Coffin to replace Cuttino as admissions dean

Promising to raise the bar on who Tufts selects, Lee Coffin will take over as Dean of Undergraduate Admissions beginning this October. He will be replacing David Cuttino who retired last spring after 17 years.

Currently Dean of Admissions at Milton Academy in Milton, MA, he has Coffin has worked at Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Harvard.

Susan Ernst, who led the search committee, wanted someone who "shares our vision of moving towards need-blind admissions." She elaborated, "We were looking for a record -- a proven record of dealing with challenges and exceeding them"

Tufts' largest long-term goal in terms of admissions is becoming a need-blind institution. This was one of the reasons Coffin was so interested in joining Tufts.

"I don't know of another school that is going back to need blind," Coffin said. "The fact that Tufts has the fortitude to say that this is a value that we support and identify is excellent. We need to identify additional resources so the admissions office can admit people [for whom] Tufts will be a powerful experience."

Tufts continues to stress admissions selectivity as an important quality of the University. Coffin said that while Tufts only admits about 25 percent of the applicants, its yield rate - the number of students who actually attend Tufts - is also low.

"The yield on accepted students is lower than it should be," he said. "You can be seen as too selective - the accepted students don't go because they also got into Harvard and Yale, and the students who do want to attend Tufts and would be a good fit aren't admitted."

Though Coffin officially begins work next month, he has been on campus several times and has met with the admissions staff.

He plans to formulate a five-year plan after discussing admissions goals with President Lawrence Bacow.

As part of that plan, Coffin will look more closely at which students are applying to Tufts, and from which secondary schools they are applying. He will then travel to those feeder schools to find out exactly what they like about Tufts, and what they don't.

Coffin said his goal is to articulate Tufts' position between larger universities and small liberal arts colleges.

"Tufts is positioned in between two unique peer groups," Coffin said. "It is a smaller university that competes with Harvard and Duke. At same time, Tufts shares the applicant pool with small liberal arts colleges. This paradox I find really interesting - this is what is distinctive about Tufts."

Although Coffin may be tweaking admissions at Tufts, the Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action will not play a large role in those changes. However, Coffin said that the admissions department needs to be constantly re-evaluating what diversity means. "Diversity is redefining itself," he said. "We see a lot of biracial students coming in. The definition of diversity has to be elastic. Admissions has to be thoughtful and creative in how we admit students."

The national search that ended with the selection of Coffin began with Tufts advertising both internally and in the higher education press. Tufts also hired a search firm to seek out people, such as Coffin, who might be interested in the job. "The candidates we were looking for are not usually reading the want ads," Ernst said.

Ultimately, a small group of candidates was invited to come on campus and meet with the search committee. Ernst said she was confident in Tufts' decision. "I think he will be an excellent manager, team player, and leader," she said. "I'm just really excited about working with him."

Coffin said he too is excited. "Tufts is educating for the global century," he said. "A nice tagline, but it spoke to me about the students who should be going to college in the 21 century."