Working for an institution like Tufts requires not only hard work, but also passion and enthusiasm. For Gabriella Goldstein, the administrative director of the Tufts European Center, her positive attitude comes naturally: Goldstein loves her job.
"I try not to tell too many people this, but [my job is] the best job on campus," said Goldstein, whose job revolves around the organization and operation of the European Center's primary location in Talloires, France: a 1,000-year-old stone priory where dozens of Tufts and high school students spend six weeks each summer immersing themselves in French culture and taking courses through the university.
To Goldstein, however, the center in Talloires is about more than just academics; it also serves as a meeting place for international groups, ranging from diplomats to business people and students of the Fletcher School.
"It's going to sound so Southern California of me, but you just feel that they're kind of inspired by the setting," Goldstein said. "I know, I'm over the top!"
Goldstein couldn't be happier with her position, which brings her to Talloires from April to October each year. "It's a really special place," she said. "If you ask people to describe it, they don't know how ... some people don't get it, but most people, they just walk in there, and they get it."
Goldstein was raised in Buffalo, New York, and graduated from Tufts in 1984. She has been connected to the university ever since.
"My parents were immigrants," Goldstein explained. "They're German Jews who came [to America during] all of the war stuff. And so they didn't know anything about college. I'm the oldest, and I opened a book and looked for study abroad programs and small colleges. I didn't want to stay in Buffalo."
Goldstein explained how her involvement with the university developed into a worthwhile career. After working numerous jobs during her undergraduate years at Tufts, helping to organize ESL programs and summer programs, as well as serving a position within the Conference Bureau, Goldstein took a backpacking trip to Europe upon her graduation.
It was there that she first developed her love for Europe, which years later, would lead her to seek her current job as head of the European Center.
"It was an accident, you know. They probably wouldn't let me in now," she said with a laugh.
After she graduated, Goldstein moved to California, where she worked a variety of jobs while maintaining her connection with Tufts.
"I'd go back to California and do all these cool, really interesting, wild freelance jobs then I'd come back here [to Tufts] and do programs over the summer," she said. "One of the crazy jobs I had when I was doing freelancing was being a research assistant for a very well-known philosopher who had terrible emphysema. [He was writing] a book about his theories about the Kennedy assassination."
"He would bring up these huge file boxes filled with correspondences with all of the key people that were involved in the investigation," Goldstein continued. "I was so sure we were going to discover who killed Kennedy. It was wild."
In 1992, an unexpected offer landed Goldstein in France for nine months working for the United States Olympic Committee, which needed her organizational skills. The American athletes were housed at the Priory in Talloires. Though she said her time working for the Olympic Committee was "an interesting experience," Goldstein said that even while there, she felt a special tie to the university.
"Somehow, I've never actually been able to break with Tufts," she said. "The European Center was always kind of in my mind."
In 2000, Goldstein got a call from the European Center about returning to work there. For her, it was another perfect opportunity.
"All these wonderful things kind of kept happening," she said.
Even now, after years of working in France and at Tufts with the European Center, the allure of Talloires hasn't faded for Goldstein.
"Every aspect of what we do has something magical about it," she said, noting the mystical effects that the land in Talloires seems to have on its inhabitants. "You take the alpine botany course and there are hills surrounded by flowers. It gives an extra layer of depth to the courses that they get to have this real-life component to them. That's fun."
But Goldstein doesn't believe that students leave Talloires with merely a few more course credits under their belts. The director credited the late Donald MacJannet, a Tufts graduate who owned the Priory and ran educational programs in Talloires, with creating a unique philosophy for students there.
"It wasn't just about learning from books. It was about learning from doing," she said. "He had a really nice idea of creating this engaged citizen, this global community. And it's funny because we kind of talk about it now like we invented it, and here's this guy who had these really progressive ideas in the 1920s and '30s."
"I feel a little bit of responsibility [to MacJannet]," Goldstein said of her desire to help link people of different countries. "I'm sort of an idealist. I read the news and it beats me up a little ... you hear people talk about France and you hear people talk about Americans and you hear people say all these terrible things."
"And yet when we go to Talloires, we bring all these Tufts students ... and all of those people do so much good for the world. They make friends and the French people see what wonderful people they are," she said, stressing the importance of positive energy within interpersonal relationships. "It's a personal diplomacy that is so much more effective. It's inspiring."
