Congrats are in order...

While the bloggers at Nuestras Voces often focus on challenges facing the Latina and Latino community, today we want to say a huge "Felicidades" to the new Dean at UCLA Law School!!! Not unlike many of the bloggers here, Dean Moran has long written on social justice issues and has mentored many Latina and Latino academics. She is among the first wave of Latina/o Law Professors,and continues to achieve great hieghts.We are so proud of our mentor, and we honor and celebrate her today!!! Here is more about her latest achievement:

Rachel F. Moran appointed dean of UCLA School of Law

Rachel F. Moran, the Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, has been selected as the eighth dean of UCLA School of Law. Moran will be the first Latina dean of a top-ranked U.S. law school.

"I'm very pleased to welcome Rachel Moran to the UCLA community. As a long-standing University of California faculty member, she is well acquainted with the university's unique role in higher education," said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. "Her record of scholarship has earned her the highest regard among her peers, and I am confident the School of Law will continue to thrive with her visionary leadership and commitment to academic excellence."

"It is an honor and a privilege to serve as dean of UCLA School of Law," Moran said. "This is a very special place with an outstanding faculty, talented students, dedicated staff, distinguished alumni and generous benefactors."

Moran, who teaches torts, education law, and race and the law, will assume the role of dean and professor of law on Oct. 15.

"UCLA Law is a great law school and, just as importantly, a great public law school," Moran said. "Long-standing traditions of access, innovation, excellence and service are a critically important part of the institution's mission. I look forward to working with the UCLA Law community and campus leadership to preserve these core commitments as we build upon the school's many strengths and accomplishments. Together, we can prepare a new generation of lawyers with the knowledge, skills and ethical compass to make a difference."

Moran, who joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 1983, received a distinguished teaching award from the Berkeley campus in 1995. From 1993 to 1996, she served as chair of the Chicano/Latino Policy Project, and from 2003 to 2008, she was director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change. Moran served as president of the Association of American Law Schools in 2009.

Moran has published and lectured extensively on education law and policy, family law, and civil rights and anti-discrimination law. She is the author of "Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance" (2001), co-author of the fourth edition of "Educational Policy and the Law" (2002) and co-editor of "Race Law Stories" (2008). Her most recent publications include "Let Freedom Ring: Making Grutter Matter in School Desegregation Cases" (63 University of Miami Law Review 475; 2009) and "Terms of Belonging" in "The Constitution in 2020" (Jack M. Balkin and Reva B. Siegel, eds.; 2009).

Following her undergraduate education at Stanford and law school at Yale, Moran clerked for Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and worked for the San Francisco firm of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe. In addition to her position at Berkeley, she was a founding faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, and she has served as a visiting professor at UCLA Law (2002, 1988), Stanford Law School (1989), New York University School of Law (1996), the University of Miami Law School (1997) and the University of Texas (2000).

"The selection of Rachel Moran as the next dean of UCLA School of Law is a great triumph for our law school. Rachel Moran is a respected and accomplished legal scholar, an excellent and dedicated teacher and a terrific institution builder," said Stephen C. Yeazell, UCLA Law's interim dean. "I am confident that under her leadership UCLA School of Law will reach the next level of excellence."

Moran, who was born in Kansas City, Mo., and raised in Yuma, Ariz., succeeds Michael H. Schill, who served as dean of UCLA Law from 2004 to 2009. Yeazell will return to his full-time position on the UCLA Law faculty.

The UCLA School of Law, founded in 1949, is the youngest major law school in the nation and has established a tradition of innovation in its approach to teaching, research and scholarship. With approximately 100 faculty and 970 students, the school pioneered clinical teaching, is a leader in interdisciplinary research and training, and is at the forefront of efforts to link research to its effects on society and the legal profession.

By Lauri Gavel June 04, 2010 Category: Campus News