Spring Break
Law school dean to step down
O'Hara to leave post in 2009 after 10 years
Puja Parikh
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: News
After a decade as dean of the Law School, Patricia O'Hara will leave her position at the University in June next year because "10 years is the optimal length of time to serve as dean," she said in a statement on March 26.
O'Hara joined the law school faulty in 1981 and nine years she later became vice president of Student Affairs. After another nine years, she left the post to become the dean of the Law School in 1999.
O'Hara said in her statement that a part of being a dean is "[knowing] when the responsibilities of leadership should be handed off to others."
She said 10 years in office is long enough to get good work done but at the same time "it is not so long as to threaten the possibility of either a lack of freshness and optimism, or to compromise the sense of joy that must be experienced for good work to flourish," O'Hara said.
Executive associate dean and law professor John Robinson praised O'Hara's leadership and commitment during the last decade.
"Like her predecessor, Dean O'Hara has been fully committed to this law school's being recognized as both a top flight law school nationally and as one that, in the Catholic tradition, invites serious and sustained consideration of the normative dimensions of the law. She has invested an enormous amount of time and an equal amount of intelligence and imagination in achieving that objective."
O'Hara's contributions to Notre Dame, however, were questioned in 2007, when the Law School dropped from No. 22 to No. 28 in the U.S. News and World Report Law School rankings. This was the program's largest drop since 2000.
"The rankings are notoriously controversial, and several leading legal academics and law schools have pointed out the lack of consistency in the computation of these rankings," said Katherine Kirkpatrick, second year law student and secretary of the Student Bar Association.
She said it's natural for schools' rankings to shift from year to year. This year, U.S. News and World Report ranked the Law School again at No. 22.
O'Hara joined the law school faulty in 1981 and nine years she later became vice president of Student Affairs. After another nine years, she left the post to become the dean of the Law School in 1999.
O'Hara said in her statement that a part of being a dean is "[knowing] when the responsibilities of leadership should be handed off to others."
She said 10 years in office is long enough to get good work done but at the same time "it is not so long as to threaten the possibility of either a lack of freshness and optimism, or to compromise the sense of joy that must be experienced for good work to flourish," O'Hara said.
Executive associate dean and law professor John Robinson praised O'Hara's leadership and commitment during the last decade.
"Like her predecessor, Dean O'Hara has been fully committed to this law school's being recognized as both a top flight law school nationally and as one that, in the Catholic tradition, invites serious and sustained consideration of the normative dimensions of the law. She has invested an enormous amount of time and an equal amount of intelligence and imagination in achieving that objective."
O'Hara's contributions to Notre Dame, however, were questioned in 2007, when the Law School dropped from No. 22 to No. 28 in the U.S. News and World Report Law School rankings. This was the program's largest drop since 2000.
"The rankings are notoriously controversial, and several leading legal academics and law schools have pointed out the lack of consistency in the computation of these rankings," said Katherine Kirkpatrick, second year law student and secretary of the Student Bar Association.
She said it's natural for schools' rankings to shift from year to year. This year, U.S. News and World Report ranked the Law School again at No. 22.