Wake Forest University invites nominations and applications for the position of Dean of the School of Law. Wake Law has been educating leaders in the state, region, and nation since 1894. While honoring its history and dedicated alumni base, the law school recognizes that the changing needs of the legal profession pose challenges and opportunities for legal education. Wake Law is adapting by offering innovative courses of study that address ever-changing methods of practice, while developing a strong focus on professional identity formation, leadership, and character. The university’s commitment to Pro Humanitate pervades the identity and curriculum at the law school, affirming the core values of honesty, diligence, excellence, intelligence, and civility. Wake Law’s faculty are respected legal scholars and uncommonly accessible teachers. The faculty regards teaching and legal scholarship as synergistic aspects of a single vocation.

Wake Law seeks an innovative, experienced, and collaborative leader as its next dean. The dean should have strong communication, financial, and managerial skills, emotional intelligence, a commitment to diversity and belonging, a commitment to the teacher-scholar model, and a demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with constituencies across the school and the wider university. The dean should have significant law school leadership experience and should be able to point to demonstrated success in managing faculty, staff, programs, and budgets, as well as the exterior roles of a modern law school dean. The dean reports directly to the provost and oversees the academic, operational, and external relations functions of the law school. The dean also serves on the president’s cabinet, and is thus part of major university decisions affecting all internal and external university constituencies. The dean will oversee fiscal management of Wake Law’s $38 million annual operating budget, and have administrative oversight of the school’s 75 full and part-time faculty, 55 staff, and approximately 600 students.

Wake Law faculty, staff, and students often cite their desire to be a part of a close-knit, supportive community as one reason for them to join Wake Law. The next dean will play an important role in enhancing the unique collegiality that has long been a strength of Wake Law.

Wake Law must work to ensure that the school charts a future rooted in a strong, sustainable financial model. The dean will bring to the role a track record of aligning resources with evolving strategies, and of helping to identify new programs that can enhance revenue while also looking for efficiencies, resource sharing, and expense reduction opportunities.

The dean should be an effective administrator who can create and lead effective teams within the law school. As the primary external face of the law school, the dean will have a visible presence among Wake Law alumni and donors as well as among the bench and bar in the region and nationally. At the same time, the dean must recognize that Wake Law is a place that places special emphasis on relationships and building community and be appropriately available to inside constituencies. Wake Law is well positioned to strengthen connections between the school and the legal community on regional, national and global levels.

Founded in 1834, Wake Forest University is a private university located in Winston-Salem, N.C., with more than 8,000 students. The undergraduate population of more than 5,400 hails from 47 states and more than 45 foreign countries. Wake Forest is a vibrant and diverse academic community in which students pursue learning in one or more of the 45 majors, 60 minors and additional programs we offer within our seven colleges and schools. In September 2022, U.S. News & World Report ranked Wake Forest as one of the top 30 National Universities for the 26th consecutive year. The University is experiencing an impressive upward trajectory. While sustaining the best of Wake Forest’s traditional strengths, in many ways the University has been transformed in the past few years.

For further information on Wake Law, please visit law.wfu.edu. To apply or to express interest, please send a cover letter and vita in PDF format via email to [email protected]. Priority deadline for this position is Thursday, March 16, 2023; applications submitted after the priority deadline will be reviewed.

Wake Forest seeks to recruit and retain a diverse workforce and encourages qualified candidates across all group demographics to apply. Wake Forest University is committed to providing access and reasonable accommodation in employment for individuals with disabilities.