A group of faculty members at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University has launched a “Save the SMFA” campaign, which lists a variety of grievances and demands regarding changes at SMFA.
The faculty members argue that SMFA is shrinking the number of Professors of the Practice , consolidating studio departments, cancelling courses and generally lacking transparency.
John Ros, a part-time lecturer and proponent of the campaign, said the campaign aims to address concerns about SMFA’s restructuring and demand accountability from Tufts administrators.
“We are requesting that there [are] at least four new full-time positions available as of next term, we want a complete reversal to department collapse, so that we go back to our core department system … and then an investigation into all course cancellations,” Ros said.
Patrick Collins, the executive director of Media Relations at Tufts, wrote in a statement to the Daily that the university did not agree with the allegations and that recent changes had been made to strengthen ties between SMFA and the School of Arts and Sciences.
“We disagree with the allegations raised by the campaign. SMFA, which has had an 80-year relationship with Tufts, is an integral part of the School of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and the university,” he wrote. “The school’s leadership and the university remain committed to ensuring SMFA’s long-term health and success.”
Since 2019, the SMFA has seen 11 PoPs leave the school, 10 of whom were people of color, according to literature from the Save the SMFA campaign.
However, SMFA has not replaced these professors, dropping the number of PoPs from 41 to 29, despite student enrollment doubling during the same period, according to the campaign. As a result, an unusually high number of classes were canceled for the fall 2025 semester.
“We want an investigation on the loss of full-time faculty, as one of our posters states, actually a majority of these faculty are faculty of color, which is a bigger issue that we want to understand,” Ros said.
Lauren O’Connor-Korb, a professor of the practice, said the loss of faculty was fueled in part by a sense that they were being treated as temporary.
“Both in the actions and in the way that the school is being run, it’s very clear that we are temporary to them, or we are not something that they’re willing to invest in, because they see no value in that,” O’Connor-Korb said.
Ros argued that the consolidation of studio departments affects the ability of faculty members to do their job, and said they are no longer able to build a relationship with their department chair.
The consolidation of departments was a “necessary and prudent step,” according to Collins, and was made to reflect the relatively small size of each department and elevate SMFA department chairs to the same responsibility level of those on the Medford/Somerville campus.
“The SMFA has one major for all BFA students — Studio Art — and a faculty that is roughly the size of one large department within A&S. With this context, it made little sense to have four departments. The consolidation maintains all the existing underlying areas of study and SMFA course offerings,” Collins wrote.
Patricia Weisberg, a second-year combined degree student, said that the lack of professors and course cancellations were apparent and made meeting credit requirements difficult.
“We totally got the short end of the stick when it came to classes and departments being reduced,” Weisberg said. “Lots of people still are not meeting their credit requirements because of SMFA’s failure to provide the classes that they require for us,”
O’Connor-Korb highlighted the effect course cancellations have on faculty.
“Those cancellations just stop us from doing the kind of education that we’re trying to do here. I think we have enough students to fill those spots,” O’Connor Korb said.
A primary focus of the campaign has been to raise awareness among the student body about issues at the SMFA.
“[The] Save the SMFA campaign was initiated to serve, firstly, as an educational model to let new students … know what the issues are of their school that they've entered and to underscore ongoing issues to students who come back,” Ros said.
The Save the SMFA Campaign also cites a lack of trust with administration as a paramount issue concerning changes at the SMFA, including its restructuring, but also communication with SMFA faculty members.
Ros expressed hope that both sides would be able to reconcile differences and come to an agreement, though they also said that previous negotiations had been “extraordinarily adversarial” and required the involvement of a mediator to facilitate further discussions.
“[The administration] didn’t want to hear what we had to say and they didn’t want to talk to us face-to-face. What that does is it damages relationships,” Ros said. “At the end of the day, we want our school to be solvent, we want to teach our students. We want this school to be everything it can be. So we have to negotiate to get there.”
Collins voiced the university’s desire to reach an agreement with the union soon and said that the two sides had already agreed on 20 articles of a deal.
“The university will continue to meet with the union and bargain with it in good faith in the hopes of achieving a fair and equitable agreement soon,” he wrote.
The university did not comment on the Save the SMFA’s accusations of a lack of hiring and the departure of PoPs of color.
