Biography|John Chambers — The Law Building on University Avenue Where He Took the J.D.

The later resume compresses West Virginia University into one line.

The law years had their own address.

After a year in Duke's engineering school, Chambers transferred home and took bachelor's degrees in business from WVU in 1971.

He stayed in Morgantown for the College of Law and finished the J.D. in 1974.

From 1923 until 1974 the law school sat in this brick building on University Avenue, the one later named Colson Hall for dean Clyde L. Colson.

Charles W. Bates designed the Beaux-Arts portico. The frieze still carries names from the history of jurisprudence.

Chambers studied here in the last classes before the school left downtown.

In 1974 the College of Law moved to a new Evansdale building raised on the back nine of the old Morgantown Golf and Country Club, now 101 Law School Drive.

The class of 1974 is the hinge year: formation happened in this hall; the school itself was packing for the hill.

Colson Hall was renamed the year after the move. It later housed the West Virginia and Regional History Center and then the English department. The portico is still there on the west side of University Avenue, south of Purinton House.

A visitor can walk the steps. The law school is not inside.

The J.D. did not send him to a firm. He took an M.B.A. at Indiana the next year and went into technology sales.

The Cisco biography that starts in 1991 skips the portico. The university catalog year does not.

Photo: World Economic Forum / Remy Steinegger, John T. Chambers at Davos, 23 January 2013, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons