Boston University officials appointed Maureen O’Rourke as the School of Law’s interim dean last week, filling the position former dean Ronald Cass left after resigning at the end of the year.

O’Rourke, a Boston University employee for more than 11 years, leaves her position as associate dean of academic affairs to take the deanship. Despite the relatively short time period between Cass’ resignation and O’Rourke’s appointment, she said she was not surprised.

As for finding a full-time replacement, O’Rourke said that process may not begin until spring 2005.

“I think the faculty will probably discuss it in the fall,” O’Rourke said Thursday. “My expectation is that we would begin looking in the spring of 2005 or fall of 2005.”

As interim dean, O’Rourke said she plans on focusing mainly on student and faculty concerns, along with fundraising at LAW.

We want to see what we can do to update the facility we are currently in, address student concerns with the facility, do some faculty hiring,” she said, along with taking “a good hard look at the curriculum” and “really review[ing] the fundraising operation.” LAW’s fundraising practice came under scrutiny after a Boston Globe column was published, and O’Rourke said the school “will follow university guidelines for accounting for funds raised.”

“It is very clear to me that I will be working very closely with the university to make sure that our procedures are appropriate,” she said. Prior to working at BU in 1993 and after her graduation from law school at Yale University, O’Rourke worked for IBM.

In a statement, President ad interim Aram Chobanian said, “The Law School was fortunate to have a number of strong candidates internally who could potentially step into the role of dean ad interim. Associate Dean O’Rourke has the requisite managerial and teaching skills and also enjoys widespread support among the Law School faculty.”