Last fall, Tufts entered the next stage of its ELEVATE strategic visioning initiative, aiming to promote “institutional inclusive excellence,” according to the project’s website. Following its official launch in Oct. 2024, the ELEVATOR Ambassador program was rolled out after a year of community sessions and feedback to create specific plans for Tufts’ improvement.
Currently, ELEVATE has a liaison program that engages senior leadership in identifying areas where change is needed. The ELEVATOR program plans to engage students, staff and faculty. Additionally, whereas the ELEVATOR program helps individuals cultivate inclusivity, the liaison program focuses on institutional change. The Office of the Vice Provost for Institutional Inclusive Excellence, which leads the ELEVATE initiative, expects to publish an executive report identifying areas that the university will target to improve inclusivity.
Alaina Macaulay, assistant vice provost for inclusive excellence, was hired by the university in 2024 specifically to construct an inclusive excellence vision for Tufts. While Macaulay felt that Tufts did a good job ensuring most members of the community could enjoy inclusivity, she saw a need to “elevate” inclusivity efforts to a larger, university-wide level.
“A lot of students, staff and faculty members say often, ‘My department is great. I love my courses. I love my team.’ Well, wouldn’t that be great if we were able to translate that across the entire institution, to have a vision forward?” Macaulay said.
After establishing ELEVATE, Macaulay focused on gathering as much community input as possible. She created a steering committee and core team to lead the project, which included students, staff, faculty and graduate students from across Tufts’ campuses and schools. In the 2024-25 school year, the OIIE hosted eight community engagement sessions that attracted over 400 participants, including students, staff and faculty members.
Equipped with data from these sessions, a task force called the ELEVATE Think Tank developed nine recommendations for the school to advance inclusive excellence, which the OIIE released in the summer of 2025. The suggestions fall under four ‘pillars’ labeled “Developing People and Leaders,” “Informing and Advancing Policies and Practices,” “Creating and Expanding Resources and Research” and “Designing Community Targeted Educational Programs.” Since the summer, ELEVATE’s work has been aligned with these recommendations.
The ELEVATOR Ambassador program is open to all students, staff and faculty. Operating with a focus group similar to that of the community engagement sessions, ELEVATOR ambassadors meet to discuss how individuals can help cultivate inclusivity at Tufts.
David Marin Escobar, a graduate student in the Eliot-Pearson department of child study and human development and a member of the school’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee, is an active ELEVATOR Ambassador.
Escobar described how much of his work as an ambassador is centered around guided conversations and workshops. “[Conversations] were about getting ideas about the steps that we could take to make this university safer and a space where people from all backgrounds were developing a feeling of belonging,” Escobar said.
The ELEVATE liaison program involves Assistant and Associate Deans of Inclusive Excellence, as well as executives in similar roles from each Tufts school. The liaisons regularly meet with one another and are in the process of creating goals for their respective schools based on the nine ELEVATE recommendations.
Megan Rokop, assistant dean for community engagement and outreach for the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, serves as the ELEVATE liaison for the school. Rokop lauded the program for its intentions. “I think it’s already made a difference, even though we haven’t yet finished shaping our goals … The fact that we’re all talking about it and being asked to do it automatically already improves inclusivity,” Rokop said.
The liaisons will present their goals to Macaulay and the OIIE in mid-March. The OIIE will then give feedback to the liaisons and suggest revisions. The OIIE will synthesize the liaisons’ reviewed findings into an executive report. The OIIE originally announced the report would be released in the fall of 2025, but it is now expected to be published this coming summer, according to Macaulay.
Macaulay explained that the office wanted to wait for more progress from Tufts’ other major institutional initiatives — Tufts Beyond 175 and the Operational Model Transformation — to ensure that changes made by ELEVATE would not be shaken up by other institutional restructuring.
“[The OIIE report] will be a compilation of what we’ve learned across all of the schools and central units and then our plans to actualize them,” Macaulay said.
Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, DEI departments and university inclusivity programs have been under increased scrutiny. Despite nationwide trends, Macaulay said, “At Tufts, I’ve never felt more supported to do the work in the way that I want to do it. And I think that I feel really confident in our ability to navigate whatever is up ahead of us.”
