Degna P. Levister is presently the Associate Dean for Enrollment Management and Access Initiatives, Executive Director of Pipeline to Justice at the City University of New York School of Law. Dean Levister began her career as a Registered Professional Nurse. She holds a Master’s Degree from Columbia University Teacher’s College and received her J.D. from Brooklyn Law School, where she was awarded the Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship. Before joining the faculty of CUNY Law School in 2001, she ran the Urban Justice Center’s Homelessness Outreach and Prevention Project, which provides direct civil legal representation to the poor via soup kitchen/food pantry outreach clinics. Her prior work was in a variety of positions at the Legal Aid Society including the Brooklyn Office For The Aging, the Criminal Appeals Bureau, and the Bronx and Brooklyn Neighborhood offices.
As a Clinical Law Professor at the law school she has taught in every year of the program. Courses include 1L Lawyering Seminars, the Health Law Concentration, the Irene Diamond Professional Skills Center and the Pipeline to Justice. As Clinical Law Professor and Supervising Attorney at Main Street Legal Services, the law school’s clinic, she co-taught in the Economic Justice Project and in the Elder Law Clinic through December 2014. In January 2015 she stepped into the role of Interim Assistant Dean of Admissions and Enrollment Management.
