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.