The Memorial Union hosted University of North Dakota Chief of Police, Rodney Clark, on Wednesday, Mar. 26 as the latest guest in the University’s ongoing 18:83 Speaker Series.
The presentation, which began at 2:30 p.m., saw Clark speaking to the audience in order to share his insights on how to be an effective leader.
Clark has been serving as UND’s Chief of Police since 2021. Before coming to North Dakota, Clark had served as Chief of Police for Wichita State University in Kansas, but policing college campuses is not the only leadership experience he has. Clark has a 22-year military career to his name, over the course of which he has served in the United States, Qatar, and South Korea as a military police officer.
Over the course of his military career, Clark says he has seen firsthand both good and bad leaders. Coincidentally, he says, some of the strongest cases of each came back-to-back. While stationed in Korea, Clark had to deal with a superior who was constantly angry and put forth unreasonable demands. Shortly after a particularly difficult incident in which Clark was accidentally pelted with gravel from the spinning tires of the superior’s jeep, he was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Hawes, who greeted Clark with a hug. Despite obvious preferences for one of the men over the other, Clark says there is a lot to learn from both kinds of leaders.
The first lesson Clark shared focused on knowing your audience and knowing yourself. Specifically, he warned not to pretend to be something you are not.
“Authenticity is not something you can go home and practice,” he said. “Whoever you are, be that. Be yourself.”
He also urged the importance of standing out from the crowd.
“Make people feel something sometimes, when you walk into the room,” he said. “There’s so many people nowadays that just blend in, they kind of go with the crowd, and they don’t really have what you would call presence.”
Several other valuable lessons and insights in much the same vein followed, so much so that the intended runtime of 18 minutes and 83 seconds was stretched to almost half an hour. Audience members did not seem to take issue with the increased length.
Overall, Clark’s presentation placed heavy emphasis on one overarching fact that the leaders we aspire to the most are not always well-known celebrities or important officials. More often than not, the best lessons are in the figures in our own lives that we look up to.
“You don’t need a history book to find role models,” Clark said.
The next speaker in the 18:83 Speaker Series will be Dean of the College of Education and Human Development Dr. Shelbie Witte on Wednesday, Apr. 16, at 2:30 p.m.
Quinn Berg is a Dakota Student General Reporter. He can be reached at quinn.berg@und.edu.
