Status: Candidate Cultivation
Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) is seeking a visionary, dynamic, entrepreneurial, and collaborative leader to serve as dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law starting in the summer of 2025. The dean of Chicago-Kent will leverage the distinctive assets of this student-centered, forward-leaning law school, including its productive and engaged faculty and its position within one of the country’s most innovative technical universities, to achieve its potential as an outstanding law school of the future. This leadership position at Chicago-Kent demands an energetic and creative leader who is committed to providing a legal education that prepares students for the practice of law in an increasingly complex and interconnected society. The opportunity to lead Chicago-Kent is unique and exciting.
Chicago-Kent is located in the heart of one of the world’s most diverse and vibrant cities, with an innovative and expanding legal community that provides an unparalleled job market for its graduates. The law school is part of an internationally renowned teaching and research university, offering its students academic programs in science and letters, business, engineering, architecture, computing, and design, as well as law, and extraordinary career opportunities that contribute to solving important challenges facing society, including legal challenges that accompany these scientific and technological advances. Chicago-Kent’s 53-member full-time faculty, which includes widely respected legal scholars, supplemented by nearly 100 highly skilled adjunct faculty, provides a future-focused, practice-ready curriculum for the school’s approximately 700 JD students. In keeping with Chicago-Kent’s history and Illinois Tech’s commitment to being an engine of opportunity, many of those students are first generation and from underserved communities, for whom the access to a legal education is transformative for not just themselves but also their families and communities.
The overarching challenge for the next Chicago-Kent dean is to realize the law school’s remarkable potential by building on Chicago-Kent’s distinctive assets: a diverse and motivated student body; an accomplished corps of legal educators; a dedicated, caring, and hard-working staff; a handsome, easily-accessible building in downtown Chicago; a unique, revenue-generating legal clinic offering experiential learning as well as public service; an engaged army of alumni, including eleven trustees of the university, who regularly contribute to the law school’s success; and a dynamic and supportive university partner that values the many important contributions that Chicago-Kent brings to Illinois Tech and its students.
Screening of complete applications will begin immediately and continue until the completion of the search process. For full consideration, please apply by October 1, 2024.
All inquiries, nominations, referrals, and CVs with cover letters should be submitted via the link below. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged.
Leading this search are:
Tim McFeeley, Partner
Kelly McLaughlin, Managing Associate
Apply for or Nominate Someone for the Position
Search Committee Members
- Chair: Lewis College of Science and Letters Dean Jennifer deWinter
- A. K. Alilonu (LAW 3rd Year), Chicago-Kent College of Law student and honors scholar, member of Chicago-Kent’s Moot Court Honors Society
- Jenna Abhijeet, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Cheryl Price, Gift Officer, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Jon Decatorsmith, Clinical Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Walter Hazlitt, General Counsel, Illinois Tech
- Kari Johnson, Professor of Legal Writing, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Mark Rosen, Distinguished Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Chris Schmidt, Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Carolyn Shapiro, Professor of Law and Associate Dean, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Cary Shelby, Ralph Brill Endowed Chair and Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Bob Surrette (LAW ’97), President, McAndrews, Held & Malloy, Ltd. and Trustee, Illinois Tech Board of Trustees
- James Tierney, Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Adrian Walters, Professor of Law Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Adam Weber (LAW ’99), Associate Dean of International Programs and Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law
- Jeff Wereszczynski, Associate Professor of Physics and Biology, Lewis College of Science and Letters