Jonathan Tisch (LA '76), chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels, Corp. and University trustee, will donate $40 million to endow the future of Tufts' University College.
Formerly known as the University College of Citizenship and Public Service, the school has been renamed the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.
The donation was announced on Friday, May 12 at a midday ceremony in which President Lawrence Bacow and Tisch unveiled a sign bearing the college's new name in front of the Lincoln Filene Center.
The Tisch College is a University-wide program which pushes students to apply academic knowledge from any discipline to make improvements in their communities.
Former President John DiBiaggio launched what was then known as the University College in 2000 with the use of a $10 million startup donation from Pierre and Pam Omidyar (LA '88, LA '89)
Tisch's gift is the third-largest in Tufts history and is believed to be the largest individual gift ever to any public service program.
The donation, Bacow said, "ensures in perpetuity" the existence of the College and will create an endowment that will support the college indefinitely off of the interest earned from the donation.
Tisch describes himself as an "early and avid" supporter of Tufts' active citizenship program, which was initially proposed in 1998 by trustee and entrepreneur Brian O'Connell (LA '53).
"I remember sitting there, thinking that this is a remarkable concept and an important idea that Tufts should embrace," Tisch told the Daily in a separate interview.
Tisch is thrilled to see the program come to this stage of development.
"Today we are awarded with the opportunity to become one of the elite universities with this program that will educate future leaders," he said at the ceremony.
"Jon is a member of a family synonymous with philanthropy," said Jim Stern, chairman of Tufts' Board of Trustees.
The Tisch family is a giant in philanthropy circles that is best known for its work with New York University (NYU). The family heavily financed NYU's Tisch School of the Fine Arts, but it has also contributed to Cornell University, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as to numerous hospitals and New York educational charities.
This is not the first time that the Tisch family has supported Tufts. Jonathan's parents, Preston Robert "Bob" Tisch and Joan Tisch, donated the funds used to remodel the main Arts and Sciences Library into the familiar Tisch Library, inaugurated in 1992.
Philanthropy is second nature to the family, Tisch said at the ceremony as he reflected on his father, who passed away last November.
"Where we came from, we didn't know of anything else," Tisch said. "It was just something we did ... we had some assets, and we used those assets to help others towards the greater good."
Tisch characterized the donation as the "ultimate nod to my father, who taught [this ethic] to us from minute one."
In following the model set by his parents, Tisch set an example of his own as an active citizen both during and after his time on the Hill.
Tisch was the second member of his family to attend Tufts, following his older brother Steve (LA '71), and he became a member of Tufts' Board of Trustees in 1988.
Though no Active Citizenship program was formally in place at the time, Tisch said that many students were very active in the Lincoln Filene community service organization. He also said that classes he took in the Experimental College helped him engage in learning outside the classroom.
An internship with the WBZ TV station that he secured through the ExCollege helped him to "venture outward" from the University to engage in an "important and beneficial" project.
He liked the business so much that at the end of his senior year, he was offered a job and stayed on for three years as a cinematographer and producer.
Tisch also engaged the community through his leadership on the Concert Board.
During an interview with the Daily, Tisch told a story that dates to March 1976, a few months before his graduation, when the Concert Board had assembled a concert with two acts.
The first act, he said, had sold relatively well, but the second act had sold so badly that after the intermission Tisch was forced to tell the performer that the second show would have to be cancelled due to lack of interest.
Who was this performer? "Billy Joel," Tisch said.
(Joel did eventually make it back to campus for a more well-received performance in September of 1991, picking Tufts as one of his stops on an exclusive college tour that included only six locations.)
Tisch's donation will also have an impact that reaches beyond Tufts.
"Tufts is also playing an important role as a model for other institutions," Bacow said. "We're looked to as the gold standard for civic engagement."
Last fall, the president met with 28 other university presidents from around the world at a conference hosted at Tufts' campus in Talloires, France. The attendees were all looking to Tufts as a model for implementing active citizenship programs.
"The impact of this gift will be felt far beyond greater Boston," said American Council on Education President David Ward in a May 12 press release. "The unique interdisciplinary nature of the Tisch College is a fine example of how a university can harness the academic strength in every element of its community toward a common goal of improving our nation and our society."
Large gifts like Tisch's will also be an advantage as the University kicks off its next capital campaign starting in November.
The past two years have yielded impressive results for Tufts fundraising. In 2004, the William S. Cummings Foundation donated $50 million, and the Omidyars donated $100 million in the fall of 2005. (see "Tufts takes steps to invest Omidyar microfinance fund," page 3).
"The structure about these significant gifts to Tufts ... reflects on the genius of the Omidyars," Tisch said. "It's not about just writing a check. Their gifts keep on giving."
"We continue to make substantial progress," Bacow said. "Each of these gifts helps reinforce that we have alumni and friends who believe in our institution and are willing to help us achieve our goals."
Large donations like the Omidyars' and Tisch's "help us to raise the bar," Bacow said.
"It's a very exciting gift to the University," said Julie Dobrow, director of the Communications and Media Studies program, in which many of the courses, including the very popular, "Producing Films for Social Change," have an active citizenship component. "Everybody is very jazzed up."
And Dobrow was not the only one to point out that the new name will make for a clearer transmission of the college's purpose, rather than ambiguous "University College" or its clunky predecessor of an acronym, "UCCPS."
The Tisch College "rolls off the tongue better," she said, adding that this increased clarity "will advance all of the initiatives."
Out of the Woods
Tisch's donation marks a milestone for the University College in terms of clarifying the ambiguities of its identity and securing its financial future. Its prospects - financial or organizational - have not always been so rosy.
In its early stages, the college did not have a strategic plan and struggled to define its role both internally and to the larger community, resulting in some frustration. Tufts alumna Lisette Garcia (LA '01) told the Daily about her disappointment in 2002. ("Concerns arise over UCCPS funding," Nov. 21, 2002)
"UCCPS could have been something incredible and it just hasn't taken off," said Garcia, who was involved in a student advisory group before she graduated.
Others, however, were confident that the college would continue to evolve, including then-sophomore and UCCPS scholar Matan Chorev (LA '05).
"There is a lot of room for improvement, but it has come a long way in a short period of time," Chorev told the Daily in 2004. ("University College works to gain outside funding," Mar. 29, 2004)
"People always try to find flaws in the program. It's not perfect, it's not even great yet, but it will be. The community needs to be patient with the College," said Chorev, who is currently pursuing a Master of Arts of Law and Diplomacy at the Fletcher School.
The Omidyar Fund originally pledged $10 million in start-up costs as part of an agreement stipulating that the University College would diversify its sources of funding and raise $20 million within five years of its 2000 startup.
The Daily also obtained an internal memo described in a November 2002 article that expressed concern over whether the college would be able to solidify its financial position. At that time, only $3 million of the targeted $20 million had been raised.
In 2004, four years after the original grant, the Daily reported that the University College had still only raised $5 million of the $20 million goal.
In that article, University College Dean Robert Hollister told the Daily that another donation on the order of the Omidyars' was unlikely, and that donors would probably be smaller-scale institutions and individuals.
But with the flick of Jonathan Tisch's pen, the College become the recipient of the largest single donation to any public service program.
Hollister said that several factors contributed to the massive step forward.
One is the expansion of both the College's programming and of its on-campus profile. As of last year, 30 percent of Tufts undergraduates had taken a class with an active citizenship component.
While Hollister said that the College has expanded somewhat since that time, he added that Tufts' presidential leadership has proved a strong force in attracting investment.
He said that Bacow advocated "significant adjustments in the University College's strategic orientation" and "was compelling in communicating with donors about the College."
Hollister also noted that the donation was largely due to the exceptional nature of Tisch himself and his strong belief in active citizenship philanthropy.
Hollister said that the Omidyars were intent on providing venture capital, not endowment, and that they had intended for the money to be spent to provide for the first years of the College's operation.
"Each year we were drawing down a portion of the [Omidyar] grants," he said.
Asked if he ever thought the college would fail financially, Hollister expressed confidence in its success. From his perspective, the College's growth took place at a remarkable pace, and any skepticism about the program's success came too early.
"I knew from the start that we would succeed; my only uncertainty was about how long it would take," Hollister said. "The College now is less than six years old. In academic time, that's a nanosecond."
The Future of the Tisch College
It turns out that community-based projects still have appeal even when Tufts students have a plethora of perhaps more prestigious or glamorous opportunities to travel far outside of their own communities.
"People feel responsibility to the communities in which they live," Hollister said. "Tufts students in Somerville, Medford, Grafton and Boston still feel the obligation to be good citizens."
Though the Tisch grant provides the College with a firm foundation, it will also bring with it a whole new set of challenges.
"The naming gift increases everyone's expectations," Hollister said.
The College hopes to continue pushing for sustainable and strong projects - a challenge when students are only on the Hill for four years.
He also hopes to further harness the power of research for active citizenship purposes.
"Many people feel like research and active citizenship are different or competing priorities," Hollister said. "But we want to demonstrate that citizenship and research can go hand in hand."
He cited such examples as Friedman School Professor Christina Economos' "Shape up Somerville" project, an applied research initiative to battle child obesity in Somerville, and Medical School Professor Douglas Brugge's research on asthma among inner city populations.
The real test of the college's programs, however, will be the legacy of its alumni and whether their post-University life will in fact show a record of more active citizenship.
Though "anecdotal evidence" to this end exists, "we need to prove the educational outcomes we are claiming," Hollister said.
He also said that the College had been working with Executive Director of Institutional Research Dawn Terkla to "conduct surveys and other institutional tracking methods" to explore the college's actual impact.
