Clark University

Founded in 1887 with a large endowment from its namesake Jonas Gilman Clark, a prominent businessman, Clark was one of the first modern research universities in the United States.

Jonas Gilman Clark (February 1, 1815 – May 23, 1900) was an American businessman, and the founder of Clark University.

Clark University is a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Worcester's many colleges, including the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clark University, UMass Medical School, Assumption College, MCPHS University, Becker College, and Worcester State University, attract many students to the area and help drive the new economy.

As a liberal arts–based research university, Clark makes substantial research opportunities available to its students, notably at the undergraduate level through LEEP project funding, yet is also respected for its intimate environment as the second smallest university counted among the top 66 national universities by U.S. News & World Report and as one of 40 Colleges That Change Lives.

G. Stanley Hall was appointed the first president of Clark University in 1888.

Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University.

The university competes intercollegiately in 17 NCAA Division III varsity sports as the Clark Cougars and is a part of the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference.

At the conclusion of the 1994-95 academic year, Brandeis University withdrew from the NEW 8 to join the University Athletic Association (which its men's sports competed at that time) and Clark University accepted membership, keeping the NEW 8's membership at eight institutions.

It is noted for its programs in the fields of psychology, geography, physics, biology, and entrepreneurship and is a member of the Higher Education Consortium of Central Massachusetts which enables students to cross-register to attend courses at other area institutions including Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the College of the Holy Cross.

Clark faculty and alumni have founded numerous companies and organizations, including Panera Bread, the American Psychological Association, and the American Physical Society, and have played leading roles in the development of modern rocketry, the wind chill factor, and the birth control pill.

In 1920, Professor Robert Goddard of Clark University published proposed improvements to rocket technology in A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes.

Clark faculty and alumni have founded numerous companies and organizations, including Panera Bread, the American Psychological Association, and the American Physical Society, and have played leading roles in the development of modern rocketry, the wind chill factor, and the birth control pill. He became the founder of the American Psychological Association and earned the first Ph.D. in psychology in the United States at Harvard.

The APA was founded in July 1892 at Clark University by a small group of around 30 men; by 1916 there were over 300 members.

Franz Boas, founder of American cultural anthropology and adviser for the first Ph.D. in anthropology which was granted at Clark in 1891, taught at Clark from 1888 until 1892 when he resigned in a dispute with President Hall over academic freedom and joined the faculty of Columbia University.

Aside from his editorial work at Science, Boas secured an appointment as docent in anthropology at Clark University, in 1888.

In 1920, Francis Sumner became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology.

He worked closely with G. Stanley Hall during his time at Clark University, and his dissertation—published in Pedagogical Seminary, which later became the Journal of Genetic Psychology—focused on "Psychoanalysis of Freud and Adler."

This after the university convinced Debórah Dwork to leave Yale University and become Clark's first professor of Holocaust studies in the prior year.

She is the Rose Professor of Holocaust History and Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Clark University, along with Stanford and Johns Hopkins, was one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, an organization of universities with the most prestigious profiles in research and graduate education, and was one of only three New England universities, along with Harvard and Yale, to be a founding member.

Among them was Sigmund Freud who, accompanied by Carl Jung, delivered his five famous "Clark Lectures" there over the course of five days in September 1909, introducing psychoanalysis to an American audience.

In 1909, Jung travelled with Freud and Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi to the United States; they took part in a conference at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

In 1963, student D'Army Bailey invited Malcolm X to campus to speak.

He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2010.

Albert A. 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, was a professor from 1889 to 1892 before becoming head of the physics department at the University of Chicago.

In 1889 Michelson became a professor at Clark University at Worcester, Massachusetts and in 1892 was appointed professor and the first head of the department of physics at the newly organized University of Chicago.

He became the founder of the American Psychological Association and earned the first Ph.D. in psychology in the United States at Harvard.

Major shifts toward graduate education were foretold by the opening of Clark University in 1887 which offered only graduate programs and the Johns Hopkins University which focused on its PhD program.

On July 1, 2010, former provost David Angel became the ninth president of Clark, succeeding John Bassett, who went on to become president of Heritage University, located on the Yakama Indian Reservation in Toppenish, Washington.

David Angel (born June 29, 1958) is President of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

In the 1920s Robert Goddard, a pioneer of rocketry, considered one of the founders of space and missile technology, was chairman of the Physics Department.

Goddard received his B.S. degree in physics from Worcester Polytechnic in 1908, and after serving there for a year as an instructor in physics, he began his graduate studies at Clark University in Worcester in the fall of 1909.

Among them was Sigmund Freud who, accompanied by Carl Jung, delivered his five famous "Clark Lectures" there over the course of five days in September 1909, introducing psychoanalysis to an American audience.

Jones's advocacy prepared the way for Freud's visit to the United States, accompanied by Jung and Ferenczi, in September 1909 at the invitation of Stanley Hall, president of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, where he gave five lectures on psychoanalysis.

The Robert H. Goddard Library is named for him.

The Robert H. Goddard Library is the primary library of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States.

The Lasry Center for Bioscience (named for hedge fund manager Marc Lasry and his wife Cathy, both alumni) houses the biology department.

Lasry grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut and received a B.A. in history from Clark University in 1981 and a J.D. from New York Law School in 1984.

What was then known as Clark's chemical laboratories was once directed by Professor Charles A. Kraus, a noted chemist who was a consultant to the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service during World War I and the Manhattan Project during World War II.

He was professor of chemistry and director of the chemical laboratories at Clark University, where he directed the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I.

Notable alumni of GSOM include Libérat Mfumukeko, secretary-general of the East African Community, Matt Goldman, co-founder of the Blue Man Group

Mfumukeko graduated in 1994 with an MBA from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in the United States.

Alumni of SPS include Olta Xhaçka, Albanian Minister of Defense, and Keith R. Hall, former director of the National Reconnaissance Office.

She received a bachelor's in Political Science and International Relations from Clark University with honors, along with an MPA.

Under GSG is Clark Labs, founded in 1987, which developed the IDRISI GIS and image processing software and then the TerrSet geospatial monitoring and modeling software.

TerrSet (formerly IDRISI) is an integrated geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing software developed by Clark Labs at Clark University for the analysis and display of digital geospatial information.