Christina A. Clark, Ph.D., former provost at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, has been named the eighth president of La Roche University. Dr. Clark has worked for more than 20 years at Catholic comprehensive universities. She is the second lay president in La Roche’s 61-year history.

Dr. Clark will take office July 1 from Provost Dr. Howard Ishiyama, who served as interim president since the passing of Sister Candace Introcaso, CDP, Ph.D., in May 2023. President Introcaso served as the University’s seventh president for nearly two decades.

Trustees unanimously selected Dr. Clark after a six-month search process led by a committee comprising University trustees, administrators, faculty, staff, students and alumni. The committee was chaired by Lyle Albaugh, vice chair of La Roche’s Board of Trustees.

As provost at Marywood, Dr. Clark led a team of administrators, faculty and staff in delivering the university’s mission by offering high-quality academic programs, fostering student success, and promoting a culture of innovation to meet the current needs and challenges. She worked alongside Marywood’s president and her Cabinet colleagues to ensure the university’s strategic growth and financial stability.

Prior to her appointment as provost at Marywood, Dr. Clark served as dean of the School of Design, Arts and Humanities at Marymount University, a Catholic Hispanic-serving institution in Virginia, where she also was a tenured professor of literature and languages. She also held various academic roles at Creighton University in Nebraska from 2001 to 2016.

Dr. Clark’s academic administration skills include strategic planning, program assessment, recruitment and retention, curricular development, shared governance, university advancement, partnership development and grant writing, among other issues of critical focus in higher education.

A key institutional leader throughout the pandemic, Dr. Clark led the successful implementation of the HyBridge Education Model at Marywood, which led to 87 percent retention for undergraduate degree-seeking students and 81.4 percent retention for graduate degree-seeking students from Spring 2020 to Spring 2021.

She oversaw the development of new degree programs in construction management, environmental studies and counseling psychology at Marywood, and programs in digital writing and narrative design, pre-art therapy and arts management at Marymount.

A consistent voice for diversity, equity and inclusion, Dr. Clark led the initiative at Marywood to diversify curricula and develop new programs such as an interdisciplinary Black Studies minor and a workforce diversity, equity and inclusion certificate. She also increased the numbers of faculty and staff from underrepresented populations at both Marywood and Marymount.

Dr. Clark was responsible for many cross-divisional institutional priorities at Marywood and Marymount, including leading the development and implementation of strategic plans at both institutions.

She also provided leadership for sponsored programs and grants, which included funding from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Clark earned master’s and doctoral degrees in classics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor’s degree in classics from Georgetown University. During her undergraduate education, she spent her junior year abroad at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

Dr. Clark began her teaching career in graduate school. After earning her doctorate, she held several visiting faculty positions before settling in Omaha, Nebraska with a tenure-track position at Creighton University. She also served as associate professor at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome in 2011-2012.

As a scholar, Dr. Clark focuses on the representation of gender and nonverbal behavior in ancient Greek and Roman poetry. Her professional contributions and research include peer-reviewed books, book chapters, articles, papers and reviews.

Dr. Clark grew up in a military family and has lived in many multicultural communities throughout the U.S. as well as the Philippines. She and her husband, Gregory Bucher, will move to Pittsburgh from Alexandria, Virginia. Having studied classics at Brown University, Dr. Bucher currently teaches at the University of Maryland after having spent much of his career in Rome, studying and working at the American Academy and the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies. Their daughter Genevieve is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh (UK) and currently lives in that city