As President Lawrence Bacow's fifth year at Tufts came to a close last May, the Board of Trustees looked back on his work so far.
"[There is] a joyful sense that Tufts is really on the move. It's a good time to be at Tufts," said Bernard Harlaston, Chair of the Presidential Evaluation Committee of the Board of Trustees.
The committee released the evaluation only to Bacow and the Board of Trustees, but Harlaston said the final result was "very positive."
Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser, who was interviewed as part of the evaluation, agreed.
"I think President Bacow is a remarkable president," Glaser said. "We're lucky to have him. He's quite an amazing guy [and is] doing great things for Tufts."
Harlaston compared the concept to the professor evaluations students complete at the end of every semester.
"The purpose is to try to pause at some point and look at how the president's doing [and] give him feedback to match or compare with [his] sense of what's happening," he said.
To achieve an analysis that encompassed the widest possible range of opinions, the committee spoke to a large sampling of the Tufts population.
It also interviewed all deans, a number of faculty members, student leaders including the Tufts Community Union Senate executive board, and the alumni associations, Harlaston said. In total, the committee spoke to over a hundred people.
The committee developed a questionnaire based on the objectives Bacow set when he first came to office. People were asked to gauge how well Bacow has lived up to those goals in the last five years, Harlaston said.
The questions were not confined to just Bacow's objectives for the school, but also included more open-ended queries.
"[We also] asked them to speak more generally," Harlaston said, by asking questions like, "How do you think Tufts is doing?"
Anyone who interacts directly with Bacow also spoke to the committee.
"Everybody that reports to [Bacow] was interviewed personally," Harlaston added.
The committee completed the interview process in less than four months in the spring.
"Procedures we set up set a new standard for any subsequent review," Harlaston said.
