Dorlene Clark, administrative assistant with the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, has worked at the UI since August 1995. She started as a customer service representative with what was then called the Division of Environmental Health and Safety, and was promoted to administrative aide at GSLIS in January 1998.
Prior to joining the UI, Clark worked at Wellesley College in Massachusetts as secretary to the college’s board of trustees; as assistant to the chief of police at the River Falls Police Department in Wisconsin; and as the assistant to the bursar at Western Illinois University. She has worked in service, business, administrative and academic units throughout her career in higher education.
Born in Colorado, she and her family eventually settled in Macomb, Ill., where her father became the first chair of the geology department at WIU.
Clark studied law-enforcement administration at WIU before switching to organizational management, when she decided one law-enforcement officer in the family was enough. Her husband is O.J. Clark, former UI executive director of public safety and chief of police, who retired in December 2005. They have two children and three grandchildren.
Tell me about your job.
My job is dynamic and diverse. My main functions are to provide oversight to the school’s administrative support services, and support the dean’s work, travel and calendar. On any given day I may be fielding questions and providing advice to senior staff and faculty members, sitting in on school and campus meetings, training new employees, hosting international dignitaries, juggling calendars, researching policy or simply keeping the dean on schedule. Some days you have to be a willow tree and other days you need to be an oak. You just never know what will come with each new day.
It sounds like you manage to stay busy.
The work is always abundant and fast-paced, but that’s OK. I don’t like being bored, and anytime someone tells me they’re bored I tell them we can fix that – and we do. (Laughs.)
What do you like best about your job?
First and foremost it’s the people. They are caring and supportive, which makes it nice to come to work. We have such longevity here, and to me that speaks to the kind of place this is. My colleagues are collaborative, dedicated and cohesive. They’re amazing, really, and I’m honored they adopted me into the GSLIS family. My colleagues on campus are equally awesome.
One of my favorite tasks is promoting our staff members and supporting their professional development. I tell everyone that I’m going to take the front-office crew on the road for show-and-tell as an example of how an office should run.
It’s been fascinating to watch GSLIS grow in so many ways in the 11 years that I’ve been here. It’s hard work maintaining our No. 1 ranking, but we are very proud of that achievement.
You’ve worked in higher education for a good part of your life. What’s the appeal?
For me it was a natural fit, probably because I grew up with a father who was a professor, a mother who was an academic clerical, and a spouse who also teaches.
What do you like to do off the job?
My husband and I love to travel. We make an annual pilgrimage to San Diego in January that really refreshes and rejuvenates us. We’ve been fortunate to travel abroad a few times. We’ve danced in a castle in Sweden – it never crossed my mind growing up that someday that could happen. We’ve seen first-hand the beauty of Ireland. In both of those trips, the people were so gracious, warm and welcoming. We look forward to more opportunities for foreign travel.
My other hobbies are reading, sewing, performing occasional volunteer work and visiting with friends and family.
Of all the places you’ve lived, which one was your favorite?
Oddly enough, I would say North Hudson, Wis., which is about 20 miles outside of Minneapolis and St. Paul on the St. Croix River.
It could be cold and snowy eight months of the year. The year we moved there it snowed on Memorial Day, and the fall before we moved to Wellesley there was a blizzard on Halloween. Five feet of snow fell in two days – and all the little trick-or-treaters still came out. The day we moved to Wisconsin it was snowing and there were students outside playing football in their shorts. I thought that they had been afflicted with permafrost of the brain, but I came to realize they just had thicker blood than we did. We eventually adapted to it, and loved it.
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