April 1, 2013
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Patricia (Tricia) Bellia, University of Notre Dame professor of law and Notre Dame Presidential Fellow and the chair of the University’s Faculty Board on Athletics, has received Notre Dame’s BIG EAST Conference award for 2012-13 National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
This award is an effort by the BIG EAST to acknowledge the contributions towards and support of girls’ and women’s athletics by individuals in communities of its member institutions. Bellia was presented the award at a timeout March 4 during the Notre Dame-Connecticut women’s basketball game at Purcell Pavilion.
Previous Notre Dame recipients of the award include former University president Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh C.S.C., former athletics director Dick Rosenthal, former athletics administrator Tony Yelovich, current women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw and current senior deputy athletics director Missy Conboy.
A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 2000 Bellia was appointed chair of the University’s Faculty Board on Athletics in 2009. Notre Dame’s Faculty Board on Athletics serves as the principal advisory group to the President on educational issues related to intercollegiate athletics and also functions as a formal liaison between the faculty and the Athletic Department. The committee monitors data on the admission of student-athletes and their academic performance, progress toward degrees, and graduation rates. It also assesses the effectiveness of institutional support for student-athletes.
Bellia also serves as the University’s NCAA faculty athletics representative and as the Faculty Board on Athletics liaison for the football, volleyball and women’s tennis programs.
A true advocate for student-athletes at Notre Dame she works tirelessly to help enhance their overall experience at the University–both in the classroom and on the playing field. Thanks to her efforts, Notre Dame has ranked at or near the top annually in the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate (GSR) and Academic Progress Rate (APR) figures as well as the Department of Education’s federal reports. A valuable resource and friend to coaches, administrators and student-athletes at Notre Dame, Bellia is seen throughout the school year at many athletic events with her family.
Bellia teaches and researches in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law, cyberlaw, electronic surveillance law, and copyright law. She is co-author of a leading cyberlaw casebook and has published several articles on Internet law (particularly surveillance and privacy issues) and separation of powers. She has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia Law School (2007).
Bellia earned her A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1991, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and also competed on the Harvard varsity tennis squad. Before attending the Yale Law School, she worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, serving as an editor for Foreign Policy magazine and co-authoring a book on self-determination movements. At Yale, she served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, executive editor of the Yale Journal of International Law, and student director of the Immigration Legal Services clinic. Upon graduation in 1995, she clerked for Judge José A. Cabranes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States. Following her clerkships, she worked for three years as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice.