Dear Members of the Men’s Crew Team:

I know that this has been a challenging week following the determination by the coaches that the large majority of the team had broken team policy and disobeyed explicit instructions by Coach Britt by producing, purchasing, and wearing as a group unauthorized tee-shirts at Spring Fling last Saturday. I have now had a chance to review the circumstances and the consequences with the coaches, Athletics Director Bill Gehling, and the deans. At my request, they have agreed to reinstate the team, ending the suspension that was announced Tuesday.

I share the coaches’ concern for the importance of adherence to team policy, which was clearly violated. Infractions of policy should and do carry consequences. In this case, however, we must balance the internal question of team discipline with the university’s commitment to an environment that supports free expression.

I know that the coaches themselves strongly support free speech, and that they acted not in a spirit of censorship but in the interests of team-building. The issues, however, have become inextricably intertwined in this case. Under the circumstances, I believe that your suspension to date, and the written apologies you have offered for breaking team rules and for any unintentional offense your tee-shirts caused, constitute sufficient consequence.

Coach Caldwell is informing the organizers of New England Rowing Championships that you will compete there this weekend, and you and your colleagues on the women’s team have my very best wishes for success.

Sincerely,

Tony Monaco

Dear Members of the Tufts Community,

I am delighted to share with you the news that David R. Harris, the Cornell University sociologist and senior associate dean of its College of Arts and Sciences, will join Tufts on July 1 as the university’s next provost and senior vice president.

David’s distinctive range of experiences and expertise will be invaluable as we chart a course that will position Tufts University to address the great global challenges of our times.

He has an exceptional record of scholarship and academic leadership at Cornell, one of this country’s great research universities. He is committed to the core values that define Tufts as an institution of academic excellence and global impact, including active citizenship, access and diversity.

David’s life and career testify to the transformative influence of higher education on individuals, their communities and the larger society.

He grew up in a working-class neighborhood outside of Philadelphia, and was the first in his immediate family to attend college. He holds a B.S. in human development and social policy and a Ph.D. in sociology, both from Northwestern University. He served on the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan for seven years before being recruited by Cornell as a professor of sociology in 2003.

David’s tenure at Cornell has been defined by a series of firsts. He was the founding director of Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences, established in 2004 to foster collaborations among social scientists across disciplines and to engage the larger Cornell community in substantive discussions about the leading issues in those disciplines. David’s own research and scholarship apply theories from sociology, economics and psychology to examine issues such as social stratification, residential mobility and racial and ethnic disparities in socioeconomic status.

He was appointed Cornell’s first vice provost for social sciences, in 2005, and its first deputy provost, in 2007. He also served as interim provost upon the departure of Provost Carolyn “Biddy” Martin in 2008. As vice provost, David was charged with augmenting the social sciences across the university, including enhancing the learning and research environments for undergraduate and graduate students. He also led a multi-institutional project that examined challenges to diversity in higher education and issued recommendations for eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in college achievement.

In his role as deputy provost, David assumed leadership for a number of Cornell’s strategic priorities, including admissions, financial aid and stewardship of key donors. He also advocated for significant changes in Cornell’s financial aid policies, to expand funding and reduce the debt that students carry upon graduation.

In 2010, David was invited to join the Obama administration as deputy assistant secretary for human services policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Analyzing federal policies that affect the well-being of Americans—particularly those related to poverty—gave him the opportunity to apply his own scholarly expertise for the common good. The Colors of Poverty: Why Racial and Ethnic Disparities Exist, a book he edited with Ann Chih Lin, argues that poverty in the United States is not caused by a single circumstance, but rather by a cascading series of events over a lifetime. He left government service and returned to Cornell in 2011.

David and his wife, Anne, and their three daughters are looking forward to becoming part of the Tufts community.

I want to express my deep appreciation to the members of the Provost Search Committee, led by Vali Nasr, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School, for their diligence in conducting a rigorous national search that resulted in the appointment of David Harris.

I am also most grateful to Peggy Newell, Tufts’ vice provost since 2004, who has served as provost ad interim since last July. Her thoughtful counsel, collaborative working style and broad institutional knowledge have been invaluable.

Please join me in welcoming David Harris to the Tufts community.

Sincerely,

Tony Monaco

President Monaco delivered a lecture about his research in genetics for the Ex-College’s “Taste of Tufts” series.

Watch the entire lecture here:

It gives me great pleasure to announce the appointment of Eric C. Johnson as our Vice President for University Advancement, effective April 1, 2012. Eric has served as acting Vice President since March 1. He had already begun to assume many leadership responsibilities to assure a smooth transition after Brian Lee announced his intended departure from Tufts last December—participating in the meetings of my senior team, attending meetings of the university’s Academic and Administrative Councils, and advising me on the full range of matters related to the university’s advancement agenda.

We are very fortunate to have such a talented, committed leader and fundraiser at Tufts. Eric has 28 years of fundraising experience, 24 of them at Tufts. Even before his arrival in 1988 as associate director of development for the School of Arts and Sciences, he was a member of the Tufts community. A graduate of George Washington University, he is the son of Faith and Ted Johnson, devoted members of the Tufts Class of 1954.

After serving as part of the major gifts team for the School of Arts and Sciences, Eric assumed positions of increasing responsibility. He served as director of development for the School of Arts and Sciences, where he helped lead successful capital campaigns to complete the Tisch Library and the Gantcher Family Sports and Convocation Center; as director of principal and leadership gifts, and as executive director of development. In this most recent role, Eric managed seven school development and alumni relations teams, collaborating with the deans and the provost’s office to raise funds to support Tufts’ academic enterprise. He also managed principal and leadership gifts, worked closely with the Board of Trustees and key volunteers, and worked in partnership with the President through the successful completion of the $1.2 billion Beyond Boundaries campaign. He was instrumental in securing some of the most transformative gifts received by Tufts in recent years, including $100 million that established the Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund.

Eric’s sustained and successful fundraising career at Tufts demonstrates a stamina that has become legendary in other ways as well. Eric helped to create what is now the Tufts Marathon Team, running his first marathon as part of that challenge in 2003. He has stayed active as a runner since then and has completed 30 marathons. He has run 14 of those with his wife, Regina, who has also been a member of the Tufts team. Eric and Regina’s sons, Griffin and Dillon, provide inspiration for their passion for running. When Eric learned that Griffin would be deployed to Iraq in 2008, he committed to running all five World Marathon Majors—Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, and New York—in a single year in Griffin’s honor. For those of you who know Eric, it will not be a surprise that he achieved his goal in 2008 while Griffin was serving in Iraq.

As we develop plans for interdisciplinary work across the schools, continue to build support for our extraordinary faculty, and further strengthen our attention to financial aid, the leadership of our outstanding advancement team could not be in better hands. Please join me in congratulating Eric and welcoming him into his new role at Tufts.

Best wishes,

Tony Monaco

Dear Members of the Tufts Community,

Tufts University has a long history of commitment to diversity and inclusion. It is one of our proudest traditions and a defining characteristic of the university. This tradition brings very real benefits to our entire academic community. Diversity is inextricably linked to excellence; inclusion is essential so that all members of the community can thrive.

While we can be proud of significant accomplishment in meeting our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we also know that there is more to be done. A shared desire to make further progress came through from my earliest conversations with members of our community. It is evident that we have opportunities to define more clearly the place of diversity in our institutional mission and to strengthen the cultural understanding, awareness, and skills of our students, faculty, and staff. To take advantage of these opportunities, I believe it is important that we work together to renew our institutional commitment, review our accomplishments to date, and develop new approaches to creating a more fully diverse and effectively inclusive community at Tufts.

To this end, I am pleased to announce the formal launch of the new university-wide Council on Diversity at Tufts. I am chairing the Council, and Dean Joanne Berger-Sweeney of the School of Arts and Sciences serves as Vice Chair. The Council is composed of exceptional faculty, students, and staff from across the university, along with two members of our Board of Trustees; a membership list appears below. Dean Berger-Sweeney and I are working collaboratively with the members of the Council to frame a scope of work that will allow the development of strategic recommendations to advance diversity and inclusion across Tufts. As the Council develops recommendations, it will also be thinking about how we can ensure effective implementation going forward, and how we can best measure the success of our collective efforts.

While the Council will be attentive to the changing environment in which American higher education operates, and to opportunities to learn from other institutions, we will focus closely on Tufts in assessing both opportunities to make a difference and how to foster change within the university. The Council will undertake much of its activity through three working groups focusing specifically on administrative structures and policies, the undergraduate student experience, and the graduate and professional student experience. We will be asking additional members to join these working groups in order to broaden and deepen the discussion, and bring our own best expertise to bear on the specific topics under review.

Our community’s passion and commitment are evident in the intellectual life and academic direction of the university. The work of the Council on Diversity will complement the significant activity that is underway at Tufts in these areas. With valuable student input, Dean Berger-Sweeney and her faculty colleagues are developing important new curricular opportunities for our undergraduates to engage in critical studies of disparities and diasporas in a global context. Advancing scholarship and teaching in these areas is also on our agenda as the Provost and I work with the deans and faculty on how best to support interdisciplinary research and graduate education at Tufts.

The Council on Diversity will be able to learn from earlier assessments of diversity and inclusion at Tufts and is fortunate to be able to draw on thoughtful recent recommendations by groups including the Equal Educational Opportunity Committee of the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. Its work process will be structured to gain input from the community, and we will share draft recommendations with the community for comment before a final report is issued approximately one year from now. I hope you will feel free to share your own suggestions, concerns, and thoughts with the Council by sending a message to councilondiversity@tufts.edu.

Best wishes,

Tony Monaco

Council on Diversity at Tufts
Council Membership

Anthony Monaco, Chair
President

Joanne Berger-Sweeney, Vice Chair
Dean, School of Arts and Sciences

Carol Baffi-Dugan
Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education, Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering

John Barker
Dean, Undergraduate and Graduate Studies, Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering

Travis Brown
Program Manager—STEM, School of Engineering

Maria Carlota Dao
Ph.D. candidate, Friedman School

Jacqueline Dejean
Associate Director, Research Affairs, School of Arts and Sciences

Luis Del Castillo
Clinical Assistant Professor, Dental School

Jeannie Diefenderfer
Trustee

Julius (Jay) Dodd, A14

Branden Grimmett
Associate Director, Career Services, The Fletcher School

Soha Hassoun
Associate Professor, Computer Science, School of Engineering

James Jennings
Professor, Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning, School of Arts and Sciences

Robert H. Kasberg Jr.
Associate Dean for Admissions and Student Affairs, Dental School

Patti Klos
Director, Dining and Business Services, Operations Division

Jose Garcia-Lopez
Associate Professor, Cummings School

Corey Mason, E14

Nirupa Matthan
Scientist, Cardiovascular Lab, HNRCA, and Assistant Professor, Friedman School

Sinaia Nathanson
Senior Lecturer, Psychology, School of Arts and Sciences, and Director, Graduate Resources and Development Center

Ellen Pinderhughes
Associate Professor, Child Development, School of Arts and Sciences

Joyce Sackey
Dean, Multicultural Affairs/Global Health, School of Medicine

Janice Savin-Williams
Trustee

Diane Souvaine
Professor, Computer Science, School of Engineering

Rachel Szyman
Program Coordinator, Tisch College

Jeffrey Taliaferro
Associate Professor, Political Science, School of Arts and Sciences

Peter Uvin
Academic Dean, The Fletcher School

Sabrina Williams
Director, Human Resources—Boston & Grafton

Jessica Wilson, A14

Henry Wortis
Professor and Chair, Pathology, Sackler School

Adriana Zavala
Associate Professor, Art and Art History, School of Arts and Sciences

Dear Members of the Tufts Community:

The February meeting of the Board of Trustees always features a particularly full and substantive agenda: it comes at the midpoint of the academic year and incorporates sessions to orient new trustees to the work of the Board. New alumni trustees Betsy Busch and Tony Cortese joined the Board as of November; they were joined this month by new “charter” trustee Jeff Moslow, elected by the members of the Board. The Committee on Trusteeship and the Alumni Council take very seriously their role in ensuring strong board governance for Tufts. Our trustees, almost all of whom have at least one Tufts degree, bring to their work as fiduciaries not only great loyalty but also a diversity of talents and life experiences.

Another important feature of board governance at Tufts is faculty, student, and alumni representation on the Academic Affairs, Administration and Finance, and University Advancement committees. By tradition, their undergraduate representatives make a major thematic presentation to each of these committees in February. This year’s presentations—on innovation and mentorship, the cost of education, and opportunities to engage the donor community on sustainability, respectively—all generated significant and thoughtful discussion. The administration and Board share a concern for the impact of the cost of education on current and prospective students across the university, and Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell will begin taking a fresh look at how we can hold down growth in administrative costs while delivering the quality of services the community needs.

Student issues also featured prominently on the agenda of the Academic Affairs Committee, which began to plan for a series of discussions of key issues over its next few meetings. At this meeting, the Committee heard about plans for new initiatives to help address issues of dangerous drinking on campus.

In keeping with the student-centered focus of the weekend, on Friday, February 10, the Board had lunch with undergraduate and graduate students from across Tufts who have demonstrated excellence in research. The student participants included many Summer Scholars and Provost’s Fellows. This lunch followed a plenary session in which I had discussed with the Board, in the context of strategic planning, the work the Provost, Deans, faculty, and I have been engaged in to advance interdisciplinary research and graduate education. The Board shares our belief that by stimulating collaboration across traditional boundaries between academic fields and our various Schools, we have an important opportunity to deepen and extend Tufts’ impact on the great challenges facing our world.

At its Saturday meeting, the Board formally voted to appoint Eric Johnson as Vice President for University Advancement ad interim, effective March 1. At dinner with the Trustees on Friday, I had the privilege of presenting departing Senior Vice President Brian Lee with the Presidential Medal in recognition of his exceptional service to the university over a period of 26 years. Awarding the Medal requires the approval of the Board’s Executive Committee, which supported this honor for him with great enthusiasm. The meeting of the University Advancement committee included a substantial discussion of how the University Relations division tells the Tufts story through multiple channels, including Tufts Now and a social-media presence that is regarded as a national leader.

Looking ahead, it is clear that maintaining Tufts’ academic trajectory will require continued investment in our facilities—including both deferred maintenance and new and renovated buildings—as well as in business systems such as the new Student Information System. These needs, and how best to finance them, were another important topic of discussion across the weekend, at the full Board meeting as well as in the Buildings and Grounds and Administration and Finance committees. To ensure that decision-making takes place strategically, we are engaged in extensive capital planning.

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Boards of Overseers program, which operates under a Trustee mandate and whose members contribute so much to our Schools, athletics program, and international engagement. At this meeting, the Trustees, following up on the recommendations of the recent review of the Overseers program, formally approved a new name for the program. Going forward, the Boards will be known as the Boards of Advisors, reflecting more accurately the important work they do.

It is a pleasure to work with our dedicated trustees and to have the benefit of their insights into Tufts.

Best wishes,

Tony Monaco