Campus Colleagues: Vessela Vassileva-Clarke

Chat with UM-Dearborn's Director of Research Development Vessela Vassileva-Clarke about her life growing up in Bulgaria, and it's not surprising to learn that she once dreamed of becoming a diplomat. Her parents were both staff in the Bulgarian military. She attended an English-language high school, where she learned not only English but French and exercised her deep interest in history any chance she got. Her childhood, adolescence and young adulthood overlapped a transformative period in Eastern Europe - a time when the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union and Iron Curtain collapsed, and Bulgaria strengthened relations with Western Europe and the U.S., events that would ultimately culminate in both EU and NATO membership. Above all, Vassileva-Clarke loved to travel and experience other cultures. Working as a foreign officer at a dynamic time in Bulgaria's history seemed like an exciting way to build a life around seeing the world.

In this month's Campus Colleagues, we talk with Vassileva-Clarke about her initial career path, some unexpected life turns and how her work now helps drive the university's growing research culture.

Speaking up landed her an embassy gig

In college, Vassileva-Clarke dug into subjects that would put her on a diplomatic career track. As an undergraduate, she majored in economics with a concentration in military studies. For her master's, she focused on international political relations and security issues. She excelled as a student, and toward the end of her master's program, her no-nonsense style landed her an internship in the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. "Some students from political science were invited to participate in a meeting with the American ambassador in Bulgaria," she recalls. "This was during NATO's intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and I guess I was the only one in the room who questioned some of the actions. I dared to tell the ambassador that what he was telling us was whitewashed. We knew there were bombs falling in Bulgaria by mistake." Shortly after, the embassy's head of public relations reached out to Vassileva-Clarke to see if she wanted to intern at the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. "Sometimes, I guess putting a person on the spot pays off. They wanted people who could think for themselves and not take a story at face value," she says.

Vassileva-Clarke flat out loved the internship. For one, she was amazed by just how much of the inner workings of the embassy she got to observe, and it taught her a lot about the nuances of diplomatic work. For example, one of her jobs was to compile summaries of important issues in the Bulgarian press for the U.S. ambassador. She said it was eye opening to see how her interpretations of events, which were informed by her perspective as a Bulgarian citizen and someone who had a global mindset, often differed dramatically from the interpretations of the U.S. Embassy staff. "Something the majority of Bulgarians considered super positive could be seen as something super negative," she says. "It showed me how misunderstood a nation could be, or how wrongly a nation could interpret international events, if you only have the insights from within the nation, without understanding the rest of the world."

In the U.S., life took an unexpected turn

Another part of Vassileva-Clarke's internship focused on strengthening economic ties between Bulgaria and the U.S., which encompassed both looking for business opportunities for American investors and taking Bulgarian businesspeople to the U.S. In the second phase of that project, she got a couldn't-refuse offer to continue the internship in the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, D.C., where her life took an unexpected turn. She met her future husband, an American businessman, and as the two contemplated whether to build their life together in Bulgaria or in the U.S., they ultimately decided on the latter. She did initially try to help him learn Bulgarian, "but the reality was, since I already spoke English, I had many more opportunities to work in the U.S. than he would have had in Bulgaria," she says.

Now rooted in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, Vassileva-Clarke briefly explored working at the U.S. State Department. But when she learned only citizens could work as foreign officers, she took a job as a project coordinator in engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where she quickly learned she had a strong interest in working with faculty on research projects. Within two years, she pivoted to a different position at Hopkins as a project manager at the cross-disciplinary Systems Institute, where she worked with engineers, data scientists, medical researchers, urban planners and international relations experts on major interdisciplinary research projects. "Hopkins was a dream come true," she says. "I learned a lot. I was constantly working with smart people doing cool things. And we had so many international students and research scientists coming from other countries that, in some ways, it was bringing the world to me. I wasn't a representative of a country, but I was helping countries work together." Plus, she says, when you're bringing together experts (and egos) from so many different disciplines, it pays to have a trained diplomat in the room. She jokes that her internship at the embassy in public relations "definitely paid off."

The next twist: a move to Michigan

While at Hopkins, Vassileva-Clarke dug deeper into her newfound passion for working with research teams by completing the university's master's in research administration program. The new degree turned out to be great preparation for her family's next big life pivot. Her son was a talented hockey player, and the family decided to move from Maryland to Michigan so he could attend the Rolston Hockey Academy in Oak Park. She says it was pure luck that UM-Dearborn was looking to recruit for a new position in research development, a field that focuses on the intricacies of helping researchers secure resources for their work. Vassileva-Clarke says it was an exciting challenge. When it comes to research, Hopkins is basically the elite of the elite; research is something everyone "lives and breathes," she says. UM-Dearborn had deep roots as an education-focused institution but had a more sporadic history of faculty research. The new leadership was trying to change that, and it would be Vassileva-Clarke's role to help support the growing ranks of ambitious, talented, young faculty who had big research goals but who weren't always experienced in securing funding. Vassileva-Clarke's is a behind-the-scenes role, encompassing some really tangible things like networking events and grant writing workshops for faculty. But it's also about building relationships with people in key positions in funding institutions, keeping up to date on their priorities, knowing all the little "back doors and peculiarities" of the different federal agencies, and nurturing mentor-mentee relationships between faculty, including with very experienced researchers on the Ann Arbor campus. "A lot of researchers have great ideas and they think funders will give them money just because their idea is great," Vassileva-Clarke explains. "But the reality is they'll only give you money if you help them do something they already want to do. So the trick is presenting your idea in a way that actually helps them. Grant writing is not academic writing. It's a sales pitch."

The work is clearly paying off. Just a few years ago, about 60% of UM-Dearborn's research funding came from industry, with the remainder coming from federal and state agencies, as well as foundations. In the nearly five years that Vassileva-Clarke's been here, that ratio has basically flipped, with the total dollar amount for research funding growing by approximately 50% compared to FY21. And beyond the numbers, she sees other promising signs that UM-Dearborn's research culture is growing in all the right ways. There's support from the leadership. There is an emphasis on hiring ambitious young faculty who have a strong interest in research. Faculty are strengthening ties to Ann Arbor - the largest public research institution in the U.S. The university is launching more graduate programs, which are essential to attracting students to power research labs. We're even starting to recruit more post-docs. "The other thing I find very encouraging is I'm hearing more stories of senior faculty helping junior faculty," she says. "I'll be telling someone they should do this and this and this, and they'll say, 'Oh, yes, professor so-and-so already told me that.' That's a very good sign. That means building this research culture is happening already."

She's enjoying the path she chose

Vassileva-Clarke loves her career. But she says she does occasionally think back to the thrills of working in an embassy and what it would have meant for her life had she followed that path. After she became a naturalized citizen, she did consider returning to that line of work. But she says it's a hard life for families, and since she sincerely enjoyed what she was doing with researchers, she decided against it. "Of course, sometimes, I still think about how different my life could have been, but this is human nature, right?" she says. "When presented with two choices, no matter what we choose, one day we will wonder if the option we did not pick might have been better, more exciting, easier, more enjoyable - you name it. So, occasionally, I have nostalgic musings. But no regrets."

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Story by Lou Blouin

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