Marking another step in his 37-year relationship with the University, Provost Sol Gittleman announced yesterday that he will step down from his post and asked President Larry Bacow to begin a national search for a new chief academic officer.
After serving as the second-highest University official for 21 years, Gittleman will continue teaching at Tufts but plans to split his time between his grandchildren, visiting baseball parks, and writing a book. "As long as I'm at Tufts, I'll be teaching," he told the Daily last night following the announcement.
Gittleman will live in the provost's official residence on Professors Row through next year and has no plans to sell his home in Winchester. His wife, Experimental College Dean Robyn Gittleman, will remain in her post, he said.
When former President John DiBiaggio resigned, Gittleman, possibly the longest serving provost in American higher education, said he would serve as long as the new president wished. But as Tufts celebrates its 150th anniversary, Gittleman says he has made his impact on the University.
"I feel particularly privileged to have served at a time when the faculty, student body, and those who help administer this University have made an enormous impact on the quality of the academic enterprise," Gittleman said in a University press release. "We've never been in a stronger position and we have a new president who fully appreciates Tufts and its people."
In his official statement, Bacow lauded Gittleman's service to Tufts. "Sol is the heart and soul of this University," Bacow said. "He has always personified all that is great about Tufts: a passion for students, a commitment to the scholarly enterprise, and a deep-seeded concern for people. Like students and young faculty before me, I have found him to be a wonderful mentor."
Beyond academics, Gittleman's love of baseball has spanned his life. The man who once tried out for the Baltimore Orioles is now a card-carrying member of the Society for American Baseball Research. Recently, Gittleman took his passion for the sport into the classroom, creating a freshman writing seminar about baseball's influence in the 20th century.
As a young man from Hoboken, NJ, Gittleman attended Drew University to "play shortstop" and says his academic career began as an "accident," when his college baseball coach, a German professor, convinced him to major in German.
Gittleman earned a master's degree from Columbia University in comparative literature and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where his wife was pursuing her undergraduate degree. He first worked as a professor teaching German in 1962 at Mount Holyoke College.
Upon leaving Michigan, Gittleman said he would have worked at any college far enough from his parents to avoid regular weekend visits but close enough to allow for an easy drive to dinner. But "Mount Holyoke College was too small and in the middle of nowhere," he says, so it was an easy decision to accept Tufts' offer of employment in 1964.
Gittleman came to the University as an associate German professor and moved into a faculty apartment on 166 Curtis St. with his wife and children. At the time, he had no definite plans for his future, but within two years, the 32-year-old was given tenure and asked to chair the German department. When then-President Jean Meyer asked him to become provost in 1981, Gittleman took the job, though he "didn't know what the heck a provost was," as he said in a 1996 Daily interview. His sole reservation: Gittleman stipulated that he would only take the job if he could continue teaching, saying he would lose the faculty's respect if he abandoned his commitment to classroom education.
"Once you become an administrator you're automatically the enemy, that's why I never stopped teaching," he said. "You have to be seen on the campus carrying books."
Overseeing Tufts' seven schools is a complicated task, Gittleman said yesterday: "It's the incompetent leading the ungovernable," he said. "What do we know about administration?" But after decades of experience, he described his central ability as being able to work well with doctors, dentists, veterinarians, and professors of the humanities. "I could get along with people and that was the only great skill you needed to have," he said.
His courses, including the freshman writing seminar, Yiddish literature, and German language classes have been popular with students across generations, but the veteran educator and orator says he is not always a confident lecturer. "I've still got to go to the bathroom before every class," he said. "You're as good as the last class you taught. The fear of failure is the greatest motivator of any teacher."
Next semester, Gittleman will teach his Yiddish Literature course. In the fall, he plans to offer the baseball seminar, again limited to a small number of freshmen.
Gittleman has served under three University presidents, written more than 4,000 student recommendation letters, won two Fulbright scholarships, and received two honorary doctorate degrees in humane letters. He was designated "professor of the year" by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.
He says he is leaving Tufts in capable hands and that he is not concerned with his replacement, who will likely be chosen by the end of the academic year. Calling Bacow his "best dream come true," Tufts' 67-year old provost said he is ready to return to the role of full-time educator. "Having seen who he is and how he has comported himself made it very easy," he said.
In the press release, the chairman of Tufts' Board of Trustees, Nathan Gantcher, said that Gittleman will continue to be important to the Tufts community. "He's played a major role in building our academic and research strengths, and we're fortunate he'll also continue to be an outstanding teacher here as well," he said.
