Latest news with #ClarkUniversity
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Clark U. was booming 3 years ago. How they got to laying off 30% of faculty
Three years ago Clark University in Worcester had its largest incoming class ever — 705 students. Since then, enrollment has been down 'more than expected,' according to John Magee, Clark's provost and vice president of academic affairs. 'It's certainly hard to say if it's a trend, but ... it's something we want to make sure that we're in front of and not just sitting around in two years saying: 'Oh, we should have done something,'' Magee said. The incoming class is underenrolled by around 100 students — leading to lay offs of up 30% of faculty and 5% of staff, according to a Tuesday announcement. Most of the layoffs Magee hopes will come from retirement and attrition over the next two to three years, he said. Read more: How a college closing disaster led to new student protections in Mass. The enrollment gain in 2022 was likely due to a bounce back from the pandemic, Magee said. However, like many other small institutions across the United States and in the state, Clark is facing difficulties with enrollment because of a 'demographic cliff,' where there are fewer traditionally college-aged students in the United States. He also pointed to declining trust in higher education and the questioning of its value as reasons for declining enrollment, Magee said. While Clark is keeping a close eye on Trump administration actions, it isn't the reason for the layoffs, Magee said. The layoffs at Clark come after Worcester Polytechnic Institute laid off 24 employees due to pressures from rising costs and uncertainty regarding the Trump administration's policies on higher education. In Massachusetts, over two dozen colleges and universities have closed or merged over the past decade due to financial and enrollment difficulties. Most recently, Eastern Nazarene College, a private Christian liberal arts college in Quincy, announced in June that it would close due to financial issues. Bard College at Simon's Rock said in November it would close its campus due to declining enrollment. As Clark confronts a difficult enrollment reality, the institution is aiming to be 'proactive,' in part by reconfiguring its academic programs. 'Clark is reasonably well resourced. We have the time and the opportunities to make some large strategic changes over the next, frankly, four or five years,' Magee said. 'So this isn't a one-year knee jerk reaction. This isn't that we're in danger of closing or needing to merge, we really have the opportunity to start doing some things different here,' he said. It will be divided into Climate, Environment & Society; Media Arts, Computing & Design; and Health & Human Behavior. It is part of a strategic planning process that began in 2022 called Clark Inspired, Magee said. In January, the institution announced it would be launching a new School of Climate, Environment, and Society in fall 2025 and hired a new dean for it. Read more: Why transforming vacant college campuses into housing isn't easy 'Part of the strategy is both addressing that value proposition — having areas that we have historic strength and newfound strength on — leaning into those as what Clark should really be well known for as a way of addressing kind of the overall enrollment trends, the demographic cliff, the public perceptions,' Magee said. The planning process also includes eliminating lower-enrolled majors, including French and Francophone studies, Comparative Literature, Ancient Civilization and Studio Art. Studio Art will be maintained as a minor and a visual arts program will likely take its place, Magee said. 'Our reorganization gives us the foundation for having Clark thrive in the future for a long period of time, really meet the market, be more agile, ensure that we have outstanding student outcomes, both on the curricular side and the student life side so that students really want to be here. They're getting value out of what we have,' Magee said. 'That's both the challenge and the opportunity,' he said. As Harvard fights Trump admin in court, professors are quietly dropping courses Clark University to lay off up to 30% of faculty amid enrollment woes 'Incredibly ironic': Trump antisemitism effort may force out Harvard's Israeli Jews MIT bans class president who gave pro-Palestine speech from commencement Why the fight over foreign students at Harvard has some US students leaving, too Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Central Mass. university to lay off 30% of faculty amid enrollment woes
Clark University in Worcester is planning to lay off up to 30% of faculty and 5% of staff while restructuring degree programs due to enrollment and financial challenges, according to the institution. 'All of higher education, Clark included, is at a critical inflection point,' Clark University President David Fithian said in a statement. 'Rather than simply meet this challenging moment as an exercise in budget constraint, we have taken a longer view, leaning into current strengths and what is best about Clark to offer our students an even more compelling experience going forward.' The announcement comes in part as a reaction to the incoming first-year class not hitting the mark for how many students the institution aims for. The incoming class is underenrolled by 80 to 100 students, the institution said. Read more: Why transforming vacant college campuses into housing isn't easy The layoffs come after Worcester Polytechnic Institute laid off 24 employees due to pressures from rising costs and uncertainty regarding the Trump administration's policies on higher education. In Massachusetts, over two dozen colleges and universities have closed or merged over the past decade due to financial and enrollment difficulties. Most recently, Eastern Nazarene College, a private Christian liberal arts college in Quincy, announced in June that it would close due to financial issues. Bard College at Simon's Rock said in November it would close its campus due to declining enrollment. On top of layoffs at Clark, the university plans to reconfigure its academic programs. That includes eliminating lower-enrolled majors. It will be divided into Climate, Environment & Society; Media Arts, Computing & Design; and Health & Human Behavior. These 'align with student interests and create a wide range of career paths for Clark graduates,' which will create hubs for 'interdisciplinary learning, research, and community engagement,' according to the institution. 'Clark is strong, there is great enthusiasm for the Clark student experience, and we do important, impactful work around the world. The opportunity we are seizing now is to harness all of that and come forward with an even more compelling approach to education, more opportunities to advance innovative solutions to big, intractable global challenges, and a more sustainable operating model. That is precisely what our plan for the future accomplishes,' Fithian said. 'Incredibly ironic': Trump antisemitism effort may force out Harvard's Israeli Jews MIT bans class president who gave pro-Palestine speech from commencement Why the fight over foreign students at Harvard has some US students leaving, too Harvard affinity group graduations held off campus amid 'capitulation' to Trump Harvard commencement speaker says it's fitting to 'hear from an immigrant like me' Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Clark University announces plans to scale down operations; layoffs coming
(This story has been updated with additional information.) WORCESTER ― Clark University is planning substantial cutbacks and restructuring as the school grapples with lower enrollment and the public's changing attitude toward college, with a quarter of faculty expected to be laid off over the next two years. "Now is a challenging time for those in higher education," Clark President David Fithian said. "We are announcing this plan to refocus what you would call our educational offerings from a student perspective." In an interview with the Telegram & Gazette, Fithian and Vice President for Academic Affairs John Magee said the university will be restructured, with all programming encompassed in three different broad fields of study in The School of Climate, Environment and Society; The Center for Media Arts, Computing and Design; and in health and human behavior. "We want to pick areas of academic studies where we know that we are good at," Fithian said. "For smaller institutions, you can't do everything equally well and we have to pick and choose what we are good at and what we are going to do going forward." While the university does not intend on cutting any programs, many of the programs will be placed to fit within the three main schools, streamlining a lot of the administrative process. Clark officials stated that approximately 25% to 30% of faculty will have their positions eliminated over the next two years, although that number may change. The layoffs are expected to affect non-tenured, pre-tenured and adjunct faculty. A decline in enrollment was cited as the biggest factor behind the changes. Fithian said the incoming freshman class, the Class of 2029, contains just 430 students, approximately 150 fewer than the school has averaged in the past. Fithian said the loss of students for the upcoming school year translates to approximately $7 million is less revenue. Fithian added that the school has lost around $1.5 million this year in grant funding from the federal government, while adding that the total could change and it's possible new grants could supplant lost revenue. "There are some grants that are still getting approved for different programs — obviously some grants are being targeted more than others (for cancellation) but it's possible we have more grant money in the future," Fithian said. Fithian said several factors led to declining enrollment — the first that prospective students and their families have become more discerning about the college process. "There is this doubt on whether going to college is the best path coming out of high school, and college has gotten expensive and more and more families are struggling to pay for it," Fithian said. "We get questions now about demonstrating outcomes — and the number one question we get is asking what Clark students are paid one to three years after graduating. You hear a lot more questions about what our students do if they are, for example, a political science major." Another factor is what those in higher education refer to as the "demographic cliff," an upcoming period where there will be a shortage of college-aged students, reflective of fewer births since the Great Recession in the late 2000s. Fithian said that the goal with the changes at Clark is to better position the school to thrive at what is anticipated to be a smaller scale. "Colleges and universities have survived for as long as they have because they have not undertaken a lot of risks," Fithian said. "What we are finding is that the environment that exists today will not allow for that. There is not this sense that if we just stay the course, others will revert to that. What we are doing is acknowledging that we need to change." At the graduate-school level, where a majority of the students are international, concerns about federal policy regarding student visas, including an incident in April in which 12 Clark students had their visas revoked, has led to apprehension about attending school in the United States. More: 12 Clark students have visas revoked in latest blow to Worcester's international students "A lot of schools attract a lot of international students, and there is a lot of pause and apprehension coming from international students," Fithian said. "Last year there was a delay in appointments for visas and we learned in August that a good number of students couldn't get a visa appointment until October, November or December. I'm worried about that happening again — the visa appointments may get delayed or outright denied." Fithian added that he said the school may consider selling off real estate in the future. Fithian said that moving forward, Clark and any other institute of higher learning needs to improve at showcasing the benefits of its education. "What we need to do a better job across the board in higher ed is not just explaining outcomes that go beyond first-year salaries out of college, but to better connect what we think of is liberal arts education, broad-based learning to make sure students are exposed to a scientific perspective, a historical perspective," Fithian said. "We need to do a better job demonstrating that the education we provide that connects those disciplines and the value that has to graduates." This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Clark University announces restructuring and faculty layoffs
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The wolf at your door might need help to survive as a species
Woo! Science is a column of science news and newsmakers in Worcester and the region. Got a science news idea? Email Margaret Smith at msmith@ They're cute, they're fluffy, they're friend-shaped, for sure. And they walk among us, but, they're not dire wolves. Or are they? Is that even a simple question to answer? They're most certainly not dire wolves in whole genetic cloth, because they've got other stuff in the mix, including from extant wolf species. As the cubs, dubbed Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi, are off romping and playing, enjoying life, their creation is raising a raft of questions, including about animals, and our relationship to them as fellow creatures. William Lynn thinks about these issues quite a lot. Lynn, a research scientist at Clark University's George Perkins Marsh Institute, is also creator of PAN Works, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to people, animals and questions of ethics. The acronym PAN stands for people, animals and nature. When news traveled 'round the world of Dallas-based Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences' bringing back from extinction the canine, which gained a following from the series "Game of Thrones," lots of people wondered if this was fact, or fantasy. "My first thought was skepticism, and that skepticism has borne out," said Lynn. "This is the creation of a transgenic animal that has dire wolf-like characteristics, in its body size and fur coat color." On April 11, the Colossal team working on the project published a preliminary preprint paper, a scholarly or scientific report ahead of peer review for an academic or scientific publication. In that preliminary preprint paper, the team explains that they took paleogenomes from two well-preserved dire wolf specimens. In a press release, the company explained that the DNA came from a dire wolf tooth, and a dire wolf skull. The paper details how the researchers spent more than a year to "decode the dire wolf's evolutionary history," Colossal said in a statement. "We generated high-quality ancient genomes from dire wolves that lived 13,000 and 72,000 years ago. Our analyses show that dire wolves interbred extensively with the lineage that ultimately evolved into gray wolves, suggesting that dire wolves and gray wolves are much more closely related than previously thought." Lynn said, "This is the creation of a transgenic animal that has dire wolf-like characteristics in its body size and fur coat color." The company has defended its work, which touched off a firestorm of debate among scientists and ethicists, not only over whether the cubs are in fact, dire wolves, but about the uncertain road of genetic engineering, and whether trying to bring back a long-extinct species is really a great idea. In Lynn's view, the cubs certainly have some dire wolf information in their genes, but also that of the gray wolf, a species that makes it home in North America, Europe and Asia. "There are very low rates of success of births with embryo transfers and genetic engineering. Of course, that is also true just normally," Lynn said. "Dire wolves and gray wolves diverged from a common ancestor. They may be in the same family, but not in the same genus." Lynn sees the cubs as "gray wolves with genetic materials from dire wolves." The dilemma over the ethics of attempting to call back species that went extinct millennia ago intersects with the present-day crisis of animals and plants that have gone extinct, or are in danger of extinction, largely due to human activity, including habitat destruction and climate change. Another major endeavor by colossal is bringing back the woolly mammoth from extinction. "De-extinction is a fascinating concept, but it is not conservation," Lynn said. The woolly mammoth thundered about for generations until its believed extinction in the Holocene epoch, which started around 11,700 years ago. If the woolly mammoth were to make a comeback with the help of human engineering, Lynn said it probably wouldn't be very happy. "There is no place on the planet woolly mammoths can be set free, to live their lives," Lynn said. For one thing, the world that the woolly mammoth knew is long gone. A species that went extinct more recently might have a fighting chance, Lynn said. "I'm not absolutely against de-extinction," Lynn said. But in order for such a creature to thrive, it needs a habitat in which it can prosper, and there is something more. Lynn said, "It is going to have to learn all over again, knowing how to hunt, who to hunt, where to hunt. Those are things they pass on from generation to generation." What does Lynn think people should understand about animals? A beautiful or sympathetic animal that may turn up again and again in your social media feed, such as the Pallas cat, a small and very plush-looking wild cat native to central Asia, is probably going to capture your heart. "When you see a charismatic animal, you are not being manipulated by that animal per se," Lynn said. "You are realizing a creature who is aware, self-aware and social, that has a personality. That is not so different from you and me." Lynn said, "The other thing I want people to remember is that there are real, live wolves right now, that need your help. If you want to help wolves, there are some things you can do, because they are in danger." Lynn said this includes advocating for legislation to help preserve animal habitat. When musician Aaron Lewis killed coyotes in a contest, spelling out "Trump 2024" with their bodies, he was met with outrage, but Lynn said the gesture is a piece of a larger picture. "It's about political extremism that wants to emphasize that humans are the most important creature on the planet, and wants to upset those who think otherwise." But it's not strictly an issue of left or right-leaning politics, Lynn said. There are people who perhaps mean well by feeding coyotes, raccoons and other predators, which can become a big hit on social media. But Lynn said, "That gets them acclimated to being around humans, and it can create problems. Raccoons, for example, are a reservoir for rabies." In short, living peacefully with our fellow organisms takes some thought, and the answers aren't always clear at first. Putting out bird seed might be a truly helpful and kind gesture, but, "When you are talking about a period of time when you have bird flu, and have a bird feeder and bird bath that spreads disease. It's complicated." This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Woo! Science: Of humans, wolves, and a world of creatures in crisis
Int'l Business Times
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Int'l Business Times
US Climate Assessment In Doubt As Trump Dismisses Authors
President Donald Trump's administration has fired the authors of the United States' premier climate report, a move scientists said threatens to derail a key assessment vital to preparing for global warming. In an email sent to contributors of the Sixth National Climate Assessment (NCA6) on Monday, the administration said the report's "scope" was being reevaluated and informed participants they were being "released from their roles." The decision follows mass firings earlier this month at the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), the body overseeing the congressionally required report, and marks the latest flashpoint in Trump's efforts to reshape the federal government. "The people who work on this report are dedicated to informing the public about the latest scientific knowledge, how this might affect people, and what some of the options are to address climate change," Abby Frazier, a climatologist at Clark University who was set to author a chapter on Hawaii and US-affiliated Pacific Islands, told AFP. "I am devastated by this news." She added that the last report had helped people see how climate change affected their communities, particularly in the Pacific Islands. Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a former author on NCA6's chapter on coastal impacts, blasted the move as reckless and politically motivated. "The Trump administration senselessly took a hatchet to a crucial and comprehensive US climate science report by dismissing its authors without cause or a plan," she said in a statement. "Trying to bury this report won't alter the scientific facts one bit, but without this information, our country risks flying blind into a world made more dangerous by human-caused climate change." The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Other authors also took to social media to confirm they had received identical notices, expressing frustration and alarm. Since returning to office, Trump has embarked on an aggressive overhaul of federal institutions, firing thousands of civil servants, including climate scientists and public health experts. It has also steered agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Institutes of Health away from climate and environmental research. The disruption of NCA6 comes at a perilous time: global temperatures have begun to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels, according to recent international analyses, fueling worsening wildfires, droughts, floods, and storms across the United States. The National Climate Assessment, first published in 2000, is a cornerstone of US government climate understanding, synthesizing input from federal agencies and hundreds of external scientists. Previous editions have warned in stark terms of mounting risks to America's economy, infrastructure and health if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed. While not directly prescriptive on policy, the reports have served as guides for lawmakers, businesses, and local governments planning climate resilience. Under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, the government is legally obligated to deliver the climate assessment to Congress and the president. It remains unclear whether the administration's actions will delay, compromise or cancel the report.
