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UPFRONT
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Landmark Philanthropy
Cummings Foundation
to invest $50 million in veterinary school
Cummings Foundation Inc. has committed to investing
$50 million in Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine
over the next 15 years—the largest gift in the
history of the university and among the largest donations
ever made to a U.S. veterinary school. It also ranks
among the largest gifts ever to a Massachusetts college
or university.
In recognition of the gift, the school will be renamed
the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in a ceremony
to be held in spring 2005.
“Tufts is enormously grateful to the Cummings
Foundation for this extraordinary gift,” Tufts
president Lawrence S. Bacow said. “One measure
of a just society is how well it takes care of those
who cannot take care of themselves. People who devote
their lives to animals are among the most caring and
unselfish among us. The Cummings Foundation gift appropriately
recognizes their selfless commitment.”
“The mission of the Cummings Foundation is to
invest in organizations that make contributions to our
society,” said William S. Cummings, A58, president
of the foundation. “We were moved to recommend
this commitment due to the practical, entrepreneurial
spirit of Tufts University in general and Tufts veterinary
school in particular. This collaboration will help
to provide the resources necessary for the school to
sustain its vision. We are honored to support this
world-class institution of higher learning.”
Dean Philip C. Kosch remarked, “This gift will
help fund needed capital improvements, provide matching
funds in support of major research proposals, and greatly
strengthen the educational and clinical mission of
the school. I cannot thank the Cummings Foundation
enough for its vote of confidence in the faculty, staff,
and students who make Tufts veterinary school the special
place that it is.”
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Photo
by Richard Howard |
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Cummings is the founder of Cummings Properties, LLC,
which operates eight million square feet of office,
laboratory, and research space in eastern Massachusetts,
which it leases to 1,700 tenants. He is an alumnus and
a trustee emeritus of Tufts. He also was an overseer
to Tufts School of Medicine.
In 1998, his 40th reunion, Cummings received the Distinguished
Service Award, the highest honor of the Tufts University
Alumni Association. He chose the occasion to endow the
Cummings Family Chair in Entrepreneurship and Business
Economics at the university. “Tufts was an excellent
experience that definitely helped me and prepared me
for the business world,” he said at the time.
“I paid my own tuition through Tufts, but I have
always felt a major sense of obligation, which is why
I have given to the university every year since graduation.”
Cummings said he focused his endowment on entrepreneurship
“because I wanted to establish something that
helps students develop the skills that are necessary
to run a business and to assist people who seek to own
their own business.”
Also in 1998, he was named Real Estate Entrepreneur
of the Year for New England by Ernst & Young. Cummings
was the founder and publisher of three community newspapers
in Woburn, Stoneham, and Winchester, and has been involved
in many philanthropic activities, including serving
as a director of the Woburn Boys and Girls Club for
25 years.
The School of Veterinary Medicine was founded 26 years
ago in partnership with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Each year, half of the seats in the entering class are
reserved for Massachusetts residents, who receive a
tuition discount. Tufts raised 100 percent of the capital
necessary to build the veterinary school and its three
hospitals on surplus state land in North Grafton, Massachusetts.
The hospitals treat more than 28,000 animals each year.
The school receives annual operating support from Massachusetts,
producing one of the most successful public/private
higher education partnerships in the nation.
—Barbara Donato |
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The
College
Bright Lights
Lee A. Coffin, dean of Undergraduate
Admissions, certainly got it right when he called Tufts
incoming freshmen “an accomplished, curious, and
opinionated” class. His long list of distinctions
for the Class of 2008 included the following: For the
third consecutive year, Tufts’ admissions was
highly competitive—14,728 candidates for only
1,280 slots. For the fifth consecutive year, 27 percent
were offered admission, a level of selectivity matched
by fewer than 20 universities in the country. Of this
year’s freshmen, 75 percent were ranked in the
top 10 percent of their graduating high school class.
And consistent with previous entering classes, international
relations is the leading academic interest in the School
of Arts & Sciences. For more on the merits of Tufts’
newest Jumbos and a photo gallery of their arrival,
visit the links at E-News (enews.tufts.edu).
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| Window
on Innovation
Emerging technology
gives Tufts a pioneering role with new display
When the President’s Office set out to create
a display about the university and its international
scope, it wanted to go beyond the conventional video
loop. Instead, it looked to an innovative education,
art, and technology design studio in Somerville to find
out about something called a Spin Browser™. Now
it seems that Tufts is leading the way in how universities
can use this interactive technology.
The new display debuted in August at TIAA-CREF headquarters
in New York this past summer. Alumni were clearly enthralled
by the 40-inch LCD flat-panel display; turning a stainless
steel dial, they controlled video sequences, spinning
forward and backward and freezing images that caught
their interest—soaring over the Veterinary School
campus one minute, for instance, and the glaciers of
Antarctica the next.
“With our theme focusing on Tufts’ international
influence, the technology gave us the freedom to bring
together the four campuses and the university’s
global reach in a creative and bold way that we never
could have achieved with traditional video,” said
Judy Olson, chief of staff in the President’s
Office. “It was a perfect pairing of message and
medium.”
The project grew out of an invitation from TIAA-CREF
to develop a university display for its lobby; colleges
and universities are celebrated in its “Window
on Learning” exhibition space.
David Durlach, director and founder of TechnoFrolics,
which developed Spin Browser™, recalls getting
the call to demonstrate the new video-based technology
he typically pitches to museums and corporations as
a captivating educational and promotional presentation
medium. Unlike a standard video kiosk, which often loses
the interest of passersby after a casual glance, the
Spin Browser™ turns viewing into a very active
and engaging experience. “This innovative, interactive
technology is often seen in high-quality science museums,”
said Durlach. “Tufts worked with us to extend
its application into a promotional area that has never
been explored before by a university. It could be considered
a standard for other schools; it’s definitely
very cool.”
Tufts is now planning for the SpinBrowser’s™
permanent display on the Medford/Somerville campus,
scheduled for mid-November, and is investigating the
technology’s potential in other areas, such as
admissions, human resources, community relations, and
the Tufts website. |
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| Engineering
a Solution in Ghana
Tufts group brings new
ideas to controlling schistosomiasis
A new project from the civil and environmental engineering
department aims to design interventions for addressing
an outbreak of schistosomiasis in the town of Kwabeng
in eastern Ghana.
Schistosomiasis, a water-borne disease, is caused by
several species of parasitic flatworms. Nearly a third
of the children in the town of about 5,000 people have
bilharzia, as the disease is locally known, the symptoms
of which include anemia and bloody urine.
Dr. Kwabena Aboagye, a native of Kwabeng and an obstetrician
at Boston University Medical School, has hypothesized
that the outbreak was triggered by recent gold-mining
activities that have caused the Awusu River to become
sluggish in places, creating prime habitat for the snails
that harbor the parasitic flatworms.
John Durant and David Gute, both associate professors
in civil and environmental engineering, were intrigued
when they heard Dr. Aboagye’s theory. It got them
thinking that there might be an engineering solution
to the problem, and they decided to lead a fact-finding
trip to Kwabeng. Their respective backgrounds of environmental
engineering and epidemiology proved appropriate to the
task.
“We invited six seniors to join us, as part of
a semester-long capstone design course,” said
Durant. “In February we spent a week in Kwabeng
and the Awusu River basin, and gathered as much information
as we could. In addition, we spent a lot of time talking
to people—the town king, the regional king, school
teachers, principals, parents, and even the mining company—to
get a sense of the social impacts of the disease, and
to build partnerships essential to the success of the
project.”
With this information, the students will evaluate and
rank all of the possible interventions—including
river restoration. The group plans to return to Kwabeng
next year with a new crop of students to discuss the
recommendations and to move to the next phase of the
design process.
“Our long-term goal is to oversee the implementation
of the selected interventions and then evaluate how
well they work,” said Durant. “Using this
methodical approach, we hope to arrive at the best possible
solution for Kwabeng and to achieve broad-based community
acceptance.”
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Imagery
of War
Exhibitions in the Koppelman Gallery, combined with
the inaugural show in the Remis Sculpture Court, offer
compelling perspectives on war and conflict. In the
Koppelman, photojournalist Gary Knight documents evidence
of war crimes and crimes against humanity in photographs
taken in Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo during the conflict
between the NATO-backed KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army)
and the Yugoslav armed forces. The show will be followed
by an exhibition of photographs taken by other photojournalists
working in countries such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,
and Iraq. Both exhibitions honor the 20th anniversary
of EPIIC (Education for Public Inquiry and Inter-national
Citizenship), a core program for the Institute for Global
Leadership.
In the sculpture court, the exhibition OVERT/COVERT,
including photography, sculpture, and painting, is so
named because “each work in this exhibition presents
a variation on the paradox of overt and covert aggression—and
asks us to ponder its consequences, especially in human
terms,” says Amy Ingrid Schlegel, director of
galleries and collections. The exhibition includes work
by Tufts graduate Jim MacMillan, A83, a Philadelphia-based
photojournalist currently on a one-year stint for Associated
Press in Baghdad, captured the devastation of the World
Trade Center at the crack of dawn on September 12, 2001.
MacMillan waited till sunrise to shoot his photograph,
thinking it would give the viewer a sense of hope. Instead,
he found “it really shows the scale of the destruction
and how little hope there was to find any survivors,”
he wrote in ArtMatters, published by the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. “It appears as if there is one person
in the photo, but there are nearly 3,000.”
For more information visit www.tufts.edu/as/gallery.
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