 Law School Expansion Gets Boost From $3.25 Million Koret Foundation Grant
The Koret Foundation has awarded $3.25 million to the University of San Francisco School of Law. The money will be used for a planned $12 million reconstruction of Kendrick Hall, the law school’s home for the last 40 years.
In appreciation of this gift, the University will name the law school complex the Koret Law Center. The complex includes Kendrick Hall and the Dorraine Zief Law Library. The name of the law school itself will remain the University of San Francisco School of Law.
“This grant is not simply about bricks and mortar,” said Jeffrey Brand, dean of the USF School of Law. “This grant is about helping the University of San Francisco School of Law to grow, to help us focus on new generations of lawyers concerned with societal responsibilities and social justice.”
The Koret Foundation is one of the largest Jewish-sponsored charitable trusts in the United States. Since its founding, Koret has awarded more than $200 million in grants to support community projects, educational institutions, and organizations active in areas of public policy, arts and culture, and programs for disadvantaged youth and elderly citizens in the Bay Area and Israel. It supports organizations and initiatives that advance economic opportunity, individual freedom, and entrepreneurial values, and provides the means for organizations to educate people to help themselves.
“Through our support of this outstanding educational center and its superior environment for the lawyers of the future, and through our significant partnership with the law school faculty, we can help to improve the quality and public responsibility of tomorrow’s lawyers,” said Ted Taube, president of the Koret Foundation.
Including the Koret grant, more than half the money needed for the renovation of Kendrick Hall has been raised. Construction is expected to begin in late December or early January. The first phase of the project will be to renovate the 23,000 square feet of space that housed the law library prior to the opening of the new library last year. That space, which comprises 40 percent of the entire building, now stands empty.
Other features of the new law center will include:
• A three-story atrium connecting Kendrick Hall with the new library.
• A “student boulevard” leading from the atrium to the classrooms. Offices for student organizations, lockers, and a student mail and copy room located just off the boulevard.
• Expanded clinic space, a new, larger moot court room, and seminar rooms in the two-story area where the library was formerly located.
• Faculty offices lining both rims of the old library.
• A “justice wing” on the third floor to provide space for unique programming dedicated to the law school’s mission of educating for justice.
• Renovated, technologically advanced classrooms.
• A new rotunda outside the classrooms that will serve as an art gallery and information center.
“The proposed changes are dramatic because they reflect a belief on the part of the entire law school community that the quality of our facilities should match the quality of what we offer our students,” Brand said.
|
