Students, faculty, administrators and alumni will gather this morning to celebrate the inauguration of President Larry Bacow as his first year at Tufts draws near a close. But the University's 12th president will have some particularly special guests in the audience - friends and family, who traveled to the hill from across the nation.
"It will be one of the largest collections of Bacows ever assembled in one place at one time," said the President, who served as chancellor of MIT before coming to Tufts. "I am looking forward to it with great excitement."
Dean of the School of Dental Medicine Dr. Lonnie H. Norris, President of the Tufts University Alumni Association Bill O'Reilly, and TCU President Eric Greenberg will be speaking and in attendance for the event.
The ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. at Ellis Oval, and is open to the public. Tufts spokesperson Siobhan M. Houton said organizers are expecting a crowd of 2,500.
"I know it will be a great day for me," Bacow said. "I hope it will also be a great day for Tufts."
The keys to Ballou Hall will be presented to Bacow, as well as the charter to the university and the presidential medallion.
Even though the University knew of Bacow's arrival last summer, given the size and prominence of the event Houton said the inauguration was delayed because it was difficult to organize.
"There is a lot of coordination of schedules for many of the key participants," Houton said. "Also, there is also a great deal of booking of facilities for the weekend-long events."
Although today marks the official inauguration, the celebration will continue throughout the weekend. Various student music ensembles helped kick off the event last night in a Cohen Auditorium concert with performances by the Tufts Chamber Singers, the Third Day Gospel Choir, the Joel LaRue Smith Trio and the Tufts Symphony Orchestra.
The festivities will continue tomorrow night with Tufts' 150th Anniversary and Inauguration Celebration, beginning at 8:30 p.m. in the Gantcher Family Sports and Convocation Center. Student a cappella groups will be performing, and Bacow will prepare a Tufts time capsule that will remain unopened until 2052.
Bacow assumed the Tufts presidency on Sept. 1 of last year. He spent much of his time early in the year attending a multitude of events and attempting to meet as many students and faculty as possible. More recently, he streamlined Tufts' bureaucracy with a number of administrative changes and established the Taskforce on the Undergraduate Experience.
Bacow comes to Tufts with a rich background in higher education. He graduated from MIT with a bachelor's degree in economics and received a law degree from Harvard Law School, before earning both a Master of Public Policy and a Ph.D. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
MIT welcomed Bacow to its faculty in 1977. There he served as the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies, and as chair of the MIT faculty and the MIT Council on the Environment. He played a key role in establishing a partnership between MIT and Cambridge University, called the Cambridge-MIT Institute.
Before arriving at Tufts, Bacow served as MIT chancellor for three years.
His research on environmental policy and regulation and on non-adjudicative methods of resolving environmental dispute resolution has garnered the respect and recognition of scholars worldwide. A distinguished lecturer both in the US and oversees, he has authored four books and numerous articles.
