The Author

Crystal Rae Coel (pronounced like Noel but with a “C”), M.A., J.D., (Esquire), is the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs and Diversity at the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. She began her position in 2020 and she received a Student Champion Award for outstanding service in helping law students during the pandemic. She was also chosen for Leadership Louisville during her first year.

For 25 years, she was the Director of Speech and Debate at Murray State University. She was also Murray State’s first African-American Head of a Residential College, Elizabeth College. She is an independent contractor for the Talent Trek Agency as a Voice Over Artist. For ten years, she served as a Governor appointed member of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy.

Dean Coel has appeared in Who’s Who in Education and Who’s Who in American Law. Her expertise is in public address, debate, mediation, broadcast performance, team communication, and leadership. She’s an active and licensed Pennsylvania attorney, a certified mediator, motivational speaker and corporate consultant. Her clients have included but are not limited to the National Weather Service, Kroger subsidiaries KenLake Foods, Inc. and Delight Products, Inc. and The American Baptist Extension Corporation. She traveled to Taipei, Taiwan where she conducted a three-day workshop/seminar for the Intel-NTU Connected Context Computing Center at National Taiwan University.

Dean Coel is from suburban Philadelphia, PA (Haverford Township). She received her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Media and Journalism from Hampton University in Virginia, her Master of Arts in Communications with an emphasis in public address from the University of Louisiana at Monroe, and her Doctor of Jurisprudence from the Southern University Law Center. She has taught in London, England; Dublin, Ireland; and at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville, the University of Louisiana at Monroe and the Community College of Philadelphia. She is a member of many academic honor societies and professional communication and legal organizations. She is a Board Member and the South Region Representative for the National Association for Law Student Affairs Professionals; and she serves as a Board Member and  Director of Communications for the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education.

Over the past 20 years, she has received numerous awards for forensics and teaching excellence including the Board of Regents Excellence in Teaching award and the  Excellence in Leadership award from the National Society of Leadership and Success. She is the author of THE Presentation Guide Book: From the Classroom to the Boardroom (1st-3rd eds.) and she co-authored the 4th edition. She is the co-author of the journal article Workplace Bullying Policies, Higher Education, and the First Amendment: Building Bridges not Walls that received national press releases from Taylor and Francis and the National Communication Association. The article is in the June 2018 First Amendment Studies Journal. Other peer-reviewed articles appear in the Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships and the Kentucky Journal of Communication. Dean Coel loves God as the Trinity, her family members, her friends and her students!