Annette Clark, dean of the Saint Louis University School of Law, resigned effective immediately.
Greta Weiderman
Web Editor- St. Louis Business Journal
Annette Clark, the dean of the Saint Louis University School of Law, resigned Wednesday, effective immediately. Clark joined the law school in 2011 from the Seattle University School of Law.
In a letter to the school’s president, Rev. Lawrence Biondi, and its vice president for academic affairs, Manoj Patankar, Clark said she no longer has confidence in either of their “abilities to lead this institution” or in their “commitment to the well-being of the School of Law.” Read the letter in its entirety below.
She detailed what she called “egregious actions” of Biondi, including:
- Transferring more than $800,000 from the law school building fund to the President’s Opportunity Fund on the final day of Sandy Johnson’s interim deanship without her knowledge and counter to Johnson’s understand of the school’s agreement regarding her compensation.
- Acquiring the building downtown and deeming it to be the new law school without adequate investigation and consultation with law school leadership.
- Refusal to meet with the American Bar Association/ Association of American Law Schools reaccreditation site team.
- Forbidding the law school to fund summer research stipends.
- Unilaterally transferring $260,000 from the law school annual fund for summer research stipends to his own discretionary fund.
Biondi said in a statement Wednesday that he and Patankar had intended to terminate Clark’s appointment at the law school today at a meeting scheduled for 11 a.m., but that she did not attend the meeting and instead emailed her letter of resignation.
“Her emails to Dr. Patankar and me, and to the faculty and staff of our School of Law, demonstrate a lack of a clear and comprehensive understanding of the duties and obligations, autonomy and authority, of a modern-day dean at a large and complex university,” Biondi said in the statement that he send to faculty and staff.
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