BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (IUSTV News) – Christiana Ochoa will be the new dean of the Maurer School of Law, effective November 1st.
Ochoa previously served as Interim Dean and as Associate Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs at IU Bloomington.
Her experience and research spans topics including international law, business and human rights, and how economic activity affects humans and the environment. She attended Harvard Law School, where she earned her J.D. in 1998.
She said her goals revolve around preparing students as best as possible to enter the legal field.
She also said she wants to make sure that the law school is doing its best to take part in conversations about social issues like democracy not just in other countries but in our own.
“Law has a very large role to play in those conversations, and it is really important to me to ensure that we are configuring ourselves in a way to have the greatest effect in those conversations,” Ochoa said.
She is the first Latina dean to be named for the law school, and she said her experience as a woman of color is central to making sure students and faculty of color feel at home even when they are the only person of color present.
“It’s incredibly important that we create an environment in which all of our students and all of our faculty and all of our staff believe that this is their law school so that even when they are alone in a class, they feel completely at home there,” Ochoa said.
