University officials are aiming to forge more international connections and cement Tufts' reputation as a bastion of multinational studies. And they've been traveling around the globe to do it.
A delegation of administrators and alumni recently returned from a 13-day trip to China, bringing to a close a three-country tour that also featured a 2004 trip to Mexico and a 2005 one to India. All three were organized by Tufts' International Board of Overseers.
"These are the three countries that we felt promised the greatest potential for growth and relationships," Bruce Male (A '63), the board's chairman, said.
A group of around 10 administrators - including University President Lawrence Bacow, Provost Jamshed Bharucha, Fletcher Dean Stephen Bosworth and Friedman Dean Eileen Kennedy - participated in the trip to China, which began on Sept. 3. While in the area, they also traveled to Hong Kong.
As part of the recent trip, they went to Zhejiang, Fudan and Peking Universities, visited a number of secondary schools; and met with a variety of Tufts alumni. Zhejiang is where the Tufts-in-China study abroad program is located.
"So much of the trip involved visiting with our partners and discussing how we might deepen and improve our educational and research relationships," Bacow said in an e-mail. "China is growing so rapidly that it will play an increasingly important role in the world. Tufts needs to be involved in this process."
Such efforts paid off in both Mexico and India. During the Mexico trip, for example, Tufts representatives signed an agreement by which the Mexican government - via CONACYT (its national science and technology council) - would pay for up to 10 students a year to get Ph.D.s at Tufts.
In India, the university's delegation paved the way for agreements with the Father Muller Medical College and the Christian Medical College. And in China, Bacow re-signed an agreement between Tufts' Dental School and Huashan Hospital.
The relationships might go the other way as well, as Director of International Recruitment Jennifer Simons said that the university has received more applications from India since the trip there, although she could not say whether they were a direct result of it.
And while the Mexico trip has not had a similar effect, it was the earliest one, meaning that university officials had better formulated their approach by the time they went to India.
It is still unclear whether this progressive trend will hold for China, but current statistics indicate that, at least at the undergraduate level, there is nowhere to go but up.
Last year Tufts enrolled two Chinese students and this year the number dropped to one. While around 40 Chinese students apply every year, Simons said that the university's limited ability to give financial aid to international students has hindered its ability to accommodate them.
"Until Tufts has the financial aid for international students - which we're increasingly getting- we're going to be limited in the number of students we're able to take in from China," she said.
Still, numbers are far more encouraging at the graduate level, and Simons said that with the recent trip, the university is "making inroads," especially because the delegation visited various schools and met with students who might consider studying here.
Male agreed. "That gives the university a profile and a face that [they] can relate to," he said.
Despite any potential progress in the admissions arena, Bharucha said that this was only a secondary goal.
"[We were] not there principally to look for students," he said. "We're there to really project Tufts' strength and reputation in China and to learn about China because it's an extremely important emerging nation."
While some other schools have been making similar trips in the past, Tufts already had a leg up in China because of its study abroad options in the country and also because of a connection forged by the Tufts Initiative for Leadership and International Perspective (TILIP), a program run through the Institute for Global leadership that has sent students there.
"Because of the relationship we've had in the past, we're a known entity," Male said.
The university's profile there may have expanded even further after some of the academic exchanges that took place. At one event at Fudan University, for example, Kennedy, the Friedman dean, spoke about nutrition in China.
Bharucha said that this talk touched on an important topic. "As nations such as China rapidly become affluent they experience some of the developments that have been experienced in the developing world: that's to say obesity, diabetes [and] some chronic diseases as the diets change," he said.
Supplementing this and other efforts was a substantial amount of media coverage, with university officials giving around 30 interviews to various journalists. Around 10 stories including information about the trip have already been published.
A final aspect of the trip was a focus on alumni. Like the India trip, the China one coincided with an excursion sponsored by the Alumni Travel-Learn Program, which gives graduates the chance to continue their education through traveling.
In addition, some notable Tufts alumni in China were presented with awards: Xu Zi Wang (F '88), the founder of the Xiwai International School, received a provost's medal and Liu Xiaoming (F '84), the Chinese ambassador to North Korea, was awarded a Fletcher dean's medal. Liu is one of 10 Tufts alumni who have an ambassadorial rank in China.
While the three-country circuit has now been completed, university officials will aim to follow up on the connections that they made.
"In each of those countries, as we establish relationships, we continue to build on them," Bharucha said.
"In the future, I expect that more of our faculty will collaborate with their Chinese counterparts," Bacow said.
Specific initiatives are also in place that will help the university capitalize on the China and India trips. Simons is leaving on Friday for a three-week trip to Asia, visiting China, India, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.
This trip will have the same goal as its predecessors: building a mutually beneficial relationship with schools in the region.
"This is very much of a give-and-take kind of relationship," Male said. "This is not a one-way street for either universities in the host country or for Tufts. It's very much a partnership."
