In chemistry and biochemistry Professor Don Spratt’s lab, students make ice cream in the name of science.

Spratt’s Kitchen Chemistry course has become a popular selection for students who aren’t science majors. In the lab, students experiment with ingredients under Spratt’s guidance. While making butter, ice cream, root beer, and pickles, they discover how pH, elements, and molecules interact with food.

“This course was spawned from trying to help students not be so scared of chemistry, but also appreciate science around us and improve scientific literacy,” says Spratt. “Food is chemistry, and if students can see that, they’ll become better cooks, and that could be a good life lesson.”

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Spratt gives us a taste of the science behind making ultra-creamy ice cream and a history lesson on pickles. Outside the kitchen, Spratt studies enzymes responsible for cancers and other diseases, neurodegenerative and immune disorders, and congenital defects. His research focuses on the structural and mechanistic studies of the HECT E3 ubiquitin ligases and homeodomain transcription factors using biophysical approaches.

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.

Professor Julie Frechette, Clark’s master’s in communication program lead, has long studied campaign communication. This means her phone has been inundated with text messages, emails, and push alerts from the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump for months.

In the past, voters often complained about the number of negative political ads on television. Today, campaigns use social media platforms and podcasts to spread their message further, swamping voters on every corner of the internet.

“We have a fractured media market, so most of us aren't only paying attention to traditional or legacy media the way that we used to. Most of us have social media and email and SMS messaging, but that has become overwhelming in the same way that negative TV ads used to overwhelm people because it really creates anxiety,” says Frechette.

“When the campaign teams for either candidate are telling you how bleak things are or what their advantages are, it's like the pendulum's always moving side to side and you never know what's accurate or who's going to have the winning message.”

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Frechette discusses how Trump and Harris are using social media and how they’re persuading voters in the final hours before Election Day.

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.

English Professor Stephen Levin spent his summer with the turtles.

He traveled to Barbados and Trinidad to observe sea turtles and how they’ve become a focal point in tourism — a fellow tourist told Levin her motivation for visiting the turtles was “evidence of divinity.” It’s part of his latest research in the environmental humanities, which underscores the role that literature and the arts play in seeking solutions to problems such as climate change.

“One of the questions in the environmental humanities is how much has to disappear before we realize that we are at risk of disappearing,” says Levin. “There's a profound awareness watching these turtles that our fate is tied to theirs.”

On this episode, Levin discusses what it was like to watch six-foot-long turtles bury their eggs at the Grand Riviere beach in Trinidad, challenges the idea of human exceptionalism, and examines the costs and benefits of using charismatic creatures like lions, tigers, bears, and turtles to spread messages about the climate and environment.

“How do we understand the marketing of these turtles and their status as commodities with the attendant reality that the focus on this charismatic species has brought attention to conservation efforts and it appears to have created a reverence among the tourists who encounter and visit these turtles,” says Levin. “I think it's important to recognize the complexity.”

This research is part of Levin’s forthcoming book, “Figures of Disappearance: Selfhood in an Era of Mass Extinction,” which examines loss and absence in the era of the climate crisis.

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.

Poring through court records from the Salem Witch Trials, creative writing Professor Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez saw an opportunity to examine the violent language of the legal system and reframe the narrative. The court records became a starting point for Gutmann-Gonzalez’s retelling of the trials through original poetry. The poems were published in the chapbook “A/An” in January and Gutmann-Gonzalez is expanding the project into a forthcoming book titled “O/ccult.”

It's a deeply personal project for Gutmann-Gonzalez, whose mother is a witch. Rituals and manifestations were common practice during their childhood.

“The court examinations are fascinating, but also very disturbing. I gravitated toward certain idiosyncrasies in the language. For example, English spelling was not standardized at that point, so a lot of the words were spelled inconsistently,” says Gutmann-Gonzalez.

“I tried to both reproduce and magnify these effects in my poems,” they continue. “I was interested in the power dynamics between the witches, the magistrates, and the so-called afflicted girls, but I was also interested in the texture of the language and the way that the language of the law can be used in ways that reify power.”

“O/ccult” is divided into four sections — each of which corresponds with a tarot card. The sections include the Salem Witch Trials archival work, reflections of Gutmann-Gonzalez’s upbringing in Chile during the U.S.-backed military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, a polyphonic witch manifesto, and an exchange in which Gutmann-Gonzalez playfully takes the role of Salem judges and interrogates their mother about her experiences being a witch.

“I grew up around all of this witchiness,” says Gutmann-Gonzalez. “I'm trying to link the historical and archival with my family history.”

If you enjoyed this episode, check out "Witchcraft and Women in Colonial Society," an interview with Rachel Christ-Doane ’17 about Salem and the youngest victim of the trials, 4-year-old Dorothy Good.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. This episode contains music made by Brenna Moore '24, MSC '25. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Many people use life expectancy as the key metric for measuring global health. Ellen Foley and Tsitsi Masvawure know global health is much more nuanced and complicated. The two are co-editors of the new book “The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Global Health,” which reframes global health and asks how partnerships can become more equitable.

Foley is a professor in Clark’s Department of Sustainability and Social Justice. Masvawure is a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Both are medical anthropologists who study health in Africa and HIV. Their book explores the complex relationship between anthropology and global health. Throughout the volume, scholars from around the world examine topics including rare diseases, HIV, health security, indigenous communities, decolonizing global health, and more.

“There's been a huge movement to decolonize global health,” says Foley. “It should not be about wealthy Western or Northern countries coming to help and bringing money and expertise.

“Why should a researcher from Clark or WPI apply for a grant to get millions of dollars to go research in Senegal without somebody from Senegal sitting on the panel, evaluating the quality of that project,” Foley continues. “I think all the stakeholders should be at the table at every stage. The most involved folks should be weighing in on those decisions, which is not how global health has worked in the past.”

Masvawure notes that while many funding agencies think of health as levels of disease, global health includes upstream and downstream factors. This includes addressing factors like housing insecurity and food access to reduce levels of diabetes, for example.

“If we think of global health as the state of health in the world — all of us together — that should allow movement to take place in any direction,” she says. “If malaria is emerging in the U. S., for example, then let's connect with those countries that have been dealing with malaria forever to help shape the American response. That's one way we can start to make those partnerships equitable.”

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.

Haley Wilder ’18 is on part two of her Clark journey. After receiving her sociology degree, Wilder worked as a litigation paralegal at the firm Fletcher Tilton and as a faculty support specialist at Harvard Business School. That path steered her back to Clark. Today, Wilder is the University's director of board operations.

“I can look out my office window and see that the work that I'm doing is affecting the students walking on the green,” she says. “There's a direct impact.”

Wilder is also an assistant coach of the women’s basketball team and is pursuing a master’s in sports and esports administration. On this episode of Challenge. Change., Wilder discusses her passions for law and basketball and how working at her alma mater has shifted her perspective.

“I always say that I didn't choose Clark, Clark chose me,” she says. “It just felt like where I should be.”

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.

John Magee, a computer science professor and Clark’s interim provost and vice president of academic affairs, is interested in learning how systems can improve people’s lives.

“The neat thing about computer science is it's all about helping people solve problems or do things,” he says. “Sometimes those problems are in computing, but very often they're problems that face scientists in other fields.”

Magee works with user interface technologies that allow people with disabilities to communicate and participate in the world. This passion started when he was an undergraduate student assisting on a project that helps people use a computer mouse without the use of their hands. Instead of pointing and clicking with their finger, Magee can coordinate computer systems so that blinking, for example, controls a computer mouse click.

“That was the moment where I first really saw the human side of computing and the difference that it can make for people,” he 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.

Andrew Vietze ’91 took a leap of faith.

As an editor for Down East Magazine, he’d written extensively about Baxter State Park in Maine, chronicling rescues and the feat of climbing Mount Katahdin. After a while, Vietze couldn’t ignore his desires anymore. He wanted to do more than just write about Baxter, he wanted to become a part of it.

“It was terrifying, frankly, to walk away from a cushy job that was desired by lots of people not knowing how I would fare,” said Vietze, who majored in English and history at Clark. “I knew that I couldn't sit at a desk anymore and look out the window and live a 7-to-6 workday every day. I knew I wanted to be master of my own destiny.”

For the past 20 years, Vietze has worked as a park ranger in Baxter. He is the author of “This Wild Land: Two Decades of Adventure as a Park Ranger in the Shadow of Katahdin,” which chronicles his life and work as a ranger — from search-and-rescue missions to trail maintenance to cleaning toilets. His other titles include “White Pine,” “Becoming Teddy Roosevelt,” and “Boon Island.”

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.