Finalists for West Virginia University’s dean of the College of Law will visit the main campus beginning Monday, March 2.

Candidates will spend two days and one evening in Morgantown and will meet with administration, faculty, staff and students.

“The WVU College of Law has become exceptional under the guidance of visionary deans,” said Gene Cilento, dean of the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources and chair of the search committee. “The candidates we are bringing to campus have that vision and would also bring unique expertise and experience to continue this strong leadership role.”

The five candidates, and the dates of their visits, are:

Jennifer Bard (March 2-4)
Jennifer S. Bard, J.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., is the Alvin R. Allison Professor of Law and Director of the Health Law and JD/MD program at Texas Tech University School of Law. Dr. Bard is currently Special Assistant to the Provost at Texas Tech working on academic outreach and community engagement across the entire university and served as Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development at the law school from August 2011-January 2013. She is also a Professor in the new Public Health Program at Texas Tech University’s Graduate School of Biomedical Science and an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Texas Tech University Health Science Center’s School of Medicine. She has been a visiting professor at Drake University Law School in Des Moines, Iowa and in the LLM program at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

Dr. Bard teaches, publishes and speaks in the areas of public health, bioethics, constitutional law, health law, human subject research, tort law, and mental disability. She has been selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a Public Health Law Scholar in Residence, received both the Texas Tech University President’s Excellence in Teaching and Excellence in Academics Award and been voted “Best First Year Teacher.”

Dr. Bard graduated from Wellesley College, studied law and philosophy at Oxford University, got her J.D. from Yale Law School, her master’s degree in public health (MPH) from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Texas Tech University.

Gary Simson (March4-6)
Gary J. Simson, Senior Vice Provost for Scholarship for Mercer University, holds the Macon Chair in Law at the law school. After clerking for Judge J. Joseph Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Simson began his teaching career at the University of Texas School of Law in 1975. He was promoted to full professor in 1977.

Simson joined the Cornell Law School faculty as professor of law in 1980 and remained at Cornell until 2006, serving as Associate Dean for Faculty Development from 1997-2000 and as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2000-2004. In 2006 he became Dean and Joseph C. Hostetler-Baker & Hostetler Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He left Case in 2010 to become Dean of the School of Law and Macon Chair in Law at Mercer. He served as Dean until moving to his current leadership position in the central university in 2014.

Simson has taught Constitutional Law, Conflict of Laws, Religious Liberty Clinic, and seminars on freedom of religion and other constitutional law topics. His constitutional law scholarship has addressed such issues as school vouchers, Supreme Court appointments, the death penalty and religion, and single-sex schools. He is also the author of a leading conflict of laws casebook and various articles in the field.

Simson received a B.A. in 1971 from Yale College, where he majored in Spanish Literature and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a J.D. in 1974 from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of The Yale Law Journal.

Greg Bowman (March 16-18)
Gregory Bowman currently serves as Interim Dean at the WVU College of Law. He also serves as founding director of the College of Law’s Geneva Study Abroad Program, adviser for the West Virginia Law Review, and co-adviser for the WVU Jessup International Moot Court Team.

Bowman previously served as the College of Law’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. He has also co-directed the Mexico Study Abroad Program. At the university level, Bowman is actively engaged in developing new global programs for other WVU colleges. He has been president of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, a U.S. association of more than 100 law schools.

Prior to joining the WVU Law faculty, Bowman was a tenured faculty member at Mississippi College School of Law. Prior to teaching, Bowman practiced law in Chicago and Washington, D.C. with the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie and clerked for the Honorable Pierce Lively on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Bowman graduated with a bachelor’s degree from WVU in Economics and International Studies, earned a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Exeter, England, and his J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law.

Robert Ackerman (March 18-20)
Ackerman is a law professor at Wayne State University. He returned to full-time teaching and scholarship after serving almost five years as dean at Wayne Law. As dean, he led the Law School in the development of new clinics in Transnational Environmental Law, Asylum and Immigration Law, Patent Procurement, and Legal Advocacy for People with Cancer. He established a Program for International Legal Studies, secured funding for domestic and international Public Interest Law Fellowships, and initiated a pro bono program. Ackerman completed fundraising for the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights, a striking addition to the Law School that houses programs and classes that highlight Wayne State’s leadership in civil rights and public interest law.

Ackerman was previously on the faculty at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law and was director of its Center for Dispute Resolution, at the time the nation’s seventh-ranked law school dispute resolution program. Prior to that, he was dean and professor of law at Willamette University College of Law. While he was dean, the law school experienced a 60 percent increase in financial aid to law students, a revitalization of the alumni organization and annual giving, enhanced visibility for the Center for Dispute Resolution and Law and Government program, and an increase in the diversity of the faculty and student body.

Ackerman teaches courses in torts and dispute resolution. He serves on Labor@Wayne’s internal advisory board, in Wayne State’s Academic Senate, and as Wayne State University’s faculty athletics representative. He has also served on the Institute of Continuing Legal Education’s executive committee, chairing that committee from 2009-2010.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and Colgate University, Ackerman has lectured at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the University of Vienna School of Law, the Penn State University College of Medicine and Leicester Polytechnic School of Law (now deMontfort University). He has also been employed by the Denver firm of Holme Roberts & Owen and the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.

Beverly Moran (March 31-April 2)
Beverly Moran is actively involved in legal education through her writings on subjects from the diploma privilege to the law school curriculum, her service on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools and the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers, and her work with the American Bar Association.

She has received teaching awards at the University of Cincinnati, Michigan State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and she has taught and lectured overseas including at the University of Asmara (Eritrea), the University of Giessen (Germany), the People’s University and Peking University (China).

Professor Moran has helped run and manage two international centers: the Vanderbilt Center for the Americas and the Wisconsin Center on Law and Africa. She was a Fulbright scholar and has received grants from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. While in practice, she ran a $40 million economic development program for New York City after first working as an Associate at Cullen and Dykman, a New York City law firm.

Moran graduated from Vassar College, earned her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and has an LLM in taxation from the New York University School of Law.

For the full position description for the dean of the WVU College of Law, see http://employmentservices.hr.wvu.edu/wvu_jobs/non-classified_positions/dean-of-the-west-virginia-university-college-of-law.

The new dean will report to Provost Joyce McConnell. The university anticipates a start date in summer 2015.

-WVU-

ac/02/20/15

CONTACT: Joyce McConnell, WVU provost
304.293.7119; joyce.mcconnell@mail.wvu.edu

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