JIANMIN QU, DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
Dear Parents and Families,
I hope you enjoyed your visit last month for Parents and Family Weekend! I had the pleasure of meeting some of you and sharing in your pride at our students’ accomplishments. As Tufts newest dean on campus, I take particular pleasure in sharing my “freshman” year with this year’s incoming Class of 2019.
Our first-year class of 1,360 students, 211 of whom are engineers, is once again one for the record books. Whittled down from 19,062 applicants, only 16 percent were offered admission, setting a fifth consecutive record for selectivity, overall. In engineering, we were even more selective at 15%!
International students represent 14 percent of the class. Included are 38 citizens frommy home country of China, the largest group of any nation outside the United States. Including foreign citizens more than a third of the total class is non-Caucasian, and 138 of the students are among the first generation in their families to attend college. Tufts distributeda record amount of financial aid for the class --$18.5 million in need-based grants -- and continued its commitment to meet the full demonstrated need of each undergraduate admitted for all four years.
Our stellar first-year class adds to the boundless energy and excitement I feel every day as I get to know Tufts. Even in these short few months, I have already been impressed by our students’ ingenuity and motivation.
Last month, the Tufts Computer Science Exchange students and the Tufts.io group hosted this year’s hackathon at our newly renovated building at 574 Boston Avenue, the Collaborative Learning and Innovation Complex (CLIC). CLIC is also the home of our Tufts Entrepreneurship Center which serves students from both the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences,giving them unique space for group meetings and collaborative design projects to take their ideas from the whiteboard to pitch in the boardroom. If you didn’t get a chance to tour the building during Parents and Family Weekend, be sure to swing by the next time you’re on campus.
I’m excited to watch our faculty grow and expand our offerings in the classroom and the laboratory for our students. Among the nearly 40 new faculty added to the ranks this year, Engineering’s seven new tenure-track faculty members are already making an impact on your students’ learning and research opportunities in environmental sustainability, human health, and our interactions with technology.
In my home department of Mechanical Engineering, Assistant Professors Iryna V. Zenyuk, Erica Cherry Kemmerling, and Kristen Wendell are bolstering our expertise in next generation fuel cells, biomedical modeling, and engineering education, respectively. In Chemical and Biological Engineering, James Van Deventer is working on targeting and disrupting molecular processes in diseases and PrashantDeshlahrais researching new materials for alternative energy applications. Xiaocheng Jiang’s research in Biomedical Engineering lies at the interface of materials science and biomedical applications.In Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mark Hempstead is working on methods to increase energy efficiency across the boundaries of circuits, architecture, and systems.
The best researchers are usually the best teachers—and vice-versa—because they are passionate about their subject matter. I believe experiential learning in an intimate setting is the best way of educating young people, but engineering education is not just about learning technology and techniques. The liberal arts should be a foundation upon which we understand technical challenges.
One of the reasons I chose to come to Tufts—not just as administrator, but as a faculty member—is the strong relationship between the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences.
To be a successful engineer today, you need to know more than your engineering discipline. Society and its problems are so complex that engineers have to go beyond the bounds of a classical engineering education.At Tufts, we are committed to expanding the horizons of not just our engineering students, but also our students across our many disciplines because tomorrow’s challenges demand interdisciplinary solutions.
I welcome your feedback as I continue to learn more about your students and become a part of the Tufts community. Have a wonderful rest of the fall season, and I hope to see you on campus soon.
Sincerely,
Jianmin Qu
Karol Family Professor
Dean, School of Engineering