Professor Katherine E. White of the Wayne State University Law School has been chosen as one of 12 White House Fellows for the coming academic year. White House Fellowships are America's most prestigious program for leadership and public service. Each fellow works full time as a special assistant to a Cabinet member or senior presidential adviser and also participates in an education program designed to nurture her or his development as a leader.

The White House Fellows program, a nonpartisan program initiated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, was created to provide young Americans with first-hand experience in national government. Typically, fellows write speeches, help draft and review proposed legislation, answer Congressional inquiries, chair meetings and conduct briefings. Over the course of the year, each class of fellows meets with close to 100 individuals, including Supreme Court justices, Cabinet secretaries, senior White House officials, members of Congress, military leaders, foreign heads of state and leaders from the worlds of business, the arts, science and technology, and the media.

White, 35, who lives in Ann Arbor, has been at WSU since 1996. She teaches Contracts, Patent Law and Patent Enforcement. White holds a B.S.E. in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University. After law school, White served as intellectual property legal adviser to LM Ericsson Co. in Stockholm before joining the Army on active duty, where she became part of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps.

White was then accepted into the honors program for the Office of the Chief Counsel of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, one of only five people from the JAG Corps admitted that year. While there, White worked on patenting inventions of the four laboratories of the Corps of Engineers. While still in the Army, White passed the examination for registration for patent attorneys and agents, also known as the "patent bar."

At night, White also pursued a master's degree in intellectual property from George Washington National Law Center in Washington, DC, the largest LL.M. program in the world. After the Army, White clerked for Hon. Randall R. Rader, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. White was elected to the University of Michigan Board of Regents in November 1998.

A major in the U.S. Army Reserves, White continues to be involved in the military. Once a year for two weeks, she teaches at JAG school at the University of Virginia School of Law. The first woman reserve officer ever to teach in the Contract and Fiscal Law Department, White's subjects are government contracts and alternative dispute resolution. She also writes all the texts for the courses she teaches.