PHOTOSPREAD
Dining Services discusses goals for theme nights see FEATURES / PAGE 3
A look at Monday’s protest against the tuition hike
Wes Anderson creates quaint canine world in ‘Isle of Dogs’ see ARTS&LIVING / PAGE 6
SEE PHOTO / PAGE 7
THE
VOLUME LXXV, ISSUE 41
INDEPENDENT
STUDENT
N E W S PA P E R
OF
TUFTS
UNIVERSITY
E S T. 1 9 8 0
T HE T UFTS DAILY tuftsdaily.com
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.
Tufts Student Action holds rally to protest tuition hike by Emily Thompson Staff Writer
On the afternoon of Monday, April 2, about 20 students gathered on the lower patio of the Mayer Campus Center as part of a rally to protest the raise in tuition for the 2018-2019 academic year. The tuition increase was announced in a March 29 email from James Glaser, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and Jianmin Qu, Dean of the School of Engineering. According to this email, tuition and fees for the upcoming academic year will be $70,941 in total, a 3.76% increase from last year’s $68,372. The rally, organized by student group Tufts Student Action, began with short speeches by Amira al-Subaey, a junior, and Ava Ciosek, a first-year, both of whom expressed their disapproval of the impending tuition hike and advocated for Tufts to “halt the hike.” “When Tufts Admissions proclaim that they cover 100 percent of financial need, all I think about is the fact that I was forced to take out over $20,000 in private loans from private banks with absurd interest rates to continue my Tufts education,” al-Subaey said in a portion of her speech. “I know that see TSA, page 2
KIRT THORNE / THE TUFTS DAILY
Students participate in a protest against Tufts Tuition hikes on the Lower Campus Center patio on April 2.
New data science major to become available in fall 2018 by Sarah Minster Staff Writer
Tufts has officially approved a new data science major in the School of Engineering, to become available next fall. According to Dean of the School of Engineering Jianmin Qu, this new major results from recent initiatives for progressive data science research and education. Alva Couch, an associate professor of computer science, co-authored the data science program proposal along with Shuchin Aeron, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The Board of Trustees officially approved the program in February 2018, according to Qu. According to Qu, the data science major requires 38 courses, including foundation, introductory, breadth and concentration courses, humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) courses, as well as a capstone experience. Couch described the data science program as an “agile degree program” that will react to new technological developments and innovations in real time. “Data science is actually a mix of applied statistics, computer science,
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Halligan Hall, where the computer science and electrical engineering departments are housed, is pictured on April 11, 2017. machine learning and obscure fields such as decision theory,” Couch stated. Eric Miller, department chair of electrical and computer engineering, emphasized the relevance of making this new major available. He also stated that the program’s development has been spurred on by student interests.
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“It’s an important intellectual area of study … data science is a very new area. It combines elements that are relevant to electrical and computer engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, but it’s not any one of those things in particular,” Miller said. “It was import-
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ant that we — both as a department and as a university — have a good program in this area for our students.” Miller estimated that 10 to 20 data science undergraduate students will declare a data science major in fall of 2018, when the major becomes available. Aeron expressed his hope that the program would expand in future years. “We really hope that the program grows in a healthy manner,” Aeron told the Daily in an email. “At this point we anticipate a quick growth in first 2-3 years, reaching a steady state subsequently.” Couch first identified the need for a data science major as he was conducting his own research and going through the hiring process. “I found very quickly that I could not hire people that I needed … The computer science major does not give you enough experience in data analysis,” Couch explained. “The data science major started as a simple and self-serving objective to create students that I could hire … It was a very selfish agenda; I needed people with a specific skill set.”
NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................3 ARTS & LIVING.......................5 PHOTOSPREAD.................. ....7
see DATA SCIENCE, page 2
COMICS.......................................8 OPINION.....................................9 SPORTS.....................................10