Dear McGeorge students, faculty, staff and alumni,

We write with a tinge of sadness but mostly with enormous gratitude to let you know that Dean Michael Hunter Schwartz has decided to return to his first love—teaching and writing about the law—upon the conclusion of the upcoming 2024-25 academic year.

By the conclusion of his deanship next June, Dean Schwartz will have served as the leader of the McGeorge School of Law for eight years (it’s worth noting that the average tenure of a law school dean today is just four years). Additionally, Dean Schwartz served our university with distinction for one year as interim provost during a time when we had an interim president and as we were just entering into the early days of the global pandemic.

A national leader in legal education, Dean Schwartz lifted up the McGeorge School on many levels, including setting the school’s highest bar passage rate in 25 years, creating the Honors Accelerated JD degree and a series of master’s degree programs, strengthening our legal clinics and experiential learning for students, creating an alumni-student mentoring program integrated into the McGeorge curriculum, launching the Center for Inclusion and Diversity and the Military Student Center on our Sacramento Campus, enhancing recruitment efforts and securing a transformational gift that will benefit McGeorge students for years to come.

In January, Dean Schwartz’s impact on legal education was recognized when National Jurist Magazine named him the ninth most influential person in the field.

Combined with his four years as dean of the William H. Bowen School of Law at University of Arkansas and seven years as associate dean and director at the Washburn University School of Law, Dean Schwartz will have served nearly 20 years in legal education leadership positions.

Upon the conclusion of his deanship next June, Dean Schwartz will take a well-deserved faculty development leave before returning to McGeorge in early 2026 to resume his teaching, research and writing career.

We are thankful for Dean Schwartz’s stellar service to our school and university and will celebrate his many accomplishments at an event in the spring. But most importantly, we are delighted that he will continue to be an important part of the Pacific family for years to come.

Dean Schwartz also has created a fantastic foundation from which McGeorge will continue to soar under its next dean. We have established a search committee co-chaired by College of the Pacific Dean Lee Skinner and Professor Larry Levine. Other search committee members include Professors Linda Coco, Jeff Michael, Mike Mireles and Jeff Proske, Judge Connie Callahan ’75, S.J. Hammon, president of the Student Bar Association, Senior Assistant Dean for Admissions Valerie James and University Chief General Counsel Lauren Schoenthaler. We have no doubt that we will recruit a great legal education leader to take the McGeorge School to new heights.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. But in the meantime, please join us in a rousing “congratulations” to Dean Schwartz!

Sincerely,

Christopher Callahan 
President

Gretchen Edwalds-Gilbert
Provost and Executive Vice President