UNC Law School Dean Search Committee

This week the UNC administration announced the members of the search committee for the new dean of Carolina Law.  They are as follows: 

Michael R. Smith, Dean UNC School of Government, Chair.  The alumni members are Richard Y. Stevens of Smith Anderson, Raleigh, Jeffery A. Allred of Nelson Mullins, Riley & Scarborough, Atlanta, and Richard A. Vinroot of Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, Charlotte.  The law faculty members are Elizabeth Gibson, Thomas A. Kelley, Ted Shaw, and Erika K. Wilson.  The student member is Leslie Puzo, UNC Law Student Bar Association President; the staff member is Kris Jensen Davidson, Associate Dean for Advancement.  The UNC faculty outside law are Jennifer Conrad, Associate Dean, Kenan Flagler Business School and James L. Leloudis, Associate Dean for Honors, UNC College of Arts & Sciences and professor of history.  The board of trustees member is Jeff Brown of Moore & Van Allen, Charlotte, and the administrator is Felicia Washington, Vice Chancellor for Workforce Strategy, Equity & Engagement.

[Update -- here is information on the dean search position announcement.]  I am expecting (and obviously hoping) that this search will draw the interest of terrific candidates. Carolina Law has an exciting intellectual environment among faculty and terrific students who go on to great careers in the state and nation.  The law school is extremely fortunate to be an important part of a great public university.  The faculty and students have great interdisciplinary opportunities here.  Looking beyond Chapel Hill, the research triangle is home to four law schools (Duke and North Carolina Central in Durham, and Campbell in Raleigh, as well as Carolina Law) and provides a great intellectual environment.  Like the other major college towns I've had the pleasure to live or work in over the decades since I graduated from high school, Chapel Hill is wonderful -- there are exciting and smart people who're setting the world on fire (metaphorically of course).  And though these days I rarely pursue cultural events, there're far more theater, music, film, and lectures here and in Durhman than anyone could possibly take in.

There's never been in my lifetime a more challenging environment for law schools, but I believe that Carolina Law is positioned well to have an important place in educating the next generation of lawyers for exciting and important careers.

Comments

[JP]

I think you have forgotten Campbell Law - in Raleigh. I am sure your co-blogger Timothy Zinnecker will forgive you.

[Jason Yackee]

Is it usual in UNC's practice to have a dean search committee that includes only a minority of law faculty members (four by my count, and not in the chair position)? That seems surprising to me, but I've only lived through one dean search in my career.

[Alfred L. Brophy]

Jason, apparently the answer is yes. I hadn't realized this was common practice (unsurprisingly I haven't followed the dean searches in other units on campus since I arrived here in 2008). However, I am informed by locals with more experience than me that dean searches here at UNC are always chaired by deans (or department heads) outside of the unit searching and that faculty from the unit are a distinct minority on those search committees. UNC's practice is different from what I'm used to seeing (and living through) at other schools.