For Vickie Sullivan, the term "student of life" should perhaps be modified to "lifetime student."
During her time as a college student, throughout her work as a political science professor and in her current position as the Dean of
Academic Affairs for the School of Arts and Sciences, Sullivan has experienced firsthand all facets of academic life.
"I always wanted to be in college, and I got to do that [as a professor], because I got to read and learn and have class discussions," she said, explaining how the work of a professor is consistently paralleled with that of a student.
After studying the works of Machiavelli at the University of Chicago, Sullivan abandoned an opportunity for tenure at another college to become a political science professor at Tufts.
Sullivan said the decision was surprisingly easy.
"I had to make a big decision whether I wanted to give up tenure and come to Tufts," she said. "I did, and it was the best decision that I ever made."
What drew Sullivan to teach and specialize in Machiavelli in the first place? Sullivan pointed to the same influence that drives her eagerness to work with college students today.
"I had really good teachers as an undergraduate," she said. "My junior year [in college], I took a seminar on Machiavelli, and it completely changed my life."
The class, Sullivan explained, challenged her to view political philosophy in a new, unique way.
"[Machiavelli] has a reputation of being immoral, but what got me really interested in him is he demands a lot of the reader ... and then I just became really impressed by sort of the magnitude of what he thought he could accomplish."
Sullivan's professors initially tried to discourage her from focusing her studies on Machiavelli, wary of his controversial, Realist school of thought.
"Although they were happy that I was doing Machiavelli, they were afraid that he was going to corrupt me, and that it might not be the best thing for me to work on," she said. Her professors urged her to focus on Plato instead, Sullivan said.
But Sullivan had other plans. "It just wasn't happening," she said. "So I went back to my first love, which was Machiavelli."
Sullivan's undergraduate studies led to a career in the same field.
"I couldn't think of anything better than to do this with the rest of my life [than to teach]," she said. "And I didn't think it was possible. I didn't think that I would have what it takes to make it, but I thought, 'Well, I'll be dissatisfied in life if I don't try.'"
Sullivan said an alternative route for her would have been law school. "What I would have done, I would have gone to law school and probably been miserable," she said. "I would have been a very unhappy person."
Sullivan began to pursue a teaching career, and never looked back.
"I knew in the first 10 minutes that I had made the right decision," she said, recalling the "engaged" and "intellectually curious" students who took her first course, "Shakespeare's Rome."
"I came in prepared with some scholarly opinion ... and [the students] came up with some really good opinions, some of which I think were better than some of the scholars who were experts," she said.
In 2003, Sullivan became the chair of the political science department. Two years later, she was asked to become the dean of academic affairs.
"I thought it would be interesting, so that's what I did," she said. "That was the progression."
Sullivan, who accepted the position "somewhat reluctantly," still felt an unavoidable tie to the classroom.
"In a way, what I'm doing now [as a dean] is what I intended not to be doing when I grew up," she said with a laugh. "It's a very different life. I'm not in the classroom as much ... it's an office job with a really tightly-scheduled day. I don't even handle my own calendar."
While Sullivan expressed a strong desire to return to the classroom, she also emphasized the importance of being able to link her duties as a dean with her background as a teacher.
"There is a really important link in that my understanding of being a faculty member ... really helps me in doing the things that I have to do as the Dean of Academic Affairs," she said. "My experience as being a faculty member is really the requirement; it's the prerequisite for being the dean."
The link between her roles as student, professor and dean has also allowed Sullivan to see the growth of her own students as they follow in similar footsteps.
"What's been really gratifying is we've had some really good, strong political theory students who've gone onto grad school and now are professors themselves," she said.
