The intensive planning effort will be inclusive of all campuses and constituencies at Tufts
Tufts University is embarking on Tufts Beyond 175, an intensive effort designed to map out plans for the next five years while also preparing the university for the next quarter-century. President Sunil Kumar announced the initiative in a community-wide email earlier today; the project’s name refers to the 175th anniversary of the university’s 1852 founding, which Tufts will celebrate in 2027.
The cornerstone of Tufts Beyond 175 will be broad consultation with the Tufts community, including faculty, students, staff, and alumni from the university’s four campuses. Opportunities for contributing to the effort will include town halls, focus groups, and surveys of all community members.
In his inaugural address last fall, Kumar introduced five pillars as the tenets of his presidency. Now, Tufts Beyond 175’s aim is to identify, within each of those pillars, a tightly focused list of specific goals as well as a timeline for achieving each of those objectives. Another key to Tufts Beyond 175 is the establishment of an accountability structure, in which individuals and departments across Tufts will be assigned responsibility for each of the priorities that emerge from the process.
Kumar’s announcement explains that Tufts Beyond 175 will produce a near-term roadmap for the entire university. This effort, Kumar explains, will not replace related efforts currently under way at Tufts’ schools, but rather will augment, knit together, and help focus those efforts.
As its partner in the extensive data-gathering efforts and consultation required by this process, Tufts has selected the Survey Research and Institutional Policy arm of the Association of American Universities (AAU). The AAU is the 71-member consortium of leading research universities noted for their accomplishments in education, research, and innovation—a consortium of which Tufts is itself a member.
Concurrent with Tufts Beyond 175, the university will also conduct a national survey about how it is perceived by individuals with no affiliation with Tufts.
To learn more about Tufts Beyond 175, Tufts Now spoke with Caroline Genco, provost and senior vice president; Marty Ray, vice president for strategic initiatives and chief of staff in the Office of the President; and Michael Rodman, vice president for communications and marketing. Genco chairs the Tufts Beyond 175 steering committee, Ray is the project manager responsible for ensuring that the effort is closely aligned with the president’s vision and expectations, and Rodman is focused on questions about how the university is perceived externally.
Why is Beyond 175 important for Tufts?
Caroline Genco: Because of the speed and degree with which higher education is changing, intentional reflection is important, for both the university as a whole and for the individual members of the Tufts community. We owe it to both our faculty and our students to be relevant and to continue to provide an exceptional and innovative education.
Marty Ray: Tufts today is a very different institution than it was 25—or even 10—years ago; the world is very different, too. Many of today’s Tufts graduates will eventually pursue careers that don’t even exist yet. Part of how we best prepare them for a future of unceasing change is by understanding what we do—and don’t do—as a university.
Efforts like this are often criticized for producing a report that gathers dust on a shelf. What makes Tufts Beyond 175 different?
Genco: Tufts Beyond 175 does not have a long timeline for delivery; President Kumar has asked us to create and execute a process that delivers a report at most one year from now. The report will have very specific priorities and goals to be achieved over a three-to-five-year timeline. That said, we are intending the impact of those priorities to be felt over the next 25 to 30 years.
Ray: The president has been clear: Tufts Beyond 175 will not be a wish list. Instead, it’s an action plan featuring priorities undergirded by metrics—and individuals with responsibility for specific outcomes. And Tufts Beyond 175 will be more accountability-driven than any previous similar effort at the university. There’s no room here for a report that sits unread on a shelf.
Genco: Our responsibility is to determine the goals that we will work toward as one university. It is very likely Tufts Beyond 175 will generate a number of ideas that have merit, but which we do not have the size, scope, or resources to pursue at the university level. It certainly may make sense, however, for one of our schools or centers to pursue those opportunities.
Why was the AAU selected as the partner for Tufts Beyond 175?
Michael Rodman: We wanted a partner that is part of the higher education firmament, not a typical consulting firm. The AAU is expert at helping not just its entire membership as a group, but also helping its member universities, like Tufts. The AAU understands deeply what higher education is about and the challenges we all face, while at the same time being a very cost-effective solution for us. As we undertake Tufts Beyond 175, we are being highly resource conscious.
Genco: The AAU also has a unique position in American higher education when it comes to being able to tell us where our numbers fit in terms of the country’s other leading research universities. The AAU has an unrivaled ability to contextualize survey findings, for example, far exceeding what a typical consultancy would be able to offer.
How can the community participate?
Rodman: With the AAU’s help, we will design surveys for our entire community, including faculty, students, staff, and alumni. We’ll also offer focus groups for faculty, staff, and students. President Kumar will be engaging with the community at various events, including faculty meetings, to solicit ideas and feedback. We also encourage community members to send any suggestions to president@tufts.edu.
Genco: And we’ve formed a 20-person, university-wide steering committee for Tufts Beyond 175, with representation relative to each school’s size, and with members from central administration and the University Faculty Senate. In addition to providing guidance on the nature and structure of the surveys and the focus groups, the steering committee is charged with helping us prioritize the data and the feedback as they’re coming in, and the goals as they’re being shaped. We will be relying on the committee for critical guidance throughout the process.
Ray: At heart, this is a community-driven process. Everyone is going to have the chance to weigh in, and we strongly encourage their contributions. The more people that we hear from, the better it is for the process—and the outcome. The quantitative and qualitative data from our community become the data that the president needs to shape the priorities for Tufts and the timeline on which we can deliver them. We encourage everyone reading this to take advantage of the voice that you have in this process.
Genco: We understand that we cannot get an entire community to agree with everything that should and should not happen at our university. Respectful discourse is healthy and encouraged; it helps move us forward as a community. It is critical to us that everyone connected to Tufts knows that we want to hear their voice. The power of our colleagues, students, and alumni to tell us what we need to hear gives me the confidence that we will arrive at a place where people are supportive of the outcome.
Ray: It’s our hope that, through a robust consultative process and a representative steering committee, we reach strong consensus on the right path for Tufts—not just for the next five years, but for the next 25 years.
Given the volatility in the higher education landscape, how do you produce a roadmap that continues to have meaning after it’s produced?
Genco: The contemporary higher ed landscape requires all administrators and academics to be nimble and to adapt to the changes in the market, the regulatory landscape, and the funding models of higher education. We anticipate that our relatively short timeframe for delivery of Tufts Beyond 175 will give us more flexibility to respond to what is coming around the corner, including deliverables as needed or as appropriate.
We are going into this fully knowing that even the most focused, dynamic, and well-designed effort risks becoming obsolete even within a year or two. We’re fully prepared to refresh portions of Tufts Beyond 175 as appropriate, in consultation with the academic leadership across our schools.
What considerations will you give to the increasingly challenging—and highly competitive—landscape of higher ed?
Genco: President Kumar has been steadfast in his commitment to our distinctive undergraduate curriculum, with the liberal arts education remaining the cornerstone. But at every opportunity, he has also exhorted our undergrads to explore the full breadth of all that Tufts has to offer, rather than focusing single-mindedly on the thing that they had decided to pursue before they even set foot on campus.
All Tufts students have a benefit unlike anywhere else in academia: As President Kumar has said on numerous occasions, we are the only university that is a part of both the NESCAC—known for its strong liberal arts education and commitment to teaching—and the American Association of Universities—the collection of the nation’s leading research universities. Our research program is critical to our university’s future, so we must be both thoughtful and expansive as we think about the opportunities for groundbreaking research.
That mindset—the importance of exploring possibilities—also empowers us to think more expansively about our graduate and professional programs. The programs we offer today are exceptional—and at the same time, there’s significant opportunity for innovation and growth in those spaces. The key is to determine both where our programs are distinctive and also where future investments will make Tufts even more of a destination for students pursuing research opportunities, advanced degrees, and additional certifications—and for faculty seeking an institution with a strong research program and a thriving innovation ecosystem.
Rodman: We’re counting on our faculty, staff, and students to help guide where we should go in these spaces, including, for example, executive education. When it comes to market demand, one reason why internal consultations are so important to Tufts Beyond 175 is that we can rely on our community to provide nuance and context to the external feedback we get.
Ray: Effective strategy must be about both what we are going to do and what we’re going to stop doing. The current environment requires us to be honest with ourselves about the things that are not going well, which we can either improve or stop doing. At the end of the day, we must confront bravely not just what we want to offer but what people want to receive. Historically, universities have not been great at that. But this process will help us match our expertise and our aspirations to the market in a focused and thoughtful way.
Why is the university also conducting a national survey on perceptions about Tufts?
Rodman: How we talk about Tufts, where we excel, how we’re distinctive, how we fit into the nation’s higher ed landscape, what impact do we have today and what are our aspirations for our impact in the future—these are all natural considerations within any process like Tufts Beyond 175. That’s why, as one part of our work, we’re going to conduct a national survey about how Tufts is perceived in the world. It will be highly beneficial to understand deeply how Tufts is perceived in all relevant markets across the country, given the demographic shifts that already impact where Tufts students come from. And it’s important for us to identify areas where the external perception of the university is at odds with our internal view of ourselves. That sort of gap can be especially constructive as we plan our communications efforts.
It’s important to note that this survey won’t be determinative of anything we do; our priority is what the Tufts community has to say. But we must understand fully how we’re perceived beyond our campuses, so we can best articulate our value to the country and the world.
How does Tufts Beyond 175 align with other related efforts?
Genco: For the past two years, Executive Vice President Mike Howard and I have led a process that engages the leadership of each of the university’s schools, the vice provosts, and the vice presidents in identifying annual school-specific priorities that can, in turn, inform university-wide priorities. The process we’re describing today—a single roadmap shared by the entire university—is a critical, overarching frame that will be built above our ongoing, annual work with the schools and central units.
Also under that frame: we have centers and offices that span Tufts and that are engaged in related work right now. Examples include current initiatives in the offices of the Vice Provost for Education and the Vice Provost for Institutional Inclusive Excellence. Their planning efforts will be concurrent with this university-wide effort and, given how critical both those efforts are to our aspirational vision, will likely provide relevant data and perspective to Tufts Beyond 175.