Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences

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Coordinates: 42°24′25″N 71°07′12″W / 42.407°N 71.120°W / 42.407; -71.120
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Tufts University School Arts and Sciences
school
Established1852
Parent institution
Tufts University
DeanJames M. Glaser
Location
Medford, Massachusetts and Somerville, Massachusetts
,
Massachusetts
,
U.S.
CampusUrban
Websiteas.tufts.edu

The School of Arts and Sciences (A&S) is a school of

faculty members (of whom 330 are full-time). There are over 4,300 full-time undergraduates and 1700 graduate and professional students.[when?
]

Organization

The School of Arts and Sciences is under the supervision of a

president and the provost, with the approval of the Trustees of Tufts College (the university's governing board). The current dean is James M. Glaser
.

The dean of arts and sciences oversees undergraduate and graduate education in 24 academic departments, more than 10 interdisciplinary programs, and 20 masters and Ph.D. programs. The School of Arts and Sciences consists of three degree granting units and the Summer Session:

  • College of Liberal Arts & Jackson College (LA&J): Until 2002, male undergraduates received their degrees from the College of Liberal Arts and female undergraduates received their degrees from Jackson College for Women. However, the two colleges have always shared the same faculty, curriculum, and facilities. Jackson College is a distinct college in name only.
  • Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS): GSAS maintains formal dual degree programs with the School of Engineering, the
    Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
    .
  • Tufts University Summer Session: The Summer Session offers about 250 undergraduate and graduate courses on the Medford/Somerville campus during two six-week sessions and one twelve-week session each summer. Approximately, 2000 students enroll in Summer Session classes each summer. More than 90% of summer courses are taught by Tufts faculty. In contrast to the other units, the Summer Session awards no degrees. The division has open enrollment and tuition on a per course basis. This enables part-time undergraduate and graduate students, undergraduates at other colleges and universities and adults in the Boston area access to Tufts' faculty, laboratories, library system, and facilities.

The

Experimental College (or ExCollege)
is also part of the School of Arts and Sciences. This college is not a degree-granting entity. Instead, it serves as a locus for "educational innovation, expansion of the undergraduate curriculum, and faculty/student collaboration within the Arts and Sciences".

History

While instruction in the liberal arts and sciences dates to the founding of Tufts College in 1852, the formal organization of the school came almost fifty years later. In 1903, the trustees of Tufts College adopted a "new plan" of organization that divided the college into several schools: Liberal Arts (formerly Letters), Engineering, Divinity (or Religion), Graduate Arts and Sciences, as well as the schools of medicine and dental medicine. The first four, all located on the Medford/Somerville campus, were grouped together as the "Department of Arts and Sciences" (later the Faculty of Arts and Sciences). This organization required any policy that affected the schools in the Department (the "Associated Schools") to be considered first by the constituent faculty and then by parent body. (This pattern of organization continues to the present day). The medical and dental school, located in Boston, remained outside this overlapping pattern of organization, as did the Fletcher School (established in 1933).

As Tufts developed, new units were incorporated into this dual organization. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, formally named as such in 1909, and Jackson College for Women, created by the trustees and chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1910.[citation needed] In 1925 Jackson College had a quota of 250 female students, and prospective students were officially required to take the Tufts University entrance examinations.[1]

The Division of University Extension, established in 1939-40, became Associated Schools. Each of the associated schools had its own dean and faculty, with the exception of Jackson College, which always shared the same faculty as the School of Liberal Arts. In 1939, following the retirement of the long-time dean of the School of Liberal Arts, the separate posts of dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and dean of admissions were created. The Division of University Extension was renamed the Division of Special Studies in 1949. Except for the 1962-1965 period, the School of Religion (formally renamed the Crane Theological School in 1955) was one of the Associated Schools of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1903 until the school's closing in 1967. When Tufts College formally became Tufts University in 1952, the undergraduate divisions were renamed "colleges" and the graduate and professional divisions were renamed "schools."

In 1989, the board of trustees directed then-Tufts University president

Oklahoma State University. He was succeeded by neuroscientist Joanne Berger-Sweeney, formerly the Associate Dean of Wellesley College
.

Since 2007, the School of Arts and Sciences has published the Tufts Historical Review, a peer-reviewed journal for student-written publications whose editorial board is composed of Tufts undergraduates.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ Ryan, Julia (2013-11-11). "How Getting Into College Became Such a Long, Frenzied, Competitive Process". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-08-31.
  2. ^ "Tufts Historical Review". Tufts University. Retrieved 2019-04-28.

Sources

  1. Richard M. Freeland, Academia's Golden Age: Universities in Massachusetts, 1945-1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
  2. Sol Gittleman, An Entrepreneurial University: The Transformation of Tufts, 1976-2002 (Medford, Mass.: Tufts University Press, 2004).
  3. Russell Miller, A Light on the Hill: A History of Tufts College, 1852-1952 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).

External links

42°24′25″N 71°07′12″W / 42.407°N 71.120°W / 42.407; -71.120

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