Wharton, Law School deans resign

Colin Diver will continue to teach and research full time at the Penn Law School. Colin Diver felt his time as dean of the Law School had simply come to an appropriate end. After nearly a decade at the school's helm, the administrative-law and public-policy scholar said yesterday that he would step down from his post at the end of the current academic year, which expires June 30, 1999. He intends to stay at Penn to teach and research at the Law School. The process of finding a replacement will begin soon, University officials said. During his tenure, Diver, 54, has increased the faculty size by one-third, expanded the school's facilities and academic support services and raised more than $100 million for the school's activities and endowment. "The decision was made more at an emotional level than a rational level, as these decisions often are," he said. "In the end, it felt like I was coming to the end of a cycle." He arrived at the University in 1989 after being lured away from the same position at the Boston University School of Law. In his letter of resignation, Diver wrote that with the approaching 150th anniversary of the school's founding and the 10th anniversary of his own appointment, "a new cycle will begin" and "new challenges will call forth new energy and new ideas." Diver, who is married with two grown sons, said he had "substantially" accomplished both the goals he set for the school when he took office and those reinforced by the school's strategic plan, which was formulated as part of the University's 1995 Agenda for Excellence. Among these, he cited faculty recruitment, increased public-service programming and Penn's improved national reputation. Diver pointed to $11.2 million in upcoming renovations to the old Law School building --Erenamed Silverman Hall in honor of alumnus and University Trustee Henry Silverman, who donated $15 million to the school in February -- and a 40 percent jump in the school's endowment over the past three years as signs the school is moving in the right direction. "Frankly, I've also believed it's a good idea to leave a job when you're on a roll," he said. "And right now we're on a roll." In addition, Diver revealed that several Penn deans have asked if he wanted to "throw [his] hat into the ring" during the ongoing search for a new University provost, but he declined, explaining that after more than 13 years of academic administration at Penn and BU he wanted to return to scholarship full-time. University President Judith Rodin lamented Diver's upcoming departure yesterday in a letter to University Trustees. "Today [the Law School] is an amply better place than when he arrived," she wrote. "He has earned our deep and lasting gratitude." Diver said a faculty, student and alumni-composed search committee will be formed soon to seek out his successor. He added that for "a school of Penn's caliber," the candidates will most likely come from the pool of tenured faculty at top-10 law schools, including Penn's. Diver noted that the four deans to serve before him were all promoted from in-house. Penn's Law School is also up for an external review, conducted by a panel of outside academics this December, which Diver said he thinks will aid the search committee in selecting candidates by pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the current school administration. Many Law School faculty members and students said they saddened by Diver's imminent departure. "He's served a long time and very well, but he does deserve a rest," Law Professor Geoffrey Hazard said of Diver, who graduated with his bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1965 before earning a law degree from Harvard University in 1968. "It will be hard to find another dean like him." Law Professor Frank Goodman said he was pleased that Diver would be remaining on Penn's staff as a professor in the areas of administrative law, public policy and government regulation. "I am delighted that he will remain on the faculty [and] we will benefit greatly from his scholarship and experience," he said. "His successor will also benefit greatly from his advice." Second-year Law student Erin Fucci, who took a class taught by Diver, said she looked forward to his full-time return to the podium. "I think he was a wonderful professor, a master manipulator in the classroom," she said. "He forced you to think about the topic." Stanford University Law School Dean Paul Brest, who himself is retiring after a decade in his current post, praised the efforts of his long-time colleague and occasional collaborator on "all sorts of projects." "He's been a first-rate dean," Brest said. "From everything I know about him, he's just fabulous." Daily Pennsylvanian staff writers Phyllis Pei and Andrew Ribner contributed to this article.