Susan Westerberg Prager

Last updated
Susan Westerberg Prager
11thDean of Southwestern Law School
In office
2013–2021 [1]
Personal details
Born
Susan Ann Westerberg [2]

(1942-12-14) December 14, 1942 (age 80) [2]
Sacramento, California, U.S.
Known forFirst woman President of Occidental College

Susan Westerberg Prager (born December 14, 1942) is an American legal scholar and administrator. Prager served as the 11th Dean and President of Southwestern Law School for eight years from 2013 to 2021, and was the first woman in the history of the law school to serve in the post.

Contents

Early life

On December 14, 1942, Prager was born in Sacramento, California. Prager grew up in Sloughhouse, California, a small agricultural community.

Education

In 1964, Prager earned her B.A. degree in history from Stanford University. Prager also earned an M.A. degree in history from Stanford University. She received her J.D. degree from UCLA and was editor-in-chief of the UCLA Law Review.

Career

Before leading Southwestern Law School, Prager served as the sixth Executive Director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools for six years. Prior to her service at the AALS, Prager was the provost of Dartmouth College.

From 1982 through 1996, Prager was the dean of the UCLA School of Law, giving her the longest tenure of any dean in UCLA Law history. Prager was the 13th President and the first woman President at Occidental College. [3]

In 1982, Prager became the first female dean of a law school in the UC system and only one of two female law school deans in the country. When Prager left her deanship in 1998, the law school established a faculty chair in her name. In addition, during her tenure at UCLA, Prager became the second woman to serve as the president of the Association of American Law Schools.

Prager served for 14 years as a trustee of Stanford University during which time she served as the Vice President of the Board and she chaired the board's Academic Policy Committee. Prager also worked for U.S. Senator Thomas Kuchel of California, the minority whip in the Senate from 1959-1969, and for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the California State Assembly. She practiced law at Powe, Porter & Alphin in Durham, North Carolina before returning to the UCLA School of Law faculty, where she focused on family law, community property, and historic preservation law.

Personal life

Prager's husband is Jim Prager. They have two daughters. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occidental College</span> Liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California, United States

Occidental College is a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887 as a coeducational college by clergy and members of the Presbyterian Church, it became non-sectarian in 1910. It is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges on the West Coast of the United States. Occidental College’s acceptance rate as of the 2022-2023 school year is 16%.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirley Hufstedler</span> American judge

Shirley Ann Mount Hufstedler was an American attorney and judge who served as the first United States secretary of education from 1979 to 1981. She previously served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1968 to 1979. At the time of her presidential cabinet appointment under President Jimmy Carter, she was the highest ranking-woman in the federal judiciary of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UCLA School of Law</span> Public law school in Los Angeles, California, United States

The University of California, Los Angeles School of Law is the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southwestern Law School</span> Private law school is Los Angeles, California

Southwestern Law School is a private law school in Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles. It is accredited by the American Bar Association and enrolls nearly 1,000 students. Its campus includes the Bullocks Wilshire building, an art deco National Register of Historic Places landmark built in 1929. Southwestern is an independent law school with affiliation to the undergraduate program at California State University, Northridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">USC Gould School of Law</span>

The USC Gould School of Law, located in Los Angeles, California, is the law school of the University of Southern California. The oldest law school in the Southwestern United States, USC Law traces its beginnings to 1896 and became affiliated with USC in 1900. It was named in honor of Judge James Gould in the mid-1960s.

Lillian Riemer BeVier is a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law. She was the first woman to become a full professor at the law school, and she holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA</span> Medical school of UCLA

The University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine—known as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM)—is an accredited medical school located in Los Angeles, California, United States. The school was renamed in 2001 in honor of media mogul David Geffen who donated $200 million in unrestricted funds. Founded in 1951, it is the second medical school in the University of California system, after the UCSF School of Medicine.

Robert Allen Skotheim is an American educator who has served as president of several colleges and institutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glenn Dumke</span>

Glenn Schroeder Dumke was an American historian, educator, university president, and chancellor of the California State University system. Dumke was the 6th President of San Francisco State University, serving from 1957 to 1961. He served as chancellor of the California State University system from 1962 to 1982, most of its first twenty years. He developed common standards for the colleges and universities in the system, supported affirmative action to recruit women and minority students, and assisted the establishment of four new campuses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Wright Nelson</span> American judge

Dorothy Wright Nelson is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Veitch</span>

Jonathan Veitch is an American college administrator, author and former professor. He was the 15th President of Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. He became president in July 2009, succeeding interim president Robert Skotheim and ended his term in June 2020, followed by president Harry J. Elam Jr. Veitch previously served as a professor at the University of Wisconsin and dean of The New School's Eugene Lang College. He authored American Superrealism: Nathanael West and the Politics of Representation in the 1930s in 1997.

Susan Harriet Fuhrman is an American education policy scholar and served from 2006 as the first female president of Teachers College, Columbia University. Fuhrman earned her doctorate in Political Science and Education from Columbia University. She became very engaged in issues of educational equity and emerged as an authority on school reform. Fuhrman is known for her early and ongoing critical analysis of the standards movement and for her efforts to foster research that provides a scientific basis for effective teaching.

Rachel F. Moran is an American lawyer who is currently a Distinguished Professor at UC Irvine School of Law. She was previously the Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. She served as Dean of the UCLA School of Law from 2010 to 2015, and was a faculty member at UC Irvine School of Law from 2008 to 2010, and at UC Berkeley School of Law from 1983 to 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann E. Carlson</span> American attorney and legal scholar

Ann E. Carlson is an American attorney and legal scholar who has served as the acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since September 2022. Before joining the Biden administration, Carlson was the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at the UCLA School of Law, where she also served as faculty co-director of the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment. She is an expert on U.S. environmental law and policy with a particular focus on climate change and environmental federalism.

Cecilia Ann Conrad is the CEO of Lever for Change, emeritus professor of economics at Pomona College, and managing director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She formerly served as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Pomona College. She currently oversees the foundation's MacArthur Fellows and 100&Change programs. Her research focuses on the effects of race and gender on economic status.

Dr. Susan E. Borrego was the second woman chancellor and eighth chancellor of the University of Michigan–Flint. Currently, Borrego is a tenured professor at the University of Michigan–Flint School of Education and Human Services.

Roger Boesche was an American political theorist. He was the Arthur G. Coons Distinguished Professor of the History of ideas at Occidental College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Lyford</span> American professor of art history (born 1963)

Amy Lyford is an American professor of art history. She is on the faculty of Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. A specialist in Modern Art, Lyford is the author of two books: Surrealist Masculinities: Gender Anxiety and the Aesthetics of Post-World War I Reconstruction in France and Isamu Noguchi’s Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, 1930-1950.

Julie Ann Freischlag is an American vascular surgeon and current CEO of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. She was the first female surgeon-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and the first female chief of vascular surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2017, Freischlag was appointed Interim Dean of Wake Forest School of Medicine and CEO of the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. During the COVID-19 pandemic in North America, Freischlag was named chief academic officer of Atrium Health, Inc., and appointed the President-Elect of the American College of Surgeons.

References

  1. "Susan Prager". Southwestern Law School.
  2. 1 2 "Susan Ann Westerberg, Born 12/14/1942 in California | CaliforniaBirthIndex.org". www.californiabirthindex.org.
  3. 1 2 "Occidental Picks Legal Scholar As President". Los Angeles Times . March 8, 2006. Retrieved May 6, 2019.