Eloise E. (Betsy) Clark papers

Eloise E. (Betsy) Clark served BGSU for 19 years, including 13 as Vice President of Academic Affairs and later as interim chair of the Biology Department. She retired from BGSU in June 2002 and was named trustee professor emeritus of Biology.

Clark was the daughter of Dr. Frank and Ava Clark of Abingdon, Virginia; the youngest of seven children. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in biology from Mary Washington College and went on to receive her PhD in developmental biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Clark did her post-doctoral work in microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis and in the Biochemistry and Virus Lab at the University of California at Berkeley. She was then appointed as the first female faculty of biology at Columbia University, where she taught and did research for 10 years, until 1969.

From 1969 to 1982, Clark worked at the National Science Foundation, ending her work as the presidentially appointed assistant director of Biological, Behavioral, and Social Sciences. She was then recruited by BGSU and served as Vice President for Academic Affairs (otherwise known as Provost) from 1983-1996, with a concurrent appointment with the rank of Professor to the Biology Department.

Clark also was past president, past chair of the board, officer and member of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as the Phi Beta Kappa liaison to that organization. She also served on the Phi Beta Kappa executive committee at the national level, functioning as a senator and also as chair of the committee on qualifications. Clark also served on the Board of Trustees of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Besty Clark died on May 10, 2017, in Asheville, North Carolina, where she had spent her retirement years.