 |
| (Illustrations by Adam Niklewicz) |
A new strategic plan offers a glimpse at the BC Law of tomorrow
Professor Hugh Ault leans back in his chair as he ponders the question of the
importance of Boston College Law School’s new strategic plan. He’s
been on the faculty for thirty-five years—long enough to have some perspective
on BC Law’s character. “Ours has historically been a ‘let
many flowers bloom’ approach to planning,” he says. Though he regards
the process as legitimate, he also believes that the new demands placed on law
schools by an increasingly complex world require new approaches to self-evaluation
and goal-setting.
“This is not a time for legal education to rest on its laurels,”
says Ault, a member of the Strategic Planning Committee. “The world is
changing and we’ve got to be part of that process. The strategic plan
is an important initiative to make sure we stay in the game.”
Dean John Garvey recognized that the school was at a crossroads, and it motivated
his decision two years ago to launch the assessment process. “It’s
sound business practice always to be looking ahead, and BC Law is a pretty big
business with lots of faculty, students, and alumni,” he says. “We
are training people for a world that is changing fast and we need to be sure
we are providing the right training and that we are keeping up with the competition.”
The Strategic Planning Committee, under the direction of chair Professor Judith
McMorrow, issued its report in September. It envisions a Law School focused
on three core commitments: 1) to improve scholarship, teaching, and student
support; 2) to build depth in select areas; and 3) to create a culture of creativity
responsive to the rapidly changing world. Many of the outcomes, McMorrow says,
“were things that people had a fire in their belly about. Their passions
helped frame the issues.”
To accomplish the first goal, the plan proposes creative new ways of aligning
faculty time to maximize their teaching as well as their scholarship and research.
It urges more support for scholarships, expanding loan repayment assistance
for alumni in public interest work, and graduate-student housing.
The areas selected for enhancement under the second core goal are international
law, emerging enterprises, public service, and ethics, religion, and public
policy.
“With the proper programmatic and institutional investments, BC Law can…become
a leading US academic center for the integrated study and practice of international
law and justice…,” the plan states. Proposals in this category include
offering an LL.M program integrating private business and human rights dimensions
of international law and an expanded human rights program that hosts visiting
scholars and offers training that certifies students as specialists in the field.
The imagined Emerging Enterprises and Business Law Program offers students a
comprehensive curriculum in the theory and practice of business law as well
as faculty research support and scholarly symposia. Some elements of this initiative
already are under way.
Public service initiatives, which the report sees as central to the Jesuit and
Catholic tradition of BC Law School, include the creation of a program for Public
Interest and Social Justice that builds on the existing Mary Daly Curtin and
John J. Curtin Jr. Center for Public Interest Law. Features under consideration
are post-graduate social justice fellowships, the promotion of research and
scholarship, and curricular and clinical enhancements.
The strategic plan also suggests a program for Ethics and the Legal Profession
that refines the legal ethics orientation for first-year students, serves as
a home for sponsored research, and offers workshops and roundtables to educate
students and alumni on the ethical issues that arise in practice. A recognition
of the need for such programming came, in part, from the results of the alumni
survey in last spring’s BC Law Magazine. Half the respondents
reported confronting ethical issues in the workplace on a weekly basis. A program
in Law and Religion is seen as another way to develop a stronger curricular
focus on morals, ethics, and the role of law and religion in society.
From Dean Garvey’s perspective, the strategic planning process, which
involved input from faculty, students, staff, and alumni, has been valuable
for reasons that go beyond the actionable proposals it engenders. One of the
intangibles, he says, “is the renewed commitment to the importance of
being a really strong academic institution. The report states right up front
that scholarship and teaching is the most important work of the faculty. It’s
good to reaffirm that commitment.”
Another accomplishment of the plan, in Garvey’s view, is its focus on
the needs of students. “At the same time we are providing the best education
and other services, we need to worry about the cost,” he says. The report
recognizes that BC Law’s ability to maintain a competitive edge among
peer schools means not only adding funds for need-based scholarships but also
increasing scholarship support for academic excellence. And if the Law School
wishes to fulfill its commitment to diversity, the report concludes, it must
make graduate housing a top priority so the school is more attractive to students
from all economic backgrounds.
The proposals in the report are assigned benchmarks for success, some of which
can be reached in stages. The costs in human and space resources are also assessed
and provide an aid to Garvey in his discussions with the university about possible
campus renovations and expansion.
Twenty-two months of talking and listening among members of the Law School community
have yielded both a clearer picture of BC Law’s identity and a more unified
articulation of its purpose and goals. “It got the faculty to focus on
a few areas they felt were important. So we now have a kind of momentum or understanding,”
Garvey says, which means many curricular, programmatic, and hiring decisions
can be made without rearguing each choice.
McMorrow says the faculty learned of their deep commitment to a balanced curriculum,
or liberal arts model, of legal education. “We did not want to become
known as a niche school, to emphasize a certain area of expertise at the expense
of a balanced education,” she explains.
“I think the Law School has accomplished a great deal,” says James
Champy ’68, vice president of Perot Systems Corporation and a strategic
planning expert who consulted on the project. “In the end the whole faculty
has to be aligned and in agreement, and I believe they have accomplished that.
It took more time than in a commercial setting, but that’s understandable.
The work of a faculty is to debate until it believes it has discovered the truth.”
BC Law’s strategic plan now enters its second phase, the delicate task
of turning some of the ideas into reality. Professors George Brown and Zygmunt
Plater co-chair the committee with that mandate. The programmatic initiatives,
in particular, will be developed for further faculty discussion.
“Any great institution or company, private or public, really needs to
have a sense of purpose,” says Champy. “The Law School’s statement
achieves a sense of that higher purpose, and that’s important because
that is part of the mobilization. My test of a good strategy is, Will it mobilize
people? And, yes, I think that will happen.”