Law School Dean
Could a minority female child from an economically challenged, inner city neighborhood earn continuous recognition of her ability to lead others in prestigious graduate schools and society? Here follows one person’s career story.
PERSONAL BACKGROUND
Danielle Conway (DC), an African American female, grew up in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia.
EARLY FORMAL EDUCATION
DC attended Greenfield School and a public ‘magnet’ school in Philadelphia, the George Washington Carver High School for Engineering and Science. A hard-working academic student, she earned admission to – and graduated from – New York University’s Stern School of Business.
MILITARY SERVICE CREATES CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
To help pay for college, DC applied for and was awarded a scholarship through participation in the Army ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) which required her to eventually serve on active Army duty for at least several years after college graduation. Fortunately, DC was able to postpone her active-duty obligation while next enrolling in Howard University’s law school, later obtaining a Masters of Law degree from George Washington University.
While in school, not yet on active duty in the Army, DC attended monthly Army reserve meetings and annual Army summer training camps.
With her background in law studies, the Army wisely assigned DC to work as an Army lawyer within its Judge Advocate General program when she eventually transitioned to active-duty status, ultimately serving (as a reserve or active duty) for 27 years, earning promotion after promotion, retiring in 2016 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
(Editor’s note – Military authorities are not known for always ‘wisely’ matching the new soldier’s background experience with a related military assignment. For example, see the story within this website: Law – Immigration Lawyer, where a law school graduate was assigned by the Army to pump gas on a helicopter base.)
GETTING STARTED IN THE ACADEMIC SIDE OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION
While on active duty, DC “really enjoyed the teaching elements of the Master of Law program. I also enjoyed mentoring and teaching my colleagues in the Army’s Chief Counsel’s honors program and the Corps of Engineers. I then realized that my passion was teaching. So, I decided to apply for a teaching position, specifically involving legal research and writing, at Georgetown University Law Center. Fortunately, I was accepted.”
EXPANDING CAREER EXPERIENCES THROUGH MILITARY SERVICE
During DC’s service as an Army reservist after the conclusion of her active duty, the Army offered DC a “reserve duty position” in either Belgium or Hawaii. She chose Hawaii, where she made new professional friends, who introduced her to leaders at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law, where DC was soon recruited to teach.
(Editor’s note – The Hawaii Law School’s administrators’ favorable impressions of DC were consistent with the same positive evaluations of DC as a person and teacher, reached by every other law school administrator and higher-ranking military officer who came to appreciate DC’s intellect, ability to reason logically and passion to pursue justice for people who had been excluded from some opportunities in society.)
Said DC, “It was a wonderful experience, not just because of all the things you would expect. But to live and work in a host community of Indigenous peoples with a history of their own, was a wonderful opportunity to learn about a new community, about their history and the constitutionalism of a peoples who were brought into the United States as citizens in 1959.“
(Editor’s note: Hawaii became the 50th U.S. State in 1959.)
“I was able to learn about rural life; a lot of people don’t think about Hawaii as a rural place. So, my scholarship, my teaching, all benefited from that exposure while I taught courses like Indigenous intellectual property law.”
DC’s academic work in Hawaii was rewarded by a Fulbright Senior Scholar award, which took her to a teaching and learning position in Australia, further expanding her understanding of comparative law regarding indigenous communities.
Eventually, DC was hired to become Dean of the University of Maine Law School, where she served for five years, focusing her attention on the intersection of rurality and marginalization.
(Per the Merriam Webster dictionary, one definition of ‘marginality” as it applies to people in society is the exclusion of a group from society or the existence of a group outside the mainstream of society.)
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES MAY EXPAND ONE’S WORLDVIEW BEYOND THE COUNTRY WHERE YOU WERE BORN
As an African American woman, DC came to understand through her lifetime experiences, how to look at how others are being impacted and to channel her knowledge and work and scholarship toward the service of others.
(Editor’s note: The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted soon after the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War in 1868, provides, in Section 1:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”)
In applying her worldview to U.S. law and society, DC thinks about the “primacy” of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; “how we have constitutionally remade society, how we have kept up with how our nation evolves, and how we pledge to recognize the importance of recognizing rights and obligations to the nation by recognizing the rights and obligations that people owe to the nation. And so the 14th Amendment is this powerful statement by our society that we embrace a multiracial, multiethnic, intersectional society that values and acknowledges the rights that people must have in an organized and civilized society.”
“To be an inclusive society, I don’t see that as work that we should relegate to formal DEI programs of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This work we must do, frankly, because when we remade society through the 14th Amendment, this was everyone’s obligation. DEI is not the requirement. The 14th Amendment is the requirement.”
In the spirit of the anti-racism established by the 14th Amendment, the Penn State Dickinson School of Law, now under the leadership of DC, has launched The Anti-Racist Development Institute of the law school.
CAREER SATISFACTION
In addition to being appointed Dean of Penn State Dickinson Law, DC has been named President-Elect of the national Association of American Law Schools.
A law school dean can influence the curriculum and thus the students at one law school. A leader of a national association of law schools has the opportunity to influence teachers and thus future lawyers across the country.
To conclude that one hard-working student taking advantage of academic and military scholarships and personal international experience can rise from a neighborhood girl to a national leader is to almost understate the achievements one life can – and will continue to – accomplish in the service of others.
This career story is based on an article written by Susan Snyder, Staff Writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, published February 16, 2025.
