It is with great pleasure that the Office of the President announces that the Honorable Mary Ellen Barbera, chief judge, court of appeals, will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the College of Liberal Art’s commencement ceremony on May 21.
Judge Barbera is the first woman to head Maryland’s highest court. She had served as judge, 7th Appellate Judicial Circuit, Montgomery County, Md., for nearly five years before accepting Gov. Martin O’Malley’s appointment following chief judge Robert Bell’s retirement.
A Baltimore native who earned a Bachelor’s degree from Towson in 1975, she traces her career in public service to her eight years as a public school teacher at Patapsco Elementary School in Baltimore’s Cherry Hill neighborhood. In the classroom she said she learned firsthand that “most laws are not abstractions, but rules whose application influences real people.”
She enrolled in law school in the late ’70s, a mother pursuing a law degree at night while continuing to teach full-time during the day. After graduating from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1984, she launched her career as an assistant attorney general (1985-89), later becoming deputy chief of the Criminal Appeals Division (1989-98), Office of the Attorney General.
