Goals

Academic and Research Excellence

We will achieve greater excellence in academic and research programs by leveraging traditional strengths, encouraging innovation, and finding synergistic opportunities to develop programs across departments. We will build on Clark’s distinctive model of a small research university that is home to a liberal arts college.

Further, we will carefully consider trends in higher education and the evolving educational needs of our undergraduate and graduate students with respect to our curricular offerings and methods of instruction. We seek to improve our academic reputation and research productivity overall in measurable ways.

Greater Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We will advance diversity, equity, and inclusion to achieve an environment and campus culture that is more fully accepting and that well supports our entire community, allowing everyone to be themselves and do their best work.

We will make Clark an ever more welcoming and attractive place, especially for those who have been excluded historically. We will continue to embrace difference, including intellectual thought, ideas, perspectives, and experiences.

A university is not a university without multiplicity, and therefore we must work to achieve greater breadth and balance of perspectives and not further contribute to the perpetuation of a dominant view that is exclusionary.

Enhanced Campus Experience

We will improve the campus experience in several important respects. We will promote a sense of belonging, shared community, and vibrant campus life for students, faculty, and staff through direct engagement, enhanced support, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and co-curricular programs.

We will improve Clark’s facilities, grounds, and campus operations to inspire and enable opportunities to thrive, individually and as an institution.

We will work in collaboration with our neighbors and city leaders to invest in, encourage, and support local businesses that contribute to the vibrancy of Main South and contribute to the enhancement of life on campus.

Impactful Outward Engagement

We will expand our outward engagement by broadening (nationally and internationally) the audiences we have traditionally sought, by intensifying the frequency with which we communicate; by exercise convening power; and by more actively seeking partnerships locally, regionally, and further.

At the same time, we will deepen ties to the Main South Community and the City of Worcester. Clark will more fully “act” as the national research university we are evaluated to be in rankings, and that we strive to be in reputation. Importantly, this goal must also include greater engagement with our own: alumni and parents.

Broader Institutional Capacity

We will augment our institutional capacity in several important ways. We will more effectively recruit, retain, and cultivate talent among students, faculty, and staff. We will attract and drive philanthropic, grant, and operating revenue toward impact, and we will build strength through strategic partnerships.

We will also catalyze momentum by the continuously high-quality and successful execution of our initiatives and progress toward these goals.

After more than a century of too often “doing more with less,” it is time for Clark to be “doing more with more.”