As a literacy researcher and teacher, as a mother, and as a daughter of God, Sarah Clark knows the importance of stories: stories we hear, stories we tell, stories that shape who we become.
“Storytelling isn’t just a personal process but a communal one: When we speak our truth, we often help others discover theirs,” Clark told students in a BYU devotional in May 2025, her second full month as dean of the McKay School of Education. “God is the grandest storyteller of them all. He hopes that we will surrender the pen to Him so He can add His own words to our life story and into our hearts.”
Surrendering the pen has shaped Clark’s perspectives following her appointment to the deanship in March 2025, after a February announcement that the former dean, Kendra Hall-Kenyon (BS ’96), would become BYU’s academic vice president for faculty relations. In Clark, the McKay School gains not only a gifted storyteller, but a leader with the beating heart of a true teacher.
“What I have learned is that God prepares you for a life that you can’t even comprehend at this moment,” Clark said. “You just have to keep pushing and growing and learning and letting God lead you through it all.” Here is Sarah Clark’s story, told through the lens of her first six months as dean.
April: Sticking the Landing on a Leap of Faith
Clark faced unprecedented conditions in becoming the McKay School’s fourth dean in five years. In addition to Hall-Kenyon, appointed in 2023, the McKay School saw the retirement of Dean Mary Anne Prater in 2021, the appointment of Dean Richard Osguthorpe (BA ’98) that same year, and Osguthorpe’s 2022 appointment as BYU associate academic vice president for undergraduate studies.
Clark—formerly a professor of teacher education at Utah State University and, since 2017, at the McKay School—had served as associate dean under Hall-Kenyon. But accepting the appointment involved deep thought and prayer, she said.
“One night in March, in the early hours of the morning, I was really struggling to say yes to becoming dean,” Clark recalled. “I was thinking, ‘I don’t think I can do this, so I shouldn’t be doing it.’ I remember watching the ceiling fan spinning around above my head, and then these words came to my mind: ‘Knock it off.’ And then a moment later, ‘I’m in this.’ That inspiration has pushed me through all of this over and over again. I have never felt more chastised by God than in that moment, but I have also never felt more loved.”
Clark is no stranger to tackling unexpected challenges. The eighth of 13 children of Dean and Joanne Kartchner, she grew up in Benson, Arizona, outside Tucson. Dean Kartchner was an anesthesiologist who loved his “hobby farm” and believed it was good for his children to work it. And work they did, herding cattle and moving irrigation pipe. “I would frequently get up early with my mom and help do breakfast,” Clark recalled. “I loved to play school; I was always talking my younger siblings or stuffed animals into being my pupils."
May: Increased Devotion(al) to Duty
Clark also gravitated to teaching through school experiences—not all positive.
“It really started in second grade,” she said. “We were at recess, and we wanted to play kickball. The teacher let us choose teams, and each captain was taking turns. I was chosen, and when they got to the last kid, nobody wanted him. I remember looking to the teacher, sure she was going to make this right. And she didn’t.
“From that day on, I realized the teacher has power, and the teacher can decide what to do with that power.”
Studying education at the University of Arizona, Clark felt like a “country mouse” among classmates she saw as more cosmopolitan, but she loved learning. She also met her husband, Mike, at the university’s institute of religion.
For her student teaching, Clark was placed in first grade, excited to grow as a new teacher. But two weeks in, she was mainly just creating bulletin boards and grading. Her university supervisor told her to talk to her mentor teacher.
“One day after school, I talked to her about it and explained that maybe I could teach a lesson in a certain subject and maybe do more instruction after that,” Clark said. “She took a stack of books, and she slammed them down, and they just kind of went flying.
“She said, ‘Fine, you take over.’ And she took her desk and pushed it out in the hall and never came back the rest of the year. I had 11 weeks straight of teaching all day, every day, to a full classroom with seven students who didn’t speak English. It was daunting.”
This experience helped Clark when she was asked to deliver the BYU devotional in May 2025.
“Along with everything else, the devotional was physically and emotionally hard,” she said. “It was really a ‘trust God’ kind of thing. In my own life, I have seen the power that sinks in when a story continues to be written over time,” she said, adding that God helps us find additional meanings in our own powerful stories through new insights or through the eyes of other people.
June: Leading One Day at a Time
Clark relied on lessons of her own story as she settled into the deanship. She made an impact even before taking the job, as a driving force behind the McKay School’s belonging field trip curriculum and other student initiatives. Still, that was different than being the face of the McKay School.
“I find myself ebbing in and out of imposter syndrome,” Clark admitted, “but I have gotten to a place where I realize, ‘They didn’t hire you for this because they thought you were perfect; they asked you to do it because they see your potential.’ If it’s scaring me a little bit, it’s because there’s huge potential to do some really great things.”
Throughout the summer, Clark learned on the job, from working through personnel issues to creating a crucial presentation for BYU’s university leadership.
She relied on experience and the spirit—a bit like the time that her difficult student teaching experience helped Clark get her first job, in Arizona’s Catalina Foothills School District.
“The Spirit helped me answer every question in that interview,” she said. “And my student teaching experience meant I could speak with authority about how I would run a classroom.”
For the presentation to BYU’s university leadership, Clark worked to tell the McKay School’s story with poise and authority.
“I was just trying to wrap my head around What’s our story? What do we do? How are we going to share what we’re doing?” she said. She was prompted to focus on how the McKay School is teaching not only professional skills, but also leadership—a reflection of her conviction that God has steered her toward leadership for decades.
“I want our students to understand everything they have within them,” Clark said. “Heavenly Father is pushing you to do something, and He’s not going to make it easy. But He’s always right there with you in the thick of it.”
July: Extending the Power of a Story
A looming school year—her first full one as dean—meant a flurry of responsibility: to welcome new students, to help existing students, to unify faculty and staff across departments. Clark thought about it all summer.
As she prepared her McKay Day message to colleagues, she felt prompted to include a story from her second year of teaching about a student accused of wrongdoing by a classmate. “It was easy to believe what you hear,” Clark said. But when she asked the student, he staunchly denied the accusation. Eventually, Clark dismissed him with a curt, “Just go to class,” only to have the Spirit immediately implore her to call him back.
“I said, ‘I’m going to believe you. I don’t know what happened, but I choose to believe you,’” Clark recalled. “I humbled myself, and he wept. And we had the best relationship after that.”
In including that story in her message, Clark wasn’t asking her colleagues to believe everything students say; rather, she was asking them to follow the Spirit.
“Believe God. Believe our Savior, Jesus Christ,” she said. “He wants to help you, and he’s letting you know that what you can offer can be enough.”
August: Building a Culture of Welcome
In August, the machinery of a new school year began to turn in earnest. A detail-oriented person, Clark relished participating in even small things: writing emails for employees, reviewing event plans, lunching with students from belonging trips.
But she also thought in larger terms. Clark’s emails alert colleagues to changes, share inspiring updates, and remind them of shared goals. Checking the details for planned events ensured they included inspiring learning infused with belonging.
“Raising a large family, my mom was so good at ministering to the one,” Clark said. “I see this college as a big family of learners, and we’ve got to adjust and change so that everyone feels welcome.”
Clark’s passion for belonging also stems from her teaching at another Arizona school.
“On the last day of school, the school had a tradition where every teacher would hang out at the bus stop to say goodbye,” she said. “We would line up around the circular driveway, and as the buses pulled out for the very last time, we would shout, ‘We love you!’ and wave like crazy. And the kids would be hanging out the window yelling it back to us.”
September: Setting the Course
As fall semester started, Clark felt a bit more settled: her comfortable office chairs had been used again and again for planning meetings, one-on-one conversations, and lively discussions.
She had integrated new responsibilities into her days while finding time to take walks on campus after work, staying in touch with students and faculty and feeling the sun on her face. With her new routine established, Clark had more time to look ahead.
“What I know for sure is there is going to be more inspiring learning,” she said. “We’ll scale up the belonging field trips: our goal is that every student has two inspiring learning experiences in their time with us.”
Under Clark, the McKay School has begun planning events like a new inspiring learning conference for student teachers and interns. Still, she worries about a student who might not be able to come to that conference or to go on a belonging trip.
That stems in part from an experience Clark had with one particularly challenging boy in her fifth grade class. He behaved “super inappropriately, at times, and it was a challenge,” Clark said. Eventually his parents sent him to military school.“I always wondered if I could have helped him more.”
Fast forward five years, to her last day as a teacher in that district. Clark’s husband had finished graduate school and she was preparing to move from Tucson.
“I was walking to the bus stop like we did on the last day, and walking up the sidewalk was this tall, handsome kid: it was him!” Clark said. “He said, ‘Mrs. Clark, I wanted to come back and say I’m sorry and to say thank you.’ I just scooped him up in a hug. It was such a full circle moment to see him and how he’d grown.”
What that means to Clark as dean is for each member of the McKay School community to ask often, “What can we do right here to help someone feel they belong?”
“By infusing belonging into everything, our students can’t leave BYU without having belonging in their education,” she said, emphasizing that creating belonging is all about treating others as Jesus Christ would. “We’re still figuring out how to do it and do it well, but we will. I want it to get to the point where they cannot escape encountering the Master during their time here. Because we know the power of what they can do with that.”