The two schools occupy the university's main campus in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts and share many administrative functions including undergraduate admissions, student affairs, library, and information technology services.

The two schools form the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (AS&E), a deliberative body under the chairmanship of the president of the university.

The School of Arts and Sciences is under the supervision of a dean, appointed by the president and the provost, with the approval of the Trustees of Tufts College (the university's governing board).

Instead, it serves as a locus for "educational innovation, expansion of the undergraduate curriculum, and faculty/student collaboration within the Arts and Sciences".

While instruction in the liberal arts and sciences dates to the founding of Tufts College in 1852, the formal organization of the school came almost fifty years later.

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, formally named as such in 1909, and Jackson College for Women, created by the trustees and chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1910.

In 1989, the board of trustees directed then-Tufts University president Jean Mayer to initiate a search for a new leader of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (which at the time included the College of Engineering) with a vice presidential title.

She was succeeded as dean by psychologist Robert J. Sternberg, formerly the IBM Professor of Psychology and Management at Yale University.