-Staff Report
Provost Brian Foster announced that Robert J. Desiderio, dean of the UNM Law School for the past four years, will resign from his position effective June 30, 2002.
“‘In his long tenure at UNM, Dean Desiderio has served the institution in many ways, including a term as interim Vice President for Academic Affairs,”‘ Foster said in a news release. “‘Dean Desiderio assumed the leadership of the law school at a time of significant challenges. He has been a University leader in every sense of the word and I would like to ask the University community to thank him for his many years of service to UNM.”‘
Foster said a national search for Desiderio’s successor will begin this summer
He commended Desiderio for his work to address the Law School’s inadequate physical plant and for dramatically increasing the school’s fund-raising. He also credited Desiderio for successfully leading the UNM Law School through an accreditation process and for the hiring of several new faculty.
“The next academic year will be the fifth year of my current deanship — the period for which I committed myself when I assumed the deanship in 1997,” Desiderio said in a news release. “I have come to the conclusion that it is a particularly appropriate time to make this move, for the benefit of the Law School and for my family and me, as well.”
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He added that many of the goals he set for himself as dean have been realized or are nearing fruition.
“We have made considerable strides in raising faculty salaries and library resources, even though we have more to do,” he said. “We all recognized the monumental nature of the task ahead of us to expand and update the new Law School facility. That enterprise has been at the core of my current deanship and will come to fruition with the dedication of the new Frederick M. Hart Addition in the fall of 2002.”
Desiderio said it was his privilege to serve as dean of the Law School twice.
“There is no other law school like it and no other Law School I would have chosen to serve,” he said. “I pledge my loyalty and support to the new dean and to the future of this quite wonderful institution.”
He previously was dean from 1979-85, vice president of Academic Affairs from 1985-86 and UNM’s faculty athletic representative to the NCAA and Western Athletic Conference from 1989 to 1997.
