LAW SCHOOL DEAN, DAN KELLY
“Ward taught me about having the mindset of an entrepreneur, taking risks and looking for big opportunities, in real estate and life,” Kelly says. “He also taught me the importance of being a leader who is a person of faith—as he would put it, being ‘on fire’ with the Holy Spirit—and that everything we do should be for the greater glory of God.” While Kelly’s academic passions will remain in real estate, there are other plans at the top of his list when he starts as dean. “My initial goals are to listen and learn,” he says. “I want to talk with everyone: our students, faculty and staff, our alumni, mentors and employers, our benefactors and supporters. I want to learn from everyone. I want to understand not only our strengths and opportunities but also our weaknesses and challenges.”
Kelly points out that some law schools seek excellence in scholarship; some emphasize the practical training of their students to defend liberty, pursue justice and advance the common good; a few seek to integrate faith and reason in pursuit of a distinctive mission. But “St. Thomas,” says Kelly, “seeks to do all three, and to do so ambitiously and unapologetically.” That is what attracted him to the School of Law, he says. “There is no higher calling than to serve a mission-focused, Catholic law school.” Kelly was raised Catholic. He attended a public elementary school and then Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois, where he played varsity basketball and participated on the speech team. He followed in his
brother’s footsteps and attended the University of Notre Dame.
“Attending a Catholic high school and college helped me to grow in my faith and understand foundational principles of the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholic social teaching,” he says. Learning was a constant theme instilled in him by his parents. Kelly recalls his childhood days sitting at the dinner table and having a clear view of a white board that hung in the kitchen. The board had vocabulary words, hand- drawn maps of the U.S. and world and other facts and ideas that his parents would discuss with him during meals. “My parents always emphasized to me the dignity of the human person,” Kelly says. He adds that they were active in the Civil Rights Movement and attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” at the 1963 March on Washington in D.C. They taught him the importance of being principled and courageous, with the biblical phrase “Be not afraid” inscribed on a homemade plaque on his bookshelf. These lessons cemented in him a strong sense of justice and a commitment to pursuing the truth and a more just society. Kelly is now a husband and father. He and his wife, Kate, whom he met when they were undergraduates at Notre Dame, are raising their five children with these same values, which he hopes will guide his son and four daughters in their own vocations.
Former and incoming St. Thomas Law Deans Rob Vischer, Tom Mengler and Dan Kelly.
Page 24 St. Thomas Lawyer
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