Provost Jamshed Bharucha has been looking for a way to synthesize Tufts' macro-level aims with its small-college feel. At the crossing point between these two missions is the idea of a University Seminar, a class offered to virtually all Tufts students, which will hit the Hill next fall.
This class model will team up undergraduates with graduate students and faculty to academically attack national and global issues from many disciplinary angles.
"By throwing faculty and students together across disciplines, they're forced to find ways [of] communicating and framing issues that are productive," Bharucha said. Assistant Professor Gretchen Kaufman from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and the Engineering School's Associate Dean of Research Shafiqul Islam were selected on Wednesday to teach the first two seminars.
The University Committee on Teaching and Faculty Development, which was comprised of at least one representative from every school in the university, considered eight preliminary proposals submitted by faculty applicants. The winners were selected based on the strength of their proposals and the appeal of their themes to students.
Kaufman will lead a seminar on global health, while Islam's students will study the relation between water and diplomacy.
"I think there was no question that [all] these seminars would appeal to undergrads, ... but we wanted to make sure that these were also appealing to graduate students," said Associate Provost Mary Lee, who served on the committee.
According to Lee, a lot of motivation is needed to get a graduate student "who already has an extremely packed curriculum to take the time to take an elective."
Islam and Kaufman will each spend the spring semester designing their seminars with a $7,000 stipend. They and other participating faculty will meet with members of the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) in order to do so.
Associate Research Professor in the Department of Education Linda Jarvin is currently looking for a new CELT employee to lead the work with professors. That person will be responsible for collaborating with the professors to find out how to best appeal to students from all disciplines by, for example, not using overly specialized vocabulary.
"Because the audience will be a mix between undergraduate and graduate students, we ... need to work on the format of the seminar," Jarvin said. "It's truly interdisciplinary."
Islam's seminar, for example, will integrate science and diplomacy to address political conflicts that result over water.
While science and technology can "guide" negotiations, Islam said, the reality is often that "you [still] have to come up with a solution that is not ideal for either side but acceptable for both."
Assistant Professor Jay Shimshack, who focuses on environmental economics, is already lined up to assist Islam with the class, and other faculty will likely join them.
According to Bharucha, in the classroom, students will work in teams and play very active roles.
"We wouldn't just have professors lecturing at students," he said.
The academic goals are to relearn and reframe big issues from differing academic angles. As a result, original research will be sacrificed in favor of collecting large amounts of data, synthesizing it and reanalyzing it.
Students will also be expected to take the lead in approaching the seminar themes from whatever subjects they have studied in the past. Engineering students would focus more on scientific material, while sociology majors would dig through sociological papers. At the same time, the hope is that all get a taste of other disciplines.
"One of the challenges of education is how you balance depth of study with breadth," Bharucha said.
He hopes that the students that apply and are accepted to participate already have some background in a specialized field, ruling freshmen out of the equation. He hopes that at the individual level students will reinforce their prior studies.
"You can take a course and get an A. Six months later - wow," Bharucha said. "Our memory drops precipitously unless we continue to utilize that knowledge and that learning."
Bharucha said that in coming years the program hopes to expand from two sections a semester to up to eight. Each seminar will cost approximately $20,000 to organize. This goes toward stipends as well as compensation for the participating professors.
Still, questions linger regarding the University Seminar. Some classes may be given on the Boston campus to orient students to the graduate side of Tufts. Methods of transportation have yet to be determined.
Also not yet determined is how students will present and follow up on their experience. Bharucha's vision is to get students' work published on the Internet so that NGOs and other organizations will have access to it when trying to research that given topic.
"What's the first thing the [organizations] are going to do?" he asked. "They're going to Google it."
