Summer News and Updates

September 17, 2007

Dear Members of the Tufts Community:

Now that the term has begun in earnest, I wanted to bring you up to date on major activities over the summer, and to welcome all of you to the start of another academic year.

Appointments

This fall will see a major administrative transition at Tufts, as Steve Manos steps down after a remarkable run of 26 years as our Executive Vice President.  As I announced to the community in August, a rigorous national search resulted in the appointment of Patricia Campbell as Steve’s successor.  Patricia knows Tufts well, having served for many years as the Executive Administrative Dean at the Dental School , where she worked with Dean Lonnie Norris to strengthen academic and administrative programs while also building the solid financial foundation that supports the school today.  Patricia, who has most recently been Vice President for Finance and Administration at WGBH, Boston 's public broadcaster, rejoins Tufts this month.  As a WGBH trustee, I have witnessed her great work there first hand and am confident that she will be a worthy successor to Steve.

Steve’s impending retirement prompted us to take a fresh look at the role of our Institutional Research office, which has reported to the Executive Vice President.  Since the office plays a critical role in supporting the university’s academic mission, it will now report to the Provost under the strong continuing leadership of Dawn Geronimo Terkla, who has been named Associate Provost for Institutional Research and Evaluation.

I am also pleased to announce the appointment of Michael Baenen as the new Chief of Staff in my office, succeeding Judy Olson, who left Tufts in order to spend more time with her family.  Michael comes to Tufts from MIT, where he was most recently Special Assistant to the President with oversight of communications initiatives in the President’s Office.

Preparedness Initiatives

The tragedy at Virginia Tech last April reminded us all that we must be prepared for sudden and serious crises, and this summer we redoubled Tufts’ ongoing crisis prevention and response planning.  In parallel, we launched a comprehensive effort to ensure that the university is well prepared in the event of pandemic illness.  I am grateful to the many colleagues—faculty, students, and administrators from all three campuses—who have worked closely together in these efforts.

A key part of our crisis planning is the implementation of a new rapid notification system, Send Word Now, which can alert members of the university community of an impending or catastrophic event simultaneously via telephone, email, cell phone, and text messaging.  In order to ensure that you receive this information, which could be critical to your safety, you will need to submit your emergency contact information, which will only be used to contact you during a crisis or an emergency.  Watch your Tufts email on this Wednesday, September 19, for the invitation to submit your contact information, and please respond.

Construction/Renovation/Facilities

This year, all three campuses have seen a great deal of construction and renovation activity -- much of it compressed into the summer months to avoid disruption during the academic year.

On the Medford/Somerville campus, we completed the renovation of the former Lorin L. Dame School at 80 George Street to provide office, meeting, and work space for most of University Advancement and a large portion of University Relations.  We have also done behind-the-scenes work to ensure that TAB continues to function well as home to many in our central administration.

A number of projects will strengthen community life on the campus.  The new Interfaith Center at 58 Winthrop Street is now open.  Wholly renovated inside and out, the building provides multipurpose worship and meeting space for our faith communities as well as offices for the Catholic, Muslim, and Protestant chaplains.

We are also upgrading some heavily used dining facilities.  The renovated Hodgdon Good-To-Go reopened last week, while a comprehensive redesign of the Hotung Lounge is scheduled for completion in early November.

Ongoing investments in academic buildings, classrooms, and offices are important to the continued excellence of our educational programs.  Notable projects this year have included exterior and interior upgrades to Braker Hall, exterior repairs to Lane Hall, and interior renovations in Miner Hall.  At the same time, residents in Carmichael, Stratton, and Wren will notice that major refurbishments have taken place in those halls, while Blakeley, Haskell, Hill, Hillside, Hodgdon, Metcalf, and Wilson welcomed their residents looking refreshed.

On the Boston campus, work on exterior repairs to the Arnold Building, which continues the exterior refurbishment plan for the M&V complex, is well underway, and scheduled for December completion.  We have also been at work renovating a number of labs in South Cove in support of Medical School research activities, and brightening up the front entrance and interior spaces of Posner Hall.

In Grafton, we launched renovations of the Campus Center.  The first phase of the project, comprising dining, student offices, exercise facility, and community space, is scheduled for completion this May.  We hope that the planned second phase of the project, consisting of a new 180-seat teaching auditorium and continuing education facility, will soon follow.  To support clinical rotations in the Cummings School, we have also begun work on a new ambulatory care facility in Woodstock, Connecticut.

This month, thanks to a major commitment by the National Institutes of Health, we broke ground on a new regional biosafety lab in Grafton.  Scheduled for completion in December 2008, this important new facility will advance research into food- and water-borne diseases that threaten public health.

We will continue to make strategic investments in facilities that support critical priorities in education, research, and student and community life.  Earlier this month, I announced wonderful gifts to Tufts from Steven and Michael Jaharis and Steve Tisch that will support a new campus center in the Sackler building at the Medical School and the planned $30-million expansion and renovation of athletics and fitness facilities on the Medford/Somerville campus.  We are also looking ahead to the planned expansion of the Dental School and to developing plans for much-needed laboratory space for AS&E on the Medford/Somerville campus.

Finances: Endowment and Advancement

Strengthening Tufts’ financial resources is critical to our continued excellence and to the success of programmatic initiatives that will maintain the university’s academic momentum.  During the fiscal year that ended in July we posted strong results in both our endowment and in private support, and I am proud of the work of our investment managers and our Advancement team.

The endowment benefited from the broad-based strength of the equity and credit markets, as well as the diversified nature of our portfolio.  Preliminary rankings suggest that our returns of 21.36% will once again guarantee an excellent year relative to our peers.  When gifts are added to this total, the endowment will have added $260 million in value over the previous year.  To put it in other terms, our endowment will have grown from $880M to just under $1.5B in two years.  While the markets have been more volatile since the end of the fiscal year, we have confidence in the strategy we are pursuing.

The recent Jaharis and Tisch gifts reflect the generous commitment of Tufts’ alumni and friends to the university.  Last year was the second strongest for fundraising in our history, with total capital achievement totaling nearly $134 million.  The year’s success demonstrated the breadth of support from alumni, parents and friends for Beyond Boundaries: The Campaign for Tufts, and brought campaign achievement to more than $661 million.  Campaign launch events in cities across the globe sparked significant support for campaign priorities including support for financial aid, faculty chairs, and needed facilities.  Meanwhile, Tufts donors continued to recognize the importance of annual giving.  Annual fund results were up 9.2% to a university-wide record $15 million. 

Teaching and Scholarship

It has been a pleasure to meet the new members of the faculty arriving this fall.  Our current faculty offer them wonderful models of excellence.  As the last academic year came to a close, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected two faculty from Tufts to Fellowship:  Professors Madeline Caviness of the Department of Art History and Martin J. Sherwin of the Department of History.  School of Engineering overseer and former trustee Bernard Gordon was also named to the distinguished company of Fellows.  All three deserve our congratulations on this honor.

One of Tufts’ distinctive strengths is its commitment to civic engagement.  Building on this commitment, the Provost has announced plans for an innovative university-wide seminar that will anchor scholarship to civic engagement by allowing a multidisciplinary team of faculty and students to focus on issues of national or global import.  The new University Seminar—Fostering a Global Community to Solve Global Problems—will knit together Tufts’ schools at a curricular level, promote active learning, and be designed to provide for broad dissemination of its results.  The university will fund one or two University Seminars this academic year.

Save the Date

In closing, I would like to highlight some upcoming community events that will offer important opportunities for the Tufts community to celebrate its people and its accomplishments.  First, next Monday, September 24, at 12:15 pm in Cohen Auditorium, we will celebrate the life of Professor Gerald Gill, whose unexpected death this summer was a great loss to Tufts and to the many other communities to which he belonged.  Later in the week, on Thursday, September 27 at 4:30 pm we will hold an open house at 80 George Street to give members of the Medford community an opportunity to revisit the former Dame School.  At 4:00 pm the following day, Friday, September 28, we will formally open the new Interfaith Center.  We’ll bring a week of celebrations to a close with our fifth annual Community Day, co-sponsored with the cities of Medford and Somerville , from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm on Sunday, September 30.

I hope that the academic year is off to a good start for all of you.  From where I sit, it seems clear that this will be another year of great success in education, research, and service at Tufts.

Lawrence S. Bacow
President