Founded in 1923, South Texas College of Law is one of the largest private, independent law schools in the United States, with 1,200 full- and part-time students, 60 full-time faculty members, and close to 12,000 alumni. Our faculty members are recognized throughout Texas for their expertise in the classroom, as well as their legal scholarship. Included among our alumni are some of the state’s leading attorneys and judges.

The mission of South Texas is to provide an accessible legal education, distinguished by its excellence, to a diverse body of students committed to serving their communities and the profession. To carry out this mission, the College depends upon the continuing support of our alumni.

Currently, South Texas has outstanding programs in five areas: advocacy, legal research and writing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), clinical practice, and library services.

Our Advocacy Program, with 99 national championships, was ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the number-one program of its kind in the nation in 2005 and is consistently listed among the top 10. Our Legal Research and Writing Program achieved the number-20 ranking in the 2006 edition of the magazine as well. The College’s ADR program, which is carried out through our Frank Evans Center for Conflict Resolution, and our on-campus clinical program, which is conducted by our General Civil Clinic, are both considered among the best such programs in Texas. And our Fred Parks Law Library has consistently been ranked by students as one of the top law libraries in the state, according to polls conducted by Texas Lawyer magazine.

The College’s Strategic Plan

With these five programs as a foundation, the College has embarked upon a set of initiatives to significantly advance our many other programs and, in turn, our overall reputation throughout the state. To carry out these initiatives, the College, in 2004, launched a five-year strategic plan, the creation of which was spearheaded by Dean James J. Alfini and the South Texas Board of Directors.

Under our strategic plan, which provides a blueprint for the future of South Texas, the College has four goals:

1. Excellence—to provide superior instruction, curriculum, and facilities
   
2. Leadership—to be acknowledged as a leader in legal education
   
3. Effectiveness—to provide efficient, timely, and cost-effective educational services
   
4. Access—to commit resources and provide opportunities to enhance the recruitment, retention, and prospects for success of a highly qualified, motivated, and diverse student body

Achieving Excellence

Symbolizing the College’s commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarly legal research are our four Centers of Excellence:

• The Advocacy Program, which equips students with the skills to successfully try and appeal a case
  
• The Frank Evans Center for Conflict Resolution, which gives both students and legal professionals the skills to mediate or arbitrate a legal dispute, plus opportunities to conduct research and advance knowledge in conflict resolution
  
• The Corporate Compliance Center, which provides corporate attorneys and officers, as well as students, with information and strategies that corporations can use in their efforts to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other federal laws governing corporate behavior
  
• The Transactional Practice Center, which teaches students how to conduct a variety of business transactions
  

Building on the longstanding success of our Advocacy Program and Frank Evans Center for Conflict Resolution, South Texas is now in the process of expanding the activities of our Corporate Compliance Center and Transactional Practice Center. We are also expanding the services and curiculum of our General Civil Clinic, which provides indigent citizens with legal representation and referral, and student interns with valuable experience in handling actual cases.

Gifts to South Texas support three research professorships: the Harry ’56 and Helen Hutchens Research Professorship, held by Professor Timothy Zinnecker; the Godwin Pappas Ronquillo, LLP Research Professorship, held by Professor Shelby Moore; and the Vinson & Elkins L.L.P. Research Professorship, held by Professor Val Ricks.

In addition, we offer six ongoing series within our seminar program: the semiannual Corporate Compliance Center Conference, the annual Fred Parks Distinguished Lecture Series, the annual Institute for Responsible Dispute Resolution, the annual John Turner Lecture on Professionalism, and the annual Ethics Symposium, sponsored by the South Texas Law Review.

Achieving Leadership

To be recognized as a leader in legal education, South Texas must recruit the best students and, in turn, produce the best graduates. To attract great students to the College, we have embarked upon such initiatives as creating new scholarships—including the Sam and Ruth Gross Memorial Scholarship and the Pamela E. George Famliy Law Scholarship—and aggressively marketing South Texas to students throughout the state through print and broadcast media.

The best law school graduates are those equipped with the skills to pass the bar exam. To help improve the bar-passage rate among our graduates, the College has taken the following steps:

• hiring professors to teach bar-preview courses to third-year students and to tutor such students in how to prepare for the exam
• creating the Parks Foundation Bar Review Scholarships, which are awarded to select students each May to help them pay for a
  bar-review course
• initiating a faculty retreat specifically geared to discussing additional ways to improve our graduates’ bar-passage rate

Achieving Effectiveness

One way in which a law school can enhance the effectiveness of its teaching is by offering its students an innovative learning environment. To provide such an environment at South Texas, we launched an ambitious program a number of years ago to upgrade our campus with the latest in multimedia technology. We achieved our first objectives in this program in 2001, when we completed our Fred Parks Law Library, and in 2003, when we completed our T. Gerald Treece Courtroom complex—home to our unsurpassed Advocacy Program. We achieved our next objective in 2005, when we equipped each of our thirteen classrooms with a power outlet at every seat, thereby enabling our students to use their laptop computers in class.

In 2007, we completed the installation of a schoolwide integrated database system at South Texas. Among this system’s many attributes is its ability to streamline the course-registration process for our students. We also achieved our latest objective in 2007, when we installed multimedia technology in each of the thirteen classrooms mentioned above. This project significantly improved the classroom experience for our students, and upgrades to this technology are ongoing.

Achieving Access

South Texas is committed to offering a diverse body of students access to the best legal education in the state, as well as to a variety of great career opportunities. To achieve the first part of this goal, we have stepped up our efforts to recruit men and women of all ages and ethnicities, and from all economic and geographic sectors. In addition, in keeping with our tradition of providing working men and women with a legal education, we have implemented a special strategy to recruit second-career students.

To achieve the second part of our goal—providing our students with great career opportunities—we have expanded our career-services efforts by

• providing more career information to students through seminars, counseling sessions, and printed materials
• increasing the number of employers participating in on-campus interviews
• increasing the number of law clerk and attorney positions we advertise

We Seek Your Support

The initiatives described above are only a fraction of the many efforts currently being undertaken by South Texas College of Law to achieve our goals of excellence, leadership, effectiveness, and access. Among these efforts is a crucial initiative to increase the involvement of alumni like you in the activities of the College. Our students need your guidance and wisdom, and our programs need your ideas and financial support.

Your investment of time, energy, and resources is critically important to our success in achieving the goals of the College. To learn how you can support our efforts, please contact Alice Morris, Assistant Director of Development, at 713-646-1796.