Clark University hires dean and establishes new School of Climate, Environment, and Society
Photo | Brad Kane
Clark University in Worcester
Clark University in Worcester will launch a new School of Climate, Environment, and Society with the fall semester and has named a former Chatham University dean as its leader.
The new Clark school will aim to address climate change by teaching students an integrated curriculum including economics, political and social sciences, and natural sciences. The School of Climate, Environment, and Society will offer undergraduate and graduate degree programs to prepare students for careers throughout a range of fields tackling the environmental crisis, according to a Tuesday press release from Clark.
“The School of Climate, Environment, and Society will harness Clark’s agile, integrative approach to research and our foundational expertise to offer something that is distinctive, compelling, and enduring,” Clark President David Fithian said in the release.
Lou Leonard, former dean of the Falk School of Sustainability and Environment at Chatham University in Pennsylvania, will serve as the school’s dean. Leonard’s position was supported by a $10-million seed funding donation from Clark Trustee Vickie Riccardo and her daughters Jocelyn and Alyssa Spencer to create the dean role, develop the school’s blueprint, and establish its primary programs.
“As a society, we have made strong progress on technologies and policies needed to address climate and related challenges, but we have struggled in the messy work of implementing and scaling solutions. The school is working to change this by focusing on the complex intersection of natural and human systems,” Leonard said in the release.
Leonard was selected from a national search conducted by a Clark committee led by the university’s professor and Biology Department Chair Deborah Robertson.
“Incoming dean Lou Leonard is the perfect leader to ensure we realize all of the promise and potential that lies ahead,” Robertson said in the release.
The school will offer students new course and degree program options, taking an interdisciplinary approach to studying five integrated priorities: sustainable and climate-resilient development; governance, equity, and justice; urban systems and livelihoods; socioeconomic systems and sustainability transitions; and earth systems, conservation, ecological interactions, and ecosystem services.
Clark’s new school announcement comes seven months after the institution rebranded its School of Management as the School of Business in June in an effort to make it stand out within the competitive market of college admissions. In August, the school was named as one of the best business schools in the nation in 2024 by the Princeton Review.
With 3,830 full-time enrolled students in fall 2023, Clark is the second largest college or university in Central Massachusetts when ranked by full-time enrollment, according to data collected by WBJ’s Research Department. Founded in 1887, the university has an endowment of $451.18 million.
Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare and diversity, equity, and inclusion industries.
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