New Fowler Center director named

Longtime Arkansas State University faculty member Dr. Marika Kyriakos has been named director of Fowler Center and promoted to interim assistant dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Communications, Dean Carl Cates said. Dr. Lauren Schack Clark was named as the interim chair for the Department of Music to succeed Kyriakos.

“I’m extremely pleased that Dr. Kyriakos and Dr. Clark are taking on these roles for the College of Liberal Arts and Communication,” Cates said. “They are outstanding performers and scholars in their own right, and I think our arts and performance community will be excited to have them in these new leadership roles for Arkansas State.”

Kyriakos succeeds Fowler Center director Les Christensen, who announced her retirement from ASU last month. Christensen also directed the Bradbury Art Museum. In taking over leadership of the Fowler Series, Kyriakos succeeds Dr. Tim Crist, professor of theory and composition. In addition to coordinating the Fowler Center, Kyriakos will also preside over the Fowler Center Series that was supervised last year by Crist. His lineup for the 2019-20 music and cultural events series is anticipated next month. The series takes place in Fowler Center’s Riceland Hall.

Kyriakos joined ASU in 2008 as the coordinator of voice and the director of the A-State Opera Theatre. She became a full professor of voice and stepped into the role of department chair for music in 2014. Kyriakos earned her doctorate at the University of Texas after receiving her master’s at the University of Missouri.

A presenter at international conferences, her most recent foreign excursions include the College Music Society Biennial International Conferences in Buenos Aires and Sydney, as well as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at Sunway University. In addition, several of her students have been selected to participate in the prestigious OperaMaya program in Mexico where Kyriakos herself has been on the performance faculty for three seasons. Broadening the audience and interest in opera remains one of her passions, and she has presented to the National Opera Association Conference on strategies to overcome the challenges of opera in small communities with Opera in the Twilight Zone, she said.

Professor of piano, Clark joined ASU in 2003 after five years at the University of Memphis. As the director of keyboard studies, Clark has also served as the director of graduate studies in the Department of Music since 2015 as well as director of international studies for the department. She also has a resume of international performance and teaching, most recently from 2016 to the present at the Saarburg International Music Festival and School in Germany and in August 2019 at the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. Clark earned her doctorate at Boston University and her master’s at Northwestern University.