Seven longtime faculty members set to retire

Seven longtime members of the Clark University faculty were feted at a May 7 reception in the ASEC building on the occasion of their retirement, taking with them a collective 222 years of experience and countless Clark memories. Starting their much-deserved next chapters are Raymond Munro (Theatre Arts, 45 years), Lou Bastien (English, 35 years), Wendy Grolnick (Psychology, 33 years), Sarah Michaels (Education, 33 years), Mary-Ellen Boyle (School of Management, 31 years), Inshik Seol (School of Management, 23 years), and Donna Gallo (School of Management, 22 years).

‘It’s like a second home to me’

Clark’s Anderson House, which houses the English Department, has been a fixture in the life of English Professor Louis Bastien ’77, M.A. ’80, for decades. He took classes in the Colonial Revival-style house and even lived in the basement for a short time as a student.

After his retirement this spring, Bastien left the familiar comforts of Anderson House for the first time in more than 40 years.

A committed generalist, Bastien joined Clark in 1988 and taught myriad courses, including Introduction to Medieval Literature, Emily Dickinson, Tomes of Solid Witchcraft: Women Poets of the 19th & 20th Centuries, and Mythopoetics. The latter has been central to his research, which examines the concept of myth pertaining to cultural development using neuroscience, cognitive science, and literary texts. Renaissance literature, modernism, and the romance genre are also among his interests.

Bastien was a finalist for the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award in 2006 and 2007.

His departure from Anderson House after 40-plus decades was personal. As he noted in a recent interview, “It’s like a second home to me.”

‘After so many years, there’s too much to say’

When asked for a favorite memory of her time at Clark, Mary-Ellen Boyle finds it impossible to answer. “After so many years, there’s too much to say!”

Boyle, who joined the Clark faculty in 1993, began teaching at the School of Management (then the Graduate School of Management) in 1998. A sociologist whose research focuses on organizational and social change, she’s offered courses on responsible global management, sustainable community development, business and society, ethics, entrepreneurship, leadership, cross-cultural management, education, and women and work.

Along with her work in the classroom, Boyle served as associate dean of the college from 2009 to 2012, and then associate provost and dean of the college from 2012 to 2015 and from 2022 to 2023. In fall 2023, she was named associate provost for special projects — which included overseeing the development of the new Honors Experience. In those roles, she helped to shape and amplify an undergraduate experience around the principle of melding classroom learning with professional, service, and research opportunities that equip students to pursue their career and life passions.

“I envision a Clark undergraduate experience where all students, not just the academic superstars or world-class activists, have a transformative education,” Boyle said in 2012 upon being named dean of the college.

Most recently, Boyle has been researching and consulting on global liberal education, working with schools in Vietnam, Nepal, and France. From 2015 to 2021, she was a Fulbright Specialist with expertise in liberal education and academic leadership. Her scholarship has addressed global liberal education, business school citizenship, university-community partnerships, and the arts in business. Boyle’s 2001 book, “The New Schoolhouse,” examined the inequities perpetuated by workplace literacy programs.

Once retired, “I look forward to having the time and energy to work on the upcoming presidential election, specifically registering young voters,” Boyle says. “After November, I will try to recover what’s been lost on abortion rights as well as advocate for stronger gun control legislation.”

‘You will graduate with a story to tell’

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in the spring of 2020, Clark announced it would cease in-person operations for the semester, an unprecedented decision made by universities across the country. When the decision was made, Donna Gallo, teaching professor in the then Graduate School of Management (now the School of Management), quickly reassured her students with an email that read in part:

“I hope you are well and adjusting to the million little things that we are challenged by each day. This email is touching base to assure you that we will get through this, you will all pass, and those who are on track to graduate will do so with a story to tell.”

These words resonated with Gallo’s student Erin Shull ’19, MBA ’20, who journaled about completing college during COVID’s disruption. “Reading emails like this reminds me that we are all in this time of uncertainty together, and that we can and must count on each other to make it through,” Shull wrote.

Gallo’s responsiveness is one reason she connected so well with SOM students — she was voted MBA professor of the year from 2005 to 2009, and in 2018. She was also named Beta Gamma Sigma Professor of the Year in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2015.

Gallo, who served 4.5 years as associate dean of SOM, taught courses that included Business Policy, International Management, and Real Estate Finance. She also oversaw undergraduate student internships and taught Undergraduate Strategic Management. Her research interests include the impacts of regulation and deregulation on competition in the financial services industry.

Her conference papers include pithy titles such as “HARIBO and The Gummy Bear Business: A Sticky Situation” and “A Hero is More than a Sandwich. Inviting Business Leaders to Your Company and Making the Most of It.”

Gallo has served as the faculty advisor to Clark Women in Business, the Clark Consulting Club, the Net Impact Chapter at Clark and the GSOM Student Council. She’s also been a judge for the GSOM Business Concepts Competition and a mock investor for undergraduate entrepreneurship projects.

‘Students at Clark are committed to creating a better world’

Since coming to Clark in 1991, Psychology Professor Wendy Grolnick has produced over 100 articles and three books related to her scholarship on motivational development in children and adolescents at home and in school. But what she will remember most fondly are the students she has taught and mentored over the years.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed the undergraduate students at Clark, who are thoughtful, active, and committed to creating a better world,” says Grolnick, who has taught courses on motivation, child development, and psychopathology. “I have also loved working with the many graduate students in my lab who have gone on to important roles in the academy and community and with whom I still collaborate.”

Applying her research, Grolnick developed and evaluated parenting interventions designed to prevent motivational and behavioral problems in school-age children. Her work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.

Her books include “The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-Meaning Parenting Backfires”; “Pressured Parents, Stressed-Out Kids: Dealing with Competition While Raising a Successful Child”; and the forthcoming “Motivation Myth Busters: Science-Based Strategies to Boost Motivation in Yourself and Others.”

As an American Psychological Association (APA) Executive Branch Fellow, Grolnick was placed at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She is a member of the APA Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education and the APA Committee on Children, Youth, and Families.

For the American Red Cross, Grolnick has served as a disaster mental health team leader, for which she has been deployed to natural and human-made disasters across the country, including the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

In retirement, Grolnick plans to continue her work with the APA, the Youth Law Center, and other organizations to disseminate research and advocate for mental health and to continue and expand her role with the Red Cross, with more time to deploy nationally.

On a lighter note, she says, “I look forward to spending more time with family, including my 9-month-old grandson, Jack!”

‘I deeply value Clark for pushing for new visions and possibilities’

Sarah Michaels joined the Clark faculty in 1990, and was the founding director of the Hiatt Center for Urban Education and a senior research scholar of the Jacob Hiatt Center for Urban Education.

“Over the years, my favorite memories are the many times I’ve had a chance to push the envelope in developing innovative courses, field-based problems of practice courses, First-Year Intensive seminars, and courses that are intergenerational by design,” Michaels says. Among those courses was the last class of career, Powerful Learning Through Teacher Research, which involved Worcester Head Start teachers, assistant teachers, and Center directors, along with Clark undergraduates interested in Community, Youth, and Education Studies (CYES), as well as a high school student hoping to become an early childhood educator. “The work was messy, fascinating, and rich, and the collaboration across age and role groups turned out to be generative and transformative,” she says.

Another memorable example was co-designing an after-school Poetry and Art program called In Our Own Words that featured several Clark undergrad and graduate students as co-designers/co-instructors; a group of CYES majors who were learning to engage in socially just participatory research practices, and a group of middle and high school youth from Claremont Academy who were participants in the weekly after-school program. Together, they translated poems from around the world leading to rich and deep discussions about language, identity, power, migration, and transformation.

“I deeply value Clark — its people, practices, and policies — for encouraging and supporting multi-generational work, helping us move beyond traditional university, public school, and community borders, pushing for new visions and possibilities for transformative education,” Michaels says.

She looks at retirement “as the start of a long (unpaid) sabbatical — so I embark on this with joy, excitement, and deep gratitude!” Michaels says. “I will never stop being fascinated by, and a student of, language, cultural identity, and society, and I do not plan to stop engaging in collaborations with thought partners at Clark and around the country and world.” She will also find time to indulge other passions, like stained glass art making, gardening and off-the-grid, sustainable living, and “walking with and adoring my two sons and grandchildren as they write their own life stories.”

‘I’m grateful for my wonderful colleagues and students’

Raymond Munro joined the Clark theatre arts faculty in 1979. Over the next 45 years, he helped shape not only the program but the future careers of the students he taught and directed in play after play.

“Performance is philosophy,” Munro says, “and theater is research — or can be.”

A cursory glance at Munro’s CV reveals how much of that research he has conducted over the years — the list of plays he’s directed runs almost six pages. Along with directing plays performed by Clark students in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, he has helmed productions in Poland, Luxembourg, Ireland, and the United States.

Munro is also an actor. He was an original member of the Chicago Project and performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Open Space in London, and the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In the early 1980s, Munro adapted and directed four short stories by Raymond Carver as a production for the stage entitled “I Could See The Smallest Things.” After seeing this production, Carver waived the rights and gave Munro permission to film one of his stories. Munro’s adaptation of “Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fix-It” was shown nationally on television as part of “Mixed Signals,” sponsored by the New England Foundation for the Arts. It also toured museums throughout Great Britain. Munro went on to adapt and film another Carver story, “Preservation,” which was broadcast on PBS in Chicago, and two other independent narratives.

As the curtain falls on his Clark years, Munro is looking ahead to his next act, when he will spend time “remembering and being grateful for my wonderful colleagues and students — and the work we did each of those 45 years.”

‘Every moment at Clark was a blessing’

Inshik Seol is not only comfortable with not bringing attention to himself, he prefers it. When approached for this story, he humbly requested that the focus be placed on the other retiring faculty.

But in brief, the School of Management professor has been an enthusiastic educator of Clark business students in areas reflecting his research interests: judgment and decision-making, corporate social responsibility, environmental accounting, management accounting, and accounting education.

His scholarly works have appeared in a number of prestigious journals like Global Business and Finance Review, Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, Management Research Review, and Journal of Applied Accounting, among others. He’s explored topics as diverse as CEO turnover and compensation, auditing skills, and cost information management of defense materials in Korea.

Asked for a quote to sum up his Clark University experience, Seol is succinct and heartfelt: “Every moment at Clark was a blessing to me.”