We are respectfully requesting that Professor Ankus’s Emotional Intelligence course be offered during both Spring and Fall semesters, expanding access to a course that provides some of the most valuable, practical lessons a future attorney can learn.

Our first-year courses build an essential foundation: we learn to brief cases, analyze legal issues, and begin preparing for the bar examination. But how strong can that foundation be if students are not also equipped to manage the mental and emotional demands of the profession they are entering?

As law students preparing to take the MPRE and assume professional responsibilities, we need opportunities to develop self-awareness, sound judgment, and healthy responses to stress. Learning how to recognize anxiety, step away from an overwhelming situation, seek support, and understand the risks of substance misuse is essential to our development as future attorneys. Students deserve space to address these issues before they reach a crisis.

Professor Ankus continues to make a lasting impact on the students he teaches. His Emotional Intelligence course offers an opportunity to develop skills that extend beyond an examination or a classroom, skills that shape how we respond to pressure, interact with others, and care for ourselves throughout our careers.

Legal education should prepare us both to practice law and to sustain ourselves while doing so. Offering this course in both spring and fall semester would demonstrate FIU Law’s commitment to educating the whole student and recognizing that student well-being is an essential part of professional preparation.

We urge the administration to add Professor Ankus’s Emotional Intelligence course to the future spring and fall schedules and make this valuable learning opportunity available to students.

We recognize that course scheduling and curriculum decisions involve competing priorities. However, limiting Emotional Intelligence to only one semester each academic year also limits the number of students who have the opportunity to take it. 

Law students must balance required courses, bar-tested subjects, clinics, externships, employment, and other electives. A course offered only once per academic year may simply not fit into every student’s schedule. Offering Emotional Intelligence in both the fall and spring would provide greater flexibility and allow more students to benefit from an educational experience that Professor Ankus is willing and eager to provide.

At a time when artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the legal profession, the ability to connect with people, demonstrate empathy, communicate effectively, and exercise emotional judgment is more important than ever.

Technology can assist with legal research and drafting. But it cannot replace the trust, compassion, and human understanding at the heart of effective legal representation.

We respectfully urge the FIU College of Law administration to:

• Offer Emotional Intelligence with Professor Ankus every fall and spring, giving more FIU Law students the opportunity to take this valuable course.
• Make student mental health a priority in practice, by offering a course that equips students to navigate the pressures of law school and legal practice.
• Support Professor Ankus’s lasting impact, enabling him to continue sharing his passion, experience, and knowledge with future generations of lawyers.

We do not just need lawyers who know the law. We need lawyers who understand people. Law school teaches us how to think like lawyers. Professor Ankus teaches us how to be lawyers. 

Please sign & share this petition to ask FIU Law to offer Emotional Intelligence in both the fall and spring semesters, giving more students the opportunity to benefit from this course.

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Disclaimer: This petition is an entirely student-led and student-organized initiative. Professor Ankus did not ask or encourage students to create this petition and is not involved in its creation, organization, or circulation.