I remember walking around the first few days,
the beautiful fall foliage was out.
Everything was sunny.
There was a sense of excitement,
there was a sense of belonging.
I was really able to find this family
that were really supporting one another
and teaching each other.
Tufts is a place where people come together
to make this world better,
lighting the path for others to follow.
At Tufts it's all about the students.
It's such a privilege to be part of their lives,
and to see them arrive, and get to know them
as first-year students and see the transformation
to when they graduate.
Whether you're at the medical school
or Cummings Veterinary School, in Medford,
or at the SMFA, Tufts is about
creating the next generation of leaders.
And they do go out and they do make a difference.
Tufts University is an engine for good.
You think of the impact that Tufts alum
have made in the world, it's very gratifying.
You go to Tufts, and that means something
to not only the Boston community,
but to really the world community.
When I walked in as an accepted student
there was a lot of work to do, no question,
but it was going to be doable
because the university had my back.
Tufts has been so transformational for me.
The amazing professors challenge me to think about
the space that I occupy as a human being
and what I want to do in the world.
I jumped around from economics,
to psychology, to computer science,
and then I found cognitive brain science.
I met Taylor in her sophomore year.
She approached me wanting to gain some experience in the lab
so I immediately put her on a project.
Through the lab that Professor Thomas directed
I was really able to find a major that I just loved.
It's a beautiful part about Tufts
is that the teachers really want you to succeed.
We study the humanities because we are
thinking about what it is to be human.
What matters to me is that students
come out of here with a base of knowledge
so that they're sparked to go and explore.
A little intellectual curiosity never killed anybody.
I'm a completely different person,
more curious then I came in, more driven, more excited.
I came into Tufts as a 17 year old kid
out of a public high school in Haverhill Mass.,
and I just felt overwhelmed, and confused, and young.
Chance decided what he could be the best at
and realized, probably for the first time in his life,
that it wasn't just on the football field.
Now he's been on the dean's list four straight semesters.
Tufts really did open my eyes
to all the opportunities available to me.
Our job is to light the candle
and get you going for the rest of your lives.
I've heard people say,
Tufts punches above its weight class.
My perspective, Tufts is in a whole new weight class.
It's really at the forefront of scientific discovery.
You have individuals who think out of the box
and challenge the way we currently think about a problem.
I started working with silk many moons ago.
This fascinating biological material really attracted me.
Coming from electrical engineering,
I could see the sea of applications
and different directions that could come from this.
Soft tissue reconstruction,
orthopedic devices, sustained drug delivery.
Optical fibers, reflective chemotherapy,
a piece of electronics that you can
stick on your food and eat.
There's just so many things to do.
The future of science is inherently multidisciplinary.
Tufts is in a great position to break down those barriers.
My lab studies the bacteria that cause tuberculosis.
We bring a quantitative approach to biology.
Tuberculosis kills at least
one and a half million people a year.
We use mathematical modeling approaches
to understand the basic biology,
to find essentially an Achilles heel, so we can
decrease the burden of these diseases in the world.
We are doing things that if we didn't do them
nobody would do them.
We're working on what I call the morphogenetic code.
What we discovered was that you can permanently respecify
the shape to which an animal regenerates
by a very brief physiological change
that doesn't rewrite the genome.
This was a major aha moment.
We were speechless.
Through our work at the Allen Center
I actually think that radical regeneration
of the human body is going to be possible at some point.
I'm really proud to see Tufts
moving forward the way that it is.
There was a time I would say, I went to Tufts,
and they'd go, where?
And now everybody knows the school.
The unique constellation of our schools
and their engaged students and faculty
working together can impact local and global challenges
like no other university in the country.
ChildObesity180 is a project where we've taken
the best science available and blended it
with innovation from the private sector,
reaching millions of children across the country.
I run one of the strangest
most awesome clinics in the world.
At Tufts at Tech we partner urban high school students
with fourth year clinical veterinary students
and provide care to low-income pet population.
The best part of my day is watching
the students' eyes pop when they do something
for the first time that they've never done before.
It's magic.
Tisch College is the incubator for education
that takes you out of yourself
to understand your responsibility in the world.
We were expert witnesses in North Carolina's
voter suppression suit.
We've had an enormous impact
on hundreds of thousands of people.
Tufts Dental has a program called Tufts Dental Facilities
designed only for people with special needs.
There's thousands of patients that are treated every year.
Some moms are even like in tears,
you know, that they'd finally found a place
that could treat their young son or daughter.
Climate change is occurring
and the impacts are becoming apparent.
Our climate policy lab is working to help
governments reduce emissions and become more resilient.
It's all about action,
and trying to have an impact on a daily basis.
One of the most wonderful parts of the Tufts
undergraduate experience is the candlelight ceremonies.
From the chapel stairs we look out
and see a sea of Jumbos about to graduate
all celebrating how they're going to
make society brighter.
Four years of college and then they call it commencement.
It's the beginning.
17 year old Chance walking on campus
is very different than 21 year old Chance walking out.
Our future is in knowledge,
our future is learning things about ourselves
and about our world.
Everybody that I've talked to at Tufts
has a passion for what they're doing.
All of these kids really wanna do good in the world.
That is Tufts' ultimate mission,
to make the world better.
It's about civic duty.
We need to make sure that our children
have a brighter world.
That's on us, we all share that bond.