Lost in Transition: Tisch College quietly restores its image

September 14, 2007

==by Alexander Dietz==

Last April, the Tisch College announced a sweeping reorganization. A week or two of spreading rumors followed the firing of beloved staffer Lisa Brukilacchio, while the College released a document outlining a series of major changes to its strategy and procedures.

Tisch became an integral part of Tufts soon after its founding as the University College of Citizenship and Public Service in 2000. Its purpose is to serve as the arm of the University that promotes active citizenship through civic engagement and research. Its staple program for years has been the Tisch Scholars, a group of 20 to 30 students from each class who work individually on in-depth service programs in communities around Tufts. Administrators concluded, after months of closed-door meetings and the advice of a firm called Vista Consulting, that it was necessary to revamp its programs in order to maximize its influence on the Tufts community.

But reaction came with speed and intensity, and much of it was negative. Students, faculty, and community leaders sharply criticized the institution for the extremity of its decisions and the secrecy of the process through which they were made. As Tisch tries to continue its transition while respecting the opinions of those who have worked closely with it, the future of this defining part of Tufts’ character hangs in doubt.

A Lack of Transparency

According to Tisch College Dean Rob Hollister, internal changes were needed for three reasons: “First, to build on the success of our work to date. Second, to provide opportunities for more students. And third, to increase Tufts’ contributions in the area of civic engagement research.”

Many members of the Tisch community agree with these goals but take issue with the way in which they were pursued.

Chief among the complaints voiced after the news of the strategy broke was that the College had failed to consult with Scholars, faculty, or community stakeholders, including even the mayor of Somerville, before arriving at their decisions. Sebastian Chaskel (A’07), a Scholar alum, was one of the leading voices opposing the changes, and he highlighted the manner in which they were developed as a key point of contention. “I am extremely concerned and disappointed at the process the Tisch College employed in designing and communicating its new direction,” he said.

He noted that community organizations heard rumors that their partnerships with the University were being modified, and that Tisch did not speak with them until they asked for a meeting. “The Tisch College’s actions were perceived as extremely disrespectful,” he said, “and damaged relationships that had taken years to form. The saddest part of it all is that the Tisch College violated the principles on which it was built, making those of us who learned and worked with Tisch for years to, for the first time, feel uncomfortable about our association with the institution.”

Susan Ostrander, a professor of sociology as well as a member of the College’s adjunct faculty, said that, while she appreciates the positive steps Dean Hollister has taken in response to criticism, she was “outraged” by Brukilacchio’s termination and “surprised and dismayed” when she learned that administrators had rolled out a grand new strategy without consulting faculty or other members of the community. John Durant, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and a member of the institution’s Faculty Fellows Program, was also “surprised,” saying that the announcement “left a lot of people confused and bewildered.”

Jen Bailey (A’09), a second-year Scholar, echoed their concerns. “Tisch has kind of become like my second home at Tufts, and so initially, when they kind of dropped the bomb on us that they were making all these changes, it felt like a part of my family had made a big decision without me,” she noted.

Diego Villalobos, a first year Scholar, compared the announcement to corporate restructurings he has witnessed in the past, most of which have a top-down approach. He felt that given the community-driven principles the College espouses, it should have held itself to a higher standard. “The only thing is that I felt that it was a little contradicting that we were preaching one thing and doing the other thing, meaning that nobody was really informing what it was doing,” he said.

Nancy Wilson, Tisch’s Associate Dean, conceded that in hindsight, the College should have behaved differently. Dean Hollister said simply, “We should have consulted more extensively with our key constituencies.” After the initial public outcry following the announcement of the new strategy, administrators acknowledged that their decision-making process had been flawed.

At a meeting of the College’s full adjunct faculty on May 9, Dean Hollister announced that he had decided to convert the original document into a mere draft for discussion and revision. According to Prof. Ostrander—a member of a faculty ad hoc strategic planning group Hollister formed to take a second look at the proposed changes—meetings with faculty, community partners, and others continue, though no firm conclusions have yet been reached.

Ms. Bailey and Mr. Villalobos, who were both involved in Tisch programs over the summer, express confidence that the process is now on the right track, but stress that they will not have a clear picture of the situation until they observe how the institution evolves this semester.

“I’m kind of reserving my judgment until I see the new program in place, and we have a lot of new staff members coming in as well, so we don’t know how that vibe is going to change the whole atmosphere of Tisch,” Ms. Bailey said. “So it’s kind of like a waiting game.”

Challenges for Research

One of the changes outlined in the April document was a shift to focus on research on civic engagement. Tisch will now devote more resources to bringing prominent academics as well as rising stars to Tufts, hoping that their work will enhance both the Tufts education and the University’s prestige as a research institution. It also plans to support fewer but more serious research projects among professors. Said Ms. Wilson, “It’s not that we’re taking funding out of students and into research, it’s really shifting our investment with faculty from a little bit of research across a lot of areas to really trying to generate some depth of research into particular areas around active citizenship.”

Some students involved with Tisch worry, however, that this emphasis on research will detract from their experience engaging directly with the community. Mr. Chaskel saw a sharp distinction between research on civic engagement and the practice of civic engagement. According to him, Tufts has opted to focus on the former at the expense of the latter. “I believe this is all a repercussion of Tufts’ new image, and pressure that has been placed on the Tufts administration to make Tufts into a leading research institution,” he explained. “While I believe this is important, my concern is about the sacrifices that are being made at Tufts to make room for research.”

Ms. Bailey was concerned that concentrating on competing with other research universities could jeopardize Tufts’ distinguished reputation as a liberal arts college where the relationships between professors and students take center stage.

Mr. Villalobos, meanwhile, was skeptical that research on active citizenship could even attract interest. He has spoken to faculty members involved with Tisch College who told him that they were uncertain that they would find students willing to do this kind of work if it were not directed to an applied field.

Prof. Ostrander, evidently, was not one of them. “I fully support more emphasis on research and scholarship, and have been an advocate for it for a long time,” she said, noting her leadership of the College’s Civic Engagement Research Group. “I don’t see a conflict between teaching and research. Good university teachers should be involved not only in teaching existing knowledge developed by others, but also involved in creating knowledge themselves as active Scholars, often in collaboration with students.”

Prof. Durant recognized that focusing on research could take away from the success of Tufts’ community partnerships if administrators “don’t do it right.” But he was confident that they were aware of the delicate balance they needed to strike, and hopeful that input from faculty would help them do it.

Severing Ties

One of the new strategy’s most controversial elements was the decision to eliminate the one-to-one brokering of community partnerships. In the past, Tisch employed two staffers who worked to build relationships with community leaders in Somerville, Chinatown, and the Mystic Watershed. They helped to connect Tufts students looking for service opportunities with businesses and nonprofit organizations looking for volunteers.

Administrators found that more students showed interest in its offerings than its existing programs could accommodate. Moreover, its mission mandated that it reach as much of the University community as possible. As Ms. Wilson explained, “And we started to realize that we had more and more students coming by, saying, ‘Gee, the Scholars program isn’t for me, but how can I get involved?’ And so we really needed to think about how we can reach more students. At the same time, as we talked to our community partners, many of them would say, ‘You know, we love it when we get a Scholar to work with. They’re prepared, they know how to work in a community. But we also get other students from Tufts who come from this program or that program, some of whom come well prepared, some of whom, not so much.’”

Tisch College administrators decided to do away with one-to-one brokering and instead work with other programs that involve students in community engagement, trying to enhance students’ ability to take advantage of such opportunities themselves “so that the overall quality of Tufts’ engagement in the community would improve.”

Ms. Bailey regretted the loss of such a central and successful program. “That was one of the things that made Tisch really unique, is that we did have that direct communication with communities,” she said. “And with our site supervisors, and through our community partnerships team at Tisch, we got to build those relationships.”

Mr. Villalobos admired the old system because it empowered the community to address problems and exploit opportunities. “It either encouraged more agency on their behalf to say what was going on, to communicate any issues that they see,” he explained, “or express how Tufts could help them better and empower them more.”

Prof. Durant said that the way Tufts had done business with community organizations had given the University a unique advantage. Such groups are usually suspicious of big universities, since “they don’t always feel that they’re going to be treated fairly or equally by the university and that when the grant money dries up, they’re just going to be cut free.”

When Tisch refashioned its method of dealing with them without their agreement or even consultation, “they started to see Tufts as just being like every other university that they’ve worked with and haven’t been treated well by.” The need to repair these relationships, he said, is critical.

Like many involved with the College, Ms. Bailey and Mr. Villalobos also had a close personal relationship with Lisa Brukilacchio, the community engagement specialist fired as a result of the new plan. They saw her as an enormously useful force in Tisch’s work, the linchpin of the University’s connections to and interactions with the community.

Prof. Durant suggested that the motives for her dismissal might not have been limited to the best interests of the College, though he did not know what they could have been. “I hear rumors that there are significant University pressures on Tisch College not to over-expand their activities,” he said. He could not understand why people who had worked closely with him had been laid off, and had heard that “they were getting pressure from the administration to make some of these personnel moves rather than changes in strategy necessitating the cutting back of some key support staff.” No one else who spoke to the Observer corroborated that claim.

Prof. Ostrander said that she opposed the elimination of the staff position in charge of brokering community partnerships. “The term ‘brokering’ minimizes the crucial work of establishing and maintaining the trusting collaborative relationships with community organizations that are absolutely essential to Tufts’ civic engagement teaching and research. It is foundational to the work. I cannot see how it can be done without staff whose job it is to do it.”

Dean Hollister said that as a result of their meetings with community leaders over the summer, administrators had committed to “a single point of contact at Tisch for community partners, maintaining the level of staffing that Tisch devotes to supporting Somerville community partnerships, and sharpening our plans for strengthening the community service work of students in a variety of Tufts programs.” Dean Hollister hopes that, in the coming months, these steps will placate those troubled by what had been the College’s bold new plan.

The Road Ahead

Although Ms. Bailey maintained a cautious optimism about Tisch’s future, she did have one constructive criticism. “Tisch is doing such amazing things,” she explained, “but a lot of students don’t know about it. You have to be engaged and kind of know somebody or know exactly what you want to do when you first come into Tufts, and maybe this is a problem with Tufts in general.” She noted that many of her friends have approached her interested in the Scholars program, only to find that they were too late to apply. Improving its efforts to inform freshmen about its offerings, she suggested, could go a long way in helping it to reach more students.

Prof. Ostrander, for her part, suggested that in addition to its current duties, Tisch should gather systematic rather than anecdotal evidence about the effectiveness of the participants’ teaching and research.

“It matters that Tisch College is having an effect on student attitudes and behaviors in terms of civic engagement, and it matters that Tufts faculty are getting our civic engagement Scholarship published in good journals and high quality books where it reaches people of influence,” she explained. “But it also matters for that teaching and that Scholarship to have some positive effect, directly or indirectly, on the local and global communities where and with whom we do our Scholarship.” It might be challenging and not all of what it finds might be good news, “but that’s how all great institutions thrive,” she said.

Most agree that Tisch, despite its challenges, has a bright future at the heart of the Tufts community, and that active citizenship will remain central to the University’s mission. Ms. Bailey said that twenty years from now, she would like to take her children to a Tisch event to show them how she learned to be an active citizen.

“And I want to have my kids to have the same opportunity, if they choose to come to Tufts, to be Tisch Scholars, and have that network, and have that community, and have that experience,” she said. “And so, the important thing is that it be sustained, and keep suiting the needs that are in our community, both in Tufts and outside of Tufts.” She hoped that the College would expand to become a “much bigger part” of the Tufts experience, to truly fulfill its mission of instilling civic values in every student.

Still, many believe that it has work to do. Tisch will need for its newfound collaboration with professors, Scholars, and community leaders to have a meaningful effect on the ultimate decisions it reaches in order to recover from the damages its reputation suffered last spring. Apart from worrying about its public relations, however, it must begin an open conversation with students and faculty at Tufts about the direction in which it is headed. After all, questions about the priority of research, the proper ways to teach the values and practice of citizenship, and true engagement with local and global neighborhoods concern not only the College, but are pivotal to the identity of the University. This time, it is essential for the community beyond the college administrators to have a say in finding out the answers.