Law Schools
ABA Accreditation Issue for Ave Maria
Posted Sep 12, 2007 5:57 PM CST
By Martha Neil
Updated: An effort to establish a new law school with a religious mission has been threatened by real estate issues and a faculty revolt. However, the dean of Ave Maria School of Law says faculty concerns are overblown, and he is confident that the Catholic institution will soon be doing better than ever after a planned campus move from Ann Arbor, Mich., to the new town of Ave Maria in southwest Florida.
Ave Maria College is already there. But plans approved earlier this year by the law school's board of governors to move it, too, are causing concern to faculty, students—and the American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, according to the Naples Daily News and the Michigan Daily, a University of Michigan student newspaper.
Law school faculty don't necessarily oppose the Florida move, but resent being left out of the decision-making process. They gave the law school's president and dean, Bernard Dobranski, an 11-3 vote of no confidence last year, according to the Naples newspaper. Meanwhile, the dean tells ABAJournal.com that faculty opposed to the move have "taken that difference of opinion to a a new level” and are now prepared to “seriously harm, if not destroy, the law school the long run” to see their views prevail.
Accredited by the ABA in 2005, Ave Maria is being investigated by the ABA because of faculty complaints, the Naples newspaper reported last month. And because of concerns about faculty retention, an ABA committee "notified the school over the summer that it appears to have failed to take the necessary steps to keep a qualified faculty," the Chronicle of Higher Education (sub. req.) reported yesterday.
However, in a detailed interview reported in Q and A format by Cybercast News Service, Dobranski said such concerns are overstated.
The ABA has determined all but one of the complaints made by law school faculty to be unfounded, he says, and the remaining faculty retention issue will soon be resolved, too. "The relocation was a catalyst for the complaints. But a major issue is not about Florida—it's about governance," Dobranski tells CNS. "And the critics believe that they run the law school and that the board does not.” This, however, is not an accreditation issue, he states.
The new town of Ave Maria is being developed by the university's founder and chancellor, Tom Monaghan, 70, who was recently profiled by the Palm Beach Post. A devout Catholic, he made a fortune from Ann Arbor-based Domino's Pizza. More coverage here.
(Updated Sept. 13, at 4:05 p.m, central time.)
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Comments
Anon.
Sep 12, 2007 11:28 PM CST
Your story fails to mention that Dobranski has since “clarified” his statements implying that the ABA iinvestigation is as simple a matter as reporting on the number of faculty hired and fired.
Last Friday he issued the following emal to the entire law school email list acknowledging that the ABA has concluded that there is reason to bellieve (based on 15 factual findings) that the law school is in violation of the accreditation standards. The next step is to consider sanctions on the school if Dobranski can’t demonstrate that the school is correcting those things that are deficiencies in the professional environment of the school.
Here is Dobranski’s verbatim email:
From: Dobranski, Bernard
Sent: Fri 9/7/2007 4:22 PM
To: All Law System Distribution; All Alumni
Subject: ABA Inquiry
September 7, 2007
In the interest of clarifying my August 24, 2007 statement regarding the ABA inquiry, I have set forth below the verbatim “Conclusion” and “Response Requested” in the ABA letter.
Conclusion:
In accordance with Rule 13(a), the Accreditation Committee has reason to believe that the Ave Maria School of Law has not established compliance with Standard 405(a), regarding the obligation of a law school to establish and maintain conditions adequate to attract and retain a competent faculty.
[See Findings of Fact (7) - (21).]
Response Requested:
The Committee requests that the Dean of the Ave Maria School of Law submit a report by December 15, 2007, with all relevantinformation necessary to demonstrate compliance with Standard 405(a), including updated information regarding departures and hires of full-time faculty.
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anoonymous
Sep 13, 2007 12:06 AM CST
The point of 405(a) is not how many faculty you attract and retain, nor the quality of the faculty—there are other standards that deal with those requirements.
The point of 405(a) is that the school has a duty to establish and maintain conditions adequate to attract and retain faculty. So for instance, if you effectively have no tenure at your law school, then you have not got the conditions that are adequate to attract and retain competent faculty. The fact that you have a certain number of qualified faculty is not really relevant to the standard. There may be other reasons why you currently have a competent faculty, but that doesn’t mean the school has demonstrated compliance wtih 405a).
If the dean were to, say, be carrying on a pattern of retaliation and abuse agaist faculty members who disagree with him, for instance, that would be a condition that does not tend to attract and retain competent faculties.
405(a) is all about creating a professional atmossphere. Apparently, the ABA has 15 factual conclusions that led them to believe that the administration is not meeting the standard for establishing a professional environment. And these conclusions were reached after a year long process in which the Dean had many, many opportunities to demonstrate compliance.
In short, a 13(a) ruling is a very, very serious matter, and Dean Dobranski was compelled to correct the misrepresentations he made about the ABA matter. Not good form.
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A. Nonymous
Sep 13, 2007 11:23 AM CST
You say that Dobranski says the “institution will soon be doing better than ever” in your report. Perhaps Dobranski should explain why, under his tenure, the school in terms of student qualifications has gone from being competitive with the top 50 lawschools in the country to being soundly in the bottom fifty. In a four year period, the median LSAT scores have systematically slid six points from their peak in 2003.
If one takes the measure of a Dean by the institutional and student quality that he is able to maintain, Dobranski is a miserable failure. That the school is under investigation for conditions arguably stemming from his incompetence is not surprising.
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History
Sep 13, 2007 12:30 PM CST
Ave Maria University is a separate entity and it’s board therefor did NOT decide to relocate Ave Maria Law School to Ava Maria Town, FL. This ill-advised decision, without regard for faculty, staff, students and the law school itself was made by the AMSL Board of Directors whose Chair is Thomas Monaghan who is also the Chair of the Board of Ave Maria University and who built Ave Maria Town. The land deal you speak of is Monaghan’s land deal, begging the question, is this a conflict of interest to disolve AMSL to reconstitute it accross the country in an isolated town in south central florida——which Monaghan and the Dean of the Law School, continue to refer to as “Naples.”
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Call It Both Ways.
Sep 13, 2007 2:45 PM CST
All of the comments here tend to focus on the Dean but, as this article points out, “The ABA has determined all but one of the complaints made by law school faculty to be unfounded”.
The disgruntled faculty members appear to be trying to hijack the ABA accreditation process to advance their own agenda. And, I believe all of the open faculty positions created have been filled already, so retention becomes something of a moot point.
The faculty members do not exactly have titile and possession of the moral high ground here.
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Mrs. Moral
Sep 13, 2007 7:19 PM CST
“The faculty members do not exactly have titile and possession of the moral high ground here.”
Yes, indeed. It is Dean Dobranski who has the moral high ground here. How about his decision to suspend Professor Safranek without pay? What a wonderful moral example!
Even better was his decision to push for Professor Lyons and Professor Pucillo to be placed on leave of absence. How moral indeed!
Thank goodness that Dean Dobranski is teaching Moral Foundations of the Law this semester. One can find no better moral example than he!
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softwarelaw
Sep 14, 2007 9:58 AM CST
Wow, what a mess Dobranski has made.
This is one dean that is learning what other deans know: faculty support is important.
If Dobranski doesn’t like the heat, he should get out of the kitchen.
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