8 faculty members to work on public service initiatives

The fellows program assists faculty members in conducting research that builds knowledge about civic engagement or is “civically engaged” and in developing curricula that prepare students to be effective citizens.

The new fellows are:
Marina Bers, assistant professor of child development, who will continue her work on virtual communities to see if and how a technology designed to promote positive youth development also has positive outcomes on civic engagement. She has conducted research with middle school children using a computer-based virtual city and discovered that these young people engage in civic behaviors in the virtual city. Next she will explore what happens when Tufts freshmen use this technology for a semester and look at academic and social outcomes as well as civic engagement outcomes for these Tufts undergraduates.

Drusilla Brown, associate professor of economics, will continue her empirical research that exams the treatment of workers in developing countries. She is working to extend an economic model that challenges the deeply held view that the most successful markets are those with low wages and repressed worker rights. To the contrary, she says there is significant evidence that enlightened labor practices are good for business. Brown is collaborating with colleagues from the departments of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Child Development and Economics and at the School of Medicine and the Fletcher School.

Hosea Hirata, associate professor and acting chair of German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literatures, and Steve Cohen, lecturer in education, will take the next step with their team-taught course, “Cultural Legacies of the Atomic Bomb,” linking it to global initiatives developed by the Hiroshima Peace Museum so that Tufts students will be interacting with students around the world. In spring 2005, they will host an international conference at Tufts, acknowledging the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Bruce Hitchner, professor and chair of classics, will expand his work as chairman of the Dayton Peace Accords Project, which has convened conferences, business exchanges, student exchanges and training programs relating to Dayton Peace implementation, democratization and economic development in Bosnia. He will engage students, faculty members, policy makers and others in developing imaginative solutions to problems in the Balkans and, eventually, other regions of the world.

Gretchen Kaufman, assistant professor of environmental and population health at the School of Veterinary Medicine, will continue her work to make veterinary medicine a more environmentally sustainable profession. She will also develop problem-based-learning case studies to show veterinary students the links between the activities of their profession and the impact on wildlife, public health and the environment.

Aviva Must, associate professor of family medicine and community health and co-director of Tufts’ Ross Aging Initiative, will develop ways for students to get involved in a wide range of opportunities to improve the lives of people as they age. She will work to strengthen an ongoing collaboration with the Greater Boston Golden Ages Center in Chinatown to develop projects for health sciences students and undergraduates. She has collected pilot data about the health needs of local elders and will continue to build a partnership with this community-based agency.

Stanton Wolfe, associate professor and head of public health and community services at the School of Dental Medicine, will build on the current work of the dental school to prepare students to be socially conscious and civically engaged dentists. He will develop a curriculum model that educates, trains and motivates students to be committed to community service, develop evidence-based learning tools and create more volunteer and externship opportunities for dental students.