You may be on campus this Sunday for commencement or you may be cheering on your friends and family from afar. Either way, you can get an inside look at the day by following Tufts Commencement 2012 online. We’d love to have you join the conversation, so check out how you can take part:

• Twitter: We’ll be live tweeting from @TuftsLive, so follow along from early morning preparation to the procession, the awarding of honorary degrees, and the commencement address. Use the hashtag #Tufts2012 to let us know what you’re up to.
•  Web: Watch the live streamed ceremony at commencement.tufts.edu, where you will also find the @TuftsLive and #Tufts2012 feeds, so you’ll be sure to not miss a thing.
• Instagram: We love photos! If you’re on campus, snap some pictures and tag them #Tufts or #Tufts2012. We’ll be capturing some shots too, so be sure to check them out (username: TuftsUniversity)
• Facebook: We’ve been getting ready for commencement, and will have tons more photos to share just after the ceremony ends.
• Foursquare: Check into Tufts University Commencement 2012 on Foursquare, include a shout out about graduation, and you’ll earn the Hats Off Badge.

What sounds more like Tufts than puns, civic engagement, and the environment? It won’t come as a surprise that Tufts alumni are essential to The Boston Tree Party.

The Party is a diverse coalition of organizations, institutions, and communities from across the Greater Boston Area coming together in support of Civic Fruit. We call for the planting of fruit trees in civic space and promote the fruits of civic engagement. Each community has committed to planting and caring for a pair of heirloom apple trees.

Three Tufts Alumni are leading the way at The Boston Tree Party. Lisa Gross is the Chairman and Founder, Maura Schorr Beaufait is the Chief of Operations, and Beth Nollner is Project Coordinator. Between them they hold degrees from Tufts/MFA, the Friedman School of Nutrition, and the Urban and Environmental Policy graduate program.

Check out this short documentary: “Growing Civic Fruit: A Documentary Film about the Boston Tree Party”

You can follow the Boston Tree Party on Twitter at @BostTreeParty

Tufts alumnus Ben Gittleson, A11,  has found something neat in Cairo. In the Egyptian capital, where political change has made life unpredictable, Parkour has gained popularity.

Ben, former Editor in Chief of the Tufts Daily, documented this discovery in a video and article that was recently featured on ESPN’s Page 2 website.

Cairo might seem like an unlikely place for parkour to take root. The free-spirited sport with French roots — in which athletes navigate urban environments with acrobatic techniques — does not necessarily mesh with Egyptian society’s conservative norms.

But it does provide an outlet for young Cairenes to get out their energy amid the pressures of life in the Egyptian capital. Endless traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and a dearth of public parks makes exercising difficult, and parkour is these youths’ answer to the constant stress.

Check out Ben’s video and the daring young Egyptians’ moves:

For more of Ben Gittleson’s journalistic work from Cairo, check out his website or blog.

Ammar Khaku, E12, wanted to find a way to visually represent where his classmates would be after graduation. When he couldn’t find a tool that did that well, he decided to build Tufts2012.com. He says, “The concept started off as a simple map with markers, but I added more features before it launched.”

He hopes that the site will be a resource for members of the class of 2012 to find other people in their area, and will create an interesting accumulation of statistics about the class. In the future, he plans to add optional information about what company people are working for or what they’re doing in the area, as well as restricting access to Tufts students and alumni. If the site takes off, he has even more plans including possible LinkedIn integration. He says, “I’m also taking feature requests, so let me know if there’s something you think would be cool!”

As for Ammar, his pin on the map is placed in Redwood City, California, where he’ll be working at Evernote next year.

The average Tufts student doesn’t get many opportunities to hear Tuftonia’s Day or Dear Alma Mater,  which are usually only played at large celebrations. Not to mention, there’s a handful of Tufts songs that many students may not have heard at all. That can now be changed by a simple playlist on Soundcloud. Tufts in Song is composed of 10 Tufts songs recorded by a group of a cappell alumni in 1990. Songs come from as far back as 1888 for Brown and Blue to as recent as their original recording of T-U-F-T-S in 1990. Get in the Jumbo spirit by listening to the playlist.

“A cultural exchange program-meets-American-Idol” is how Laila Selim, A10, describes a project she is working on in Egypt. Collaboration between American company Share the Mic, Egyptian company Nile Promotions and the U.S. Embassy in Cairo has resulted in a program to “support Egyptian women’s right to be heard.”  “Sing Egyptian Women” is a competition to find the best singer in Egypt, while giving the finalists training in leadership communication and music along the way.

The competition has narrowed to 16 singers. Visit the Facebook page for “Sing Egyption Women” to meet the contestants and vote for your favorite.

“Sing Egyptian Women” has also garnered attention from The Huffington Post and Ahram, the most widely circulated newspaper in Egypt.

Nothing says farewell like a well-organized flashmob performance by your co-workers. Brian Lee, the Senior Vice President for University Advancement left Tufts after 25 years with the university. This crowd of his friends and colleagues, organized by Alumna and current University Advancement member Kristin Livingston, A05, gave him a send-off to remember, with a customized and conducted rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

“Too late, your time has come,
Stole away our great VP, his multitasking can’t be beat
Goodbye, ev’rybody, he’s got to go,
Gotta leave Jumbo behind for Beaver teeth
Briaaaaaan oooh,
It’s been an A+ time,
We sometimes wish the campaign didn’t end at all.”

Check out the whole flashmob performance and Brian’s reaction in this video!

The 2011-2012 EPIIC symposium, a four day event that took place from February 22 to 26,  was comprised of lectures and panels discussing various aspects of this year’s subject, “Conflict in the 21st Century,” and was put on by the Tufts Institute of Global Leadership. While tickets to the full symposium could run up to $75 a pop (the price was largely discounted for Tufts students and alums), the IGL made it possible to stay in the know no matter where you were, both during and after the symposium. You can scroll back on their twitter account to check out great EPIIC quotes or see their Flickr albums for photos of the many events and speakers.

Tufts alum Liz Queler, A81, is using her musical talent to help aid Alzheimers research with a youtube video featuring an original song titled  ”Hallelujah (Sing for the Hope).” The video is the base of a ”View-a-thon” fundraiser where $1 will be donated to the Alzheimers Association for every view the video gets, with an ultimate goal of 50K. As she writes on the project’s site:

Hallelujah (Sing for the Hope) is an anthem about persevering through grief, and it got me through some very dark days. I had always envisioned a choir on the song, so we asked some of our singer and musician friends to lend their voices. I was stunned to discover how many of these friends had lost their own loved ones to Alzheimer’s and dementia-related diseases.

You can join in on her efforts to contribute to Alzheimer’s research by watching the video below or donating on the site.