On Oct. 5, University of North Texas System Chancellor Lee F. Jackson announced a switcheroo, so to speak.
Contrary to an announcement in February, Michael Hunter Schwartz, professor at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan., won’t join the proposed UNT Dallas College of Law as associate dean of academic affairs, according to a press release. Instead, Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law professor Ellen S. Pryor (pictured) will fill that role, effective January 2013.
UNT Dallas College of Law is scheduled to open in August 2014.
According to the UNT press release, Schwartz’s decision not to make the move relates to personal reasons. Schwartz confirms that and declines further comment.
In an email, Pryor writes that her reason for accepting the post “does not stem from any discontent or unhappiness with SMU, which has been my beloved academic home for 25 years. Instead, it stems from excitement about the chance to participate in shaping a new public law school in downtown Dallas — a school aimed at providing an affordable, accessible legal education; a school whose curriculum and instructional practices reflect a constant effort to answer the question of what our students need to know, understand, and be able to do as they develop professional expertise and judgment; and a school whose faculty is encouraged to pursue what the great educator Ernest Boyer called the ‘scholarship of engagement.’ ”
— Miriam Rozen
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