Graduate students seek greater inclusion in Medford campus

Graduate students at the Tufts School of Medicine, Tufts Vet School and Tufts Dental School say they feel consistently disconnected from the larger Tufts community at the Medford/Somerville campus.

At a February trustees meeting, graduate student representatives from the Medical, Dental, and Vet Schools expressed concerns that their peers spend almost no time on the Medford/Somerville campus during their years as Tufts students, often stepping foot there only during orientation and graduation.

"I feel like I go to Tufts Vet School, which has nothing to do with Tufts," Danielle Goldin-Munday said at the meeting last month.

Third-year dental school class president Jean-Paul Boudreau noted that the different schools under the Tufts umbrella tend to naturally separate themselves. "The medical school is in fact attached to the same building as the Dental School in Boston, and there isn't even a whole lot of interaction between them, either," Boudreau said.

Although dialogue such as that which took place at the trustees' meeting has taken place, little has been done to make graduate students feel more included on the Medford campus. Boudreau said that he mentioned graduates' concerns about their association with Tufts in a meeting last year with trustees and representatives from the Tufts community. "Nothing seemed to come out of the discussion then, and I would be surprised if anything resulted from [February's] meeting," he said.

Classics Department Administrator and Graduate Student Council (GSC) Treasurer David Proctor said that the council was unaware of Boston graduate students' desire for greater inclusion within the Medford/Somerville community.

"About a year ago there was a meeting including student representatives from all of Tufts' campuses. There we tried to foster connections between the schools, but admittedly those haven't progressed very far," Proctor said.

He said that now that he has heard that students on other campuses are interested in achieving greater inclusion, the University will begin to set up a "dialogue. "We're delighted that they want to be more active within the Tufts community, and want to better incorporate them in what goes on in Medford," Proctor said.

Although this issue appears to have been simmering for a few years now, it appears some new programs are starting to take steps to bridge the gap between Tufts' campuses.

Though plans for Boston graduate students are not yet fully underway, "we have been working to make the graduate students in the Arts, Science and Engineering feel more like they are part of the Medford/Somerville campus community," Dean of Students Bruce Reitman said.

Reitman said that as the school increases dorm space on campus, it will mean more graduate students will be able to reside there. "I hope that after we are able to build more residence halls that there will be more of a residential presence for the graduate students," he said.

Furthermore, Reitman said that joint research ventures involving students and faculty from across the campuses are the primary overlap, and that these opportunities are growing with time.

Reitman cited the Summer Research scholars program as an example of this integration. "Undergraduates tend to be more involved these days in research projects going on at the graduate campus; graduate students have taken steps to alleviate the situation.

Graduate students agree with that assessment. "Some of my classmates have recently visited the undergraduate campus to talk about the Dental School, and to talk with students interested in dentistry. I hope that these attempts will prove to strengthen the bond between the undergraduates and the Dental School," Boudreau said.