Areas of Focus

We seek to build a narrative about Clark’s academic vision that redefines the University as a destination school. To promote our reputation and rankings, we will draw upon our academic strengths, generating thought leadership that accentuates Clark’s excellence and prominence. Ultimately, this narrative will support us in fulfilling our obligations to society and meeting the terms of our social contract as an institution of higher learning.

Our academic vision includes capitalizing on Clark’s intellectual, institutional, and educational assets to renew our existing liberal arts traditions. As we strengthen and amplify Clark’s undergraduate education, we will ensure that the liberal arts remain at the heart of it.

We envision Clark as a destination university that provides a transformative liberal arts education and pursues research to address real-world problems through four interdisciplinary areas of focus:

Within these four areas of focus, we will develop academic initiatives that will be transformative to Clark and the education we provide to students. Not only will these initiatives push the institution forward, building on our strengths and traditions in search of new levels of academic excellence, they will also help change what we do and how we do it, in ways in which Clark University will become more distinctive and unique.

To elevate Clark and redefine it as a destination school, we concurrently need to rejuvenate our campus — the facilities and operations that support and uphold the academic and student experience.

To do so, we have established five foundational areas of focus through which we will identify and refine multiple initiatives to promote excellence across the University and prepare us to better meet the future needs of the Clark community.

We envision a campus that reinforces the distinctive elements of our culture and identity, while fostering a sense of belonging within an increasingly diverse, equitable, and inclusive Clark community.

The Clark of the future will be — even more palpably — a center of vibrant scholarship and intellectual engagement both within and of the urban fabric of Worcester and the Main South neighborhood where the University is located. At the same time, our plans must also promote a path to environmental sustainability and carbon neutrality.

Within and across these five areas of focus, we will develop initiatives and investments aimed at promoting our students’ relationships with each other and with Clark. We will create spaces that allow all of us at the University to better connect with one another and the Worcester community. We also will improve the quality of our classrooms and instructional laboratories so they align with our academic vision of transforming Clark’s liberal arts education.

The physical spaces we create will speak to Clark’s impact both locally and globally and help support our positioning as a University of distinction. We envision signature interdisciplinary collaboration spaces like the new Center for Media Arts, Computing, and Design that will allow faculty and students to share ideas and envision new, creative ways of approaching classroom and research projects.

Throughout our planning and implementation, we will incorporate sustainability standards in our buildings and landscapes to make measurable progress toward carbon neutrality. These efforts will connect our campus’ best practices in sustainability to our establishment of Clark as an international leader in climate and global change research, one of our four academic areas of focus.