Clark University is a teaching and research institution founded in 1887, as the first all-graduate school in the United States. Until Clark instituted undergraduate programs in 1902, the university offered only Ph.D. granting programs. Clark is also one of the oldest universities to offer formal graduate programs, second only to Johns Hopkins University, and is one of only three New England universities, with Harvard and Yale, to be a founding member of the prestigious Association of American Universities.
Clark's first president was G. Stanley Hall, founder of the American Psychological Association, who earned the first Ph.D. in psychology in this country at Harvard.* Clark has played a prominent role in the development of psychology as a distinguished discipline in the United States. Clark was the location for Sigmund Freud's famous "Clark Lectures" in 1909, introducing psychoanalysis to this country.
Clark also has played an important role in the development of geography as a discipline. Clark has granted more Ph.D.s in this environmentally related area than any other school in the nation. The George Perkins Marsh Institute was the first research center created to study the human dimensions of global environmental change.
Researchers who have held Clark appointments include A.A. Michelson, the first U.S. Nobel Prize winner in the sciences; and Robert Goddard, the father of the space age and the inventor of rocket technology. Other researchers at Clark, for instance, created the formula for the windchill factor, defined chemical double bonding, developed research leading to the birth control pill, and made the first breakthrough in understanding how brain tissue regenerates itself.
* FUN FACT: You may wonder, if Clark and Johns Hopkins were the first schools in the United States to offer formalized graduate programs, how could Hall have earned a Ph.D. at Harvard?
According to Mott Linn, Clark history buff and coordinator of archives and special collections at Goddard Library, although Clark and Johns Hopkins were the first in the U.S. to offer formalized graduate programs, it didn't mean that someone during that time could not earn a Ph.D. from a U.S. undergraduate institution like Harvard. It didn't happen very often, but when it did, the curriculum was planned specifically for the person seeking the degree. So although Hall earned a Ph.D. at Harvard, it was not through a formalized graduate program at a graduate school.