Dear Valued Alumni,

It is truly a pleasure to be able to communicate with you at the end of this calendar year, as I approach the completion of one and a half years as Dean.  It is an honor and a privilege to serve all of you, as well as our students, staff, and faculty.  Every morning as I enter my office, with its wonderful view of Campus Green, looking east, with sunlight pouring through the windows, I feel an immense sense of gratitude. I look forward to continuing to serve you for years to come. 

I wanted to use this space to encourage you to stay connected with our College of Law.  We are at the cusp of transformational change, with an upward trajectory that I believe will launch us into being properly recognized as a national, elite public law school.  We have developed a series of strategic priorities—student success, experiential learning (as part of a holistic, integrative learning approach), bolstering our centers of excellence, international and comparative law and legal programming, and strengthening our capacities in legal education beyond the JD.  We have taken and are continuing to take significant steps to advance those priorities, which you can read about here or listen to a podcast about here.  Finally, to stay in the know, we have developed and will be continually updating a microsite that has the specific purpose of highlighting our upward trajectory, and the way that it is very much consonant with the University of Cincinnati’s strategic direction of Next Lives Here.    

I also welcome a personal touch and opportunity to connect. If you are in Cincinnati or willing to travel to it, I humbly invite you to attend my upcoming Coffees with the Dean, on February 11, 2025, at the University Club.  There will be another one scheduled later in the spring as well, at the Queen City Club, which I will announce once the date and time are set.  There I will be discussing our most recent initiatives, as well as our progress in achieving our strategic priorities.  And, of course, you can always send me an email or find me on LinkedIn or Instagram, where I maintain an active presence. 

In sum, I consider it a priority to hear from you about your concerns and aspirations for our College, and I look forward to these exchanges being rich and fruitful.  Indeed, my interactions with alums are invariably rich and fruitful, as I learned from the listening tour during my first year as Dean, when I visited dozens of law firms, corporations, and nonprofit centers across the country to hear from all of you.  These visits were instrumental in the development of our five strategic priorities, and your support has been just as instrumental in our efforts to advance them.

Put differently, we are on a pathway to success, but we can only succeed together.  In that vein, I welcome and indeed seek your engagement.

I wish all in Bearcat Nation a healthy, joyful and prosperous 2025. 

Haider Ala Hamoudi

Dean and Nippert Professor of Law