Tufts Beyond 175

1. The plan will always stay true to the university’s mission of education, research, and civic engagement, drawing on our distinctive strength in the liberal arts, while furthering it through investments in—and commitment to—the faculty and staff who deliver on that mission.
2. The plan will be distinctive to Tufts. It will not blindly replicate what other institutions have achieved or are pursuing.
3. The implementation of the plan will follow shared governance with faculty bodies and school deans as appropriate. It will be accountable to the Tufts community, providing annual updates on progress.
4. The plan will reflect the Tufts community’s desire to be forward-thinking, nimble, and efficient.
5. The plan will reflect a commitment to institutional pluralism, community, and belonging.

The foundational elements and drivers are the key conditions, capabilities, or resources that enable us to achieve the pillars and the priorities within. These elements are the means through which the priorities can be realized.

1. Invest in our faculty and staff and preserve the unique culture of Tufts.
   We must collectively support the competitive recruitment and retention of faculty and staff across the university and ensure that compensation and benefits are in line with those of our peers. We will continue to support the professional development of our faculty and staff, invest in leadership development programs, and enhance community and belonging. We will do so while preserving the distinctive community of supportive, collegial, kind, and community-oriented individuals for which Tufts is renowned.
2. Improve our financial and administrative processes.
   We will work to optimize and transform our operational, administrative, and financial models to identify better structures, systems, and tools in service of our faculty and staff and enable them to fully realize the teaching, research, and civic engagement mission of Tufts University. We will embark on a bold and innovative plan to engage greater numbers of Tufts alumni meaningfully and implement an ambitious fundraising strategy to raise $250M annually by 2030 in support of the university’s priorities and goals.
3. Enhance our infrastructure, physical plant, and tools and systems.
   We will invest in tools and systems with an eye to leveraging the latest technological advancements to provide an improved educational experience and enhanced services and efficiencies across the university. We will continue to aggressively invest in enhancing our physical plant—our residential, teaching and research infrastructure—through either new projects or by exploring ways to better and more efficiently utilize our existing assets and infrastructure with the goal of creating improved educational, living, and social spaces for students, and better work environments for faculty and staff. We will use new and innovative ways to finance, design, and complete construction projects ensuring that the university’s resources are used responsibly and efficiently.
4. Expand our definition of a student.
   We will think broadly about who would benefit from a Tufts education as we innovate our curricular offerings and engage in creating stronger partnerships with corporate and business partners as we look to expand our student base nationally and globally. In particular, we should include non-traditional, mid-career, and lifelong learners as potential students.
5. Build mechanisms to enable increased collaboration and coordination across schools.
   This plan will support deans and faculty, and the strategic plans made at the school level. We will identify opportunities where coordination and cooperation across the schools will be particularly beneficial for the collective good of the entire university community.
6. Tell our story effectively.
   We will communicate the strengths, distinctiveness, and unique position of the university in a more comprehensive and proactive manner. We will do so in our admissions processes as we seek to attract the best students from across the world, in our recruitment of faculty and staff, and more broadly in sharing widely the many successes and achievements of our faculty, staff, students and alumni.

The university will support each of its schools to recruit the most talented and qualified students possible across the socioeconomic spectrum. Furthermore, the university will support the faculty at each of the schools to challenge those students to deepen their knowledge, broaden their perspectives, and equip those students to become leaders who are conscientious, thoughtful, empathetic, and ethical individuals who serve the community and society at large, regardless of their chosen career path.

Priority 1: Expanding access to a Tufts education and ensuring excellent student academic and career outcomes

Goal: Support the schools to increase access to a Tufts education for students from families in the lower half of the socioeconomic spectrum through improved recruiting and outreach to prospective students and improved financial aid and student support services

Strategies:

1. Support the undergraduate schools to reimagine financial aid to provide greater support for low-income families and introduce more tuition flexibility for extra semesters and years, scholarships, and housing support, and support the graduate and professional schools to identify new and increased resources for financial aid
2. Provide central coordination and resources to help improve academic support and career services at all schools to ensure enhanced student success and improved career outcomes across all schools
3. Provide new technological tools to support staff in recruiting and retaining students across all schools

Priority 2: Promoting academic innovation and curricular flexibility, within and across schools

Goal: Create more academic flexibility for students and allow for more experiential opportunities that foster creativity, innovation, and leadership abilities by supporting the deans and the faculty to initiate calendar and curriculum reviews at schools across the university, as needed and appropriate

Strategies:

1. Support deans and the faculty in all schools in their efforts to review curricula and foster innovation with an eye towards meeting the evolving needs of our students, while retaining our emphasis on the liberal arts in the undergraduate schools
2. Work in partnership with stakeholders across the university to standardize key systems and processes
3. Work with partners at all schools to create pathways for experiential learning opportunities students as appropriate and applicable such as research, co-ops, education-focused internships, community engaged participatory research, etc.

Priority 3: Centering academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas within a community that champions pluralism

Goal: Create the conditions to protect academic freedom while facilitating more opportunities for students to learn the critical skills of listening, debating, and discussing alternate viewpoints necessary for future leaders

Strategies:

1. Support faculty to create more opportunities to develop critical thinking skills in classes, research, and other community engagement opportunities
2. Support the schools to design coursework, modules, and events around civic engagement, free speech, civil discourse, and dialogue, in partnership with schools and centers where such expertise resides at the university

The university will help foster an even stronger, more cohesive student community with vibrant student life opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Tufts will help provide students with enhanced resources for improved outcomes and create spaces and opportunities for our students to engage collaboratively with each other to relish the full Tufts experience.

Priority 1: Implementing a new model of career services, a new definition of student success, and new academic pathways towards professional programs to improve the overall academic experience for all students

Goal: Imagine a new model for supporting students for their professional lives after Tufts through improved career services and other programs

Strategies:

1. Support the deans and their teams to redesign career education to integrate academic experiences and student life for students at all schools as applicable
2. Work to expand relationships with local industries, organizations, and alumni to provide networking and recruitment opportunities for all students
3. Work with the schools to explore more direct pathway programs between undergraduate programs and the graduate and professional programs

Priority 2: Supporting the schools to improve all aspects of the non-academic student experience

Goal: Enhance residential, social, athletic, creative and performance art opportunities and experiences for all undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at Tufts

Strategies:

1. Invest and create new and innovative residential spaces, including the new residence hall on campus, for undergraduate students to foster more community and belonging
2. Work with departments across the university to create additional arts, music, cultural and recreational opportunities, and provide additional resources for club and intramural sports
3. Partner with the deans and the faculty to scale up and develop new summer programs to provide transformative experiences for students

Priority 3: Creating new physical spaces for gathering and community engagement

Goal: Introduce new opportunities and gathering spaces for students, faculty, and staff to have enriching social experiences across all campuses

Strategies:

1. Engage university-wide stakeholders to rethink community and social spaces including libraries and other institutional facilities to expand such facilities
2. Provide additional spaces and resources to host institution-wide social events
3. Reimagine campus center spaces to allow for more collaborative and recreational spaces

Tufts will grow the institution’s research and scholarly enterprise, while leveraging areas of knowledge where the university has a unique advantage, such as our strength in the liberal arts, to distinctively contribute more than our fair share to advancing knowledge and creating impact to address the world’s pressing problems.

Priority 1: Recruiting, developing, and retaining exceptional faculty and research staff

Goal: Support the schools to recruit outstanding faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and research staff to enhance our global stature in research and scholarship—and invest in the professional development of faculty and staff and make efforts to retain them at Tufts through competitive compensation and benefits, and by creating an environment that fosters their scholarship.

Strategies:

1. With an eye towards faculty retention, partner with the schools to review faculty salaries, to ensure internal equity, adjusted for performance, and with the external market with a goal of bringing 90% of faculty to within the peer evaluated salary ranges for their roles specific to school and discipline
2. Support the deans to recruit faculty in university-wide and school-based thematic priority areas in research and scholarship
3. Work with the schools to create professional development and faculty engagement programs throughout the faculty lifecycle
4. Create a strategy and timeline and continue to invest in new research infrastructure to facilitate innovation and discovery while continuing to maintain existing research facilities

Priority 2: Promoting and nurturing university-wide centers of research and scholarship excellence, in the sciences, arts, and humanities, identified through a bottom-up process consistent with school-level strategies, for focused growth—and engaging with external audiences to share our research strengths more effectively

Goal: Identify and strategically invest in new key areas of research and scholarship emphasis in partnership with the schools and develop ways for showcasing our research and scholarship externally

Strategies:

1. Work with the deans, academic deans, and research deans to develop university-wide research and scholarship networks for Tufts faculty and staff to create new and distinctive collaborations towards centers of excellence
2. Organize and host conferences for external audiences highlighting research strengths at Tufts
3. Create a mechanism for Tufts to participate actively in external engagements to highlight and promote Tufts' institutional and school-based thematic research and scholarship priority areas
4. Work with partners at the various innovation and entrepreneurship groups across the university to create a new model and culture of innovation that extends the impact of our research and creates engagement opportunities with external audiences, such as industry, government and foundations

Priority 3: Diversifying funding sources for the research and scholarship portfolio

Goal: Create a new model of funding that increases engagement with foundations and corporations to reduce reliance on the traditional federal sources of funding and increase non-federal funding up to 50%

Strategies:

1. Develop partnerships between the Provost’s Office and Advancement to create a new model for corporate engagement and networking and foster an internal culture of positive and productive engagement with the corporate world
2. Develop new strategies to engage with foundations and increase grant submissions to them in support of the schools and the faculty
3. Explore state and local level sources of funding and untapped federal sources where we traditionally have not made inroads

The university will work with all of its schools to educate and prepare scholars, to give back to their local, national and global communities through service, education, research, and scholarship as appropriate, while engaging the entire Tufts community of faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

Priority 1: Operationalizing a civic and community engagement framework

Goal: A meaningful opportunity for a civic engagement exercise for every community member at Tufts.

Strategies:

1. Work to have all schools create scaled-up cohort-based student civic engagement programs with curricular and experiential components
2. Host an annual civic engagement symposium engaging students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members
3. Create a hub-and-spoke operationalization plan for civic and community engagement across the university by supporting Tisch College to align, support, and assess efforts at various schools across the university

Priority 2: Expanding community-based experiential learning and community engaged research

Goal: Create credit-bearing experiential offerings that all Tufts community members can take on civic engagement, and ensure Tufts becomes a global leader in community-engaged participatory action research.

Strategies:

1. Work with the faculty to develop innovative and accessible civic engagement courses across the full spectrum of civic engagement (public service, community service, veterans’ programs, etc.) by hosting workshops for faculty, staff, students, and community members to share ideas and brainstorm content
2. Support the deans to build capacity in the faculty body to teach civic engagement
3. Support faculty research groups to develop a university-wide framework for centering community knowledge in research and ensure such work is annually documented and publicized widely

Priority 3: Expanding opportunities to serve the community directly

Goal: Create a hub for civic and community engagement activities across the institution

Strategies:

1. Support the School of Dental Medicine and Cummings School deans and faculty to scale up our clinical operations in those schools in service of our neighbors and the larger community
2. Provide central support to the schools to conduct outreach, organize, and coordinate community engagement opportunities, connecting faculty leaders with community partners
3. Support the schools to provide opportunities and incentives for faculty and staff to participate in and lead civic engagement initiatives