Burk Appointed Speaking Programs Director at MHC

Tamara L. Burk, a national expert in the field of classroom communication and Mount Holyoke’s new director of speaking programs, has hit the ground running. Still organizing her files, she has been working straight through the weekends, educating alumnae about the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership, training the Speaking, Arguing, and Writing (SAW) Program mentors, and offering workshops for the Student Leadership Conference and Take the Lead!, a program for high school women to be held at MHC in October. Since arriving on campus, she has met with students, faculty members, and administrators and has fielded questions “on everything from helping children with communication problems to English as a second language.” Also appointed a senior lecturer, Burk begins teaching in the spring.

All the while, her highly oral, if not yet verbal, ten-month-old son Roscoe Griffith is happily adjusting to his well-equipped playpen situated snugly in Burk’s Weissman Center office closet. (Roscoe is similarly equipped in the office of Burk’s husband, Kirt Moody, visiting assistant professor of earth and environment). Despite her hectic new life, Burk seems undaunted by the juggling that lies ahead. She’s happily settled in faculty housing and characterizes her arrival at MHC as a homecoming of sorts.

Burk first came to MHC last year as a consultant and to deliver several faculty development workshops, and that experience reinforced her feeling that she belonged on a small liberal arts college campus. “I’m ecstatic to be back in a culture such as this,” says Burk, who hails, most recently, from the University at Albany, New York, where she served as associate dean and director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning. In another recent position, at Hamilton College, she served as an Emerson Distinguished Scholar for Faculty Development.

Over the past ten years, Burk has worked in a variety of teaching, administrative, and consulting positions at public and private colleges. She is best known for her leadership in the widely recognized

Oral Communication Program at The College of William and Mary. While there, Burk taught communication studies and women’s studies in a variety of contexts; tested and assessed new curricular models focused on interactive classrooms; delivered regular student and faculty development seminars; oversaw speaking studio facilities where students could go for peer consulting and training; and coordinated innovative educational grant initiatives.

At Mount Holyoke, Burk is “listening, learning, and attending, so that my decisions can be strategic and appropriate,” she says. She sees the College’s speaking programs as a “unique and exciting national model,” one “erupting with energy, enthusiasm, and great ideas.” She is particularly impressed with the “incredible success” of the mentor program. Down the line, she envisions an evolved “holistic” program model, “with intellectual purpose and rigor,” that integrates “leadership, speaking, arguing, and writing in both theory and practice.” She also hopes to see more faculty development collaboration.
Burk credits Lee Bowie and Eva Paus, former codirectors of the Weissman Center, with launching a highly successful program that is ripe for growth. She is looking forward to working with the center’s new directors, Christopher Benfey and Karen Remmler. “We’re really excited that Tamara has joined us at the Weissman Center,” says Benfey. “She’s a national figure in the field, and we are lucky to have her. The energy and vision she brings to the job are really impressive, and we hope, contagious.

Photograph by Nancy Palmieri.