Working for the People

Lauren Bell: U.S. Supreme Court Fellow

by Karol Crosbie

Lauren Bell '94, who researched Supreme Court decision-making for her Wooster Independent Study, has taken a year's leave from her position at Randolph-Macon College for a prestigious Supreme Court fellowship.

Lauren Bell’s two passions are inexorably linked. As she digs into her research, she can see the top of the U.S. Capitol from her office window. She loves the sense of purpose that comes from her work as a U.S. Supreme Court Fellow. But her other purpose is always on her mind. She loves teaching. If ever there was a poster child for the symbiosis between research and teaching, it is Lauren Bell.

She has no doubt that her research abilities landed her the prestigious one-year appointment with the Court, where she is working on sentencing guidelines for the U.S. Sentencing Commission. A professor of political science at Randolph- Macon College in Ashland, Va., Bell ’94 says her application for one of the four positions appointed each year was almost perfunctory. “I applied and then bought a house and a dog; I knew I wasn’t going to get it.”

But it turned out that the perfect candidate was a researcher who could make complicated data understandable and who had a sense of public service. In other words, a researcher and a teacher. In other words, Lauren Bell.

One of the main functions of the Sentencing Commission is to simplify the intricate federal guidelines that prosecution and probation officers use to calculate sentences. As part of the team working on the simplification process, Bell must not only understand how to analyze data but must also be able to turn it into a clear, direct message.

“The people whom the Commission talks to aren’t statisticians or mathematicians,” says Bell. “They are judges and probation officers who have literally hundreds of thousands of cases worth of data that they want us to distill, put into bullet points, and make relevant.”

Among her political science majors at Randolph-Macon are the inevitable math-haters, whom Bell does not exempt from rigorous data analysis classes. But she tells them that she can identify with their hostility. “I was petrified of math. I hated it and thought I couldn’t do it. I wish all of my students could be by my side here in D.C. and see what a huge advantage it is to have those skills.”

“Sharing what I’ve learned”

A class with Mark Weaver,Wooster professor of political science, launched Bell’s interest in the subject. “ From that first class on, I wanted to learn more. You know that cliché about how influential one professor can be? It’s true.” For her Independent Study, Bell investigated whether Supreme Court justices changed their voting decisions on desegregation during a 40-year period. She remembers laboring over data analysis and fervently wishing she had paid more attention in class.

“My Wooster experience was about as direct a line as you can get to future success.When I graduated, I had no clue that I was going to be able to write a dissertation or become a Supreme Court fellow. But by taking risks and pushing myself, I saw I could be successful.”

Last year, Bell brought three teams of her students to the Wooster campus to compete in the Midwest District Moot Court Tournament. The only Midwest District teams to advance to the next level were Bell’s Randolph-Macon teams and Wooster’s teams. “Given the Wooster moot court dynasty, I was pretty proud,” Bell says. Of course I had to cheer for my students, but they couldn’t get through the Wooster juggernaut.” (The Wooster team ranks one of the highest in the nation.)

Bell says she hopes the teaching style that she admired in Mark Weaver’s classes is reflected in her own teaching. “The tradition of Randolph-Macon is like the one at Wooster.We take students from all levels and make them better than they thought they could be.”

One of her former students, who is himself now a teacher, says that Bell succeeded. “She was interactive, demanding, and personally interested in us,” says Curtis Ellis, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma’s Carl Albert Center, Bell’s own graduate alma mater. “I’m trying to do things as close to the way she did as I can.”

Bell says she is looking forward to returning to her students at the end of her year in D.C. “Sharing what I’ve learned— that’s the fun part!”