October 15, 1999

Dean of Texas Law School That Was Focus of Hopwood Resigns; Smith College Selects a Man to Lead First Engineering Program at a Women's College; Director of Harvard's Herbaria Moves to Yale

By KATHERINE S. MANGAN, SCOTT HELLER, and DAVID L. WHEELER

M. Michael Sharlot, dean of the University of Texas Law School, is tired of fighting to maintain racial diversity in the aftermath of a federal court's ban on affirmative action. He's so tired, in fact, that he's decided to resign as dean next summer.

His decision surprised many people at the university, which has been striving to overcome the effects of the 1996 Hopwood decision, in which a federal appeals court, ruling on a challenge to the law school's admissions policy, banned the