Our findings and recommendations come directly from the input we received from faculty, students, staff, alumni, overseers, and trustees in countless meetings over the past two years. Our work is also informed by survey data and analysis provided to us by the Office of Institutional Research as well as our own survey efforts, and by the numerous documents made available to us by various departments, programs, and administrative offices. For organizational purposes, we have grouped our recommendations around our three central themes: climate, community, and coherence. Most proposals address more than a single area, which is of course precisely what makes them so attractive, and so we have placed each initiative in the category to which it most contributes.
A. Enhancing the Intellectual Climate on Campus
Emphasize communication skills across the curriculum over all four undergraduate years.
Construct a cafe in Tisch Library to symbolize the library's role as an intellectual center on campus.
Restructure the curricular requirements to reflect the educational outcomes that define a Tufts education.
Provide additional support for undergraduate research.
Encourage initiatives that knit together the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering.
Increase programming that contributes to an enhanced intellectual climate.
Create attractive and convenient gathering spaces for faculty and students throughout the campus.
Support our continuing commitment to providing attractive and educationally appropriate classrooms.
B. Strengthening the Tufts Community
Create a Tufts College System that brings faculty, students, and staff together in meaningful and sustained ways.
Implement need-blind admissions for the undergraduate program.
Provide enhanced support for faculty and curricular development in the areas of diversity and pedagogy.
Utilize residence halls as an instrument for undergraduate education.
Create a planning group to design the optimal configuration of residential housing options for our undergraduate students.
Complete the Campus Center to fully realize its potential as a "town commons," a vibrant locus of social activity on campus.
Develop programs that foster a greater sense of the Tufts community as a whole.
C. Contributing to the Coherence of the Tufts Experience
Articulate a developmentally coherent vision for each of the four years of a Tufts education through a series of "intellectual milestone" events, mechanisms, and supportive systems.
Restructure the advising system within Arts and Sciences to provide students with continuous advising support from matriculation to graduation and to provide faculty with additional advising support.
Strengthen connections between our alumni and students, particularly in the area of career services.
Create closer links between the curriculum and co-curricular life.