University of Iowa - Hawkeye Yearbook (Iowa City, IA)

Page 25 text:

Vernon 211

Page 24 text:

Dean Vernon - stepping down and moving up I am not retiring, I am resigning, emphasized Dean David Vernon of the College of Law. I told them when I came here I would take the job for five years. He has been at the job exactly that long and will officially step down in September of 1971. Dean Vernon came to Iowa from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1966 and has taught one class each semester since he became Dean. However, he is highly interested in returning to full-time teach- ing and part-time writing. In his five years here the law school has chang- ed curriculum programing, which Vernon feels is one of the more important accomplishments of his career. The size of the faculty has increased to 24 members, and Dean Vernon feels the student quality has improved. Students now accepted for admittance have higher grade averages in their undergraduate work than the majority accepted before, and the school has still increased its enrollment of first year students -from 27 in 1966 to 117 in 1970. Dean Vern- on believes the change in curriculum has had much to do with the increased popularity of Iowa's law college. College of Law admission requirements state that a student must have at least a 2.3 grade point on all college work. However, the admissions flyer cau- tions: As a practical matter, a student is normally not given serious consideration who does not have the equivalent of an evaluated grade-point average of close to 3.00. For the class admitted for September 1970 . . . the median evaluated grade-point average was 3.250. Slightly less than one-fourth of the 1970 entrants had grade points of 3.5 or higher in their undergraduate work. We try to do our best to help students take every tdvantage of the outstanding abilities they bring to law schoolf' and Dean Vernon believes that we have done wellg we can do better and I am confident that we will do better. I suggest that the most practical thing a law school can do is to provide a sound theoretical foundation for a lifetime career, Vernon noted. If I were to attempt to sum up the classroom experiences avail- 210 Vernon able at the Iowa law school, I would say that a strong effort is made to develop and hold student interest while helping them develop their 'lawyering' abili- ties. A lack of sufficient funds now plagues the college, as it does many of Iowa's schools and colleges. Dean Vernon believes this problem will be resolved with improved economic conditions and with public un- derstanding of what a University is. Iowa's law school will continue to progress if the funds come through, he vowed. If Dean Vernon were free to change one thing in the law college, it would be the budget - increasing it. He wants the increased funds to improve the quality of education by hiring more faculty members so that the facultyfstudent ratio would be lower, making a more useful and complete library, and assuring all students who could qualify for admission that they could come without worrying financially. When Dean Vernon steps down from his position, he will, as he described it, move upstairs to his new teaching job. SZ

Page 26 text:

212 Action Studies STUDIES