Clark named associate vice chancellor for faculty, staff

Laurie Beth Clark, professor of art and director of the visual culture cluster, will become the new associate vice chancellor for faculty and staff programs, Provost Peter Spear announced this week.

Clark replaces Linda Greene, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law, who is leaving the position after five years. Associate vice chancellors customarily serve for three to five years before returning full time to the faculty. Clark begins her new position July 1.

“Laurie Beth has extensive experience as a teacher and artist, and with shared governance and administration,” Spear says. “She has enormous energy and enthusiasm, and lots of creative ideas. We all look forward to working with her in the provost’s office. In addition, I am confident that she will work extremely well with faculty, staff, department chairs and deans to improve our support for faculty and staff across campus.”

Clark, who has held positions as chair of the Department of Art, interim associate dean of the School of Education and Emily Mead Baldwin Bell Bascom Professor of Creative Arts, has an extensive record of campus service and participation in many programs that she will now help oversee.

“I find that I very much enjoy administration, a trait which I know makes me something of an anomaly among artists,” Clark says. “I look forward to acquiring a broad perspective of the campus, beyond that of a faculty member in the arts and humanities.”

The New York City native holds a bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College, a master’s degree from the University of New Mexico and a master of fine arts from Rutgers University.

Since 1985, she has been at UW–Madison where she teaches classes in nonstatic forms, which include video, performance and installation.

She says her willingness to stay at UW–Madison for so many years was aided by the faculty strategic hiring initiative, giving her firsthand knowledge of how the initiative improves faculty retention.

“(The program) was instrumental to my dual-career household, and I can offer personal testimony about how crucial this program is to the retention of faculty,” she says.

Committed to the integration of art theory and practice, Clark provided leadership for an interdepartmental group of faculty who proposed and was awarded in 1998 three faculty positions in visual culture studies as part of the cluster hiring initiative. One of the cluster’s goals is to integrate teaching creative skills with critical thinking, a combination that many high-tech companies are looking for in college graduates, but an area that Clark says is underserved by many American universities.

A strong proponent of interdisciplinary collaboration, Clark says she is pleased to be taking over the cluster hiring initiative as part of her new duties.

“I am concerned with increasing the sense of intellectual community that faculty and staff have on campus,” Clark says. “Many of us chose to spend our lives at a university in order to be part of a vibrant research culture, yet the pragmatic requirements of our jobs sometimes exceed the opportunities for us to exchange ideas.”

Clark will oversee three general areas: faculty and staff support initiatives, hiring and retention initiatives, and leadership and professional development.

In addition to the cluster and faculty strategic hiring programs, Clark’s responsibilities will include working with campus offices and governance groups to clarify existing programs and to develop new initiatives that address faculty and staff concerns. She will chair the Provost’s Human Resources Working Group, co-coordinate new faculty orientation, oversee the sabbatical program, and lead in the development and design of the Academic Leadership Series.

Clark will monitor hiring, retention and pay-equity data, as well as issues such as leaves of absence, extension of probationary periods, promotion, tenure, and other faculty and staff issues that arise.

Spear says a key part of the position is identifying the need for and implementing programs that benefit faculty and staff, leading to an overall better-functioning university, a charge Clark seems ready to take on.

“The greatest strength I can offer is that I can solicit opinions from broad-based constituencies and then formulate practical means to realize those goals,” she says. n