Welcome to the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice at Clark University.
If you are ready to be part of a vibrant community of scholars, researchers, advocates, activists, practitioners, and change makers, the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice is the place for you.
Through our practice, research, community engagement, and scholarship, we are called to focus on the critical, interconnected issues facing our world today: climate change adaptation; forced migration; gender, racial, and economic equality; and equitable access to high-quality and culturally responsive food, health, education, and housing. We offer immersive experiences for our students to apply what they learn; these include Global Learning Collaboratives, which allow them to pursue experiential learning opportunities from Worcester to Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Today, our department is deepening and amplifying what we have always done best: provide opportunities for students to work with faculty and to partner with communities on projects that matter.
Our engagement — which challenges the false dichotomies of global and local, rural and urban — is rooted in participatory and liberatory methods of knowledge production and action. This calls us to understand the world as interrelated and interconnected, and opens space for communities to determine their destinies.
Like many of my colleagues, my formative experiences as an undergraduate and graduate student have taken place outside the United States working alongside regional experts and local communities to understand problems and forge solutions. While my own work has mostly been in francophone West Africa, the department of Sustainability and Social Justice has faculty and students who have personal and professional experience all around the world. The department is a place where faculty, staff, and students share experiences and expertise and think together about the world we would like to create through our collective efforts.
All of us in the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice share an unwavering commitment to making the world more just and sustainable. Today, our mission is more important than ever: to understand the complexity of urgent social, political, and ecological problems and develop leaders who, through collaborative scholarship and innovation, are prepared to find solutions to these challenges.
I welcome you to join us in this new and exciting venture.
Ellen E. Foley, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
