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.
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 634-acre (2.57 km 2 ) 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:
- 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 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.
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