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FROM THE NEW HAVEN REGISTER:
(Continued from UNH Today home page.)
WEST HAVEN — Can Connecticut sustain another law school?
The University of New Haven believes it can, and plans to undertake a feasibility study to get one up and running in Greater New Haven or somewhere along the Interstate 95 corridor between here and New York.
President Steven Kaplan, who has made strengthening the arts and sciences at UNH one of the university’s strategic goals, feels a law school fits in that framework.
Beyond that, Kaplan, in a campus e-mail, told faculty and staff Thursday that a law school "was certainly appropriate for a university with such strong criminal justice and forensic science programs."
Kaplan, in a phone interview, said he also foresees a heavy emphasis on joint degrees with the university’s business and engineering schools.
There are three law schools in Connecticut, with Yale University’s the oldest and most prestigious. The University of Connecticut also has a long established school, while the Quinnipiac Law School is the youngest.
Quinnipiac took over the law school at the University of Bridgeport in 1992 and moved it into a new building on its Hamden campus in 1995. With a high of 750 students at one point, it has cut that back to a more selective 400-member student body.
Kaplan said since he arrived in 2004, he has been told the university missed a good opportunity when it did not pick up the law school when it severed ties with the University of Bridgeport.
"My attitude has always been that it is still not too late," Kaplan said Thursday. "It makes all the more sense today."
The president said he feels the marketplace along the Metro-North line into New York City is not being served by any of the schools in the region, particularly a niche program around public safety, business and engineering.
He said his administration hired a consultant, who over the last year examined places such as Drexel University in Pennsylvania and Elon University in North Carolina, which just started law schools, as well as more established schools such as Villanova University.
The idea for a feasibility study will come before the board of governors at UNH Sept. 27. If the board agrees at some point to go ahead with a law school, the idea would need state approval.
Kaplan said the school can cover the operating expenses for the first few years out of its budget, but it would need donors to help with the 100,000-square foot-building, either new or renovated, which would cost between $15 million and $25 million with another million needed for a library.
He said he has talked to several dozen potential donors, including "a few who could see making a significant contribution."
A law school, if approved, would probably have the first class on the West Haven campus, with the expectation that subsequent classes would be in a new facility.
Kaplan said funding of a law school, however, would have to complement other projects already under way on the campus, rather than supplant them.
The $15.5 million recreation center is nearing completion, while the schhool will break ground for the $15.5 million Henry Lee Institute in the spring, if it can complete some $7 million in fund-raising.
UNH also is in the architectural planning stage for a $40 million student residential complex with 400 beds, which also is scheduled for ground-breaking in spring 2008.
In the last few years, UNH has put $10 million into renovating the campus by upgrading classrooms and labs for 2,600 undergraduates and 2,100 graduates and this year it is refocusing on attracting adult students for an evening program.
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