissenting justices. "If you measured the intensity of her support, her side won," says her husband, Dr. Alan Katz, professor of politics in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), who attended the milestone with their two children.

"It's an extraordinary professional accomplishment," says Dr. Joy Gordon, associate professor of philosophy in the CAS. "It's very rare that any attorney brings a case to that level." Dr. Katz's students and colleagues benefit from her experience, Dr. Gordon says, adding, "She has a deep sense of wisdom and a generosity of spirit."

Dr. Katz joined Fairfield University in 1983, where the classroom quickly proved to be her niche. Six years later, the Student Association named her Advisor of the Year for her work with the newly formed Debate Team.

"As an advisor, Dr. Katz served me extremely well," says Fiona A. Edwards '95, who has since earned an MBA and a J.D. "She had the ability to see me as an individual person, a business student, an aspiring lawyer, an African-American, a Christian, and a young woman in a strange place." As her advisor, Dr. Katz discussed qualities to consider in selecting a law school, encouraged Edwards to study abroad, and even had a conversation on the sophomore blues. "At what seemed like critical points in my college life," says Edwards, "she gave me her pearls of wisdom."

In continuing to do so, Dr. Lucy Katz is living the life she imagined long ago - albeit differently - making positive change possible.