Dr. James P. Clements (’85 Computer Science and ’91 M.S. and ’93 Ph.D. Information Systems) Appointed President of West Virginia University

Date Posted: - 5/14/2009

On June 30, 2009, Dr. James Clements takes office as the 23rd President of West Virginia University, leaving his position as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Towson University, and currently going through the process of cross-phasing between the two positions. However, his aspirations of being a professor and eventually an administrator in higher education actually began more than twenty years ago while he was a student at UMBC.

The Department of Information Systems played a role in Dr. Clements’ career path and development in not only the computing sciences, but in academia as well.

Dr. James Clements’ college experience began at UMBC in the fall of 1982. He says he knew early on that he wanted to be working in the computing sciences, but shortly into his undergraduate studies another career path also became very clear to him. While waiting for a class to start his professor entered the room and that’s when he said to himself, “You should be a professor.” He remembers the thought left him with a “magical feeling.”

Despite the excitement this thought brought him, he still pursued his goal to be a professional in the private sector. Dr. Clements felt confident in his ability to pursue both career tracks. “I was very prepared for my private sector career after receiving my bachelor’s degree from UMBC,“ he says, “the IS Department has always had a cutting edge curriculum that prepared me to work professionally in my field of study.”

As Dr. Clements recalls, he has been fast-tracking along his career path for as long as he can remember, starting with his studies at UMBC. Originally, he chose UMBC for factors of proximity and cost – but he also found a rich academic experience. “My parents didn't go to college,” he says. “My brother and two sisters, we were the first generation to go to college. We didn't have a lot of money. There weren't a lot of options. But for what I wanted at the time…UMBC was a great choice. The program was excellent. The professors were great.” The pre-PhD James Clements was someone with a “fire in the belly” for knowledge and a game plan of what to do with it.

He worked while he pursued both his master’s and PhD at UMBC, going directly into his master’s studies without even skipping a semester. Throughout this time, he could see that UMBC was constantly raising the value of the degrees they awarded—especially that of the IS graduates who entered their careers with highly developed skills in project management and human-computer interaction as well as strong people skills. He says that the pay increases he received along the way underscored his employers’ recognition of the value a UMBC degree presented. “When I came out, and went to work for industry – I worked for a company called General Physics, which is run by Robert W. Deutsch, who has been very generous to UMBC – I felt so prepared,” he says. “I was working with people who'd been at some of the top institutions in the country, and I felt that I had an equal level of education to anyone in that building. UMBC continues to have a great reputation as an excellent institution,” says Dr. Clements.

After quickly becoming tenured as faculty at Towson University, thus achieving his goal to be a college professor, Clements soon realized another calling in higher education, albeit out of necessity: university administration. Only after years of being told there was never enough money for research, supplies, conference travel and the like, Dr. Clements thought he could make a difference in the administrative ranks to help ensure that colleagues and future generations of students and professors would have the vital resources and infrastructure they needed to “do their job,” as he puts it. Clements discovered that he had a knack for the coordination and fundraising that goes along with academic leadership – and also that he liked it. These talents led him all the way to Morgantown and West Virginia University.

Now as he leaves the University System of Maryland to assume the responsibilities that lie ahead at WVU, his focus on higher education increases many-fold as WVU’s incoming President. Recently, WVU has had it share of challenges resulting in their last president stepping down leaving behind a somewhat tarnished public perception of the university. But Dr. Clements learned early on at UMBC that problem-solving and people skills can take you farther along in your career—and at a significantly more rapid pace—than some would have expected. He sees renewed, exponential success for WVU in the next decade and he welcomes the challenge.

What he sees as part of the “big-picture” work ahead is closing the gaps of academic disconnect between middle and high school aged people and colleges in America. Dr. Clements cites Gaston Caperton, West Virginia Governor and President of the College Board, a New York-based non-profit organization that oversees the SAT college entrance examination. Caperton’s assessment that American children are less and less academically prepared for college, as evidenced in the board’s most recent findings, is of particular interest to the incoming WVU President. Clements says that both pre-college and college educators and administrators must collectively “pick up our game.”

Further, Dr. Clements references the documentary, “2 Million Minutes,” an eye-opening, thought provoking film which takes a deeper look at how the three superpowers of the 21st Century - China, India and the United States - are preparing their students for the future. The film follows two students - a boy and a girl - from each of these countries, composing a global snapshot of education, from the viewpoint of kids preparing for their future. Dr. Clements encapsulates that film’s premise centers on a most critical timeframe, “2 million minutes” from the moment a child enters the 9th grade until high school graduation, where he or she has only this much time to build a foundation of learning and prepare for college and ultimately a career. “This film,” says Clements, “suggests the blueprint for the future…our roadmap for preparing students for higher learning.” And, Dr. Clements should know…he’s been a proponent of excellence in higher learning—by his own work ethic—long before he ever entered UMBC as an undergraduate in 1982.

(Richard Byrne, UMBC '86, Editor, UMBC Magazine, also contributed to this article)