Aug. 11--Northwestern University has been given a $5 million bequest from the estate trust of Dawn Clark Netsch, its law school's first female faculty member at the school and the first woman to hold statewide office in Illinois.
The money will be used for financial aid for students at Northwestern University's School of Law who are interested in pursuing careers in public interest law, according to a university news release. It will also be used for loan repayment assistance for graduates working in public interest jobs, which tend to pay less than those in the private sector, according to Kirston Fortune, assistant dean for marketing and communications at Northwestern Law.
"The great thing about this gift is that it allows us to carry her legacy of public service forward into the next generation of public interest advocates," Fortune said. "That's what she wanted because she was passionately committed to public service."
Netsch became the first woman to hold statewide office in 1990 when she was elected Illinois comptroller. She was elected to the state Senate in 1970 and served for 18 years, and in 1994, her trailblazing in Illinois politics led to a Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
She graduated from Northwestern Law in 1952 and became the law school faculty's first female member in 1965, serving for more than 45 years. Netsch died in March 2013 of Lou Gehrig's disease at age 86.
Len Rubinowitz, a Northwestern law professor who worked with Netsch for 20 years, said she had great loyalty to the school.
"I think it's just a very concrete measure of the devotion and loyalty that she had to Northwestern Law School," he said of the endowment, "and even without all of that, she gave Northwestern Law School more with her presence than the law school could ever give her."
mmrodriguez@tribpub.com
