Tufts University

Tufts University is a private research university with its main campus straddling the cities of Medford and Somerville, and with significant additional facilities in Boston. Founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning, it is now a research university with campuses in both the Greater Boston area and in Talloires, France. Now more than 170 years old, Tufts is the third-oldest college in the Boston area. The university enrolls over 13,000 students and offers over 90 undergraduate and 160 graduate programs across ten schools in the greater Boston area and from a campus in France. The university's motto, Pax et Lux (Peace and Light), reflects its mission to prepare students as engaged leaders who address complex global challenges through scholarship, service, and innovation.

Founding and Early History

In 1847, the Universalist Church organized an educational convention to discuss the potential establishment of a college for the Universalists, and the first provisional Board of Trustees was selected and began working to raise funds and choose a site. Charles Tufts, who had accumulated significant wealth and land holdings from his family's brick manufacturing business, donated 20 acres of land to the Church to be used for establishing a college, and that land included one of the highest hills in the Boston area, Walnut Tree Hill, straddling the cities of Medford and Somerville. After much debate among the Trustees, in 1851 the Medford land was selected as the site of Tufts College, and Charles Tufts later donated an additional 80 acres to the campus.

As local lore has it, when a relative asked Charles Tufts what he would do with his land, and more specifically with "that bleak hill over in Medford," Tufts replied, "I will put a light on it." This phrase became central to the university's identity and its motto of Pax et Lux — Peace and Light. When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts chartered Tufts College in 1852, the original act of incorporation noted the college should promote "virtue and piety and learning in such of the languages and liberal and useful arts as shall be recommended."

Having been one of the biggest influences in the establishment of the college, Hosea Ballou II became the first president in 1853, and College Hall, the first building on campus, was completed the following year — that building now bears Ballou's name, and the campus opened in August 1854. In 1854, the Trustees authorized faculty "to give instruction in the Latin and Greek languages and in Mathematics to such young men as desire to pursue those studies," and in Tufts' earliest days the original college building served as both home and classroom for seven students, who were taught by four professors.

The official college seal, bearing the motto Pax et Lux (Peace and Light), was adopted in 1857. The school colors of brown and blue were selected in 1876.

Growth into a University

P. T. Barnum was one of the earliest benefactors of Tufts College, and the Barnum Museum of Natural History (Barnum Hall) was constructed in 1884 with funds donated by him to house his collection of animal specimens and the stuffed hide of Jumbo the elephant, who would become the university's mascot. Jumbo the Elephant, Tufts' official mascot, was the prime attraction in P.T. Barnum's entertainment empire, was the first African elephant in the United States, and his name is derived from a Swahili word meaning "large."

On July 15, 1892, the Tufts Board of Trustees voted "that the College be opened to women in the undergraduate departments on the same terms and conditions as men," and Metcalf Hall opened in 1893 to serve as the dormitory for women; at the same meeting, the trustees also voted to create a graduate school faculty and to offer the PhD degree in biology and chemistry. In 1893 the Medical School opened and in 1899 the Boston Dental College was integrated into the university.

During World War II, Tufts College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission, and due to travel restrictions imposed by the war, the Boston Red Sox conducted spring training for the 1943 Major League season at Tufts College.

In 1955, continued expansion was reflected in the change of the school's name to Tufts University. The university experienced some growth during the presidency of Jean Mayer (1976–1992), who established Tufts' veterinary, nutrition, and biomedical schools and acquired the Grafton and Talloires campuses, at the same time lifting the university out of its dire financial situation by increasing the size of the endowment by a factor of 15.

Campuses

Tufts' main campus is located on Walnut Hill in Medford and Somerville, about 5 miles from Boston on the site of the original farm of Charles Tufts, and houses all undergraduates in Arts & Sciences and Engineering, the graduate programs at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and all of the graduate programs in Arts & Sciences and Engineering. While the majority of the campus is in Medford, the Somerville line intersects it, placing parts of the lower campus in Somerville and leading to the common terms "Uphill" and "Downhill"; the "Uphill" portion of the campus comprises the academic and the residential "Rez" quad, built on the former reservoir site.

Many points on the hill have noted views of the Boston skyline, particularly the patio on the Tisch Library roof. Designed by the Olmsted Brothers in the 1920s, the memorial stairs form one of the main entrances to the university and allow direct access to the engineering school from the academic quad.

The School of Medicine, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, School of Dental Medicine, and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy are located on the Tufts Boston Health Science campus in the Chinatown neighborhood of Boston. This compact Health Sciences Campus is located in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood, only a short walk from Boston Common and the start of the historic Freedom Trail, and is also home to Tufts Medical Center and the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging.

As part of the MBTA's $2.28 billion Green Line Extension project, the university gained the Medford/Tufts station — the northern terminus of the E branch, located next to the Joyce Cummings Center and adjacent to Boston Avenue — which opened on December 12, 2022, after numerous delays.

Academic Profile and Schools

Tufts is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and is a member of the Association of American Universities. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 7,126 (fall 2024), its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 150 acres, with a student-faculty ratio of 10:1 and a semester-based academic calendar.

The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy was founded in 1933 with the bequest of Austin Barclay Fletcher, who left over $3 million to Tufts University upon his death in 1923, with a third of those funds dedicated "for the establishment and maintenance of a School of Law and Diplomacy." The Fletcher School opened in 1933 under the joint administration of Harvard University and Tufts College, and Tufts College assumed exclusive responsibility for its administration in 1935. It remains the country's oldest graduate school of international relations.

The Tufts University School of Medicine was established in 1893 and is located on the university's health sciences campus in downtown Boston, with clinical affiliations with numerous doctors and researchers around the world, as well as affiliated hospitals including Tufts Medical Center, St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, Baystate Medical Center, and Maine Medical Center.

The university's schools include the School of Medicine (1893), the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences (1981), the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (1981) — described as the only graduate school of nutrition in North America — and the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine (1978), the only veterinary school in New England.

The main library, Tisch Library, holds about 2.7 million volumes, with other holdings dispersed at subject libraries including the Hirsh Health Sciences Library on the Boston campus, the Edwin Ginn Library at the Fletcher School, and Webster Family Library at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine on the Grafton campus.

Notable Alumni and Faculty

Tufts has produced graduates who have achieved distinction in government, the arts, sciences, and public life. Tufts alumni in the government sector include Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO; Mulatu Teshome Wirtu, President of Ethiopia from 2013 to 2018; Kostas Karamanlis, former Prime Minister of Greece; and Shashi Tharoor, former United Nations Under-Secretary General and Indian Member of Parliament.

Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman of eBay, graduated in 1988 with a degree in computer science. Hank Azaria attended Tufts and has since won four Emmy awards for his voiceovers on Fox's The Simpsons as Moe Szyslak and Chief Clancy Wiggum. Roderick MacKinnon, a School of Medicine graduate, won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2003 for visualizing the opening and closing of potassium ion channels in cell membranes.

Notable faculty have included geologist Alfred Church Lane and physicist Allan M. Cormack, while poet John Ciardi and U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan are among Tufts' alumni.

Eighty-seven percent of Tufts students complete at least one internship while at the school, and the university's reputation and proximity to Boston provide students with many opportunities to get a head start on their post-college careers.

See Also

• Boston University
• Northeastern University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Green Line Extension
• Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy