Greetings From the Dean

CURIOSITY. It drives us to ask questions, to explore, to stay up way too late reading books on philosophy or watching videos of Rube Goldberg machines wondering just how someone figured out something so complex and so beautiful. It is the need to know more, and to then apply that knowledge to doing more.

Tufts tends to attract intellectually curious students for whom learning is part of the thrill. In fact, our selection process seeks out those very students—one of our short-answer application questions in recent years has asked, “What excites your intellectual curiosity?” We seek to understand what makes your heart beat a little faster, what lights up those neurons in your brain, and what you would stay up way too late learning about.

Coming to Tufts provides endless opportunities for you to flex your curiosity muscle. Our diverse community of scholars from around the world will expose you to ways of thinking and being that might be entirely new to you.

Each of our dozens of majors and minors is an opportunity to immerse yourself in a subject area about which you may have only scratched the surface…so far. As an R1 research university, you will be surrounded by, and potentially contribute to, a generation of new knowledge as we all seek to answer the questions that intrigue us. And every one of our 300+ student organizations is a chance to learn something new with new friends in a new environment. I hope that intrigues you!

In this issue of Jumbo, you will learn how curiosity drives Tufts. You will learn how something as simple as a toothbrush ignited the mind of Professor James Intriligator in his human factors engineering research and how Tufts creates a dynamic space where our Dean of Research and Professor of Psychology Ayanna Thomas can let her research flourish. You will read about how multiple fields of study are integral to SMFA student Vivian Tran’s artistic practice as well as how an early exposure to both STEM and humanities still fans Fatima Lawan’s intellectual curiosity to this day.

Curiosity is the theme of this issue of Jumbo, which serves as a window into some of the people and opportunities that await you if you join our community. From faculty members who are eager to teach you and invite you to join them in research, to students who are eager to share their paths to Tufts with you, each page of this issue will, I hope, ignite your curiosity to learn more about what makes our community so special.

Best,

J.T. Duck's signature.

JT Duck Dean of Admissions