Second-year law student Danielle Peach was the first recipient of the Teresa J. Sigmon Scholarship.
Shortly before Danielle Peach started at the College of Law, she learned she was the first recipient of the Teresa J. Sigmon Scholarship, which Sigmon, a 1982 law graduate and a longtime medical malpractice defense attorney in Germantown, Tennessee, had recently endowed.
“It means so much,” says Peach. “Law school is a lot of commitment, with a lot of student loans, and the scholarship helps with that. But it also means a lot that someone cares enough to help someone else along their way.”
I had the opportunity to have lunch with Ms. Sigmon at the law school,” says Peach. “She asked me about myself and my life, why I wanted to go to law school and why I wanted to be lawyer. It meant a lot to me that she was interested in me as a person, and that she had been in these shoes herself.”
It means a lot that someone cares enough to help someone else along their way.
– Danielle Peach, first recipient of the Teresa J. Sigmon Scholarship
Peach grew up in Carterville, Illinois, and majored in English literature at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. “UT was on my list of law schools,” she says, “and when I visited, it felt really welcoming, a place where I could see myself living for three years.”
In June, Peach interned in the courtroom of Michigan Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who presided over the case of Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Peach, a gymnast in her younger years, always followed gymnastics, and during the Nassar case she followed Aquilina on Twitter. When Peach messaged Aquilina, the judge messaged her back and, after some lively exchanges, offered her an internship. During July, Peach interned at Cook, Barkett, Ponder & Wolz in Cape Girardeau, where she hopes to set up practice someday.
