Almost every Tufts student knows the history of Jumbo and recognizes familiar names in Tufts' history like Hosea Ballou. However, few have perspective on the history of Tufts, as students come and go, typically staying for only four years. Even faculty and administrators usually do not spend their entire careers at one institution, and as a result, there are few people who fully realize how Tufts has changed and grown over time.
But in almost 40 years on Walnut Hill, Provost Sol Gittleman has seen it all. He is a walking encyclopedia of Tufts history and is known among administrators as Tufts' institutional memory.
When Gittleman first came to Tufts as a German professor, the Hill was home to a small, liberal arts school that had recently become a university. His tenure has seen the University grow into an internationally prominent research institution.
"We have done things in the last two and a half decades that really have made people sit up and take notice," said Gittleman, pulling a book from his shelves and referencing a passage about Tufts as a greatly improved institution.
"Everything's changed except that we still remain a collegiate place," he said. "When I think of the changes to the physical plant - it's unbelievable."
One area where Gittleman has seen the University make "huge progress" in the last 25 years is finances.
"The most dramatic change is that we have some money to spread around," he said. "The first 125 years were sort of staggered along. In the last 25, finally somebody said 'we need to raise some money' and we did it."
The improvement in Tufts' endowment, the addition of more graduate schools, Tufts' elevation to a Research I institution, and other efforts have launched Tufts into the national spotlight in recent years. Gittleman says that the University has achieved this status largely without self-promotion, and he condemns the branding and marketing universities have to use to promote themselves.
"There are 4,000 universities and colleges in this country, and to think we're working at one of the top is really satisfying," he said. "Regardless of lists, we have become one of the more attractive universities."
As Tufts has become more popular, the caliber of students has risen. "They certainly know more. They come with a huge amount of knowledge and go out with an even huger amount," Gittleman said.
In his many years at the University, Gittleman has seen thousands of students cross the Hill, and for the most part, he says they are still the same. However, Gittleman says that students' demands of the administration have changed significantly. Jumbos today tend to insist that the administration address their concerns immediately. "People are concerned with getting their money's worth, since faculty are clerks and students are customers," he said. "If there is any way to get me annoyed, it is for them to sit in front of me and say I'm here to serve them."
The role of faculty and administration is to teach, and the role of the students is to learn, he added.
Gittleman views the changes in students' demands on the administration as part of national trend though. The political nature of universities nationwide has undergone a vast change since he began his tenure at Tufts, he said.
"I started in 1964, the year of the free speech movement in universities," he recalled. "Universities started raging. We all had the same issues: the war, shared governance, the beginning of sexual freedom... and a new kind of political correctness."
"The old kind [of political correctness] went out. It used to say if you weren't Anglo-Saxon, you couldn't teach Chaucer, Milton, or Frost," Gittleman said.
With retention of minority faculty as one of today's most heated issues on the Hill, Gittleman says the atmosphere is vastly different. The University has also become more diverse during his tenure, though race and ethnicity continue to be areas of much debate and tension.
Though campus politics have been characterized by conflict and bickering this year, Gittleman called the rudeness among students an "anomaly." He has repeated condemned what he calls the "bad manners" of current students. He wrote a passionate letter to the Daily about the issue in February, and three months later, the Provost is still concerned about the situation.
"There is no reason you can't disagree and be passionate, but to be personally destructive..." he trailed off.
Gittleman, however, is quick to laud the accomplishments of the University's faculty that he has seen during his tenure. "We have an infinitely better faculty now but we've always been committed to teaching," he said. "There was a strong focus on the undergraduates - and we haven't lost that."
Gittleman also says the University's emphasis on having professors who do research and also teach classes represents the character of the institution. "That's the strength of Tufts," Gittleman said. "We have a teaching faculty where everyone does research."
The Provost has demonstrated the University's commitment to teaching by putting himself on the front line, as he has insisted on teaching each semester throughout his career as an administrator.
Though Gittleman has seen the University accomplish much, one thing that he is most proud of is his work in the creation of the F.W. Olin Center. "Getting a nice new building for the languages was important," he said. Throughout Gittleman's tenure, the University has maintained a strong commitment to programs in languages and international relations.
Gittleman believes that students are at Tufts "to learn for four years and hopefully light the candle for 40 more." For him, however, the college experience has lasted considerably longer, and he has set a record in higher education for tenure. He says, however, that the years have flown by.
"Twenty-one years in this job is plenty. I didn't think I'd last two [more]. I just kept going," he said.
Calling his lengthy posting a "pure accident," Gittleman explained that the key to his success was picking the right people to surround him. "As Provost, you try to be as invisible as possible," he said. "I appointed some great deans. That's what makes me a genius - finding people who are greater or smarter than I am."
Gittleman's outspoken letters in The Chronicle of Education, and his willingness to take a stance on a number of issues facing institutions of higher learning today have brought the provost to national prominence. He still says though that he loves his jobs, and does not hesitate to give some advice to graduating students.
"Become a professor. It's the best life in the world," he said. "You're all smart enough to do it."
Though his reign as University Provost will end on June 1, Gittleman plans to remain at Tufts for at least another year to teach. Former Dartmouth Dean of the Faculty Jamshed Bharucha will be Gittleman's successor.
And as for the University's future, Gittleman has ambitious dreams. "I'd like to see nice rooms for teaching and living," he said. "Also, I'd like the Vet school funded and to find research space for the Medical school."
"There is more to be done," he added.
Like 2,300 students on the Hill this morning, Gittleman also graduates this year in a sense, as he announced in October that he would be retiring as provost. But just like the students receiving their diplomas today, Gittleman knows that this is not the end of his lifetime relationship with Tufts.
"That's why it's called commencement. It's only the beginning," he said.
Ask Gittleman about his future and he will likely allude to his age. "I'm a grandfather. It's more about my past than my future," Gittleman says. Gittleman, however, will continue to teach on the Hill and hopes to write the next installment of the Light on the Hill series, which documents Tufts' history.
And he may well be the most qualified person to do so.
