From the Provost

Higher Education in a Global Context

As Provost and Senior Vice President, Dr. Jamshed Bharucha is the Chief Academic Officer of Tufts University, overseeing the seven schools, Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, and all cross-school programs. The provost is also responsible for driving institutional and budgetary priorities, and for academic planning. He is dedicated to leveraging the international focus of all the University's schools and initiatives. Working with the International Board of Overseers, he has launched a strategy of engagement with Mexico, India and China. They have successfully established partnerships that serve students and faculty, connected with international alumni, and promoted Tufts around the world.

The future of higher education requires a new commitment to educate students for global leadership. Successful global leadership requires new ways of thinking about traditional academic knowledge, in order to address complex problems at global scales. It also requires the ability to think, communicate and act successfully across cultural boundaries.

At Tufts we seek to lead the way in defining what it means to be a university whose education and research have a global reach. Our students and faculty are engaged in international research and scholarship on issues ranging from AIDS to arsenic. They are grappling with the fundamental human forces that fuel conflict and cooperation in international affairs. And they are doing so through experiential global learning, distinctive interdisciplinary programs that apply academic knowledge to real-life situations around the world. Tufts University's emphasis on international education and research reaches across the curriculum, and infuses every school.

<h4>A Dental Education Delivered to your Doorstep</h4>

<p>Unlike most first-year students at Tufts, the students in the School of Dental Medicine's distance education program -- the first of its kind in the world -- don't get together on campus for study groups. Instead, they remain in constant communication with the school and each other from their homes around the world as they earn their M.S. degrees in craniofacial pain and temporomandibular joint disorder.</p>

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<p>Dr. Jeffrey Griffiths, an associate professor of public health and family medicine, is always on the go. But then he needs to be: he is bent on nothing less than changing the world. What makes him run? "I'd just like the world to be a better place when I go," he says. "And it's fun doing this stuff."</p>

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<h4>A Mission to Help </h4>

<p>During the summer of 2007, Tufts dental student Marjorie Brisard traveled to her native Haiti this summer with a team of classmates and faculty members. For Brisard, the trip was one step toward fulfilling a life's goal.</p>

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<p>Working for the United Nations Mission in Sudan gave two Fletcher School students a unique view into an international peacekeeping operation and a new outlook on the Darfur conflict.</p>

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<h4>Bienvenue à Talloires</h4>

<p>The Tufts in Talloires program allows students to explore a foreign culture -- and themselves.</p>

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<h4>Castle in the Clouds </h4>

<p>Elliot Hirshon (A'05) recalls a trip to Tibet with Engineers Without Borders.</p>

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<h4>Change Agent</h4>

<p>Salome Otami, a Tufts Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development graduate student, hopes to make a difference when she returns to her native Ghana.</p>

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<h4>Connecting Across Continents </h4>

<p>Students in GMAP, a combined residency and Internet-mediated graduate program at Tufts University's Fletcher School, are gaining an interdisciplinary education in global affairs, while making lifelong connections with their classmates from around the world.</p>

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<h4>Deliverance</h4>

<p>Through the organization he founded, LimaKids, Joseph Donroe (A'98, MD/MPH'07) seeks to address both mental health and quality of life issues of orphaned children in Peru's capital city.</p>

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<h4>Depth of Field</h4>

<p>One of several programs offered by the Tufts Institute for Global Leadership (IGL), EXPOSURE is an institute for photojournalism, documentary studies and human rights. It all began when IGL Director Sherman Teichman and undergraduate Matthew Edmundson (A'05) teamed up with acclaimed photographer James Nachtwey.</p>

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<h4>Dr. Chotanga</h4>

<p>Jeffrey Lazar, M03, recalls his seven-week stint at Livingstone General Hospital in Zambia.</p>

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<h4>Growing Strong</h4>

<p>The New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (NESFP), part of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, was founded in 1998. It now serves about 50 immigrant farmers from Laos, Cambodia, Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, and Kenya.</p>

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<h4>It's All Breaking New Ground</h4>

<p>As the directors of Tufts University's Nutrition/ Infection Unit, Drs. Christine Wanke, MD, and Sherwood Gorbach, MD, explore the link between nutrition and HIV/AIDS.</p>

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<h4>Making Its Mark </h4>

<p>A decade after its inception, Tufts University's Feinstein International Center is making a powerful impact on humanitarian work around the world.</p>

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<h4>Re-engineering a River</h4>

<p>Applying engineering principles to primary disease prevention can help bolster public health efforts, says David Gute, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts.</p>

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<h4>Summer Smarts</h4>

<p>Through Tufts Summer Scholars program, Jamie Chang (A'06) spent a summer in Korea exploring her passion for theater history. With support from her faculty mentor, she studied how contemporary Korean theater incorporates traditional performance forms, such as one-man operas and masked dances.</p>

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<h4>True Blessings</h4>

<p>Sue Higgins, T86, G02, has seen firsthand the difference occupational therapy can make in the lives of adults and children living in Mexico.</p>

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<h4>Welcome to America </h4>

<p>In 2000, Jane Leu (J'91) founded Upwardly Global, a San Francisco nonprofit dedicated to helping legal immigrants find work in their field. Today, with more than a dozen employees and a field office in Manhattan, the organization has assisted immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from some 65 countries.</p>

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<h4>Welcome To Arada Vieja </h4>

<p>Jonny Crocker (E'07), the former president of Engineers Without Borders, talks about the group's water filtration project in rural El Salvador.</p>

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