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T HE T UFTS DAILY
VOLUME LXXXI, ISSUE 12
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.
Tufts University School of Medicine opens new doctor of physical therapy program in Phoenix
NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES
Tufts Medical Center is pictured. by Fernando Cervantes Jr. Staff Writer
Tufts University School of Medicine announced on Sept. 15 the opening of the new Tufts doctor of physical therapy program based in Phoenix, Ariz., with plans to enroll an inaugural class in the summer of 2022. This is the second doctor of physical therapy program
launched by Tufts School of Medicine in the past year with the first having started in May 2020, located locally in Boston. Dr. Tawna Wilkinson, director of curriculum and assessment, also commented on what the program seeks to achieve. “Our purpose is to prepare doctor of physical therapy students for professional licen-
sure and ultimately, culturally conscious licensed clinicians contributing to the healthcare team and positively impacting patient well-being,” Wilkinson wrote in an email to the Daily. The program will help to address the country’s growing need for physical therapists. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the need for physical therapists is expected to grow in the next 10 years. “Employment of physical therapists is projected to grow 21 percent from 2020 to 2030, much faster than the average for all occupations,” according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “About 15,600 openings for physical therapists are projected each year, on average, over the decade.” The same sentiment is shared by Dr. Eric Hegedus, director of the Phoenix program, who also spoke on why Arizona was chosen specifically. see PHOENIX, page 2
Kyongbum Lee named dean of School of Engineering by Ria Agarwal
Assistant News Editor
Professor Kyongbum Lee was named Karol Family professor and dean ad interim of the School of Engineering on Aug. 3. He replaced Jianmin Qu, who left Tufts to become provost and vice president for academic affairs at Stevens Institute of Technology at the end of the same month. Lee previously served as chair of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Tufts for 11 years. He joined Tufts as an assistant professor in 2002 before being promoted to associate professor in 2008 and a full professor in 2014. He earned his B.S. at Stanford and his Ph.D. at MIT. Lee’s research focuses on metabolic engineering, systems biology and cellular metabolism. In 2015, Lee was named a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering for his contributions to biomedical engineering through experimental studies in cellular metabolism. He has received the Jay Bailey Young
Investigator Best Paper Award in Metabolic Engineering 2006 and the Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award in 2010. One of Lee’s priorities within the School of Engineering is to foster diversity and inclusion within the student body, faculty and administration, an effort in which the school has invested heavily over the past five years under Qu. “[The School of Engineering] created a Division of Student Diversity and Inclusion jointly with the School of Arts and Sciences and raised more than one million dollars for the Center for STEM Diversity,” Lee wrote in an email to the Daily. Other initiatives include a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to increase underrepresented and LGBTQ students’ accessibility to programs and an added requirement for tenure-line faculty candidates to include a diversity and inclusion statement in their applications. Moreover, Lee has also observed an increase in the percentage of women in the engineering undergraduate student population.
FEATURES / page 3
Boston will elect second woman of color as mayor this November
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Friday, October 1, 2021
“The incoming Class of 2025 engineering undergraduate class is near gender parity, with more than 49% women,” Lee said. Despite this progress, Lee emphasized the necessity for continuing to improve diversity and inclusion in the School of Engineering. “We recognize that SOE needs to continue improving its student body diversity with respect to underrepresented students of color,” Lee said. “We also recognize that systemic barriers still exist that can hinder these students’ success in the SOE. The vital work of improving diversity and lowering barriers will continue under my leadership.” Nadine Aubry, provost and senior vice president, voiced a similar concern about the lack of diversity in engineering spaces. “As someone with an engineering background myself, I am well versed in the lack of diversity in the STEM workforce and understand how it negatively impacts our society and ability to grow technologisee DEAN, page 2
Tufts rises 2 spots on U.S. News & World Report rankings
AVA IANNUCCILLO / THE TUFTS DAILY
Jumbo is pictured on Sept. 12. by Ella Kamm
Assistant News Editor
Disclaimer: Hana Tzou is an assistant copy editor at The Tufts Daily. She was not involved in the writing or editing of this article. Tufts ranked 28th on the 2022 U.S. News & World Report Best National University ranking, rising two positions from the 2021 list. The annual rankings, which were released on Sept. 13, assess 1,466 U.S. bachelor’s degree-granting institutions and factor in 17 different academic measurements. These include graduation and retention rates, social mobility, undergraduate academic reputation and student selectivity. Factors such as student life and sports are not considered. At 28th place in the ranking, Tufts is tied with New York University, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Florida, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University. “Overall, Tufts University’s place in the U.S. News rankings has remained stable for nearly two decades, with small positive and negative annual fluctuations, placing us consistently in the top tier of national universities,” Dean of Admissions J.T. Duck wrote in an email to the Daily. “Due to ties at certain spots on the rankings, our place has effectively remained unchanged over the years.” The impact of the pandemic on Tufts and higher education institutions in general is not yet
ARTS / page 4
OPINION / page 6
Spooky season is upon us
Lebanon’s history and politics warrant greater focus in academic environments
fully apparent in the rankings. Though they are published for the 2022 admissions cycle, and include information from 2021 on factors such as tuition and fees, the standardized test score ranges reflect admissions data from 2019 and 2020. “Notably, SAT/ACT scores mostly reflect a test-taking period from 2019 to early 2020, before the effects of the coronavirus were felt in the United States,” U.S. News said on its website. “Nonetheless, to account for the disruption to higher education due to the ongoing pandemic, we slightly adjusted how we assessed SAT/ACT scores and made greater use of historic data for a few of the other ranking indicators.” It is typical for U.S. News to make slight adjustments to its scoring system year to year. These adjustments, Duck said, may have contributed to Tufts’ slight rise in the rankings. “It’s hard to say what causes a fluctuation in any given year because U.S. News makes changes to the underlying algorithm from year to year,” Duck said. “Because of the stability of our rankings, these minor fluctuations don’t have an impact on our ability to recruit talented and compelling students. For example, last year our ranking fell slightly but our applications rose 35 percent.” Hana Tzou, a tour guide for Tufts Admissions, said that prospective students typically don’t ask questions about or mention U.S. News rankings on tours. see ADMISSIONS, page 2 NEWS
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