University of Iowa College of Law dean stepping down

IOWA CITY — Adding to turnover atop the University of Iowa’s 12 colleges is Kevin Washburn, who’s leaving his post as dean of the College of Law in December after six years on campus.

The university’s longest-serving dean — Donald E. Letendre, who led the College of Pharmacy for 17 years — wraps up his tenure Friday. New pharmacy Dean Jill M. Kolesar starts Monday.

With Washburn’s departure and successor, 10 of the 12 UI college deans will have started within the last six years. Of those 10, eight started since 2020 and four will have started within the last year.

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“The university will miss Dean Washburn’s leadership at the helm of the college, but I fully support his future endeavors,” UI Executive Vice President and Provost Kevin Kregel said in a statement. “He has had a profound positive impact on the college and the university, navigating expertly through many challenges.”

In the budget year that just ended, Washburn, 56, earned $402,000. After he steps down Dec. 31, he’ll “return to the classroom and his research” on the UI faculty.

A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, Washburn earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Oklahoma and his Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1993. He was chief judge of the Court of Appeals for the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Indians in Michigan from 2008 to 2011 and served as assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Obama administration from 2012 to 2016.

He was captain of the Department of the Interior Agency Review Team for the Biden-Harris transition in Washington from August 2020 to January 2021 — while also serving as UI dean.

“Led a team of 13 professionals who met daily for more than six weeks and held hundreds of meetings with thousands of stakeholders, ultimately producing more than 50 planning memoranda in less than eight weeks,” Washburn wrote of his time in that position on his curriculum vitae.

Beginning in October of 2021 — and ongoing — Washburn reports serving as director and trustee of qualified settlement trusts tied to opioid litigation.

“Selected by federal district court and bankruptcy court judges to create trusts and direct the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars of settlement funds arising from opioid litigation against Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and several other defendants to tribal governments for prevention and abatement of opioid problems in tribal communities nationwide,” according to Washburn’s CV.

He "remains an active scholar, continuing to publish research during his time as dean, and co-teach a course on federal Indian law,“ according to the university’s announcement of his resignation.

“I am particularly grateful that he will conclude his time as dean with the college’s most successful faculty hiring season in many years, with eight new faculty joining the college in 2024-25,” Kregel said in a statement.

The UI College of Law reported 114 total faculty last fall, down from 123 the year prior but above the 97 when Washburn started in 2018. Enrollment in the College of Law’s Juris Doctor professional program reached 492 in fall 2023, on par with the last few years and up from 422 in 2018.

His College of Law reported $1.6 million in external research awards in the last budget year — more than in any year in the last decade, but the lowest among the university’s colleges.

“It has been a tremendous honor to serve as dean at Iowa Law, and I am grateful to the faculty, staff, alumni, and students who have helped me succeed in this role,” Washburn said in a statement. “We are in the midst of an ambitious capital campaign, and I plan to ‘run through the tape’ so that my successor will have strong resources to continue the momentum of the ‘Writing Law School.’”

Listed among Washburn’s accomplishments while dean was developing a “Writing Law School” vision for the college — expanding its legal analysis, writing and research faculty; realigning its 35-year-old Writing Center; and increasing its writing and drafting classes.

The UI College of Law in 2024 did not make U.S. News & World Report’s list of “best legal writing programs,” topped by the University of Oregon. The UI is ranked No. 36 among “best law schools,” tying with Big Ten peers Wisconsin and Illinois universities.

“Washburn also helped develop an ambitious new environmental law program known as the Hubbell Environmental Law Initiative,” according to the university.

On Thursday, Kregel named Graduate College Dean Amanda Haertling Thein and Civil Litigation professor and Chair Todd Pettys as co-chairs of a search committee to replace Washburn. They will head a search committee of 10, including eight with law school connections.

The university with tap the search firm WittKieffer to help fill the position.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com