Aviva Abramovsky regards her new position as dean of the state University at Buffalo School of Law as “a kind of homecoming.”

Abramovsky, 41, an entrepreneurial educator with a global vision, is the 19th permanent dean to head the law school and the first woman. She also is the first dean named from outside the school in 30 years, but she has always been part of the university's extended family.

Her father Abraham Abramovsky and mother Deborah Abramovsky met at the university in the late 1960s when her father was studying at the law school and her mother was an undergraduate fine arts student.