NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt University Law School has named Todd Morton, one of the most talented and experienced law school admissions officers in the nation, to head its admissions program.
Morton, who will join the law school’s staff this fall as assistant dean for admissions, comes to Vanderbilt from Harvard Law School, where he has served as director of admissions since 2000. From 1989 to 2000 he was Harvard Law’s associate director of admissions. Prior to his tenure at Harvard, Morton was director of recruitment and admissions services at New York University School of Law. He began his career as assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth College.
“We are fortunate to have someone of Todd Morton’s caliber direct Vanderbilt’s admissions program,” said Edward Rubin, Vanderbilt Law School dean and John Wade-Kent Syverud Professor of Law. “Admissions is an extremely important part of any law school’s operations and particularly important for us as we move forward with our plan to develop a new law school curriculum for the 21st century. Todd is a highly regarded leader in the field who brings to our program a wealth of expertise gained over his 20 years of law school admissions experience.”
Morton earned his undergraduate degree in government from Dartmouth in 1978 and his doctor of education and master of education degrees in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in 1982 and 2000, respectively.
At Harvard, Morton was appointed to serve on a broad range of committees, from the World Wide Web Team to the University Child Care Scholarship Committee. He also has an extensive history of service to the Law School Admission Council, having served as part of numerous working groups and as a member of the Test Development and Research Committee and the Grants Subcommittee.
“This appointment continues several years of great successes in hiring at Vanderbilt Law School,” said Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Chris Guthrie. “We’ve recruited a number of top faculty and, equally important, retained faculty who’ve been widely sought after by other top law schools. We brought in Ed Rubin, an influential scholar and academic visionary, as dean, and now, building on those successes, we’ve recruited one of the country’s leading admissions experts to help us continue to build the law school community,” he said.
Rubin also announced that Mike Spivey has been named associate director of admissions. Spivey has been acting associate director of admissions since January, having previously served from 2001 to 2004 as coordinator of admissions and recruitment. He left the law school in 2004 to pursue his doctorate in educational leadership and policy at Vanderbilt. His dissertation is titled “Tackling Dummies: A Multi-Case Study of the Intercollegiate Student-Athlete.” Spivey expects to complete the degree in the spring of 2006.
Spivey was an admissions counselor at Vanderbilt Law School from 2000 to 2001 and assistant director of admissions at Manderson Graduate School of Business at the University of Alabama prior to that.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Vanderbilt in 1995 and his MBA from the University of Alabama’s Manderson School in 1999.
At Vanderbilt, Spivey served as co-chair of the university’s committee on NCAA Governance and, in this capacity, was responsible for the university’s seven-year self-report on governance submitted to the NCAA.
Media contact: Susanne Hicks, (615) 322-NEWS
susanne.hicks@vanderbilt.edu