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Member Spotlight: Clark University

  

Learn a little bit about an URMIA member: Clark University  (A conversation with Tony Penny, business and auxiliary services manager)                                                                   

                                                                                                               

Q: You posted on the URMIA community last month that you’re hiring your first FT director of safety and risk management. How exciting! What got you to this point?

Risk management was previously one of the many responsibilities assigned to our business manager position. Over time, the demands related to risk management, including ERM, have required more and more of his time which made it difficult to balance the various duties associated with the business manager position. After a vacancy occurred within the same division as the business manager, Clark University took that opportunity to rethink it staffing structure and ultimately determined that hiring a dedicated director of safety and risk management made the most sense.

Q: How did you build the job description?

Partly from the existing business manager position but also reviewing URMIA resources and job posting on HigherEdJobs.

Q: What advice would you give to another institution who hasn’t yet gotten to the point of hiring its first risk manager?

As staff vacancies arise, take the opportunity to review the staffing structure to see if there is an opportunity to re-align job responsibilities to allow for a full-time risk management position. The demands related to risk management are only likely to increase in the future so it would be wise to plan for that and allocate staffing resources as appropriate.

Q: Any fun facts about Clark University?

We have two that I’ll share: 1) Physics professor and Clark University alumnus Robert Goddard conducted his pioneering rocketry research in Clark laboratories and 2) Sigmund Freud presented his Clark University lectures in 1909 as part of a series of conferences held in observance of our university’s 20th anniversary. It would be Freud’s only visit to America, and his only lectures outside of Europe.





8/31/2022

By URMIA National Office

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