Dean stresses diversity, collegiality

Minnesota Law’s newly appointed dean, William McGeveran, says he is excited to “hit the ground running” when he officially assumes the post on June 17.

McGeveran served as the school’s interim dean during the 2023-24 academic year after Dean Garry Jenkins resigned last year to become president of Bates College in Maine. McGeveran, the Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty & Bennett Professor of Law, will be the school’s 12th dean.

“I’ve been here for 18 years, and I love the school,” McGeveran said. “But in a year as interim dean, I learned all kinds of things about it that I didn’t know before from my previous vantage point, and now I love it more.”

A member of the Minnesota Law community for nearly two decades, McGeveran is ready to work swiftly to build on what he lauds as the law school’s multiple successes.

“One nice thing about coming into this with a lot of familiarity and time as interim dean is that you can hit the ground running more easily than someone else might. And so, I intend to take advantage of that,” McGeveran said.

It may not be surprising that McGeveran, as a law professor, finds that the faculty is one of the strengths of the law school.

“I think the faculty really is the beating heart of the school,” McGeveran said.

A priority for McGeveran is growing the faculty, which has become smaller over time, mainly due to retirements. They had five new professors start in 2023, with three starting in the fall. McGeveran described the faculty as not only “first-class” but also “highly collegial.” With fewer lawyers seeking professorships while the school strives to increase diversity, adding to the faculty is a tall order.

“We need to keep growing and expanding the faculty. That’s a priority,” McGeveran said. “The legal profession is not diverse enough, and the legal academic profession, if anything, has more under-representation. It’s challenging to grow the faculty, particularly for diversity, but even overall, it’s challenging to grow the faculty because we have, as I say, we have this excellent collegial faculty culture now, and you want to bring people in who energize it and improve it.”

McGeveran states that his other top goal is to continue to build student community, something that took a hit with the pandemic. “The other sort of main immediate goal is that we’re really focusing on student community and belonging in the law school as a priority,” McGeveran said. “Like institutions everywhere, the COVID hangover is real. And we’re working hard with our students who, after all, are typically people who had a lot of their undergraduate experience scarred by COVID. We are bringing as much energy and collegiality and cohesiveness to our student life as we can. And we made a lot of progress this past year in the interim. The number of events that student organizations held was double, last fall was double what it had been the previous fall. Life is returning, but we really want to foster that.”

Inclusivity which McGeveran said is a crucial component of DEI is also pursued with the aim of strengthening diversity. “Our student body is a good deal more diverse than it was 10 years ago, and we have to make sure that as we build that community we’re building one that’s inclusive,” McGeveran said. “And you can have the diversity of people’s backgrounds, but if you don’t bring that together in an inclusive way that where everyone gets a benefit from that diversity, then you’ve not finished the job.”

The culture of Minnesota is central to both of these goals. “We have something really special here in terms of our culture. We have to figure out how to expand that and take advantage of that as we get more and more talent here, but never ruin our collegial culture,” McGeveran said. “It is something quintessentially Minnesota.”

Aside from the school’s culture, McGeveran identifies its emphasis on theory and practice as a strength. “There is an unusual strength of our law school compared to others that emerges from our demonstrated commitment to integrating the theory that we teach with the practice of law that our students will be doing,” McGeveran stated.

The school is tied at number 16 in U.S. News and World Report’s 2024 ranking of best law schools. While McGeveran acknowledges the that publication’s ranking has “plenty of flaws,” he said the school is “proud to be placed well” in it. National Jurist does a ranking for practical training, and Minnesota Law is ranked fifth.

This “shows we are doing both excelling at teaching students how to take the law that they’re learning and the analytical skills that they’re learning and them put them to use,” McGeveran stated. “The theory and the practice are really both valued here and actually strengthen each other. Not an add-on, it’s not an extra thing. But also, it’s not instead of the traditional legal education, it’s a both-and.”

“We’ve really basically taken our energy for ideas and also we teach students how to put those ideas into action, which I think is an exciting combination. And with the way that the bar is changing going forward, the next-gen bar coming down the road, and with the demands we’re hearing from employers for better prepared new attorneys, this is going to become important for law schools across the country, but we have an enormous head start,” McGeveran added.

More information about fall events officially welcoming McGeveran as the next dean are forthcoming.

“There’s just so much going on in so many different corners. There’s so much energy and activity and ideas here. And from this seat, I get to see a bigger cross-section of it,” McGeveran said.

Related: William McGeveran named 12th dean of Minnesota Law

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