Pitt law dean Amy Wildermuth departs her post

The University of Pittsburgh will be looking for a new dean in the months ahead with the announced departure of Amy Wildermuth, who held the position for 4 1/2 years until this week.

Provost Ann Cudd delivered word of the transition Monday in a two-paragraph message to law school colleagues and others. The dean’s departure was effective immediately.

Cudd said Wildermuth was leaving “to reengage in academic pursuits and assume a tenured faculty role.”

Vice Dean Haider Ala Hamoudi will assume day-to-day oversight of the school until an interim dean is named, Cudd said in the message.

The provost was not available for additional comment Friday, but Pitt officials said Wildermuth will remain a tenured faculty member in the law school. Wildermuth could not immediately be reached.

In June 2021, the university publication Pittwire reported that the law school topped all others in Pennsylvania in its passage rate for first-time takers of the bar exam.

According to Pittwire, the rate of those first-timers from Pitt who passed the Pennsylvania bar exam was 91.36%. Eighty-one Pitt Law graduates sat for the test as first-time takers the previous July and 74 of them passed.

Wildermuth began her duties July 1, 2018. She came to Pitt from the University of Utah, where she was associate vice president for faculty and academic affairs.

An announcement at the time of her hiring said Wildermuth brought academic and administrative experience plus law expertise. She was the Utah university’s first chief sustainability officer and was a professor in the S.J. Quinney College of Law. Her academic career has focused on areas of civil procedure, administrative law, environmental law and U.S. Supreme Court practice, according to Pittwire.

Pitt’s law school was founded in 1895 and has an enrollment of about 500. The university said there were 1,296 applications for 121 seats in the Class of 2022.