While Strauss served as dean, the law school increased enrollment, average credentials of the students who were accepted into the law school and bar exam scores, with a 16% jump between 2015 and 2023, higher than any other Ohio law school.
“I think the future is really bright for the law school,” Strauss said. “I really look for it to continue to grow.”
During Strauss’s tenure, the law school created multiple new programs — including an online masters in law program for foreign students — a government contracting law program aimed at people in the Dayton region and a law school program in South Korea.
The law school changed how it taught students, creating more check-ins and structuring time for students to study on-campus for the bar before the July exam. Strauss credits the law school faculty with that accomplishment.
Strauss said in 2008, the recession affected lawyers for the first time in a long time. By 2010, law schools had begun to see fewer students, too. He said a need to diversify away from just law students led him and his team to think of ways for the law school to attract people.
“That’s the part of the job that I probably have enjoyed the most is sort of the entrepreneurial part and starting new programs and conceiving them, having the idea and then being able to execute and implement,” he said.
Strauss served as dean during a time in higher education when many changes were happening. In Ohio, higher education enrollment dropped in the 2010s. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed students out of classrooms and into online schools, causing faculty and students to rapidly relearn how to be in college.
Strauss said the model of serving legal education to the public can help law schools continue to survive.
“As society continues to get more and more complex, more and more people have a need for some kind of legal education,” Strauss said. “They don’t need to become lawyers, but they need some kind of legal education.”
Strauss noted the legal community in Dayton has welcomed UD law students.
“Here, because of the judges and lawyers that come in and really take our students under their wings, they feel a part of the Montgomery County Bar,” Strauss said. “They really do. It’s like they’re part of it from day one.”
University of Dayton president Eric Spina said Strauss is leaving the law school in a better place than when he arrived.
“With the engagement and support of the faculty and staff, Andy has transformed the law school in many ways — shrinking the JD program to focus on quality, starting the online JD program, developing initiatives to enhance bar pass rate and placement rate for graduating students, initiating non-JD academic programs that draw on the strength of the faculty and are highly relevant in the marketplace and in high demand, and enhancing the quality of the student body through a greater focus on diversity of all kinds,” Spina said.
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