Wendy Hensel (left), has been named GSU's interim provost, effective July 1. GSU Law prof Leslie Wolf will become interim dean. (Courtesy photos)

Georgia State University's law school will get a new interim dean, Leslie Wolf, because the current dean, Wendy Hensel, has been named the university's interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

Wolf is currently the director of GSU's Center of Law, Health & Society and a Distinguished University Professor. A well-respected scholar of health law, she joined the law school's faculty in 2007 and in 2015 was jointly appointed in GSU's School of Public Health.

Wolf and Hensel's new positions are effective July 1, the university announced last week.

Hensel, who has served as dean of GSU's College of Law since 2017, succeeds Risa Palm, who will return to the faculty after serving 10 years as the university's provost. Before becoming dean, Hensel was the law school's first associate dean for research and faculty development. She also oversaw the development of its strategic plan.

“Wendy Hensel is an outstanding scholar and academic leader, and she possesses all of the talents, qualities and experience we need in a provost,” said GSU president Mark Becker in a statement.

As interim dean of the law school, Wolf said in a statement, she will continue to provide “overall leadership” to the Center of Law, Health & Society. Under her leadership, the center has grown to 12 full-time faculty members and has been ranked No. 2 nationally in health law by U.S. News and World Report.

She has also helped start a new master of jurisprudence degree with a concentration in health law for nonlawyers that GSU will introduce this fall.

Wolf has a national reputation in the fields of health law, public health and ethics, and she has published widely in academic journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine. She has taught courses on medical liability, human subjects research, public health law, HIV/AIDS and the law, and bioethics.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appointed Wolf in 2016 to a four-year term on the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections, which advises DHHS on the protection of human subjects in research.

Wolf has also served on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Ethics Subcommittee to the Advisory Committee to the Director and as a peer reviewer for the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.

Wolf holds an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. After clerking for the Massachusetts Appeals Court, she worked as an associate for Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft in San Francisco (now part of Duane Morris).

Wolf turned to academia after earning a master's degree from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health on a Greenwall Fellowship in bioethics and health policy. She taught medical and research ethics at the University of California, San Francisco before joining GSU Law more than a decade ago.