Fisk University’s new president, Dr. Agenia Clark, took office this month. She brings a reverence for the school’s more than 150-year-old history, and she’s motivated to become an agent of “transformation” for the historically Black university.

Fisk is “extremely wealthy,” said Clark.

“It’s wealthy in students. It’s wealthy in the scholarship of its faculty. It’s wealthy in alumni,” Clark said. “What we don’t have is economic wealth.”

Clark is hoping to change that.

She said she want to share school’s existing strengths with the community to drive more investment in the campus. She’s still figuring out how. In the meantime, she has been meeting with the university’s board and local leaders, including Mayor Freddie O’Connell, to strategize.

One thing she says is critical to her process — listening.

“My approach so far has been to spend as much time as I can [with] what I would say are my most important constituents,” Clark said.

That means talking with faculty, staff, and of course, Fisk students.

Engaging with students after a turbulent start to the semester

The student body had a lot to say early this semester, when a new payment policy and academic purge sent some of them home just weeks after classes started.

This all occurred before Clark was brought on, and students have been sharing their perspectives on the incident with her.

“What I can speak to is the impact it had on these students. And it wasn’t about the purge.” Clark said for the students she talked to, it was about members of the Fisk family being sent home.

Clark said she appreciates “how they shared their experiences with me because you could tell it was very emotional for them.“

During the protests over the purge, students also brought up concerns with living conditions on campus, saying there was mold in dorm rooms, and broken air conditioners in the summer heat. Clark said she spoke with students about those issues too. 

“As the president, my objective is to make sure that the family experience that these students come here to get is addressed not only from the classroom, but from the other elements of their life here on this campus. So all of those things are being evaluated and discussed,” Clark said.

Clark mentions this idea of family several times throughout her interview. She said the culture of family at Fisk is what brings students to the school — and what helps push them to finish their degrees.

Alexis Marshall WPLN News

Fisk president Dr. Agenia Clark has stocked her office book shelves with scholarly work from university faculty.

Returning to Fisk

While Clark is new to this new role as president, this isn’t her first time working for the university.

“It was my first experience with Fisk that’s brought me back to Fisk,” she said.

Clark volunteered as an instructor at the school when she first moved to Nashville more than 30 years ago, she said. She spent many of the years since then leading Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee.

“So to come back here now, I’m able to take all the years of my experiences since then and hopefully combine all of that into something that’ll help us look at the next 150 years for Fisk.”

When asked about what kind of mark she wants to leave on the school, Clark said “I don’t want it to be my legacy.”

“I want it to be the legacy of the students here at this school. And the students here say that ‘While I was at Fisk, I experienced and witnessed a transformation.'”

She said she’s not sure what that transformation will look like yet.

“But I’m sure there’s a student or an alumni or two who will tell me,” Clark said with laugh.