Mississippi College School of Law issued the following statement:
Wendy Scott Resigns as Mississippi College Law Dean
Mississippi College School of Law Dean Wendy Scott is resigning, with
plans to become a professor on the Jackson campus in January.
The MC Law dean since August 2014, Scott will step down on December
1. Under her leadership, MC Law stabilized its enrollment, including an
increase in first-year students this fall, and strengthened ties with the metro
Jackson community through her service on various local boards. Scott worked
effectively with alumni, and members of the Mississippi Bar.
“We appreciate Wendy Scott’s service to the MC Law School during a
very challenging time in legal education,” President Lee Royce said. “Dean
Scott’s Christian devotion, care for students, and impressive scholarship will
serve the Law School well as she returns to the faculty.”
An interim MC Law dean will soon be announced, say officials at the
Baptist-affiliated university.
MC’s 8th law dean, Scott became the first African-American
to lead the institution since its creation in 1975. Celebrating its 40th
anniversary a year ago, MC Law School today enrolls nearly 400 students.
“I have enjoyed the challenge of leading MC Law School over the last
two years,” Scott said. “I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to
serve as the dean of such a fine law school and look forward to returning to
the classroom.”
A graduate of Harvard University and New York University School of
Law, Scott succeeded Jim Rosenblatt, who served 11 years as MC Law dean. He
remains Dean Emeritus and professor at MC Law.
MC leaders noted that Scott advanced MC Law private giving, including
the creation of the late Professor Jeffrey Jackson, and Anthony Scardino
scholarship funds. She is a recognized leader in the American Bar Association
and the Association of American Law Schools.
Before joining MC Law, Scott served as a professor at North Carolina
Central University School of Law for eight years. In addition, she worked as
associate dean for academic affairs at the school. Earlier during her legal
career, Scott served as a professor at the Tulane University Law School in New
Orleans for 17 years. During part of her tenure, she worked as the
institution’s vice dean for academic affairs.
Most recently, Scott was invited to speak at the federal Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals Judicial Conference by Chief Judge Carl Stewart. Her
area of legal scholarship focused on constitutional theory and school
desegregation.
Early in her career, Scott served as a staff attorney at the Legal
Action Center for the City of New York.
Wendy and her husband, Reverend Eddie Scott, are the parents of one
son, Christian Scott, 17, a senior and basketball
standout at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Ridgeland.
31 comments:
Interesting. With national trends, it's a difficult time for law schools right now, and it would've been hard for almost anyone to follow Rosenblatt. Still, she seemed to make it a little harder on herself than she needed to. Kudos to her for making this decision, and here's hoping that the law school doesn't end up in the interim (or full-time) hands of anyone currently on staff.
Thank you for your service Dean Scott.
Uh oh, wait till Kamikaze hears about this one.
Every MC alum I know thought of her as nothing other than an absolute disaster. Identity politics and social justice warrior this and that. I believe it was her that stated in the now infamous CL article that unemployed law students could accept unpaid or volunteer positions. Moved away from academic merit-based scholarships and more toward "need" scholarships. A quick search will reveal the downward trend in MC's 1L GPA, 1L LSAT, bar passage rate, employment rate, etc.
When will that greaser Matt Steffey leave for parts unknown? Regardless of what he knows or does not know about the law, he is a literal embarrassment to this state when he appears as a spokesman. His credibility, assuming he has any, is immediately shot to hell once he appears on camera. Why the media call on this clown for his opinion is beyond the imagination of a normal bystander.
Dean Scott.....thank you for your comment at 3:21.
Does anyone know who is going to replace her? Rumor has it Rosenblatt is going to come back in.
Rumor has it Chuck McRae is going to apply.
@5:17, Steffey won't leave because he has nowhere to go. He is a complete embarrassment.
It's amazing how many MC law experts we have in this blog.
She was awful.
A swing and a miss at a diversity attempt.
The school should get back to its roots...a practical place where local practitioners teach adjunct classes.
Forget Harvard teachers and theory.
Get back to basics and train good practicing lawyers.
As an MC alum, she was not a disaster. However she was not the right fit as she is an outsider to the Mississippi legal community. MC needs someone who is plugged into the good ole boy system who can get their golf and hunting buddies to have their firms donate funds to help support the school. She didn't have the ability to fit into the power structure and thus was unable to bring in what the school needs most....money.
Carolyn "You Work For Me" Meyers, Cedric the Gray, and now Great Scott? Phony Tony next. What about the tardy federal judge?
Can we simply agree that she was a 'diversity token'? Sort of like when a corporation such as Entergy puts a woman in the head chair of a company responsible for power-grids and distribution lines. Or when a large manufacturing corporation puts a black female in charge of the organization and she doesn't know a punch-press from a grinding-wheel, but she understands 'metric boards' and 'focus groups'.
8:49 - One doesn't have to be 'an MC Law expert' to recognize what was up with that hire.
It was readily apparent to everyone that the legal education market was about to tank/actively tanking when Dean Scott came on board. I suspect she took the job knowing she would be a sacrificial lamb because it represented a step up even if it didn't last, she knew she'd have a "soft landing" and, hey, maybe she'd get lucky. MC is happy (or certain people at MC are happy) because now they don't have to hire another black female for a while. Everybody wins. From a strictly transactional perspective, pretty good lawyering by both parties.
9:59 & 8:03. Hope you enjoy the classroom.
@8:03 Jesus H. Christ...
Dean Scott's gender or race had nothing to do with her problems as Dean. Believe it or not, a person can simply not be the right fit for a particular position based solely on lack of merit and under-performance.
Her downfall says nothing about anyone else who follows who happens to be the same gender or race as she is.
Philip Gunn
I hear one of the local DAs is looking for a new position???
Is he the one who grill-roasted the federally-protected Canada geese on the Rez?
9:22, I remember that. Was that before or after he ran them down with a riding lawnmower?
Yay!!! Students have been up in arms and complaining about her blatant discrimination. She brought her own political agenda to the position and tried to push that forward (for example, only sending black faculty to conferences, only putting forward black students names for clekships). The worst was instructing head of admissions (?) to only recruit at Alcorn and JSU. When he refused she fired him. MC did a horrible job of vetting her as this aspect of her profile was widely known. Granted, I am getting this info second hand from a relative who is a student there now.
6pm, the head of admissions was fired because he is a pedophile. Plead down to lesser charges in Virginia around 96/97 and there's an open case in Mississippi now. Google it. All public record.
Philip Gunn is speaker of the House of Representatives.
the guy with the geese was former State Senator Mike Gunn, who was a campaign aide to David Duke in Louisiana before he became a Washington lobbyist for a tobacco company.
AH, MCSOL. What a waste (I'm a graduate).
"First year enrollment is up!" is the constant mantra to increase revenue with no regard for the actual job market that its students will face with HUGE student loans.
And Steffey, don't get me started. Credibility? Yeah, sorry, but while I was there, let's just say he was fond of giving some certain students personal attention...
8:38 - so much for your very limited answer. Either debate the entire post to which you responded or go sit in the corner. If you can't follow, let me help. Here are the points you failed to address:
Allegation (a): Sending only black faculty to conferences.
Allegation (b) Only putting forward black students names for clekships).
Allegation (c) Instructing head of admissions to only recruit at Alcorn and JSU.
If those three allegations are anywhere near the truth, then this woman had what is often referred to as a 'Diversity Agenda' - Another term for quota system.
Who are all of the black faculty she supposedly deployed on this "diversity agenda"? I just scanned the mc website and it lists two black faculty, out of a sea of several nonblack. If the reference is to Angela Kupenda, she travels and she's also one of few who publishes and presents scholarship. She has done so for several years. Maybe Jim Rosenblatt had the same "diversity agenda" as Scott? Foolish talk. I just did a quick scan of their recent news and I see Modak (white male) traveling and presenting. I see Anderson traveling and presenting (white male) all within the last month. Read people. Alums should actually read the news bulletins instead of getting all of their info from John Lyon's Facebook rants. (White female alum. Give it up, John. It's despicable.)
Also, can't help but notice that this resignation comes a few weeks after the bar exam results come out, and that she's not finishing out the school year. The pass rate must be terrible.
Hey 8:20, the Interim Dean appears to be another AA woman. Let's see if John Lyons will run her off, too.
3:55
While I don't know what the pass rates were, this year's Bar takers would have included students that started school before Scott became Dean. Can't lay the blame on her for that...
All these comments are wrong and terrible. As an alumni of MC Law School, she brought a lot of good change to the school. What a lot of people don't talk about in this forum is how bad the school was before she came and its terrible reputation. What she did in her two years was outstanding. She tried to bring change, a change that was much needed yet a change that wasn't accepted by the administration of MC. Also it is false to say that she was a racist and that she only recruited black students. Yes, she focused on bringing more African Americans into the school but she also took many trips in order to promote MC college to students in Mississippi and across the US. Great Dean who was put through unneeded challenges due to a unwilling administration.
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