Ree Morrow JD \u201922 realized something as she drove with her husband from Oklahoma City to Hartford in the summer of 2019 to begin her first year at the UConn School of Law. She wanted to document the varieties of American culture that they were seeing and bring them to schools around the nation.<\/p>\n
The idea was still with her a year and a half later, in her second year at UConn Law, when she heard about the\u00a0Hinkle Entrepreneurship Competition. The winner would\u00a0receive a $7,000 cash award to start a business.<\/p>\n
Morrow\u2019s\u00a0proposal, \u201cThe Road That Connects,\u201d won the competition. After she graduates next year and passes the bar exam, Morrow and her husband, Colin, will take to the road\u00a0to\u00a0explore and document the country, region by region.\u00a0She expects\u00a0the entire process of filming and editing the material\u00a0to\u00a0take up to five years.<\/p>\n
The couple plans to\u00a0deck out a van for them to comfortably live and travel in for months at a time.\u00a0Once finished\u00a0on the\u00a0mainland, they will fly to Hawaii, Guam, Puerto\u00a0Rico\u00a0and other territories. Colin Morrow, who\u00a0has a background in film and editing,\u00a0will shoot the footage of Ree interacting with and interviewing local\u00a0people\u00a0and explaining\u00a0points of\u00a0local history and culture.\u00a0As they complete each\u00a0regional package\u00a0of video, lessons and\u00a0activities in geography, civics and history,\u00a0the Morrows\u00a0plan to market it to educational institutions.<\/p>\n
The grant comes with\u00a0connections\u00a0to\u00a0the Connecticut Small Business Development Center,\u00a0the\u00a0Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Law Clinic\u00a0at UConn Law,\u00a0and the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology to help\u00a0carry out the business plan.\u00a0The award is\u00a0funded by\u00a0Muriel and David Hinkle \u201976, who\u00a0founded their\u00a0technical services\u00a0business,\u00a0Sonalysts, in 1973,\u00a0while David was an evening student at the law school.<\/p>\n
\u201cRee\u2019s\u00a0application for \u2018The Road That Connects\u2019 immediately caught the attention of the Hinkle Entrepreneurship Competition Committee,\u201d said\u00a0UConn Law\u00a0Professor Kathleen Lombardi,\u00a0who is\u00a0a\u00a0co-director of the clinic and a\u00a0member of the committee. \u201cAfter speaking with her, it was clear she has both the background and the passion for education, diversity, equity and inclusion to really make her project a success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before entering law school,\u00a0Morrow\u00a0organized religious education for a\u00a0church and taught\u00a0grades\u00a0one through nine\u00a0in her native Oklahoma City. Mission work and other travel\u00a0as a child fundamentally shifted her outlook, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEver since I was a kid,\u00a0I\u2019ve been so amazed at traveling to new places and really seeing how life is and can be different around the country and world,\u201d she\u00a0said. \u201cI\u2019m so excited to be able to give students an authentic and deep view of how people live their lives differently and meaningfully across this nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her interest\u00a0in the law\u00a0developed later in life, when she took a Non-Profit Law class at Oklahoma City University\u00a0while studying for\u00a0a\u00a0master\u2019s degree in Nonprofit Arts Leadership and Administration.\u00a0While \u201cThe Roads That Connect\u201d is her next big project, she also harbors a passionate interest in policy and the systems and structure of law.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up knowing I wanted to help people and I just never really connected that to law or being a lawyer, I just thought of what I saw in movies,\u201d Morrow said. \u201cBefore that class, I\u00a0never knew that being a lawyer could mean that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once at UConn Law in 2019, Morrow immediately began involving herself in organizations and student associations.\u00a0She is\u00a0president of the Womxn\u2019s Law Students\u2019 Association and co-president of the American Constitution Society.<\/p>\n
Carriana\u00a0Field,\u00a0director of graduate and exchange programs at UConn Law and advisor to the Womxn\u2019s Law Students\u2019 Association, said Morrow has\u00a0renewed\u00a0the organization\u2019s identity.\u00a0She led the association\u00a0to change the word \u201cWomen\u201d\u00a0in its name\u00a0to \u201cWomxn\u201d\u00a0to promote gender inclusivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cRee\u00a0has worked to create an even more inclusive way of thinking about gender and all the ways that people self-identify and correct,\u201d Field said.\u00a0 \u201cHer\u00a0Hinckle\u00a0project again highlights how she brings people together through learning and exposure to new people, places and ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morrow\u00a0believes that\u00a0the stars aligned for her project.\u00a0Not only can she rely on\u00a0her husband\u2019s videography skills,\u00a0but\u00a0a friend who is a teacher is\u00a0advising her on distribution. To top it off, Morrow\u2019s sister and brother-in-law\u00a0will help outfit the van.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter I won, a friend told me \u2018This\u00a0is the most Ree Morrow thing I have ever seen. It just had to be,\u2019\u201d Morrow said. \u201cThis project is going to be such an exciting combination of all the amazing people in my life and their unique skills and something I\u2019m really passionate about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An epiphany on the drive from Oklahoma City to Hartford in the summer of 2019 put law student Ree Morrow on a new path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":170493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1857],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2158],"class_list":["post-170492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 01:00:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170492"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170495,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170492\/revisions\/170495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/170493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170492"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=170492"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=170492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}