University President Anthony Monaco, Provost David Harris and Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell held a town hall-style event yesterday in which they discussed the university's strategic planning process and answered questions on academic and other initiatives.
"At the core of our mission is of course teaching and learning, research and scholarship and how they interact [by] bringing faculty research into the classroom and getting our students involved in faculty research projects," Monaco said. "Both of these either on their own or together can have a real impact on society."
Monaco emphasized the ways in which the strategic plan, "Tufts: The Next 10 Years" seeks to further this mission.
"On implementation of this mission and strategic plan, first and foremost we should be supporting our students and faculty across the schools," he said. "At the same time because of our schools and the unique constellation of them, we should be working across boundaries on both local and global challenges."
Monaco highlighted several ways in which the school is furthering its mission, including the Bridge to Liberal Arts Success at Tufts (BLAST) program to support first-year college students, fundraising efforts for renovations to the Foster Hospital for Small Animals and the creation of a presidential Task Force on Sexual Misconduct Prevention. He also commended various faculty and students on recent grants and awards they received.
A large portion of the discussion was focused on the university's financial state, and how the school can mitigate rising costs without making dramatic increases in tuition. A major part of reducing costs includes streamlining administrative and supporting services, according to Monaco.
"[We are trying] to address the trend that our expenses have been rising faster than our income," he explained. "We can't keep just making up this gap with increasing been our income and we hope at the end of this endeavor that we can have a savings that will allow us at the school level and at the university level to invest in our future."
In reviewing the school's capital planning process, Monaco highlighted planned efforts to raise money for deferred maintenance projects -- including an addition to Anderson Hall and a renovation to Barnum Hall. Monaco also updated the audience on the ongoing renovations for 574 Boston Ave., which is scheduled to open in February 2015.
"This is a warehouse that we owned for 25 years but never used for a functional academic space," he said. "Forty-four different faculty will be moving in there and that will provide teaching, research and office space for the entire Department of Physics and Astronomy, the entire Occupational Therapy Department, some groups from [Department of] Child Development as well as the Community Health Program [and] Human Factors Engineering."
After presenting on the school's planning process, Monaco, Harris and Campbell accepted questions from the audience and viewers online about the university's decision to not divest from fossil fuels, possible planning for future online courses and growth in the computer science field -- an area that Harris said various schools and offices have allocated additional funding to.
"One of the good things about university is they don't flow fast to the latest demands," Harris said. "At the same time we have to be agile to respond to the market and to needs [and] ... we've had a huge increase in student demand in [computer science] ... We've authorized the use of some Arts and Sciences resources [and we] have some funds at the level of the provost that we can allocate for helping students. As a result, you will see much more availability of computer science for next year."
While the administrators would not comment on the ongoing negotiations with the part-time faculty, Campbell did speak about the university's compensation practices.
"We actually look at our market and we look at what other employers are intending to do about salaries," Campbell said. "We also look at what's happening with inflation. Over a long period of time, surprisingly, we haven't had significant inflation. [Salary increases] haven't been out of line with what has happened with the consumer price index [and] some of our peers have actually worked to reduce benefits which we have not done."
In response to a question from Environmental Studies Program Director Colin Orians about reducing competing financial interests among schools, Harris emphasized that the school was working to overcome the hurdles.
"One of the key things for me, at least working through this strategic plan and other things we've been doing is to recognize that this is one university, to recognize that our comparative advantage is not in our individual schools but is both in our schools and what we can do across our schools," Harris said. "With respect to fundraising, it's a challenge we have to work through. It's a challenge in that we have to be able to work with folks that are interested in philanthropy wherever they may be -- across schools -- and not be focused too much within schools."
Overall, Monaco emphasized that the university is working to build its endowment, to increase financial aid and to renovate and strengthen academic and non-academic programs.
"I think it's a very exciting time for the university as we think about how as individual students, faculty and staff, at the school level and now at the university-wide level we are going to go from a great university to an outstanding university at the same time we're trying to address challenges form a very complex environment of funding and regulation," Monaco said. "We will continue to support students and maintain that student-centered research university mission as we advance our teaching, scholarship and our commitment to active citizenship."
