January 08, 2016

Madison Clark ’15 first learned about Susquehanna when a postcard arrived in her mailbox in Blue Springs, Missouri—nearly 1,000 miles away from Selinsgrove.

“My decision came down to Columbia University and Susquehanna, and my visit to SU truly stole all of my attention away from Columbia,” she says. “It was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

She originally intended to major only in creative writing.

“My favorite aspect of the creative writing program is its extraordinarily talented faculty. There are few departments that employ the kind of accomplished writers that our department boasts,” she says.

But after taking a religious studies class, she added that major her sophomore year.

“Although I am not a religious person, I found the discussion aspect of the program to be absolutely delightful and intriguing. I came to realize that religion is something I am passionate about because of the role it plays in nearly every single person’s life,” she says.

Clark also was an editing and publishing minor and a member of the Honors Program.

“The honors program is significantly more than a simple challenge. It is the opportunity to select research topics, select faculty members to work alongside, and built-in opportunities to share our hard work with the rest of the community,” she notes.

While taking a few years off before going to graduate school in Northern Ireland, Clark is a Life Together Fellow and an AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow at Esperanza Academy, a tuition-free, independent middle school for underserved girls in Lawrence, Mass. She is working toward her Teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) certification.

“Ultimately, I want to travel and hold writing workshops for young people as a way to offer useful outlets and language that can help bridge any variety of issues—issues that will, most likely, include faith-based differences,” she says.