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| Motto: | Pax et Lux
(Peace and Light) |
| Established: | 1852 |
| Type: | Private |
| Endowment: | $1.4 billion (June 30, 2008) |
| President: | Lawrence S. Bacow |
| Provost: | Jamshed Bharucha |
| Faculty: | 1,210 |
| Undergraduates: | 5,016 |
| Postgraduates: | 4,773 |
| Location: | Medford/Somerville, MA, USA |
| Campus: | Urban/Suburban |
| Colors: | Brown and blue |
| Mascot: | Jumbo |
| Affiliations: | NESCAC |
| Website: | www.tufts.edu |
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Tufts University is a private research university in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The university is home to the nation's oldest graduate school of international relations, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
In 1852, Tufts College was founded by Universalists who had for years worked to open a non-sectarian institution of higher learning. Charles Tufts donated the land for the campus on Walnut Hill, the highest point in Medford, saying that he wanted to set a "light on the hill." The name was changed to "Tufts University" in 1954, although the corporate name remains "the Trustees of Tufts College." After over a century as a small New England liberal arts college, the French-American nutritionist Jean Mayer became president of Tufts in the late 1970s and, through a series of rapid acquisitions, transformed the school into an international research university.
Tufts is organized into 10 schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France. The university emphasizes public service in all of its disciplines and is well-known for internationalism and its study abroad programs.
History
In 1852, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts chartered Tufts College. The original act of incorporation noted the college should promote "virtue and piety and learning in such of the languages and liberal and useful arts as shall be recommended." Charles Tufts was the donor of the land the university now occupies on the Medford-Somerville line. The twenty-acre plot, given to the Universalist church on the condition that it be used for a college, was valued at $20,000 and located on one of the highest hills in the Boston area, Walnut Hill. Having been one of the biggest influences in the establishment of the College, Hosea Ballou II became the first president in 1853.
P.T. Barnum was one of the earliest benefactors of Tufts College, and the Barnum Museum of Natural History was constructed in 1884 with funds donated by him. Barnum donated the building to house his collection of animal specimens and featured the stuffed hide of Jumbo the elephant. On April 14, 1975, fire gutted Barnum Hall; the collection housed in the building was completely lost, including numerous animal specimens, Barnum's desk and bust, and the stuffed hide of Jumbo.
On July 15, 1892, the Tufts Board of Trustees voted "that the College be opened to women in the undergraduate departments on the same terms and conditions as men." At the same meeting, the trustees voted to create a graduate school faculty and to offer the Ph.D. degree in biology and chemistry.
Walnut Hill as it appeared prior to the construction of Tisch Library and steps, circa 1910. The road to the right no longer exists.
The university experienced tremendous growth during the presidency of Jean Mayer (1976–1992).Mayer was, by all accounts, some combination of "charming, witty, duplicitous, ambitious, brilliant, intellectual, opportunistic, generous, vain, slippery, loyal, possessed of an inner standard of excellence, and charismatic." Mayer established Tufts' veterinary, nutrition, and biomedical schools and acquired the Grafton and Talloires campuses, at the same time lifting the university out of its dire financial situation by increasing the size of the endowment by a factor of 15.
Recent Developments
Tufts is in the midst of a capital campaign, entitled Beyond Boundaries, with the intent of raising $1.2 billion and fully implementing need-blind admission.[10] As of July 31, 2008, the campaign has raised $907.1 million.
Tufts received a gift of $136 million, the largest in the university's history, on April 9, 2008 upon the dissolution of a charitable trust set up by 1911 alumnus Frank C. Doble. As an unrestricted gift, the donation was invested entirely in the university's endowment. The investment will help finance the construction of a lab complex integrating biology and engineering, already in the planning stages, which will bear Doble's name.
Previously, the university had received the three largest donations in its history during 2005 and 2006. On 4 November 2005, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam donated $100 million to Tufts to establish the Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund.[15] On 12 May 2006, Jonathan Tisch gave $40 million to endow the University College of Citizenship and Public Service, which now bears his name. The veterinary school was named in honor of William S. Cummings after a $50 million donation to the school in 2005. On September 4, 2007, it was announced that Steve Tisch had donated $10 million to support a $35 million athletics and fitness facilities expansion planned to begin in late 2008; in addition, the Jaharis Family Foundation donated $15 million to renovate the Sackler Center for Health Communications and build a new campus center for the Boston campus and medical school.
Campuses
The University has four main campuses—three in the Boston area and one in southern France.
Greater Boston
Tufts' main campus is located on Walnut Hill in Medford, about 5 miles (8 km) from Boston. While the majority of the campus is in Medford, the Somerville line runs through the campus, placing some parts of the lower campus in Somerville, and leading to the common terms "Uphill" and "Downhill" for the two sections. The offices of the president, the provost, many of the vice presidents, and the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences are located in Ballou Hall, the oldest building on the hill. There are administrative offices in the surrounding neighborhoods and nearby Davis Square. Many points on the hill have noted views of the Boston skyline, particularly the patio on the Tisch Library roof.
The Schools of Medicine, Biomedical Sciences, Dental Medicine, and the Friedman School are located on a campus in the Chinatown neighborhood of Boston, adjacent to Tufts Medical Center, a 451-bed academic medical institution. All full-time Tufts Medical Center physicians hold clinical faculty appointments at Tufts School of Medicine.
The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine is located in Grafton, Massachusetts, west of Boston, on a 634-acre (2.57 km2) campus. The school also maintains the Ambulatory Farm Clinic in Woodstock, Connecticut and the Tufts Laboratory at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole on Cape Cod.
Talloires
The Tufts European Center on the Talloires campus
Tufts has a satellite campus in Talloires, France at the Tufts European Center, a former Benedictine priory built in the 11th century. The priory was purchased in 1958 by Donald MacJannet and his wife Charlotte and used as a summer camp site for several years before the MacJannets gave the campus to Tufts in 1978. Each year the center hosts a number of summer study programs, and enrolled students live with local families. The site is frequently the host of international conferences and summits.
Organization
Tufts University comprises eight schools including:
- The School of Arts and Sciences (1898 or 1903).
- The School of Engineering (1898).
- The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1933), America's oldest graduate school for international relations and foreign affairs.
- The School of Dental Medicine (1899)
- The School of Medicine (1893), whose primary affiliated hospitals are the Tufts Medical Center and the Baystate Medical Center.
- The Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences (1981).
- The Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (1981), the only graduate school of nutrition in North America, with the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center.
- The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine (1978), the only veterinary school in New England.
- The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service (2000).
Each school has its own faculty and is lead by a dean appointed by the president and the provost with the consent of the Board of Trustees. In addition, the university is affiliated with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the New England Conservatory of Music.
The School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering are the only schools that award both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The Jackson College for Women, established in 1910 as a coordinate college adjacent to the Tufts campus, was integrated with the College of Liberal Arts in 1980, but is recognized in the formal name of the undergraduate arts and sciences division, the "College of Liberal Arts and Jackson College." Undergraduate women in arts and sciences continued to receive their diplomas from Jackson College until 2002.
The Fletcher School, the School of Medicine, the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, the School of Dental Medicine, the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine are exclusively graduate and professional schools. All of these schools, with the exception of dental medicine, award the Ph.D.
The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service was founded in 2000 "to educate for active citizenship" with the help of a $10 million gift from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam. In 2006 the school was renamed after a $40 million dollar gift from Jonathan Tisch. It has been called the "most ambitious attempt by any research university to make public service part of its core academic mission." Tisch College does not grant degrees; the college facilitates and supports a wide range of community service and civil engagement programs, research and teaching initiatives across the university.
Under the purview of the School of Arts and Sciences is the Experimental College, a non-degree granting entity created in 1964 as a proving ground for innovative, experimental, and interdisciplinary curricula and courses. By far, the most successful component of the Ex College is EPIIC, a year-long program begun in 1985 to immerse students in a global issue which culminates in an annual symposium of scholars and experts from the field.
The Crane Theological School was opened in 1869 and closed in 1968.
Academics
Rankings
Tufts' undergraduate program is ranked #28 overall on U.S. News & World Report's 2009 rankings of national universities tied with the Wake Forest University,[19], tied for #102 in Shanghai Jiao Tong University's 2007 Academic Ranking of World Universities,[20], and #157 in the Times Higher Education 2008 World University Rankings.[21] Tufts University has also been consistently ranked as #1 for best undergraduate International Relations programs in the country, including the 1996 Gourman Report published by the Princeton Review.
In the Princeton Review's 2006 Best 361 Colleges, Tufts was named #7 in a list of the 20 schools in the country where students are happiest, and #17 in a list of the 20 schools in the country with the best food.
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy was ranked 4th in the Foreign Policy magazine's ranking of top Masters degree programs in International Relations. Only Georgetown University, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University are ahead of Tufts in this ranking.
Admissions
In the 2008 US News & World Report college rankings, Tufts tied Cornell as the 15th most selective university in the nation. Tufts accepted 25.5% of applicants to its undergraduate Class of 2012, a 3% decrease from the previous year's admissions rate.[22] Eighty-five percent of incoming freshmen ranked in the top 10% of their high school class. The average SAT score was 2122.[23]
In selecting the Class of 2010, Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg added experimental criteria to the application process for undergraduates to test "creativity and other non-academic factors." Calling it the "first major university to try such a departure from the norm," Inside Higher Ed also notes that Tufts continues to consider the SAT and other traditional criteria.[24][25]
Libraries
The Tufts University Library System contains over 3 million volumes. The main library, Tisch Library, holds about 2.5 million volumes, with other holdings dispersed at subject libraries which include the Hirsh Health Sciences Library on the Medical campus in Boston, the Edwin Ginn Library at the Fletcher School, the Lilly Music Library in the Granoff Music Center, and Webster Library at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine on the Grafton campus.
Culture and student life
Notable alumni and faculty
Tufts alumni hold prominent positions in government, media, and business. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Prime Minister of Greece Kostas Karamanlis, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Today Show host Meredith Vieira, Oscar-winner William Hurt, New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., and New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. count Tufts as their alma mater. Although Tufts does not have a business school, three alumni are CEOs of Fortune 500 firms: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler, and DuPont CEO Ellen J. Kullman.
Notable Tufts faculty include philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, former American Psychological Association president Robert Sternberg, retired Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Martin J. Sherwin, and Nobel Prize recipient Allan M. Cormack (1924 – 1998).
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