Explore
Dear Readers,
Clark University is committed to addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time, as seen through its diverse and impactful research. Our scholars are actively engaged in understanding and shaping the world around us by connecting their research to society, a meaningful and critical link to ensure we focus on strategies and solutions for our future.
To help illuminate those efforts, we introduce Questa, whose name is derived from the Latin word meaning “seeking,” reflecting our institution’s insatiable sense of curiosity and relentless pursuit of answers.
In Our Changing Planet, the first of four sections in this special publication, researchers tackle the climate crisis by exploring the intersection of science, sustainability, and social equity. Their work informs policy, education, and implementation, emphasizing the interconnectedness of how we address global change.
Being Mind-Full explores Clark’s legacy in psychology, where researchers investigate human thought and behavior. As the birthplace of the American Psychological Association, Clark has long been at the forefront of inquiry into how we influence, and are influenced by, the social and cultural contexts in which we live.
In the humanities, Clark’s scholars take on a similarly ambitious mission with great success. The Art of Humanity examines the modern relevance of literature, language, and the arts, highlighting their role in helping society navigate today’s complex and rapidly changing world.
Finally, Secrets from the Soil uncovers the hidden intricacies of life beneath our feet. By studying soil organisms, Clark scientists unlock insights into the evolution of life, ecosystem quality, and innovative ways to improve human well-being. This work bridges science and society, demonstrating how even the smallest forms of life play a key role in our future.
Across all these disciplines, Clark University is united by a commitment to address urgent global issues through research that informs, inspires, and empowers.
Jennifer Hanselman | Associate Provost and Dean of Research
Joining Clark’s leadership team in 2024, Jennifer Hanselman brings substantial experience and expertise in research, higher education, and the biological sciences. As a paleoecologist, she has conducted research and published widely about the impacts of climate change in the natural world. She has a Ph.D. in biological sciences with a specialty in ecology/conservation biology from the Florida Institute of Technology.
University
Editorial
Design:
Photo by Steven King
Section 1
Our Changing Planet
For decades, Clark scholars have confronted the climate crisis through research and engagement that examine the critical issues of vulnerability, mitigation, and adaptation existing at the nexus of science, sustainability, and social equity. Our holistic approach to climate and global change seeks to inform and inspire policymakers and the public to explore strategies for our shared future — and take action.
The Big Thirst
Researchers help drought-stricken Mexico City focus on a greener future
By Meredith Woodward King
“/”
We’re entering this complex world of climate impacts through the gateway of water, because water is life.
–Tim Downs
With a decade-long drought, failing infrastructure, overdevelopment, and shrinking reservoirs that cannot serve a growing population, Mexico City is deep in the midst of a water crisis.
In the city’s eastern borough of Iztapalapa, water trucks rumble up and down the twisting, hilly streets. Over the years, this tightly packed, socioeconomically marginalized alcaldía of 2 million people has been hit hard by dwindling water supplies, and it’s only getting worse.
Residents’ taps run dry for days, even weeks. They rely on government-supplied water distributed by trucks. Often, the tankers arrive empty, or not at all.
Without water, families reuse what’s left from washing laundry and dishes. Many spend one-fifth of their income on water, buying bottles or paying private companies for deliveries.
“I’ve been watching those tanker trucks for a long time, over many decades, and they’re getting bigger and bigger,” says Professor Tim Downs, an environmental scientist and engineer with expertise in aquifers and watershed stewardship. “That’s an indication that more and more people don’t have water coming into their homes.”
The Mexico City metro area is a barometer for the impacts of climate change, unchecked urbanization, and resulting water stress, Downs says.
Yet, the region is poised to become a model for sustainability, he believes, if policymakers,
communities, businesses, and universities collaborate to visualize alternative climate and development scenarios to reshape their collective future and alter their fate.
That’s where an interdisciplinary, communityengaged team of researchers comes in from Clark’s Department of Sustainability & Social Justice, Graduate School of Geography, and Becker School of Design & Technology.
Eleven faculty and over a dozen graduate students are applying their expertise in geographic information science (GIS), climatology, sustainability, community development, engineering, environmental policy, and interactive media design to help Mexico City and the surrounding region emerge from a long, devastating thirst.
“We’re entering this complex world of climate impacts through the gateway of water, because water is life,” Downs says.
Over four years, the researchers are collecting data and “co-creating knowledge-for-action” with community stakeholders: Indigenous people, pre-K-12 schools, the municipal and federal governments, National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Isla Urbana, a nonprofit organization that helps households and schools capture rainwater.
The project combines the tools of GIS — remote sensing/satellite data and digital maps — with system dynamics modeling, virtual/extended reality (VR/XR) technology, and experiential educational experiences to help policymakers and the public
“/”
The Mexico City basin has been overexploited for 50 years.
–Tim Downs
understand the threats posed by climate change and how to mitigate them.
Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for International Research and Education Program, the research focuses on the Mexico-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region, which provides water to some 28 million people in 200 metropolitan communities in and around Mexico City.
“We’re studying this region because it’s an example of what’s wrong with business-as-usual development. The Mexico City basin has been overexploited for 50 years,” says Downs, the grant’s principal investigator. “This region is emblematic of the pressing environmental and social justice challenges that the world is facing under climate change.”
By drilling deeper for water, Mexico City has destabilized the ground, and is sinking into the compressible lake beds of the volcanic basin on which it sits. Even with a vast aqueduct snaking through the region to supplement the water supply, the local groundwater is drying up. The city is pumping more and more from watersheds in the far west, with plans to triple such transfers by 2050. Reservoirs tapped by the aqueduct — like Valle de Bravo — are depleting rapidly.
Water scarcity impacts agriculture and food, aquatic ecosystems, human health and livelihoods, and the economy. These “impact cascades,” according to Downs, are unevenly distributed across landscapes and populations, resulting in inequities and growing climate injustice.
Unlike Iztapalapa and other marginalized areas, affluent neighborhoods “have much more secure access to water. But sooner than later they are also going to be suffering water scarcity,” he says.
“Will Mexico City’s extreme water scarcity increase? Yes. Unless we all work together to do something truly transformative.”
Two communities are collaborating with Clark to become models of sustainability: Miravalle in southeastern Iztapalapa, and, west of Mexico City, Valle de Bravo, which Downs calls a “bellwether town” in the water crisis. Valle de Bravo faces plummeting reservoir levels because of water transfers to Mexico City, high leakage (over 40%) due to aging pipes, and climate change impacts to the water cycle.
Both pilot communities have signed on to collaborate with the collection, sharing, application, and archiving of data that will be made available to them. As part of the research project with Clark, each is launching a community center for “climate change education, monitoring, research, and action,” Downs says. In Iztapalapa, residents helped graduate students conduct interviews about water issues and climate-change impacts.
Data from community surveys, hydroecological field data, and satellites will be integrated into a multilayered online atlas mapping the effects of climate change and used as inputs to a VR/XR visualization platform to simulate, and allow users to virtually inhabit, Central Mexico’s alternative futures — in 2050 — at local and regional scales.
Funded by a Projects for Peace award, Clark undergraduate students in screen studies accompanied Professor Tim Downs to Central Mexico to film a documentary about the water crisis. Senior Zeke Fairley captured this photo of the low water levels at Endhó reservoir, north of Mexico City.
The VR/XR platform will incorporate images shot in Mexico by Clark undergraduate screen studies students working on a documentary about the climate-water crisis. Additional data will come from weather stations created via 3D printers and donated by Clark.
“What has been missing in modeling efforts are models at human scale with ways to grasp what is at stake,” Downs says.
Air- and water-quality sensors have also been donated to enhance experiential, research-based learning for all ages, pre-K through higher education. Researchers are connecting young people in Miravalle with their peers in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles to share stories about life under climate change and their visions for the future.
“We want youth to be front and center, and actively involved,” Downs says, “because they are the ones with the most at stake.”
The War Beneath the Waves
Researchers go deep into the underwater struggle for our planet’s breath
By Meredith Woodward King
Many of us hear about cyanobacteria when summertime blooms of toxic blue-green algae spawn beach closings at freshwater ponds and lakes. But not all cyanobacteria are harmful — those growing in the ocean produce more than 10 percent of the oxygen we breathe.
“Cyanobacteria form an important foundation of life in the oceans,” Biology Professor Nathan Ahlgren says. At the bottom of the oceans’ food chain, “they produce organic material and oxygen, just like plants on land do.”
For more than two decades, Ahlgren’s research has focused on the most abundant marine cyanobacteria — Synechococcus and its sister genus, Prochlorococcus — that together carry out about 25 percent of the photosynthesis in the ocean.
“In every breath you take, some of that oxygen comes from these tiny little things,” he explains, “because half of all photosynthesis on earth occurs in the ocean.”
In a study funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the microbial ecologist has investigated how cyanobacteria — a type of phytoplankton — interact with their environment and with other organisms, especially the viruses that infect them. He has collaborated with marine virologist Marcie Marston of Roger Williams University, using water samples gathered over a decade from Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.
“It’s important to figure out what viruses are killing these cyanobacteria, how they are killing them, and why,” Ahlgren says.
In many places, the number of cyanobacteria in the ocean remains roughly the same from day to day, he notes. “But in reality, there’s this whole ecosystem that’s churning, this warfare of viruses and hosts happening back and forth, that is potentially changing the species and the composition of microscopic creatures living in the water.”
conditions affects phytoplankton populations, including Synechococcus.
“We hope to set the context for understanding what’s happening right now so we can start to make predictions for the future,” he explains. “If we know how iron conditions are going to change, and if iron is going to be more variable or more stable, then we might know how cyanobacteria could respond.”
During photosynthesis, phytoplankton remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — like forests on land, the blooms of microbial marine phytoplankton play a role in carbon sequestration, helping curb global warming. Through this biochemical process, phytoplankton absorb carbon, fueling bigger organisms higher up the food chain.
“/”
In every breath you take, some of that oxygen comes from these tiny little things.
–Nathan Ahlgren
Backed by a five-year grant from the NSF’s Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, Ahlgren now is investigating “how iron, as a nutrient, shapes the Synechococcus community structure and how these organisms adapt to deal with differing iron nutrient conditions.”
Like all living things, cyanobacteria need iron to survive. Scientists have focused on iron levels in the ocean, where phytoplankton play a crucial role in “controlling the amount of photosynthesis and flow of carbon dioxide on our planet,” Ahlgren notes.
In about 30 percent of the ocean, phytoplankton growth is limited by a lack of iron, a phenomenon that has been well studied, he says.
Less studied is phytoplankton’s response to low, medium, or high iron levels in the rest of the ocean, Ahlgren says, and how the variability or stability of iron
Forecasting the future health of phytoplankton contributes to scientists’ broader understanding of climate change.
“Climate is always present in the background of our research,” he says, “even if it’s not the direct focus.”
Scientists have studied the impacts of weather patterns that increase the amount of iron in the ocean, enriching the phytoplankton and leading to more carbon sequestration.
“One classic example is the winds from the Sahara in Africa that blow sand into the Atlantic,” Ahlgren says. “When that happens, the phytoplankton are exposed to sand dust containing iron, and they just go wild. They bloom.”
The NSF grant supports science education and inquiry for a wide variety of students and scholars, from fifth graders studying ecology at a local elementary school to Clark undergraduate and graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow in Ahlgren’s lab. The grant funds 10 undergraduate researchers over five years.
“It’s important,” he says, “for students to see how their research can connect to bigger things like helping to protect ecosystems.”
Hawai‘i’s Slow Burn
Racing for answers to prolonged climate threats in the Pacific Islands
By Meredith Woodward King
Geography Professor Abby Frazier and her research colleagues had been warning for years about the worsening drought conditions that could lead to more wildfires in Hawai‘i.
But it wasn’t until August 2023, when flames raced through the fields and hills of Maui, killing 102 people and destroying the historic town of Lahaina, that the world took notice.
“People are not aware how bad fire can be in Hawai‘i. In some years, the percent area burned is higher than what you have in the Western U.S.,” says Frazier, lead author
of the Fifth National Climate Assessment’s Hawai‘i and Pacific Islands chapter.
“It’s even higher,” she adds, “when you head out to the Western Pacific, like Guam — they’ve had years where 10 percent of the island burns.”
The Lahaina fire was caused by a combination of factors: El Niño-induced drought; strong winds from a Category 4 hurricane and a high-pressure system that fanned flames; and dried-out invasive grasses that provided fuel, according to Frazier, a seasoned climatologist who has conducted research in Hawai‘i for over a decade.
James Keul, Fish in Troubled Waters (2013, oil on canvas) www.jameskeul.com
We have to strive to be proactive, not reactive.
–Abby Frazier “/”
“There is likely a climate change signal in everything we see,” she says.
Frazier’s work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center, U.S. Forest Service, and U.S. Geological Survey.
She now is exploring the physical and socioeconomic impacts on communities hit by such “compound climate extremes” — a combination of multiple climate hazards.
In Hawai‘i and the Pacific islands, residents face existential risks under climate change, Frazier and her co-authors reported in the Fifth National Climate Assessment chapter.
Home to 1.9 million people, the region includes Indigenous Pacific islanders “who share reciprocal and spiritual relationships with the lands, waters, natural resources, and cultures,” the report states. The area’s 2,000 islands range from the low-lying atolls of the Marshall Islands to the volcanic, mountainous peaks of Hawai‘i, featuring diverse ecosystems and many threatened and endangered species.
Climate change impacts include sea level rise, altered rainfall patterns that result in flooding and drought, and rising ocean and air temperatures, according to the report.
“Sea level rise has a huge impact. Homes and businesses that are located on the coast are going to be threatened, and saltwater is already contaminating freshwater,” Frazier says. “Low-level islands are literally losing territory.”
The report reveals the impacts of climate change on Pacific islanders’ “economic and cultural livelihoods, including tourism, agriculture, fishing, forestry, and artisan practices,” as well as their physical and mental health.
Yet, there is hope, Frazier insists, pointing to the report’s conclusions that communities can better adapt to climate change by centering local, Indigenous knowledge, such as traditional and sustainable farming and fishing practices.
In turn, scientists need to share their weather data widely so that islanders can monitor climate change and adapt, she says.
Recently, Frazier and her colleagues from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and the East-West Center in Honolulu published a study supporting the establishment of state climate divisions that designate climatically homogeneous areas.
“From a climate perspective, Hawai‘i is a fascinating place to study because you have incredibly varied climates that occur over very short distances,” Frazier says. “On one island, you can see everything from alpine tundra to a dry desert to super-wet rainforest — and everything in between.”
The designation would make Hawai‘i the last U.S. state to gain access to NOAA’s weather and climatemonitoring products, including high-resolution datasets indicating drought, temperature, and rainfall trends.
Much of the data Frazier and her colleagues analyze come from nearly 100 NSF-funded climate stations installed throughout the islands to measure and monitor temperature and rainfall totals. The data feed into the Hawai‘i Climate Data Portal, and will be added to NOAA’s national database.
Another tool developed by Frazier and her colleagues as part of the Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange will help ranchers plan for future drought.
To address drought in Hawai‘i and elsewhere in the world, “we have to strive to be proactive, not reactive,” Frazier says, “in order to reduce our risk.”
Iceless Age
The Arctic Report Card assesses a chilling future
Polar scientist Karen Frey understands that when people think of the Arctic, they typically envision “a desolate, cold, white place.” But Frey knows that the Arctic of the future figures to be warmer, stormier, and greener than ever imagined.
Frey is a longtime contributor to and a lead author on the Arctic Report Card, established by NOAA 18 years ago as an annual compilation of original, peerreviewed environmental observations and analyses of a region undergoing rapid and dramatic alterations to weather, climate, oceanic, and land conditions.
The report card assesses how climate change is causing this once reliably frozen, snow-covered area to warm faster than any other part of the world, melting sea ice at a staggering rate and disrupting ecosystems. Her phytoplankton research has been key to revealing the impact of algae blooms on the marine food chain.
“Climate warming’s impact on sea ice has incredibly important cascading effects on all aspects of marine ecosystems,” Frey says.
The Arctic Report Card confirms it.
Photo courtesy of Karen Frey
The Sounds of Science
Tuning into the health of habitats from Massachusetts to the Amazon
By Meredith Woodward King
More than 1,800 species of birds live in Brazil, home to two of the world’s most important rainforests, comprising 840 million acres in the Amazon and 330 million more along the Atlantic coast. Their songs and chatter can provide clues about the health of these diverse ecosystems, according to Clark Geography Professor Florencia Sangermano.
Sangermano has become globally recognized in the expanding field of ecoacoustics, the interdisciplinary study of a habitat’s “soundscape” over time and space. She first began attaching audio recorders to trees in Central Massachusetts to capture the sounds of birds, weather, and humans in and at the edges of forests. At the invitation of fellow scientists, she has expanded her research to Brazil.
“When you go to the doctor, you get your blood pressure taken or they check your heartbeat. In the same way, we can listen to the sounds of an ecosystem and evaluate its health,” says Sangermano, named a Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences and the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities for her contributions to science.
To obtain a more comprehensive snapshot of a soundscape, Sangermano integrates her research in geographic information science (GIS), remote sensing, landscape ecology, and conservation.
“The question we want to ask is: How are all these things connected, and how does that relate to the sounds we are listening to?”
In her Massachusetts research, Sangermano graphed the frequency, amplitude, and length of time of sounds — the relationships among these factors indicating the health of habitats. Along with satellite images of forests decreasing over time, she could determine which areas might be threatened — and how.
“We can connect what we learn from the sounds with what is happening in the landscapes,” including increased human activity and fragmented forests. “If we combine that information with the amount of change you have in an area,” Sangermano says, “we can start making inferences about which areas to prioritize for conservation.”
The same techniques can be applied to ecosystems elsewhere in the world, she added, including Brazil’s richly diverse rainforests.
Recently, Sangermano transported her ecoacoustics research to the Amazon, working with ETH BiodivX, a 58-member global research team, to compete in the five-year, $10 million XPRIZE Rainforest contest.
The competition aims to encourage scientists to deploy technology in more creative, transportable ways, allowing them and Indigenous communities to more easily monitor the health of rainforests.
The teams each had one goal: to determine — in just 72 hours — how many species live in the same 38.6-squaremile section of Brazil’s Amazon. The catch: The scientists could not step foot in the forest.
ETH BiodivX relied on drones to carry sticky traps for gathering insects and environmental DNA (e-DNA), along with Sangermano’s acoustic recorders for capturing the sounds of birds and other wildlife. Applying GIS and remote sensing techniques, she helped the team determine the best places to land the drones atop trees. Their equipment also included a “backpack lab” to process e-DNA samples; a Starlink kit to access satellite internet; computers; and a generator for electricity.
In the end, the team identified 376 taxa and wrote a 212-page report in just 72 hours.
Sangermano also is applying her ecoacoustics lens to a study with researchers at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil. They want to understand how habitat and biodiversity loss in the Atlantic rainforest could affect rodent populations, possibly transmitting infectious diseases to humans.
The rainforest has become “fragmented” into patches of untouched, deforested, and “regenerated” areas, allowing rodents to migrate closer to humans. “Our hypothesis is that a degraded ecosystem will have more diversity of rodents that carry a larger number of pathogens known to pass to humans,” she says.
Sangermano is using time series of land cover data to generate scenarios of forest change and rodent populations over 10 years. The researchers are examining whether any alterations — such as restoring habitats and increasing biodiversity — could lead to more positive outcomes, with fewer disease risks for humans.
“Healthy biodiversity systems,” she says, “have healthy animals and, in turn, healthy humans.”
Going with the Grains
Ethiopian farmers may hold the answer to curbing famine. Researchers are listening.
By Meredith Woodward King
Four decades after Ethiopia saw as many as 1 million people die from famine, Africa once again faces a far-ranging food crisis, this time brought on mostly by climate change. And drought-induced famine is only expected to get worse.
But this time in Ethiopia, an international research team is investigating a promising, climate-resilient, ageold agricultural practice to help stave off global food insecurity: the planting and harvesting of traditional grain mixtures.
“We’re interested in how the diversity of the grains relates to climate adaptation. In some cases, the farmers are planting five to seven different varieties of two different species in a single field,” says Department of Sustainability and Social Justice Professor Morgan Ruelle, who works with Indigenous communities as they respond to climate change. “They’re planted together, harvested together, used
together, saved together, and then planted again the next year.”
The project is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which, through its Periodic Table of Food initiative, is interested in the nutritional benefits of Ethiopia’s traditional grain mixtures that have been largely ignored and almost lost. Ruelle is collaborating with researchers in Ethiopia and the United States, including the New York Botanical Garden.
Ruelle co-designed ethnobotanical and agroecological research with faculty and students at Addis Ababa University. Students interviewed hundreds of farmers and agricultural officials about growing wheat and barley; fava beans and field peas; sorghum; and teff, used to make injera, a pancake-like flatbread that is a mainstay of Ethiopian meals.
Traditional grain mixtures — known as maslins in France, where they were first cultivated during medieval times
Photos by Alex McAlvay, New York Botanical Garden, and Morgan Ruelle
Climate Science Meets AI
— are “self-evolutionary crops where the varieties compensate for each other depending on the climate and weather conditions in the particular year,” Ruelle explains.
“The proportions of each component in the mixture change from year to year,” he says. “If it’s really dry one season, the varieties that do better under dry conditions take over, and if it’s really wet, others become dominant.”
Over time, the mixtures produce more stable yields than monocrops. Besides adapting to changes in precipitation patterns, the maslins also respond well to challenges like pests, diseases, and low soil quality.
“These grain mixtures are an example of really sophisticated Indigenous knowledge about crops,” Ruelle says. “As climate change affects crops and food sources across the world, traditional grain mixtures like these could nourish entire populations.”
Scientists rely heavily on the data they extrapolate from satellite images to understand how the earth is changing due to climate change — and how humans might adapt.
Yet experts face a monumental challenge: More than 10,000 satellites now orbit the globe, producing thousands of terabytes of data each year.
How can researchers mine all this satellite data, along with information from millions of published scientific papers, and effectively share it with policymakers and the public?
Working with NASA and IBM, Hamed Alemohammad, director of Clark’s Center for Geospatial Analytics, and a team of six graduate students hope artificial intelligence can help resolve this conundrum. Together, the researchers have produced the world’s first geospatial AI foundation model, a milestone that will allow climate and earth scientists to access and study data more quickly and efficiently.
Researchers can save time and money by using the foundation model to build generative AI models that can be customized for various applications, rather than building their own from scratch, says Alemohammad, an associate professor in Clark’s Graduate School of Geography, where researchers pioneered the field of geographic information science.
“That’s really the bottom line here,” he says. “Using fewer samples of data, you can get similar or better accuracy with the foundation model.”
Section 2
Being Mind-Full
Clark has long been a leader in the field of psychology: a haven for pioneering research into the human mind, the birthplace of the American Psychological Association, and the only university in the United States to host Sigmund Freud. Our experts investigate why we think and behave the way we do, and how we impact, and are shaped by, the people, culture, and society surrounding us.
Love, Law, and LGBTQIA +
Investigating the fraying rights of diverse families
By Melissa Hanson
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the Parental Rights in Education bill, described by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, people immediately wondered what effect the legislation would have on youth and teachers.
Psychology Professor Abbie Goldberg, however, wanted to learn how the law — which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity before the fourth grade — was impacting LGBTQIA+ parents. She interviewed 113 LGBTQIA+ parents in Florida following the bill’s passage and discovered that 56% were considering relocating out of the state, 21% were less “out” in their communities, and nearly 25% feared harassment by neighbors because of their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.
“The bill affects children’s ability to talk openly about their families and potentially complete assignments about their families, like writing about their family vacation with two moms or two dads,” Goldberg says. “Some of my participants pointed out that the naming of the bill, Parental Rights in Education, refers to certain parents’ rights. They asked, ‘What about our rights?’ ”
Goldberg, the author of four books and co-editor of five, has spent her career researching, writing, and teaching classes about diverse families, including LGBTQIA+ parent families and adoptive-parent families, as well as the experiences of marginalized groups such as transgender youth. She’s driven by curiosity and a desire
to uncover stories and perspectives that are often untold. Decentering what many people define as the “normal” family, sexuality, or gender is a main theme of her work.
“We know that when people feel like they can’t be their full selves and they cannot be ‘out,’ it harms their mental health,” Goldberg says. “Nobody likes to feel that they’re hiding or are unable to share parts of themselves for fear of negative treatment.”
That fear existed among the Florida families. Of the parents with LGBTQIA+ children, 13% said that their children were worried about living in the state. Goldberg’s research, conducted with the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, was the first to examine the impact of the bill.
“Folks who I respect see this as part of a concerted effort designed to win elections, appealing to a particular group of people who vote in a particular way, and not really about LGBTQIA+ issues,” Goldberg says of the law. “It’s not about trans children, for example, but it is a way of capitalizing on people’s ignorance and fears.” She expects long-term fallout from the legislation.
More broadly, Goldberg has been conducting a longitudinal study of adoptive parenthood among lesbian, gay, and heterosexual couples for nearly two decades and has interviewed the teenagers in those families about their experiences.
Nobody likes to feel that they’re hiding.
–Abbie Goldberg “/”
The Language(s) of Learning
Which practices work best for bilingual schoolchildren?
By Meredith Woodward King
English language learners (ELLs) comprise over 10 percent of the nation’s public schoolchildren, traditionally receiving in- or out-of-classroom support in English-only schools. A smaller but growing percentage attend bilingual schools, alternately learning in English and their native language — most commonly Spanish in the United States.
“We tend to see two recommendations in public schools: Either you’re completely separating the languages or you’re using all the languages available for the student,” says Professor Alena Esposito, a developmental psychologist, expert on bilingual education, and former kindergarten teacher. “Neither recommendation has empirical support beyond a few case studies.”
Historical guidelines for bilingual education in the U.S. are based on English/French dual-language programs
in Québec. “Our population of students in bilingual education in the U.S. is very different from the students they are typically teaching,” Esposito notes.
Now, in a first-of-its-kind longitudinal study funded by the National Science Foundation, Esposito and her colleagues will examine — and more importantly, measure — which language practices are associated with the best student outcomes in racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse bilingual schools in the U.S.
The researchers especially want to know the effectiveness of teachers adopting flexible “translanguaging or bridging” practices, where they might use two or more languages “to help make sure that the content is understood by students,” she says.
In Esposito’s experience of teaching in bilingual
“/”
When the fire alarm rang, we needed to communicate with children in a language they understood.
Cuando sonó la alarma de incendio, necesitábamos comunicarnos con los niños en un idioma que entendieran.
–Alena Esposito
carnosconlos
niños enunidioma que e ntendieran.
schools, “when the fire alarm rang, we needed to communicate with children in a language they understood and not worry about what language they were taking,” she says. “And that raises the question: Is using only one language at a time, and never bending that rule, advantageous for children?”
Esposito is partnering with co-principal investigator Jennifer Coffman, a developmental psychologist and director of the Child and Family Resource Center at North Carolina State University, Greensboro. University of Massachusetts Lowell psychologist Joseph Gonzales will assist with quantifying data.
The five-year study focuses on cohorts of “emerging bilinguals” or “emerging multilinguals” from kindergarten through fourth grade. Their schools include both bilingual education and “sheltered English immersion”
(SEI) programs — where ELL instruction is offered to students in a classroom (“pull in” support) or students receive ELL support outside of class (“pull out”).
An expert in methodology for classroom observations, Coffman will teach Esposito and her student researchers how to “code” each 30-second interaction between teachers and students so the taped communications can be more easily measured and analyzed.
Coupled with the school’s regular assessments, the researchers hope to better understand the connections between teachers’ language practices and students’ cognitive development.
“Our goal is to find out what those teachers are doing and use that as the basis for empirical work,” she says, “so that policies and practices are based on actual evidence.”
The Elusive Art of Masculinity
Like the culture, men are evolving
By Jim Keogh
“Be a man.”
It’s an admonition that historically has had one meaning: Toughen up. And men have heard it all the way back to boyhood.
In his research of men’s mental health, Psychology Professor Michael Addis notes the deepening recognition that being a man is a far more complex and nuanced construct. The author of the book Invisible Men: Men’s Inner Lives and the Consequences of Silence notes that the understanding of, and expectations for, men are evolving alongside shifting cultural and societal norms.
Addis questions the popular notion that men are losing ground in the modern world — that they are in crisis.
“I think that’s a very broad statement that partly comes out of fear of change and resistance to change,” he says. “Traditional gender roles for men, in this country and around the world, are shifting. Some might call that a crisis if they feel like it’s a bad change; some might call it an opportunity — it depends on where you’re coming from. I see young men really engaging in all new ways of being in the world.”
“Toxic masculinity” is a term that evolved in popular culture but has not proven useful in scientific research, Addis says. “One of the problems is that the term itself assumes that there’s a toxic version of masculinity and
a nontoxic version — and that all we’ve got to do is get rid of the toxic version and the so-called positive side of masculinity will be allowed to thrive.
“That may come from a place of wanting to highlight some of the good things men can do, not only the problematic things. But how about we just let go of the idea of masculinity per se; the idea that says men are supposed to perform and behave and feel and think a certain way because of their gender?
“There’s a whole range of positive experiences for men related to emotional awareness, intimacy, and connections with other people. All these things are helped by letting go of the pressure to be a certain way because of your gender.”
Addis brings his expertise into the classroom in such classes as Psychology of Men and Psychology of Music, which typically fill up quickly. The themes of both courses interconnect, he notes, because music is a common avenue for men to experience and express emotional truths.
“Men will talk about how music makes them feel, what they listen to based on how they’re feeling,” he says, “and specific songs that were crucial for them at critical moments in their lives. Music is one of the few social contexts in this country where men are allowed to express raw vulnerability.”
On the Front Line
In 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a rare advisory, warning that young people are facing “devastating” mental health effects from the challenges experienced by their generation. His declaration delivered a blunt and chilling message: Our kids are in crisis.
To help confront this singular challenge, Clark’s Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise directs its intellectual resources toward creating immersive, technologyassisted approaches that effectively treat behavioral health issues among adolescents and young adults, with a special emphasis on young men of color.
Central to those efforts is the institute’s MI PEACE app, which gives school counselors a platform to create and collaborate on plans to coordinate care, facilitate wraparound services, and monitor student mental health progress. The app also provides counselors and approved administrators data regarding mental health screening results and highlights students’ strengths and stressors.
The app is but one of the evidencebased services, tools, and technologies developed by the Mosakowski Institute under the leadership of Director Nadia Ward. The institute also incorporates a social development curriculum and sensory immersion room into its continuing efforts to address the emotional, academic, and mental health needs of young people … and keep a crisis at bay.
From Freud to Family Therapy
A history of psychological innovation
By Jim Keogh
Ever since eminent psychologist G. Stanley Hall took the helm as its first president in 1887, Clark University has been renowned for its pioneering research into the workings of the human mind. Through the Psychology Department, one of its flagship programs, early Clark psychologists underpinned prominent advances in the field, and urged academics and practitioners to consider fresh, sometimes daring, approaches to the investigation and healing of the mind, some of which persist to this day.
Here are six historical facts you may not have known.
Tweens and teens
G. Stanley Hall coined the term “adolescence” and made the case for treating this vulnerable life stage as separate and distinct from all others — a radical notion for the time. Hall, the founder of the American Psychological Association, “provided a basis for dealing with adolescents as neither children nor adults but as distinctive, beautiful, dangerous creatures,” wrote Thomas Hines, author of The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager.
An amazing invention
The American Psychological Association credits Clark with being the birthplace of the rat maze as a research tool. In 1900, Willard Small, a graduate student for Professor Edmund Sanford, developed the contraption modeled on the hedge maze at Hampton Court Palace in England to observe how rodents behave when presented with various rewards and obstacles, tracing commonalities with human behavior. Seventy years later, Hollywood made a horror movie, appropriately titled Willard, about a young man who commands an army of rats.
Inside a child’s mind
With his Ph.D. in hand, Arnold Gesell left Clark in 1906 and went on to shape the field of child development, influencing generations of parents in raising their children. Gesell introduced radically different and effective research methods — like the use of film to record child behavior — in his drive to understand and elucidate the stages of development, inform public policy around special education, and reform the longstanding approaches to medical pediatrics. He set the path for future well-known practitioners in this field, including child-care expert Dr. Benjamin Spock.
Freud pays a visit
In 1909, G. Stanley Hall brought to campus Sigmund Freud, then a largely unknown Austrian psychologist, as part of a series of conferences held in observance of Clark’s 20th anniversary. It would be Freud’s only trip to America, and his lectures on psychoanalysis were the only ones he delivered outside of Europe. (Also on the dais for the Clark conference: Carl Jung.) His work would go on to influence the trajectory of psychology and Western culture. Today, a statue of Freud sits at the center of Clark’s campus — a testament to his historic visit.
The Father of Black Psychology
In 1920, Francis Sumner earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Clark, becoming the first Black person in the U.S. to earn a doctorate in that field. Known as “The Father of Black Psychology,” Sumner went on to found the Department of Psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and served as chair from 1930 until 1954. Among his students was Kenneth B. Clark, who would later become the first Black president of the American Psychological Association and an influential figure in the Civil Rights movement.
All in the family
Professor John Bell pioneered, and proselytized for, the practice of family group therapy to promote intergenerational understanding, foster emotional healing, and bring familial peace. His first monograph, Family Group Therapy, was published in 1961 and set the blueprint for the rest of his career, in which he shared the lessons of unlocking complicated family dynamics across the world.
G. Stanley Hall
John E. Bell
Front row: Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, and Carl Jung gather at Clark in 1909.
Francis Sumner
Photos courtesy of Clark Archives and Special Collections
Section 3
The Art of Humanity
Considering fresh approaches to traditional literature, language, and the arts, Clark scholars explore questions rooted in today’s complex and challenging world. Their work reflects the urgency and relevancy of modern humanities, and how humanities and the arts help us to respond and adapt, embrace and transform, resist falsity and seek truth.
The Fourth is with Him
Musicologist recovers the legacy of 19th-century composer Anton Bruckner
By Meredith Woodward King
As one of the world’s foremost authorities on the important but often-overlooked 19thcentury Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, musicologist Benjamin Korstvedt has traveled far and wide during this celebratory “Bruckner Year.”
Throughout 2024, as Bruckner fans and scholars gathered in Austria and other countries, Clark’s Jeppson Professor of Music has been called upon to share his expertise in lectures (including keynote addresses at two conferences), exhibits, and festivals marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth on September 4, 1824, in a village near the city of Linz, on the Danube River.
Bruckner has not always been so widely recognized or admired, according to Korstvedt, the longtime president of the Bruckner Society of America. In his keynote address for an international conference held by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, he outlined the roles played by contradictory images of the composer, who “left few personal accounts of himself.” What is known of Bruckner, Korstvedt says, comes mostly from secondhand accounts “ranging from sarcastic to sympathetic.”
Over the years, depictions of Bruckner have been marked by dissonance, often with distinct political resonance. The composer has been seen as a misunderstood genius, a Catholic mystic, even a dangerous musical radical, according to Korstvedt. Austria’s 19th-century cultured elite generally regarded Bruckner as a “bumbling, rustic character from out in the provinces who was unsophisticated,
socially as well as musically,” who could never truly fit into the urbane social world of Vienna.
Throughout his life, Bruckner struggled to secure performances of his symphonies, Korstvedt notes. But two decades after his death in 1896, during the rapid social and cultural changes of the Jazz Age, Bruckner was embraced as perhaps the last composer in the great tradition of the symphony that marked many legendary composers’ careers.
“Every characterization of Bruckner emerges in a specific time and place — and is always shaped by the cultural tendencies and sociopolitical pressure of the moment,” he explains.
Most infamously, Bruckner’s image and his music were exploited in the 1930s with the rise of Adolf Hitler, who had been born outside Linz near the German border. The Nazi movement claimed the composer as a fellow German, symbolically annexing him just as they would soon politically and militarily annex the nation of Austria.
“Hitler took a great interest in Bruckner’s music, and Bruckner came to be used as a symbol of German nationalism,” Korstvedt says. “Bruckner was heavily appropriated as a symbol not only of German art and music but also of the supposed spiritual unity of Germany and Austria.” This effort culminated in 1937 with a ceremony at the Walhalla temple, a Germanic “hall of fame” in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, at which Hitler celebrated the installation of the composer into that pantheon.
Critical fallout against Bruckner lasted until the 1950s and ’60s, according to Korstvedt. By then, the popularity of high-fidelity audio and LP recordings was bringing new appreciation for the intense symphonies of Bruckner and his younger friend, Gustav Mahler. At that time, his music was embraced by a new generation that valued his grand sonic visions and the expressive depth of his music.
“Their music was, and is, a favorite of people who are audiophiles. It’s good music to enjoy in stereo,” Korstvedt says. The musicologist’s authoritative notes accompany SOMM Recordings’ release of Bruckner from the Archives, a six-double-CD-volume series celebrating the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth.
This fall, Oxford University Press is publishing Korstvedt’s third book, Bruckner’s Fourth: The Biography of a Symphony. It’s the culmination of his research into a musical work that perhaps best defines what scholars call “the Bruckner Problem.”
For years, musicologists have disputed the authenticity of various versions of Bruckner’s works, including his Fourth Symphony. During his lifetime, most of Bruckner’s symphonies were published with his approval, but in the 1930s scholars advanced the argument that these publications had been heavily edited by his friends and students, supposedly without
the composer’s approval or even awareness, according to Korstvedt. As a result, modern editors decided to publish only the “original” versions of his symphonies, even though many of these had not been published during the composer’s lifetime.
Deep into his doctoral research in the 1990s, Korstvedt became aware of “striking contradictions” in the historical evidence pertaining to Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony. The version of the Fourth published during Bruckner’s lifetime, the musicologist says, “was commonly believed to have been mutilated by editors and possibly even produced without his awareness or agreement.”
This interpretation first emerged within Nazi Germany, which added to Korstvedt’s suspicions.
“The more I delved into it, the clearer it became to me that much of that scholarly work was strongly shaped by the ideological context” of Nazi Germany, he says. He began to see that “the facts told a much different story.”
Korstvedt traveled to Austria to examine a set of archival photographs of a crucial but long overlooked document from the symphony’s compositional process: a copy of the score prepared by Ferdinand Löwe, a former student of Bruckner’s who later became a leading conductor.
Bruckner was heavily appropriated as a symbol of the supposed unity of Germany and Austria.
–Benjamin Korstvedt
His research convinced him that this version of the Fourth was not a corruption of Bruckner’s wishes, as was commonly believed, but rather a clear expression of his final intentions. The photographs reveal that “Bruckner had worked over the score closely and made many of the most important changes,” Korstvedt explains. “He was totally involved in the process.”
His revelation made waves among other Bruckner scholars. “There was quite a bit of resistance to it,” Korstvedt recalls, “and this persists in some circles.”
Yet his argument did win over a key player: the managing editor of the Bruckner Collected Works, the late Herbert Vogg. In 2001, he asked Korstvedt to prepare a new critical edition of this version of the Fourth Symphony, which now has been performed across the world, fostering fresh insights into the composer’s musical thinking and creative process.
In 2012, Korstvedt was invited to unravel the mysteries surrounding the other versions of the Fourth and to produce new critical editions of them for the New Anton Bruckner Critical Edition. The first volume appeared in 2019 and received the Claude V. Palisca Award from the American Musicological Society as the outstanding scholarly edition of the year. The second volume, which will appear in print in 2025, has already been performed and recorded during the Bruckner Year.
Korstvedt’s great journey through Austria for the Bruckner Year is winding down. But instead of a coda, there is another movement, with the musicologist embarking on a comparative study of the changing images of Bruckner and Mahler as they evolved amid 20th-century political and cultural upheavals in Austria and the United States.
Anton Bruckner, c. 1885 by H. Kaulbach
Food Lit
Queer-food author serves up a theory worth chewing on
By Jim Keogh
When English Professor Elizabeth Blake opened
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, she was captivated by more than the recipes. Published in 1954, after the death of Toklas’ partner, Gertrude Stein, the cookbook is a hybrid document. The book’s pages are rife with gossip and stories about artists in modernist Paris, but it is also a serious literary and theoretical investigation into the power of food, the value of art, and queer life. Blake spent a decade researching the intersection of queer theory, modernist studies, and food studies after finding inspiration in Toklas’ recipes and stories. Her book, Edible Arrangements: Modernism’s Queer Forms, is the first scholarly monograph to combine the three fields.
“I think about the way structures of nutrition and structures of heteronormativity mimic each other — we’re taught that we’re supposed to eat certain things at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all of which are culturally specific,” Blake says. “Similarly,” she adds, “our understanding of how sexuality operates is culturally specific and prescribed. I’m interested in the way modernist writers think about transgression in terms
of eating, which invites us to think about transgression in terms of sexuality.”
In Edible Arrangements, Blake explores the way modernist writing about eating delves into larger questions about bodily and literary pleasure. Drawing on insights from the field of food studies, she makes dual interventions into queer theory and modernist studies: first, locating an embrace of queerness within modernist depictions of the pleasure of eating, and second, showing how this queer consumption shapes modernist notions of literary form, expanding and reshaping conventional genres.
Each chapter presents a set of seemingly disparate writers working in related modes — such as the satirical writings of Richard Bruce Nugent, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield — in order to demonstrate how writing about eating can both unsettle the norms of bodily pleasure and those of genre itself. While Toklas’ cookbook isn’t discussed within Edible Arrangements, Blake’s book turns a scholarly gaze on its preoccupations in order to reveal new ways of thinking about queer life, literature, and the pleasure of eating.
Yak and Hack
Digital humanities expert explores tech’s pluses and pitfalls
By Meredith Woodward King
Professor Eduard
Arriaga-Arango’s path to digital humanities began as a doctoral student in Canada researching cultural transmission in diverse cultures, along with migration. He discovered “the power of computation” to dive deep into data, quickly compile information, and identify patterns.
“/”
How is technology improving humanity, and possibly decreasing the importance of humanity?
–Eduard Arriaga-Arango
Two decades later, Arriaga is now recognized as an expert in digital humanities, studying how language, literature, culture, and technology collide and intersect.
“Within digital humanities, we use computers and digital technology to explore questions in the humanities, and we also question technology,” says the chair of Clark’s Department of Language, Literature, and Culture. “We ask, ‘How is technology improving humanity, and how is it possibly decreasing the importance of humanity?’
“We started to use those tools not to replace what we do in the humanities but to look at humanities questions from other perspectives.”
Arriaga characterizes the differences between traditional and digital humanities as “yak and hack — a popular trope in the digital humanities.”
“The ‘yak’ is the theoretical approach that we in the humanities usually take, discussing everything and being philosophical,” he explains. “But in the digital humanities, we bring out the ‘hack.’ We want people not only to speak but also to create things, to use those creations to think and then speak.”
Those creations might include a visualization (a graphical representation of data and information), model, web page, or database. When studying a novel, for instance, a researcher could use data mining to see historical and literary contexts and “patterns” by speedily uncovering other works published at the same time, Arriaga suggests.
“You definitely can conduct research with a pen and paper, but how long would it take for you to reach any conclusions?” he asks.
In his research, Arriaga uses both a yak and hack approach. Applying digital humanities methods, he is investigating the connections between data mining — a process through which corporations and governments appropriate humans’ intellectual and creative work — and the extraction of minerals from the earth.
“Mining, the physical activity of extracting value from the earth, is connected, metaphorically and concretely, with data mining, which is extracting value from data produced by humans,” Arriaga says.
Meanwhile, his research on Afro-Latinx and Afro-Latin American cultures and identities explores the social, political, and ethical questions surrounding technology.
His upcoming book, Arriaga says, “examines the way AfroBrazilian marginal communities challenge the so-called ‘algorithmic determinism’ through hybrid and communal digital practices in search of data and social justice.”
And that’s a lot of data to hack through.
From Othello to ‘Other’
In search of the inclusive Shakespeare
By Melissa Lynch
Growing up in Southeast Texas, Justin Shaw never saw a Shakespeare play performed. As much as he hoped to be inspired, the Bard simply didn’t feel relevant.
“As a young Black guy in Texas, reading about some despondent white prince whining about stuff and never doing anything about it wasn’t a good entry point,” he laughs.
At Morehouse College, Shaw studied in London, took classes in Shakespeare, watched live performances — and discovered his missing inspiration.
“As far as I tried to run away from him,” he recalls, “I kept running back to Shakespeare. And I kept finding myself in Shakespeare.”
Shaw is still running back to the playwright, unearthing prescient lessons about contemporary political tumult, social struggles, and class conflicts embedded in stage pieces written 400 years ago.
As Clark’s resident Shakespeare scholar, he helps his students perceive why the Bard continues to move audiences to tears, to laughter, to deeper understandings of human motivation — but also why his words still matter since he last put quill pen to paper in 1610.
“/”
Some characters in Shakespeare are trying to exist and thrive in an oppressive world. “Othello is a respectable Black man who just wants a seat at the table,” Shaw says, “while Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus wants to destroy the table.” In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is “the other” because he is a Jew.
Shaw is a co-editor of the 2024 book Inclusive Shakespeares: Identity, Pedagogy, Performance, a collection of essays on making Shakespeare studies more inclusive for students, teachers, performers, and audiences who have occupied a historically marginalized position in relation to his poetry and plays.
It’s a philosophy Shaw applies to his own teaching. He invites his students not just to read Shakespeare, but “to do Shakespeare” and to see themselves in the plays.
Othello is a respectable Black man who just wants a seat at the table.
–Justin Shaw
“I see real-life people’s situations reflected in Shakespeare,” Shaw says. The playwright is not the beall and end-all of literature studies, but “he provides a helpful lens through wh ich we can read the world.”
Shaw’s research interests lie in how Early Modern/ Renaissance dramatists and poets use “the language of melancholy” in areas of race or otherness.
“It’s not just feeling down or anxious,” he explains. “It’s power versus powerlessness. It’s the feeling of living in the world as a person who is queer, or who is ‘othered’ in some way, or, in different points in history, as a woman. It’s the feeling of living in the U.S. right now, especially in certain states, where there is anxiety about moving through life. It’s being Black in a world where you don’t know how a police encounter will end for you.”
“There are so many characters, so many scenarios we can find ourselves in, with plots that represent very real situations,” Shaw says. “I want them to see and feel the importance. There are important issues in Shakespeare, as there are in a lot of texts, that we should be dealing with head-on.”
In his most advanced Shakespeare course, Shakespeare in Black and White, Shaw stresses the importance of the playwright by “decentering” the plays. He starts by exploring race in two tragedies, Othello and Hamlet, which helps students develop a method for seeing obvious — “and not so obvious” — racism in the texts. He then moves on to modern plays, all by writers of color, that are adaptations of Shakespeare.
“We use Shakespeare to read culture, to read life, and then use these other modern dramas to bridge the gap.”
As an assignment, Shaw asks his students to write sonnets about topics that interest, challenge, or move them. “I love seeing them work through very personal and important issues through Shakespearean form and content.
“That’s what Shakespeare did.”
Photo by Steven King
Section 4
Secrets from the Soil
By studying the humblest of organisms found on the surface of the earth or deep underground, Clark scientists achieve a more expansive understanding of the evolution of life on our planet, the health and vitality of critical ecosystems, and approaches for improving the lives of humans.
Sex and Death. A Love Story.
Evolutionary biologist studies the mating rituals of dung beetles
By Meredith Woodward King
“/”
A lot of biology is about sex and death. That’s really what matters.
–Erin McCullough
Photo by Steven King
On a dairy farm in Massachusetts, a dramatic courtship plays out among dung beetles in underground tunnels.
Armed with a pair of devil-like horns, a male Onthophagus taurus stands guard in a tunnel leading to the female with whom he’s just mated. Bowing his horned head like a shield, he blocks any other male from access.
What happens next is an insect version of the famous blues song about the philandering Back Door Man. While the horned male diligently protects his turf, a smaller, horn-less male — possessing big testes full of sperm — sneaks in through a side tunnel and meets up with the female.
For Biology Professor Erin McCullough, the mating rituals of dung beetles are not only fascinating, they also can provide a window into understanding how climate change might affect biodiversity.
Native to the Mediterranean but accidentally introduced to Florida in the 1970s, the range of Onthophagus taurus — a “tunneling” dung beetle — has expanded steadily northward across the United States to Massachusetts.
“Because of climate change, we have species expansion,” the evolutionary biologist says. “But there’s still a lot to learn about why some species are expanding, and why some species are not.
“Understanding how sexual selection plays a role in all of this is not well documented.”
McCullough first began researching Onthophagus taurus during her postdoctoral research at the University of Western Australia. The dung beetle is not only the world’s strongest insect but also the strongest animal; a male Onthophagus taurus can pull over 1,000 times his own body weight — the equivalent of a human pulling six doubledecker buses full of people, according to one study.
Part of the Scarabaeidae family, whose members are commonly known as scarabs, dung beetles have been celebrated as “nature’s pooper scoopers.” Depending on the species, they eat manure as adults or larvae. Many — like the Onthophagus taurus and tuberculifrons that McCullough captured at farms in Massachusetts and
Connecticut — favor dung from herbivores like cows and horses. But some — like Onthophagus hecate, orpheus, and striatulus, all of which she collected from traps set in Clark’s Hadwen Arboretum — dine on dog feces.
Dung beetles fall into three categories — rollers, which form dung into balls; dwellers, which live in manure; and tunnelers, which dig underneath a dung pad to lay their eggs. The genus Onthophagus is a large and diverse group of tunnelers, with more than 2,400 described species, the most of any genus in the animal kingdom.
“They bring balls of dung down into their tunnels and construct what we call a brood ball,” McCullough explains. “The baby beetle feeds on the brood ball and then emerges from the tunnel as an adult.”
In Australia, native dung beetles could not be relied upon to eat cattle manure — they preferred marsupial feces instead — so farmers introduced the tunneling Onthophagus taurus to attack the cow pies and curb flies.
Although the dung beetles successfully cleaned up farmers’ fields, “this introduced species is outcompeting native species, and it’s disrupting the ecological balance,” McCullough says.
In Massachusetts, she is studying whether Onthophagus taurus’ expansion has affected native dung beetles. And she is examining whether taurus has changed its sexual selection traits and tactics as it has expanded.
Often accompanied by undergraduate student researchers, McCullough is gathering dung beetles in the wild — recently receiving funding to collect beetles in Connecticut, North Carolina, and Florida — and bringing them back to the lab to observe their fighting and mating.
“Why in some populations is the introduced species the most abundant? And why in other populations is it not?” McCullough wonders. “I think that patterns of sexual selection may help explain some of these differences.
“A lot of biology is about sex and death,” she adds. “That’s really what matters.”
What Will We Eat in 2050?
The
race is on to create an
enduring global food source
By Melissa Hanson
Biology Professor Chandra Jack knows the clock is ticking.
Scientists and policymakers fear that by 2050, the world won’t be able to produce enough food to support its population. We need sustainable solutions, and Jack is quite literally digging for them.
Jack studies plant microbe interactions, examining how microbes influence traits such as when a plant flowers or whether it can compete against neighboring vegetation, and applies that knowledge to benefit society through sustainable agriculture.
”Even if we can feed the world now, in 20 years we won‘t be able to unless we make some significant changes,” Jack says. By studying how microbe interactions affect plant traits, Jack hopes to contribute to the development of new, more sustainable ways to increase food production.
The forthcoming food crisis dates to the 1950s, when synthetic fertilizers were a major technological advance and, along with the development of new crops, allowed farmers to produce significantly more food.
Since then, researchers have discovered that synthetic fertilizers are environmentally and economically costly, according to Jack. Such fertilizers must be applied to fields over and over, and the pollution that comes from that constant application impacts the runoff of soil and water.
“/”
“Imagine you’re a plant. You have a set bucket of resources, and your resources can go toward growth or survival,” Jack propositions. “Now imagine that you are in an environment where you’re facing significant heat waves and there’s limited water. Your resources have to be allocated to survival rather than to significant growth. If that’s the case, you’re producing less food.”
Jack says it’s going to take generations for plants to adapt to climate change. Tiny microbes, however, can multiply quickly and adapt more nimbly.
At her field sites in Washington’s Palouse region, where wheat farming is common, Jack sees the negative effects of synthetic fertilizers. The soil there is not yet conducive to microbes — it has a pH of 4 compared to a neutral soil’s pH of 7, Jack says.
Even if we can feed the world now, in 20 years we won’t be able to unless we make significant changes.”
–Chandra Jack
This is where microbe research comes into play. Jack wants to understand how to make healthier soil to benefit people and the planet.
“Researchers want to use microbes to replace synthetic fertilizers,” Jack says. “We know what they can do in the lab. We don’t know what they can do in the wild or the field.”
Although they cannot be seen with the naked eye, microbes, like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa, interact and play a significant role in breaking down organic matter and cycling nutrients. These microbial interactions can improve or, in some cases, impair the health and growth of plants.
She compares the Palouse soil to that of other agricultural sites and sees how wheat responds to each. Understanding the properties of the soil will reveal how to make the healthiest environment for plants.
Jack also determines how many different types of nitrogen “fixers” are in the soil samples. Nitrogenfixing bacteria are microorganisms capable of transforming atmospheric nitrogen into fixed nitrogen — turning it into a component found in chlorophyll, which plants need for photosynthesis.
Legumes have a close, symbiotic relationship with microbes, according to Jack. Cereal crops such as wheat and barley do not. However, Jack is examining whether “free-living nitrogen fixers” — bacteria present in the surrounding soil — could have a tighter association with cereal crops so that nitrogen can be applied to those plants without the need for fertilizers.
Jack’s research is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Squirmy Medicine
Will robot worms heal what ails you?
By Jim Keogh
Photo by Steven King
Some people look at worms and see fish bait.
Arshad Kudrolli sees the future.
The physics professor oversees experiments detailing how California blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) move through sediments and water-filled containers of various shapes and strictures.
The research is expected to one day inform the development of “soft robots” that could worm their way through digestive tracts and other complex “terrains” within the human body. They might assist with the diagnoses of illness, the delivery of medicines and other treatments, and the development of more efficient surgical techniques.
Observing the biolocomotion patterns of worms is central to Kudrolli’s research, which lies at the nexus of biology, physics, and technology. With a core of student researchers, “we are trying to understand how organisms and robots move through media which are not quite liquid or solid,” Kudrolli said when the experimentation began several years ago. In his lab, conditions have been created to approximate sand and water, clay, sludge, and even fluids in the human body, which he describes as “a giant hydrogel.”
The most recent round of experiments, led by Ph.D. candidate Sohum Kapadia, entails the movements of worms through water to observe the creatures’ behavior when they are met with an obstruction to their forward progress, such as a 90-degree corner in a square tank. Sohun and sophomore Simon Bissitt have been observing the mechanics of both individual worms and groups of worms as they respond to an array of conditions.
Also in Kudrolli’s lab, senior Lily Carey experiments with magneto-elastic robots that emulate wormmovement patterns. An oscillating magnetic field generated by a Helmholtz coil — a device that creates a nearly uniform magnetic field — allows the robots to burrow, swim, or crawl through polystyrene beads. Students record the variables that contribute to the worms’ forward propulsion.
Kudrolli recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation for the development of soft robots that could one day be a cornerstone in the ways that emerging technologies influence biomedical science.
California blackworms cluster during an experiment in Arshad Kudrolli’s physics lab.
“The development of soft robots that can navigate through complex terrains to mine resources, and actuated devices that transport granular medium, requires a physical understanding of the interactions of oscillating, thin, elastic bodies with particulates immersed in a fluid,” Kudrolli explains in his NSF proposal.
“A set of prototypes will be constructed with elastic materials embedded with magnetic particles that can be oscillated with controlled external fields and can be observed inside opaque medium. ... [T]he elastic forces of the body, and the external fields, will be developed, guided by experimental observations of the shape and velocity of the robots.”
The work will “result in a deep understanding of biolocomotion and soft robot design in sediment beds” and perhaps, someday, within the landscape of the human body, according to Kudrolli.
The project will enable the year-round research training of undergraduate students as well as capstone courses that will assist in their pursuit of STEM careers.
A community-education component is also connected to the NSF grant: Clark undergraduate and graduate students in Kudrolli’s lab will participate in activities — creating educational toys that explore the physics of burrowers — to expand K-12 students’ and even adults’ knowledge and appreciation of this forward-thinking research.
The Mysteries of the Mushroom
Clark mycologists piece together a genetic puzzle
By Melissa Hanson
“Zombie-ant
fungi do not reanimate ant corpses.”
It’s the answer to a question that mycologist David Hibbett likely thought he’d never be asked. But during a Q&A session hosted and filmed by WIRED magazine inside a Manhattan studio, Hibbett took it in stride, reassuring the world that the parasitic fungus that infects and kills other organisms does not, in fact, create an army of living-dead insects.
He also championed fungi as potential allies in the fight against environmental pollutants, revealed the hidden ways in which mushrooms communicate with one another, and extolled the joys of foraging in all manner of landscapes.
Hibbett, the Andrea B. and Peter D. Klein Distinguished Professor of Biology, has found himself part of a cultural phenomenon centered on the public’s fascination with all things fungal, expressed in everything from pillow designs to the postapocalyptic HBO miniseries The Last of Us.
While mushrooms are having a moment, so too is Hibbett, as he explores the secrets of the world’s fungi. He regularly takes students up the Ipswich River in Massachusetts, where the riverbed is the classroom, an innovative mushroom is the teacher, and evolution is the lesson. The project is supported by a National Science Foundation grant for which fellow Biology Professor Javier Tabima Restrepo is the co-principal investigator.
Photo by Steven King
“/”
“/”
Mushrooms are a window to a secret world.
–David Hibbett
Hibbett, Tabima, and their students are examining the fungal genus Lentinus, which offers a stunning glimpse of evolution in action. The species Lentinus tigrinus, also known as the tiger sawgill, grows in a classic umbrella shape with gills that emit spores — typical of mushrooms. To researchers’ bemusement, it also grows in a puffballlike secotioid form, in which its gills are covered by a layer of tissue. These two forms are so distinct that they were once thought to be different species, but they’re capable of mating, and appear side by side throughout North America.
Lentinus tigrinus is a wood-decaying fungus that grows on trees such as willows, elms, and maples. It can be found on logs protruding from rivers. Hibbett and Tabima, a mycologist and evolutionary biologist who specializes in genomics and computational biology, are examining the genetic mechanism behind its two forms.
“We want to know how natural selection is working on those genes. There’s something called ‘balancing selection,’ a model of natural selection that promotes the occurrence of two different forms in a population,” Hibbett says. “We believe there may be some balancing selection going on here.”
The professors and their students have gone hunting for the species in Topsfield, Massachusetts, through a partnership with the Massachusetts Audubon Society. They hop into canoes and search for Lentinus at the society’s wildlife sanctuary.
The secotioid form of Lentinus tigrinus, which traps spores inside the fruiting body, is unusual because a mushroom’s function is to release spores, according to Hibbett.
Photo by Steven King
Though uncommon, this form protects the mushroom as it fruits along waterbodies.
“You can imagine that a mushroom that’s underwater is going to have really different spore-dispersal properties than one that is above water. Lentinus tigrinus somehow adapted to these fluctuating conditions. The mushroom could be submerged or could be high and dry,” he says. “It’s adapted to being a semiaquatic mushroom. It seems like it’s able to disperse its spores underwater or through the air.”
Hibbett and Tabima are collecting genome data, analyzing the section Tigrini (which contains L. tigrinus) to understand species limits and identifying the genetic region(s) responsible for the secotioid form.
Additionally, the team will assess whether the genetic regions responsible for the secotioid form are part of positive selection, in which beneficial traits appear more commonly in a population.
Over the summer, two of Hibbett’s students performed secotioid gene analysis on fungus samples from the Ipswich River and the Chicago River, as well as on preserved samples from the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, isolating the specimens’ DNA to obtain reproduction and population data.
The project should reveal valuable insights into the diversity of mushrooms and population genetics.
“Mushrooms are a window to a secret world because they are so fantastic,” Hibbett says. “They come in all these strange forms and magically appear, growing up from the ground or out of wood. They’re odd and beautiful things.”
138 Woodland Street
Worcester, MA 01610
clarku.edu/research
For centuries, farmers in Ethiopia have grown a mix of grains in their fields. Clark researcher Morgan Ruelle is investigating whether this age-old, climate-resilient agricultural practice can help combat world hunger. See page 16.
by Alex
Photo
McAlvay, New York Botanical Garden