Dean Carolyn Jones joined Iowa Law in 2004 and will be stepping down as dean to teach full-time in Summer 2010.
Dean's Message
Real World
"The world of education is like an island where people, cut off from the world, are prepared for life by exclusion from it." Maria Montessori,
The Absorbent Mind (1949).
If we take Montessori's statement as true, this is the time of year when students go forth from our "island."
They graduate, leaving the College of Law for lives in the law (or in other ventures). They could be other students testing new experiences through our summer externship programs (for work with governmental agencies, judges or nonprofit organizations), work as summer associates or in other cultures through our summer program in Arcachon, France. In every case, education continues either through successes or disappointments.
While there is something true in this notion of educational separation from the real world, I do not think this leads to the deep and rich training required of lawyers. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. so famously wrote in 1880, "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience."
I'm very proud of our faculty who help us understand the lived experiences of our fellow citizens. It is impossible to list every contribution, but it is worth highlighting some of these efforts. Katherine Porter examines the world of debtors passing through the bankruptcy system. David Baldus is nationally known for his empirical work on race and the death penalty. The most recent issue of the Iowa Advocate examines the law reform activities of Arthur Bonfield and Sheldon Kurtz. James Tomkovicz is working on a major revision of Iowa's Criminal Code.
It is my hope that our students' pro bono and public service work, whether they are in New Orleans, India, Iowa City or at the Mitchellville women's correctional facility, will provide "real world" perspectives that will inform choices about curriculum and career.
The real "life" that Montessori's 1949 quote refers to, is not an unchanging landscape. For those of us who are baby boomers, Bill Bryson's account of growing up in the 1950's in Des Moines - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - resonates in memories of Younker's Tea Room or Dahl's supermarket, but it is quite unrecognizable as today's capital city.
We boomers will continue to learn, work and require loads of societal resources. The world we live and work in is changing fast - an "island" of constant, non-dynamic assumptions will not keep pace generationally and globally.
Our recent graduates, Generation X and Millenials have and will change our institutions. For a book that speaks to the Midwest, particularly (and briefly) I recommend Rebecca Ryan's Live First, Work Second: Getting Inside the Head of the Next Generation. Law schools are, mostly, quite appropriately, work-centered institutions. Ryan's book includes the finding that "Three out of four Americans under the age of 28 said a cool city is more important than a good job." This is quite a remarkable shift away from the days of William Whyte's The Organization Man. Newsweek's May 12 issue features an article by Fareed Zakaria on "The Rise of the Rest." The terrific growth experienced in emerging markets will alter the future and change our graduates' and America's role in the world at large. This holds both peril and promise.
The Iowa College of Law must continue in its teaching, scholarship and service to enable people, communities and civic organizations to be a part of this dramatically altering "real world." Many of our programs that allow these activities would not exist without your continued gifts of time, expertise and financial support. For your generosity, past and future, many, many thanks!
-Carolyn C. Jones, Dean and F. Wendell Miller Professor Law
Dean Search Now Underway
Dean Carolyn Jones will be stepping aside from her position as dean to join her faculty colleagues in a full-time teaching and scholarship position. The University of Iowa College of Law is currently seeking a new dean, to begin Fall 2010.