ATLANTA—Leslie Wolf, Distinguished University Professor and director of the Center of Law, Health & Society, has been appointed the interim dean of the College of Law at Georgia State University, effective July 1.
Wolf succeeds Wendy Hensel, who was named the university’s interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Wolf joined the faculty at the College of Law in 2007 and was jointly appointed in the School of Public Health in 2015.
Wolf, a leading national scholar in health law, public health and ethics, with a focus on research ethics. Her research has appeared in some of the most prestigious journals in the country, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the JAMA family of publications, American Journal of Public Health and PLoS One, as well as in law reviews, and is widely cited by scholars nationally and internationally. In 2016, Wolf was appointed to a four-year term on the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections. That committee provides input on federal policy, making recommendations on the protection of human subjects in research to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Under Wolf’s leadership, the College of Law’s Center for Law, Health & Society has grown to 12 full-time faculty members and has been ranked No. 2 in health law. The center and its faculty offer a robust health law curriculum, organize public presentations on pressing health law issues and conduct research with the goal of promoting society’s health.
Wolf’s leadership and vision helped establish a foundation for Georgia State’s new master of jurisprudence degree with concentration in health law for non-lawyers that will be introduced this fall.
“I will continue to provide overall leadership for the center while taking on this new role,” Wolf said “Fortunately, my health law colleagues will help ensure that the work of the center will continue uninterrupted.”
Wolf is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate with distinction of Stanford University. She earned her juris doctor cum laude from Harvard Law School. Following her graduation from law school, she was a clerk at the Massachusetts Appeals Court and then was an associate with the San Francisco law firm, Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft.
Wolf’s transition to academia came through her a Greenwall Fellowship in bioethics and health policy at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where she earned her master’s degree in public health. Her experience since then demonstrates her commitment to interdisciplinary work. Prior to joining the law school, Wolf taught medical ethics and research ethics at the University of California, San Francisco. After joining the law school, Wolf was invited to serve on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ethics Subcommittee to the Advisory Committee to the director. She has also was a peer reviewer for the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, as well as numerous journals.