|
|
|
|
||
|
||
 
|
spacepace |
|
Although Pace still had an affiliation agreement with the New York Law School, that institution was not a party to the University's petition to the Regents. Dr. Mortola told Michael H. Cardozo of Temple University, former executive director of the Association of American Law Schools, who would act as a consultant to the nascent Pace law school, "You probably know that Pace is presently affiliated with the New York Law School, but that affiliation is not so close or binding that we, at this moment, find it appropriate to submit a petition on behalf of the two institutions. Our Trustees are now engaged in the preparation of a more meaningful merger agreement, and when that is effected we would include the New York Law School more effectively in our planning."
In the meantime, Pace was continuing its efforts to obtain unwavering support for its proposed law school from the legal community. Early in 1974, Dr. Mortola wrote the following to the Honorable Morris Lasker, judge of the United States District Court: "A small, quality law school is being planned, not just another law school. It should be able to make unique and significant contributions to the University at large and to the Westchester community. Its graduates should be welcomed into the profession and into allied fields. With the broadening of law curricula and the continuing diversification of lawyers' tasks, and the pertinence of current legal education, and what promises to be developed, to professions outside the parameters of traditional law practice, the fear of a crowded profession seems to me no longer justified."
In February 1974, a "large and very encouraging meeting of lawyers, judges, and corporate leaders of Westchester County" was held at the White Plains Hotel "to build up community support" for the proposal. This gathering "was judged to have been a most successful effort." At the same time that the University was soliciting support on the local level, it was making a concerted effort to gain the approval of the State Education Department. Early in 1974 a Pace team, consisting of Dr. Mortola, Dr. George Vice President for Facilities Planning, consultant H. Cardozo, and State Supreme Court justice McCullough journeyed to Albany for a meeting with the Commissioner of Education. Their efforts were successful because on June 26, 1974, the Board of Regents authorized the establishment of a Pace University School Law.
At this time, the affiliation agreement between Pace and the New York Law School was still in force. At a Pace Trustees' meeting held two months later, Dr. Charles Dyson, Chairman of the Pace Board of Trustees, described the future of the affiliation between New York Law and Pace as "uncertain," adding that "the appropriate committees of the two institutions are expected to meet to review this matter further, including the possibility of termination of the agreement." At the same meeting the trustees grappled with the very real problem of where to place the proposed law school. They talked about renting space at the outset and constructing a $2,000,000 building on the Pleasantville campus, which would house the law school for a few years and then be used for undergraduate classes after the law school moved into buildings elsewhere on the campus specifically designed and constructed for its use. The Executive Committee of the board was authorized to explore these alternatives and to begin acquiring books and periodicals for a law library. In the days which followed, committee members became teal estate scouts but one of their discoveries, the former American Airlines reservations center on Route 9 in Briarcliff Manor, was rejected by the full board in late July.
The following spring, both the site selection and New York Law School problems were resolved. At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, held on April 22,1975, "Dr. Dyson noted that he had forwarded to John Thornton, Chairman of the New York Law School, copy of an agreement to end the affiliation between Pace University and the New York Law School to be effective June 30, 1975." With regard to "the status of the Pace University School of Law," the Executive Committee minutes reflect "that the expected merger with the College of White Plains would conclude the search for the best possible location for the School of Law since it is now scheduled to be built on the campus of the College of White Plains."
Besides finding a location for the new law school, the University had to select a Dean and faculty. The tasks of building a faculty and choosing a law librarian fell to Dr. Charles A. Ehren, Jr., a graduate of the Columbia University School of Law and a professor of law at the University of Denver College of Law. Dr. Ehren was named Dean of the Pace University School of Law on July 10, 1975, five days before the consolidation of The College of White Plains and Pace University formally took effect. During the next few months Dr. Ehren began building a staff and worked on developing a curriculum, which included both traditional and innovative approaches to legal education. Among the things envisioned by the new Dean were small group instruction, problem-solving, and clinical experience. Dr. Ehren did not have an opportunity to implement any of these curricular proposals. Policy differences with the Board of Trustees led to a change in leadership at the Law School in the spring of 1976.
With the resignation of Dr. Ehren, Dr. Robert Fleming was named dean. A magna cum laude law graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo, Dr. Fleming had taught at SUNY Buffalo, St. Louis University and Harvard University before becoming associate dean of the State University of New York at Buffalo. One of Dr. Fleming’s first official acts as Dean of the Pace University School of Law was to welcome the 250 students comprising the school's first class. On September 18, 1976, when the law school opened, day session freshmen numbered 150 and evening students 100. They had been chosen from a poof of 1,400 applicants. Somewhat older than traditional law students, many of the Pace freshmen were in their thirties and forties. Quite aside from the average age of its students, as the only law school between Columbia University to the south and Albany Law School to the north, the Pace University School of Law attracted considerable attention.
Some of the publicity obtained by the law school during its freshman semester resulted from the groundbreaking for the Joseph and Bessie Gerber Glass Law Center on the university's White Plains campus. In mid-October 1976 in excess of 400 guests flocked to a portion of the campus facing busy North Broadway for a ceremony honoring the late Joseph Glass, a corporate attorney, and his wife Bessie, a major benefactor of Pace University who, some years earlier, had offered Pace her estate in Northern Westchester for a possible center for legal education. In addition to the recognition accorded the Glass family on this occasion, New York Governor Hugh Carey received an honorary degree. He addressed those present, as did Westchester County Executive Alfred DelBello, Henry G. Miller, President of the Westchester Bar Association, and Dean Robert Fleming, who asked for community support for the new law school which had opened its doors just a few months earlier. Declaring his intention to head "a quality law school," the Dean said: "We want you to want us to, be very good, indeed; if you expect a lot of us, we will perform."
In many respects, the law school was already performing quite well. A library organized by the school's first law librarian, Charlotte Levy, had been assembled and processed in a rented warehouse in Valhalla. As the law school was about to open its doors, the enormous collection, which would grow to over 170,000 volumes by the late 1980s, was moved to the Tudor Room of Preston Hall, which served as the law library until January 1979, when the Glass Law Center was completed. Although there were many loose ends when the law school opened, such as the lack of a placement director and an insufficient supply of housing for law students, the freshmen and their eight full-time faculty members forged ahead.
Despite the inevitable problems associated with any new enterprise, on the whole, the first class did well. A few months after the Pace University School of Law awarded' its first degrees, Associate Dean James Fishman was able to report that "70% of the first graduating class of the Law School had passed the Bar exam-an impressive percentage for a first graduating class." Dean Fishman also noted that "the Moot Court Team of Pace Law School had won first place at the New York City Moot Court competition." Moreover, the Pace University School of Law had received provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association in February 1978. Reacting to this good news, Dean Fleming said, "We are particularly pleased to acquire this accreditation because it has been achieved in the shortest time possible allowed by the ABA."
The law school was off to a flying start, but it was, nevertheless, plagued by certain problems. Students and some law school faculty were highly critical of what they perceived to be an inefficient registration system and an unsatisfactory way of scheduling final examinations. Divisions within the faculty and between the faculty and the law school dean in addition to apprehension about full accreditation by the American Bar Association all took their toll. To help the law school deal with these and other important issues, Dr. Mortola appointed Dr. Ewald Nyquist, former Commissioner of Education of the State of New York and Vice President for Academic Development at Pace, as liaison with the School of Law in March 1979. In a memorandum to the Law School Faculty, Dr. Mortola stated that "Dr Ewald Nyquist has been requested to devote the bulk of his time in assisting the Law School in improving its administrative effectiveness..." The President also noted that "Dr. George Mims, Director of several Pace programs intended to recruit and assist minority students, had been assigned on a full-time basis to help recruit minority students and staff for the School of Law."
At the same time that he was reassuring the faculty that the problems the school was experiencing could be resolved, Dr. Mortola was doing his best to prevent the further erosion of student morale. Responding to a student who had communicated with him in writing, Dr. Mortola said, "A number of faculty, as well as Dean Fleming, Dr. Schiff and I, are hard at work on restoring some of the order and unity that are necessary for the future of the School of Law and also that are important to your own sense of satisfaction and enjoyment in attending the school. I hope that you will persist in your pursuit of your law degree at Pace and hope also that you will have full justification for doing so by the time that we enter into the next academic year."
The efforts made by the faculty and administration to correct problems while simultaneously enhancing the reputation of the Law School received a temporal setback with the publication of an article in the New York Law Journal in May 1979. The article contended that "the most obvious example of divisive, elements at the three-year old institution is the racial discrimination complaint filed in Federal Court in February by Associate Professor Hugh M. Wade, a black, against Dean Robert B. Fleming." Since the case was pending at the time, Pace officials could not comment on this aspect of the Journal's reporting but Nicholas A. Robinson, Associate Professor of Law and Chairman of the Pace Law School's Committee on Planning and Review, decried inaccuracies in the article in a letter to the editor of the New York Law Journal, in which he stated that it was "evident that your news story did not accurately recite, much less explain the growth problems which this new law school has experienced." He went on to say, "There have been disagreements between the Dean and some members of the faculty. That is a situation common to law schools generally. Expectations in a new law school are high; disappointments may have been taken by some persons more severely than would be the case in a school of longer standing. Personality conflicts can and did become mixed and confused with policy disagreements between the Dean and some faculty and among some faculty. If these sorts of issues are worth journalistic scrutiny, they obviously raise complexities and difficulties which require dose and careful examination; the uncritical repetition of information from undisclosed sources does not evidence such, examination." The unfavorable publicity generated by the New York Law Journal article notwithstanding, the American Bar Association granted the Pace University School of Law full accreditation on August 6,1980. Attainment of this important goal helped ease the concerns of faculty and students. Less than a year after accreditation was obtained; Dean Fleming was able to report to the Board of Trustees that the enrollment of the Law School was 749. Of that number, 412 were day students and 337 evening students. Fully 45 percent of the student body was female. Other good news cited by the Dean was the establishment of an alumni association, "with representatives in 13 states." Another milestone was reached in January 1982 when the University's School of Law received final accreditation by the American Association of Law Schools.
In reporting this development to the Board of Trustees, Dr. Mortola also stated that Dr. Robert Fleming was retiring as Dean, but that after a leave of absence, he would return as a faculty member. A search committee was formed to recommend a successor to Dean Fleming and, in the interim, former Westchester County Executive and Judge James Hopkins served as Dean. In 1982 the Honorable Janet Johnson, a judge of the Iowa court, was named Dean of the Pace University School of Law. Dean Johnson served for six years, resigning in July 1989. Her successor was Steven Goldberg, who came to Pace in 1989 from the University of Minnesota School of Law where he had been Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and External Relations.
During Dean Johnson's tenure at Pace, curricular innovations included certificate programs in International Law, International Trade Law, Health Law and Policy and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) program in Environmental Law. In 1984 when the first volume of the Environmental Law Review was published, Pace became one of a handful of including Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford, to produce this type of professional periodical. In 1986 the Pace University School of Law established, with the approval of the American Bar Association, the only semester abroad program affiliated with a British faculty of laws.
In
1977 Pace
University acquired the assets of Briarcliff College.
In 1979 Pace
University became the first institution in New York State to offer the doctor of
Psychology degree in school/community psychology.
The Lienhard
School of Nursing, named for alumnus and benefactor Gustav O. Lienhard, received
National League for Nursing accreditation for it's baccalaureate program.
In 1982 IBM
corporation established its only U.S. program in International Finance, Planning
and Administration at Pace.
In 1983 the U.S.
Department of Education selected the Lubin School of Business Administration to
develop one of six programs nationwide in international business studies for
undergraduates.
The School of
Computer Science and Information system was established. For more information
about the school, 
"School
of Computer Science and Information Systems."
