A well-known Fletcher School professor and former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor will leave after this semester to become the dean of Brandeis' Heller School for Social Policy and Management.
Lisa Lynch will become the second Fletcher professor this academic year to plan to leave Tufts for an administrative job at a peer institution. Adil Najam, an associate professor of international negotiation and diplomacy, accepted an endowed-chair professorship and a leadership position at Boston University in November.
Lynch, who has been a tenured professor at Fletcher since 1993 and now serves as the William L. Clayton professor of international economic affairs, was not looking for a new job when the Heller School sought her out last year.
"When I was approached by the dean's search committee at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis, I was not looking to leave Fletcher and had already turned down several approaches from other colleges and universities," she said in an e-mail.
According to Lynch, Heller's offer was different from the others she had received, because the priorities that guide her own academic and policy careers match the institution's social policy mission and goals.
"Heller has a distinguished record as one of this country's leading academic institutions for critical social policy research on issues including healthcare, income and asset disparity, children, youth and families' policy, aging, disability and international development," she said. "To have an opportunity to work as the dean of such an institution was something that I could not pass up."
Even with two long-time Fletcher professors deciding in the same academic year to leave Fletcher for high-up positions elsewhere, Dean of the Fletcher School Stephen Bosworth rejects the idea that the departures indicate a problem with Fletcher's faculty retention.
Bosworth feels that the professors left because they received offers that were very appealing to them, not because they were dissatisfied with Tufts.
"We regret that Professors Lynch and Najam have left Fletcher, but each left to accept extremely attractive offers," Bosworth said in an e-mail.
Bosworth praised both individuals. "They were both valued members of the Fletcher faculty and respected both for their teaching and scholarship," he said.
Lynch feels thankful for her time at Fletcher. "I have always told everyone that I felt I had the best job in the world at Tufts," she said. "The quality of the students, faculty and staff is outstanding."
But she does not consider this the end of her time at Tufts.
"[O]ne of the advantages of being an academic in Boston is that it is easy to maintain links with colleagues across schools, so I know that I will not be 'leaving' my colleagues at Tufts," she said.
Lynch also looks forward to the formal cross registration between Tufts and Brandeis as an opportunity to see some Fletcher students in the future.
Brandeis' Heller School was founded in 1959, making it the university's first professional school. "The Heller School's vision is focused and clear, believing in the power of knowledge advancing social justice," the school's Web site says.
Lynch is currently teaching "Introduction to International Trade and Finance" and "Transnational Labor Economics Issues" at Fletcher.
