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Clark University

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Clark University
Image:Clarkseal.gif Image:Clarklogo 2.gif
Motto Challenge Convention. Change Our World.
Established 1887
Type Private
Endowment U.S. $204.2 million <ref>Clark University Endowment</ref>
President John Bassett
Staff 167 (faculty)
Undergraduates 2,069
Postgraduates 711
Location Worcester, Mass., U.S.
Campus Urban
Mascot Cougars
Website www.clarku.edu

Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the United States, is a private teaching and research institution founded in 1887 by the industrialist Jonas Clark. It is the smallest research university in the nation and in 2005 was rated "hottest school for student research" by the Kaplan-Newsweek Guide. Clark is the second-oldest all-graduate institution. It is one of only three New England universities, with Harvard and Yale, to be a founding member of the Association of American Universities. Clark withdrew membership from the Association of American Universities in the late 1990s, due to a shift in focus from research to undergraduate education.

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[edit] History and background

Clark's first president was G. Stanley Hall, founder of the American Psychological Association, who earned the first Ph.D. in psychology in the United States at Harvard. Clark has played a prominent role in the development of psychology as a distinguished discipline in the United States. It was the location for Sigmund Freud's famous "Clark Lectures" in 1909, introducing psychoanalysis to this country. Franz Boas, founder of American cultural anthropology, taught briefly at Clark between 1888 and 1892 before resigning (in a dispute with Hall over academic freedom) and moving to Columbia University. Albert Abraham Michelson, the first American to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics, best known for his involvement in the Michelson-Morley experiment, which measured the speed of light, served as a professor from 1889 to 1892. In the 1920s Robert Goddard, a pioneer of rocketry, considered one of the founders of space and missile technology, served as chairman of the Physics Department.

Clark has a long history of community involvement and partnering. In 1985, the university engaged in a partnership with community groups and business organizations to revitalize Clark neighborhoods. Its efforts in the University Park Partnership program include refurbishing dilapidated or abandoned homes, reselling them to area residents, and subsidizing mortgages for new home buyers. In 1997, Clark opened a secondary public school, the University Park Campus School (UPCS), that is also a professional development school for Clark’s teacher education program. Because of its long hours and demanding curricula, UPCS has been lauded as a model for collaboration between a university and an urban district. Students are able to attend Clark University free of charge upon graduation, provided they meet certain residency and admissions requirements. In the May 16, 2005, issue of Newsweek, UPCS was named the 68th best high school in the nation.

The UPCS collaborative is one of several sponsored by Clark's Jacob Hiatt Center for Urban Education focused on urban teacher education and school reform.

[edit] Recent developments

In recent years, Clark has received widespread media coverage for its "Fifth-Year Free" program. Under Clark's BA/MA program with the fifth year free, undergraduates who maintain a B+ average are eligible for tuition-free enrollment in its one-year graduate programs, meaning that they can get a Master of Arts degree for the price of a bachelor's degree. However, the program has been criticized for forcing students to complete much of their master's coursework during their senior year, granting a degree but not allowing for a distinct graduate experience.

Clark has flourished, marketing its programs off-campus and accepting a student body largely from out of the city and often from out of the state. Its graduate programs recruit students worldwide. Clark has developed a reputation as a free-thinking institution. In recent years, Clark has been noted especially for its geography and psychology departments, with the latter having a distinctive, if increasingly unfashionable "humanistic" orientation (humanistic psychology). The School of Geography was founded by then President Wallace Attwood in 1921 and is the first institution in the United States established for graduate study in this science. It has granted more doctoral degrees than any other geography program in the country. The geography department is best known for its strength in human-environment geography and for the development of the Idrisi geographic information systems software by Prof. Ron Eastman. It was ranked #1 for undergraduate geography by Rugg's Recommendations on Colleges and has consistently been ranked in the top 10 in the nation by other publications. Its mission is ambitious: "to educate undergraduate and graduate students to be imaginative and contributing citizens of the world, and to advance the frontiers of knowledge and understanding through rigorous scholarship and creative effort."

The total bill students will receive from Clark University for the 2006-07 academic year will be $37,100, including tuition, room and board. This figure includes a 6.5 percent increase in tuition from the 2005-06 academic year, a matter of some contention on the campus.


[edit] Security at Clark University

The neighborhood, Main South, in which Clark resides, is generally impoverished with high crime rates. As such, Clark has taken measures to help ensure the safety of its community. One such measure is the Clark University Escort service, which operates vans to take students around the campus and local area from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. daily. The school also operates a Police Department on campus in the first floor of the Bullock dormitory that specifically handles most Clark University security issues.

[edit] Notable alumni

[edit] Notable faculty

[edit] Trivia

  • The book Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope profiles Clark University along with 39 other colleges.
  • Jerry Garcia once referred to Clark University's Goddard Library as "his favorite place to trip."
  • Activist Abbie Hoffman was an occasional student and visitor to campus. He grew up in Worcester.
  • Its students are referred to Clarkies.
  • The first breakthrough in understanding how brain tissue regenerates itself was at Clark.
  • The official student newspaper of Clark University is named The Scarlet.
  • The Clark mascot is the Cougar.
  • Jimi Hendrix performed at Clark University. More about the album
  • Clark is home to a large statue of Sigmund Freud in the center of campus, commemorating his visit in 1909, but actually has two statues of the famous psychologist.

[edit] External links

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