Ronald E. Wheeler

Biography

Professor Wheeler, in the interim role of Associate Dean for Equity, Justice, & Engagement is responsible for assuring that classroom climate concerns are appropriately addressed whether they flow through the official Classroom Climate Reporting Portal or from students who drop into his office. He further works to help faculty, staff, and students both understand and work toward implementing best practices for equity and inclusion in everything we do here at BU Law.

Ronald Wheeler, a recognized leader in the area of legal research instruction, has served in various law library management roles at law schools across the country, including Suffolk University Law School, the University of San Francisco School of Law, Georgia State University College of Law, and the University of New Mexico School of Law. Wheeler has taught legal research in various contexts including in stand-alone first year legal research courses, upper division courses, online, and in study abroad programs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Linz, Austria. Wheeler also taught a course on US Legal Research to Chinese law students at the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, China during the summer of 2012. Beyond legal research Wheeler has taught research and writing seminars like Queer Legal Scholarship which addresses the intersection of sexual orientation law and academic literature, Critical Race Theory, and he taught Critical Thinking in the Pre-Law Summer Institute for American Indians and Alaska Natives at the American Indian Law Center in Albuquerque, NM.  Wheeler hopes to soon complete developing courses like Black Legal Scholarship and Critical Legal Research.

Professor Wheeler’s scholarship focusing on legal research techniques, legal research instruction, and algorithm-driven search engines gained him national attention, and he is regularly called upon to speak about innovations in teaching and other legal research-related topics. He is a well-known author and speaker addressing issues related to law library management; the role of the law library in legal education; and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Access; and Critical Legal Research. Wheeler penned several installments of Diversity Dialogues, a regular feature in Law Library Journal which aimed to engage scholarly conversation on issues of diversity and inclusion in librarianship and the legal profession. In 2014, Wheeler was named to the Lawyers of Color “50 under 50” list of minority attorneys making an impact on legal education.

From 2016 to 2017, Director Wheeler served as president of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), becoming the first African-American male president of AALL. He was appointed to chair AALL’s Inclusion, Diversity & Equity Awareness Special Committee whose work from 2020 to 2022 resulted in the adoption by AALL of several of the Special Committee’s recommendations.  Wheeler is a member of the Law Librarians of New England (LLNE), the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL), the British & Irish Association of Law Libraries (BIALL), and the Association of Boston Law Librarians (ABLL). He serves on the executive boards of the New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO), the Boston Academic Law Library Collective (BALLCO), and the Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC).