Alumni Gazette

In the News

“Publicly available databases show that the culture war script embraced by journalists and politicos lies somewhere between simple exaggeration and sheer nonsense. There is no culture war in the United States—no battle for the soul of America rages, at least none that most Americans are aware of.”

—Morris Fiorina ’72 (PhD), a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of political science at Stanford University, writing in the Wall Street Journal last summer about the differences between voters’ attitudes on social and economic issues and how the media portrays election results.

Alumna Heads International Research Group

A physics alumna whom Discover magazine named in 2000 as a “scientist to watch” has been chosen to lead an international research group of 800 physicists from 12 different countries at one of the world’s top centers for particle physics. Young-kee Kim ’90 (PhD), a professor of physics at the University of Chicago, has been elected a coleader of the Collider Detector at Fermilab, a high-energy physics experiment that uses Fermilab’s Tevatron accelerator, the world’s highest-energy accelerator, to study subatomic particles.

Kim also was elected in 2004 as a fellow of the American Physical Society, an honor that goes to only about one-half of 1 percent of the society’s 40,000 members.

Strike Up the Band

Kenneth Megan Jr. ’73E has been selected as the new director of the U.S. Coast Guard Band. Megan, a chief warrant officer who joined the band in 1975 and has served as assistant director for 18 years, was scheduled to take over at the baton in October, pending approval from the Senate and President Bush.

During his tenure with the band, Megan has worked as musician, arranger, assistant director, director of public information, and producer of the band’s radio broadcast series.

Yale Dean Goes to Duke

The Rochester-trained dean of the nursing school at Yale University is moving to lead another highly regarded program. Catherine Lynch Gilliss ’79N (Flw), who has been a professor and dean at Yale since 1998, has been named the new dean at the Duke University School of Nursing. As an adult nurse practitioner, Gilliss has specialized in family management of diabetes, prevention of diabetes, and health disparities.