Steven J. McDonald - 2007
Steven J. McDonald has served as General Counsel for the Rhode Island School of Design since 2002. Previously, Mr. McDonald was Associate Legal Counsel for The Ohio State University and was in private practice at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, where he represented CompuServe in Cubby v. CompuServe, the first online libel case. Since then, Mr. McDonald has handled a number of other Internet-related legal matters, ranging from alleged infringements of copyrighted materials on student web pages to investigations of computer break-ins to an e-mail death threat to Socks the Cat. He has taught courses in Internet law at Ohio State’s College of Law and at Capital University Law School. Mr. McDonald received his A.B. from Duke University and his J.D. from The Yale Law School.
Since joining NACUA in 1992, Mr. McDonald has served on a wide variety of NACUA committees, including Continuing Legal Education, Strategic Planning, the Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusivity, Board Operations, and Membership and Member Services. He was Chair of the Committee on Information Services in 1999-2000, the Task Force on Electronic Discovery in 2001-2002, the Work Group on Electronic Discovery in 2002-2003, and, for the past two years, the NACUANOTES Editorial Board. He was a member of the NACUA Board of Directors from 2000 to 2003, and edited both the first and second editions of NACUA’s best-selling compendium, The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act: A Legal Compendium. He has spoken extensively at NACUA CLE workshops and annual conferences, consistently receiving very high marks. Mr. McDonald gives generously of his time and expertise, and his work over the years has educated an entire generation of NACUA lawyers on the topics of FERPA and privacy law. His contributions to NACUANET are highly regarded and always valued by his colleagues for their clarity and thoughtfulness.
NACUA is pleased to bestow the honor of Fellow of the Association on Steven McDonald in recognition of his outstanding scholarship and appreciation for his on-going contributions to higher education, the profession, and the practice of law.