blueprintImmigrant family’s dream inspires aid for new gener-ation of students, page 5

Newly endowed professorship boosts great teaching at Friedman, page 5

Gift eases financial burden on Fletcher students eyeing public service, page 12

New facility reins in contagion thanks to foundation’s gener-osity, page 11

Scott (left) and Norsworthy

LONG BEFORE Marcelo Norsworthy, A09, and Nathan Scott, A08, became team-mates at Tufts, the two track stars had a lot in common: Both possessed unending discipline, a deep desire to help others, and a drive to make the most of their undergraduate careers.

One other thing: Neither had imagined he would be able to go to Tufts.

“Growing up I didn’t know anyone who went away to college,” says Norsworthy, an Austin, Texas, native and National Merit scholar. “I applied to Tufts, but I never thought I would be able to afford to go to a private school out of state.”

Shortly after receiving his acceptance letter, though, Norsworthy learned he had been selected to receive a Pritzker Scholarship. This award supports need-based financial aid for talented students who otherwise might not have considered pursuing a private col-

lege education. “I could hardly speak,” recalls Norsworthy. “I knew it was an incredible opportunity.”

On the indoor track team at Tufts he met Nathan Scott, another Pritzker Scholar, and the two became fast friends. “Everyone on the team had a special bond, and we all supported each other,” said Scott, who graduated this past spring.

Norsworthy runs for the men’s cross-country team and has competed in middle-distance events for men’s track and field. Scott played defensive back on the football team and was a New England titleholder in the pentathlon in track and field.

Both say athletics gave them the focus and stamina they needed to pursue their passions.

Scott, from Hartford, Conn., graduated with a double major in biomedical engineering and biopsychology, and aspires to attend medi-cal school. He landed a prestigious medical research fellowship the summer after graduat-ing and has begun a post-baccalaureate pro-gram at the University of Pennsylvania this fall.

Norsworthy, majoring in international rela-tions, has studied abroad in Chile, and plans a career in public policy. Through the Tisch College Scholars Program he designed a pro-gram to help Hispanic pupils at Somerville High School build community and gain bet-ter access to academic support and college counseling.

Because he will graduate from Tufts debt-free, Norsworthy says, he can start working in international development without the bur-den of paying back student loans. Scott can relate. “Because I’m not coming out with debt, I have more flexibility to go to the best medi-cal schools, regardless of tuition,” says Scott. “That’s going to make me a better doctor.”

The Pritzker Challenge was launched six years ago by the Jay Pritzker Foundation, a philanthropic fund that counts among its trustees Karen Pritzker, J83, also a Tufts trustee, and her husband, Daniel Pritzker, A81. The Pritzker Foundation issued a $5 million challenge intended to generate scholarships for deserving students who wouldn’t otherwise have access to a Tufts education. Under the Pritzker Challenge, new gifts made toward financial aid for students would be matched, up to $5 million. After the initial challenge was met, the foundation two years ago pledged an additional $5.2 mil-lion to renew the challenge; that sec-ond call now also has been matched.

Generating more than $20 mil-lion in endowed scholarship aid, the Pritzker Challenge has made many deserving students’ Tufts dreams come true. In this story, you will meet two of those students, Marcelo Norsworthy and Nathan Scott.

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rofessor Philip Haydon has an ambitious goal for the neuroscience department he has arrived to direct at the School of Medicine: “We are going to become the

best,” he says.A $3 million gift has been announced that will

endow the professorship held by department chair Haydon while furthering neuroscience research ben-efiting the field of gastroenterology. The gift to the School of Medicine through the Switzerland-based Foundation for Research in Gastroenterology and Related Fields was made possible by Annetta Grisard-Schrafl, J94P, a Tufts international overseer and former university trustee, and her husband, Gustav, J94P.

The recent arrival of Haydon and colleague Stephen Moss from the University of Pennsylvania brings two neuroscientists of international reputation to Tufts. The pair carry with them eight grants from the National Institutes of Health. Meantime, a host of new tenure-track faculty positions in the medi-cal school’s Department of Neuroscience have been advertised.

Tufts is making a major commitment to a field seen as one of the great unexplored frontiers of sci-

ence. The research to be done at Tufts is expected to have significant impact on the treatment of epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases.

Professor Haydon’s research into the little-under-stood role played by glial cells in the brain is helping uncover how brain cells communicate with each other. Dr. Moss’s research on synaptic inhibition, a process critical for normal brain function, has applications in treating epilepsy, anxiety, depression, and other dis-orders of the central nervous system. Tufts invested significantly to renovate space in the South Cove Building, a former shirt factory on Kneeland Street, where the gleaming white-walled offices and labs of the neuroscience department on the second floor look out on the urban bustle of Chinatown. “The university has helped enormously,” says Michael Rosenblatt, dean of the School of Medicine. “Without the investment by the university it would not have been possible to create state-of-the-art facilities to recruit the best scientists.”

“This is the decade of the brain,” Rosenblatt says. “No field in my estimation is more important than neuroscience. This area is exploding with knowledge, with tremendous applications for health in the future.”

Tufts is making a major

commitment to one of the great

unexplored frontiers of science.

The research to be done at Tufts

is expected to have significant

impact on the treatment of

epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, and

other diseases.

Stephen Moss (left) and Philip Haydon

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Chair, Board of TrusteesJames A. Stern, E72, A07P

PresidentLawrence S. Bacow, Ph.D.

ProvostJamshed J. Bharucha, Ph.D.

Campaign ChairsPamela K. Omidyar, J89Pierre M. Omidyar, A88Alan D. Solomont, A70, A08PJonathan M. Tisch, A76

Honorary ChairsWilliam S. Cummings, A58,

M97P, J97PDr. Bernard M. Gordon, H92Daniel F. Pritzker, A81Karen M. Pritzker, J83

Executive CommitteeKathryn C. Chenault, Esq., J77Steven B. Epstein, Esq., A65,

A96P, A01P, A07P, AG04PNathan Gantcher, A62, H04Martin J. Granoff, A91PDaniel A. Kraft, A87Joseph E. Neubauer, E63, J90PAgnes Varis, H03

BlueprintUniversity AdvancementTufts University80 George StreetMedford, MA 02155

617.627.3200giving@tufts.edu

t’s hard to believe that Michael Karsch , A90, F91, could ever have lacked direction. He first invested in the stock market

when he was 14 years old. As a mem-ber of the class of 1990 at Tufts, he earned his bachelor’s degree in politi-cal science in just three years. Next, he completed a master’s in Law and Diplomacy at the Fletcher School, earned an M.B.A. from Harvard, and eventually became a managing director for the Soros Fund. Now the 40-year-old financial expert operates Karsch Capital Management, a New York hedge fund that manages assets worth about $3.5 billion.

Yet Karsch insists that he had no idea until late in his college career how to begin approaching Wall Street. “In the financial commu-nity,” he explains, “Tufts still suffers from the fact that most firms on Wall Street recruit from only a dozen schools. Despite their reputation for excellence, students from Tufts who might want to go into finance are not being given the opportunity to do so.”

Feeling fortunate that a fel-low Tufts student who had landed a Wall Street job showed him the way, Karsch wants to help others. That’s why he has decided to volunteer his

time for the university. Each year, he visits campus to give a talk to students in the class about leadership led by Robert J. Sternberg, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. He holds Tufts events in his home, such as the dinner he hosted last year to introduce New York City alumni to President Bacow. He also works to point Tufts students inclined toward finance in the right direction and to strengthen the Tufts community by fostering connections among its members. For this reason, he recently joined the advisory board of the Tufts Financial Network, an affinity group that brings together Tufts students, alumni, and faculty with this shared interest.

“Having role models has been crucial for me throughout my life,” Karsch says. “To the extent that I can, I want to be a role model now.” In fact, Karsch is doing much more than that. Determined to help make it possible for deserving individu-als to attend Tufts even if they lack the means, he is in the process of establishing a scholarship. “I’m proud that Tufts’ endowment has been exceptionally strong, but even more so that so many high-quality students apply to and enroll in the university,” Karsch says. “This is something I want to be a part of.”

“Having role models has been crucial for me throughout my life,”

Karsch says. “To the extent that I can, I want to be a role model now.”

Interested in helping to make a difference for Tufts? Please contact Tufts University Advancement

at 617.627.3200 or campaignleaders@tufts.edu

FEEDING THE HUNGRY. Treating and preventing disease through nutrition. Creating policies that can eradicate world hunger. The challenges are daunting.

Malnutrition is the world’s most severe health problem, implicated in more than half of all child deaths, and causing irreparable damage to chil-dren who survive. At the other end of the scale, obesity and the chronic dis-eases it can lead to, such as diabetes, pose increasingly worrisome health and social problems throughout the developed world.

Tufts’ Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy is taking on the world’s nutrition problems. The school is in the midst of a $50 million campaign to support its mission of training leaders in nutrition science, policy, and interventions, while making an immediate impact on nutrition and health worldwide.

Faculty development is a top priority of the school’s campaign. It is thanks to outstanding teachers that Friedman alumni are changing the world in meaningful ways: revamping agricultural policies, reversing vitamin defi-ciencies, reducing infant mortality. If Friedman graduates are using their skills and knowledge to improve the quality of life for people around the globe, great teachers have made it possible.

This drive to bolster Friedman’s teaching enterprise recently has been given a boost. Through the generosity of Joan M. Bergstrom, J62, the Friedman School will be able to hire a new junior professor who will address such issues as malnu-trition, hunger, food insecurity, and famine. The new position will be known as the Bergstrom Foundation Professorship in Global Nutrition.

Dr. Bergstrom, a professor of education at Wheelock College, long has been associated with children’s concerns as an educator, author, consultant, and entrepreneur. A member and former chair of the Friedman School’s Board of Overseers, she is a trustee emerita of Tufts University.

Eileen Kennedy, the dean of the Friedman School, called the gift “an absolutely wonderful opportunity” to enhance the Food Policy and Applied Nutrition Program. The new professorship, she said, will emphasize mater-nal and child nutrition issues.

“There’s a desperate need in the global environment to look at how to take basic nutrition research and find ways to apply it in the real world,” Kennedy said. Specifically, she said, the Friedman School wants to help institutions in developing countries meet what are known as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a series of objectives that include reducing by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Dean Kennedy said endowed professorships are important to the school as a means of recruiting talent in a highly competitive environment. “In the coming years, we can expect significant turnover of our current senior faculty,” she said. “We not only need to replace faculty members, but to expand the breadth and depth of our programs by recruiting new faculty members with other areas of expertise and in growing fields of research, such as behavioral nutrition.”

WHEN WILLIAM “BILLY” PEDUTO,A53, of Brighton, Mass., died last fall at 90, an inscrip-tion in his testimonial guest-book read, “The country was built on the backs of men like Mr. Peduto.” The spirit that drove Billy Peduto and his Italian-American parents to reach for their American dream now has inspired a pair of scholarships that will help a new generation of hard-working students realize the opportunity of a Tufts education.

“Theirs is a story of triumph, love, and perseverance,” says Brigette Bryant, senior director of development for Arts & Sciences. Indeed, the Peduto family’s story echoes many in this nation of immigrants. Rosaria Marino arrived at Ellis Island in 1910 from a small town in southern Italy, and within three years had married Joseph Peduto. They moved from New York to Brighton, where sons Danti and Billy were born, and Joseph found work as a laborer. Times often were hard. Joseph Peduto was a three-dollar-a-day construction worker in the days before hard hats, and in 1940, he suffered a head injury that permanently disabled him. “The family never had much, except love and each other,” Bryant said. “Rosaria was the driving force behind the family, instilling in her boys the need to stay close and to look after one another.” Both brothers graduated from Brighton High, and served in the U.S. Army in the Second World War.

In the war, Billy was blinded in battle, receiving the Purple Heart. Afterward, as a disabled veteran, he attended Tufts under the GI Bill. Tufts provided him with a reader for his lessons, and Billy graduated in 1953 with a degree in sociology. “Billy, with his Tufts educa-

FRIEDMAN SCHOOL CAMPAIGN PRIORITIES

Peduto continued on page 14

Bergstrom

$1 million gift from members of her extended family has endowed the Carol R. Goldberg Civic Engagement Initiative at Tisch College.

Carol Rabb Goldberg, J55, former president and chief operating officer of the Stop & Shop Companies, Inc., is a member of Tisch College’s Board of Advocates and a longtime supporter of the college’s mission to encourage civic engagement. Contributors to the gift included members of the Goldberg and Cahners fami-lies. “We are honored by this wonderful commitment to Tisch College and delighted the Carol R. Goldberg Civic Engagement Initiative will become a lasting part of the college’s work,” said Dean Rob Hollister.

The Carol R. Goldberg Civic Engagement Initiative, cosponsored by Tufts and the Boston Foundation, provides a forum for developing practical recommenda-tions for improving the quality of life in Greater Boston. Participants are drawn from the public and private sec-tors, from academia and business, and from grassroots and civic organizations. Issues addressed have included the revitalization of Boston’s parks, the broadening of access to primary health care, and the strengthening of university-community partnerships.

For Goldberg, citizenship is synonymous with active involvement in one’s community. “I don’t know how people can be citizens and be passive,” she says. “The most important thing the college can do is to encourage people to contribute to civic life.”

Goldberg is president of the AVCAR Group, Ltd., a private investment and consulting firm she founded with her husband, Avram. She also serves on the boards of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies. She is a founding member of the Commonwealth Institute, devoted to helping women entrepreneurs build their businesses, and co-author of Members of the Club: The Coming of Age of Executive Women.

This is a revised version of a story that first appeared in the Tisch College bulletin The Active Citizen.

“I don’t know how people can

be citizens and be passive,” she says.

“The most important thing the college

can do is to encourage people to

contribute to civic life.”

Carol Goldberg, J55, at Boston’s Esplanade

ABOVE:ICU at the Cummings

School of Veterinary Medicine

RIGHT: Third-year Tufts medical student Kristen Scarpato

(center-right)

Sophomore forward Brian Lowry on a fast break

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ith the official dedication of the Agnes Varis Campus Center on September 23, the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine unveiled a showpiece that will foster a new spirit of community at the school.

President Lawrence S. Bacow hosted the dedication ceremony, at which Trustee and Overseer Agnes Varis, H03, who gave the $4 million naming gift, was guest of honor.

A visit to the new campus center reveals an inviting venue that promises to be a popular destination for students, faculty, and staff.

New fieldstone under the front patio matches the original architecture of the building, originally a residence for male nurses when the grounds housed a state hospital. Through the campus center’s windows, framing is visible for the new auditorium that is being constructed next door and is scheduled to open in spring 2009.

On the first floor of the Varis Campus Center, the campus dining service, long housed in a trailer canteen, now has its own space. The Elms Café, which opened this summer, has been supported by a gift from Dr. David McGrath, AG83, V86, A11P, trustee and overseer.

On the second floor are two student lounges: one “quiet,” with a work-ing gas fireplace, the other “loud,” with pool, foosball, and TV. Picture windows provide striking views of the tree-lined grounds. The student-run campus store, formerly housed in a cramped closet in the Jean Mayer Administration Building, has its own spacious room.

On the third floor, faculty members this summer began moving into new offices. Visitors to Professor M. Kumar’s office one recent morning found his shelves lined with books and animal skulls—otter, alligator, deer, raven, and ringtailed lemur. The window seat outside his door looked to be an invit-ing waiting place for the first-year Gross Anatomy students who visit during office hours.

“It’s perfect, the best thing I’ve seen compared to other schools’ faculty offices,” Kumar says.

Meantime, on the lowest level of the building, a state-of-the-art fitness center has been equipped with weight racks, treadmills, and ellipticals, funded in part from $43,000 in donations raised by Team Jumbo West, the Grafton contingent of student runners in the President’s Marathon Challenge.

NAMING OPPORTUNITIESThe following are some of the nam-ing opportunities currently available at the Agnes Varis Campus Center:

EXERCISE ROOM$500,000

SOCIAL LOUNGE$500,000

STUDENT-ORGANIZATIONS OFFICE$250,000

STUDENT STORE$150,000

AUDITORIUM SEATS,TRADITIONAL$1,000

For more information, contact Shelley Rodman, Director of Development and Alumni Relations at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, at 508-839-7907 or shelley.rodman@tufts.edu.

A visit to the new campus center reveals an inviting venue that promises

to be a popular destination for students, faculty, and staff.

WHAT’S OLD WILL BE NEW AGAIN at historic Cousens Gymnasium when a thorough renovation of Tufts’ athletics complex gets under way next year.

Work is expected to begin next April on rotating and lengthening the Cousens basketball court, currently too short for NCAA tournament play. The court will be rotated 90 degrees, which will require removing some of the concrete bleachers and replacing them with the collapsible kind. The seating capacity of 700 will remain about the same.

The old-school feel of the place will remain, too. “We’re going to retain all that’s there, the flags and the balconies,” Athletic Director Bill Gehling said. “We’re not going to change the character of the gym.” The new court is expected to be ready for the 2009–10 basketball season.

The update of the basketball court is part of a major renovation of Tufts’ ath-letic facilities. The university seeks to raise $50 million for the project, whichwill include a front three-story, 36,000-square-foot addition to the Cousens complex housing the new Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center. The vision for the sports center also includes a new swimming and diving facility, new locker rooms, and expanded sports medicine facilities.

This summer, sewer lines beneath the 77-year-old Cousens Gym were relo-cated in anticipation of the project. The renovation of the athletics complex will be carried out in phases over the next few years, enabling the facilities to stay open during construction.

When finished, the complex will be fully handicapped-accessible and much more user-friendly. “Now it’s a maze to get from one building to the other,” Gehling says. “In the new complex it will be easier to find your way around. It’s going to look and feel new.”

NAMING OPPORTUNITIESThe following are some of the naming opportunities currently avail-able for the athletics renovations under way at Tufts:

COUSENS GYMNASIUMBASKETBALL COURT$3,000,000

COACHING OFFICE SUITE$1,000,000

MULTIPURPOSE ROOMS$750,000–$1,500,000

SPORTS MEDICINETREATMENT ROOM$500,000

TEAM ROOMS$150,000–$250,000

CONFERENCE ROOM$250,000

For more information, contact Chris Grugan, Associate Director for Arts & Sciences Development, at 617-627-5386 or christopher.grugan@tufts.edu.

Tufts’ women’s basketball at Cousens Gymnasium

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patient recovering from gall-bladder surgery complains to his doctor of wooziness and shortness of breath. Suddenly, the patient’s heartbeat speeds up; he appears, right there in the exam room, to be getting sicker and sicker.

An emergency? Not really. The examining physician is a Tufts medi-cal student, and the patient is a realistic mannequin being controlled by a teacher in an adjoining control room. The high-tech “dummy patient,” operated via computer, can breathe, feign a heart attack, and, through a built-in speaker, even talk.

The exam is being carried out in a state-of-the-art medical simula-tion center that resembles an actual hospital emergency room. The simulation center at 35 Kneeland Street is part of an ambitious transfor-mation of the School of Medicine’s city campus made possible by a $15 million gift from the Jaharis Family Foundation.

The 8,500-square-foot Clinical Skills and Medical Simulation Center will greatly improve the student experience by giving them the ability to interact with patients—both mannequins and live actors—in a setting that looks and feels like a real physician’s office. The facility also enables greater opportunities for firsthand observation of students, and thus better faculty feedback.

“Students debriefed afterward say it feels absolutely real,” says Dr. Scott Epstein, dean of educational affairs at the School of Medicine. “Every student who has walked through here said it was great.”

Dean Epstein recently led a tour of the new center on the third floor of 35 Kneeland. The facility features 12 patient exam rooms where Objective Structured Clinical Examinations, or OSCEs, are performed on “standardized patients” portrayed by actors. The standardized patients—the artist’s models of the medical school world—are special-ists at feigning pains and illnesses. A sample exam room looks like the exam room at your doctor’s office, save for the unobtrusive camera, a little dome in one corner of the ceiling, that enables observers in a cen-tral control room to monitor the examination. On a typical day, the 12 exam rooms will be in operation with 12 standardized patients, each stu-dent seeing eight, presenting different maladies. “It really mimics what they’ll confront on board exams,” Epstein says.

The School of Medicine has 170 students in each class, and each student will spend time in the facility all four years, Epstein says. “This will be a busy place.”

The simulation center, set up like an emergency room or a hospital room or an intensive-care unit, enables students to practice procedures on mannequins without risk of harming a live person. “The dummies look almost real,” Epstein says. “You can feel a pulse. They breathe; their lungs expand; they have heart sounds.” And they can talk. “The student forgets pretty quickly it’s a mannequin.”

The benefit of robot patients is they can “get up and walk away,” Epstein says. “It’s safe to make mistakes. It’s just like a flight simulator: better to crash that than the real McCoy.”

NAMING OPPORTUNITIESThe following are some of the nam-ing opportunities currently available for the Clinical Skills and Medical Simulation Center:

ENTIRE CLINICAL SKILLS ANDMEDICAL SIMULATION CENTER$25,000,000

TWELVE PATIENT EXAM ROOMS$50,000 each

THREE SIMULATION ROOMS$250,000 each

FOUR MULTIPURPOSECONFERENCE ROOMS$100,000 each

For more information, contact Leslie Kolterman, Senior Director of Development and Alumni Relations at Tufts University School of Medicine, at 617-636-2777 or

leslie.kolterman@tufts.edu.

Patient exam rooms look just like those in a doctor’s office.

WHEN AN ANIMAL with a highly contagious disease is brought to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine it is immediately placed in isola-tion to prevent spreading the illness to other patients. If the isolation stalls are full, then the staff may reluctantly have to turn the animal away, fearing an outbreak of the disease.

Now, thanks to a $2.25 million gift from The Manton Foundation, the Hospital for Large Animals at the veterinary school will have the capacity to care for more sick animals with infectious diseases. The gift will establish a separate isolation unit for large animals with an additional six stalls, adding to the two already at the hospital.

“It means wonderful things for the school,” says Dr. Mary Rose Paradis, asso-ciate professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences. “In the summer, espe-cially, there is always an increase in risk of infectious disease in horses. One such disease is salmonella. Horses will silently carry salmonella and can put other horses at risk. Another one we see frequently is strangles, a respiratory disease caused by the bacterium Streptococcus equi. Once you get it in a barn it can spread quickly.”

Dr. Paradis said the isolation units will be housed in a separate building, not far from the large-animal hospital. It will consist of six separate stalls, each self-contained, with separate ventilation units.

“I’ve wanted this for over 15 years, and I didn’t imagine seeing it before I retired. It’s a major need and absolutely something that everyone has wanted.”

Sandy Niles, a trustee of The Manton Foundation, said she and her family have long been aware of the excellent work of the veterinary school. “We have always felt incredibly fortunate to have access to a nationally renowned facil-ity,” she says.

Niles says her horses, as well as several horses boarding in her stables, have received excellent care at the veterinary school. “The vets, students, and staff at Tufts have been so incredible with my horses and with me,” she said. “They explain all possibilities, procedures, and options thoroughly and thought-fully. The trustees of The Manton Foundation are thrilled to be a part of this project.”

“It means wonderful things

for the school,” says Dr.

Mary Rose Paradis, associate

professor in the Department

of Clinical Sciences. “In the

summer, especially, there is

always an increase in risk of

infectious disease in horses.”

Dr. Paradis (center) and team treat a foal and its mother at the large-animal hospital.

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Nash family moved by history to invest in future

When Lisa and Michael Nash (below) visited their daughter at Tufts last year, they took her out for a birthday dinner with her friends and learned many of them were receiving finan-cial aid. “It hit me that all these wonderful kids wouldn’t be

there if there weren’t scholarship money,” says Michael, A73. The couple, who live in the San Francisco area, began thinking about

how they could help, especially in light of one of their own recent experi-ences. Lisa had been in a serious accident and says it was a life-changing event for her and her family. Following her recovery, she decided to find a way to make a positive difference in the world. She had been the chief marketing officer of a start-up company and is now CEO at Blue Planet Run Foundation (www.blueplanetrun.org) a nonprofit whose goal is to help provide safe drinking water to people around the world.

The couple also decided to put their energies into something that would help young people reach their potential. “What better way to do it,” says Lisa, “than by giving a world-class college education?”

The Nash family has donated a $500,000 scholarship that will help offset the expenses of a worthy student who would not otherwise have the means to pay for an education. The gift will be matched by the Pritzker Foundation.

Why Tufts? “We knew Tufts would be an outstanding institution because our family has generations of experience with it,” says Michael. Michael’s father, Michael Sr., earned an undergraduate degree and a medi-cal school degree from Tufts in 1936 in a combined program and practiced medicine in Medford. Now Sarah Nash, A11, is the third generation to be attending Tufts. A second daugh-ter, Mary, is in high school.

For Michael, having a daughter go to Tufts paved the way for a happy return to his alma mater. An avid runner, he signed on to the Tufts Marathon Challenge where he got to know President Lawrence Bacow. “I’m very impressed with what Larry has done,” he says, and is pleased he and his family can help further those accomplishments.

Owens family aids those aspiring to global serviceFLETCHER SCHOOL graduates who set out to repair developing country debt all too often are bur­dened by heavy debts of their own.

A gift of more than a million dollars toward financial aid will help. B. Craig Owens, GMAP ’01, and his wife, Libby, made the $1.1 million gift to create the Owens Scholarship Fund(s), to benefit students in the Master of Arts in Law and diplomacy or residential Master of Arts programs planning careers in the public sector.

Mr. Owens, executive vice president and chief financial officer of delhaize Group, Brussels, and a former longtime executive with the Coca­Cola Co. in Europe and the United States, is a graduate of Fletcher’s Global Master of Arts Program (GMAP) and member of the Fletcher School’s International Management Advisory Group.

At present, Fletcher students graduate from the two­year master’s program with an average debt burden of about $50,000, not including any debt from their undergradu­ate or other graduate studies. With annual tuition and living expenses totaling roughly $45,000, the Fletcher School sees increasing the financial aid available to its students as the greatest strategic priority of its current $100 million campaign.

A major increase in funding for financial aid is regarded as essential if Fletcher is to fulfill its mission of interna­tional service while attracting students of the highest potential, including those from developing countries and from underrepresented minorities in the United States.

One million dollars from the Owenses’ gift was placed in a flexible deferred annuity that, when matured, will be used to create an endowed scholarship fund. The additional $100,000 was put toward term scholarships awarded in 2007–08 and 2008–09, after which the benefactors will consider renewing the commitment.

The Nashes also decided to put their

energies into something that would help

young people reach their potential. “What

better way to do it,” says Lisa, “than by

giving a world-class college education?”

libby and Craig owens, with scholarship recipients (left to right) Anna Schulz, Julia Bennett, and Alder Kovaric (all F08).

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im Desmond, V08, never imagined he’d travel to Zimbabwe after his first year of veterinary school to study diseases in cattle that might be passed to wildlife and humans. Nor did he predict he’d be returning to

Africa the next summer to test chimpanzees for malaria.“Sometimes you step back and think, ‘Wow, I can’t believe

I’m actually doing this,’” says Desmond, of Portland, Maine.His passion for veterinary medicine was triggered by the

late Annelisa Kilbourn, V96, a renowned wildlife researcher, whom he met at an orangutan rehabilitation center in Borneo while traveling the world with his wife soon after their wedding.

“There are not enough people fighting for and helping ani-mals, especially wildlife overseas,” says Desmond. “It’s reward-ing to work with those individuals who really need help.”

For his academic credentials and leadership qualities, Desmond was awarded the Henry L. Foster Scholarship in

2007. At a luncheon for scholarship recipients, Desmond had the opportunity to meet Dr. Foster, V83, H92, a Cummings School overseer and Tufts University trustee emeritus whose past gen-erosity helped establish the Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals on the Grafton campus. “It was great to meet him and have the chance to thank him, not only for the scholarship, but also for all he has done for the school,” Desmond says.

Desmond, who graduated this year with a DVM and a master’s degree in comparative biomedical sciences, hopes to develop methods to monitor zoonotic and emerging diseases to prevent them from decimating wild-animal populations. He said the Foster Scholarship made it possible for him to pursue this career path unburdened by a high level of debt.

“I had a great experience at Tufts,” he says. “I feel privileged to have attended the Cummings School and hope to be affiliated with Tufts for many years to come.”

Efforts to save endangered animals bolstered by scholarship

Foster Scholar Jim Desmond was inspired to pursue a career in veterinary medicine after meeting a renowned wildlife researcher at an orangutan rehabilitation center in Borneo.

hen John A. Adams, E39, passed away in 1993, his widow, Dorothy, sought a way to honor his connec-tion to Tufts. To do this, she established a charitable gift annuity that paid her a fixed income for life.

When she died earlier this year, the gift annuity terminated and the remaining principal from the gift was available to help the school her husband held so dear.

The John A. and Dorothy M. Adams Faculty Development Professorship will enable the School of Engineering to bring in a junior faculty member who will serve in the endowed position for a term of three years. The donation also established an endowed fellow-ship fund that will provide financial aid for a graduate student at the School of Engineering.

Jeffrey Hopwood, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said it is challenging to recruit young profes-sors, especially in the area of alternative energy research, where such researchers are highly sought after. Thanks to the new professorship, he says, his department was able to bring in Thomas Vandervelde (below), who will become an assistant professor.

Vandervelde comes to Tufts from the University of New Mexico, where he was a research assistant professor. His current work focuses

on the development of high-efficiency solar cells and infrared detectors. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships, includ-ing the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2004.

“Tom will not only be a major contributor to the School of Engineering’s thrust area of sustain-able engineering, but he is highly dedicated to teaching and educa-tion,” Hopwood says. “Finding and recruiting the top young Ph.D.

recipients is highly competitive. It is particularly difficult to recruit new faculty who are dedicated to both highly effective teaching and world-class research. In addition, with a renewed interest in alternative energy, many universities are searching for new faculty with expertise in this area.”

Hopwood says the new faculty-development professorship was “an integral part of our recruiting effort. It allows us to compete head to head with schools that are much larger than Tufts for the best new faculty recruits.”

tion, and through wise investments, went on to amass a sizeable fortune,” Bryant said. “What a story that he would choose to give it to Tufts.”

To help future students have the same opportunity for a Tufts education, Billy Peduto intended to leave much of his estate to the university to provide financial aid to undergraduates in the School of Arts & Sciences. After Billy Peduto passed away last year, his brother Danti carried out his wishes. The result is a pair of endowed scholarships valued at an estimated $3.5 million.

The William L. Peduto, A53, Endowed Scholarship will assist students of diverse backgrounds who might not otherwise be able to attend Tufts. The Joseph G. and Rosaria Marino Peduto Endowed Scholarship, named for the parents of Billy and Danti Peduto, will provide aid to deserving A&S undergraduates.

“Billy was ever curious, always seeking knowledge, a perpetual learner,” Bryant said. “Tufts was right for him because it allowed him to nurture his intellectual nature and explore things of interest to him. All he wanted was to give to future generations what Tufts had given him: a solid education and an opportunity for a new life.

“Blindness never stopped Billy. Adversity never squelched this family’s formidable spirit,” Bryant said. “I bet Rosaria and Joseph would have been extremely proud of their boys.”

Peduto continued from page 5

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE PEDUTO FAMILY

Left to right: Joseph, Billy, and RosariaPeduto

Above, clockwise from top left: Joseph G., Rosaria, and William Peduto.

IN KENYA, where Noreen Orinda grew up, those who cannot afford dental care often travel long distances from rural areas to receive treatment in urban clinics. “Many times,” explains Orinda, a fourth-year predoctoral student at the School of Dental Medicine, “the dental care is sought when it is so late that extraction is the only remedy. In the worst cases, patients arrive with can-cers that have already advanced in growth, causing facial disfigurement and impeding function.”

The recipient of a $20,000 Colgate Scholarship at Tufts, Orinda will pursue general dentistry in the U.S. after graduation. Once her practice is established, her goal is to recruit dental colleagues to make regular outreach trips to Kenya. Marsha Butler, vice president of Global Professional Relations at Colgate-Palmolive and the company’s liaison with Tufts, observes, “As the Colgate scholarship at Tufts has evolved, it has been gratifying to see how much these students want to give back to the community.”

Over the last 18 years, through the National Dental Association, Colgate has provided more than $3 million in dental scholarships across the country. Several years ago, working directly with Tufts, the company funded a scholarship based on leadership ability, need, and aca-demic standing. In 2007, the previous recipient, Marjorie Baptiste (above), D08, became well known at Tufts for leading a group of her fellow predoctoral students and

professors on a 10-day mission to provide dental care in her home country of Haiti. After she completes post-graduate periodontal studies at Tufts, Baptiste plans to travel to Haiti on a monthly basis to work in a clinic established by her uncle, one of the few facilities in that impoverished and politically volatile country that provides dental implants and bone grafts. Currently she is work-ing on getting funds to build a dental clinic in Haiti at the Suzanne et Leon O. Baptiste Orphanage, which would serve as a permanent base for an educational and clini-cal outreach exchange program between Tufts and Haiti.

“Marjorie and Noreen are outstanding examples of the kind of students we are proud to support,” notes Butler, who applauds the dental school’s efforts to promote diversity in the profession. Regarding the high cost of a dental degree, Orinda says, “Sometimes my nonden-tal friends ask about my loans and wonder how I man-age. Dental school is very expensive, but there is no other profession that would have fit my skills as well or enabled me to help as many people.” Baptiste, who feels she will have “a lifelong connection to Tufts,” says that financial assistance from Colgate and Tufts has helped her tremendously throughout her career at Tufts. “If I have been so lucky,” she observes, “I can better understand what it is to bring hope and relief to those in need.”

“As the Colgate scholarship

at Tufts has evolved, it

has been gratifying to see

how much these students

want to give back to the

community.”

Baptiste

University Advancement80 George Street, Medford, MA 02155

NONPROFITNONPROFITORGANIZATIONORGANIZATIONU.S. POSTAGEU.S. POSTAGEPA I DPA I DBOSTON, MABOSTON, MAPERMIT NO. 1161PERMIT NO. 1161

blueprint

A Blueprint for Campaign Success

This edition of the Beyond Boundaries campaign newsletter

appears under a new banner: Blueprint. The new name reflects

the planning for Tufts’ future, and the vision for building a better

university—made possible by your generous support.

Inside, more...

The athletics facility renovations p9

The new Clinical Skills and Medical Simulation Center p10

The Agnes Varis Campus Center in

Grafton p8