Over the past several decades, Akron Law has provided you and your colleagues with an exceptional legal education at an affordable cost. It has offered you support in many forms and fashions. Akron Law has equipped you with the tools to achieve great success and assist others. Now is a prime time to give back to the law school as we look to completely renovate and right-size our facilities. Although The C. Blake McDowell Law Center has enabled us to educate generations of law students, it is clear that we need to renovate our worn facilities and create a more modern learning environment.

Our goal is to renovate our facilities in a cost-effective manner that does not result in a major tuition increase for our students. The plans for renovating The C. Blake McDowell Law Center are well underway and construction began December 2015. The project will begin with:

• a complete renovation of our first floor facilities which will feature a new café, two small moot court rooms, substantial updates to our classrooms, offices, technology, and building mechanics
• the demolition of West Hall
• construction of a smaller wing to replace West Hall to include a dual purpose 125-seat courtroom/classroom, two state-of-the-art lecture halls, and new student spaces

We anticipate that these renovations will be completed in August 2016. Construction will then transition to the second and third floors of the building, which will include:

• a new career services suite (including interview spaces)
• a new clinic suite
• a modernized library
• critical updates to study space for our students, law review offices, faculty offices, and other vital parts of the law school

Finances permitting, we have targeted August 2016 as the start date for renovating the second and third floors. This $21 million project is a milestone in the history of The University of Akron School of Law. We hope that you will be a part of this historical transformation by supporting this important project.