Garvey to leave after 11 years as BC Law dean

Courtesy of the Office of News and Public Affairs

By Ana T. Lopez

Special Projects Editor

Though his primary passion is undeniably the world of higher education and all associated with it, John Garvey, soon to be the former dean of the Boston College Law School, did not always envision himself as a dean. “I didn’t really have an interest in being a dean as an abstract matter,” Garvey said. “The glory of it is not great enough to make it worth while and I love being a teacher. But being the dean of a law school as prominent as BC is something that I thought was worth giving up teaching and writing books.”

Approached during the school’s dean search in the early ’90s, Garvey declined the position originally, choosing to finish projects he has started as a professor at the University of Kentucky. “At the time I said no, but it was always in the back of my mind,” he said. So, when Aviam Soifer stepped down as dean in 1999 and Garvey was once again offered the opportunity, he came to BC.

When Garvey leaves this week after spending 11 years on the Newton Campus to assume his new position as president of Catholic University, he will leave behind a legacy that explains in part why BC Law is a tier-one, respected law school.

Upon coming to BC, Garvey had set three goals for his tenure. “One was to make us more academically ambitious to improve our scholarly profile in the legal community,” he said. “The second was to raise more money for the law school and the third was to become more conscious of how to fulfill our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution within the University.”

In terms of academics, Garvey succeeded in hiring 20 new faculty members, marking a 40 percent turnover in faculty from the late ’90s until now. “They have been almost entirely junior faculty who are just starting their careers or at the very beginning,” he said. “I think they’ve been a wonderful infusion of new ideas and new ambitions for the institution, so I think that has set us on a really good path for the next decade.”

Fundraising has also grown significantly under Garvey’s direction. When BC Law obtained independent fundraising authority nearly 20 years ago – making it the only college within the University to have such power – they began the difficult process of boosting alumni donations and major gifts. Now, following the tenure of deans such as Soifer and Garvey, the fundraising efforts of the school are finally hitting their stride.

“It takes a while to get something like this underway,” Garvey said. “To get your alumni used to the idea of having the responsibility of supporting the school – it’s a process where starting friction is greater than flying friction.”

Garvey said that, early on, fundraising efforts garnered approximately $600,000 annually for the law school. “That’s grown by about 15 percent a year,” he said. “We’re approaching $2 million a year.” The increase in funds means that more money can go into loan repayment for students working public interest jobs as well as scholarships for faculty in the summertime.

“We’re suffering through the recession like everyone else, so this will be a slower year, but I think we’re on our way,” Garvey said, adding that, even with the economic hardship, major gifts to the college have increased over the past decade or so from $1 million annually to over $6 million last year.

Garvey is modest in relaying the achievements of the law school, attributing the funds raised and the reputation of the school to the “wonderful faculty and staff” that support him. “It’s all been a collective effort,” he said.

One of Garvey’s most memorable contributions to the school may be his strong conviction in honoring BC’s Catholic Jesuit tradition in the context of the Law School. “I think it’s a conscious effort that we make in hiring people for the school and speaking with prospective students that this is a law school that has a culture that’s different, on account of its Catholic and Jesuit heritage, than you would find at most other law schools.”

Garvey’s belief in the benefit of what he refers to as “institutional plurality” is so strong that he made it the topic of focus for the entirety of the American Association of Law Schools when he served as the organization’s president a few years ago. “There are many different law schools – not just different places doing the same job – but different programs, which is a good thing for consumers of legal education,” he said.

He added that, of the 200 law schools that are a part of the American Bar Association, more than 40 are religiously affiliated, which affects the topics they wish to focus upon and the way they interpret such topics as they reconcile their study of law with their faith. “At a law school affiliated with the Jesuit order, for example, Catholics have a particular belief in the sanctity of human life. At a school like this you might expect that people will take a different stance on the forms of criminal punishment,” he said.

Garvey said that, by staying connected with the beliefs and values of the Church as a law school, these beliefs and values are imparted on students when they eventually become lawyers. “We invite people to think about their religious faith in the same paragraph that they think about their duties to their clients and community,” he said. “It’s nice to do this type of thing that you couldn’t do at the University of Kentucky, where I taught for many years, because the law frowns upon state schools providing support to religious traditions. But this is a place where that’s meant to be a part of what we do.”

It is this dedication to Catholic education and serving a school with a strong academic foundation that attracted Garvey to the position of president at Catholic University. “The same things that attracted me to BC attracted me to Catholic,” he said. “It’s the national university of the Catholic Church and I can’t imagine leaving this school to be president of just somewhere random.”