Mark Clark

Education

• PhD, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Auburn University, 1998
• MS, Industrial Engineering, Auburn University, 1988
• BS, Industrial Engineering, Auburn University, 1985

Professional Activities

Dr. Clark joined the Harbert College of Business in 1998 as a clinical professor.  He has a doctorate in Industrial and Systems Engineering and specializes in the areas of analytics, quality, and process improvement. 

His role as a clinical professor allowed him to spend half of his time in the classroom and half of his time in a clinical role while serving hundreds of Alabama-based companies.  Clark was a member of the Auburn Technical Assistant Center which exists to help fulfill the College’s responsibilities in the University’s Extension mission.  In 2018, Dr. Clark moved to a full-time Lecturer position but has continued to work sparingly in a clinical capacity.

While at ATAC, Clark was the Quality Team Leader where he delivered quality management systems to aspiring 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd tier automotive suppliers.  This led many companies to meet supplier quality requirements in the automotive supply chain in Alabama.  The majority of his time was spent teaching and implementing the six sigma process improvement methodology.  He worked with hundreds of manufacturing, service, transactional, and healthcare companies located in the Southeast US. He is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt, as well as an instructor for numerous ASQ Certifications including the Certified Quality Engineer, Certified Quality Technician, Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, Certified Six Sigma Green Belt and the Certified Quality Process Analyst.  He has taught over 170 courses with over 2,000 students in his outreach capacity.  Over the years, Dr. Clark has worked to certify over 700 Green Belt and Black Belt candidates.  He has authored and delivered program material and lectures for several companies that have in-house or customized training. As a result of his clinical work, Dr. Clark was the recipient of numerous State and National awards, including the 2002 National Association for Management and Technical Assistance Centers Project of the Year Award, the 2004 National University Economic Development Association Outstanding Project Award, the 2002 Alabama Technology Network Star Performer Award, and the 2008 College of Business Excellence in Outreach Award.  As a result of Dr. Clark’s clinical and extension work, he secured approximately $4 million where he was either the Principal Investigator or the Co-Principal Investigator.  

In the classroom, Clark teaches quality management and business analytics at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Upon his arrival in 1998, he joined the Graduate Faculty and since then, roughly half the courses he has taught have been graduate-level courses.  He is and has been an instructor in the Executive MBA programs since 2001.  He serves as the Faculty Director of the Executive MBA and Physicians Executive MBA Programs.  He is the recipient of numerous Harbert College of Business awards, which included the 2007 College of Business MBA Outstanding Teaching Award, and the 2009 Supply Chain Management Outstanding Teaching Award.  Over his 28 years of being a faculty member in the HCOB, Dr. Clark has taught over 265 for-credit course sections with over 8,000 students.

In addition, Clark has co-authored numerous articles which have been published in outlets such as IIE Transactions, Annals of Operations Research, Computers and Operations Research, and Forest Science.

In 1995, and prior to joining the Harbert College of Business, he was a graduate research assistant in the Ginn College of Engineering for three years.  While there, he obtained a grant from the US Department of Agriculture (US Forest Service) to study the accumulation of raw forest material and the subsequent distribution of finished forest products.  He has continued to work in the forest products industry while at Auburn serving numerous pulp and paper companies in the Southeast.

Prior to starting his academic career at Auburn, he spent eight years in the pulp and paper industry at International Paper.   In 1987, he joined IP as a Process Engineer in their Corporate Engineering group in Mobile.  He worked as a preliminary design analyst for projects over $5 Million in the company’s Process Technology group.  In 1990, he joined the management team at one of the International Paper’s Flagship primary production facilities.  His responsibilities included production scheduling, finishing production, warehousing, and shipping.