History

Tufts's first commencement ceremony took place on July 9, 1856, although no students had yet met the requirements to receive a degree. Tufts College conferred its first degrees to graduating students the following year and by 1865 the first engineering students graduated from a three-year degree program in civil engineering. The first class of women engineers (pictured above) enrolled at the college in 1918.

In the 160 years since the first commencement ceremony, Tufts has expanded from a small liberal arts college to a leading research university that encourages research collaboration across our network of schools.

Presently, the School of Engineering awards over 200 bachelor of science degrees each year. We are proud to have one of the most gender-balanced engineering undergraduate programs with women constituting 40 percent of our total undergraduate population.

The graduate programs in the School of Engineering award over 250 advanced degrees each year including 43 doctoral degrees in 2018. Our graduate alumni embark from Tufts with the ambition and skill needed to become leaders of thought and innovation in their fields.