Exciting things are happening at Southwestern. Yesterday, almost 150 of Southwestern’s recent graduates, students, and faculty came together to help launch a new innovative giving program: the Honors Program Members Challenge. Over wine and hors d’oeuvres, students mingled with recent alumni and networked, while graduates had the opportunity to catch up with their former classmates. There was plenty to talk about. Alumni were energized not just because they were reconnecting with the school and their friends, but also because of the tremendous innovations and changes that have occurred at Southwestern in recent years.
In 2007, the Carnegie Foundation recognized Southwestern’s first-year curricular reforms in a seminal and widely distributed report on legal education. The Carnegie Foundation also selected Southwestern as one of ten schools nationally - the only school in California, other than Stanford - to participate in a groundbreaking follow-up study to its 2007 report. Beginning in January 2009, the Association of American Law Schools’ Journal of Legal Education will be based out of Southwestern. Prior to Southwestern, the Journal had been edited out of Georgetown and before that Vanderbilt. And recently, Southwestern was honored as the first law school in the nation invited to take advantage of the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Fellowships offered by the John Hazard Institute of Hanover.
Alumni were also told how the school is a different place than it was a decade ago. With lower attrition rates (under 5%), substantial grading reforms, and a revised curriculum, the day-to-day life of students at the school has dramatically changed. Gone are the days of the myths and rumors (never true) that Southwestern “dropped” large segments of its entering classes. With a more friendly student-centered approach to law school, as well as the creation of the new Student Resource and Writing Centers, the Office of Diversity Affairs, and the re-energized Office of Student Affairs, many alumni were enthusiastic about Southwestern’s future. Perhaps the announcement that received the most attention, however, was when alumni were told of Dean Garth’s steps to purchase the building across the street, and how he is aggressively moving forward with the building of dorms - something that in three or four years will transform Southwestern’s campus.
Of course, the Honors Challenge is itself one of these initiatives designed to make Southwestern, already a great school, even better. The Honors Challenge is straightforward enough in its goals: it seeks to raise the school’s profile and strengthen the school’s alumni-student network. Current students in the school’s four honors programs - Law Review, Law Journal, Moot Court Honors Program, and Trial Advocacy Honors Program - are competing to obtain the highest percentage of recent alumni who give to the school’s Annual Fund. Every alumnus within the past ten years, who was a member of an honors group, is part of the Honors Challenge. The student group with the highest alumni participation rate will win the challenge and an award. The Honors Challenge will run from September 23 through December 15. The concept is based on similar fundraising challenges being used effectively by law schools across the nation, including Boston University, Georgetown, UCLA, USC, and Yale. Recognizing the importance of reaching out to all students and every alum, next year the school plans to expand this pilot program significantly.
Programs like the Honors Challenge are critically important for the school. Alumni support is the life-blood of any law school, and Southwestern is no exception. The school’s Annual Fund provides the law school with much needed funds to support scholarships, the law library, faculty research, and student groups. Fundraising is essential to compete with our peer law schools. Yet having alumni contribute to the school - even in small amounts - is important for another reason. A high participation rate acts as a signal that alumni are invested in the school’s success: a key consideration for the various accreditation and ranking agencies that view alumni giving rates as a proxy for “customer satisfaction.” Because the message that a high participation rate sends is so important, faculty and staff were asked to give back to the school this summer. Currently, almost 80% of Southwestern’s faculty and 75% of its staff contribute to the school’s Annual Fund.
We ended at 8:30 p.m., after three hours of great conversations and reconnecting with old friends (long after the last hors d’oeuvres were gone!). It was clear alumni left feeling good about having reestablished their commitment to Southwestern, knowing that their alma mater is on the rise.
Written by Austen Parrish, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs
