Josephine (Jo) R. Potuto, the Richard H. Larson Professor of Constitutional Law, has been Nebraska's faculty representative (FAR) at the NCAA and conference level since May 15, 1997.

For the past four years, Potuto has been president of the 1A FAR (FARs from FBS institutions). In 2002, she was named Outstanding Faculty Athletics Representative by the All-American Football Foundation.

Potuto spent nine years (the maximum) on the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions (chair her last two years) and currently substitutes on the Committee when a member cannot serve.  She is a past Big 12 Conference representative on the NCAA Division I Management Council, served on the NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championship Committee, and currently serves on an NCAA-wide (all divisions) committee to advise NCAA staff on student-athlete issues.

Potuto is an expert on NCAA enforcement and infractions processes as well as on the general NCAA committee structure and has authored several articles on NCAA processes and operations. She has testified before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution regarding due process in NCAA infractions hearings and has made presentations to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. She also has lectured on NCAA processes and issues at, among others, the Universities of Istanbul, Washington, Maryland, and Baltimore.   Potuto is a past adviser to the Uniform Law Commissioners Committee to draft a sports agent statute, has drafted rules governing search and seizure and hearings for the Nebraska Racing Commission, and also has written on issues of gender equity in college athletics.

At Nebraska, Potuto is a member of the academic senate as well as the senate's intercollegiate athletics committee. She also served on Nebraska's NCAA site certification steering committee.

Potuto teaches constitutional law, procedural and criminal law, federal jurisdiction, and sports law. She has been a visiting professor of law at the University of Arizona, Rutgers University, the Cardozo College of Law at New York's Yeshiva University, the University of Oregon, the University of North Carolina, and Seton Hall University. She has worked as an assistant prosecutor in the Essex and Morris County (N.J.) prosecutor's offices.

Potuto was project director and a drafter of the Uniform Law Commissioners Sentencing and Corrections Act, as well as the drafter for the Nebraska Supreme Court Committee to Draft Criminal Jury Instructions. She is the author of three books and numerous articles. She also is a member of the American Law Institute.

Potuto earned her bachelor's degree in journalism at Rutgers' Douglass College; her master's degree in English literature at Seton Hall; and her juris doctorate at the Rutgers Law College. She is a member of the bars of Nebraska and New Jersey and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the U.S. District Courts for Nebraska and New Jersey.