Dean's Message
Dear Friends of Santa Clara Law:It is a great pleasure to introduce this issue of Santa Clara Law. I hope you enjoy reading the issue as much as we enjoyed preparing the articles and assembling the information contained in the following pages. This issue continues the growth of our law school magazine. We continue to broaden the publication’s readership and enhance its relevance to legal education and to the friends of Santa Clara’s law school. The articles in this edition describe the many accomplishments and activities of law school faculty, students, staff, and alumni while contributing to knowledge about some increasingly pertinent legal topics. Santa Clara Law faculty members are engaged in cutting-edge research and scholarship on the emerging legal and policy issues concerning virtual worlds. Susan Vogel’s excellent article describes the ways that law school faculty and students are advancing thinking about these issues, and how that knowledge is supporting the work that lawyers are doing in advising clients and resolving disputes. Santa Clara’s intellectual property and technology law programs and faculty clearly are in the vanguard on these and other intriguing issues.
The law school’s alumni reunion program continues to flourish, attracting more than 300 alumni and family to the September 2007 reunion weekend. The article (and accompanying photos) in this issue attest that the great collegiality achieved in law school at Santa Clara continues among our graduates in the years after graduation. If you are coming up on a reunion year, I hope you’ll participate. I am sad to report that Santa Clara University President Paul Locatelli, S.J., recently announced that he will resign from his position next academic year. The good news for President Locatelli (and the Society of Jesus) is that he will assume the responsibility for advancing worldwide Jesuit higher education. I am confident that he will be an extraordinary leader in that important work as well. He has been a great friend to legal education at Santa Clara and he will be missed by his friends at the law school. However, we look forward to assisting the Board of Trustees in their efforts to identify, recruit, and hire the next president of the University. I also am pleased to report that, following a comprehensive assessment of the law school’s progress over the past five years, I have been asked to serve another five year term as dean. While the time since my appointment in 2003 has sped by, I am increasingly confident of the tremendous future of this law school and the opportunities we have ahead of us. We are taking an aggressive, thoughtful look at our prospects for future greatness through an institutional strategic planning process that was recently initiated. You will be able to learn more about that process, and our plans for the future of the law school, in the next issue of Santa Clara Law. It is a great honor to serve as the dean of Santa Clara’s law school, and I look forward to working with our friends, alumni, and others in the law school community in the coming years. Sincerely, DONALD J. POLDEN
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