Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Global Professor Robert A. Stein '61 has a new fund named in his honor to boost the Law School’s ability to hire and retain outstanding faculty amid increasing competition for top-notch talent among leading law schools.
The Dean Robert Stein Faculty Excellence Fund recalls Stein’s accomplishments in adding to the Law School’s exceptional faculty during his time as dean from 1979 to 1994, a push that elevated Minnesota Law’s reputation both nationally and internationally.
“A key to the excellence of the Law School is excellence of its faculty, and in all respects—excellent teachers, excellent scholars, and excellence in public service,” Stein says. “We have many outstanding faculty in the Law School right now, and this fund will assist them and others who are recruited to the faculty by providing salary supplements and funds for research and public service activities. I hope this fund will assist faculty in helping them achieve their goals.”
A strong faculty also strengthens student recruiting. “The reputation of the faculty is an important ingredient in the reputation of a school and helps attract first-rate students to Minnesota Law,” Stein says.
The Faculty Excellence Fund mirrors the action Stein took to establish the Stein Scholars program when he stepped down as dean.
That fund, through 30 years of granting scholarships, has been “very helpful in establishing excellence in our student body,” Stein says. “And now this new Faculty Excellence Fund is intended to help, in the same way, attract and retain excellent faculty who will stay at Minnesota, and do their work at Minnesota because they’ll be supported in all of their activities.”
A Generational Shift
With several long-time faculty members retiring or close to retirement, the Law School is undergoing a “generational shift” that sharpens the focus on recruiting and retaining faculty members, says Professor Kristin Hickman, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and associate dean for research and intellectual life.
“Establishing a fund in Bob Stein’s name for the support of faculty excellence both honors the tradition of Bob Stein and his many contributions to our Law School but also helps us to continue that tradition into the future,” Hickman says.
The Stein Fund’s creation comes as the Law School faces increasingly “fierce” competition for talented faculty, Hickman says.
“In the base terms of salary and benefits, we need to be able to compete with our peer institutions,” Hickman says. “We’ve always been able to hire and retain good faculty. And yet at the same time, every year, it’s a bit of a battle as we seek to hire new faculty but also as we seek to hold off higher-ranked institutions that want to poach our top colleagues.”
The Faculty Excellence Fund will help support faculty research that also benefits student learning.
“The scholarly research that I do is something that I then turn around and bring into the classroom, and I think my colleagues do the same thing,” Hickman says. “The law is dynamic and understanding the trends and the developments in the law and helping to shape those trends and developments. That’s important stuff for students to be exposed to and learn. For students and alumni, it is important to appreciate that symbiotic connection between faculty research and scholarship and our educational mission, our efforts as teachers.”
Research isn’t free, from the cost of data collection to attending conferences to exchange and present ideas to hiring students as research assistants. Students in that role gain exposure to scholarly research and writing and the evaluation of different legal concepts, doctrines, and ideas as they build personal relationships with professors, Hickman says.
“Our faculty is known for both the caliber of its scholarship but also the impact that that scholarship has in helping to guide the development of the law and solve society’s problems,” Hickman says. “Providing resources to support research is more vital now than ever.”
Hickman points to Professor Nicholas Bednar ’16, as a former research assistant for her, Stein, and Professor Steve Meili, as “a rising superstar in the field of administrative law” whose students benefit from his research into executive power, among other issues.
Other Minnesota Law faculty research, Hickman says, includes the work of professors Francis Shen on neurobiology and the law, Susan Wolf on bioethics and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin on international human rights.
“The University’s investment in that research has, in turn, with all of these folks, influenced the direction of law in the United States and in the world, and has influenced our understanding of the law,” Hickman says. “But we bring students along with us.”
The Faculty Excellence Fund, Stein says, rounds out his long-term focus on seeking preeminence for the Law School.
That includes In Pursuit of Excellence, the history of Minnesota Law that he wrote in 1978, and the Stein Scholars fund. Stein also launched the Jurist in Residence program, bringing U.S. Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, William Rehnquist, and Harry Blackmun to the Law School when he was dean. Stein and his wife, Sandy, have endowed the Robert A. Stein Lecture Series, which has hosted former Vice President Walter F. Mondale ’56 as well as Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Sonia Sotomayor, John Roberts, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett for lectures and interactions with students, faculty, and the legal community.
“It seems to me to complete the project,” says Stein, who rejoined the faculty in 2006 after 12 years as executive director and chief operating officer of the American Bar Association. “I’m hoping that this Faculty Excellence Fund will build on my contributions and those of other alumni and supporters, and that it will be large enough to make a significant impact.”