2024-2025 Academic Catalog 
    
    Dec 04, 2024  
2024-2025 Academic Catalog

Facilities



Athletic Facilities

The Kneller Athletic Center includes the Hurst Courts, a recently revamped gymnasium with three full-size courts for basketball and volleyball; a six-lane 25-yard swimming pool with one- and three-meter diving boards; four racquetball courts and two squash courts; a weight room; a training room with facilities for rehabilitation; a dance room; locker rooms, offices and a conference room.

The James and Ada Bickman Fitness Center, received an expansive addition in the summer of 2013 and provides students with a cardiovascular area, strength and free-weight area and a multipurpose room.

Outdoor athletics compete at the Dolan Field House Complex, which features a newly installed synthetic surface for intercollegiate soccer and lacrosse.

In addition there is a sport-turf field for field hockey, and baseball, as well as six lighted Plexi-Pave-surfaced tennis courts. The fields, which are also used for intramural and recreational sports, include the 29,850 square-foot Dolan Field House, which provides indoor practice space, a training room, and locker rooms for visiting and home teams. The field house is also used for intramural and recreational use. Furthermore, Clark has another synthetic field just under a mile away that is lined for soccer, lacrosse, softball and circled with a four lane track. The field is primarily used for varsity practice, intramurals and clubs.

O’Brien Field is the home to the varsity softball team, while the Donahue Rowing Center, one of the largest rowing facilities on the East Coast, is the home for the women’s rowing program. The teams practice and compete on Lake Quinsigamond, located approximately 10 minutes from campus and considered one of the best waterways for crew competition in the country. The lake has been the site of the New England Championships, the NEWMAC Championships and the Eastern Sprints Regatta.

Campus Libraries

The Robert Hutchings Goddard Library provides robust instruction, research, and learning support services for students and faculty. The building has access to a varied group and quiet study areas, exhibition spaces, and meeting rooms. Clark Library collections include more than 1,200,000 print and full-text electronic books, over 200 research databases, over 8,000 print and full-text electronic journals, and over 500,000 print and digital media items, including 250,000 maps, 7,500 ariel photographs, music, works of visual art, and video. The library is staffed by 13 librarians and professional staff as well as over 20 student employees.

Named for Robert Huchings Goddard, the Clark physicist who invented the rocket technology that made space travel possible, the building is a landmark of brutalist architecture designed by John M. Johansen, originally constructed in 1969 and renovated in 2009 to include the Academic Commons on floor one, a 24 hour space that houses a café, the IT Helpdesk, Student Success services, and the University Archives and Special Collections.

As a member of the Worcester Academic and Research Collaborative (ARC), Clark offers students borrowing privileges at eight academic libraries with a combined local collection of more than 3.8 million volumes.

The Jeanne X. Kasperson Research Library offers one of the most extensive research collections in North America on environmental risks and hazards, environment and development, and the human dimensions of global environmental change. It also has significant holdings on international development, sustainability, water resources and energy policy.  The collection includes books, monographs, journals, newsletters, government documents and technical reports. The library also maintains an expansive internal database of grey literature in its areas of specialization and houses an archive of resources related to Worcester’s refugee communities. The Kasperson Library is part of Clark University’s George Perkins Marsh Institute.

The Rose Library, the Strassler Center library collection is comprised of books, journals, and donated archival materials related to the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and a range of other cases of genocide and mass violence. Shelved in both the Rose Library reading room, located on the ground floor of Cohen-Lasry House, and a book annex in the Colin-Flug Graduate Study Wing, the collection has more than 10,000 volumes. Originally conceived as a library for Holocaust research, the range of titles broadened as the Center’s mandate steadily expanded.  It continues to grow, with book acquisitions and primary source archival materials including letters, diaries, manuscripts, newspapers, postcards, survivor testimonies and audio/visual materials. Committed to providing access to special collections, we have made finding aids available to a world-wide audience through Clark University’s Digital Commons.  Full access is also available to the over 55,500 testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.

The Traina Center for the Arts houses the Visual and Performing Arts Department Media Arts Study Hub (MASH), which serves to generate scholarship, ideas, and artworks via input from all of the Visual and Performing Arts programs. The MASH is an open study space equipped with a wide array of modern and legacy technology. It houses the departmental media collections, which encompass current-use and archival material. Use of all collection material and technology is restricted to inside the MASH, unless otherwise indicated. A valid Clark ID must be presented to access material.

Information Technology

Clark provides a robust computing infrastructure and environment. Clark’s high-speed data network connects all campus buildings including residence halls; wireless connectivity is available in residence halls, academic and outdoor spaces. Most classrooms are equipped with multimedia audio-visual systems and there are multiple small-group collaboration/study spaces for student use on campus. Computer labs and a high-performance computing cluster provide access to specialized software used in courses and certain disciplines. Microsoft Office 365 and Zoom licenses are available for all faculty, staff, and students providing productivity collaboration, and cloud storage tools.

Clark students, faculty and staff routinely utilize the Clark computing and networking environment in their day-to-day activities. The University’s intranet portal (known as ClarkYOU) serves as a gateway to content, communications and web services for the Clark community and provides access to faculty, staff and student resources, including online registration, as well as many other campus services. Faculty and students utilize Clark’s online course management system (Canvas) to extend the classroom beyond traditional walls. Select campus events are webcast and archived for playback on demand.

Faculty and staff are provided with networked computers. Most students bring a personal computer to campus. The University has Help Desk assistance available for all members of the community. Help Desk services are available year-round, with extended hours during academic sessions.

Science Facilities

Clark’s science facilities include the Cathy ‘83 and Marc ‘81 Lasry Center for Bioscience, as well as the Arthur M. Sackler Sciences Center, which links chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science. The Lasry Center for Bioscience is a 50,000-square-foot building that houses teaching laboratories, lecture halls, faculty offices and research laboratories used by faculty and students in biology, and biochemistry and molecular biology programs. Completed in 2005, the Lasry Center received Gold certification by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. The Sackler Sciences Center and affiliated buildings include many newly renovated research, teaching and office spaces used by faculty and their students in biochemistry and molecular biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and physical geography programs.

All the science facilities feature:
     • Research laboratories for faculty and their undergraduate and graduate students
     • Flexible teaching laboratories well-equipped with state-of-the-art technology
        and which accommodate a variety of instructional approaches
     • Classrooms and seminar rooms that incorporate modern technology and facilitate
        interactions among students and between faculty and students
     • Common-use spaces that promote collaboration and collegiality

The science facilities house computer facilities, including GPU workstations. Additionally, the science research and teaching laboratories house a variety of shared-use state-of-the-art equipment including an electron spin resonance spectrometer, four high-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, multiple spectrophotometers, a Walz PAM-2500 fluorometer, an AriaMx real-time PCR machine, a Dolomite µEncapsulator system, a Fuji FLA4000 imager, multiple gel documentation systems, a 50 tesla pulsed magnetic field, a 6 GHz oscilloscope, a Zeiss Axio Observer 7 fully motorized microscope with apotome, a SQUID magnetometer, a scanning tunneling microscope, a Varian Medical Systems micro-focus x-ray CT machine, a x-ray powder diffractometer, a gel permeation chromatograph, a thermogravimetric analyzer, and a multiplexing-capable impedance spectrometer. A helium liquefier recycles and provides cryogenic helium for low-temperature experiments and NMR spectrometers. The Fairchild Imaging Facility houses scanning electron microscopes and an atomic force microscope. The equipment is routinely used in research conducted by collaborative laboratory groups including faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

Visual and Performing Arts Facilities

The Traina Center for the Arts, which opened in August of 2002, is a facility for the visual and performing arts. The complex consists of a completely remodeled late-19th-century brick school building of Richardsonian design with a newly built hall for lectures, recitals and screenings.  Much of the department’s activity is based here.  Studios for painting, drawing and graphic design, together with a print-making studio, photography darkroom, exhibition gallery, media arts study hub (MASH), George F. and Sybil H. Fuller Foundation multimedia center and modern classrooms, create an integrated environment for the study, creation, display and performance of many diverse forms of art.  A new, fully equipped sculpture studio opened at a new location, 918 Main Street, in Fall 2019.

Razzo Hall is also located in the Traina Center for the Arts.  It is a fine recital hall, which hosts numerous musical performances by students, faculty and professional ensembles.  Razzo is also used for lectures, film screenings, symposia and class sessions.   

The Little Center, the home of the Theater program, was fully renovated and reopened in fall of 2022 and is devoted to the creation of theatrical performances.  It houses the Michelson Theatre, a black-box theater, an experimental theater, a costume shop, a design workshop, and a practice studio and classrooms.

The Music program is based in Estabrook Hall.  Music classrooms, including the George F. and Sybil H. Fuller Foundation Center for Music, as well as practice rooms, faculty offices, a keyboard lab, and a fully equipped recording studio are all housed in Estabrook Hall. In addition, senior studios for advanced studio art students are located here as well.

As of Fall 2023, Screen Studies production courses, Music computer and technology courses, and Studio Art graphic design courses will be held in the new Center for Media Arts, Computing, and Design (cMACD).

In CMACD, the Screen Studies program offers a dedicated 1600 square foot production studio, as well as an audio Mix Stage outfitted with Dolby Atmos surround and JBL monitoring.

CMACD Music recording facilities incorporate a Genelec 8361 and W371 monitoring system, a 56-channel SSL G+ Analog console with Tangerine Automation, as well as a 64 Pro Tools HDX system running on the latest Mac Studio computer. This room gives students access to a world-class professional recording and mixing environment that provides the skills to compete in the modern music market. 

The CMACD Graphic Design Studio is equipped with Adobe Creative Suite software and Wacom tablets, as well as a large 4K projector and an adjacent print room. 

Each of these three V&PA programs hosts a dedicated media editing lab with industry standard Mac computers and a range of peripherals.  Music and Screen workstations feature a comprehensive suite of Music Production and Mixing Plugins for stereo and immersive audio and mixing.