After nearly two years with an interim dean following a shake up in the school’s administration, the Creighton University School of Law named a West Virginia law professor as its next dean.

Joshua P. Fershee will begin his new duties as Creighton Law’s 11th dean on July 1.

“Creighton University has a long and proud history of educating for service and justice,” Fershee said in a Creighton news re­lease. “I am excited to join the School of Law to help make sure the fu­ture is even brighter than the impressive past.”

Fershee has been a tenured professor of law development at the West Virginia University College of Law since 2014. He has also been the director of a Master of Laws program in energy and sustain­able development since 2013. 

His career began with practicing public rela­tions after graduating in 1995 from Michigan State University. He attended the Tulane University School of Law, where he gradu­ated in 2003. 

Fershee was a sum­mer associate and an associate corporate attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York City, where he worked on corporate and trans­actional matters such as mergers and acquisitions, derivatives and securities litigation and regulation. In 2004, he left to join Hogan & Hartson LLP in Washington, D.C., as an associate attorney special­izing in government regulation of the energy sector.

He was a visiting professor at the Dickinson School of Law at Pennsylvania State University in 2006-07 and then joined the fac­ulty of the University of North Dakota School of Law, serving as associate dean for academic af­fairs and research for the 2011-12 academic year prior to moving to Morgantown, West Virginia.

As West Virginia University, Fershee has also been a member of the research faculty and head of the economic and community development group for the Center for Innovation in Gas Research and Utilization, including being a co-investigator on a $1.26 million research challenge grant project.

Fershee’s research has ap­peared in the Harvard Journal on Legislation, Harvard Business Law Review Online and Energy Law Journal, among other places. He is also the author of two case­books, Energy Law: A Context and Practice Casebook and Unincorporated Business Entities.

“I look forward to working to­gether on creative and forward-looking efforts that will ensure that Creighton School of Law stu­dents continue to have the intellec­tual, interpersonal and moral abili­ties they need for lifelong service in the law in an evolving world,” Fershee said in a release.

Fershee will take the reins from Creighton Law Professor Michael J. Kelly, who has served as in­terim dean since the summer of 2017. Kelly took over after Paul E. McGreal stepped down as dean to become a law professor.

Creighton President Daniel S. Hendrickson said he welcomes Fershee to the law school.

“We look forward to his lead­ership and the commitment to students he has demonstrated,” Hendrickson said in a release.