Dean's Faculty Forum

Shortly after Dean Sternberg arrived at Tufts, he announced the concept for the Dean's Faculty Forum in September 2005 because he was extremely impressed with the research and scholarship activities of the faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences. He envisioned this Forum as an opportunity for faculty, staff, and students to learn more about the different types of research our faculty are engaged in throughout the School.

Often, we learn through departmental talks and other events more about the research going on in other institutions than we learn about the research in our own. Tufts has various programs for learning about our own internal research, and Dean Sternberg felt this event would highlight the excellence in research not only among the Tufts community, but the local academic community as well.

Every semester, Dean Sternberg sponsors a Dean's Faculty Forum that features the research and scholarship of faculty members from Arts and Sciences. The Forum is structured with a lecture by one faculty member on a particular topic followed by commentary from a faculty discussant. The most important aspects of the Dean's Faculty Forum are that it appeals to a broad audience and gets people excited about the scholarship being done at Tufts. All of our previous events have certainly achieved this, and we are excited to continue this program.

Previous events include:

Title: "In Praise of Farce, or How Low Can You Get?"
Speaker: Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory
Date: Thursday, October 22, 2009
Time and Location: 5:30 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: Jonathan Wilson, Professor of English
To view any portion of this event, please visit one of the following Windows Media video links:
- Talk by Laurence Senelick
- Discussant Jonathan Wilson

Title: "Of Owls, Rings and Grand Theft Auto: The Uses and Abuses of Enchantment"
Speaker: Susan Napier, Professor of Japanese Studies, Department of German, Russian, & Asian Languages and Literatures
Date: Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Time and Location: 6:00 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: George Scarlett, Deputy Chair, Department of Child Development
To view any portion of this event, please visit one of the following Windows Media video links:
- Talk by Susan Napier
- Discussant George Scarlett
- Q&A session

Title: "Partisans of Allah: Jihad as Ethics, Jihad as War"
Speaker: Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History, Department of History
Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Time and Location: 6:00 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: Vali Nasr, Professor of International Politics, The Fletcher School
Video: View the video of this event.

Title: "Soft robots: a new way to think about hardware"
Speaker: Barry Trimmer, Henry Bromfield Pearson Professor of Natural Science, Department of Biology
Date: Monday, March 31, 2008
Time and Location: 6:00 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: Richard Wlezien, Professor and Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Video: View the video of this event.

Title: "Many Worlds in One"
Speaker: Alexander Vilenkin, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Time and Location: 6:00 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: Lawrence Ford, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
To view any portion of this event, please visit one of the following Real Media video links:
- Introduction by Dean Robert Sternberg
- Talk by Alexander Vilenkin
- Discussant Lawrence Ford
- Q&A session

Title: "When the Brain Reads---'Endless thoughts most wonderful'"
Speaker: Maryanne Wolf, John DiBiaggio Professor in Citizenship and Public Service, Professor of Child Development, and Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research
Date: Monday, April 30, 2007
Time and Location: 5:00 PM, Coolidge Room, 2nd Floor Ballou Hall, Medford Campus
Discussant: Calvin Gidney III, Associate Professor, Department of Child Development
Video: View the video of this event.

Title: "100 Years of Excavations at the Giza Pyramids: Old Digs, New Technologies"
Speaker: Peter Der Manuelian, Lecturer in Egyptology, Department of Classics and Giza Archives Project Director at the MFA
Discussant: Bruce Hitchner, Chair, Department of Classics
Date: Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Title: "Religion as a Natural Phenomenon"
Speaker: Daniel Dennett, University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies
Discussant: Father David O'Leary, University Chaplain
Date: Monday, April 10, 2006

Note: You will need RealPlayer to watch the videos. Download the basic version free of charge.

For further information, please send an email to deansfacultyforum@tufts.edu.

<p><strong>Breaking Down Barriers</strong>

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<p>Tufts literacy expert Maryanne Wolf has pioneered ground-breaking research that has led to advances in dyslexia testing and treatment.</p>

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<br/>(A'07)

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<p>Working as an intern for MTV Hong Kong helped prepare Tufts junior Erin Yeh for the real world.</p>

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<p><strong>Expanding Their Horizons</strong>

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<p>This summer was action-packed for Tufts students who undertook a variety of projects across the world and in their own backyards.</p>

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<p>Webcasting technology is giving Tufts students a real-time view of life in the Middle East. </p>

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<p><strong>Great Wide Open</strong>

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<p>Through the OpenCourseWare initiative, Tufts is using the power of the Internet to share its greatest resource - knowledge - across the globe.</p>

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<p><strong>Hot Stuff</strong>

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<p>When the semester starts to cool down, student performance groups at Tufts begin heating up. </p>

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<p><strong>International Appeal</strong>

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<p><i>Kaplan/Newsweek College Resource Guide</i> ranked Tufts as the "Hottest School for Study Abroad" in 2004, celebrating the university's international approach to learning.</p>

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<p><strong>Jay Cantor  </strong>

<br/><em>Professor, English</em>

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<p><strong>BACKGROUND:</strong> Raised in Great Neck, NY; Ph.D., University of California-Santa Cruz; at Tufts since 1977.</p>

<p><strong>PUBLISHED WORK:</strong> Five books, including three novels; latest work is Great Neck. Working on next novel, titled The Reborn.</p>

<p><strong>ABOUT WRITING:</strong> "It starts with just a love of putting words together and a certain physical feeling that comes with that. Beyond that, without story-telling, I wouldn't know what to do with all the lives that I hear about everyday."</p>

<p><strong>WHY TUFTS:</strong> "Tufts is a place very open to a person teaching what they are most interested in.</p>

<p>I think graduate students come to Tufts for the strength of the faculty, its accessibility, and its range of interests. They won't be disappointed by the other students, who, from my experience are a very self-directed, independent minded group."</p>
<p><strong>AFTER-HOURS:</strong> "I don't have free time. I say that because I'm either working on classes or I'm researching things for class, or for my novels or essays. But those are all things that I want to do. So you could say that the good thing about my work for Tufts is that it is what I would want to do in my free time. I also write screenplays, as work for hire for studios."</p>

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<p><strong>Jeffrey Taliaferro</strong>

<br/><em>Asking Why</em>

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<p>Taking an approach that blends political science and psychology, Tufts faculty member, Jeff Taliaferro, sheds new light on the reasons why states become embroiled in counterproductive military situations.</p>

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<p><strong>John D. McDonald  </strong>

<br/><em>Professor, music</em>

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<p><strong>Background:</strong> Born in Norfolk, Va., doctorate from Yale;
composer/pianist in residence in Mongolia via the U.S. Information
Agency; at Tufts since 1990.</p>

<p><strong>Compositions:</strong> More than 800, including commissions for the Havana
Festival 2000, St. Petersburg Spring Festival 2002, Duke University,
Wellesley College, Vienna Saxophone Quartet, Boston Celebrity
Series, Worcester Chorus, and Florestan Recital Project.</p>

<p><strong>Current work:</strong> Annual piano albums (collections of short solo
keyboard pieces); "Peace Process," a work for basset horn and piano
for Tufts Merrin Professor (and clarinetist) Ray Jackendoff; an
evening-long song cycle about animals for voice and piano; a choral
work for the Worcester Chorus.</p>

<p><strong>Goal in music:</strong> "I like to confront people, to mark events in our
lives, to capture in music something I've observed that would be
difficult to express in words-something about a person, something
political, or something completely abstract. All my acts of
composing are inherently pacifist."</p>

<p><strong>Why Tufts:</strong> "I don't feel I can meet the needs of more than
eight graduate composers at a time, so the smallness of our graduate
music program is important. I also appreciate all the contact I have
at Tufts with people from other departments and disciplines, as well
as the very high quality of our undergraduate students."</p>

<p><strong>After-Hours:</strong> Compose, practice, read, and then do those things some
more. What little free time I have, I spend with my wife and children. I also like to run in the woods."</p>

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<p><strong>Jonathan Wilson  </strong>

<br/><em>Professor and Chair, English; Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate </em>

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<p><strong>BACKGROUND:</strong> Born in London, England; educated at the University of Essex, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; with a dissertation on the novels of Saul Bellow; Guggenheim fellowship in fiction; at Tufts since 1982. </p>

<p><strong>PUBLISHED WORK:</strong> Seven books, including two novels, two collections of stories, two critical works and a biography of Chagall.</p>

<p><strong>ABOUT WRITING:</strong> "Writing is a lifetime of unfolding your imagination. It remains a mysterious activity."</p>

<p><strong>WHY TUFTS:</strong> "Teaching at Tufts is an undiminished pleasure. It's a pleasant atmosphere for teaching, an intimate atmosphere. I keep up with many of my former students; I get e-mails from some students I taught 22 years ago."</p>

<p><strong>AFTER-HOURS:</strong> "I'm a soccer fanatic. [Wilson covered the 1994 world cup for The New Yorker.] I also love watching TV with my sons. I used to play poker but gave that up.</p>

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<p><strong>Karina Weinstein</strong>

<br/>(A'02)

<br/><em>Spreading Hope to the Children of Chile</em>

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<p>For Tufts graduate Karina Weinstein, studying abroad in Chile during her junior year was a life-changing experience.  </p>

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<p><strong>Krishna Kumar  </strong>

<br/><em>Professor and Chair, Chemistry, Associate Member, Cancer Center, Tufts-New England Medical Center, Adjunct Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering</em>

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<p><strong>BACKGROUND:</strong> Born in Madras, India; Ph.D., organic chemistry, Brown University; Skaggs Fellow, The Scripps Research Institute; at Tufts since 1998.</p>

<p><strong>RESEARCH:</strong> De novo design and construction of proteins, especially those with nonstick properties; also probing the evolution of proteins by using bioinformatics to deconstruct enzymes to the smallest pieces that still have catalytic properties.</p>

<p><strong>ABOUT HIS WORK:</strong> "We use two complementary approaches. One is to take inspiration from biology, to push the frontiers of understanding of how biology works and use that understanding to do chemistry. The second is to use chemistry to endow extra-biological properties to molecules and organisms."</p>

<p><strong>WHY TUFTS:</strong> "We have a dual mission of education and research, and I find that Tufts does both quite well. They are synergistic-you can't do cutting-edge research without engaging in and benefiting from teaching, and students must be involved in pushing the research envelope to receive a top education and train other students."</p>

<p><strong>AFTER-HOURS:</strong> "I play squash, ski, and sail."</p>

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<p><strong>L. Michael Romero  </strong>

<br/><em>Professor, biology; Professor, environmental and population health, Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine</em>

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<p><strong>BACKGROUND:</strong> Raised in Albuquerque, NM; Ph.D. in biology, Stanford; post-doctoral fellowships from National Science Foundation and American Psychological Association; at Tufts since 1996.</p>

<p><strong>CURRENT RESEARCH:</strong> Using neuroscience, physiology, and ecology-in the lab and in the field-to learn about stress in vertebrates, specifically how levels of stress-related hormones released in an animal are barometers for how well it is coping with its environment; currently focused on what role those hormones play in survival. </p>

<p><strong>WHY TUFTS:</strong> "It's rare to find a department where faculty members co-author papers the way we do here. That's because it's rare to find a biology department with such a wide range of faculty as we have-including a physiologist, plant scientist, ecologist, neurobiologist, molecular biologist, geneticist, conservation biologist, and animal behaviorist. Tufts also is unusual in the closeness graduate students have with their advisers; most of our biology labs have only two or three graduate students in them."</p>

<p><strong>AFTER-HOURS:</strong> "I read science fiction voraciously; I also enjoy hiking, skiing and bridge.</p>

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<p><strong>Martin J. Sherwin</strong>

<br/><em>Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History</em>

</p>

<i>American Prometheus</i> -- Martin J. Sherwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer -- contains lessons that resonate today.

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<p><strong>Maryanne Wolf</strong>

<br/><em>Professor, Child Development;
Director; Tufts Center for Reading and Language Research
John DiBiaggio Professor Citizenship and Public Service, Tisch College Adjunct Faculty</em>

</p>

<p><strong>BACKGROUND:</strong> Born in Indiana; Ed.D., Harvard; Fulbright fellow in Germany; at Tufts since 1980.</p>

<p><strong>CURRENT RESEARCH:</strong> Integration of research in cognitive neurosciences, linguistics, and child development to understand the evolution, development, and variations in the reading brain; the application of this knowledge to the design of tests and interventions  for children with dyslexia.</p>

<p><strong>HONORS:</strong> Awards from the International Dyslexia Association, Fulbright Fellowship, American and Massachusetts Psychological Associations; and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; DiBiaggio Chair of Citizenship and Public Service.</p>

<p><strong>WHY TUFTS:</strong> "I tremendously value a place where I can be real friends with everyone from the maintenance person to the president; this is a place where people care about each other.  It is also a place where the scholar-teacher is at the core of the academic mission.  That is the core of who I am."</p>
<p><strong>AFTER-HOURS:</strong> "Every night at 11:00 or 11:30 (and sometimes at 4:00 a.m.) I return to my roots as an English lit. major and quietly read poetry and fiction.  I also swim, ski (badly), play the piano, and travel to places where I can grin in gratitude at the variety of creation."</p>

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<h4>Multimedia</h4>

<p><strong>Pattern Language: Clothing As Communicator</strong></p>

<p>Every year, the Tufts University Art Gallery features a wide variety of art, including works from national and local artists, as well as Tufts students. Gallery Director Amy Ingrid Schlegel discusses a recent exhibit that explores clothing as a metaphor of larger social and cultural issues. </p>

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<li style="list-style-image: url('../Link_Type/app_flash.gif');"><a href='http://www.tufts.edu/home/studentlife/gallery/patternlanguage/' class='null'>Watch the Multimedia</a></li>

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<h4>Multimedia</h4>

<p><strong>A Jumbo Retrospective</strong></p>

<p>Former Tufts athletic director Rocky Carzo talks about Jumbo and school spirit at Tufts.</p>

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<li style="list-style-image: url('../Link_Type/photo_gallery.gif');"><a href='http://www.tufts.edu/home/studentlife/gallery/carzo/' class='null'>View Multimedia Slideshow</a></li>

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<p><strong>Richard Lerner</strong>

<br/><em>Professor, child development Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science; Director, Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development</em>

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<p><strong>BACKGROUND:</strong> Born in Brooklyn, NY; Ph.D.,City University of New York; at Tufts since 1999.</p>

<p><strong>CURRENT RESEARCH:</strong> Groundbreaking work on the nature of positive development among adolescents. Several longitudinal studies are underway exploring how adolescents develop in positive ways and how this development is juxtaposed with risk behaviors (alcohol, drug use, unsafe sex, delinquency, etc.) often seen during this period.</p>

<p><strong>LATEST BOOK:</strong> Liberty:Thriving and Civic Engagement Among America's Youth.</p>

<p><strong>WHY TUFTS:</strong> "Tufts has a great liberal arts tradition and is making a difference in the world for individuals, communities, and civil society more generally. Having the opportunity to work at an institution that has this traditional excellence and yet this commitment, this pillar, to application to real world service is just an enormous opportunity, a great gift." </p>

<p><strong>AFTER-HOURS:</strong> "I like to spend time with my kids and my wife, who is a professor at Boston College. I also jog every day and do crossword puzzles."</p>

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<p><strong>Sara Lewis</strong>

<br/><em>Bright Ideas</em>

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<p>Biology Professor Sara Lewis' groundbreaking research, performed in conjunction with colleagues, students, and even her husband, has shed much light on fireflies and people alike.</p>

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