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Tufts University
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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.
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Encyclopedia
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.
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 , with the intent of raising $1.2 billion and fully implementing need-blind admission. 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. 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: 3 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. The northern Medford section of campus is further uphill, while the southern Somerville section is further downhill, hence the common terms "Uphill" and "Downhill" for the two sections. The legal boundary runs through the President's Lawn and tennis courts, so the distinction between buildings in one half or the other is fairly clear. The dividing line does, however, run directly through Tisch Library, which is located halfway between Uphill and Downhill.
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 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 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 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,, tied for #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 University has also been consistently ranked as #1 for best undergraduate International Relations programs in the country, including the 2006 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.
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. 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
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 Tufts mascot is the only school mascot listed in Webster's dictionary.
The school colors of Tufts University are brown and blue. The shade of brown is generally called chocolate brown, and the blue is variously described as between light and middle blue, or dusty sky blue. Though this color combination was chosen by the student body in 1876, the colors were not made officially the colors of Tufts University until 1960, when the Trustees voted on the matter.
The Tufts Community Union funds a number of undergraduate student groups, and some 150 are recognized by the university. The Leonard Carmichael Society, an umbrella organization for community and public service projects, is the largest student group at Tufts, comprising a volunteer corps of over 1,000 and a staff of eighty-five.
Traditions
- 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. 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.
- The Naked Quad Run takes place just before fall finals, where hundreds of students unwind by stripping and running a circuit around the Rez Quad. Most students run naked, but some wear costumes such as capes or shrink wrap.
- 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 Dropkick Murphys, The Roots, T.I., and Tufts alumni Guster.
- 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 sailing team won the 2001 Intercollegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) Dinghy National Championship and won more championships in the 1990s than any other team. Men's Squash maintains a top 20 Division I national ranking.
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 to a Tufts versus Harvard game in 1875 as the first game of College Football between two American colleges using American football rules.
In 1943, the Boston Red Sox used the Tufts athletic facilities during spring training due to gasoline rationing limiting the team's travel.
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.
- The 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 stories, poems, one-act plays, and photography.
- Melisma, a journal of independent music and culture founded in 2004.
- TuftScope: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Health, Ethics, and Policy, an interdisciplinary journal of health, ethics, and policy founded in 2001.
- Tufts Historical Review, an academic journal of global history consisting of undergraduate and graduate students, and distributed both at Tufts and at other research universities.
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, 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 50 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).
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 addition, because of both the school's suburban ambience 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.
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