University of Southern Maine

Diversity Plan: 2003 - 2005

University of Maine School of Law

GOAL I: Climate

USM continuously strives to make the campus a welcoming climate, inclusive in its understanding and integration across multiple dimensions of diversity, including, but not limited to, diversity based on race and ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, age, gender expression and identity, religion, and class.

Law School/Campus Climate - How to Create a More Welcoming and Inclusive Environment

1. The Law School will continue its efforts to make its building, including the Clinic Building more accessible to students with physical disabilities. A plan is already in place with respect to providing Clinic accessibility and work will begin this summer. However, modifications to the main building are also necessary to ensure that the Law School is an attractive option for students with disabilities. For example, although students in wheelchairs can be seated in the back row of each of the three amphitheater classrooms, there is no way for them to get into the well of any classroom on their own. This limits their ability to participate in panels or classroom demonstrations. Efforts will be made to raise funds, either from within the University or externally, to make necessary modifications.
   
   
2. The Law School will work to develop, in coordination with agencies like Alpha One, a list of apartments and other housing opportunities in the community that are accessible to law students with disabilities, and will publicize this information to prospective students.
   
   
3. The Law School will continue to stress in its publications, admissions recruiting materials and in public forums that it offers a welcoming climate for older students (the average age of Maine Law students is 29, with students ranging in age from 21 to 60), for female students (55% of the Class of 2005 is female), for gay, lesbian and bisexual students, and for students of color. The Law School's nondiscrimination policies will continue to be regularly disseminated in publications and postings, and the administration will continue to work with and support existing student groups such as the Black Law Students Association, Latina/o Law Students Association, Native American Law Students Association, the Women's Law Association and the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Law Caucus to ensure that climate issues are stressed and addressed.

GOAL II: Academic Experience

The USM academic experience, which includes both curricular and co-curricular activities, increasingly reflects the multiplicity and diversity of communities and cultures locally, nationally, and globally.

1. The Law School will continue to offer courses such as "Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation and the Law," Native American Law and a seminar on Domestic Violence and the Criminal Justice System.
   
   
2. The Law School will encourage faculty and students to use the Group Study option as a "curriculum incubator" to develop new courses that reflect the multiplicity and diversity of communities and cultures. The first two courses mentioned above started as Group Studies, and this semester, one of our faculty will be advising a Group Study in Islamic Law that may one day be added to the curriculum.
   
   
3. The Law School will continue to encourage and support special interest student organizations to come together in a "diversity coalition" to develop and sponsor, on a regular basis, special co-curricular programs that educate and engage law students on issues of diversity and underrepresented populations.
   
   
4. The Law School will explore approaches to expanding the outreach of our Clinic and Externship Program in ways that will enable our students to engage with and assist clients from a more diverse population.
   
   

GOAL III: Student Recruitment and Retention

USM strives to increase the diversity of its student body through active outreach and recruitment. USM increasingly works to develop structures and mechanisms that support the retention of all students of color and other underrepresented populations.

1. The Law School will continue its ongoing efforts to recruit a more diverse student body. Because our efforts to recruit and retain female students, older students and students of various sexual orientations have been quite successful, we believe that we must continue to focus our efforts on recruitment and retention of students of color.
   
   
2. The Law School is currently engaged in an effort to develop relationships with and connections to several traditionally minority undergraduate colleges to ensure multiple sources of law school applications from qualified minority students. Our Assistant Dean is contacting minority alumni/ae who are graduates of such schools, to seek their assistance, and our Associate Dean has spoken with representatives of the Law School Admissions Council to pursue the possibility of the Law School participation in an LSAC grant program that encourages law schools to establish summer programs for students from colleges with significant numbers of minority students.
   
   
3. The Law School will explore the possibility of developing an exchange program/relationship with a traditionally minority Law School to facilitate exchanges of law students and faculty.
   
   
4. The Law School will continue to: (a) recruit at minority student fairs, and to involve our current minority students in student recruitment; (b) send personal letters to minority students registered with the Law School Admission Council's Candidate Referral Service (CRS) inviting them to apply and enclosing materials about the school; (c) to sponsor a "Day of Law School" event for local high school students, especially students of color, to encourage them to consider careers in law; and (d) to be a sponsoring organization of CLEO (Council on Equal Educational Opportunity).
   
   
5. As noted above, the Law School will make efforts to improve its facilities to make them more attractive and accessible for student with physical disabilities. We believe, from contacts with disabled applicants, that our current physical plant discourages such students from applying to the Law School.
   
   
6. The Law School will make renewed efforts to recruit international students and will work with our alumni/ae who live and work abroad and who are engaged in international law practice to expand the pool of applicants from foreign countries. We will also continue to strengthen our existing exchange programs with law schools in France, Ireland, England and Canada to draw more students from abroad to our program and to encourage more of our students to take advantage of the exchanges.
   
   
7. We will continue to expand and enrich our Academic Support/Success Program, which was begun in earnest this year, to ensure that students recruited through the efforts outlined above are provided with the tools and assistance to succeed in Law School.

GOAL IV: Faculty and Staff Recruitment/Retention

USM strives to increase the diversity of faculty and staff, particularly faculty and staff of color, but inclusive of other underrepresented populations as defined in Goal I.

1. The Law School's faculty is quite diverse in terms of age, gender and sexual orientation and we are proud of our successful efforts in this regard. Today, about 45 percent of our full time faculty is female and two faculty members are openly lesbian. Although the staff continues to be predominately female, three of seven senior professional staff positions are now held by males. There are no faculty or staff members of color, however, and therefore recruitment of minority faculty and staff continue to be our principal goal.
   
   
2. With respect to faculty recruitment, we will collaborate more closely with the Office of Campus Diversity and Equity and we encourage that Office (a) to pursue with Human Resources the addition of funds to search budgets that would be earmarked especially for minority recruitment efforts, and (b) to contact Search Committee Chairs immediately after a search is announced to suggest ways to broaden the scope of advertising to reach a more diverse pool of applicants. We will continue our past practice of identifying, through the AALS Register and advertising, a diverse range of candidates and then actively recruiting them. We will continue to register job openings with organizations and in venues that would reach a diverse audience of law-trained professionals. We will continue to use Summer Session as a way to increase minority presence on the faculty and will aggressively pursue minority faculty from other schools to interest them in teaching a summer course here.
   
   
3. With respect to recruiting a more diverse staff, the Law School will collaborate more closely with the Office of Campus Diversity and Equity to develop strategies for searching outside the local area and within local and regional immigrant communities. We will explore, for example, the possibility of aligning ourselves with community groups and organizations such as the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project to encourage referrals of job applicants.
   
   
4. The Law School will explore the possibility of holding a luncheon or a series of lunches with local leaders in the minority and immigrant communities to introduce them to the Law School, both as an employer and an educational institution, and communicate our interest in diversifying our faculty, staff and student body.
   
   
5. We would anticipate a similar approach to leaders in the disability community once the Law School facilities have been made more accessible to individuals with physical disabilities.