Profile of Ayanna Thomas

DEAN OF RESEARCH AND PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY

Portrait of Dean Thomas

Tufts is a delightfully ambitious institution. Every day, the university brings the brilliant minds of students and professors together as they ponder some of our world’s most perplexing questions. To remedy this curiosity and seek answers, Jumbos look toward robust research opportunities. In the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts (A&S), Dean of Research and Professor of Psychology Ayanna Thomas leads the charge.

Dean Thomas has an extensive history of research experience due to her scholarship in the field of psychology. She has a special interest in memory and cognitive aging, and her research allows her to explore these interests in depth. Tufts, being both a medium-sized liberal arts college and a top-tier research institution, allows Dean Thomas and her students to foster meaningful connections in their lab. “I wanted to go back to a liberal arts school,” Dean Thomas affirmed, “I wanted to go back and have the same kind of interactive class dynamic that I was motivated by as an undergrad. What’s great about Tufts is that it really is the best of both worlds. You still have that liberal arts feel; you still have a really close community with students, and you also have high quality, state-of-the-art research labs with scholars at the forefront of their field.” As another testament to the unique faculty-student relationships at Tufts, Dean Thomas has a special fondness for graduations. “I love meeting people’s parents—it’s my favorite part of graduation. And I get to see all the joy and excitement and anticipation that my students have.”

Research at Tufts, according to Dean Thomas, is pleasantly collaborative. Compared to other research institutions, faculty and students interact directly while they work alongside one another. In her own lab, Dean Thomas works with a number of graduate and undergraduate students. The commitment to teamwork extends across labs, too. Research groups at Tufts are often apt to collaborate on the most pressing issues in our world. In other words, when multifaceted problems arise in society, Tufts has the interdisciplinary means to address them.

“Researchers and scholars at Tufts really do value civic and community engagement. There is a real commitment to taking what I do in the lab and having a direct application in the world around me…Some of my work has relevance in the criminal justice system, so I have, over the last [few years], engaged as an expert witness for a variety of different kinds of cases, both criminal and civil. Litigation that involves witness testimony sometimes [requires] witnesses to recollect past experiences. My testimony often involves explaining how memory works to judges and juries. This is also an opportunity for the students working with me to see how the work that they are doing in the lab [has real-world applications]. Sometimes students will accompany me to court to watch my testimony.”

The dedication to research and scholarship at Tufts is no small undertaking. For Dean Thomas, this means taking on a rewarding yet arduous challenge. In her role as Dean of Research, she has already set out clear goals of what research in the School of Arts and Sciences aspires to look like.

“My goal is primarily to facilitate research in [the School of] Arts and Sciences. I am also developing ways to structure more concrete time for collaboration and solving larger-scale problems that are plaguing our society and our local community. I am really trying to structure a research environment in A&S that integrates what we value about not only research and scholarship, but also how it supports our work in the classroom. Thinking about ways to create a space for diverse voices in research is also important in this agenda; thinking about structuring pipelines that get undergrads from underrepresented groups, and who maybe have not had access to some of these research opportunities. All of these are aspects of my role as Dean of Research.” —BLAKE ANDERSON ’24