Pritzker Prof. Kimberly Yuracko has been named the next dean of the Pritzker School of Law, the University announced Monday.

Yuracko will succeed Daniel Rodriguez, who will step down this summer. Yuracko will officially take over Sept. 1, according to a news release.

“It’s a tremendous honor and a privilege,” Yuracko told The Daily. “This is the community I’ve been part of for the last 17 years, and it’s a community that I’ve been so grateful to for all of the professional opportunities that I’ve had here. And so it’s really such an honor to be given the opportunity to give more back to Northwestern and to the law school community.”

In the release, Rodriguez said he’s happy Yuracko was named dean.

“Her long experience at Northwestern will serve her well,” Rodriguez said in the release. “I wish Kim the very best and will look forward to working with her as a colleague in helping her and her team to take Northwestern Law to even greater heights.”

Yuracko currently serves on the Provost’s advisory council on women faculty and is co-chair of the Organization of Women Faculty. She joined Pritzker’s faculty in 2002 and in 2011, she served as interim dean of Pritzker before Rodriguez took over.

Provost Jonathan Holloway told The Daily that Yuracko was one of three candidates for the position, two of which were internal options. Her experience in her 17 years at Pritzker made her a very qualified candidate, he said.

“She could speak to things about how she imagines the law school interacting with other schools at Northwestern and she could speak to Northwestern broadly speaking,” he said. “She’s able to do it with an incredible confidence and command at every level. That, to me, was a very strong separating factor as a candidate.”

Holloway added that he hopes Yuracko will focus on fundraising, something that he said is very important for law school.

Yuracko said she had a number of things she’d like to work on as dean, such as increasing support for students, both academically and to help with students’ careers. She also said she wants to improve Pritzker’s relationship with the Kellogg School of Management.

“Going forward, I’d really like Northwestern to be known as the law school in the country that does the best at sort of developing and promoting and nurturing our human capital of our students, of our faculty and of our other alumni,” Yuracko said.

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