The State Bar Association of North Dakota Summer 2014 Gavel Magazine | Page 10

IN TRANSITION
and bar services are all located in the
Strinden Center. Much of our collection is
maintained in O’Kelly in the old medical
library stacks, and the rest is in long-term
storage awaiting completion of the building
project. In the University’s Chester Fritz
Library, our students have been afforded a
study area reserved for their exclusive use
during relocation.

K AT H R Y N R . L . R A N D
Dean, University of North Dakota
School of Law
Greetings from UND School of Law, now
located in multiple buildings across the
University of North Dakota campus!
I write this from the fourth floor of
Twamley Hall, the University’s main
administrative building and where our
Office of Student Life and most of our
Dean’s Office is now located. If I crane my
neck, from our Twamley windows I can
see the Carnegie building, O’Kelly Hall,
the old Strinden Center, and—off in the
distance—Dakota Hall, where the rest of
our faculty and staff offices are temporarily
located.
Strolling over to the meeting rooms in
the basement of Swanson Hall, where I’m
scheduled to give a guest lecture in one of
our summer courses, I pass Gamble Hall,
Witmer Hall, Upson II, the Education
building, Gillette, Merrifield, and Leonard
Hall—we’ll hold classes in each of these
buildings during the 2014-2015 academic
year.
Our law library is operating out of
both Strinden and O’Kelly. Public
access and student, faculty, and bench
10

THE GAVEL

This is a time of transition for the School of
Law. It’s incredibly exciting—we can’t wait
to see the new addition go up! And it’s also
stressful for our students, faculty, and staff,
all of whom are enduring the hardships
of relocation. Our faculty and staff are in
cubicles and shared offices, our students
don’t have enough work and study space
as we’re using every available room to hold
classes, we don’t have dedicated space for
speakers and events, and our community
is spread across campus. And yet, when I
ask people, “How are you doing—are you
getting along in our temporary space?”
without exception I hear, “I’m getting along
because the building project is worth it—we
need it for the future of the law school.”
Every single student and every single
employee is lending a hand to ensure the
success of the law school’s building
project. That’s teamwork. That’s
pulling together. That’s community.
And it’s in that same spirit of
community that we ask you,
members of our bench and bar,
alumni and friends, to lend us a
hand, too. You’ve already shown
your support in so many ways we
hesitate to call on you again.
But we need your help.
With rapidly increasing
construction costs in the state,
we need private donations to
help us complete the full scope
of our building project, including
classrooms, student study and work
space, and student services space.

As you already know, the full scope of the
building project is critical to our status as an
accredited law school, critical to the quality
of our educational program, and critical to
the future of the School of Law and North
Dakota’s legal profession. The students
educated in the new and improved law
school building will be the next generation
of judges, law firm partners, rural lawyers,
and community leaders.
I hope you’ll join me, and many others, in
making a donation to the UND School
of Law Building Fund to help us reach
our $2.5 million target and complete this
historic and transformative building project.
We will have once-in-a-lifetime naming
opportunities for those of you with the
means to make major gifts. But we know
all of you have the heart if not the means,
and we are truly grateful for your support in
whatever amount or form.
On behalf of our faculty and staff, on behalf
of our current students and future graduates,
and on behalf of the generations of attorneys
who will follow in your footsteps, thank you
for your commitment to North Dakota’s law
school!