Three people pose for photo at Athletic Awards banquet, 1982

Three people (including Hebert trophy winner Paul Saltzman) pose for photo at the Clark University Athletic Awards Banquet, 1982 All photographs in this collection were digitized between 2022 and 2023. The photographs in this collection are part of the Photographs and Media record group of Clark University’s Archives & Special Collections.https://commons.clarku.edu/athawardphotos/1002/thumbnail.jp

Coach Wally Halas talks to men\u27s basketball team during a game [3], circa 1984-1986

Photograph of Coach Wally Halas talking to his men\u27s basketball team during a game, circa 1984-1986 All photographs in this collection were digitized between 2022 and 2023. The photographs in this collection are part of the Photographs and Media record group of Clark University’s Archives & Special Collections.https://commons.clarku.edu/basketball/1026/thumbnail.jp

Towards more effective nature-based climate solutions in global forests

Terrestrial ecosystems could contribute to climate mitigation through nature-based climate solutions (NbCS), which aim to reduce ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions and/or increase ecosystem carbon storage. Forests have the largest potential for NbCS, aligned with broader sustainability benefits, but—unfortunately—a broad body of literature has revealed widespread problems in forest NbCS projects and protocols that undermine the climate mitigation of forest carbon credits and hamper efforts to reach global net zero. Therefore, there is a need to bring better science and policy to improve NbCS climate mitigation outcomes going forward. Here we synthesize challenges to crediting forest NbCS and offer guidance and key next steps to make improvements in the implementation of these strategies immediately and in the near-term. We structure our Perspective around four key components of rigorous forest NbCS, illuminating key science and policy considerations and providing solutions to improve rigour. Finally, we outline a ‘contribution approach’ to support rigorous forest NbCS that is an alternative funding mechanism that disallows compensation or offsetting claims. © Springer Nature Limited 2025

Analyzing sequential purchasing behavior and prioritizing brands in loyalty programs

Purpose: This study aims to develop a novel model to quantify the strength of customer loyalty based on sequential purchasing behaviors within loyalty programs. It also ranks brands to generate a comprehensive ranking list for each customer segment. Design/methodology/approach: This study proposes a network-based model to record customers’ purchasing history, incorporating purchase frequency, time-decay and discount effects. This study also introduces a modified Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search algorithm to rank brands within each customer segment. Findings: This study analyzes the transactional data set of a multi-industry loyalty program to identify future brand choices for each customer segment. Research limitations/implications: The proposed methodology does not consider point redemption or expenses incurred for a specific brand. The methodology also does not assume any specific distribution for purchasing time or include predictive analysis. Practical implications: Loyalty program managers can design marketing strategies based on representative transaction sequence networks from customer segments. They can also identify popular or influential brands. Cross-selling strategies can be developed using information about the brands most likely to be purchased subsequently. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to propose a network-based model to quantify the strength of customer loyalty from sequential purchasing behaviors. This study also introduces a novel methodology for segmenting customers and proposes a modified Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search algorithm to rank brands. © 2025, Emerald Publishing Limited

A professor teaching mathematical formulas, early 1970s

Photograph of a Clark University professor teaching mathematical formulas, circa early 1970s All photographs in this collection were digitized between 2022 and 2023. The photographs in this collection are part of the Photographs and Media record group of Clark University’s Archives & Special Collections.https://commons.clarku.edu/classroom/1002/thumbnail.jp

Action shot of men\u27s basketball game [5], circa 1984-1986

An action photograph of the Clark University men\u27s basketball team during a game, circa 1984-1986. All photographs in this collection were digitized between 2022 and 2023. The photographs in this collection are part of the Photographs and Media record group of Clark University’s Archives & Special Collections.https://commons.clarku.edu/basketball/1017/thumbnail.jp

Women’s basketball team member takes free throw shot, circa 1980s

Photograph of Clark University women’s basketball team member taking a free throw shot, circa 1980s. All photographs in this collection were digitized between 2022 and 2023. The photographs in this collection are part of the Photographs and Media record group of Clark University’s Archives & Special Collections.https://commons.clarku.edu/basketball/1159/thumbnail.jp

Marina Giolas about to score 1000th career point during women’s basketball team, 1987

Photograph of Marina Giolas about to score 1000th career point during women’s basketball team, 1987. Giolas was captain of the team for the 1986-1987 season, is one of Clark\u27s 1000-point scorers (even finishing out at over 1,500 points), and received the M. Hazel Hughes Trophy, which is given to the outstanding senior female athlete, upon graduation. All photographs in this collection were digitized between 2022 and 2023. The photographs in this collection are part of the Photographs and Media record group of Clark University’s Archives & Special Collections.https://commons.clarku.edu/basketball/1168/thumbnail.jp

Enhancing Food Security with High-Quality Land-Use and Land-Cover Maps: A Local Model Approach

In 2023, 58.0% of the African population experienced moderate to severe food insecurity, with 21.6% facing severe food insecurity. Land-use and land-cover maps enable informed resource management, urban planning, environment monitoring to enhance food security. The development of global landcover maps has been facilitated by the increasing availability of earth observation data and advancements in geospatial machine learning. However, these global maps exhibit lower accuracy and inconsistencies in Africa, partly due to the lack of representative training data. To address this issue, we propose a data-centric framework with a teacher-student model setup, which uses diverse data sources of satellite images and label examples to produce local land-cover maps. Our method trains a high-resolution teacher model on images with a resolution of 0.331 m/pixel and a low-resolution student model on publicly available images with a resolution of 10 m/pixel. The student model also utilizes the teacher model\u27s output as its weak label examples as a form of outcome-based knowledge distillation. We evaluated our framework using Murang\u27a county in Kenya, renowned for its agricultural productivity, as a use case. Our local models achieved higher quality maps, with improvements of 0.14 in the F1 score and 0.21 in Intersection-over-Union, compared to the best global model. Our evaluation also revealed inconsistencies in existing global maps, with a maximum agreement rate of 0.30 among themselves. Our work provides valuable guidance to decisionmakers for driving informed decisions to enhance food security

Four students practice archery on campus green, 1951 [2]

Four Clark University students practice archery on the campus green. These four women can be seen in this very similar photograph taken on a different day. All photographs in this collection were digitized between 2022 and 2023.The photographs in this collection are part of the Photographs and Media record group of Clark University’s Archives & Special Collections.https://commons.clarku.edu/archeryphotos/1003/thumbnail.jp