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:''For the university in Atlanta, see Clark Atlanta University''.
'Clark University', in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the United States, is a private teaching and research institution founded in 1887 by the industrialist Jonas Clark. In 2005 Clark was rated "hottest school for student research" by the Kaplan-Newsweek Guide. Though it now also educates undergraduates, Clark is the oldest institution founded as an all-graduate university [1]. 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 early 2000s, due to a shift in focus from research to undergraduate education.

Contents

History and background

Recent developments

Security at Clark University

Notable alumni

Notable faculty

Trivia

External links

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 the United States. 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.

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 marketed 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 Atwood 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."
Once a year, Clark University has Spree Day. On that day, classes are cancelled and the students have a carnival, invite bands to play outdoors, sponsor movies, and party.
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.

Security at Clark University

The neighborhood where Clark is, Main South, is generally impoverished with high crime rates, especially property crimes, which well exceeds the national average.[2].
As such, Clark has taken measures to help ensure the safety of its community. The University Police Department is a full-service law enforcement agency comprised of twelve officers who are on patrol 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All are duly certified police officers, empowered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to carry firearms and make arrests. Additionally, the Clark University Escort service provides van and foot escorts to take students around the campus and local area from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. daily. Students, faculty and others related to Clark University call a number and a dispatcher directs the vans (at least 2 run at all times per shift) to the location of the pick-up. Students are encouraged to use Van Escort as a means to avoid safety and legal issues, such as drunk-driving. An average of 120 people use the Escort daily, with numbers increasingly significantly on weekends. The service operates within roughly a quarter-mile radius of the campus.

Notable alumni

★ Adelbert Ames, Jr. - Scientist

★ Jill Beck - President of Lawrence University

★ Corey Carrier - Child Actor

★ Alexander Francis Chamberlain

★ Beth Edmonds - Maine State Senator (BA Geography 1972)

★ John H. Flavell Stanford University Professor (MA Psychology 1952, Phd 1955)

★ E. Franklin Frazier- Sociologist, MA 1920

★ Arnold Gesell

★ Matt Gilman Aide to the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts -(BA Government 2006)

★ Gayle L. Gifford - President, Cause & Effect Inc. (BA Geography 1975)

★ Robert Goddard Inventor of Rocketry

★ Matt Goldman of Blue Man Group (BA Economics 1983, MBA 1984)

★ Thomas F. Goreau

★ John Heard - Actor (BA History 1968)

★ Robert Hurst - Vice Chairman, Former Head Of Investment Banking, Goldman Sachs Group (BA Government 1966)

★ Padma Lakshmi - Actress, supermodel, writer and TV personality. She is the current host of the television show Top Chef 3 (BA Theater 1992)

★ Solomon Lefschetz (Phd 1952)

★ Phil Lerman - Writer/Producer America's Most Wanted (BA English 1976)

★ Jeffrey Lurie - Owner of Philadelphia Eagles (BA Psychology 1973)

★ Michael Marcus - Legendary commodities trader

★ Richard T. Moore- Massachusetts State Senator (BA History 1966)

★ William Mosakowski - President, Public Consulting Group, Inc. (BA Government 1976)

★ Margaret Morse Nice

★ Hugh Panero - CEO of XM Radio (BA Government 1978)

★ Paul Pena

★ John Corke- Mahatma (BA in English 2006)

★ Michael Ross (legislator) - Boston, Massachusetts Councilman (BA Government 1993)

★ Adam Sadowsky - Actor (Eli from It's Your Move sitcom)

★ Ronald Shaich - CEO of Panera Bread (BA Government 1976)

★ Frederick Madison Smith

★ Lewis Madison Terman

★ Miriam Van Waters - Prison Reformer

★ Mesfin Woldemariam - Ethiopian human rights activist

Notable faculty

★ Franz Boas

★ Cynthia Enloe

★ G. Stanley Hall, First President of the University

★ Douglas Little

★ William Damon

★ Relly Raffman

★ Robert Goddard

★ Albert Abraham Michelson

★ Ellen Churchill Semple

★ Patrick Derr

★ Dan Chaput

★ Larry Tedeschi

Trivia

★ The book Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope profiles Clark University along with 39 other colleges. [3]

★ Activist Abbie Hoffman was an occasional student and visitor to campus. He grew up in Worcester. [4]

★ Clark students and alumni often are called and refer to themselves as "Clarkies" [5]

★ The first breakthrough in understanding how brain tissue regenerates itself was at Clark. [6]

★ The official student newspaper of Clark University is named ''The Scarlet''.

★ The Clark mascot is the Cougar. There has been recent talk, among the students, to change the mascot to the 'Fighting Freuds', having the mascot be Sigmund Freud himself.

★ 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. Carl Jung was also present at the 1909 meeting, along with several other eminent psychologists of the time. [7]

★ In October 25, 1992, Margaret Comer, a professor of biology for 16 years, was murdered when she interrupted a burglary of her home [8]

External links

★ Clark University Homepage

★ Colleges of Worcester Consortium Homepage