Gerard Solis

Background

About Gerard Solis

My job is to give timely and accurate legal advice aligned with the university’s goals, aspirations, and most importantly, the institution’s mission. Prioritizing mission makes sense if you think about the university more as a small city than a big school. In the same way that cities tend to grow around industry, tourism, or government centers, universities grow around academic, research, and clinical centers. The factors that disrupt a city’s growth equally disrupt a university’s progress. For example: • shifts in leadership and funding affect universities in the same way that the election of a new mayor or loss of a large employer can rearrange municipal priorities and budgets; • cultural issues play out on campus just as they do on city streets; • a labor dispute with faculty or staff unions can limit academic operations in the same way that a strike by transportation employees will snarl city traffic; and • natural disasters test university infrastructure and planning as surely as they do any city emergency management office. For all these similarities, there is a fundamental distinction between a city and a university; that is, universities don’t just experience disruption, universities encourage it. Universities exist to create the kind of intellectual disruption that occurs when ideas are exchanged, tested, refined, and applied. Whether the disruption is encountered or encouraged, the university’s citizens - its students, employees, and the communities the institution serves- thrive depending on how well the university's leaders manage disruption. The difference between a higher education lawyer that navigates disruption and a lawyer that is confused by it is clarity about the university’s mission. The mission is consistent, even if how we achieve the mission is continually adapting to disruptions. This is the core competency of any higher education attorney; that is, the ability to understand and advocate for the institution’s mission while developing new strategies to manage challenges and generate opportunities. This is also what makes the job so engaging and rewarding.