B. Keith Faulkner Joins Team ASL
Keith Faulkner, our new President and Dean, arrives at Appalachian School of Law with just the right background at just the right time. Dean Faulkner has professional footprints in legal studies, business management and accounting, and nuclear submarines. In each he has excelled.
He recently finished his service as Dean of Liberty University School of Law. In that capacity, Dean Faulkner led the law school in 2018 to achieve the seventh-highest bar passage rate compared to all other law schools in the nation. The most recent admissions cycle also produced the highest number of applications since the founding of the school in 2004 and the third largest entering class in its history.
Dean Faulkner previously served as the Dean of the Business School at Campbell University following his service as Interim Dean of Campbell Law School. In these roles, he drew upon the lessons learned from his educational journey — a journey that included a law degree from Campbell University, a Master of Business Administration degree from Campbell University, a Master of Law degree in Litigation Management from Baylor University School of Law, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration (with an emphasis on finance) from Baylor University.
Dean Faulkner started this journey, however, not in the studied halls of academia but in the steel hull of a nuclear-powered submarine. This included a tour of duty aboard a United States Navy Sturgeon-class attack submarine and an assignment as an instructor in a Navy Nuclear Power Training Unit.
While reaching these milestones of achievement, Dean Faulkner also found time to sharpen his skills as a litigation attorney, an adjunct professor, and a frequent lecturer on lawyering skills and business practices.
In short, Dean Faulkner’s diverse professional, legal, academic, and business experience coupled with his natural concentration on achieving tangible, compelling results make a perfect combination that will ensure the continued success of ASL.
One conversation with Dean Faulkner would also reveal that, consistent with ASL’s ethos and educational philosophy, he highly honors the Rule of Law, so necessary for a free society; strongly supports ASL’s student-centric approach to teaching, so important to the long-term wellbeing of ASL graduates; and earnestly engages in the larger quest, as William Blackstone put it, for the “true and substantial happiness” that we all seek. For Dean Faulkner, these goals involve not only an ongoing investment in his career but, even more important, a lifelong commitment to developing and nurturing his beloved family, Patty, his wife, and their three children, Hannah, Erin, and Ryan.
