Chicago-Kent College Of Law Dean To Be Next Law Dean At UF

April 17, 1996

GAINESVILLE — Richard Matasar, dean of Chicago-Kent College of Law, will be the next dean of the University of Florida College of Law, UF President John Lombardi announced Wednesday.

Matasar will take over administration of the state’s oldest public law school, one of the 10 largest in the nation, when current Dean Jeffrey E. Lewis steps down June 30 after eight years in the deanship.

“I’m delighted that Dean Matasar will join us at the University of Florida,” Lombardi said. “He has a rich and varied background with a record of leadership and accomplishment that will serve him well as he takes us on our next round of improvement and enhancement of this university’s excellent law college. I know our students and faculty and our outstanding alumni and friends will join me in enthusiastically welcoming Dean Matasar to this campus and to our community.”

Matasar, 43, has been dean of Chicago-Kent’s law school, part of the Illinois Institute of Technology, since 1991, and he serves as vice president of the IIT Downtown Campus, which also houses the business school. He was selected through a national search launched after Lewis announced plans to return to full-time teaching.

Matasar will be the ninth dean of UF’s College of Law, which has graduated scores of prominent state and national figures in law, business, education and government since its founding in 1909. No other state or law school has produced as many presidents of the American Bar Association in the past 20 years. The college also has graduated 29 of 47 presidents of The Florida Bar and approximately a fourth of all lawyers practicing in Florida.

Matasar said he plans to build on Florida’s strengths with skills developed in the public and private sectors. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, which is private, and later taught 11 years at the University of Iowa College of Law, a public school, before becoming dean at Chicago-Kent, a private school comparable in size to UF’s law school.

“Florida’s law school is poised on the precipice of greatness,” he said. “It is one of the true gems — almost undiscovered gems — in legal education, with a very solid educational program, a great faculty and a terrific student body. It also is part of a great university. It’s a place that is developing its character for the next decade and beyond, and I want to be part of the formation of that mission.”

During his tenure at Chicago-Kent, the school’s endowment rose from $5 million to more than $17 million and the school moved into a new 280,000-square-foot building. More than a dozen faculty were recruited and faculty productivity rose to the top echelon nationally. The school also became known for a number of curricular niches, including environmental law, clinical education, and computer-aided teaching.

The challenges of the private sector have prepared him well, Matasar said.

“Private institutions over the long haul have had to be much more aggressively creative in order to survive and attract students, so you learn the importance of better programming, offering a better product, and marketing. I want to take that into a public school setting where there are significant advantages by virtue of state subsidy and by being the school of choice for citizens of the state. If you can add to that advantage the spirit of entrepreneurship and aggressiveness from the private sector, I think you have an absolutely unbeatable combination.”

Matasar’s first priority at Florida will be getting to know faculty, staff and alumni, and engaging them “in a common mission.”

“I’m firmly convinced that the only way a school progresses is by connecting those who have come before with those who will be coming in the future,” he said. “My plans call for a lot of individual attention to people, building toward what I hope will be strategic planning for the law school. There’s no reason the school can’t be dominant in every way.”

He also plans to remain as active in teaching and scholarship as his administrative responsibilities at Florida will allow. Matasar is coauthor of a just-released federal courts casebook and has written and spoken extensively on legal education and the legal profession. He has taught federal jurisdiction at Chicago-Kent, and civil procedure, jurisdiction and other courses at Iowa and as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. He has been active in the Chicago Bar Association, law school site evaluations, and he serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Legal Education and on the board of directors of the Chicago Public Interest Law Initiative. He is a member of the American Law Institute and is involved in civic, charitable and religious organizations.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” Matasar said. “I’m incredibly excited about being in Gainesville. It’s a great chance for our family to move back to a college town.”

Matasar and his wife, Sharon, have a 17-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son.