Nataley Davis | staff writer

Duquesne has welcomed two new distinguished faculty fellows to teach at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law and the Nausti College of Osteopathic Medicine, this semester.

Soo Song, a former attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, has been appointed a distinguished fellow in law. W. Thomas McGough, former executive vice president and chief legal officer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is a distinguished fellow of both law and medicine.

Distinguished faculty fellow is a title granted by the university to faculty members who are leaders in their field or professionals in the community. They are brought in to share their extensive knowledge with students.

Provost David Dausey, who will be the next president of the university, said that these individuals will foster a meaningful partnership between the two areas of study.

He said distinguished scholar fellowships are not awarded on a regular basis, but are thoughtfully reviewed when someone distinctively excels and can provide students with unique perspectives.

“At Duquesne we’re constantly looking for ways to recognize faculty who contribute above and beyond,” Dausey said. “As we look to identify individuals that might collaborate or do work at the university, it’s not something where we say we’re going to bring five in every year … It really is contingent upon a number of factors including the individuals in our community.”

Soo Song

Song, ​​a graduate of Yale University and George Washington Law School, began teaching a course on human trafficking to students in the law school this semester.

Song said that she was enthusiastic to bring this topic to Duquesne. She aims to shed light on a crime that is misunderstood and to teach people about how many victims are exploited.

“Human trafficking is clearly one of the major threats facing kids and facing adults, so it was very much a commitment of mine in my work, and I was happy to educate about it,” she said. “People presume that it involves people crossing international borders or even interstate borders. In fact, most cases, there isn’t that kind of travel going on.”

Song served the country for 30 years as an attorney focused on seeking justice for victims and survivors of crime. She said she will use that experience to give hands-on opportunities to students hoping to do the same line of work.

In her course, students will have the opportunity to work with survivors of human trafficking, helping them submit paperwork to receive restitution for the crime they experienced.

Song said that students immersing themselves in real-world situations is vital to that experience.

“There’s not a textbook for the course, and I’m pretty deliberate about that,” Song said. “I’m trying very hard to build the course around cases and educational material that is drawn from actual prosecutions and real people and real investigators, and these are actual survivors who will be able to give an insight that no book can.”

W. Thomas McGough

McGough’s fellowship will include teaching a health care marketplace course at the law school that features collaborative sessions with students from the medical school as well.

He is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Virginia School of Law. Prior to joining UPMC in 2011, McGough spent 30 years trying cases as an assistant U.S. attorney and later as a partner and global head of litigation at Reed Smith, LLP.

McGough said he can’t remember a time when he didn’t want to go into law, but medicine is the last area he thought he would get involved with.

He admitted that going into his position at UPMC, his knowledge on healthcare was limited.

“At UPMC, the learning curve is just about vertical for everybody every day,” McGough said. “Once you think you know something and have mastered it, it will change within 24 hours — so I basically threw it down as a challenge, and I found I couldn’t resist that challenge.”

After immersing himself in the health care industry for 13 years, McGough is bringing his expertise in the legal and medical administration fields to Duquesne, examining the systems that affect health care in the U.S.

In the new health care marketplace course, McGough will challenge law and medical students to brainstorm ways to improve the current system. He said that this program is one of the first of its kind.

“To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever done what we’re about to do, and what we’re about to do is basically deploy the med students and the law students together to attack the problem of health care,” McGough said.

In April, the approximately 100 students taking the class will be put into small groups with a facilitator to discuss ideas. The law students, dispersed among each group, will report on the main findings.

“It’s almost like crowdsourcing the solution among people who are entitled to have an opinion on this,” McGough said.

McGough is in talks with the university on how to improve and broaden the course for upcoming years.

Dausey agreed that marrying law and medicine is especially significant in today’s world.

“If you think about medicine in general, where it’s going in law … We think that the students from both of those disciplines will benefit from having shared knowledge,” he said.

Nataley Davis can be reached at davisn5@duq.edu