Mr. Frederick Clark		Carrie Kulick-Clark at her office at Braintree High School

Frederick Clark's Contributions Are Remarkable

Frederick W. Clark says he is a rarity, a political science major who is actually knee deep in the science of politics, and has been ever since he was chief justice of the student court at Bridgewater State College in the early 1980s.

"How many political science majors actually get into politics?" he laughs from his corner office on the third floor of the spectacularly located U.S. Courthouse on the Boston waterfront that visually cozies up to the city skyline on one side and the shimmering harbor on the other.

And he remains entrenched in politics. As J. Joseph Moakley's district director, he is the regional right-hand man for one of the most powerful men in Washington. Mr. Clark of Easton is a 1983 BSC grad who later went on to earn a law degree from Suffolk University. In June of 1998, he was named chairman of the BSC Board of Trustees. He is married to BSC graduate, Carrie Kulick-Clark, president of the BSC Alumni Association. The couple has two boys, Justin, 8, and Derek, 4.

"I was at BSC in 1982 and was running a state representative's campaign," Mr. Clark says. "Congressional redistricting at the time absorbed Bridgewater and Easton. Joe's people asked me to be his college campaign manager, handling places like Northeastern University, Stonehill College, the University of Massachusetts."

Mr. Clark did such a good job, Congressman Moakley sponsored him for an LBJ Fellowship in Washington. He continued to work for Congressman Moakley in his regional offices while going to law school, and then began running the popular congressman's re-election campaigns.

When Mr. Clark graduated law school, he became Congressman Moakley's legal counsel and in 1994, when the former district director retired, Mr. Clark was tapped to be his successor. He is Congressman Moakley's top aide in Massachusetts, running three district offices in Boston, Taunton and Brockton.

"Joe's a great guy, that's why I've never left the Moakley fold," Mr. Clark says. "You can do a lot for people in a job like this. The way we work in district offices is less legislative and 100 percent constituent oriented. You get calls about barking dogs, a contractor wanting a multimillion defense department contract in the district, and just about everything in between.

Congressman Joseph Moakley and Mr. Frederick Clark

"The big thing," he says, "is you can make a difference in people's lives, from putting oil in their tank for heat to finding a lost Social Security check. A woman in South Boston called once about cars parking up on her sidewalk and wanted a cement pole put in so they wouldn't park there. I called around and pretty soon, there's a pole in the sidewalk. That's why Joe's been in office 25 years."

Mr. Clark has been on the BSC Board of Trustees for four years, and was vice chairman for three. He sees three major objectives for the board and the college.

"The first is to fight for a respectable level of funding from the State House," Mr. Clark says. "We now have the largest enrollment of any state college (9,161 graduates and undergraduates), but in per-student appropriation, we are dead last ($4,400-$4,500, according to BSC's Office of Institutional Research). That's wrong, and it needs to be overcome."

The second challenge is testing, looking at the skill level of students who want to be in the teaching program. Those students are being helped to boost their skills, he says; the state mandates an 80-percent pass rate, but it is now 55 percent, he says, meaning a lot of work needs to be done.

"The third is raising the admitting standards to college," Mr. Clark says. "The Board of Higher Education is pushing it up, it's already harder to get in college. The state is shooting for a 1025 average SAT by 2001, but very few area school systems have averages that high. It's good to raise standards, but I worry about disconnecting from the ability to reach as many students as we can."

Mr. Clark's helping his old school actually began years ago, he says. When he was interning for Congressman Moakley in Washington, the college wanted a campus bus system so he put them in touch with the Brockton transit system to get those wheels rolling. The college has its own bus program now.

"I thought at the time it would be my biggest contribution," he jokes.

Not by a long shot, it turns out. In the early `90s, he says he was troubled by seeing millions of federal dollars helping private schools and knew that BSC could use some. He called around, found out that there was actually $10 million extra floating around in the budget at a time when a technology center at BSC was being discussed that would cost, coincidentally, around $10 million. Congressman Moakley came through and today the technology center on campus bearing his name is hooking up students and teachers worldwide. There is no other facility like it on the East Coast, Mr. Clark says, and it still holds the title of landing the largest federal appropriation of any college in U.S. history.

"The center," Congressman Moakley says, "turned this sleepy little college into an important technology center. People used to not make a big deal out of going to Bridgewater, but now I meet them all the time, they shake my hand and say they're a BSC grad and proud of it."

As is Mr. Clark. "BSC is opportunity, and that means something to me," he says. "We have to do everything we can to present that opportunity to others. That's why I'm involved."

* * * * *

Carrie Kulick-Clark Working to Get More Alumni Involved at BSC

The change in her life's mission was really a choice Carrie Kulick-Clark felt was easy to make.

A 1985 BSC speech communication graduate and current president of the BSC Alumni Association, she was working for the state welfare department as a reform program manager, helping people but putting in insanely long hours.

"I loved the job, but the hours were crazy," says Ms. Kulick-Clark, wife of fellow graduate Frederick W. Clark, class of `83 and chairman of the BSC Board of Trustees. "Sometimes I'd get home at 2 am and have to be back in the office at 7:30."

It was decision time, Ms. Kulick-Clark says, and a no-brainer at that.

"I decided that at the end of my life, what I do is what I want to be remembered for," she says from her office at Braintree High School where she's been a guidance counselor since September. "I decided welfare would always be getting reformed, but that my kids would not remember that I was a piece of something. They'd just remember I was never home."

Frederick Clark and Carrie Kulick-Clark speak with alums at homecoming.

Last year, Ms. Kulick-Clark graduated from BSC again, this time earning a master's degree in education in counseling. She interned at Brockton High School and became a counselor in Braintree in September. She's never looked back.

"I've never regretted it," she says of a job that allows her much more time with the couple's boys, Justin, 8, and Derek, 4. "Not for one second."

She says her education at BSC (she gives special credit to speech communication professor Susan Miskelly) helped her enormously in her work.

"This job and my old one use all of my skills. Speech communication is basically a method of thinking, how you develop it and what I learned at BSC helps," she says. "Being a guidance counselor is interesting, it's something different every day. It's scheduling issues, personal issues, the what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my life issue for a lot of kids. You help them, even if just referring them to other resources. You don't open any doors for them you can't close."

Ms. Kulick-Clark considers herself as an aggressive person, always joining clubs and organizations at BSC, and admits she's a list freak. At the couple's Easton home, she hangs up an `a' and `b' list, the first being the top priority of things to do, with the second less important, but eventually moving up to `a' status when tasks are accomplished.

"Actually, I'm the ultimate extrovert, while Fred is, or was, an introvert. He's much more outgoing now," Ms. Kulick-Clark says with a laugh.

How they met is testimony to her outspokeness. Mr. Clark was in his last year at BSC and his future wife wanted to ask him out. Their lives literally crossed paths as they'd traverse on the path across from what is now the Moakley Center going in different directions, and in spring of 1983, on Mr. Clark's absolute last day as a student, Carrie Kulick stopped him and said, "If I asked you out, would you say no?"

Mr. Clark said he would not, to which Ms. Kulick responded, "OK, I'll call you in two weeks. I'm kinda busy right now." They were married at St. Clement's Church in Ms. Kulick-Clark's native Medford on July 11, 1987.

Ms. Kulick-Clark is forever grateful to her school, saying "BSC was, more than anything, open arms. They'd go out of their way to help you, even after you left. I came back to give back."

She says there are 32,000 BSC graduates who live near the campus, a powerful base upon which to draw help for the alumni group.

"We have three basic things we'd like to do," she says. "One is increase publicity in the form of a handbook for alumni, so they'll know what's available to the them and how to get it."

The second, she says, "is keeping the lines of communication open through a newsletter to alumni council members," and also by doing a survey in the magazine that would ask graduates, "What would you bring back to BSC?" in terms of expertise or knowledge that could help others.

"We also want to do more outreach to the alumni, more reunions, activities, things like that," she says.

Mostly, she says, "My goal is to get people (alums) who were never here before. We've got a lot of new people in the pipeline, and that's good. The board has 18 alumni and the Alumni Association Council about 60 members. We want more people, active people with ideas who want to work."

She says when she comes back to BSC, it reminds her of what's important in life, "who you are, where you want to be. You see the students, the world is their oyster. It's funny, but as you get older you feel your choices are limited. But you go back, see the kids, you know that's not true."

Her degrees are some of her proudest possessions, she says.

"You go into the world with a BSC degree, you stand in the same line as people with Harvard degrees, you make the same money," she says, adding with a smile that "about the only difference is the size of the student loan you have to pay back."

Paul Kandarian is a freelance writer whose articles appear regularly in the Boston Globe South Weekly and Rhode Island Magazine.