Located in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark is a university on the cutting edge of higher education. A liberal arts-based research university with a distinguished academic and research pedigree, Clark is redefining higher education for the 21st century — forging robust partnerships that break down boundaries between academia and society and more deeply attuning students' learning experiences to the profound changes taking place in the world today.
We're a national leader in cultivating an educational environment characterized by collaboration, creativity, intellectual daring, and the capacity and determination to bring about real, transformative global change.
Capturing the essence of a place that transforms intellectual inquiry into real-world impact can be difficult, like defining an instinct or emotion. The words are there, but Clark University is changing the vocabulary.
The rapidly shifting and increasingly interconnected world of the 21st century demands citizens who are innovative, resilient, and unafraid to tackle complex problems on a global scale — from climate change to the fracturing of civil institutions. Clark ensures that its graduates not only thrive in but contribute to this dynamic environment by building careers and lives of meaning while deploying their talents, skills, and compassion in a society that sorely needs them.
To accomplish this, Clark University has forged a new model that is a powerful synthesis of research, community partnerships, and undergraduate and graduate education. We cultivate the kind of intellectual dissent and forward-thinking that erupts into bold ideas and spurs action that is both thoughtful and fearless. Clark is a university of consequence, where research excellence empowers action on critical human concerns, and where students pursue their passions with a singular purpose: to become a relentless force for positive change.
A Clark education reflects our belief in the enduring value of liberal education and our efforts to more deeply attuning students' learning experiences to the profound changes underway in our economy, society, and democracy.
Clark's legacy of taking the bold, unconventional approach is exemplified in LEEP (Liberal Education and Effective Practice), our undergraduate experience that combines a comprehensive liberal arts-based curriculum with experiential learning opportunities in highly integrated and life-changing ways.
Through this unique model, we make the development of "capacities of effective practice," an explicit learning requirement for our undergraduates. Critical to success in today's world, these capacities include imagination, self-directedness, resilience, and managing diversity and uncertainty.
Founded in 1887 as the first all-graduate school in the country, Clark offers a graduate education that is focused and comprehensive and trail-blazing. Our innovative model of engaged scholarship connects rigorous research methodologies and clear academic objectives with pressing societal needs, allowing students to work with scholars, practitioners, and citizens to effect positive change. Our graduate students master the skills to advance in their fields, think critically and creatively, challenge the status quo, and place their world globally.
Clark's education begins in the classroom, but it does not stay there. We believe in showing students that they each have the power to effect positive change in the world — and that their connections to others can impel even more profound transformation. Clark forges powerful connections with universities, educators, researchers, and business and community leaders at home and abroad, providing students with countless opportunities to conduct in-depth research and work collaboratively to address global concerns.
Our diverse community of educators, researchers, and scholars challenge and inspire each other with their unconventional perspectives, cutting-edge ideas, and determination. Clark University students benefit from close ties to alumni, who hire them as interns, provide mentorship and help enable their transitions from college to career, proving that the Clark experience is continuously unfolding.
As a high-caliber research university, we have a responsibility to pursue fundamental truths and develop solutions to society's most pressing problems. Our faculty, students, and alumni conduct research that opens new avenues of thought, improves lives, and informs the way people view the world — and one another. We think broadly and deeply and act collaboratively.
Clark University is known for intellectually daring research that engages the outside community and impacts people's lives and livelihoods throughout the world. To help ensure an environment where consequential research is fostered, Clark gives faculty and students the freedom and flexibility to pursue projects that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, resulting in a much greater volume of high-quality research than at universities of comparable size.
We are committed to action-based learning, providing students with excellent research opportunities, and reframing traditional research questions to regard problems from fresh angles and different prisms.
The world demands that people of intelligence, compassion, and creativity come together to address its most pressing challenges. This is where Clark University steps up. We lay claim to what we call Passion With a Purpose: those shared places within the human experience that are hungry for transformation. Here, our faculty, students, and alumni tirelessly expand the frontiers of knowledge, defying conventional wisdom to devise inventive solutions to complex problems and then roll up their sleeves to get things done because it is the right thing to do.
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