July 9, 2008

Robert M. Ackerman will serve as Wayne State University's Faculty Athletic Representative. He was named the 10th dean of Wayne State University Law School this past spring.

"I look forward to working with Dean Ackerman to build on our successes academically," stated WSU Director of Athletics Rob Fournier. "His record of scholarship and professional qualifications will complement the position of faculty athletic representative and will certainly be a model for our student-athletes who aspire to further their educational ambitions beyond their undergraduate programs."

Professor Ackerman came to the Wayne State Law School from the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State, where he taught torts, dispute resolution, conflict resolution theory, negotiation and mediation. He also served as chair of several committees and was the director of the Center for Dispute Resolution, the nation's seventh-ranked law school dispute resolution program.

A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Ackerman served as dean and professor of law at Willamette University College of Law from July 1996 to May 1999. While dean, the law school experienced a 60 percent increase in financial aid to law students, a revitalization of the alumni organization and annual giving, enhanced visibility of the Center for Dispute Resolution and Law and Government program, and an increase in the diversity of the faculty and student body.

Ackerman has held academic appointments at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the University of Vienna School of Law, the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, and Leicester Polytechnic School of Law (now deMontfort University). He has also been employed by the Denver firm of Holme Roberts & Owen and the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.

Ackerman has written extensively in the fields of torts, dispute resolution, communitarian theory and civic responsibility, and his scholarship has appeared in a wide variety of high profile publications. His recent essay, "Taking Responsibility," was a winner of the international Communitarian Essay Contest and was published in the German social science journal Leviathan. His co-authored book (with Robert F. Cochran Jr.) titled "Law and Community: The Case of Torts," was published early in 2004.

Ackerman is an active participant in professional groups related to conflict resolution, and recently completed a term as chair of the AALS Section on Law and Communitarian Studies. A founding member of Mediators Beyond Borders, he has been working on development projects in Tanzania with Penn State's InterInstitutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge.

Wayne State University Law School has served Michigan and beyond since its inception as Detroit City Law School in 1927. Located in Detroit's re-energized historic cultural center, the Law School remains committed to student success and features modern lecture and court facilities, multi-media classrooms, a 250-seat auditorium, and the Arthur Neef Law Library, which houses one of the nation's 30 largest legal collections. Taught by an internationally recognized faculty, Wayne State Law School students experience a high-quality legal education via a growing array of hands-on curricular offerings, five live-client clinics, and access to well over 100 internships with local and non-profit entities each year. Its 11,000 living alumni, who work in every state of the nation and more than a dozen foreign countries, include leading members of the local, national and international legal communities. For more information, visit www.law.wayne.edu.