{"id":1312,"date":"2026-05-27T12:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/magazine\/?p=1312"},"modified":"2026-05-28T12:59:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:59:37","slug":"finding-community-at-clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/magazine\/finding-community-at-clark\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Community at Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Kaytee<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

By Melissa Lynch \u201995, MSPC \u201915<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The first time Kaytee Gillis \u201909 walked onto Clark University\u2019s campus, it was for orientation. She had applied sight unseen after a high school English teacher told her, \u201cYou seem like a Clark person.\u201d She didn\u2019t quite know what that meant, but she figured it out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I stepped foot on campus, I felt like I\u2019d been there before,\u201d Gillis recalls of her first visit to the Worcester campus. \u201cI felt home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She would need that feeling. A native of Augusta, Maine, Gillis grew up inside what she describes as a very dysfunctional, very traumatic, abusive family. The worst of it peaked in high school, just before she left for college. Clark became her safe space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Gillis is a therapist and Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University, studying intimate partner violence. She writes a Psychology Today blog<\/a> and teaches psychology and social work at Michigan State and the University of Michigan. She has also published seven books on trauma, family abuse, and relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is, by any measure, a prolific output. But Gillis is quick to resist the label of \u201cwriter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople aren\u2019t going to open my book and be like, \u2018wow, this really pulls me in,\u2019 \u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cI just have stories people can relate to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gillis enrolled at Clark as a psychology major, with an interest in French that eventually became a minor after she spent a semester studying in Dijon, France. But the depth of what Clark offered in psychology registered only after the fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t realize how well-known Clark is in psychology until I left,\u201d she says. \u201cNow I\u2019m in academia for social work, and they\u2019ll talk about Clark and Freud, and I\u2019ll say, \u2018Clark University was the only university to give him an honorary degree.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She studied under faculty she still cites with admiration: professors like Abbie Goldberg and Michael Bamberg, to whom she gave a copy of her first published book on a visit to campus. She felt \u201creally spoiled\u201d by the caliber of minds she encountered, even if she couldn\u2019t fully appreciate it at 19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t have anything to compare it to. But now, having gone to graduate schools and working in academia, it is different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as the Psychology Department shaped her intellectually, it was the Clark student newspaper, The Scarlet<\/em>, that shaped her personally. For four years, Gillis threw herself into the paper, eventually becoming executive editor. She describes long production nights that stretched until four or five in the morning, when the laid-out pages would be dropped off at the printer before dawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Scarlet<\/em> was absolutely my thing,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was my chosen community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I think about Clark,\u201d she adds, \u201cI realize that it was the first time I had ever felt part of a community. I just didn\u2019t know it at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her work, Gillis is careful to distinguish between family and systemic trauma. Family trauma is what happens when the people who are supposed to keep you safe are themselves the source of harm. Systemic trauma includes the biases, gaps in healthcare access, political uncertainty, and institutional indifference that reinforce or compound what is happening at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gillis grew up in a time when therapy was rarely discussed in psychology classrooms, let alone at kitchen tables. The cultural shift from silence to TikTok confessional is something she finds genuinely meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gillis says she didn\u2019t begin to truly connect the dots of her own story until her thirties. As a Clark undergrad, she would read about abusive families in her psychology coursework without recognizing her own. The brain protects, she says, even when that protection becomes an obstacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At her 15th Clark reunion in 2024, Gillis visited the former Scarlet<\/em> office at 138 Woodland Street, which is now home to University Marketing and Communications, and took a walk through Jonas Clark Hall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have such fond memories,\u201d she says, noting that she couldn\u2019t help but be a little teary on her return to campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe tears weren\u2019t from happiness, and they weren\u2019t from sadness,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was a nostalgia \u2014 for\u00a0who I was at Clark, and how I survived when I was there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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