We gather at an extraordinary time for our university, for higher education, and for our country for what is ordinarily a routine exercise in institutional self-reflection: the annual State of the University address. This year, I believe we all would agree that the challenges we face — seemingly on all fronts currently — are no ordinary state of affairs and that our response cannot and should not be routine. At the same time, we should not allow ourselves in the din of the present to overlook all of the things we do really well every day, the progress we have made in overcoming prior challenges, the promise of our still greater potential, or the fact that Clark matters to the world, and not just to those of us who are here now.
What I have prepared for today, then, is less of an address and more of an appeal.
At the heart of so many of our challenges today — at Clark, in higher education, and across the American and global political landscape — is that we are at odds with each other. We will not agree on what all the challenges are, the reasons we face them, or how best to respond. There will never be universal agreement on many things, and that has never been, nor should it ever be, the goal. In fact, what we in higher education stand for — fostering a plurality of perspectives, experiences, beliefs — is meant to ensure a verdant marketplace of ideas subject to testing that fuel engines of progress for individuals and societies.
Yet, the public’s perception of what we do in higher education is now seemingly tainted with suspicion, born out of fear that as some individuals and ideas gain ground others inherently lose it. Our mission to prepare critical thinkers to be engaged citizens is seen by some as an agenda pursued with nefarious intent to disruptive ends. Our own government now ascribes ulterior motives to our work, our methods, our values, and it fails to see — it would seem — that higher education contributes as much to innovation, research and development, a healthy society, culture, and the economy as it does to teaching the next generation of citizens and leaders. It is not an overreaction, I believe, to say that higher education as we know it is under deliberate threat and that we must act accordingly. At moments, that might mean speaking up and speaking out, ideally in concert with professional colleagues across the country. At other moments that might mean relying on our elected representatives to be our voice and authentically represent our interests. But, always, it means continually demonstrating our value and importance by staying focused on our mission and doing good work.
Even those who believe in the vital role of higher education are increasingly uneasy about some aspects of it. They ask: “Why does college have to cost so much?” and “Can you guarantee us a return on our investment?” They tell us of their expectation for the highest quality in everything — teaching, facilities, food, a panoply of wraparound services — along with their expectation of a discounted price. The idea of liberal arts study feels to some more like an indulgence or distraction from preparing for one’s first job rather than a foundation for lifelong learning and the ability to succeed in many jobs over the course of one’s career.
Can we do better at containing some of the costs that drive up our price? Certainly. Can we do better at conveying the value of a postsecondary degree and the benefits of a broad-based education pursued by students representing all aspects of diversity? We must. Can we defend against government policies and actions that seem designed to punish higher education and thwart free expression, academic freedom, and civic engagement? We will.
Of course, we face more than just ideological challenges and changing consumer expectations. The number of traditional-age college students is in decline, especially here in the Northeast, making the supply of higher education institutions greater than the demand for them. And institutions are increasingly finding that, with rising costs, decreasing demand, and a volatile economy, the resources available to them are insufficient to sustain current operations. I myself do not know of a single college or university today that isn’t engaged in some form of contraction.
Change, then, is today’s imperative in higher education. And change can be hard and uncomfortable and leave us uneasy, especially when we are in the midst of so much uncertainty. But change doesn’t have to mean a complete abandonment of continuity, or of values, or of purpose.
At Clark, we have many challenges in front of us, some of them years if not decades in the making, some emerging unexpectedly with each new day. We also have some appreciable advantages and opportunities, some by virtue of the actions already taken and investments recently made. But time is of the essence to address the former and to benefit most fully from the latter. If we don’t act quickly to bring about more of the changes we have been discussing since last summer, we may put Clark — an institution we all love and want to see thrive — at greater risk. In fact, I would say one measure of how much we love Clark, value it, care about it, and believe it matters, is how quickly and fully we work together to set it on its most promising and sustainable path toward a stronger and brighter future. I believe in that future, and I know you do, too.
My first appeal, then, is that we rededicate ourselves to a way of working with one another that is maximally constructive. I know and deeply appreciate that differing perspectives and lived experiences mean that each of us has a very individualized sense of Clark, our challenges, and what we should do about them. Let’s draw on those different perspectives as a strength and not let them hamper our ability to act in synergy to move our institution forward. I appeal to us all to do our best to rise above suspicion, distrust, self-interest, fear, and anger that may manifest in our individual senses of Clark and instead come together around a stronger sense of common cause. What Clark needs most from us now is a coalition of the engaged, determined, and aspirant.
My second appeal is to not just acknowledge the need for change but to embrace it and promote it. Many of you will have heard me reference James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, which for some time now I’ve been mining for its many various insights into human tendencies. In one chapter, Clear discusses the difference between motion and action — two words that we might think mean the same thing but that Clear argues are quite different. He writes:
“When you are in motion, you are planning, strategizing, and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t always produce a result. Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome. If I outline twenty ideas for articles I want to write, that’s motion. If I actually sit down and write an article, that’s action. If I search for a better diet plan and read a few books on the topic, that’s motion. If I actually eat a healthy meal, that’s action.”
Seemingly both are important in that our actions may be more successful if we go through the motion to plan well for them. But too often, we don’t move from motion to action, and one reason for that, again quoting Clear, is that “motion allows us to feel we are making progress without running the risk of failure.” Said another way, Clear notes, “it is easy to be in motion and convince yourself that you are still making progress.”
We need to take action. And that will involve some degree of risk.
None of us has a crystal ball, and predicting the future seems harder than ever right now. But we cannot remain mired in analysis and process and navel-gazing. We cannot advance Clark down the road toward a stronger future through paralysis; we cannot become the best version of our institutional self if we remain stuck in place or accept only modest stepwise change. We need to take a measure of action that propels us with transformational velocity.
Clark’s trajectory, post-pandemic, has been the subject of numerous conversations for many years now. The work on our strategic framework, Clark Inspired, engaged hundreds of faculty and staff, and set in motion several important initiatives — including our new School of Climate, Environment, and Society, a multiyear honors program that got underway this year, and the reinvigoration of our approach to undergraduate education through The Clark Experience — capital t, c, and e — now taking shape. All of this has been an effort to achieve academic and research excellence, broad-based diversity, inclusion, and belonging, an enhanced campus environment, impactful outward engagement, and expanded institutional capacity. Each of these are important goals on their own, but none of them can be achieved fully without success in the others.
We have built new facilities, such as the Center for Media Arts, Computing, and Design and the Experimental Plant Investigation Center, and begun to address some of the backlog of deferred maintenance, including on our largest building, Goddard Library.
We have, to date, exceeded $57 million in fundraising commitments toward our next comprehensive campaign goal of $250 million or more. We have increased annual giving by more than 15% just this fiscal year and, in the past six months alone, performed more than 8,000 engagements with current and prospective donors. Clark’s Office of University Advancement is now leading the way in the use of AI in fundraising and has developed an online course. Just last week, Clark was one of two institutions to present twice at the CASE conference in Boston including a session with Evertrue, our AI partner.
Even with our best efforts to expand and enhance our educational offerings, improve our facilities, expand our financial capacity, and boost our reputation, we expect to enroll fewer students going forward, and this will put pressure on available resources given that we are now and have long been a tuition-dependent institution. We have no choice but to adapt to this new reality, which means operating the University at an even smaller scale and size.
As a result, we have begun to make a number of adjustments to our operating model, a need I focused on in last year’s State of the University address. These adjustments are never more difficult than when they entail layoffs of beloved colleagues or the elimination of longstanding programs or services. But contraction, which for us means achieving a state in which we are operating within our available resources, is essential and will itself, I believe, help us to attract new resources through our new campaign, as will more clearly defining what we do and how we do it, which I’ll turn to in a moment.
At the end of last month, we laid off nine members of our staff. It was an incredibly difficult decision, and I want to acknowledge their many wonderful contributions to Clark and especially to our students and other staff with whom they worked. We have a terrific and unusually dedicated staff to whom we are daily indebted because, as so many of us know firsthand, we can’t do what we do without them. There are currently no more layoffs planned for this semester, but we have not yet achieved our budget targets for FY26 and therefore, in fairness, cannot definitely state that more won’t be necessary in the future. I know that some expected a larger number of layoffs. Fortunately, our strategy of delaying these decisions to allow for natural attrition has been helping us manage this in a way that minimizes the impact on our most important asset — our people.
The work to adapt our operating model, as you know, may also require some changes and even elimination of some academic programs, majors, minors, and concentrations. This is work being led by our provost, John Magee, in partnership with faculty committees and faculty working groups. A primary focus is finding interdisciplinary opportunities to gain efficiencies and develop more compelling narratives for our academic offerings and better differentiating our approach to education.
These have been challenging adjustments that I know have caused many of us to feel unsettled, frustrated, and angry. I acknowledge those feelings and, once again, express the hope that we can find ways to move forward constructively.
Students, too, are feeling unsettled and want to be heard. Consider the recent activism on our campus which has led to a challenging few weeks, especially for our students. While we may disagree on the issue of undergraduate student unionization, I deeply appreciate all the important contributions our students make to our campus community. There remain many opportunities and channels for students to engage with the University on any aspect of their experience here. Our highest priority — and focus — is ensuring that their experience at Clark is exceptional and fulfilling. We have immediate plans in place to open even wider channels for communication, engagement, and action with our students — including candid dialogue that we hope will build trust grounded in a shared sense of community. We will be sharing with our students more detail about this later today.
So, what is next for Clark?
Faith in the promise of an institution is most often strongest at its founding and during its earliest years. And such faith is aided by a clear purpose. Clark University enjoyed both. The promise, then, of Clark in the beginning was a clear sense of institutional focus. Clark was only the second all-graduate institution in the nation following Johns Hopkins. It attracted faculty and students to study and learn in only five fields: biology (more so zoology at the time), physics, chemistry, math, and psychology. In fact, Clark was lauded in its first quarter century by an outside observer who saw our distinction as our ability to “do a few things supremely well.” In the intervening century, Clark added a college, continuously expanded the subject areas to be taught, and learned to emulate the institutions we admired and, later, competed with. The problem was that our quest to be as comprehensive a research university as we could be was not met by a sufficient resource base to be able to do all of that equally, let alone “supremely,” well.
One hundred and thirty-five years later, our resource base remains insufficient and our ability to compete across all fields is difficult.
Our obligation to Clark, then, is to refocus, reorganize, and reenergize the University by returning to “doing a few things supremely well.”
Why refocus? Not because we would ONLY do a few things at the expense of all others — rather to be more directed and intentional about prioritizing areas that offer the greatest potential impact, influence, and appeal.
Why reorganize? To make sure that we are running efficiently — within our financial means — and right-sized for a sustainable future. Also, that we inspire true, authentic interdisciplinary effort.
Why reenergize? To confront head on the times we are in and the challenges we face, we have to work at full steam. I deeply appreciate that this could be a tall order, especially given the emotional weight many of us are feeling. But it is essential that we be responsive, creative, innovative, and nimble to meet our moments when they arise.
Within that scaffolding, four institutional assets offer our best opportunity to identify those few things we must do supremely well:
- Our College of Arts and Sciences;
- Our new School of Climate, Environment, and Society;
- Our Becker School of Design & Technology, perhaps expanded into a School of Media Arts, Computing and Design; and
- Our School of Business, with its emphasis on business for social good and growing undergraduate majors.
We can, should, and will discuss and debate what’s contained within each of these four, and how each intersects with the other, but recalibrating toward our strengths is essential. So, too, is the type of collaboration we are coalescing around the humanities and STEM. Our provost is heavily engaged with faculty committees in bringing detail and structure to ways of refocusing, reorganizing, and reenergizing Clark. I am grateful to John for his leadership and to our faculty for your partnership.
This work puts us in a better position to build a stronger identity and stronger reputation, which must be our ultimate goals. The most impactful ways to accomplish both is by bringing more distinction to our areas of historic strength and honing the relevance of a Clark education — merging “traditional” with “new.” For example, bringing Geography into our new School of Climate, Environment, and Society. Incorporating into our Becker School of Design & Technology synergistic disciplines like machine learning, computation, and visual arts. And reimagining The Clark Experience into an outcomes-driven, holistic program that ensures our students leave Clark with the creativity, confidence, and resilience to succeed and lead lives of meaning and consequence.
This is a moment of existential threat to higher education across the United States, which only exacerbates the challenges we face as a smaller liberal arts institution.
At the start of this academic year a new faculty member I met during orientation asked me how they could help with the challenges we face on campus. I replied:
Do your job as well as you can.
Engage in the process of shared governance.
Believe that Clark matters.
We cannot simply stay the course and continue to do what we are currently doing. We cannot simply wait for greater resources to come, a clearer institutional identity to emerge, and a stronger reputation to be built. We need to act in order to achieve those things, confident in our ability to refocus, reorganize and reenergize this great institution.
Again, while past may or may not be prologue, and times have clearly changed, Clark seemingly thrived when the University focused on “doing a few things supremely well.”
Given my advice to our new faculty colleague, one could ask why I believe Clark matters. At Clark, we bring together people of purpose who share in community and a commitment to authentic learning, innovative and creative thinking, and outsized positive impact in the world. Our teacher-scholars know students by name, are curious about their ideas, and draw their lessons from our city and the world, not just a textbook. They inspire and prepare students for work, civic engagement, and life while also contributing to a better world through research, direct engagement, and advocacy.
We see this approach powerfully in stories like that of Linnea Menin, Class of 2019, a gifted Clark student who earned her bachelor’s and master’s in biology here. We profiled Linnea in the most recent Viewbook, the publication that our Admissions team distributes to prospective students to provide them insight and inspiration about Clark.
Linnea was chosen because her trajectory is emblematic of the tremendous possibilities of the Clark experience.
Here’s how …
She found her passion here, devoting herself to the study of microbial communities — the types of bacteria and other microorganisms that can impact water quality. To maximize her education in this area, Linnea took advantage of Clark’s 4+1 Accelerated Master’s program.
She worked closely with faculty to conduct meaningful research, particularly with biology professor Nathan Ahlgren to explore the water-quality challenges facing some of Massachusetts’ most iconic waterways on Cape Cod and at Walden Pond. Their aim was to determine the threats to the ponds’ health, then educate the public on how to better care for these precious and fragile water bodies now and for future generations.
At each step, Linnea benefited from faculty guidance and expertise. Yes, she learned the science, but she was also given the opportunity to grow as a researcher, to operate independently, and to communicate to others the impact of this important work.
And, Linnea has found professional success. Energized by the full force of her Clark education, she worked in research at Boston-area biotech companies and today is a life science sales specialist with Avantor, where she advises clients in healthcare, biopharma, education, and government on products and services that address pressing problems in the world.
So many profound milestones of Linnea’s journey are shared by virtually all of students: deep exploration and mastery of a field of knowledge; the embracing of purpose and challenging of intellect; an abiding concern for the human community; and the ability to synthesize and communicate complex ideas. Clark is bursting with stories like Linnea’s. It’s why we’re here: to ensure that our students have the capacities to follow the path that gives their lives and careers meaning, however they define it.
At the start, I mentioned that today’s occasion is usually a routine affair and that what I had prepared for today was more of an appeal than an address. In good times, we celebrate the achievements of our students, staff, and faculty; promote the progress we have made on our initiatives; and recognize attainments as a campus community that make us proud. Of course, it’s important that we do the same in challenging times as well, for we never stop doing the work. Our ability to persevere through the challenges and prioritize our students to give them the best possible experience is indeed an accomplishment to be recognized as well as a point of pride this year.
Before concluding then, let me say, simply, “Thank You!” Thank you all for everything you’ve been doing and will continue to do to center our students and remain focused on their educational success while we simultaneously work through needed institutional changes. I want to thank you for listening as you have, for engaging with us in difficult conversations. And I want to thank you, most of all, for believing in the project that is our university, our very own engine that could.
My third appeal is that we keep going, we stay at it, we don’t give up on our aspirations for Clark or on each other. Let’s form that determined coalition, bridge difference with dialogue just as we ask our students to do, and be the very best present-day stewards of Jonas Gilman Clark’s grand experiment that launches amazing students like Linnea Menin. We can do it by taking action.
Thank you.
