Camille M. Davidson has been appointed president and dean of Southern Illinois University’s Mitchell Hamline School of Law, effective July 1.
Davidson serves as professor of law at the law school and has served as dean at SIU Law since July 2020.
“I am thrilled to be leading Mitchell Hamline,” said Davidson. “Mitchell Hamline’s record of innovation and adaptability — including launching the first-in-the-nation Blended Learning program — speaks to its independence and forward-looking approach.”
Davidson holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She is a scholar who specializes in health law. She founded a clinical lab where she supervised students who prepared estate plans for low-income elderly people in the community.
But Davidson began her career in higher education in 2004, spending two years teaching at Davidson College. She held a clerkship at the D.C. Superior Court in Washington, D.C., followed by a position as an assistant counsel in the Office of the Legislative Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives. She also worked as a judicial hearing officer for the state of North Carolina, and in private practice in both health law and estate planning and administration in Charlotte, N.C. She spent 11 years as a professor and administrator at Charlotte School of Law, where she taught various health law and trusts and estates courses, and Wake Forest University School of Law, where she taught in the online Master of Legal Studies program.
“We are extremely pleased and excited that Camille Davidson will be leading the law school,” said Nicole James Gilchrist, chair of the school’s board of trustees.