This year, the Drake University Law School community welcomed Professor Dean Strang to its faculty. Bringing deep knowledge and experience in criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, torts, and conflict of laws, Professor Strang joins Drake with a passion for teaching and a strong belief in the role of law as a pathway to justice. In this Q&A, he reflects on what makes Drake special, how his professional experience shapes his classroom, and what he hopes students carry with them long after graduation.
What do you enjoy about working with students?
Nearly everything. Our students generally are curious and eager to learn. Attendance is one easy, objective marker of that, and my experience here so far is that attendance is nearly perfect for every class. Almost to a person, too, my students are sincere. They also span a wide range of backgrounds, life experiences, identities, and opinions. While the main point, of course, is students’ learning, this breadth in our student body helps me learn, too.
What makes Drake special to you?
The school itself is small enough to foster a sense of community and to assure frequent encounters among all of us in the building. I have felt a welcoming spirit, too, that I hope is widely shared.
What do you hope students will take away from your teaching?
Excitement and desire to learn for a lifetime, and to connect our profession to the shared humanity of everyone on the planet. This profession markets and brands itself lavishly in justice; then it often delivers only law in practice and in the classroom. For those who grasp the possibilities and responsibilities of lawyering as a vocation, though, the pursuit of justice is in reach. We can exceed mere law if we learn to try early, in law school and our first few years of practice, to learn as broadly as we can. And that requires not just an appreciation of the humanities—the social sciences, too, because they also enrich this profession and help us to understand its possibilities—but also an appreciation of becoming both humane and humble as people and as lawyers. To my mind, that’s where we can surpass merely hoping to have a job or a career, and find a vocation with our eyes on addressing injustice and, in doing that, seeking justice.
How does your prior work experience in the legal field influence the way you teach?
I unavoidably infuse my classroom teaching with my practical experience observing how our profession, and our daily work, affect people. I probably could not stop doing that if I wanted to. In any event, I don’t want to. Now, I don’t ever want to become, or sound, cynical. But I do want to be, and sound, realistic. Again, much of my experience involves seeing the practical effects of law and lawyers on real people.
Anything else you would like to add?
Even for a guy who has been undeservedly lucky all his life, joining Drake Law is one of my luckiest breaks yet. So, it strikes me that my corresponding duty is to share and spread that in every way I can.