Arts and Sciences in the Community

The School of Arts and Sciences is actively engaged with the world outside of Tufts through a variety of programs and other initiatives. Each year, this work takes faculty, students, staff and alumni everywhere from China to Africa; from England to Budapest; from Nicaragua to France. Closer to home, departments and programs associated with the School of Arts and Sciences offer events, performances, and other programming on the Medford Campus and are involved in a number of local projects, both within the Greater Boston area and beyond.

Events

• Each semester, there are numerous events, lectures, and other programming open to the community both within and outside of Tufts. These offerings include plays and musicals directed by faculty of the Department of Drama and Dance and featuring Tufts students, concerts involving faculty and students from the Department of Music, exhibits displayed by the Tufts University Art Gallery, and lecture series sponsored by various offices and departments such as The Pearson Prentice Hall Seminar Series in Global History and the Dean's Faculty Forum.
   
• The Dean's Faculty Forum was announced in September 2005 as a way to showcase the research and scholarship activities of the faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences. The Forum is 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. This event highlights the excellence in research not only among the Tufts community, but the local academic community as well.
  
  Every semester, the Office of the Dean 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 generates excitement about the scholarship being done at Tufts. All of our previous events have certainly achieved this, and we are excited to continue this program.

Departments and Interdisciplinary Programs

• A number of departments and programs within the School of Arts and Sciences have extensive involvement with community outreach and coordinate a number of initiatives that bring students and faculty into close contact with the community. For example, the Department of Anthropology matches Tufts students with Latino/a high school students in Somerville and Cambridge through its "Urban Borderlands: The Somerville Community History Project" course; the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development provides invaluable outreach programs and consultation to educators and school systems in the greater Boston Area through the Center for Applied Child Development; and the Community Health Program offers an internship program for students to work in the field at hospitals, clinics, public health systems, government agencies and community-based organizations. For additional examples of the various activities in which our faculty and students are engaged, please visit the list below.

Student Groups

• Student groups are a vibrant part of campus life at Tufts, and many of our students have participated in a number of organizations that take an active role in community-related outreach. Some of these groups include the Leonard Carmichael Society, an umbrella organization for a variety of service activities and the largest student-run volunteer organization on campus with over 1,500 volunteers; the Community Language Bank, an Internet-based service started by two A&S undergraduates that provides translation and schedules interpretation services to help non-English speakers function in their local communities, and the Tufts Literacy Corps, which matches Tufts students with local school children struggling to read.

Below is a sampling of departments, programs and initiatives that highlight on their websites our collective commitment to and engagement in the community within and beyond Tufts. Our students and faculty also participate in a range of programs offered throughout the University, with extensive ties to Arts and Sciences, some of which are also included here.

Anthropology Department

American Studies Program

Biology Department

Boston School of Occupational Therapy

Center for Cognitive Studies

Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development

Classics Department

Community Day

Communication and Media Studies

Community Health Program

Community Language Bank

Dean's Faculty Forum

Drama & Dance Department

Education Department

Environmental Studies

EPIIC-Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship

Experimental College

FOCUS

Graduate Student Council

Group of Six

History Department

INSPIRE

Institute for Global Leadership

Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service

Leonard Carmichael Society (LCS)

Music Department

Mystic Watershed Collaborative

New Initiative for Middle East Peace (NIMEP)

Peace and Justice Studies

Political Science Department

Project LOCAL

Read by the River

Tufts University Art Gallery

Tufts Drama and Dance Team

Tufts Communications and Media Studies

Tufts Literacy Corps

Tufts Pre-Med Society

TuftsScope

Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Department

Water: Systems, Science, and Society