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'Tufts University' is a private research university in Medford/Somerville, Massachusetts, suburbs of Boston. The school emphasizes public service in all disciplines^[2] and is well-known for internationalism and its study abroad programs.^[3] The university is home to the nation's second oldest and best-known 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.^[4] Charles Tufts donated the land for the campus on Walnut Hill, the highest point in Medford. Tufts said that he wanted to set a "light on the hill." Originally affiliated with the Universalist Church, Tufts is now non-sectarian. The name was changed to "Tufts University" in 1954, although the corporate name remains "the Trustees of Tufts College."
In the late 1970s, the French-American nutritionist Jean Mayer became president of Tufts and, through a series of rapid acquisitions, transformed the school from a small liberal arts college into an international research university.^[5]

Contents

History

Recent developments

Campuses

Greater Boston

Satellite facilities

Institution

Admissions

Organization

Culture and student life

Traditions

Athletics

Campus media and publications

Student groups

Notable alumni and staff

Tufts in popular culture

References

External links

History

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. In 1852, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts chartered Tufts College. 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. 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 the elephant.
On July 15, 1892, the Board of Trustees voted to admit women to Tufts College.[1]
The university soared to new heights under the presidency of Jean Mayer (1976–1992). Under Mayer, the University was unmasked revealing a greatness that was dormant for so many years. 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".^[6] 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 crippling financial situation.

Recent developments

Financially, the university has 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.^[7] On 12 May 2006, Jonathan Tisch gave $40 million to endow the University College of Citizenship and Public Service, which now bears his name.^[8] The veterinary school was named in honor of William S. Cummings after a $50 million donation to the school in 2005.
On 3 November 2006, Tufts officially launched a capital campaign entitled Beyond Boundaries with the intent of raising $1.2 billion and fully implementing need-blind admission.^[9]
On 12 December 2006, it was reported nationally (via the Associated Press) that a controversy had erupted on the Tufts undergraduate campus regarding two anonymous articles published in the conservative undergraduate publication ''The Primary Source''. In May 2007 ''The Primary Source'' was found guilty of "creation of a hostile environment" and "harassment" by a panel of students and faculty. It was ordered to sign all future editorials with the author's name.^[10]
On 27 August 2007, judgement was rendered on an appeal of the decision by ''The Primary Source.'' James M. Glaser, Dean of Undergraduate Education, overturned the part of the judgement requiring editorials to be signed by the author's name on the grounds that the restriction would unfairly single out one of Tufts's media organizations. By overturning the punishment, Dean Galser in effect commuted the sentence while leaving the CSL judgement standing.^[11]
In August 2006, Tufts subsidy TUDC LLC and development partner Hines Interests LP secured approval to build a 621-foot tower atop Boston's South Station. The complex, designed by César Pelli, was conceived by Jean Mayer in 1991 as a medical research hub. Construction is expected to begin in late 2007 and is an example of transit-oriented development.^[12][13]
On September 4, 2007, it was announced that Steve Tisch has donated $10 million to support a $30-million athletics and fitness facilities expansion planned for 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.^[14]

Campuses

Greater Boston

★ The Medford/Somerville campus on Walnut Hill houses the School of Arts and Sciences, the School Engineering, the Fletcher School, parts of the Friedman School of Nutrition, and the university administration. The offices of the president, the provost, the 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 also administrative officers elsewhere on campus, as well as in the surrounding neighborhoods and Davis Square. Many points on the hill (especially the roof of the Tisch Library) have excellent views of the city skyline in the greater Boston area.

★ The Schools of Medicine, Biomedical Sciences, Dental Medicine, and Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy are located on a campus in the Chinatown neighborhood of Boston adjacent to Tufts-New England Medical Center (Tufts-NEMC), a 451-bed academic medical institution. All full time Tufts-NEMC physicians hold faculty appointments at Tufts.

★ The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine is located in Grafton, Massachusetts, west of Boston, on a 634-acre 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.

Satellite facilities

★ 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.

Institution

Tufts employs 3,500 people with 8,500 students from across the United States and more than 100 countries attending classes on the university's three campuses in Massachusetts (Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton) and one in Talloires, France. In addition, the university is affiliated with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the New England Conservatory of Music.
Tufts is ranked 28 in the "National Universities" category of the America's Best Colleges 2008 list by ''U.S. News & World Report''. The institution is also categorized as a "Doctoral/Research Extensive" institution by the Carnegie Foundation. Media outlets have referred to Tufts as a "Little Ivy".
In the Princeton Review's 2008 ''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.

Admissions

In 2007, Tufts accepted 26.6% of 15,386 applications to its undergraduate class of 2011. Entering applicants held a mean SAT score of 1439 - Tufts' highest to date.^[15]
In selecting the class of 2011, 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'' notes that Tufts continues to consider the SAT and other traditional criteria.^[16][17]

Organization

Tufts University comprises eight schools including ^[18] :

★ The School of Arts and Sciences (which includes the College of Liberal Arts and Jackson College, the College of Special Studies, and the Graduate 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-New England 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), 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 (formally the Trustees of Tufts College).
The School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering are the only schools that award both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Together, they constitute the "Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering", a deliberative body under the chairmanship of the president of the university. The associated schools, as they are called, share certain administrative functions (including, undergraduate admissions, student services, libraries, and information technologies), but each has its own dean, faculty, and budget. 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". The campus land that was Jackson College is in the city of Somerville. Undergraduate women in arts and sciences continued to receive their diplomas from Jackson College (not Tufts University) 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. The Tisch College has been called the "most ambitious attempt by any research university to make public service part of its core academic mission."^[19] Unlike the other seven schools, Tisch College does not grant degrees. Instead, the college facilitates and supports a wide range of community service and civil engagement programs, research and teaching initiatives involving students, faculty, staff, and alumni across the university.
Finally, the Experimental College is a non-degree granting entity at Tufts, under the purview of the School of Arts and Sciences. Often called the "Ex College", it was created on the Medford campus in 1964 as a proving ground for "innovative", experimental, and interdisciplinary curricula and courses. The Ex College is governed by a board of five students and five faculty members who set policy and select courses. Visiting instructors, practitioners, and students teach the majority of Ex College courses. In addition to offering courses outside the regular curriculum, this college has also served as an incubator for new undergraduate majors and other academic programs. For example, the current majors in Arabic, Chinese, and Hebrew, as well as the Peace and Justice Studies Program and the Media and Communication Studies Program, began under the auspices of the Ex College. By far, the most successful innovation was EPIIC, a year-long program begun in 1985 to immerse students in a global issue, culminating in an annual symposium of scholars and experts from the field. Since 2001, EPIIC and related programs have been under the purview of the Institute for Global Leadership, a research center that reports to the provost. The Ex College continues to offer a wide array of interdisciplinary courses.

Culture and student life

A fixture on the Medford campus is a replica of a cannon taken from the deck of the USS ''Constitution'', donated to the university by the city of Medford in 1956.^[20] Since 1977, it has been used by student groups and individual students who paint advertisements, political statements, birthday greetings, and other messages on the cannon under the cover of night. Painting the cannon is a competitive activity; students must guard their handiwork or risk of having their message painted over by a rival group before dawn.^[21]

The Tufts school mascot is Jumbo the elephant, in honor of a major donation from circus owner P.T. Barnum in 1882. While Barnum gave the skeleton of the animal to the American Museum of Natural History, the stuffed remains of Jumbo were put on display in the basement of Barnum Hall until the building burned down in 1974. The alleged ashes of Jumbo currently reside in a peanut butter jar in the athletic director's office. A large plaster-statue elephant, Jumbo II, now sits on the academic quad.
The Leonard Carmichael Society is the largest student group at Tufts, an umbrella organization for community and public service projects. LCS is comprised of a volunteer corps of over 1,000 and a staff of eighty-five.

Traditions

★ The Naked Quad Run takes place just before fall finals, where several hundred students unwind by stripping and running circuit around the Rez Quad. Most students run naked, but some wear body paint or costumes.

★ A concert known as Spring Fling takes place in the spring semester immediately before final exams on the President's Lawn; acts over the past several years have included The Roots, Less than Jake, and Tufts alumni Guster. 2007 featured Lupe Fiasco, Spoon and T.I.

★ The night before Spring Fling, the Tuftonia's Day fireworks take place on the Rez Quad.

★ The Tufts Mountain Club famously "pumpkins" the campus on the night before Halloween, placing pumpkins in prominent and increasingly absurd locations such as atop buildings and statues. Although the ritual is over 75 years old, the TMC has never officially taken credit for it.

Athletics

Tufts is a member of the Division III National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which includes Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Williams, and Wesleyan. Tufts does not offer athletic scholarships. Men's and women's squash and coed and women's sailing are the only Division I sports at the school.
The Tufts football program is one of the oldest in the country. The 1,000th game in team history was played during the 2006 season. Historians point [3] to a Tufts versus Harvard game in 1875 as the first game of College Football between two American colleges using American football rules ^[22]. Discussion of the historic game and its place in the evolution of football was featured in the ''Boston Globe'' and on ESPN.
In 2007, Tufts men's lacrosse made their first appearance in the NCAA Division III Men's Lacrosse Tournament in 2007, making it to the second round before losing to Gettysburg College. In addition, the Jumbos had the best regular season NESCAC record, earning the first seed in the NESCAC tournament. Also in 2007, Women’s softball won the NESCAC Championship and advanced to the final of the 2007 NCAA Div. III Softball New England Regional Tournament.
Tufts Sailing has a long history of success. The team won the 2001 Inter-collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) Dinghy National Championship and also won more championships in the 1990s than any other team. Men's Squash maintains a top 20 Division I national ranking and Women’s tennis has made the NCAA Division III tournament seven years in a row. ^[23]

Campus media and publications

★ ''Tufts Daily'', the daily student newspaper and the most prominent source of news for the last two decades; the ''Daily'' is notable for its financial independence, receiving no funding from the student activities fee.

★ ''Tufts Observer'', a weekly newsmagazine and the oldest student organization on campus, having been founded in 1895 as the university's first student newspaper.

★ ''The Primary Source'', a journal of conservative thought.

★ ''Zamboni'', a humor and satire magazine.

★ ''Tufts Traveler'', a travel journal founded in 2005.

★ WMFO (91.5 FM Medford) is freeform radio operated by students and community volunteers since 1970; the station broadcasts 365 days a year and operates out of Curtis Hall.

★ TUTV, the campus television station, operated by Tufts students in partnership with the Ex College.

★ JumboCast, a student-run broadcast group that specializes in streaming Tufts events live over the internet via webcast.

★ ''Hemispheres'', since 1976 one of the few undergraduate journals dedicated to international relations in the United States.

★ ''Public Journal'', an alternative literary magazine, founded in 2005, which focuses on publishing found literature.

★ ''Outbreath'', a literary magazine which publishes short, fictional stories, photography, and one-act plays.

★ ''Melisma'', a journal of independent music and culture founded in 2004.

★ ''TuftScope'', the interdisciplinary journal of health, ethics, and policy founded in 2001.

Student groups

Tufts funds a number of student groups, and some 150 are recognized by the university. ^[24] Several groups became involved in 2006 political campaigns, with a number of Tufts Democrats campaigning for Tufts alum Joe Courtney in his bid for representation of Connecticut's 2nd congressional district.^[25] (Courtney won by 83 votes.)

Notable alumni and staff

Main articles: List of Tufts University people

Notable Tufts alumni include Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Maxine Kumin, television personality Meredith Vieira, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, lawyer and statesman John G. Sargent, and Nobel laureate Roderick MacKinnon.

Tufts in popular culture

★ Hannah, the heroine in Curtis Sittenfeld's second novel, ''The Man of My Dreams'', goes to Tufts. Interestingly, the heroine in Sittenfeld's first novel, ''Prep'', was rejected from Tufts.

★ Pete and Berg, the lead characters in the sitcom ''Two Guys and a Girl'' met as undergraduates at Tufts.

★ The gate to the President's Lawn was featured in the opening credits of the sitcom ''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch''.

★ Elaine Benes, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the sitcom ''Seinfeld'', mentions that she attended Tufts, and that it was her "safety school".

★ Large portions of Tufts' alumnus and bestselling author Darin Strauss's forthcoming novel, ''More Than It Hurts You,'' take place at the university.

★ Scott Adler, recurring character in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series. Eventual U.S. Secretary of State, Adler graduated first in his class at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

★ On the animated show ''Daria'', the title character goes off to attend fictional Raft College around Boston. Many ''Daria'' fans think that Raft may be a thinly veiled fictional version of Tufts.

★ Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, title character from ''Crossing Jordan'', played by Jill Hennessy, graduated from Tufts' medical school.

★ Amy Abbott on the WB drama ''Everwood'' was rejected from Tufts in an episode of the show.

★ Ken Erdedy, character in the novel ''Infinite Jest'' by David Foster Wallace. It is likely that the fictional marijuana addict and resident of Ennet House attended Tufts University, evidenced among other things by the memorabilia in his household (p.25, 360, 362).

★ Dr. Jennifer Melfi, psychiatrist to Tony Soprano on ''The Sopranos'' graduated from Tufts Medical School.

★ Julie Merkel, a cutthroat prep school student in the film ''Cheats'', a 2002 comedy starring Mary Tyler Moore, wants desperately to attend Tufts.

★ Kenny, a Stuckeybowl employee on the TV show ''Ed'', graduated from Tufts (and, when asked about it by Ed, replied, "It's in Massachusetts").

★ Jenna Blake in the ''Body of Evidence'' mystery novels attends Somerset University, a fictional version of the Tufts campus.

★ Susan Silverman of Robert B. Parker's Spenser mystery series teaches at "Taft University", a thinly-veiled stand-in for Tufts, and Parker uses the Taft setting in several books.

★ Toyota ran an ad in the late 1970s/early 1980s that portrayed a student setting off for college in his new Toyota and driving cross-country from his home in Southern California. The ad finished with his triumphant arrival in front of Eaton Hall. For years, this commercial was shown before all campus movies.

★ Some outdoor footage of the Tufts campus was shot in fall of 1967 for the 1968 movie ''Charly'' starring Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom. The movie is based on the short story "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes and is about a slow man made into a genius — temporarily.

★ The indoor shots of the prom scene in the movie ''The Next Karate Kid'' were filmed in the Cousen's Gymnasium at Tufts.

References

1. Russonello, Giovanni. Endowment is thriving, survey demonstrates. (2006). ''Tufts Daily'', 5 October 2006.
2. Bacow, Lawrence S. "How Universities Can Teach Public Service." ''The Boston Globe.'' 15 October 2005.
3. Kantrowitz, Barbara. "America's Hot 25 Schools." ''Newsweek Kaplan College Guide.''
4. Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History [http://dl.tufts.edu/view_text.jsp?urn=tufts:central:dca:UA069:UA069.005.DO.00001&chapter=T00041 "Tufts University, 1852"
5. Gittleman, Sol. (November 2004) ''An Entrepreneurial University: The Transformation Of Tufts, 1976-2002''. Tufts University, ISBN 1-58465-416-3.
6. Gittleman, Sol. "The Accidental President." ''Tufts Magazine'', Winter 2005.
7. Hopkins, jim. "Ebay founder takes lead in social entrepreneurship." ''USA Today'', 3 November 2005.
8. Tisch announces million gift to Tufts University. ''Boston Globe''. 12 May 2006.
9. [2] ''Chronicle of Higher Education''.
10. http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/05/10/university_panel_says_student_parody_harassed_blacks/
11. http://ase.tufts.edu/undergradeducation/documents/Primary%20Source%20Appeal.pdf
12. http://media.www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/paper856/news/2007/03/16/News/LongAwaited.South.Station.Tower.Construction.Progresses-2778184.shtml
13. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/06/29/south_stations_mega_makeover/
14. E-mail sent from President Bacow to campus students, faculty and staff on September 4, 2007 at 1:18pm EST.
15. http://media.www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/paper856/news/2007/04/04/News/Tufts.Admits.And.Seeks.To.Court.The.Potential.Class.Of.2011-2822367.shtml
16. Jaschik, Scott (2006). A "Rainbow" Approach to Admissions. Inside Higher Ed, July 6, 2006.
17. McAnerny, Kelly (2005). From Sternberg, a new take on what makes kids Tufts-worthy. Tufts Daily, November 15, 2005.
18. of the Trustees of Tufts College, Article VI, sec. 6.1
19. Bombardieri, Marcella. At Tufts, civic engagement stretches across the globe. ''Boston Globe'', 14 March 2004.
20. http://www.tufts.edu/home/timeline/html/1956-e-cannon.html
21. http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/winter2006/features/feature1.html
22. Smith, R.A. "Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics", New York: Oxford University Press, 1988
23. http://ase.tufts.edu/athletics/default.htm
24. http://ase.tufts.edu/stu-org/
25. http://media.www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/paper856/news/2006/11/08/News/Jumbos.Work.Hard.To.Get.Out.The.Vote.Locally-2446153.shtml

External links

★ Tufts University (official website)

★ TuftsLife.com (student life portal)