When I graduated from Tufts last May, things were changing. On the surface, we were being re-branded. According to the marketing folks, "Uppercase Tufts" was an old, New England ivy-league wannabe; while "Lowercase Tufts" is a progressive, contemporary "New Ivy."
Despite our new look, the administration is leading our university down a well-worn path, sacrificing the most enriching aspects of the undergraduate experience for the sake of becoming a research institution.
I suppose that this should come as no surprise. When Robert Sternberg came on as dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the beginning of my senior year, he joined Provost Bharucha and President Bacow to create a triumvirate of middle-aged men with Ivy League and Ivy League-caliber backgrounds (Princeton, Dartmouth and MIT, respectively).
In October 2005, Sternberg drafted a vision statement (a bold move, as only university presidents usually do so), in which he vowed to integrate a stronger research component into Tufts' most experiential programs, including the University College (now Tisch College), the Institute for Global Leadership and the Leonard Carmichael Society. He also laid out his plans to bring in professors with better research accomplishments, claiming "the most outstanding teachers are often the best researchers." This sounds very "uppercase" to me.
Sternberg's plans are coming to fruition with amazing speed, as evidenced very painfully for me by the removal of three people who had an immense influence on my intellectual and personal development during my undergraduate career. The departure of the first of these three mentors, I admit, did not come as a great surprise. His classes were repeatedly nominated as those to take for an easy "A," and his subject of scholarship, hip-hop, is one easily passed off as "un-academic." My lack of surprise did not lessen my disappointment that this professor, who engaged so many students by channeling our passion for music into scholarly pursuits, will not return to the music department next fall.
The second blow to my belief that the administration valued the undergraduate experience came when the Political Science Department denied tenure to the best professor I had during my four years at Tufts. I am not the only student upon whom this professor had such a significant impact - last year the TCU Senate named him the Professor of the Year for "his ability to use creative methods to bring complicated material to life, his individual attention to students and his passion for the subject."
Was he the most prestigiously published professor I had? No. But I will never forget the academic or personal lessons I learned in his class, and that is what an undergraduate education should be about. To the benefit of a few more classes of undergraduates at Tufts, Community Health and Peace and Justice Studies have created positions for him in their departments, but Sternberg isn't happy about this arrangement either, and it seems sure to be a temporary one.
As painful as it was to see a great professor leave Political Science, I don't expect too much from that department (from which I graduated), especially now that it is under the chairmanship of a man who makes jokes about fellow professors in class. I am greatly shocked, however, at the changes now underway at the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, a place that I knew intimately and believed stood for something greater than marketing schemes and university politics.
One of the first people I met at Tufts, and the woman who had, by far, the greatest impact on my personal and intellectual development during my college career, is a woman who, because she doesn't teach courses, most students have probably not have the pleasure to meet. Her name is Lisa Brukilacchio and until recently she held the position of Community Engagement Specialist at Tisch College, where I spent four years as one of a group of scholars formerly known as Omidyar.
My sense of betrayal at Tisch College's decision to get rid of Lisa's position is twofold. On a personal level, I am saddened that Dean Rob Hollister and Director Nancy Wilson - who together made the decision to restructure the College without any input from community stakeholders - cannot see what an important role Lisa has played in the college careers of so many Tufts students.
You may not have met her personally, but if you have ever volunteered to work with a community group in Somerville, or participated in an event surrounding the Mystic River, Lisa probably was a key player in making that experience possible. If you have met her personally, than she has probably inspired you to look at a situation in a new way, or to push yourself to go above and beyond is expected.
On the university level, I am shocked at the decision to cut our ties with the communities that have started, over the past five years, to trust us. The role of the Community Engagement Specialist at Tisch College was to work with community stakeholders to identify their needs and find appropriate placements for Tufts students who wanted to enrich their undergraduate experiences through civic engagement. The concept of listening to the community to identify needs, and then forming partnerships to address these needs is a concept that Lisa introduced to my fellow Omidyar Scholars and me during our first week at Tufts, and one that I thought that the Tisch College stood for.
Now, however, the College (or more likely a group of consultants that has never spoken with community groups) has decided that it doesn't need community input; that it knows what the community needs, and what the community needs are more people at Tufts conducting research about civic engagement. Students will still be placed with community organizations, at least for the time being, but it will not be in the spirit of partnership, or "doing with," it will be "doing for." Undergraduates will no longer have the opportunity to engage with community organizations in a meaningful way. In fact, many community groups are so outraged at the decision that they have threatened to refuse to host Tufts students at all.
I do not disagree with getting more undergraduates involved in conducting research with professors or writing theses, if in fact there is any part of Sternberg's plan that engages undergraduates in such endeavors. I had the opportunity to conduct research with a professor as a Summer Scholar, and it was an experience that was immensely gratifying.
I also understand that better research equals a more prestigious university. However, let's not forget what makes the undergraduate experience at Tufts great: passionate (and sometimes unorthodox) professors and a genuine engagement with our community. I am glad that I had the opportunity to study at a school that valued these qualities, but I fear that future Tufts students will not be so lucky.
Chelsea Bardot (LA '06) majored in political science and is a former Omidyar (CPS) scholar.
