New Dean of Students Sarah Jean Kelly on Relationship Building, Advocacy, and Support

Sarah Jean Kelly joins Brooklyn Law School as the new Dean of Students on Feb. 4, bringing to our community nearly two decades of experience over a wide variety of positions within higher education administration.  

Kelly has spent eight years in progressively responsible roles at two different law schools—Georgetown University Law Center and, more recently, St. John’s School of Law. At St. John’s, where she initially served as assistant dean for graduate studies, she became vice dean for administration—a role in which she was responsible for all student services and academic support, diversity and inclusion, faculty support, communications, budget, and operations—before ultimately serving as vice president for student success and retention strategy for St. John’s University. 

Kelly earned her J.D. at the Georgetown University Law Center, and holds an M.Ed. from the University of Virginia, and a B.A. in political science from Wellesley College.  

We spoke with Kelly about the joys and challenges of her lifelong work focused on the student experience, and what she is looking forward to in becoming a part of the Brooklyn Law community. 

What do you consider to be the most important qualities for a dean of students? 

Sarah Jean Kelly: To be accessible, approachable, solution-oriented, and student-centered in our work, and to ask what role we can play in meeting students’ needs and being their advocate. 

You really have to love students to be in this role. Because you’re walking with students on their best days and their most challenging days, through family loss, illness, conduct issues, and much more. So, it’s critical that they know someone is always in their corner. For me, a big component of the job is hoping that students learn quickly how much I care for them and that the Law School is a place they can thrive and succeed. 

What made Brooklyn Law seem like a great fit for you? And what plans do you have for your new role?  

Brooklyn Law’s commitment to access and providing a strong legal education made it feel like a place I would feel alignment with, as that has been important to me over the course of my career. In getting to know the existing team and senior leadership through the interview process, it felt like an exciting place to join.  

My plan when I get to Brooklyn is to get to know the people, the students, the faculty. I’m excited to hear from people about the challenges they see and how I can be of help in meeting those challenges.  

My wife and I have an eight-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter, both of whom have grown up around a college campus and love students. We have always baked snacks and filled a wagon with them to pass out at exam time. So, my son wanted to know if, when we move to Brooklyn, we can get pizza and ice cream and share it with our new neighbors. 

Let’s talk about your career journey. After graduating from Wellesley, you began your career as an admissions counselor for your alma mater before getting your M.Ed. Then you joined Georgetown University as the assistant director of external relations for its Career Education Center, advising students and developing career programming. What drew you to a career in student-focused administration? 

I’m someone who was the beneficiary of a transformative education as an undergraduate, being part of a community and an environment that encouraged me to thrive as a person, not just as a student. When I realized you could make a career out of helping students to have the same experience, to maximize their opportunities to grow and thrive as people, as students, and as professionals, it was enormously appealing to me.  

I have been lucky to be able to do a great variety of things in education. Starting with my work in admissions, my focus has been on increasing access, on the student experience, on improving student outcomes, and on how we run an administration in a student-centered manner.  

How did you decide to transition to working within the administration of law schools and to getting your J.D.? 

I fell into the law school specialization, although I come from a family of lawyers. My dad was an attorney at a law firm and general counsel for a corporation, and I have aunts and uncles who are lawyers.  

When I was at the University of Virginia, I decided to pursue a law degree, not necessarily to practice law but to apply that education more broadly to higher education administration. I was lucky to be able to work full time at Georgetown Law while a student there, and that really sparked my love for law school administration. 

Your experience in law school was fairly unique. Tell us about that. 

I had a different experience from a lot of my fellow law school students because I was also working full-time at the Law Center. I was Director of Marketing and Business Development for the Department of Academic Conferences and Continuing Legal Education. So, I had the opportunity to see how law schools operate from multiple perspectives, and in addition to learning the typical law school subjects, I also learned about legal education and how to run a law school. I saw how a law school’s business model functions, and how that impacts the student experience, and how important it was to find ways to make our work more effective to better facilitate the student learning and outcomes. 

You have said that international education is a personal passion. How have you put that passion into your work? 

I studied abroad as a student, and that really made clear to me how important international education is. After law school at Georgetown, I became the director of the school’s LL.M. Academic Services, where much of my work was aimed at the educational experience of our international LL.M. student population, and I supervised more than 350 LL.M. adjunct faculty, and I learned about how legal systems work in other parts of the world and was able to build relationships with other law schools internationally.  

At St. John’s, I was responsible for recruiting and serving our LL.M. student population, the majority of whom were international students, as well as overseeing study abroad for the law school. I really enjoyed getting to know our incoming international students, learning about the law schools from which they were coming to us, and getting to understand their goals and objectives for their LL.M. year. Over the course of my time there, we were able to develop strong programs designed to enhance their experience, as well as improve their outcomes with respect to the bar exam and career placement. I’ve also had the opportunity to lead a number of study-abroad programs and teach courses in Comparative Legal Studies as an adjunct, and that has been tremendously fun! 

At St. John’s School of Law, as you served simultaneously as interim vice dean for academic affairs and vice dean for administration until 2021, you led the school’s COVID response. Tell us about how you managed that challenging time.  

Doing two jobs as one person is a challenge at any time. Layered with COVID, it was extremely difficult; there was so much that was unknown. The risks were significant, and it was impossible to know if we were making the right decisions that would serve students and faculty well. But the relationships with faculty, administration, and students are what enabled us to make a plan on how to move forward. It was a team effort.  

What are some of the events and programming you instituted to strengthen the culture of community engagement at St. John’s? 

There were many ways in which I got to partner with students and faculty, and that is the best part of the job. One of the programs we did was a brunch at the start of the academic year for LGBTQ students at the law school that my wife and I hosted. We wanted to give the students comfort and the ability to get a feeling of the place they were coming into and know that there was tremendous support available.  

We also formed a dean’s advisory council, a group of students that met with the dean and me on a regular basis to workshop ideas and give us feedback on their experience. It was a natural opportunity for connection and for them to voice concerns. It was beneficial for all of us and made it possible for us to better serve the students. 

Among your many accomplishments as vice president for student success and retention strategy for undergraduate students at St. John’s, you reimagined and restructured the first-year experience for students. In your view, what makes that first year smoother and more successful for students? 

A big focus in my first year in that role was on getting a handle on how to make resources that were available to students known to them, how they could access and utilize these services. We transformed the former Freshman Center into the Center for Student Success, where career services, academic advising, and academic support—and a case manager, if needed—were offered to first-year students. Also, we did a lot of work in the past couple of years on wellness and strengthened the counseling and psychological center, student accessibility services, and the student health center, helping students to thrive by removing barriers.  

There has always been an element of relationship building in your work. Do you consider this one of your greatest strengths as an administrator who works closely with students, faculty, and partners in the community and in other law schools?  

To me, partnerships are critical to success and to having meaning in the work that I do. One of the things I take to heart is that I am a professional with expertise in my own areas, but everyone has expertise in their own area, and each student I serve does as well. Building relationships and understanding what is important to other people is essential in order to create a strategy to move forward. My experience and objectives are only part of the equation.  

How have you observed the needs of students change over the years, and how has your work stepped up to meet those needs? 

Working with different populations of students over time, it has become clear to me that their basic needs must be met—food security, health care, housing, money to meet the cost of course materials or a bar prep course in order for students to thrive. It wasn’t that these issues didn’t exist a decade ago, but they weren’t as top of mind for our profession. They are top of mind for me now in the work I’m doing. I’m always thinking, what are we doing to make sure that students are satiated when they go in for exams?  

COVID has had an impact on the educational experiences of many of our students today. Many students in high school and early college, who have been studying remotely, haven’t learned how to build relationships with faculty, or sometimes even with each other. We need to put the systems and structures in place for them to forge those relationships. The impact of COVID will change over time, but populations of students will experience these effects for years.