Tufts University history

The campus opened in August 1854.

President Ballou died in 1861 and was succeeded by Alonzo Ames Miner.

Engineering instruction began at Tufts in 1865, with the introduction of a three-year degree in civil engineering.

In 1875, as chair of the physics department, he installed a working telephone which connected his lab in Ballou Hall to his home on Professors Row.

Tufts’ mascot became Jumbo the Elephant in 1885, when P.T. Barnum, circus showman and an early Trustee of Tufts, donated the stuffed hide of Jumbo to the college.

In 1892, the Board of Trustees approved “that the College be opened to women in the undergraduate departments on the same terms and conditions as to men” and nine women enrolled that fall.

In 1898, the trustees voted to formally establish an undergraduate College of Engineering.

The Jackson College for Women was established in 1910 as a coordinate college adjacent to the Tufts campus.

Tufts expanded in the 1933 with the opening of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the first graduate school of international affairs in the United States.

Tufts assumed full administration of the Fletcher School in 1935, and strong linkages between the two schools remain.

In 1955, continued expansion was reflected in the change of the school's name to Tufts University.

The College of Engineering added graduate study to its curriculum beginning in 1961, with master's degrees available in four departments.

He later attended Tufts University (near Boston), earning bachelor’s degrees in political science and French in 1970 and a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy the following year.

The building stood until April 14, 1975, when fire gutted Barnum Hall, destroying the entire collection.

Richardson rose quickly within the state’s Democratic Party ranks, and he made an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1980.

In 1984 CEO and chairman of Analogic Corporation and NeuroLogica Corporation Bernard Marshall Gordon founded the Tufts Gordon Institute as the first educational institution created to foster entrepreneurship in the engineering fields.

Tufts had acquired the air rights from South Station in 1990, with former President Jean Meyer envisioning a tower that would be the center of medical research.

Richardson chronicled his life and views in Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life (2005).

However, Richardson failed to place higher than fourth in both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, and he withdrew from the race in January 2008.

In January 2009 Richardson asked to be withdrawn from consideration for the cabinet position because of an investigation into whether his administration had awarded state contracts to one of his political donors.

On November 30, 2010, the university announced that Anthony P. Monaco, formerly of Oxford University, would become its thirteenth president.

He was barred by state law from seeking a third consecutive term as governor, and he left office in 2011.

As of October 15, 2015, Computer Science surpassed International Relations as the largest major at the university, with 466 declared majors.

The merger was completed on June 30, 2016.

Preliminary design was done by Cesar Pelli, with construction scheduled to start in 2017.

On January 2, 2020, Tufts announced that it would pay the MBTA $2 million over 10 years to rename the adjacent Green Line Extension station from "College Avenue" to "Medford/Tufts."