• Campbell University announced that B. Keith Faulkner will be interim dean for Campbell Law School effective July 1, replacing Melissa Essary, who has served as dean since 2006. Essary will join the faculty of the law school upon leaving the dean’s office.
Faulkner, who serves as the vice dean for administration and external relations for the law school, has held the positions of executive associate dean for academic affairs and administration and associate dean for external relations at the law school since his arrival in 2004. A graduate of the school, he worked in private practice as a litigation associate in one of North Carolina’s largest law firms, partnership in a private practice, and eight years of service in the U.S. Navy as a submariner.
• University of North Texas announced the appointment of Washburn University School of Law Professor Michael Hunter Schwartz as the inaugural Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the UNT Dallas College of Law. His appointment will be effective May 2013, in anticipation for the law school’s opening in August 2014.
Schwartz teaches contract law and serves as Associate Dean for Faculty & Academic Development at Washburn. As the Dallas College of Law Associate Dean, he will be responsible for administering all aspects of academic life. As part of the law school’s launch, he will help develop new curriculum and assist in the hiring of faculty.
During his six-year tenure at Washburn University School of Law, Schwartz has been a major advocate of legal education reform, seeking to transform traditional law school education into a more student-centric learning experience, one that goes beyond theory and integrates law practice realities and ethical values into the entire curriculum, with the goal of producing professional, practice-ready new lawyers.
• The Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law announced several faculty appointments — including Indiana Supreme Court Justice Frank Sullivan, Jr.
Sullivan served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the school of law from 2007-2009, teaching a class in public finance law. He will teach classes in business law and corporate finance. Sullivan said that he will continue to serve as a member of the Court until near the start of the fall semester at the law school. He said he will notify the Clerk of the Court and the Judicial Nominating Commission as soon as a definite date for his departure from the Court is determined.
Sullivan has been a member of the Indiana Supreme Court since 1993 when he was appointed by former Governor Evan Bayh. During his tenure on the Court, he has authored approximately 500 majority opinions addressing a wide range of criminal, civil, and tax law issues.
The school also hired four new associate professors: Yvonne M. Dutton, Margaret Ryznar, Lea Shaver, and Diana R. H. Winters.
Dutton currently is a chair and instructor of lawyering skills at the University of San Diego School of Law. She also has taught as an adjunct at the University of Colorado School of Law, and was a fellow in the Careers in Law Teaching Program at Columbia Law School, where she earned her J.D.
Ryznar is currently an associate at the Washington, D.C.-based firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft. She also served as a clerk for the Hon. Myron H. Bright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. She received her J.D. from the University of Notre Dame Law School.
Shaver is associate professor at Hofstra Law School, where she teaches intellectual property, patent law, and transnational law. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law and was the submissions and articles editor for the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal.
Winters is a visiting assistant professor of law and Health Law Scholar at Boston University School of Law, where she has taught environmental law, environmental litigation, and advanced civil procedures. She also worked as a graduate teaching assistant at Harvard University, where she received her Ph.D. in the History of the American Civilization, and a master’s in history. She received her J.D from New York University School of Law.
• Thomas Cooley Law School announced the school’s initial Tampa Bay campus faculty, which will open this spring. Joining Cooley’s staff is Florida attorney Carolyn House Stewart, and three current Cooley professors from the school’s Michigan campuses; John Scott, Brendan Beery and Ronald Sutton.
Stewart will teach Contract Law to Cooley’s incoming class at Tampa Bay. She is currently a shareholder in Macfarlane, Ferguson & McMullen, one of Florida’s oldest law firms. She has been with the firm since 1994, handling cases in the firm’s civil litigation, casualty and labor law sections. Stewart received her Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina.
Professor John Scott will teach Property Law at Cooley’s Tampa Bay campus. Scott joined Cooley’s faculty in 1978. Before that, he specialized in family law, criminal law, property and bankruptcy litigation. Scott received his Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan.
Professor Brendan Beery, who has been at Cooley since 2003, will teach Constitutional and Criminal Law. He received his JD from Cooley Law School in 1998. Thereafter,
he served as a research attorney for the Michigan Court of Appeals and then went into private practice, first as an associate with the law firm of Thrun, Maatsch & Nordberg, P.C., and then as a partner in the firm of Mahjoory, Mahjoory & Beery P.L.C.
Professor Ronald Sutton has been teaching at Cooley for more than 20 years. Sutton received his Juris Doctor from Wayne State University Law School.
