Jacksonville, FL, September 12th, 2019 – Florida Coastal School of Law is delighted to announce that Rick Inatome, CEO of InfiLaw, has appointed Jennifer Reiber as Interim Dean and Peter Goplerud as President.
Jennifer Reiber began teaching at Florida Coastal in the Spring of 2009 while still actively practicing law in Jacksonville, representing injured families. In August 2010, she was hired as a full-time faculty member. Reiber has served as the academic Dean since 2016, and with the dedication of the faculty and staff, she has helped lead the law school back into ABA compliance while improving the law school’s bar pass results. Since the Spring of 2018, Dean Reiber has taught, and will continue to teach, the law school’s National Law Survey Multi-State Bar Exam class, which has yielded significant gains for our individual students and our law school’s bar pass
results. Inatome states, “Dean Reiber has worked tirelessly the past four years as Dean of Academics and I am confident she will provide capable leadership.”
Peter Goplerud began his career as a Law Clerk for Justice David Prager of the Supreme Court of Kansas and later joined the faculty of the University of Akron School of Law. He has taught at Southern Illinois University School of Law, where he was also Dean and Associate Dean; Saint Louis University School of Law; and the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where he served as Dean for three years. In addition, he served as Dean of Drake University Law School from 1997 to 2003 before joining Florida Coastal School of Law as Dean in 2004. After concluding his deanship in 2013, Goplerud has served in various executive roles for InfiLaw. Goplerud is excited to return to the law school in the role of President.
This afternoon, Florida Coastal received confirmation that starting tomorrow it will begin to receive the Fall 2019 student federal financial aid funds from the Department of Education. Florida Coastal will immediately begin processing those funds to release student stipends as early as tomorrow so students will have access to those funds starting on Monday. Please know Florida Coastal leadership takes very seriously the delay in disbursement of student federal financial aid funds, and we understand this delay created undue hardship and stress for our students. There have been some inaccurate news reports that Florida Coastal had those funds previously and failed to disburse the same – that is simply not true. Florida Coastal is dedicated to serving its student needs and has been working directly with the Department to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Florida Coastal appreciates their students’ patience and understanding as they worked to resolve the matter expeditiously with the Department.
The Florida Coastal leadership intends to continue to work with the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (Council) to accomplish the goal of converting Florida Coastal to not-for-profit status. Although Florida Coastal’s previously filed pplication for conversion was recently denied, the Council has allowed Florida Coastal to submit additional items in order to grant acquiescence. Florida Coastal intends to submit those items to the Council for review at their November meeting. Florida Coastal is moving forward with these new appointments to ensure continued success in the law school and their students.
About Florida Coastal School of Law
Located in Jacksonville Florida, Florida Coastal School of Law, the only ABA accredited law school in Northeastern Florida, was founded in 1996 on the pillars of serving the underserved, providing an education that is student-outcome centered, and graduating students who are practice ready. Florida Coastal’s students and faculty have donated over 1 million hours of legal services to the region since 2007. Jacksonville is a U.S. News top 40 places to live with a population of 1.5
million.
Contact
Jennifer Reiber, Dean
904-516-8748
jreiber@fcsl.edu