January 1998
Return to Table of Contents
In Depth With GCOE's Dick Clark His time at UMass Boston has been short -- a mere five months. But it didn't take long for Richard J. Clark, the new dean of the Graduate College of Education (GCOE), to get excited about UMass Boston.
"I think this is a really special place -- not only the Graduate College of Education, but the entire university," Clark said. "I have been so impressed with the faculty and the students and the staff here." Clark says he immediately noticed the caring nature of UMass Boston faculty. "I think the faculty is extraordinary," he said.
The Graduate College of Education appears to be a perfect match for a man who has been both a teacher and administrator at various educational levels.
After earning his bachelor's degree in American Studies from Amherst College in 1960 and his M.Ed. from Harvard in 1961, Clark taught fifth and sixth grades in Concord and Lexington. From 1963 to 1966, he was an elementary school principal in Jefferson County, Colo. He went on to earn his Ed.D. from Stanford University.
When Clark joined the UMass Amherst faculty in 1968, he intended to spend two to three years helping to build that campus' School of Education. Clark's "brief" stay at UMass Amherst lasted nearly three decades.
At UMass Amherst, Clark has held various positions, including associate dean for program planning and development in the School of Education and chair of the Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies.
A UMass Amherst project Clark is particularly proud of is the Math, English and Science Teacher Education Program (MESTEP) for master's level students. The program was run for 13 years with school systems in the greater Boston area.
Through the corporate partnerships, MESTEP students worked in corporations such as Digital and Hewlett Packard to learn more about educational technology and corporate approaches to training. Though students liked the money, longer lunches and clean environment, 90 percent of them went into and stayed in teaching, Clark says with satisfaction. MESTEP's successor program, "180 Days in Springfield," recruits master's students to work in Springfield for one year, studying, teaching and learning in public schools.
Clark has brought to UMass Boston the same enthusiasm he had for programs at his former campus. He welcomes three main challenges he faces as new dean of GCOE.
"The challenges are also the opportunities," he said. "As the Graduate College of Education, we seem to be in two places simultaneously," Clark said, referring to the challenge of balancing. GCOE must continue to function well as part of the university, in addition to working with the public schools.
"We need to make sure that we are holding ourselves responsible for the academic and professional work that we do," Clark said. One way to do this, he said, is securing accreditation for GCOE. Already, Clark has met with faculty on the issue, discussing three main questions: "What's unique about us?," "How many students can we serve?," and "How do we think about our relationship with the public schools, especially the Boston Public Schools?"
Clark and faculty have spent much time looking at the makeup of today's educators. Half of the teachers here today won't be here in a decade, Clark said. "There is no clear pipeline of people coming in." Naturally, he wants to encourage more people, especially people of color, to enter the teaching profession.
The final main challenge, Clark said, is developing a closer link between GCOE programs and its centers and institutes, which make the college unique. The presence of the centers and institutes working side by side with the academic programs is exciting, he said.
Clark and his wife, Casey, a professional staff member at Smith College, are the parents of three grown children.