College of Law, University of Illinois

Dean Heidi M. Hurd
David C. Baum Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy
Co-Director of the Program in Law and Philosophy
Telephone (217) 333-9857
hhurd@law.uiuc.edu

Greetings! I want to issue a warm welcome to those of you who are new to the College of Law; a hearty welcome back to those of you who are returning; and a wave across the campus and across the miles to our University colleagues and our extended family of alumni whose challenges lie outside our hallways, but whose hearts, we hope, will always find a home here.

I have many things to tell you in this opening greeting. Beyond the fact that the College of Law is now the second licensed vendor of Starbucks Coffee in Champaign County (with Frappuccinos forthcoming!), the first bit of introductory news is that this greeting marks the initiation of what will be a series of monthly Dean’s Newsletters that will report upon the events, activities, and issues of contemporary importance at the College of Law. I hope that you enjoy these updates, and that they provide a means of staying current with the College’s constant metamorphosis. In what follows, then, I shall tell you about:

FALL 2003 EVENTS
This year, in commemoration of its 50^th anniversary, many (though not all) of our significant public events will be devoted to exploring themes raised by the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education. This commemoration will conclude in the Spring with a marvelous multi-day conference, co-sponsored by the College of Law and the College of Education, which will intensively examine the legacy of Brown and the lessons to be learned from the first fifty years of its application.

I urge you all to attend as many of the public events hosted by the College as your busy lives will permit. The schedule of such events this semester is very full and it affords multiple opportunities to meet persons of distinguished national reputation. Even more events and activities are in the planning, but for now, please calendar the following occasions:

September 15, 12:00 pm, Room A:	Debate on the Patriot Act. Sponsored by the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society, and moderated by Professor Steve Beckett.
October 1, 12:00 pm, Auditorium:	"Jim Crow’s Children." Lecture by Peter Irons, Professor of Political Science, University of California at San Diego, on his best-selling book.
October 2, 4:00 pm, Auditorium:	David C. Baum Memorial Lecture: "From Equality to Diversity: The Detour from Brown to Grutter," President Colin Diver, Reed College.
October 9, 8:00 pm, Auditorium:	Panel Discussion on "War Crimes, Restitution, Reconciliation" featuring David Cohen, Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California-Berkeley, and a panel of University of Illinois professors. Co-sponsored by the College of Law and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities.
October 24, 3:00 pm, Auditorium:	Piper Rudnick-Vacketta Lecture: Richard Army, Former House Majority Leader and Co-Chairman of Citizens for a Sound Economy.
November 14, 4:00 pm, Room D:	Annual Environmental Law Lecture: Professor Robert Glennon, University of Arizona Law School, on the impending American water crises.
November 19, 4:00 pm, Auditorium:	"Law in the Academy." Lecture by Professor Thomas Ulen, in celebration of his appointment to a Swanlund campus Chair.

NEW TRADITIONS
While I am delighted to be returned to the classroom this semester and to be able to get to know the 1L students in Section C, my short experience in this job has made it clear that we would all benefit from more structured means by which to talk about the law school–its strengths, its weaknesses, its challenges, and its future. To that end, and in partnership with Associate Dean Charles Tabb, Assistant Dean Virginia Vermillion, and SBA President Jeff Stotler, I am pleased to announce the creation of a set of initiatives that I hope will provide valuable means by which students, faculty, and staff members can better get to know and talk with one another.

Dean's Open Forums: Each month I shall hold a "Dean's Open Forum" at which I shall be very pleased to discuss with students, staff, and faculty any issues which are of concern to them or any topics that would benefit from open dialogue. You are invited to attend these casual monthly gatherings–to bring questions, concerns, ideas, proposed initiatives, and the like. The only condition that applies to this invitation is as follows: for every problem that you identify, I’d ask you to have a possible, if tentative, solution for discussion. The dates and locations of this year’s open forums are as follows:

Fall Semester
September 16, 3:00-4:00, Room F
October 21, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm, Room H
November 10, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm, Room H

Spring Semester
January 26, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm, Room H
February 19, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm, Room H
March 12, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm, Room H
April 6, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm, Room H

Take a Faculty/Staff Member to Lunch Program: Faculty and staff members are most pleased to be invited to join groups of students for lunch, and in order to encourage an even more lively "lunch culture" I am very pleased to announce the creation of a new initiative that will reimburse students for the cost of faculty and staff members’ lunches. (I’d love to reimburse students for their lunches as well, but we’re simply not that flush!) Here’s how our new program works. If two or more students invite a faculty or staff member to lunch and pick up the tab, all they need do to be reimbursed for the cost of the faculty/staff member’s lunch is to drop by the Deans’ Suite and submit the receipt for the lunch to Diana Marshall, the Assistant to the Office of Student Services. Receipts must be submitted within 10 days of the date of the lunch; the College will reimburse up to $10 of the cost of the faculty/staff member’s lunch, and alcohol cannot be reimbursed. So be bold: Ask a faculty or staff member to lunch. Their bill is on me (but you can pretend it’s on you when you take them out!).

Dean’s Lunches: As a means of better getting to know you, I invite you, individually or in small groups, to sign up for one of the monthly luncheons that I will be hosting over the course of the year. A sign-up sheet is posted in my office, Room 202E in the Deans’ Suite, so please swing by and reserve a seat at one of these events. I will ask various administrators to attend these luncheons so that those who come to them have an opportunity to get to know other members of the College’s hard-working staff. I would also be very pleased to join groups of students for lunches at other times as my schedule permits, so please do not hesitate to look into other dates.

Fall Semester
September 23, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, Room 208
October 22, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm, Room 200
November 14, 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm, Room J

Spring Semester
January 26, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm, Room 208
February 13, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, Room 200
March 16, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, Room 200
April 14, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, Room 200

Student Advisory Committee: In partnership with the SBA, Assistant Dean Virginia Vermillion, Associate Dean Charles Tabb, and I are working to establish a small Dean’s Student Advisory Committee, which can be consulted on matters of institutional importance as and when they arise. Designed on the model of the Faculty Executive Committee, this Committee will be called upon to offer advice on matters of academic and administrative policy that bear on the experiences that students have within the College community. I hope that the creation of this Committee, together with the creation of the various opportunities for dialogue discussed above, makes clear how important I believe it is to have open avenues of communication between the various constituencies within the College.

NEW MEMBERS OF THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY
People are my favorite things to brag about, and we have a very exciting new group of students, faculty, and staff members joining the College this Fall, and the energy that they are bringing to our classrooms and administrative efforts is positively infective.

NEW STUDENTS
The incoming J.D. Class of 2006 is an impressive and very diverse group. Minority students total 36% of the class!--a figure up a full third from last year's class total of 27%--and women represent 45% of the class. The Class boasts a median GPA of 3.37, a 75th percentile LSAT score of 164 (up a point from last year's class), a median LSAT score of 162 (matching last year's class), and a 25th percentile LSAT score of 159 (also matching last year's class). Representing 93 universities, 27 states, and 3 countries, with an average age of 24, the Class of 2006 is destined to do the College of Law proud. Add to the remarkable mix of new J.D. students our very accomplished LL.M. Class of 2004, representing 13 different countries and an array of impressive foreign career experiences, and we have a multicultural recipe for a very lively year!

In addition to welcoming the J.D. class of 2006 and the LL.M. Class of 2004, please join me in greeting:

NEW FACULTY
Harold Greenberg is teaching Commercial Law in the fall as a Visiting Professor. Professor Greenberg comes to us from Indiana-Indianapolis, where he has taught commercial law for many years, and where he won the Indiana University Trustees' Teaching Award in 2002. He received his A.B. summa cum laude from Temple, and his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also was elected to Order of the Coif. After graduating from Penn, he clerked for Justice Samuel Roberts on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and then practiced law for 13 years as an associate and then partner with Cohen, Shapiro, Polisher, Shiekman & Cohen in Philadelphia. He has written books and numerous articles on commercial law.

Amy Wenz is teaching Administrative Law in the Fall and Income Taxation in the spring. Professor Wenz graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1998 and was elected to Order of the Coif. She served as Articles Editor for the University of Illinois Law Review. She received her B.S. degree from Miami University (Ohio) in 1995. After graduating from law school, Professor Wenz clerked for the Honorable James L. Ryan of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Since 1999, she has been an associate in the tax department of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood in Chicago.

George Mader is joining the College’s Legal Research and Writing faculty, having taught the subject at the University of Minnesota Law School last year. He received his J.D. cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 2000, where he received the award for the best brief of the Jessup International Moot Court competition and served as a teaching assistant in Contracts and Constitutional Law classes. He has a B.A. cum laude from St. John’s University, and an M.A. in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, where he taught numerous courses in History and English. He served as a Research Assistant to Justice Paul Anderson of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a Judicial Clerk to Justices Alan Page and Joan Ericksen Lancaster of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and a Judicial Clerk to Judge Myron Bright of the 8^th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

NEW STAFF
ADMISSIONS: In the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid we have a brand new team of professionals–Grant Keener and Paul Pless–who bring a terrific combination of experience, intelligence, and enthusiasm to the task of identifying and recruiting students who will be as diverse, experienced, interesting, and collegial as are the students of the past and present about whom we so often brag. They join Patricia Carlson, our very experienced Admissions Coordinator, whose hours of hard work and dedication crucially helped steward the office through the summer transition period. They also join Admissions Office Assistant, Patricia Camp, who similarly invested extra efforts in ensuring that the Class of 2006 had all that they needed to make the transition to campus for the start of fall classes.

Grant Keener, our new Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, is a 1997 graduate of Ohio Northern University College of Law where he held several offices in the Student Bar Association. Grant has more than five years of law school admissions experience, most recently serving as the chief admissions officer for the Touro College, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center. Grant has been very active in the Law School Admission Council, including serving as a speaker at a 2002 forum on the admissions process. Grant holds a B.S. degree from Penn State University.

Paul Pless, the Assistant Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, is a 2003 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law. He was awarded the Rickert Award for Excellence in Service to the College of Law Community. Prior to coming to law school, Paul worked in the Student Life department of Prairie State College. He received his bachelor’s degree in Political Studies from the University of Illinois at Springfield, and while in college he served as the Senior Intern on the staff of House Speaker Madigan.

CAREER SERVICES: In the Office of Career Services we have another new dynamic duo, Stacey Tutt and Elissa Libman, both of whom are dedicated to sustaining the stellar service that is the hallmark of the office and that last year won the office a 100% placement rate. They join Assistant Dean Lois Casaleggi, and staff members Shirley Pelmore and Velviet Rardin, who have been hard at work all summer preparing for a very active on-campus recruiting season and a year thematically dedicated to further nationalizing the placement of students and to acquainting and connecting them with the array of public service, governmental, small firm, and non-traditional career opportunities available to law graduates.

Stacey Tutt is the Associate Director of Career Services and a 2003 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law, where she graduated cum laude and received the Rickert Award for Excellence in Public Service. Stacey previously worked for two years as the Public Interest Coordinator for the Office of Career Services. In 2002, she was awarded the prestigious Goldmark Equal Access to Justice Internship, in which capacity she focused on domestic violence issues. She holds a B.A. in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Elissa Libman is our new Assistant Director of Career Services. She graduated Order of the Coif from Northwestern University School of Law in 1998. Previously, she practiced for more than four years as an attorney in Sidley Austin Brown & Wood’s Chicago office, acquiring extensive experience in firm hiring and evaluation processes. Elissa holds a B.A. in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: In the year that marks the 50^th Anniversary of the College of Law’s first LL.M. graduating class, we are very excited to announce the appointment of the College’s first full-time International Studies Program Director, Carolyn Pribble. The creation of this position will enable us to forge innovative faculty and student exchange programs with leading law schools around the globe; to facilitate the placement of our students in multi-national firms and financial institutions; to identify and recruit successful lawyers, judges, and legal academics who will benefit from and further diversify our very excellent graduate program; and to enable our international alumni to better preserve their connections to their American alma mater and to one another.

Carolyn Pribble brings to the College of Law community a wealth of experience in crafting foreign programs, creating exchange opportunities, and pursuing international development efforts. From 1989-96, for example, she was the Director of International Programs with the University of Illinois Executive Development Center, during which time she developed a number of initiatives with China and countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Upon becoming the Acting Director of the EDC in 1997, she extended the Center’s outreach to Latin America and represented the College of Commerce and Business Administration in meetings with business and governmental organizations around the globe. Carolyn now joins the College after three years in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences where she has served as the Director of Development. She has a B.S. in Agricultural Economics, an M.A. in Extension Education, and a Certificate in Business Administration, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

COMMUNICATIONS: Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of alumnus and Board of Visitors member Chuck Bay, the CEO of KANA, which provides the industry's leading customer relations management systems to the largest businesses in the world, the College of Law is experimentally adapting a CRM system to the unique needs of an institution of higher education.

Seema Desai will be employing Chuck’s generously-donated KANA software to work with our Relationship Building Project in the development of marketing strategies for recruiting students, marketing the College of Law, strengthening alumni relationships, and developing fund raising opportunities. She joins us from Northwestern University where she was a marketing research analyst for the School of Continuing Studies. Before working at Northwestern, Ms. Desai worked with the SMG Marketing Group in Chicago. Ms. Desai received her M.B.A .and her M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communications from Loyola.

BUDGETING AND PLANNING: Maxine Sandretto has joined the College of Law as the Director of Budget and Resource Planning. Maxine will oversee financial affairs for the College and will supervise the Business Office staff. Additionally she will manage facilities services for the Law Building. Maxine joins us from the Office of Business and Financial Services on campus where she was Assistant Director of Business and Financial Services since 1999. Before coming to the University of Illinois Maxine was the Financial Services Administrator for the St. Joseph County public library system in Indiana. She holds M.B.A.and M.L.S. degrees from Indiana University, and a B.A. from the University of Northern Iowa.

DEBTS OF THANKS
On a final note, the College is indebted to several people who stepped up over the summer months to assist in carrying out crucial administrative functions in offices requiring temporary additional assistance. Please join me in thanking:

Professor Aylon Schulte, who served as Interim Assistant Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid.

Professor Thomas Mills, who served as Interim Director of the College’s International Studies Program.

Ms. Patricia Carlson, who helped to plan and conduct the College’s summer recruitment initiatives.

Please also join me in thanking Mr. Matt Gardner, for his willingness to serve through the summer months and this Fall semester as Interim Director of Information Services. Special thanks are also owed to Assistant Dean John Rossi, for his willingness to lend invaluable assistance to the College’s development and alumni relations efforts during its interim search for an Assistant Dean of Development and Alumni Relations.

I hope that the coming Fall is productive, interesting, and rewarding for all of the members of the College of Law community. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance.

Best wishes,
Heidi M. Hurd
Dean and David C. Baum Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy
University of Illinois College of Law