Dr. Lawson Clark Receives 2024 CBOV Faculty Leadership Award 

By Erin Marlow, Communications Specialist

Dr. Sherri Lawson Clark, Associate Professor of Anthropology, has been awarded the 2024 CBOV Faculty Leadership Award. Since 2017, the College Board of Visitors has honored a Wake Forest faculty member who demonstrates an outstanding commitment to the goals of the College through cross-departmental collaboration and academic leadership. 

“Reading the email announcing me as this year’s recipient of the College Board of Visitors’ Leadership Award filled me with a profound sense of gratitude and honor. Being recognized for my ongoing dedication to supporting the College’s community and mission is deeply meaningful, especially coming from such a distinguished group. This acknowledgment inspires me to pursue further growth and continue making a positive impact in the classroom, through my scholarship, and within the Wake Forest and Winston-Salem communities,” said Dr. Lawson Clark. 

Dr. Lawson Clark was selected as this year’s recipient for her impressive and wide-ranging leadership initiatives, including the expansion of the American Ethnic Studies (AES) program and her successful work facilitating connections between Wake Forest faculty and community organizations. 

“She not only leads by example to promote our Teacher-Scholar model, but she also integrates that model seamlessly with local and national-level community engagement in the true spirit of Pro Humanitate,” said Dr. Steve Folmar, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology.

When Dr. Lawson Clark arrived at Wake Forest as an Adjunct Professor in American Ethnic Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in 2009, she began a trajectory of positive impact that would continue throughout her career. She served as a Teacher-Scholar fellow until 2012 and joined the Department of Anthropology as an Assistant Teaching Professor that same year. In 2015, she was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and recognized as a core faculty member in the AES department. 

While serving as Rubin Professor, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Director of American Ethnic Studies, Dr. Lawson Clark leveraged her leadership experience to support the goals of Wake Forest’s liberal arts academic mission. In 2022, after noticing a gap in the AES curriculum related to ethnicity, race, and nationalism, Dr. Lawson Clark guided the AES steering committee in discussing potentially expanding the program with an eye for global issues. The effort resulted in collaborations with multiple programs across campus, including African American Studies; Latin American/Latino Studies; Jewish Studies; African Studies; and East Asian Studies. 

Further fostering connections across departments, Dr. Lawson Clark oversaw the partnership between AES and Wake Forest’s Race, Inequality, and Policy Initiative (RIPI), which works to support faculty and students as well as promote research opportunities that address racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities. 

Dr. Lawson Clark has served in many additional leadership positions on campus, including her role as Director of the Center for Community Solutions; an appointed member of former President Hatch’s Advisory Committee on Naming and Commemoration; and a key participant in the Working Group on Community Wellbeing, started as a part of the University’s Strategic Planning Process. In 2022, Dr. Lawson Clark was selected by then-Dean Gillespie for the Committee on the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum (CLACC), where her curricular innovations awarded her the title of Cohort Leader. 

An inspiration to students and faculty alike, Dr. Lawson Clark’s impact has extended beyond the College and into the local and national communities, particularly for her work related to housing and poverty. In 2016, she received a three-year grant from Strong@Home Partnership to study the effectiveness of its poverty-reduction efforts and has been invited to speak at various organizations, including The Women’s Fund of Winston-Salem; the City of Winston-Salem Human Relations Commission; the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; New America; and Leadership Winston-Salem. Most recently, she was awarded the Lam Family Endowed Faculty Fellowship, a three-year stipend that will enhance her new ethnographic research project, “The Stably Housed: An Ethnographic Study of Stably Housed Families Residing in High Poverty (Winston-Salem) Neighborhoods.” 

For her extraordinary faculty, student, and community-focused leadership, we congratulate Dr. Sherri Lawson Clark as this year’s winner of the CBOV Faculty Leadership Award. 

“She not only leads by example to promote our Teacher-Scholar model, but she also integrates that model seamlessly with local and national-level community engagement in the true spirit of Pro Humanitate.”

Dr. Steve Folmar, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology