Across the university, spaces have been established and renewed with a focus on collaboration, innovation, and sustainability
The skylight in the atrium of the Science and Engineering Complex, which opened in October 2017. Photo: Alonso Nichols
The renovations and new construction during President Monaco’s tenure have renewed the spaces across our campuses that are home to every aspect of the student experience—the buildings where they live and learn, the spaces where they share meals with friends, the fields and facilities where, as student-athletes, they score for the Jumbos.
Each project has amplified the research, teaching, and health care mission of Tufts—and built an ever-more solid foundation for the university's achievements to come.
In addition to design excellence, each new and renewed space has centered sustainability, collaboration, and innovation.
As you look at these 12 years of projects, consider the overarching goal of this enterprise: The creation of inclusive places where Tufts people want to live and learn in shared spaces with one another.
Prioritizing Collaboration: The Sci/Tech Corridor
Built in 2015, the Collaborative Learning and Innovation Complex (CLIC) established a new gateway to campus and ushered in a new era of buildings designed expressly for interdisciplinary work.
The AIA award-winning Science and Engineering Center (SEC) is a gold LEED-certified building with state-of-the-art research and teaching labs for the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering. Shared collaboration spaces include open living rooms, atrium seating, introductory and advanced science teaching labs, and engineering and computer teaching labs for cross-university occupants.
Built in 2022, Joyce Cummings Center brings together several academic departments, educational programs, and interdisciplinary centers. In addition to housing flexible classrooms, labs, and event spaces, the building provides a diverse array of spaces that encourage students to see Cummings Center as not only a place for classes, but for study, sharing ideas, and collaboration. Adjacent to the new MBTA Green Line station, it also offers unparalleled views of Medford, Somerville, and Boston.
New and Enhanced Research and Clinical Spaces
Across three schools at Tufts, renovations large and small have modernized research and clinical spaces for better collaboration and enhanced patient care.
On the Boston Health Sciences campus, improvements at One Kneeland (completed in 2020) include an expansion of the lobby and the addition of a new elevator to fully empower Tufts University School of Dental Medicine to meet the needs of its students, faculty, and patients.
Dental students walk through the lobby of Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in 2019. Photo: Alonso Nichols
In Grafton, the Equine Sports Medicine Complex at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine (completed in 2017) provides a safe, quiet, and comfortable place for patients to be evaluated in-hand or under saddle. The arena’s footing provides a level surface for horses to exercise and simulate how they work at home. For clinicians, this means increased accuracy when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of even the subtlest lameness.
At Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals, construction of a new reception area and renovations to exam and treatment rooms respond to increased patient needs.
Sidney Beecy, V22, Melissa Rhodes, Veterinary Technician II, Tim Chan, Intern in Dermatology, and Ramón Almela, Assistant Professor of Clinical Sciences, attend to a patient while Yui Kurakake, V22, takes notes at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. Photo: Alonso Nichols
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine completed an expansion and renovation of the lobby, examination rooms, and areas of the emergency room at the Foster Hospital. Photo: Alonso Nichols
Originally built as the kitchen and dining hall for the former Grafton State Hospital, the newly renovated Peabody Pavilion transforms the 60-year-old building into a modern, flexible space that includes laboratories, offices, and conference rooms.
Cummings School Assistant Professor and veterinary pathologist Amanda Martinot is spearheading a new shared resource located in the renovated Peabody Pavilion lab space. Photo: Jake Belcher
In March 2023, newly renovated laboratory space opened at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Building 21 based on the shared laboratory concept. It brings together five new researchers into a space that will catalyze collaboration and discovery. This space will work synergistically with the comparative pathology and genomics shared resource described above.
The Luke and Lily Lerner Spay/Neuter Clinic provides veterinary students with opportunities for surgical training while serving pets in need from local shelters and rescue organizations. In 2018, the clinic was renovated and expanded to include a new induction suite and multi-purpose training laboratory, and operating rooms were upgraded with new equipment and machines.
Finally, the newly renovated Joseph Kelley, DVM Simulation Laboratory at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine allows students preparing for live-animal surgery to practice procedures ahead of time with multiple repetitions. Featuring a state-of-the-art A/V system, the lab includes both low-fidelity examples as well as high-fidelity and 3D-printed simulators designed by Cummings experts.
The Joseph Kelley, DVM simulation Laboratory helps veterinary students develop hands-on skills and enables them to feel competent and confident in their clinical abilities. Photo: Paul Rutherford for Tufts University
On the Boston campus, Tufts Launchpad | BioLabs is home to over 20+ early-stage life science startups. A full-service biotech facility, the 15,000 square foot site provides high-potential biomedical startup ventures with the infrastructure, equipment and core facilities, operational support, and industry connections they need to build and grow their companies.
Scientists work in the Tufts Launchpad | BioLabs space. Photo: Alonso Nichols
Improving the Residential Experience
A number of improvements have been made to the residential experience with the goals of keeping more upper-class students on campus, enhancing campus life, and changing dining facilities and food services to meet student needs. Tufts added more than 700 on campus beds from 2016 to 2023, thanks to new projects like Community Housing (CoHo), major renovations to existing dorms, and new acquisitions.
A Creative Community's Home
In July 2016, when the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston officially became part of the School of Arts and Sciences—and was renamed the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University—the art school became notable for being embedded within a major research university and also affiliated with a world-class museum. In adding this historic art institute to Tufts' existing constellation of schools, the university gained new spaces for teaching and learning.
Michael Barsanti, Professor of the Practice of Ceramics, removes pottery from the kiln. Photo: Anna Miller
Priscilla Mach, BFA24, works in her studio space at the Fenway building. Photo: Alonso Nichols
Showcasing Art Across Our Spaces
Our newest buildings have donor-funded programs for public art as integral to the architecture, with the ability to feature some graduates of the SMFA at Tufts. Large-scale portraits, three-dimensional structures, video installations and paintings, as well as whiteboards for capturing viewers reactions, are installed across all four floors of the CLIC building, for example. Original works of art are also featured prominently throughout Joyce Cummings Center.
This detail of the wall sculpture entitled "The Poetry of Reason" by artist Yu-Wen Wu is installed near a floor-to-ceiling window in Joyce Cummings Center that provides abundant natural light, an element that, in the words of the artist, "further embodies the system of visual symbols and material connections" featured in the artwork. Photo: Jake Belcher
“The Sum of Ostrom, Common Pots, and Persistence,” a two-story mural by artist Jamal Thorne in Joyce Cummings Center. Photo: Alonso Nichols
Learning Spaces—Transformed
To date, 87 learning spaces have been upgraded on the Medford/Somerville campus as part of an ongoing, multi-year improvement project built on a comprehensive assessment of the needs of these spaces. An additional 36 brand-new classrooms have been brought online.
New spaces like the Nolop FAST Facility, completed in 2019, provide advanced tools and training that empower collaboration, while renovations to existing spaces such as Robinson Hall bring enhanced teaching technologies to the classroom.
Serving both the School of Medicine and the School of Dental Medicine, the Michael Jaharis Jr. Anatomy Laboratory (completed 2017) integrates state-of-the-art technology and interactive learning with the classic anatomy dissection experience.
The adjacent Clinical Skills and Simulation Center (completed 2022) is a 15,000-square-foot training facility that contains four simulation rooms with advanced computerized mannequins that display symptoms and distress the same way real patients do. Together, these facilities establish a medical education hub on Tufts' Boston health sciences campus.
Forty-four dissection tables with high-resolution diagnostic imaging were added to the Technology Enhanced Active Learning classroom in the Jaharis Gross Anatomy Lab. Photo: Anna Miller
Room 217 of the simulation clinic at Tufts University School of Medicine. Photo: Alonso Nichols
At Cummings School, the newly renovated Joseph Kelley, DVM Simulation Laboratory allows students preparing for live-animal surgery to practice procedures ahead of time with multiple repetitions. Featuring a state-of-the-art A/V system, the lab includes both low-fidelity examples as well as high-fidelity and 3D-printed simulators designed by Cummings experts.
The Joseph Kelley, DVM simulation laboratory helps veterinary students develop hands-on skills and enables them to feel competent and confident in their clinical abilities. Photo: Paul Rutherford
Assists for Jumbo Victories
Under Monaco's leadership and with strong support from donors, the university has made a number of improvements to sports facilities, including upgrades to the Ellis/Oval Field, the Daniel Ounjian Field, and the Gantcher Center track and field area. Among the top priorities were the completion of a new squash facility and the establishment of Gittleman Park, in honor of the longtime provost, professor, and baseball aficionado.
History Reclaimed: Barnum/Dana
Completed in 2019, a strategic renovation of historic structures (some dating as far back as 1882) on the heart of the Academic Quad has allowed for the relocation of several university-wide offices and programs including Tisch College, the Institute of the Environment, Environmental Studies, the Office of Sustainability, Film and Media Studies, and selected Fletcher School offices.
Closer Than Ever: Boston and the Hill
The opening of the Medford/Tufts Green Line station represents the culmination of the MBTA's long-awaited Green Line Extension project and ushers in a new era for Tufts as a truly transit oriented university. The new station not only makes it easier for students, faculty, and staff to travel between three Tufts' campuses, but it moves the university closer to carbon neutrality and connects our community with other groundbreaking institutions in Massachusetts.
Elected officials including Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker join Tufts University President Anthony P. Monaco to cut the ribbon at the grand opening of the Medford/Tufts University MBTA Green Line station on December 12. Photo: Alonso Nichols
The Commitment to our Future
Sustainability is at the heart of all the projects. In support of Tufts’ goal to significantly reduce carbon emissions by 2050, each construction and renovation project has helped to reduce wasted energy and to make our physical plant increasingly efficient.
In addition, specific projects like the ones shown here have helped to create a resilient Tufts campus and lower our carbon footprint.
Joyce Cummings Center at sunset. Photo: Jared Charney
