Challenge. Change.

Some people are led to believe that they lack motivation. Wendy Grolnick , professor emerita of psychology , wants you to know that’s just not true. “Motivation is really a function of what situation you're in, what your interests are, how people are treating you, and what your opportunities are — everyone is motivated,” Grolnick says. “The idea is that environments and people who are trying to mo...

How can you identify the species living in a 38.6-square-mile section of the Amazon rainforest without stepping foot in it? Geography Professor  Florencia Sangermano turns to ecoacoustics. Sangermano was among researchers who competed in the five-year, $10 million XPRIZE Rainforest competition, which challenges scientists to use technologically advanced techniques to rapidly survey the t...

In chemistry and biochemistry Professor Don Spratt ’s lab, students make ice cream in the name of science. Spratt’s Kitchen Chemistry course has become a popular selection for students who aren’t science majors. In the lab, students experiment with ingredients under Spratt’s guidance. While making butter, ice cream, root beer, and pickles, they discover how pH, elements, and molecules interact wit...

Professor Julie Frechette , Clark’s master’s in communication program lead, has long studied campaign communication. This means her phone has been inundated with text messages, emails, and push alerts from the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump for months. In the past, voters often complained about the number of negative political ads on television. Today,...

English Professor Stephen Levin spent his summer with the turtles. He traveled to Barbados and Trinidad to observe sea turtles and how they’ve become a focal point in tourism — a fellow tourist told Levin her motivation for visiting the turtles was “evidence of divinity.” It’s part of his latest research in the environmental humanities, which underscores the role that literature and the arts play...

Poring through court records from the Salem Witch Trials, creative writing Professor Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez saw an opportunity to examine the violent language of the legal system and reframe the narrative. The court records became a starting point for Gutmann-Gonzalez’s retelling of the trials through original poetry. The poems were published in the chapbook “ A/An ” in January and Gutmann-Gonzale...

Many people use life expectancy as the key metric for measuring global health. Ellen Foley and Tsitsi Masvawure know global health is much more nuanced and complicated. The two are co-editors of the new book “ The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Global Health ,” which reframes global health and asks how partnerships can become more equitable. Foley is a professor in Clark’s Department of Su...

Haley Wilder ’18 is on part two of her Clark journey. After receiving her sociology degree, Wilder worked as a litigation paralegal at the firm Fletcher Tilton and as a faculty support specialist at Harvard Business School. That path steered her back to Clark. Today, Wilder is the University's director of board operations. “I can look out my office window and see that the work that I'm doing is af...

John Magee , a computer science professor and Clark’s interim provost and vice president of academic affairs, is interested in learning how systems can improve people’s lives. “The neat thing about computer science is it's all about helping people solve problems or do things,” he says. “Sometimes those problems are in computing, but very often they're problems that face scientists in other fields....

Andrew Vietze ’91 took a leap of faith. As an editor for Down East Magazine , he’d written extensively about Baxter State Park in Maine, chronicling rescues and the feat of climbing Mount Katahdin. After a while, Vietze couldn’t ignore his desires anymore. He wanted to do more than just write about Baxter, he wanted to become a part of it. “It was terrifying, frankly, to walk away from a cushy job...

A few months after Benjamin Korstvedt ’87 graduated from Clark, he bought a handful of 99-cent records. Among them was a recording of Austrian composer Anton Bruckner’s second symphony. Korstvedt was hooked and still is decades later. Korstvedt, now the George N. and Selma U. Jeppson Professor of Music at Clark, and fellow scholars are celebrating “Bruckner Year,” the 200th anniversary of the comp...

Owen Chase ’26 discovered microgreens after starting college, in search of a crop he could grow easily year-round. Now, they’re the centerpiece of his business, Just For Fun Farms. Chase, a global environmental studies major , sells his greens at the Clark Collective pop-up markets during the academic year. Over the summer, he set up shop at the Worcester Regional Environmental Council farmers mar...

“Challenge. Change. Presents: Project Squid” is a podcast miniseries that dives deep into what it takes to make a video game as a college student. In this episode, the team reflects on the game-making process after a year of Game Studio. Challenge. Change. Presents: Project Squid is produced by Brenna Moore ’24, MSC ’25, and Ed Greig ’23, MFA ’24, for Clark University. Find episodes wherever you l...

“Challenge. Change. Presents: Project Squid” is a podcast miniseries that dives deep into what it takes to make a video game as a college student. Listen as the team preps for the massive PAX East gaming convention and prepares to launch their game to the public. Challenge. Change. Presents: Project Squid is produced by Brenna Moore ’24, MSC ’25, and Ed Greig ’23, MFA ’24, for Clark University. Fi...

“Challenge. Change. Presents: Project Squid” is a podcast miniseries that dives deep into what it takes to make a video game as a college student. Making a game gets messy. In this episode, hear how the team decided to pivot halfway through the project. Challenge. Change. Presents: Project Squid is produced by Brenna Moore ’24, MSC ’25, and Ed Greig ’23, MFA ’24, for Clark University. Find episode...

“Challenge. Change. Presents: Project Squid” is a podcast miniseries that dives deep into what it takes to make a video game as a college student. What is Game Studio? Dive into the Becker School of Design & Technology at Clark and learn how students create games together. Challenge. Change. Presents: Project Squid is produced by Brenna Moore ’24, MSC ’25, and Ed Greig ’23, MFA ’24, for Clark...

Sometimes, finding your place takes a touch of magic. It’s not uncommon for a first-year student to confide in Dean of Students Kamala Kiem when they’re having trouble finding community. In those moments, Kiem connects the student with peers in clubs and organizations that would make a good fit. When the next academic year comes around and Kiem isn’t seeing that once-lonely student anymore, she kn...

As Clark conferred 1,376 degrees to the Class of 2024 on Monday, May 20, at the DCU Center in Downtown Worcester, student speakers recalled the compassion and community found among peers on campus. "Being a part of a diverse community has taught me so much because it has allowed me to see the world through the lens of other people," graduate student speaker Gabe Spindel ’23, MBA ’24,&nbs...

What makes a great sentence? It’s something English Professor Jeff Noh and his creative writing students could debate for hours. “A sentence is often a temporary place you visit on your way to the next sentence,” says Noh. “Some writers certainly are obsessed with the sentence and think about it as an enormous, capacious kind of thing. I think it's more the case that we think of sentences in their...

Below the surface of the soil, a diverse community of microbes — living organisms like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa — interact and play a significant role in breaking down organic matter and cycling nutrients. These microbial interactions can improve or, in some cases, impair the health and growth of plants. Although they cannot be seen with the naked eye, microbes could help solve a vex...

Tools help us save time, freeing up mental space so we can accomplish more. But, the assistance of technological tools can become problematic, suggests Professor Eduard Arriaga-Arango , chair of the Department of Language, Literature, and Culture . We expect devices like Alexa and Siri to respond to our every command, which can replicate slavery. “Slavery is a structure that considers human beings...

Sometimes app developers create sneaky strategies to keep you on your phone longer. Other times, they create tools meant to help consumers protect their data or accomplish tasks. These mechanisms are at the heart of research by  computer science  Professor  Peter Story  and  Becker School of Design & Technology  Professor  Kat Andler . The tools developers us...

A moment of serendipity led Brian Woos ’16 to his career. During a student internship at a film company in New York, Woos walked into a room and saw a panel replete with buttons and wheels. Sitting at the panel was a colorist, finessing with shadows, highlights, and luminosity to ensure everything looked seamless on the big screen.  At the time, Woos didn’t know the colorist role existed. Now...

Sculpture Professor James Maurelle doesn’t work on one project and then move on to the next. His process flows freely. “I surround myself with materials and objects and work on them all at the same time. I’m like the eye of the hurricane. That's how I've developed over the years,” he says. “It's the closest thing to freedom that I've embodied in my entire life.” Maurelle, Clark’s first full-time s...

Award season is upon us, and three screen studies professors are sharing their favorite films of 2023 ahead of the Oscars.  “The Killer,” “Bottoms,” and “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning” were last year’s cinematic standouts for professors Hugh Manon , Jed Samer , and Soren Sorensen . The three are hosts of the Clark podcast “ Recommended For You ,” and bring their film expertise — and opin...