COMMUNITY
After three decades on the faculty of Pepperdine University School of Law, professor Janet Kerr (‘75, JD ’78) has retired from teaching. In 1983 then-dean Ronald Phillips invited the 1978 School of Law and 1975 Seaver College alumna to join the law faculty. Over the next 30 years, Kerr would go on to serve as an associate dean of academics, launch a successful center for entrepreneurship, and become one of Pepperdine’s most beloved teachers and mentors, winning the University’s Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellow award twice. She was the first occupant of the School of Law’s Laure Sudreau-Rippe Endowed Chair and the Distinguished Alumna for Seaver College in 1994. Kerr now holds the title of Professor of Law Emeritus. FACULTY MEMBER AND ASSOCIATE DEAN
JANET KERR Architect of Palmer Center, Retires After 30 Years By Tom Inkel
“It is widely known that Professor Kerr has been one of our most beloved and influential faculty members,” says Phillips, now senior vice chancellor and School of Law Dean Emeritus. “She reflects so very well the values that Pepperdine stands for. Her enthusiasm for teaching and mentoring has been impressive, inspiring, and contagious. Professor Kerr has not only taken a very personal interest in students while they were enrolled in law school, but has continued to assist them in all sorts of ways long after they have graduated.” While Kerr taught a variety of classes during her tenure at Pepperdine, she was perhaps known best as the dynamic, classroomroaming “chief executive” of Corporations. Relationships formed during and after her classes extended long after students graduated, resulting in a far-reaching network of friends at some of the best-known companies and firms in the world. One such alumna, Laure Sudreau-Rippe (JD ’97), would go on to establish the first alumna-endowed chair at the law school and select her former mentor Kerr as the initial recipient. “My students made my life rich and full of purpose,” Kerr says. “It has been an honor to be part of their lives.”
PEPPERDINE LAW
32