Sciences at Clark vs. Wooster vs. Muhlenberg

[Mastadon]

Here is the data on research spending in the sciences as reported by the NSF

…Clark…Wooster
Total Sciences…5.2M…1.3M
Life Sciences…735K…319K
Physical Sciences…691K…407K
Physics…242K…138K
Environmental Sci…1.6M…153K
Social Science…1.6M…68K

Muhlenburg had no reported research spending.

Clark has an interesting history in that it started out as the first graduate only school in America and then added a small undergraduate college.

Most other schools have grown in the opposite direction. Clark was one of the founding members of the AAU - which is basically an academic research frat. The first American Nobel Prize winner in Physics was a professor at Clark.

Technically, it is classified as a research university, but I tend to think of it as a “Research LAC” with an MBA program. It has 2300 undergrads and about 1100 graduate students on a 50 acre campus in downtown Worcester, MA. Historically, the location has been a liability (relative to other Massachusetts colleges), but it has improved in recent years. The UMass Medical Center is in Worcester as well along with Holy Cross and WPI. Clark has a small masters and Phd program in physics, which suggests that it would have a larger selection of higher level courses than a school that does not, but you can verify that by looking at course listings.

Clark University, along with Stanford and Johns Hopkins, was one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, an organization of universities with the most prestigious profiles in research and graduate education, and was one of only three New England universities, along with Harvard and Yale, to be a founding member.[9] Clark withdrew its membership in 1999, citing a conflict with its mission; it is one of only four schools to do so.[10]

G. Stanley Hall was appointed the first president of Clark University in 1888. He had been a professor of psychology and pedagogy at Johns Hopkins University, which had been founded just a few years prior and was quickly becoming a model of the modern research university. Hall spent seven months in Europe visiting other universities and recruiting faculty. He became the founder of the American Psychological Association and earned the first Ph.D. in psychology in the United States at Harvard. Clark has played a prominent role in the development of psychology as a distinguished discipline in the United States ever since. Franz Boas, founder of American cultural anthropology and adviser for the first Ph.D. in anthropology, taught at Clark from 1888 until 1892 when he resigned in a dispute with President Hall over academic freedom and joined the faculty of Columbia University. Albert A. Michelson, the first American to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics, best known for his involvement in the Michelson–Morley experiment, which measured the speed of light, was a professor from 1889 to 1892 before becoming head of the physics department at the University of Chicago.

https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=report&fice=3037&id=h2
https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=report&fice=2139&id=h2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_University#cite_note-ChronGT-10