On Friday, Tulane University named Marcilynn Burke, current dean of law at the University of Oregon, the new dean of the Tulane School of Law.

Burke will replace interim dean and professor Sally Brown Richardson, who has been the law school’s dean since May. 

Burke is Tulane’s first Black woman to serve as a dean of the law school.

Burke worked at the University of Houston for 14 years, where she served as a law professor and then associate dean of the University of Houston Law Center.

For the past seven years, Burke has been the dean of law and the first Dave Frohnmayer Chair in Leadership and Law at the University of Oregon, which aims to highlight the importance of teaching leadership.

Burke is a former acting assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of the Interior and was deputy director for programs and policy for the Bureau of Land Management. President Barack Obama then appointed her as acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management for the department where she served from 2011 to 2013.

Burke earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then earned her juris doctorate from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of both the Yale Journal of International Law and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism.

“Marcilynn’s long service and expertise in academia, private practice and government service set her apart from the list of remarkable candidates identified through our national search,” Tulane said in the announcement.