The Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs works to promote a culture of faculty thriving for all faculty across the institution. She oversees all aspects of the faculty professional life-cycle, from recruitment and hiring to onboarding, mentoring and professional development, tenure and promotion processes, and transition to retirement. Partnering closely with members of senior leadership as well as key faculty governance committees, she develops policies and processes governing faculty work, partners on the development of academic budgets and faculty compensation strategy, and directs a team responsible for the analysis and dissemination of institutional data pertaining to student academic achievement and the development of strategies to improve outcomes.
Jones joined Clark in 2009 as a faculty member in the English Department. She holds the E. Franklin Frazier Chair of African American Literature, Theory, and Culture, and served as the inaugural director of Clark’s Africana Studies concentration.
Before Clark, Jones was the inaugural Race and Difference Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow (2008-2009) and visiting assistant professor (2006-2008) in the Emory University departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and English. She holds a doctorate in English (2006) and a Master of Arts in African American and African Studies (2001) from the Ohio State University. In 1998, she graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Music from Fisk University, where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society her senior year.
Jones serves the profession extensively outside of Clark in organizations that promote excellence for students both prior to and immediately following their four-year college experience: the Advanced Placement program, organized by Educational Testing Services, and the national organization of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Jones has been a question leader with the Advanced Placement Literature Exam since 2016, leading the assessment of high school students’ performance in college-level literature classes taken during high school. In her role as president of Clark’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, she was elected as a senator at the national organization’s 2015 Triennial Council. She joined the Executive Committee of the national office of the Society in 2018, working with Secretary and CEO Frederick Lawrence and executive officers to provide strategic vision, planning, and direction for the major initiatives of the organization in its mission to serve as an advocate for the liberal arts and sciences.
Jones’ research interests are in the broad field of medical humanities, specifically the field of literature and medicine. In the area of race, medicine, and the humanities, she studies bioethics and has published on the practice and politics of inequity in healthcare delivery systems, the history of alternative health practices and religion, and structural competency in healthcare systems as explored through a range of literary genres, including science fiction and mimetic fiction. She is the author of “Medicine and Ethics in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), and is the editor-in-chief of a forthcoming major reference work titled “The Palgrave Handbook of Global Critical Health Humanities, Race and Ethnicity” (Springer Nature 2020).
The Associate Provost for Organizational Learning leads the strategy for organizational learning by facilitating the creation, retention, and transfer of institutional knowledge within Academic Affairs that informs faculty and staff development and change (most broadly known as the Academic Excellence and Student Success Initiative). Working in close partnership with Strategic Analytics and Institutional Research (STAIR) and across all Academic Affairs units including academic departments and programs, the Office of the Dean of the College, and the Division of Student Success, she helps to drive positive organizational change through data analysis, review, dissemination, and development of positive interventions for faculty and departments to promote student academic success.
Prior to joining Academic Affairs, Hayley Haywood ’09 (she/her) served as the Director of Multicultural and First-Generation Student Support for four years, where she provided direct student support, advocacy, & program design resulting in 100% retention of two cohorts of scholars in the ACE Summer Institute. Hayley was later promoted to Assistant Dean for Equity and Student Success prior to her transition to academic affairs. In recognition of her sustained commitment to equity, Hayley received the 2020 President’s Achievement Award for Inclusive Excellence. Hayley is a proud McNair scholar who earned a Bachelor of Arts from Clark University where she graduated phi beta kappa and summa cum laude with highest honors in psychology. She then received a Master of Education from the University of Maryland College Park in Counseling and Personnel Services and a doctorate in Organizational Change and Leadership from the University of Southern California. Through her research, Hayley seeks to amplify the counter-narratives of first-generation college graduates of color as they pursue gainful employment.
Lynn Murray-Chandler, Ed. D.
Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Assessment and Learning
Lynn Murray-Chandler, Ed.D. is the Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Assessment, and Learning at Clark. She brings 25 years of teaching experience to the community, having taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Franklin Pierce University, and most recently at Southern New Hampshire University. At SNHU, she also served as the AVP for Learner Engagement and Academic Innovation and founded the Learning Fellows program, the First-Generation Academy, and the Center for Project-Based Learning. These programs directly improved student success and access for students from underserved populations.
Her areas of interest are in Design Thinking, Liberatory Design, and Students-As-Partners in Teaching, Assessment and Learning. She has been honored as a Teagle Assessment Scholar, a HERS Woman-in-Leadership Institute leader, and she holds a PMP in Project Management from the Project Management Institute. Lynn loves to combine her training from Stanford’s Teaching and Learning Studio with Elon University’s Relationship-Rich Education to create curated learning experiences where students and faculty are co-creators to elevate student voices. Her success in this space has led to consultations and presentations with other institutions to help them improve teaching, learning, and assessment processes on their campuses—most recently at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, with Universidad Camillo Jose Cela in Madrid, Spain and with Illinois Wesleyan University. She holds a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.