The university’s next director for the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women brings a passion for “empowering women and creating community that is committed to gender equity”—as well as a record of meaningfully advancing both causes.
Angela Clark-Taylor, currently director of Bowling Green State University’s (BGSU) Center for Women and Gender Equity and founding director of its Violence Prevention Center, starts her new role at Case Western Reserve July 1.
“Angela’s intellect, energy and experience deeply impressed those involved in the search as well as other members of the campus and broader community,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Lou Stark. “Her scholarship and leadership in higher education give her rich perspectives into the opportunities of this role, as well as the strategic insight needed to realize them.”
Clark-Taylor came to her career path by way of her own early challenges as the family’s first traditional college student, which intensified her interest in learning more about social inequities, with a more specific focus on gender. She went on to earn master’s and doctorate degrees in higher education from the University of Rochester. Throughout graduate school she served in positions of increasing responsibility at the university’s Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. While there she engaged actively in both the campus and local community, and also managed administrative details from finances to extensive event coordination.
In 2015, she became a visiting assistant professor in Student Affairs and Counseling at the University of Redlands, and went on to become the institution’s inaugural Rochford Leadership Initiative Faculty Fellow. In the latter role she helped launch a scholar’s academy for low-income, first-generation students and their families—which simultaneously provided master’s and doctoral students first-hand learning experiences directly related to their studies.
At BGSU, Clark-Taylor has worked actively to increase engagement with both centers and the range of issues they work to address. Such efforts more than tripled attendance at an annual women of distinction event and quintuple the audience for a mentors’ celebration. She also coordinated a Women’s Leadership Summit that featured a trio of female scholar-activists for discussions involving women of color leadership models as well as broader issues in higher education.
“Case [Western Reserve’s]’s community engagement, its research profile, including undergraduate student research, and the population really seemed like a good fit for my background and skills,” Clark-Taylor said, noting that her meetings with campus and community stakeholders increased her interest in the role. “I think we can do a lot of good work together.”