Rasmussen installed as dean

USC President Sample officially welcomes law school's 13th dean — By Darren Schenck Surrounded by his family and fellow deans, university trustees and senior officials, and USC Law faculty and staff, Robert K. Rasmussen was formally installed as law school dean on Nov. 2 at a ceremony held in Town & Gown on the USC campus.

President Sample presented Rasmussen with The Red-and-Blue Chair.

USC President Steven B. Sample spoke to the capacity crowd about Dean Rasmussen’s virtues as a scholar and leader. He also recounted the story of the dean’s early USC connection, when a 10-year-old Rasmussen accompanied his mother — then a UCLA master’s student — to a USC-UCLA football game. Seated in the Bruin section, Rasmussen had cheered on the Trojans. “Bob says that even as a young boy, he was a Trojan fan,” said Sample. “He explains his loyalty to USC as — and I quote — ‘I knew quality when I saw it.’” Sample continued: “Well, Bob, at USC we know quality when we see it. That’s why we chose you.” When Dean Rasmussen took the stage, he mentioned that he and his wife, constitutional scholar and Vanderbilt Law Professor Rebecca Brown, had been visiting some area schools with their 11-year-old daughter Megan, who with Brown will move to Los Angeles next year. Rasmussen told the audience that an administrator at one school had remarked that “everything Sample touches turns to gold. “I was hoping she’d say, ‘Everything he touches turns to Gould!’” The dean then acknowledged his decanal predecessors, including Judge Dorothy Nelson ‘56 and Professor Scott Bice ‘68, both of whom were in the audience. He also praised former deans and current USC Law professors Matthew Spitzer ‘77 and Ed McCaffery. “Not a law school in the country has hired better faculty members than they did,” he said. Formerly a professor and administrator at Vanderbilt University Law School, Rasmussen said that he has always held USC Law in high regard, and that he especially values the sense of community the school fosters and the rigorous education it provides.

Rasmussen with former deans Nelson and Bice

“I am proud to be a lawyer,” he said. “Lawyers are facilitators. Great research and teaching is done under the purview of my fellow deans here at USC, but the impact of all that work is mediated by lawyers.” Addressing the school’s educational mission, Rasmussen said that law today is a more complicated and bottom-line business than it was when he was in law school. “Lawyers today must have knowledge of other disciplines such as  business, psychology, history, philosophy, economics and communications,” he said. Rasmussen also said that, to produce the best possible lawyers, a law school must be in a first-rate legal market, have a diverse student body, and that its alumni must give back to the community. USC Law excels in each of these areas, said Rasmussen. “I have outlined the direction we must take, but it’s not a blueprint,” he said. At the close of the event, President Sample presented Dean Rasmussen with a miniature replica of the dean’s chair, a 1918 design by Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld called The Red-and-Blue Chair. “The Red-and-Blue Chair became the icon of a design movement that had as its mantra: ‘One serves mankind by enlightening it,’” said Sample. “That is a truly lofty goal: Serving mankind by enlightening it. That is the goal of Bob and the goal of all of us in the academy.”