New Texas Tech law dean Nowlin happy to be back in West Texas

When Texas Tech’s new law dean was growing up in San Angelo, he had Texas Tech paraphernalia in his bedroom.

Jack Nowlin’s aunt and uncle had attended Tech, and although he was the first in his family to attend college, he had Tech gear before he ever went to college.

He didn’t come to Tech, though.

Instead, he went to Angelo State University, where he first thought he wanted to ultimately teach college English. Angelo State is now under the Texas Tech University System, but it wasn’t when he went to school there.

“I’d always loved teaching. I’d been the kind of kid where other kids would say, ‘You should be a professor,’” Nowlin said. “But I talked to the folks at Angelo State, and there are very few jobs in English back then, and still today, (it’s) hard to get a job. So I started thinking about law school.”

He went off to law school at the University of Texas, where a professor put a note on his exam at the end of the year.

“Come see me if you’re interested in being a law professor,” the note said. And that’s when he started the path that led him to school at Princeton to get a masters and doctorate in political science after he completed the UT law degree, then to the University of Arkansas to teach. Most recently, he spent 17 years at the University of Mississippi School of Law, where he ultimately ended up as the senior associate dean.

Nowlin said he always loved West Texas, and told people at Ole Miss that he planned to retire and come back to Texas someday.

“Ole Miss was wonderful — loved it there. But as much as I loved it there, the deanship came open here, and folks approached me about it, and I kind of hesitated. Because I was really happy at Ole Miss and loved it there. Seventeen years, it’s one-third of my entire life. I just turned 50 last year. But the search consultant, I talked with him, and at one point, he said, ‘Shouldn’t you talk to the people at Tech before you decide whether you’re interested in leaving Ole Miss?” Nowlin said.

That’s the kind of advice he might give to others, but didn’t think of himself, he said. So he came to Lubbock to do what he called “the airport interview” with a search committee including faculty, staff, alumni and even some students and a judge.

“I was sold after about 10 minutes of the airport interview,” Nowlin said. “It was great, and I was sold. And here I am.”

According to Nowlin, Tech has some similarities to Ole Miss in that it is very focused on students and teaching.

“That’s what attracted me,” he said. “There’s a real emphasis on teaching and mentoring students. Not every school is like that.”

Nowlin said teaching is what he really loves, and by next year, he hopes to be teaching a class in academic legal writing, which would focus on how to write comments for publication in law journals.

As a professor, he taught a lot of constitutional law classes, especially the First, Fourth and 14th amendments.

He also loved teaching first-year law students.

“They’re new, and they’re excited, and they don’t know anything and so, that’s the most important teaching you do, the new first years, because you’re helping them transition,” Nowlin said. “Even if they did pre-law, it’s not the same thing as law school, so you’re helping them make that transition.”

First year students have to learn both the subject matter and how to think like a lawyer, he said.

“In law school, we’re less interested in the right answer than we are in the ability to argue for different answers. I like to get people and take whatever their intuition tells them is the right answer, and make them argue the other side. That’s when you know they really know what they’re doing,” he said.

As a professor, he said he has found that if he is having fun, his students are having fun.

“You don’t make it easy. You make it challenging, and you make it interesting, and then everybody’s engaged and they’re excited, and they’re having fun,” Nowlin said.

He said the path to administration came from serving on a committee, doing a pretty good job, chairing a committee, doing a pretty good job and taking on service activities.

“Before I knew it, I was an associate dean, and then senior associate dean. And then I came here to be a dean,” Nowlin said. “The only downside to being a dean is that I don’t get the contact with students that I would like. Not every day contact, not in the classroom, though I’m doing what I can to reach out to the students. But I have loved being a professor, have loved research, but loved teaching especially.”