The Rev. Kenneth I. Clarke, formerly director of the Center for Ethics and Religious Affairs at the Pennsylvania State University, has been named director of Cornell United Religious Work (CURW), the first interfaith program on a major American campus.

Clarke, who also was the primary administrator for the Helen Eakin Eisenhower Chapel at Penn State, was named director effective July 9 of this year, said Susan H. Murphy, Cornell University vice president for student and academic services.

"We are thrilled that Ken has accepted our invitation to lead CURW," Murphy said. "His experience with the interfaith community at Penn State prepares him well for the special community we have at Cornell. Moreover, his pastoral and teaching background have given him an appreciation for the opportunities that exist for integrating the spiritual, personal and intellectual lives of our students, faculty and staff."

CURW is composed of 22 affiliated religious communities. It offers programs of worship, study and social events, as well as opportunities for students to engage in interfaith dialogue. As director, Clarke oversees and coordinates religious ministries at Cornell, supervises core staff members and develops campus religious programs and lecture series. He also oversees liturgical and preaching responsibilities at the campus's Sage Chapel and elsewhere, handles pastoral counseling and liaison with academic units, boards and committees, and may officiate at funerals and weddings.

"I am honored to accept the position of director of Cornell United Religious Work," Clarke said. "I inherit a legacy established by distinguished religious, socially conscious and intellectual leadership from the inception of CURW in 1919 and particularly embodied by my immediate predecessors, Robert Johnson and Jack Lewis. I am challenged and inspired to build upon this legacy as CURW evolves into its future." Clarke, who had been at Penn State for 11 years, said he was interested in moving to Cornell and CURW because of its national reputation. "Additionally attractive," he said, "was the fact that there is an institutional expectation at Cornell for the director of CURW to engage a broad university community of students, faculty, staff and alumni.

I was also attracted to Cornell because it shares with Penn State a land-grant institutional identity, reflecting an effort to make higher education available to a wide spectrum of persons irrespective of social, class, ethnic and other characteristics of identity. I left Penn State, a national leader in religious affairs on a state-related campus, largely because CURW and Cornell represented exceptional opportunities and promise."

Clarke said his goals for CURW include:

o developing effective relationships with CURW core staff, chaplains, students, faculty and staff;

o promoting of multifaith and cultural pluralism (diversity broadly defined);

o establishing contacts with alumni to keep them abreast of CURW's ongoing activities; and

o utilizing Sage Chapel worship and educational events "to assert the contribution religion has to make to the educational mission and intellectual life of the university."

Clarke became acting director of the Center for Ethics and Religious Affairs (CERA) at Penn State in July 1996 and director in July 1997. He was assistant director of CERA from 1990 to 1996, primarily responsible for developing CERA's educational programming. He also served as a part-time instructor in the Department of African/African American Studies at Penn State from 1992 to 2001, teaching courses on "The Emerging Status of Blacks in the 20th Century" and "The Life and Thought of Malcolm X."

He received his bachelor's degree from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md., in 1980 and his master of divinity degree from Colgate Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, N.Y., in 1986.