School of Arts & Sciences
Tufts' founding tradition of liberal education thrives in the School of Arts and Sciences, the largest of Tufts' eight schools and the heart and soul of the university.
The School of Arts and Sciences, composed of the College of Liberal Arts and Jackson, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, is intellectually and culturally diverse, with an international reputation in research and a commitment to service.
Photo by Patrick O’Connor for Tufts University
Today, we reaffirm our commitment to the School of Arts and Sciences on all fronts. We have launched a $425 million campaign that will infuse the school’s mission with a renewed sense of purpose and pride. Our challenge is to reinforce what Tufts means and to promote a distinctive Tufts “edge” in ways we have not done before. It is an effort that calls for making significant investments in the nature and delivery of the undergraduate liberal arts education we offer our talented students.
Toward that end, we have targeted those qualities that set Tufts apart--the characteristic strengths that attract top faculty and students. We have found that Tufts is a place where college students and faculty feel engaged and empowered. Our students are rarely satisfied by convention.
Our Comprehensive Campaign
Financial Aid: $160M
A commitment to access for students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds has long been a critically important mission for Arts and Sciences, as it is for the entire university. Today, such broadly-defined diversity in the undergraduate community is at risk: rising tuition costs place a Tufts education out of reach for many middle and lower-income families. Compounding this issue of access, Tufts' financial aid resources are finite as the University balances its goal of access against other pressing institutional priorities. To maintain fiscal balance, the university is not, at present, “need-blind” with respect to its admission decisions.
Now, with the visionary financial help of our alumni and friends, Tufts is poised to make a critical leap: we aim to join the ranks of institutions that practice “need blind” admissions. It is a prestigious group of fewer than 40 colleges and universities—the Ivy League universities, Duke, MIT, Washington University, Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst, to name a few—and it is a critical group that includes each of our primary overlap institutions for undergraduate admissions. Each selects its freshman class without considering an applicant’s ability to pay; Tufts aspires to do so as well. Need blind admissions is an obvious moral imperative for a place like Tufts, and it is of vital competitive importance in attracting top students.
Financially, practicing need-blind admissions is an audacious goal for Tufts, but it is also an imperative one. Achieving this objective will dramatically improve and preserve the socioeconomic depth and breadth of our student body and fuel the vibrant intellectual diversity of our classrooms
Enhancing Graduate Education: $16M
- Graduate student support: $9M
- Graduate student financial aid: $7M
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences collectively pushes the frontiers of knowledge. Graduate students work with faculty on theses that develop new and important ideas and insights. Yet we must shore up seriously under-funded graduate education resources. We often lose strong graduate school applicants because we are not financially competitive. We must strengthen and extend our graduate program to ensure that it enjoys the same prestige as the Tufts undergraduate experience. We must be committed to attract the most talented graduate applicants.
The Faculty: $101.6M
- Endowed Professorships, New Faculty: $51M
- Endowed Professorships, Existing Faculty: $12M
- Faculty development: $38.6M
Tufts leadership thoroughly and carefully selects university faculty, a process that can vastly strengthen the Tufts experience. Our campaign focus on faculty recruitment, retention, and development continues to reinforce the central role of this process in the future of Tufts.
Our strength in large part depends on significantly growing the size and quality of the faculty. Faculty engaged in scholarly investigations, for instance, enhance our productivity and profile; their research is a natural complement to teaching, encouraging students to explore new domains and appreciate the vast and rapidly changing nature of knowledge.
We must also create endowed professorships; we aim to raise a total of $63 million for this priority alone. A greater number of endowed chairs will help attract top scholars to Tufts and ensure the retention of our already outstanding professors.
Undergraduate Student Life: $700,000
So much of the college experience happens outside the classroom. A complete learning environment requires quality living, dining, and athletics facilities, vibrant intellectual and/or cultural programming, and intentional opportunities for personal growth and self-discovery.
Facilities: $113,625M
New Spaces: $98.9M
- Integrated Lab Complex
- Music Building (including new instruments: $500,000)
- Sophia Gordon Hall
- Boathouse
Renovations: $14.25M
- Cousens Locker Room
- Organic Chemistry Teaching Lab
- Barnum Renovations
We have underinvested in our physical plant. For example, one of our oldest buildings, Barnum Hall, cannot support the dynamic needs of the biology department. It cannot accommodate the needs of modern biology, a field that has now demands a much more sophisticated research infrastructure.
The School of Arts and Sciences can no longer afford to delay building critical facilities that are indispensable to upholding our reputation. Uppermost among our priorities is an integrated lab complex. We envision that this complex will finally provide what Tufts researchers and scientists have long required: a place for dynamic discovery. The most exciting advances in science now spring from the intersection of disciplines, and so we aim to connect disciplines through innovative architecture--a complex that will house faculty from the Biology department and from several departments within the School of Engineering.
Library: $1.5 M
We have good reason to be proud of Tisch Library. The Princeton Review recently ranked Tufts University libraries eighteenth of the 331 “best colleges of 2002.” The Tisch Library has worked hard to achieve this status by targeting specific areas of importance to students and faculty.
Annual giving
Annual giving is a priority for the School of Arts & Sciences. Funds go directly into the operating budget, providing current-use dollars that directly support teaching and learning. Annual gifts also keep Tufts nimble by allowing us to respond to unforeseen challenges and opportunities.
Transforming the future
As the cornerstone of Tufts University, the School of Arts and Sciences is integral to the success of the entire institution. From its grounding in the arts and humanities, the School puts forth knowledgeable, civic-minded graduates with the skills and awareness to be exceptional citizens, thinkers, scholars, and business leaders.
Alumni demonstrate in their own lives how the historic mission of Tufts continues to thrive. We celebrate Tufts’ commitment to providing one of the finest educational experiences in the country. Investing in the Arts and Sciences is required to meet critical needs and to help Tufts University, as a whole, achieve its goals. We ask you to please join us in supporting this great mission and this great institution.
