Joy JuedesThe highest LSAT scores and most diversity among entering classes. A first-time bar pass rate higher than the state average. A continued rise in rankings.
All of these significant milestones were achieved over the last decade with the help of a $55 million gift from Dale E. and Sarah Ann Fowler to Chapman University’s law school. With the gift, the school, which opened in 1995, was named the Dale E. Fowler School of Law.
“Without your support, without your vision, without your constant encouragement, Fowler School of Law would not be what it is now,” Chapman President Daniele C. Struppa said during a March 13 luncheon celebrating the anniversary of the naming of the school. “And so today, we celebrate this great school and the accomplishments of the last 10 years, and we’re here to celebrate you and to thank you for what you’ve done.”
At the event, Dale E. Fowler ’58 was given the C.C. Chapman Distinguished Service Award, the university’s highest honor. It has been given only nine times in the last 45 years.
“There are very few individuals who have had the same transformational impact on Chapman,” Struppa said.
The $55 million gift was the second-largest gift reported to a law school at the time. The Fowlers also gave $45 million in 2018 to the Fowler School of Engineering.
Dale E. Fowler has served on Chapman’s Board of Trustees since 2011. An Orange County native, he paid his way through college and made his first real estate investment before graduation. From that 10-unit Huntington Beach apartment building, he went on to build a thriving business in industrial property development, eventually expanding throughout Orange and Riverside counties. Two of the Fowlers’ three children attended Chapman.
“As a Chapman alumnus, I’m honored to be able to have an impact on generations of students to come,” Dale Fowler said when his $55 million gift was announced.
When the law school opened about 30 years ago, it was the only law school on a university campus in Orange County.
Then-Chapman President Jim Doti said at the school’s naming dedication in 2013 that the Fowlers “are helping to create a new trajectory for our law school that will lead to real prominence in terms of the impact it will have on legal education.”
At the luncheon, Jillian Friess Leivas (JD ’20) and Jodee Storm Sullivan (JD ’24) both thanked the Fowlers and spoke about the impact the law school had on their professional and personal lives.
The event’s keynote speaker, two-time U.S. Attorney General William Barr, spoke about his career and current issues as reflected in his book “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General.”
He joked that he went into law after working for the CIA because “my mother made me do it.”
“I decided to make her happy and go at night … I had always been interested in law and the Constitution,” he said.
Barr was attorney general from 1991 to 1993 and from 2019 to 2020. He was the second person in U.S. history to hold the office twice.
