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Beth Edmonds came to Clark to broaden her horizons. At Clark, she found a learning environment that was both small enough to ensure she wouldnąt feel lost and large enough to fulfill her educational goals. Coming from a very small town, Edmonds also enjoyed the cultural and ethnic diversity of urban life in Worcester. For Edmonds, Clark was also the perfect place to experience the important social movements of her time—mainly the women's movement—and to learn how to become an active participant in social change.
I attended Clark in the fall of 1967. I was 16 years old, turning 17 in October. I came from a very small town of 500 people in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York state. Coming from such a small town, I reasoned that I needed to enlarge my world. Clark seemed small enough to be understandable and still large enough as a university that it would meet my needs. I also knew that I needed to be in a big city with all its challenges and diversities.
After a year or so, I chose geography as my major. The good reputation of the department, as well as the relative intimacy and small classes, appealed to me. I also understood that geography encompassed the large view of the world that I found so interesting.
Needless to say, attending Clark from 1967 to 1972 was a particularly fascinating time in U.S. history. I was able to participate in the antiwar movement and to begin to understand the feminist movement of that era. Those were distinct advantages to me. They provided a way for me to learn first-hand how national policy is set and how determined people can shape that policy. In the year after Clark, I taught at an alternative school, was the educational director of a day care center and finally became a children's librarian in a small public library. All during this time, I was also very politically active particularly in the women's movement. Moving to Maine in 1978 with my husband, I joined the Maine National Organization for Women (NOW) and worked on the Equality Rights Amendment. In the following 20 years, I was a National NOW board member, worked on the Choice Coalition in Maine and finally, in 1998, ran for office for the first time. I was successful in my bid for state senate in 2000 and having been re-elected to that seat in 2004, I was also elected by my colleagues to be president of the Maine Senate.
Clark was a good place for me to grow up. I especially appreciated the caliber of students there. In addition, a liberal-arts education has given me a firm foundation on which to stand. I appreciate it daily.