Winter trustee meeting focuses on Fletcher

The University Board of Trustees gathered with administrators, faculty, and students on the Medford/Somerville campus this past weekend to discuss issues ranging from campus improvements to community relations.

The focus of the weekend's meetings was the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Friday morning, the trustees were briefed on current events by Fletcher deans and professors.

The Board then divided into its three main committees to hear presentations by Fletcher administrators and the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate's Trustee Reps.

The University Advancement committee viewed Fletcher's new graphic identity, including a new logo and image campaign.

Trustee Rep. Jill Bier spoke to the committee about Tufts' relations with the surrounding communities, proposing a Community Day that would bring local residents to the campus and a student address each semester to the Medford and Somerville Boards of Aldermen on Tufts programs in the community. She also encouraged increased alumni participation in the Alumni Network to make more relationships between current students and Tufts graduates.

The Academic Affairs committee heard a presentation by Fletcher deans about the challenges facing the school. This was followed by Trustee Rep. Joe Coletti's presentation about the pitfalls of the current peer advising system and a recommendation for a more sustained role for peer advisors.

The Administration and Finance committee was presented with Fletcher's new master plan for remodeling and several requests for appropriations for renovations to the school. Trustee Rep. Daniel Kleinman presented the committee with a proposal to increase the use of information technology in classrooms by installing digital projectors and increasing training programs to help teachers better use the technology.

At the Saturday morning meetings, Fletcher Dean Stephen Bosworth presented the school's new strategic plan, and the four new trustees, Karen Pritzker, Bill Richardson, Dr. Alfred Tauber, and Bill Thompson, Jr., were installed. Only Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, could not attend.

The meeting was followed by a lunch with administrators, faculty, and students from each of Tufts' schools. A popular topic of conversation at the luncheon was the housing shortage on the Medford/Somerville campus and the difficulty of building Sophia Gordon Hall. Professors Row, the location of the dorm, is a historic district.

During lunch discussions, Board Vice-Chair Joe Neubauer, the Chairman of Aramark, said the battle over the new dorm should be viewed in the broader scope of relations with the surrounding communities.

"This is not a one-building issue," he said. "It's a question of whether we're going to be able to move forward."

Neubauer said that "if Tufts were well-endowed 30 or 40 years ago and had some foresight, it could have bought up all the land around it" similar to the University of Chicago.

Director of Student Activities Jodie Nealley addressed the problem of "trying to do a master plan for this place, being landlocked."

Planning the capacity of new dorms requires a good deal of guesswork, Neubauer said, and empty rooms are worse for the University than a housing shortage. "The University is in the resource allocation business," he said. "If the beds don't produce any revenue, that's a wasted asset."

When asked by second-year Dental School student Matt Feeley why the University does not purchase more housing for students on the Boston campus to make the Chinatown neighborhood safer, President Larry Bacow said, "Every time we say we want to change a community that's very tight, that's a very threatening statement."

In reaction to Coletti's presentation, one topic of conversation was the quality of advising at Tufts. With several advising options already available for entering undergraduates, Trustee Joyce Barsam, a French professor at Northeastern University who has been on the Board since 1994, questioned whether "you add another layer of bureaucracy and invent something new, or do you fix what you've got?"

Trustee Dana Callow, the Managing General Partner at Boston Millenia Partners, a private equity investment group, spoke about the necessity to increase the "corporate exposure" of the Tufts name. "If an employer hasn't hired a Tufts grad before and decides to go [recruit at] Harvard, that's a problem," he said. He proposed increasing partnerships with pharmaceutical companies through the School of Medicine.

Trustee Marty Granoff said that increasing exposure requires improving both the faculty and student body. "It's top-down and bottom-up," he said.

Echoing Bier's presentation, Vice President of University Relations Mary Jeka said that Tufts is active in the surrounding communities, but "it's clear as a bell, we don't broadcast -- we don't tell anyone."

Because the luncheon gave many Tufts graduate students the chance to come to the Medford/Somerville campus, another discussion topic was the inclusiveness and sense of community among Tufts' many schools. "I don't think there is a really good connection" between the schools, said Jay Kher, Class President of the third-year students at the School of Medicine.

Danielle Goldin-Munday, a first-year student at the School of Veterinary Medicine, said, "I feel like I go to Tufts Vet School, which has nothing to do with Tufts."

The trustees themselves expressed a desire to be better connected to the Tufts community. "I would love to hear honest dialogue," Trustee Deborah Jospin, who was the Director of AmeriCorps before founding a Washington, D.C. consulting group, said. "I don't get to hear from students."