New and Retiring Faculty
New Faculty
Laura Connor
Laura Connor brings both private practice and teaching experience to the UMKC Law legal writing faculty. She teaches Lawyering Skills I and II.
Before joining the faculty, Professor Connor practiced law in Kansas City for five years. Her practice focused on a variety of real estate matters, ranging from complex title insurance issues to large-scale economic development projects. Prior to practice, Professor Connor earned her B.A. from the University of Missouri-Columbia and her J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law.
During law school, she served as a Writing Dean’s Fellow. In that role, she worked in Miami Law’s legal-writing program, helping students improve their legal writing skills and providing feedback through regular meetings with students. She is a member of the Missouri Bar.
Colin P. Marks
Colin P. Marks comes to UMKC Law after two decades on the faculty at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio. Most recently, he was the Ernest W. Clemens professor of Corporate & Securities Law there. He also served St. Mary’s as the vice provost for Graduate Education for the past year.
Professor Marks is an elected member of the American Law Institute and has been the cochair of the American Bar Association Business Law Section’s Uniform Commercial Code Annual Survey. He has published a casebook on business torts and unfair competition as well as a hornbook in preparation on those topics and one already published on the law of sales. He also has published an innovative activity and coloring book that he and other law professors use to teach secured transactions law. He has taught most of the courses in the business law curriculum and is teaching Contracts and Business Associations at UMKC this fall. While at St. Mary’s, Professor Marks was known as an excellent teacher, winning both the University Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching and the Student Bar Association Professor of the Year Award.
Sheerin Haubenreich
Sheerin Haubenreich teaches legal writing courses and is co-advisor to the UMKC Law Review. She has both private practice and teaching experience. She has a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from the University of Oregon with degrees in history, Spanish, and political science and was also a member of the Oregon Six (top six graduates elected by the faculty each year); a Master of Science from Oxford University in Latin American Economics; and a J.D., cum laude, from The George Washington University Law School, where she served as a senior editorial board member of the Law Review and drafted the school’s Van Vleck Moot Court competition problem argued before U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. She started her legal career at the Washington, D.C., office of Jones Day as a member of the Trial Practice group, ultimately joining the newly developed Global Disputes practice group serving clients in international litigation and arbitration. Her pro bono experience includes work with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless; various immigrant rights organizations; and the Children’s Law Center, as a guardian ad litem and board member. She returned to her alma mater, The George Washington University, as a member of the adjunct faculty to teach in the law school’s Legal Research and Writing program for five years before moving to Kansas City.
Retiring Faculty
Professor Anthony Luppino
Professor Luppino served on the UMKC Law faculty from 2001to 2025, with tenure granted in 2005 and promotion to full professor in 2010. He served as the first director of the UMKC Center for Law, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, one of many projects that he brought in substantial grant dollars for. As a teacher and scholar, he won all the major law school faculty awards: the 2004 Daniel L. Brenner Faculty Publishing Award (best publication by a faculty member for the year), the 2010 Marvin Lewis Rich Faculty Scholar Award (for scholarship over a three-year period), the 2005 Law Alumni Outstanding Professor Award (voted by the graduating Class of 2005) and the 2004 Elmer F. Pierson Excellence in Teaching Award. For his service work, he received the UMKC Trustees’ Leo E. Morton Community Service Award in 2019.
Throughout his time at UMKC Law, Professor Luppino taught the required Business Associations course, teaching this subject to over half of the law school’s students for more than two decades. He also stood out for his interdisciplinary work, creating and teaching courses with faculty from other disciplines and connecting people in the university and in the University of Missouri System to outside people and programs. Professor Luppino has been an exemplary member of the law school and university communities throughout his more than two decades of service.
Professor Daniel Weddle
Professor Weddle was a faculty member for 28 years and served as teaching professor of law from 2006 through 2025. Professor Weddle taught basic legal-writing and legal-study classes; he also created and served as director of the academic support program from 2005 through his retirement. That program has been critical in improving bar passage numbers and student success. He moved beyond the legal-writing curriculum to teach constitutional law and several courses on education law. He has also provided substantial service to the greater university. He served from 1999-2000 as the assistant dean of the School of Education, and he was special assistant to the dean for Information Technology in 2000-2001. Along with several other service roles for the university, he served on the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee from 2008 to 2014 and the Program Evaluation Committee from 2010 to 2013.
Professor Weddle commented that “the most gratifying of all has been the pleasure of teaching the subjects that most inspire me personally and professionally. From teaching legal writing and analysis to teaching education law to teaching constitutional law and First Amendment law, I have had the most fulfilling career I could ever dream possible. In fact, all these years after leaving secondary education, I still teach law to high school students from around the metropolitan area in the hopes of inspiring young people to envision themselves thriving in college classrooms and law school classrooms.”
Faculty Accomplishments
Law Professor Nancy Levit Receives Thomas Jefferson Award
The UMKC School of Law’s Curators’ Professor Nancy Levit, J.D., is the 2025 Thomas Jefferson Award recipient. The award, given by the University of Missouri System, honors a member of the University of Missouri community who "through personal influence and performance of duty in teaching, writing and scholarship, character and influence, devotion and loyalty to the University best exemplifies the principles and ideals of Thomas Jefferson." Professor Levit has been a faculty member at UMKC Law since 1988. She has been voted Professor of the Year by the graduating class six times and was one of 26 law professors profiled in the book, "What the Best Law Teachers Do." Her most recent book, "Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy," coauthored with Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, was published in 2024. The New York Times Book Review called it a “compelling assessment of what has thwarted women’s efforts to attain workplace equality.”
Sean O’Brien (J.D. ’80) Named Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor
This designation is the highest and most prestigious academic rank awarded by the University of Missouri Board of Curators, given to a select few outstanding scholars with established reputations for research or teaching. Professor O’Brien joined the UMKC Law faculty in 2005, teaching criminal law, criminal procedure, sentencing mitigation, post-conviction remedies and other courses. He has made a career of freeing the wrongfully convicted, including people who have been in prison for decades. He successfully argued Schlup v. Delo, a landmark 1995 case that expanded the ability to reopen a case in light of evidence of innocence, before the Supreme Court. Professor O’Brien’s teaching is masterfully informed by these very real experiences. He was recognized as the 2023 Alumnus of the Year by the UMKC Alumni Association.
Allen Rostron Named Edward A. Smith/Missouri Chair in Law, the Constitution and Society
Allen Rostron, J.D., William R. Jacques Constitutional Law Scholar, professor of law and associate dean of the UMKC School of Law, was recently appointed the Edward A. Smith/Missouri Chair in Law, the Constitution and Society. The Smith Chair recognizes a faculty member for their scholarly accomplishments and involvement in the law school and community. It helps attract and retain accomplished faculty members, allowing students to learn about constitutional law from renowned experts.