Challenge. Change.

Clark Psychology Professor Michael Miller has a background in communication science, so as artificial intelligence like ChatGPT emerged and ballooned in popularity over the last few years, he wanted to examine AI's impact on the way we communicate.

"It was like finding a new type of microscope to study human communication. I could see so much deeper," Miller says of AI. One theory Miller is exploring is resonant geometry, a framework that explores how humans and AI co-create meaning by coordinating not just language, but emotion, attention, and timing. He has published a paper on his research with ChatGPT as a co-author.

"AI can look back at what it does. It can self-reflect. That's pretty powerful. I would also say there's a difference between what an algorithm can do and what a mind can do. Even an unsophisticated mind can be challenged in many ways," says Miller. "I would argue these AIs have minds ... You run a prompt through it, and many things could happen, unlike a tool, a calculator, for example, where you get the same thing each time."

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

When governments end social programs like cash transfers to economically disadvantaged people, what is the impact on their children, their grandchildren, and beyond? It’s a question Economics Professor Jon Denton-Schneider is trying to answer.  

Denton-Schneider studies the historical causes and economic consequences of poverty and poor health, and he’s particularly interested in unexpected positive or negative occurrences that economists refer to as “shocks.” 

One such shock — the introduction of the 1834 “New” Poor Law in England and Wales — caused generational impacts that could be observed in census data roughly 60 years later. Denton-Schneider and Jennifer Mayo, professor of economics at DePaul University, are working on a National Institutes of Health-funded project called “Rags to Rags,” which examines the effects of ending cash transfers in Victorian Britain.

"We saw very clearly that if you were in a county where there was a larger decline in poor relief after 1834, when you grew up, you would have worse outcomes," says Denton-Schneider. "If you were a girl around 1834, one of the clearest impacts we see is that in 1861, you have more children."

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

The mission of Clark University's School of Climate, Environment, and Society can be summarized in one word, according to Lou Leonard, the school's D.J.A. Spencer Dean, and that word is impact.

"For the last 10,000 years or so, the world has been in what many call the 'Goldilocks period' of climate: not too hot, not too cold ... The bottom line is we've left that period," says Leonard. "There is no magic key that's going to solve this problem. It is going to take the collective work of everyone, and every step that we take matters. Every quarter of a degree of warming that we don't experience saves lives."

As the world faces a polycrisis of climate, biodiversity loss, and social disruption, Leonard says Clark students will reach out into the community to learn hands-on how they can contribute to building a healthier planet.

"The nature of these problems is that they are a result of the intersection of politics, economics, culture, and technology," says Leonard. "The real world doesn't operate in disciplinary boxes. It operates in the messy middle where everything comes together, so that is part of the way students will learn."

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Photographer and Visual and Performing Arts Professor Stephen DiRado fell in love with cameras at age 12 and remains infatuated five decades later.

"As a nervous kid, the camera had that same kind of heartbeat — that click, click, click, click, click — as opposed to the slow, methodical way of working with a paintbrush or with a pencil. It spoke to me on so many levels," says DiRado.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., DiRado recalls some of the first images he captured and shares a glimpse into how he constructs a photograph from behind the lens.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

A two-time and first-gen Clark alum, Danielle Morgan Acosta '05, MAT '06, knows what it's like to arrive at college and feel overwhelmed by all the opportunities ahead. Acosta, the dean of students, came to Clark all the way from California, and the self-identified introvert remembers leaning on her peer mentor and friends to help get settled on campus.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Acosta shares a few tips to help incoming students step out of their comfort zone and find where they fit in — introvert or not.

"I think the best advice is to take a deep breath and try to be as much of a sponge as you can during your time in college," she says. "Unlike many other parts of your life, really everywhere you turn during college is a learning experience. That can be incredibly exciting, but also tough and difficult. Clark offers so many opportunities for new experiences and for students to dive deeper into the things that they really care about."

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Clark's 121st Commencement Ceremonies on May 19, 2025, conferred 468 undergraduate degrees and 1,014 advanced degrees.

NPR journalist Ari Shapiro and Esther Duflo, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered speeches to graduate students and undergraduate students, respectively. Both spoke about the need for care and compassion in the world.

In addresses to their peers, Temera De Groot ’25 and Kumar Gaurav, MBA ’25, spoke about their journeys at Clark as first-generation college students. Relive the highlights of the day on this episode of Challenge. Change.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

History Professor Nathan Braccio is a scholar of Indigenous and colonial American history and has a special interest in maps.

"Like many other people, I have a fascination with maps," he says. "A map can be a legal tool that allows you to assert, 'this is where my borders are.' A map could be used to visualize an empire, to visualize a nation."

His forthcoming book, “Creating New England, Defending the Northeast: Contested Algonquian and English Spatial Worlds, 1500–1700,” examines how Algonquian-speaking peoples and Puritan colonists mapped the landscape of present-day New England. 

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Braccio explains how maps have changed over time and how English settlers erased Indigenous populations through mapmaking practices.

"One of the things that has changed in maps is the ways that they reflect our different set of values or assumptions about the land, because that is at its heart what a map is doing. It's supporting how we think about the land and the world," he says. "How someone in the 17th century thought about land may have prioritized a different set of things than we do now."

Challenge. Change. is produced by Brenna Moore ’24, MSC ’25, and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

With season two of HBO Max's "The Last of Us," based on the acclaimed video game franchise created by Naughty Dog, hitting screens this weekend, we asked Clark University professors to unpack people's fascination with post-apocalyptic stories and comment on the fictional science of the series.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., English Professor Betsy Huang discusses speculative fiction and the depiction of institutions in catastrophic tales; Becker School of Design & Technology Professor Ulm explains how video games help players explore their fears; and mycologist and biology Professor Javier Tabima Restrepo comments on the depiction of Cordyceps in this wildly popular game and show.

Challenge. Change. is produced by graduate student Brenna Moore '24, MSC '25, and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Geography Professor Asha Best has lived in a handful of cities across the U.S., Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Atlanta among them. Experiencing each place’s unique culture, transportation, and education systems has given Best insight into how different cities are designed and how they function. A curiosity to understand this more drives some of her current research.

Best, an urbanist who studies mobility and urban informality, is researching how planners and developers can build just cities, where everyone lives equitably. One thing she’s noticed throughout her studies is that there is no common definition of what justice looks like, however.

“We often know what injustice looks like in cities, but we don't often know what justice looks like. I think that equality is a good start. Do we have equal access to shared resources, and are vital resources distributed in a way that's consistent and even — and I'm talking about things like water and food and shelter, the basics,” she says.

Best believes just cities are ones in which planners and officials address current problems and work to right historical wrongs.

“I think it's about how cities deliver vital resources, discovering who doesn't have access to them and how to fix that, and creating a space that's livable, where people have dignity,” she says.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

In 2008, just as the film adaptation of "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer was about to hit theaters, Sarah Gallagher was a doctoral student in Boston and saw everyone walking down Commonwealth Avenue with their heads buried in the book with an apple on its cover. Initially, she wasn't interested. But once she inevitably got her hands on the book, she tore through it in one night.

"I can never explain what it felt like to read that book for the first time and to just fall in love with it. I immediately was so obsessed with Edward. There's something in the pages of that book that makes you fall into the world," says Gallagher, now the associate dean of students and operations in Clark's School of Professional Studies.

Vampires don't age, but the series did, and not necessarily gracefully. On this episode of Challenge. Change., Gallagher explains some of Twilight's flaws and why the fandom is still so passionate about Bella and Edward despite the saga's issues. These topics are at the heart of Gallagher's book, "Why We Love (and Hate) Twilight," which is being published in April. Gallagher encourages the fandom to think critically about the kinds of media we love.

"I think if we can start being critical about things that we love, then it will be a lot easier to be critical about terrible things that are happening," she says. "I think it's an exercise in evaluating the things in our life."

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.