http://giving.tufts.edu/why_give/2007difference/athletics.html
http://giving.tufts.edu/why_give/2007difference/athletics.html
http://tuftsmarathonchallenge.com/
http://ase.tufts.edu/athletics/facility.htm
http://www.tufts.edu/vet/
Tufts University - Index
Tufts University - Beyond Boundaries Newsletter Spring 2008 - Index
BEYO ND BOUNDARIES
8
Good Sports: Krafts
Pitch in to Benefit
Athletics Center
As a Tufts athlete, Dan Kraft,
A87, graduated from the
school of hard knocks. “I was a
lacrosse goalie, which left me
with bruises in places you never
thought you had,” Kraft, now
a Tufts trustee and athletics
overseer, recalls with a laugh.
“I remember offseason practices
in the dead of winter. We’d
practice at 5:30 or 6:00 in the
morning in Cousens Gym, in the
freezing cold and pitch dark.”
He wouldn’t trade a moment.
“It was a great teambonding
experience,” Kraft reflects.
“Some of my best memories
of Tufts come from the camaraderie
of sports.”
When Kraft and his wife, Wendy,
J87, recently gave $1 million
toward the renovation of Tufts’
athletic complex, he says they
were contributing to improved
fitness facilities for “those kids”
practicing hard at dawn, and
“for everyone at Tufts.”
“Athletics always has been something
very important to me,”
says Kraft, who now coaches
youth basketball and who shares
a love of sports with his wife,
in her Tufts days a dancer who
led the men’s hockey team in
offseason aerobics workouts.
Their children, 13, 11, and 6,
“play every kind of sport.”
So their gift toward the athletics
renovation supports a cause
close to their hearts.
The university seeks to raise
$35 million for major improvements
to its sports and recreation
facilities. Planning is under
way on the Steve Tisch Sports
and Fitness Center, which will
provide 66,000 square feet of
new space between Cousens
Gymnasium and the Gantcher
Family Sports and Convocation
Center, and 55,000 square
feet of renovated space. The
vision for the sports center also
Dan and Wendy Kraft with
President Bacow
includes a new swimming and
diving facility, new locker rooms,
and expanded sports medicine
facilities.
“At Tufts, you’ve got a worldclass
university with excellent
students and faculty in addition
to a culture focused on
fitness and wellbeing, with the
President’s Marathon Challenge,
the Tufts personal fitness program,
and a graduate school
of nutrition,” Kraft says. “The
athletic facilities should be on
par with all the other excellent
aspects of the university. The
new Tisch Fitness Center will
be a magnet not only for varsity
athletes, but the entire Tufts
community.”
News of the Campaign for Tufts Spring 2008
Overseers’
Gift Advances
Capabilities in
Animal Shelter
Medicine
A
$150,000 gift from Overseers V. Duncan
and Diana L. Johnson will benefit homeless
cats, dogs, and other animals by supporting
veterinary training in shelter medicine at the
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.
Almost all of the animals that have become members
of the Johnson family over the years had been
previously abandoned. “We cannot think of a better
way to pay tribute to our own companion animals, past
and present, than to support such a program,” say the
Johnsons, of Providence, R.I.
The program in shelter medicine is a new initiative
for the school. The Johnsons’ gift will help plan and put
in place the program’s curriculum. Partners will include
some of the most respected animal-welfare organiza-
“H5N1” Rockefeller Found
Some villagers call it “plok,” for the sound of a
dead chicken falling from its perch. Avian influenza, or
bird flu, in Indonesia has led to the deaths of millions
of birds, stricken by the virus or killed to prevent it from
spreading.
The H5N1 strain of the virus has occasionally spread
to people, and Indonesia has seen nearly half of the
worldwide human fatalities since the virus emerged in
2003. Scientists fear the strain could become readily
transmitted by humans, threatening millions of lives, so
an international effort is under way to stop the disease
at its source.
Ten Tufts researchers, including nine veterinarians, are
working with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture
Organization to train Indonesian villagers to detect and
respond to outbreaks of avian flu.
A $206,600 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation,
made through the Foundation’s Pandemics Initiative,
will build upon a nationwide communitybased training
program for prevention and control of highly pathogenic
avian influenza (HPAI) in Indonesia led by the Cummings