Tufts College, 1853.
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
Universalist 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.
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.
21st century
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 by 2011. As of
September 9, 2009, the campaign has raised $1.017 billion.
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. 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. In September of 2009,
Bernard Marshall Gordon donated $40
million to the school of engineering.
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
.
Tufts' Medford campus, along with MIT and Harvard, has been called
part of a "brainpower triangle" based on the research influence of
the three universities. 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 of Nutrition 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 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
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 to live with local families. The site is
frequently the host of international conferences and summits.
Organization
Tufts University comprises eight schools including:
Each school has its own faculty and is led 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, also 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 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 University's undergraduate school is ranked #28 overall on
U.S. News & World Report's
2009-2010 rankings of national universities, #102 in Shanghai
Jiao Tong University
's 2007 Academic Ranking of World
Universities, and #157 in the Times Higher Education 2008 World
University Rankings. Tufts is counted among the "
Little Ivies" and was named by
Newsweek as one of the "25 New
Ivies." It is a member of the
NESCAC league.
In the
Princeton Review's 2010
Best 361 Colleges, Tufts' study abroad program and
experience was ranked #8. In the 2006 "Best 361 Colleges", Tufts
was named #7 in a list of the top schools in the country where
students are happiest and #17 in a list of the top schools in the
country with the best food.
The
Advocate's College Guide for
LGBT Students
named Tufts one of the Top 20 "Best of the Best" LGBT-friendly
colleges and universities.
Admissions
In the 2010
US News &
World Report college rankings, Tufts ranked as one of the top
20 most selective schools among national universities in the United
States. Tufts accepted 25.5% of applicants to its undergraduate
Class of 2012, a 3% decrease from the previous year's admissions
rate. Eighty-five percent of incoming freshmen ranked in the top
10% of their high school class. The average SAT score was
2122.
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.
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,
Today Show host
Meredith Vieira,
Hank
Azaria, voice of many characters on the
Simpsons and
New York
Times publisher
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.
count Tufts as their alma mater. Although Tufts does not have a
business school or major, three alumni are CEOs of Fortune 50
firms:
JPMorgan Chase CEO
Jamie Dimon,
Pfizer CEO
Jeff Kindler, and
DuPont CEO
Ellen J.
Kullman.
Notable Tufts faculty include philosopher
Daniel 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).
Tufts references in popular culture
Tufts
alumni in the media have been known to write characters as
students of Tufts or a thinly-veiled substitute, such as the title
characters of
Two Guys and a
Girl and the lead character of
Christopher Golden's
Body of
Evidence mystery novels. Fictional doctors who cite
Tufts School of Medicine
as their alma mater include the title character on
Crossing Jordan and Dr.
Jennifer Melfi on
The Sopranos.
Elaine Benes from
Seinfeld claims that she attended Tufts,
calling it her "safety school," a common Tufts stereotype in the
1990s. In the
Simpsons episode, "Bart Gets a 'Z'," Bart's
substitute announces to the class that he received his Master's
degree in teaching from Tufts.
In
addition, because of both the school's suburban ambiance and
proximity to Boston, it has been used as a filming location to
represent a New
England liberal arts
college. Footage of the campus has appeared in
Sabrina, the Teenage
Witch,
The Next Karate
Kid, and the 1968 film
Charly.
References
- Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History "Tufts University, 1852"
- Gittleman, Sol. (November 2004) An Entrepreneurial
University: The Transformation Of Tufts, 1976-2002. Tufts
University, ISBN 1-58465-416-3.
- Bylaws of the Trustees of Tufts College, Article
VI, sec. 6.1
- Bacow, Lawrence S. "How Universities Can Teach Public Service."
The Boston Globe. 15 October 2005.
- Kantrowitz, Barbara. "America's
Hot 25 Schools." Newsweek Kaplan College Guide.
- McFadden, Robert D. " Jean Mayer, 72, Nutritionist Who Led Tufts,
Dies." The New York Times. January 2, 1993.
- Gittleman, Sol. " The Accidental President." Tufts
Magazine, Winter 2005.
- Tufts U. Joins Growing Number of Colleges Seeking
to Raise More Than $1-Billion Chronicle of Higher
Education.
- http://giving.tufts.edu/news/2009/milestone.html
- Russonello, Giovanni. " Tufts receives largest gift in university
history." The Tufts Daily, April 9, 2008.
- The Harvard Crimson :: News :: Tufts, Lesley
Receive Big Gift
- New building to integrate biology, engineering -
News
- Hopkins, Jim. " Ebay founder takes lead in social
entrepreneurship." USA Today, 3 November 2005.
- Tisch announces $40 million gift to Tufts
University. Boston Globe. 12 May 2006.
- E-mail sent from President Bacow to campus students, faculty
and staff on September 4, 2007 at 1:18pm EST.
-
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/tufts-receives-40-million-gift-1.1872834.
- Bombardieri, Marcella. At Tufts, civic engagement stretches across the
globe. Boston Globe, 14 March 2004.
- http://www.advocate.com/article.aspx?id=21890
- Typical Yield Makes for Ideally Sized Incoming
Freshman Class
- Jaschik, Scott (2006). A "Rainbow" Approach to Admissions. Inside Higher Ed,
July 6, 2006.
- McAnerny, Kelly (2005). From Sternberg, a new take on what makes kids
Tufts-worthy. Tufts Daily, November 15, 2005.
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