Zielinski Law LLCTeaching
Southern Illinois University Carbondale · College of Business and Analytics
Clinical Assistant Professor of Finance & Economics
Courses
Kevin teaches the business-law sequence in SIU’s College of Business and Analytics. The courses are built the way he learned to teach: black-letter rules first, then the fact pattern that makes the rule matter, then the student explaining it back.
FIN 270
Legal and Social Environment of Business. The legal system, constitutional limits on regulation, torts, contracts, agency, and the ethical and social setting in which firms operate.
FIN 280
Business Law I. Contracts and sales under the common law and the UCC, from formation through remedies, with commercial paper and secured transactions.
FIN 380
Business Law II. Business organizations, agency, securities regulation, property, bankruptcy, and the regulatory state as it reaches the firm.
Office: 1025 Lincoln Drive, Rehn Hall #130, Carbondale, IL 62901 · (618) 453-2417. Current students should use the course site on D2L for materials and announcements.
Student evaluations, FIN 270, Fall 2025
Fall 2025 was Kevin’s first semester in a university classroom. He publishes his evaluations in full, including the items he is working on, because students deserve to know what they are getting and because the numbers are the baseline he is building from.
Overall course rating
8.57 / 10
Question 20, average across 30 responses
Highest-rated items (scale 1–5)
Strong performance (4.50–4.70)
Working on (scale 1–5)
The pattern is plain: students participate, ask questions, and trust the grading. The work ahead is on explanation and method, which is why FIN 270 now opens every unit with a worked fact pattern before the rule.
Elsewhere in the classroom
Before SIU, Kevin taught an introductory law course for Upward Bound and spent eight years as a private tutor. See Tutoring for subjects and reviews, and the curriculum vitae for the full teaching record.