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2009 News Articles › Education Law Section Honors Dayton Cole
Education Law Section Honors Dayton Cole
Article Date: Friday, April 24, 2009
Written By: Russell Rawlings
From left, Catherine and Dayton Cole with daughters Erin and Amy,
following awards ceremony. |
Dayton Cole was honored Friday as the 2009 recipient of the
Distinguished Service Award presented by the Education Law Section
of the North Carolina Bar Association. The award was presented
during the section's annual meeting at the N.C. Bar Center in
Cary.
Cole serves as university attorney for Appalachian State
University, a position he has held since 1988. During this tenure,
he has served as president of the Watauga County Bar Association
and as a member of the NCBA Board of Governors.
A former chair of the Education Law Section, Cole has also been
actively involved in the National Association of College and
University Attorneys. In addition to extensive committee service,
he served as treasurer of the national association from 2002-05 and
as a member of the board of directors from 1998-2001 and
2002-05.
Cole is originally from Texas, where he is a native of Port
Lavaca and a graduate of Bay City High School. He received his
undergraduate degree from Southwest Texas State University in San
Marcos in 1976 and graduated from the South Texas School of Law in
Houston in 1981.
Prior to making the move to Appalachian State, Cole served as
university attorney for Texas A&M-Commerce (formerly East Texas
State University) and as an assistant university attorney at Texas
State University (formerly Southwest Texas State University).
Cole is married to the former Catherine Matthews. They have five
children: Erin, Adam, Justin, Sara and Amy.
"Dayton is a practitioner of the highest caliber in the field of
education law," stated fellow university attorney Donna Gooden
Payne of East Carolina University in support of Cole's nomination.
"More important than that, he is a terrific human being."
"Dayton has always made new attorneys feel welcome in the
fraternity of education lawyers," Payne added. "He is consistently
warm and encouraging. I have admired, too, his inclusion of his
family in outings connected with our national and state meetings,
always sending a message that as much as he enjoyed his legal
practice, family came first."
The Distinguished Service Award was established in 1990 to
recognize "outstanding leadership by an attorney in the field of
education law." It is presented as merited to "an attorney who has
a record of professional, community and personal achievement in the
representation or affiliation with educational institutions,
including public and private schools and colleges or universities,
involvement with parents, teachers, faculty or administrators in
the field of education law."
Previous recipients of the award were Edwin Speas Jr. (1990),
John Hardy (1991), Robert Phay (1992), Laurie Mesibov (1993),
George Rogister Jr. (1994), Douglas Punger (1995), Wardlaw Lamar
(1996), Ann Majestic (1998), Phillip Dixon Sr. (2003), Elizabeth
"Betsy" Bunting (2004), Walter L. Currie (2005), John Gresham
(2006), Thomas Ziko (2007) and Allison Schafer (2008).