Challenge. Change.

On this episode of Challenge. Change. , relive the highlights of Commencement 2026, held on Monday, May 18, at the DCU Center in Worcester. Commencement speakers — including renowned astrophysicist and University of Chicago Professor Wendy L. Freedman; Sir Andrew Steer, one of the world’s foremost climate experts; Board of Trustees chair Roy DiNicola '90; William Stafford '26; and Nourhan Beshir A...

Mia Davis '01, M.A. '03, remembers riding her bike to CVS as a kid to glance through the shampoos and conditioners available in the beauty aisles. Back then, she wondered why there were so many items and so much packaging — questions that remain relevant today. Davis has been working in the beauty industry as a sustainability leader for more than 15 years. She's currently the chief impact officer...

On this episode of Challenge. Change. , Clark University Professor Asha Best and Stanford University Professor Emma Shaw Crane discuss detention and migration in the United States and why the government chooses remote locations for detention centers. "We can understand migrant detention alongside things like prisons and jails as fundamentally projects that are about breaking relationships and remo...

On this episode of Challenge. Change. , Michael Butler , chair of Clark's Political Science Department and professor of international relations, analyzes the war in Iran through the lens of international security and conflict resolution. "There's no real incentive or need for Iran to seek an exit strategy here," says Butler. "The Strait of Hormuz is a particularly good example of that. It’s a high...

Katie Stebbins ’10 of course became familiar with the name Robert Goddard during her time as a Clarkie — the University’s library is named after the physicist and alum who launched the world’s first liquid fuel rocket on March 16, 1926, an accomplishment that allowed man to reach the moon just 43 years later. But Stebbins, Clark’s digital projects librarian, did not have a deep knowledge of Goddar...

Laurie Ross '91, M.A. '95, dean of the college and professor of sustainability and social justice , remembers how important her study abroad experience in Costa Rica was in finding her passion and career. Experiential learning can look like study abroad, an internship, serving as president of a campus club, or building a video game with teammates. The path from college to career looks different fo...

Clark's Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise aims to create a world where all young people are supported in developing the social and emotional skills they need to be successful in school and in life. To help reach that goal, the Institute has embarked on the Southbridge CARES project , an innovative, equity-focused initiative supporting students’ mental health in partnership with the Southb...

When Matt Goldman '83, MBA '84, LHD '15, was a Clarkie, he had no idea that in a few years he'd co-found Blue Man Group with Chris Wink and Phil Stanton. Surrounding himself with good people, like Wink and Stanton, was one of the keys to taking an idea, making it real, and making it great. Goldman shared that lesson and more during a visit to campus in November with Laura Camien, former vice...

Clark Psychology Professor Michael Miller has a background in communication science, so as artificial intelligence like ChatGPT emerged and ballooned in popularity over the last few years, he wanted to examine AI's impact on the way we communicate. "It was like finding a new type of microscope to study human communication. I could see so much deeper," Miller says of AI. One theory Miller is explor...

When governments end social programs like cash transfers to economically disadvantaged people, what is the impact on their children, their grandchildren, and beyond? It’s a question Economics Professor Jon Denton-Schneider is trying to answer.   Denton-Schneider studies the historical causes and economic consequences of poverty and poor health, and he’s particularly interested in unexpec...

The mission of Clark University's School of Climate, Environment, and Society can be summarized in one word, according to Lou Leonard, the school's D.J.A. Spencer Dean, and that word is impact. "For the last 10,000 years or so, the world has been in what many call the 'Goldilocks period' of climate: not too hot, not too cold ... The bottom line is we've left that period," says Leonard. "There is n...

Photographer and Visual and Performing Arts Professor Stephen DiRado fell in love with cameras at age 12 and remains infatuated five decades later. "As a nervous kid, the camera had that same kind of heartbeat — that click, click, click, click, click — as opposed to the slow, methodical way of working with a paintbrush or with a pencil. It spoke to me on so many levels," says DiRado. On this episo...

A two-time and first-gen Clark alum, Danielle Morgan Acosta '05, MAT '06, knows what it's like to arrive at college and feel overwhelmed by all the opportunities ahead. Acosta, the dean of students , came to Clark all the way from California, and the self-identified introvert remembers leaning on her peer mentor and friends to help get settled on campus. On this episode of Challenge. Change., Acos...

Clark's 121st Commencement Ceremonies on May 19, 2025, conferred 468 undergraduate degrees and 1,014 advanced degrees . NPR journalist Ari Shapiro and Esther Duflo, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered speeches to graduate students and undergraduate students, res...

History Professor Nathan Braccio is a scholar of Indigenous and colonial American history and has a special interest in maps. "Like many other people, I have a fascination with maps," he says. "A map can be a legal tool that allows you to assert, 'this is where my borders are.' A map could be used to visualize an empire, to visualize a nation." His forthcoming book, “ Creating New England, Defendi...

With season two of HBO Max's "The Last of Us," based on the acclaimed video game franchise created by Naughty Dog, hitting screens this weekend, we asked Clark University professors to unpack people's fascination with post-apocalyptic stories and comment on the fictional science of the series. On this episode of Challenge. Change. , English Professor Betsy Huang discusses speculative fiction and t...

Geography Professor Asha Best has lived in a handful of cities across the U.S., Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Atlanta among them. Experiencing each place’s unique culture, transportation, and education systems has given Best insight into how different cities are designed and how they function. A curiosity to understand this more drives some of her current research. Best, an urbanist who studies mobil...

In 2008, just as the film adaptation of "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer was about to hit theaters, Sarah Gallagher was a doctoral student in Boston and saw everyone walking down Commonwealth Avenue with their heads buried in the book with an apple on its cover. Initially, she wasn't interested. But once she inevitably got her hands on the book, she tore through it in one night. "I can never explain...

Most people aren't thinking about just how many sounds they encounter on an average day. But Professor Matt Malsky, the Tina Sweeney, M.A. '49, Endowed Chair in Music, director of the Alice Coonley Higgins Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and director of the interdisciplinary Media, Culture, and the Arts program, part of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, is immersed in it. "Our v...

Professor Christina Gerhardt , Clark's Henry J. Leir Endowed Chair in Foreign Languages and Cultures, Language, Literature & Culture , is an open water swimmer who typically lives near oceans and grew up with a front-row seat to her aunt's political work as one of the co-founders of the Green Party in what was then West Germany. It created a clear path to Gerhardt's current work as a scholar o...

Is online influencing just for entertainment? Or does it have a place in the business world? LinkedIn has been a networking platform since 2002, but lately, it has evolved into something more. So-called LinkedInfluencers are using the platform in the same vein as other social media sites, injecting inspiration into their posts to boost their personal brands and shape conversations about their indu...

How does one write art history when there are no physical objects or archives to study? This is a question at the center of art history Professor Kristina Wilson 's latest work. Wilson came across the names of two designers, Addison "Add" Bates and Perry Fuller, in editions of Ebony Magazine dating to the 1950s. Curious about their work, Wilson tried to learn more and discovered no readily availab...

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...