The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service this summer announced that Alan Solomont (A '70), ambassador to Spain and Andorra, will serve as the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar dean starting in January. Solomont will replace interim dean Nancy Wilson, who has been serving as dean ad interim since 2011 when Robert Hollister, co-founder and first dean of the college, stepped down.
While students and faculty were away for the summer, Provost and Senior Vice President David Harris announced Solomont's appointment.
"I look forward to working with Ambassador Solomont and the Tufts community to build on the substantial progress that Tisch College has made in recent years," Harris said in an email to the Tufts community.
Wilson expressed optimism about the selection of Solomont as the college's new dean.
"I think [10 years] is a great time for someone fresh to come in and say 'Okay, we've been trying all these things, where do we need to do more and where can we do less,'" she said. "I'm sure [Solomont] will bring a different lens and a different set of questions to the role."
Founded in 2000, Tisch College aims to help students develop into active citizens through collaboration with Tufts schools, departments and student groups. Wilson began her involvement with the college in 2004 as associate dean.
"Because the job of Tisch College is to provide civic learning experiences for students across the whole university, a really important role of the dean is working with other deans to figure out, 'How do we do this in our school?'" Wilson said.
Although no specific classes are offered from Tisch College, it works as an umbrella organization to support all aspects of Tufts' curricula, with the dean highlighting and encouraging active citizenship across the university.
Solomont, born in Boston and a long-time social and political activist, is no stranger to Tufts. After graduating in 1970 with a B.A. in political science and urban studies, he went on to work as a community organizer in Lowell, Mass. After discovering an interest in health care, Solomont earned a B.S. in nursing from the University of Lowell in 1977 and spent a significant amount of his career working in healthcare-related areas.
Solomont brings political experience to Tufts as well. After his first experience working as a page at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Solomont went on to serve on the campaigns of John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis and worked as the Democratic Party's national finance chair from 1997 to 1998.
According to a June 2013 Tufts Now article, Solomont said that his undergraduate experience at Tufts helped develop his belief in the power of political activism. While at Tufts, Solomont demonstrated against the war in Vietnam and tackled the issue of the lack of minority hiring during the construction of Lewis Hall in 1969.
"I remember organizing around that issue," Solomont told the Daily in a previous interview. "Trying to raise people's consciousness about it [and communicate] that we had a responsibility as a university to be good citizens and to confront this issue of institutional racism."
After knocking on doors and gaining support, Solomont and other students decided to affect change more publicly.
"We paid a visit to Ballou Hall and sat in at the president's office," he said.
When the movement gained the attention of the Record American, the Boston Herald's predecessor, Solomont was pictured in the press.
"There was a picture on the front page of the Record American ... of a bunch of students in the president's office," he said. "There are a lot of African-American students, and then, you know, there's this white kid, in a cap, sitting on the president's desk, reading a newspaper."
The event gained support throughout the Boston area, Washington, D.C. and New York, according to the Tufts Civil Rights Protests, which archives the history of on-campus student activism. The university soon adopted new hiring policies as a result of the demonstration.
Since graduating from Tufts, Solomont has maintained his ties with the university, according to Wilson.
"Alan goes back a long way with Tufts and with Tisch College," Wilson said. "In fact, somewhere in the building we have the initial founding document for Tisch College that was signed by a couple of the Tufts trustees and the initial funders and the dean, and Alan's signature is on that document because he was there in minute one."
Since the initial signing, Solomont has acted as a Tisch College senior fellow and a visiting instructor, and has taught a course on the American presidency. He was also a founding chair of the Tisch College Board of Advisors and has served on several boards of nonprofits and for-profit organizations.
More recently, at the 10th anniversary of Tisch College in 2011, the Alan D. Solomont Lecture was established at the college in honor of Solomont's achievements. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, gave the first lecture of the series, and Solomont himself gave the second lecture.
Wilson noted that the transition comes at an appropriate time in her career. A graduate of Stanford University, Wilson has dedicated much of her focus to corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship. For the past six years, she taught a class on innovative social enterprises through the Entrepreneurial Leadership Program and American Studies Program. She remains undecided about what her future holds.
"I'm exploring a number of things, some of it around corporate social responsibility kinds of work because I've always been committed to that area," Wilson said. "I'm just looking for another leadership role where I can pick another dynamic, change-making organization.
One of Wilson's highlights during her term as interim dean was the Gifford Corporate Citizen Fellowship, which began in 2011. The program has since begun bringing civic corporate leaders to campus, such as former President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company Doug Conant.
"The reason we invited [Conant] was that what he did at Campbell Soup was not just corporate philanthropy ... but he actually looked at how we reconfigure our food products so they are healthier for our customers," Wilson said.
The Corporate Citizen Fellowship is only one of interim dean Wilson's many contributions to Tisch College. Solomont will soon oversee the fellowship, as well as much of Wilson's recent work on diversity and inclusion within the university, once he assumes his new role next semester.
"When [Solomont] was chair of the board, he used to joke with then-President Bacow that he'll know when Tisch College is successful when students are sitting in at his office," Wilson said, referencing Solomont's undergraduate activism. "To see students feeling empowered and that they've got a message that they want to get across [is good]."
