Rochester Review

July–August 2010, Volume 72, No. 6

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Sharon Dickman, Susan Hagen, and Becky Jones

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Stephen Reynolds

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Published six times a year for alumni, students, their parents, and other friends of the University, Rochester Review is produced by University Communications.

Opinions expressed are those of the authors, the editors, or their subjects and do not necessarily represent official positions of the University of Rochester.

Copyright © 2010 University of Rochester

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Happy 160th, University of Rochester﻿

By Joel Seligman﻿

The first University of Rochester students arrived on November 5, 1850, on what felt like a late summer day. As the entering class of 60 students participated in the inaugural ceremony that afternoon, the temperature had risen to 74 degrees. It was also Election Day, and newspapers reported that results from state races would arrive quickly, thanks to the new wonder of the telegraph.﻿

This fall our University celebrates its 160th birthday. Our campus and our students—as well as the state, our community, and our nation—are profoundly different. This September we will welcome more than 5,000 undergraduates to the School of Arts and Sciences, the Hajim School of Engineering, the Eastman School, and the School of Nursing. Across all six academic units, more than 9,900 students will study in our bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, residency, fellowship, and other postdoctoral programs.﻿

In 1850, the entire entering class was white and male, and almost all of our students came from New York and New England. Today, our students come from virtually every state in the nation, and from nearly 120 countries. In our undergraduate programs, our student population is almost equally divided between men and women and gaining in diversity with underrepresented minorities and multiracial and international students making up about 30 percent of our undergraduates.﻿

In 1850, three out of every four members of the new class planned to enter the Protestant ministry, and they and their classmates set out on a rigorously proscribed curriculum that emphasized Greek, Latin, algebra, geometry, ancient and modern history, rhetoric, natural philosophy, logic, chemistry, optics, botany, astronomy, and political economy.﻿

Today, our undergraduates can choose from nearly 75 different majors. While they can still major in Greek and Latin, history, or astronomy, our students also can pursue a number of new majors, including biomedical engineering, public health, and international relations. Through our groundbreaking Rochester curriculum, our students plan their academic programs based on their intellectual interests, putting into practice the scholarly pursuit of knowledge that will serve them throughout their lives.﻿

In 1850, the entire University was housed in one building. For $800 a year, the University rented the United States Hotel on what was then Buffalo—and now West Main—Street. The building had been built in 1826 in the hope of attracting travelers on the newly opened Erie Canal.﻿

Today, the University occupies more than 11 million square feet and 164 buildings. The University has grown into a complex institution that ranks among America’s premier research universities. By setting our academic, artistic, clinical, and health care missions to represent the highest quality, we have established our University as a leading comprehensive research university.﻿

While there are many ways in which our University and our students today differ from those of 160 years ago, there are also remarkable similarities. The students of 1850 gathered in the middle of a booming metropolis known as the Flour City. Just a few buildings away from our “hotel” campus, abolitionist Frederick Douglass had established his landmark publishing enterprise, including Frederick Douglass’ Paper. The early leaders of our University frequently met with Douglass, sharing their ideas about education and leadership. In 1900 Susan B. Anthony famously pledged her life insurance so that women students could enroll in the University.﻿

Over the past century and a half, we have witnessed tremendous social, political, and technological change. Our University is committed to the idea that a vibrant society and economy—whether an 1850s boomtown, a 1950s manufacturing giant, or a 2010 knowledge-based economy—requires cutting-edge discovery, scholarship, and technological breakthroughs.﻿

But in a critical respect our core values have not changed. The day before our first graduation ceremony, on July 9, 1851, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher spoke to the graduating class of 10 about “Character.” On May 16, 2010, more than 5,000 attended the College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering’s graduation ceremony, where 1,328 students graduated. They heard Wegmans CEO Danny Wegman deliver a Commencement address that notably stated: “If you want to get ahead yourself, think of others. If you want to get credit yourself, give credit to others. If you want to be the best at something, be humble.” Implicit in his words was a value that has animated this University throughout our entire history—a concern for our community and its well-being. The more things change, the more they stay the same.﻿﻿﻿

Letters

Making the List . . .

I enjoyed your cover story on “101 Things to Do before You Graduate” by Dana Hilfinger ’10 (May-June). Fun, creative, room for alumni to debate. Just the kind of thing the magazine should do more of.

As a former CT editor, I was pleased to see No. 33 (“Write an editorial for the Campus Times”). And since one of my fondest college memories is going traying with friends from the International Living Center who had never seen snow before, I liked No. 30 (“Tray down the hill behind Susan B. Anthony halls”), too. As a prefrosh, a concert featuring the YellowJackets helped me to fall in love with Rochester. So No. 31 (“Tap your toes to an a cappella concert”) definitely has earned a place as well.

Well done!

Rachel Dickler Coker ’96

Apalachin, N.Y.

I loved Ms. Hilfinger’s list of 101 things to do before graduating. The list brought back such a flood of memories that I ended up counting 23 things that I had done between 1949 and 1953—admittedly with a few name changes because of differing circumstances.

I have no clue as to whether Nick Tahou is a person or a restaurant, but then, Dana probably never walked across the river to get one of Jim’s White Hots. Yes, I served on the Boar’s Head Dinner committee, frequently fell asleep in the Welles-Brown Room, dozed on the balcony of Rush Rhees, and picnicked in Highland Park every spring. I hosted “Uncle Stacy’s Bedtime Hour” on Sunday nights on WRUR, wrote a bunch of articles for The Campus and also served as editor of the 1953 Interpres. I sang with the Glee Club in Strong Auditorium and once at Eastman Theatre with the Rochester Philharmonic.

I never painted the tunnel under the Quad, but was a sometime user of the steam tunnel that permitted late-night access to the nurses’ dorm—no need for them to sign in or out! As manager of the basketball team, I saw all of the games both home and away—anyone remember “Tom Hoffman ’50” releasing pigeons from under his raccoon coat? Jim Armstrong ’54, ’65 (MA), Bob Place ’54, and Bill Secor ’53 used to beat me up on a regular basis when the team was short of players at practice. Our guys used to have a lot of conflicts with labs and stuff—at halftime of a losing effort against Calvin Murphy and his Niagara bunch, Lou Alexander told the boys not to worry: “You could beat ’em at physics.”

I parked my car inside Fauver stadium (under the stands) and therefore never got a ticket. Actually, I had a key to Rush Rhees (a Deke legacy) which permitted a number of late-night visits to the walkway around the top; carillons still give me a chill. I miss those Saturday night parties in the Deke house basement where everyone actually sang college songs. And we knew all the words. Do students sing anymore? And I didn’t see mention of those Friday night “Rousers” with the huge bonfires on the list. Are they gone too? What about the flag rush or the tug-of-war?

My suggestion for No. 102 would be to repeat the adventure of Coke Dales ’51 and Bill Ceckler ’51 who cemented a toilet to the Alpha Delt chimney. But then that probably would not be politically correct in today’s world—and certainly not Meliora.

Stacy Stevens ’53

Yarmouth, Maine

As parents of Carol Fern Simonson Culhane ’73, ’78W (MA), we visited her on Parents’ Weekend in late October 1969, taking her favorite mince pie and a sheet cake to celebrate her birthday.

Her father, Nelson Simonson ’47, then a commander in the U.S. Navy, was about to depart for duty in Vietnam. The pie was consumed at dinner in the dining hall, and the cake left for dorm consumption. Assisting in eating the pie was Nelson Wester ’71, ’73S (MBA), a cousin who was called from the dish room to help celebrate. Said cake pan was to come home at Christmas, but it never made it! The illustration in the article confirms Carol’s excuse.

We, as a family, have many fond memories of Rochester and its campuses.

Caroline Davis Simonson

Wernersville, Pa.

. . . and Checking it Twice

Even though I graduated 25 years before Dana Hilfinger ’10, I shared many of her Rochester experiences. However, here’s one experience that she didn’t mention: Being a “guinea pig” in a medical school “cold study.”

When I was at the U of R between 1980 and 1984, there were frequent ads in the Campus Times requesting students to participate in “cold studies.” A friend of mine had highly recommended the experience as a way to acquire some extra spending money, and I finally enrolled in one in my junior year. The study started in October of the academic year when I was inoculated with a cold vaccine (or a placebo). Every few months I had to visit the Medical Center to have my nose washed out with saline. The nose washes were necessary for the study but were rather uncomfortable.

Following the end of the school year, my fellow “subjects” and I checked into Highland Hospital where, during our five-day residency, we were fed copious amounts of food, played endless games of cards with each other, and ate ice cream on the roof of the hospital. Unfortunately, we also had our noses washed about four times a day (including in the middle of the night).

I have fond memories of the cold study because I remember that it was a warm, sunny week in May and I really had a great time hanging out with my fellow guinea pigs. In addition, I was generously compensated by the medical school researchers and didn’t even come down with a cold!

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to recall this unusual Rochester experience.

Esther Racoosin ’84

Ithaca, N.Y.

In your list of “101 Things to Do before You Graduate,” you omitted:

1. Explore the roof of the student union, standing 25 yards above the brick floor.

2. Find that your cans of beer froze on your dorm window ledges.

David Epstein ’71, ’72S (MBA)

Potomac, Md.

Go to Sal’s and have a swimmer! That’s the classic “bird” with LOTS of Sal’s hot sauce.

It wasn’t a good week if I didn’t have a bird.

Dean DeJong ’86, ’87 (MS)

Sammamish, Wash.

Great List!

I counted 55 things on the list that I had done. (Not sure all of those places existed when I was at UR.) Not on your list:

Grocery shopping at Wegmans.

Having beverages loaded into the trunk of your car at Southtown Beverages’ drive-through.

Waltz at the Viennese Ball.

Sunbathing on “Holli Beach.”

Coffee at 3 a.m. at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Mt. Hope.

Thanks for the dose of nostalgia!

Jennifer (Jeff) Ingalls Bowie ’91

Salem, Mass.

Diversity of Diversity?

I was struck by the lack of diversity in the photo of the nine participants at the University’s conference on diversity (“Building an Inclusive Community,” In Review, May-June): eight men, one woman; six whites, three blacks/African-Americans; zero younger than 40.

This does not bode well for a conference on building an inclusive community. I can only hope that there were other participants at the conference from other ethnic backgrounds (for example, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, etc.), and there were more women and some younger people.

Of course, race, ethnicity, gender, and age are not the only forms of diversity, and I am not suggesting that simply having women and men of different ethnic backgrounds and ages equals a diverse and inclusive community. However, it is ironic that a conference on diversity appeared so non-diverse. Perhaps this is why the conference was needed.

Sharon M. Lee ’75

Victoria, British Columbia

Editor’s note: The photo that we used to accompany the story on the first University-wide diversity conference featured the members of a panel discussion who were asked to talk about issues of diversity based on their experience as University, business, and municipal leaders. The conference also featured small group discussions involving members of the campus community as well as other large group sessions. As we noted in the story, the conference was designed as an annual event to facilitate discussions of diversity.

Disc Detectives

Editor’s note: On page 35 of the May-June issue, we featured a photo of students playing Frisbee on the Eastman Quadrangle during a spring day in the early to mid-1970s. We asked if any alumni recognized the students or who could help place the photo in historical context.

The guy in the photo going for the Frisbee is Harold (Hal) Rosenberg ’72. I don’t know anyone else in the photo. He was one of my roommates junior and senior years. The picture could not be later than 1972 as we graduated in ’72.

Jon Tomar ’72

Gaithersburg, Md.

We caught up with Rosenberg, who confirms that he’s the male student jumping for the Frisbee in the photo. The identity of the female student remains a mystery.

Love of Languages

I enjoyed the article about creating the language for Avatar (“Avatar of Language,” March-April) I enjoyed the movie as well. I have to wonder, however, if movies could be the medium of preserving at least some knowledge of dying languages.

What if the energy and resources applied by the movie industry to create new languages was used to preserve or record dying or extinct languages from around the world? A thousand words of a dying language seems a marvelous legacy, especially if the fans pick it up and make it their own.

Barbara Rich ’88

Bend, Oregon

Editor’s note: While not the same as the work of Paul Frommer ’65 to create the language for the blockbuster movie, Rochester faculty members are working to catalog some native languages in northwestern Canada that are in danger of disappearing. For more, see page 10.

Department of Corrections

In our story about noted illustrator Jane Marinsky ’73 (“Drawing Readers In,“ Alumni Gazette, May-June), who collaborated with her daughter Leah Sharpe on the new children’s book, The Goat-Faced Girl, we failed to note that Marinsky’s daughter, Rebecca Sharpe ’85, also is a Rochester alumna. We apologize for the oversight.

Review welcomes letters and will print them as space permits. Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity. Unsigned letters cannot be used. Send letters to Rochester Review, 22 Wallis Hall, P.O. Box 270044, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0044; rochrev@rochester.edu.

MUSIC PERFORMANCE

Down on ‘Jazz Street’

Eastman students play to international audiences in Rochester’s ninth annual jazz festival.

jazzCENTER STAGE: Trio Slaye, featuring pianist Chris Ziemba ’08E, bassist Dave Baron ’10E, and drummer Kevin McDonald ’10E, performed during the jazz festival. (Photo: Mark Druziak)

The 162,000 jazz aficionados who filled “Jazz Street”—as the area near the Eastman School was known during this year’s Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival—could pick from a cast of big names, including Jeff Beck, Herbie Hancock, and Gladys Knight. But fans could also hear many Eastman students among the 1,000 or so artists.

The lineup featured guitarists and Downbeat award winners Graham Keir ’10E and Gabe Condon ’13E. Accompanying Keir was Trio Slaye—pianist Chris Ziemba ’08E, bassist Dave Baron ’10E, and drummer Kevin McDonald ’10E. Joining Condon were drummer Jeff Krol ’13E, bassist Matt Krol ’13E, doctoral pianist Nick Weiser, saxophonist Ted Taforo ’12E, and doctoral trumpeter Mike Van Bebber.

Also playing well-received sets were members of The Po’ Boys Brass Band—trombonists Erik Jacobs ’11E, Chris Van Hof ’08E (MM), Nick Finzer ’09E, Evan Dobbins ’94E (MM), and T. J. Ricer ’10E (DMA), drummer Chris Teal ’09E (MM), and guitarist Mike Frederick ’09E (MM). And Saxophonist Will Cleary ’10E (MM) took the stage with Van Bebber, Weiser, McDonald, and bassist Kyle Vock ’10E (MM).

At a concert featuring saxophonist Dave Glasser ’84E, ’86E (MM) with the Eastman Jazz Ensemble under the direction of Eastman professor Bill Dobbins, the jazz festival and the Eastman School presented this year’s jazz scholarships to saxophonist Erik Stabnau of Brighton, N.Y., and guitarist Alex Patrick of Penfield, N.Y.

In addition to their own performances, Eastman faculty led high schoolers in a jam session that featured guitarist Bob Sneider, pianist Paul Hofmann, bassist Jeff Campbell, and drummer Rich Thompson.

For more about the festival, visit www.rochesterjazz.com.

STUDENT RESEARCH

Graffiti Gardener

graffiti (Photo: Adam Fenster)

URBAN ART: Dan Brooks ’10 was so intrigued by the “graffiti gardens” of Prague during a semester abroad in the Czech Republic that when he returned to the University he embarked on an ethnographic study of graffiti in Rochester. The anthropology and philosophy major from Tabernacle, N.J., used funds from an Anthropology Undergraduate Research Grant to explore the history and culture of Rochester graffiti, focusing on FUA, the city’s most established graffiti crew. “You could stare at it for hours,” Brooks says of the group’s work. “At least I could.”

LINGUISTICS

Project Maps Native Languages—Before They Disappear

speechDOT-TO-DOT: The Rochester team is using geotagging technology to map the locations of communities that include speakers of native Dene languages in northwestern Canada. Represented by yellow dots, the communities participating in the research project will provide examples of sounds used in their languages for an online speech atlas. (Illustration: Steve Boerner)

What is the sound of a language that’s no longer spoken? Rochester linguist Joyce McDonough doesn’t want to wait to find out.

Thanks to a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation, she and her research team are developing an online speech atlas of endangered native languages of the Mackenzie River Basin, a vast and sparsely populated region of northwestern Canada.

The goal is to help preserve linguist diversity and help native communities hold onto their languages.

“Language for a community is like a second skin,” says McDonough, an associate professor of linguistics and brain and cognitive sciences. “It’s who they are. It’s their source of identity. And it carries all of their cultural knowledge. This is especially true in minority cultures or oral cultures, where there is no body of knowledge that exists outside the speakers of the language. So when the language disappears, that knowledge disappears.”

The atlas will focus on the sound systems of the Mackenzie Basin’s Athabaskan—or as speakers prefer, Dene—languages. Spoken from Alaska to the Rio Grande, the systems constitute the largest and most geographically widespread language family of native North America.

Envisioned as an online site for sharing information, research, and educational resources between the Canadian Indigenous Language and Literacy Development Institute and the indigenous communities, the site will provide geotagged links to individual Dene-speaking communities. It will also provide examples and descriptions from each community, demonstrating sounds spoken by native speakers.

“Heritage languages are under considerable socioeconomic pressure from the English and French speaking overculture” in northwestern Canada, McDonough says. “Fewer and fewer native North Americans are becoming fluent in their heritage tongues, and those who are fluent or want to learn their languages face increasingly reduced opportunities to speak and learn in their tongue, a situation that undermines the stability of these communities and their cultural knowledge.”

“This Web site,” she says, “can be critical, too, to those interested in preserving linguistic diversity and for helping communities hold on to their native languages before they vanish.”

—Susan Hagen

ENGINEERING

Driven to Succeed

baja (Photo: Adam Fenster)

ROAD WORK: Dustin Canzonieri ’11, a mechanical engineering major from Plainview, N.Y., and other members of the University’s Society for Automotive Engineers demonstrated their engineering—and driving—skills with strong finishes this spring during the national society’s Baja car season. The Hajim School team placed 36th out of 89 teams at the Baja Carolina competition, hosted by Clemson University, and the team was 23rd out of 70 at the Rochester World Challenge, hosted by RIT. Cars in the competition are judged on design, cost, acceleration, and other factors.

CITATIONS

Research Notes

Multiple Brain Regions Are Wired for Language

There’s no single advanced area of the human brain that gives it language capabilities above and beyond those of other animal species. That’s according to a Rochester study of American Sign Language led by Elissa Newport, the George Eastman Professor and chair of brain and cognitive sciences; Ted Supalla, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences, linguistics, and ASL; and Daphne Bavelier, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and radiology. In a report published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, the team found that humans rely on several regions of the brain in order to make sense of sentences, depending on the type of grammar used.

Popular Autism Diet Doesn’t Demonstrate Behavioral Improvement

A popular belief that specific dietary changes can improve the symptoms of children with autism wasn’t supported by a tightly controlled Rochester study, which found that eliminating gluten and casein from the diets of children with autism had no impact on behavior, sleep, or bowel patterns. The study—led by Susan Hyman, an associate professor of pediatrics, and presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research in May—is the most controlled diet research in autism to date.

Rochester Team Advances Understanding of Deadly Malaria

Rochester scientists are making strides against cerebral malaria, a fatal form of the disease that can ravage children’s brains and is often difficult to treat. New research points to platelets as a source of inflammation, leading to obstruction of blood vessels and causing damage similar to a stroke. Led by Craig Morrell, an assistant professor in the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute, and published in the online journal PLoS One, the research suggests an effective treatment for the disease may involve targeting platelets.

ANALYSIS

In Deep Water

What does the BP oil spill mean for consumers and for the nation’s energy policy?

oilANALYSIS: “We need to assess carefully what went wrong . . . to prevent this kind of failure again,” says engineer Ben Ebenhack of this spring’s explosion at a BP oil well. (Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP Images)

As the Fallout from the BP oil spill splashed into the halls of Congress early this summer, we asked a few faculty experts for their analyses.

Mark Zupan

Dean of the Simon School and a professor of economics and public policy

In the short run, there’ll be very little impact on gas prices because there wasn’t the expectation that this oil would be hitting the market for a while.

The risks of something like this spill happening grow over time as oil becomes harder to find. When you push the envelope, you get greater risks. It also looks, though, like this incident involved basic complacency and not taking the rules seriously enough.

There are opportunities to learn from what has happened—we learn by doing. We may conclude that there are costs we need to factor into oil production—for example, there was no second rig on hand in this case, and that might have made a difference—things we need to pay for as backup insurance.

The spill is likely to change how we approach our liability laws and our regulatory policies. If companies aren’t fully liable for their costs, they end up running greater risks. When regulatory rules say you’re only liable up to $75 million—the current liability cap for the oil spill—people act on that.

If energy prices move to $150 a barrel, the issues become much more real for people, because we’re going to have to figure in the environmental component into the cost of procuring this oil. And as an economist, I say the best way of getting people to become aware of that cost is market forces. We—not just Americans, but people around the world—have to make choices about where we live, what we drive, and how far we’re going to commute.

Living day to day in contact with students and alumni, I’m very optimistic. I see ideas and passions percolate about how to solve these problems, and that gives me great hope.

George Cook

Executive Professor of Business Administration

Firms facing a crisis like BP’s must take a proactive posture right from the beginning. A delayed, reactive approach doesn’t work today. All major companies should have a contingency plan on the shelf, ready to deploy the minute a disaster happens.

It’s a given that BP will be facing a multitude of problems as a result of the Gulf oil spill, which President Obama has called “an unprecedented environmental disaster.” Undoubtedly it will hurt future drilling—new leases are granted by the government—and that could impact future gasoline supply for the U.S.

The overall environmental damage is huge, affecting wildlife, game birds, and the fishing industry, which is a major industry for the area—thus eventually driving up prices for fish products for the average consumer. The tourist industry, which is very big, is getting vacation cancellations—allegedly in reasonably large numbers—which reflects another economic hit for the area. That’s worth about $100 billion per year, according to CNN Money. The fishing industry is seemingly “wiped out” in certain areas for some uncertain period of time. Fishermen are probably the most directly affected by the spill since reports say the government has closed down over 20 percent of the federal waters for fishing activity.

Ben Ebenhack

Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering

In terms of the significance of this oil reserve, it’s clearly a promising discovery. A good initial flow rate doesn’t necessarily indicate good reserves, but the fact that the well has been flowing at a very high rate that isn’t noticeably diminishing suggests that it’s an excellent reservoir. To offer some perspective, even with the very high flow from this well, it has probably produced a total of less than a million barrels of oil—which equates to one hour of U.S. petroleum consumption.

The depth of this well guarantees very high pressures. At its depth—some 18,000 feet below sea level—the pressure would be expected to be at least 9,000 pounds per square inch—and it can be much higher than that. The formation fluid pressures are normally contained by the weight of the drilling fluid—what drillers call “mud”—in the hole. However, when gas enters the well-bore, it can push some mud out of the hole, decreasing the mud pressure, allowing more gas to flow into the well-bore. This is a self-aggravating problem. It’s controlled by the blow-out preventers, which would normally stop it before it escapes. They failed in this case. We need to assess carefully what went wrong in order to add more levels of redundancy to prevent this kind of failure again.

Unfortunately, this spill is not likely to aid the transition toward more sustainable energy, because it isn’t pushing prices up and the alternatives still can’t compete effectively against cheap oil. I would hope that it convinces Americans that we need to reduce the demand for petroleum, through conservation.

—Kathleen McGarvey

COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS

‘Knowledge Base’

Report highlights the University as an example of ‘knowledge-based’ economic shift.

By Kathleen McGarvey

The University is the sixth-largest private employer in New York state and “the leader in the transition of Rochester’s economy,” according to a new report from the Center for Governmental Research, a nonprofit public policy agency based in upstate New York.

Employment growth has placed the University—which has been the top employer in the region for several years—among the largest private employers in New York, behind only the Presbyterian Healthcare System in New York City and national corporate giants Walmart, Citigroup, IBM, and JP Morgan Chase.

“One of the central goals of this institution is to provide a foundation—through education, culture, science, and medicine—for future economic growth in Rochester and beyond,” says President Joel Seligman.

The University is responsible for approximately 8.8 percent of the local labor force, providing some 47,000 jobs and $2.3 billion in wages in the region, the report notes.

Such economic impact puts Rochester in the company of other private research universities: the University of Southern California is the top private employer in the city of Los Angeles, as is the University of Pennsylvania in the city of Philadelphia and Johns Hopkins University in the state of Maryland.

“Over the past several decades, our state has evolved increasingly to a knowledge-based economy in which by 2009 five of the largest 10 employers in New York either are universities, health centers, or both,” Seligman said in his Garden Party speech in May.

“A key to the University’s growth has been our focus on innovation,” he noted. “During the past eight years, we have been ranked as one of the top 10 universities in the country in terms of patent royalties—an extraordinary tribute to the talents of our faculty.”

The center’s new report calculated the economic impact of the University using two methods. A more conservative formula, called the traded sector, assumed that certain functions of the University—primarily those related to health care—would continue to be performed in the community even if the University did not exist. The second formula—called the local and traded sector combined—calculated the impact of all University activities.

“Education and health care have become key drivers of local and regional economic growth throughout the United States,” according to the report. “The increasing sophistication of medical science, rising affluence, and the aging of the population all contribute to the growing importance of the health sector.”

“We wanted to put the University’s role as a major employer in context, which is what led us to construct a list of the top private employers in the state,” says Scott Sitting, a project manager at the center and coauthor of the Rochester study.

“Health care and higher education is the largest sector represented on the list with nearly twice the employment as retail, which came in number two,” says Kent Gardner, the president of the center and a coauthor of the study.

According to a report commissioned by the Associated Medical Schools of New York, academic medical centers nationwide contributed more than $500 billion to the U.S. economy in 2008—approximately 3.6 percent of the country’s total economy.

And New York state plays a critical role in that economic impact: Its academic medical institutions are responsible for almost 14 percent of the economic impact of all American academic medical centers, according to the association.

The new Rochester report also noted that the University has several major expansion projects under way, including the Clinical and Translational Science Building, a project to increase the number of beds at Strong Memorial Hospital, the renovation and expansion of the Eastman School, plans for a Warner School building, and the development of a college town on University-owned land on Mt. Hope Avenue.

For more about the study, visit the center’s Web site at www.cgr.org.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

‘Refreshing News for Mothers’

While stress hormones may impair babies’ cognitive development, loving care may counter the impact.

By Becky Jones

It’s not news to mothers that pregnancy can be stressful—and recent studies suggesting that maternal stress can be bad for a baby’s cognitive development have given moms-to-be yet one more thing to worry about.

But there’s reassurance for parents in a new study led by Thomas O’Connor, a professor of psychiatry and psychology. The research, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, suggests that the negative link between stress and impaired cognition disappears almost entirely if the mother or another caregiver forges a secure connection with the baby.

“This is such refreshing news for mothers,” O’Connor says. “There’s already so much for mothers to be careful of and concerned about. It’s helpful to learn that sensitive care goes some way toward buffering children from the adverse effects of early stress exposure, even in utero.”

The study—conducted by O’Connor and his colleagues at the Medical Center and at Imperial College in London—represents the first direct human evidence that elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol may be a factor in children’s later cognitive development.

“Our results shape the argument that fetal exposure to cortisol—which may in part be controlled by the mother’s stress level—and early caregiving experience combine to influence a child’s neurodevelopment,” O’Connor says. “If future studies confirm these findings, we’ll need to not only engineer ways to reduce stress in pregnancy, but we’ll also need to promote sensitive caregiving by moms and dads.”

For the study, O’Connor and study coauthor Vivette Glover of Imperial College followed 125 women at an amniocentesis clinic in an urban maternity hospital, measuring the stress hormones in the mothers’ amniotic fluid. The mothers were at 17 weeks gestation on average; only mothers with normal, healthy pregnancies and subsequent deliveries were followed.

When the children were about 17 months old, researchers administered a test—called a Bayley Scales of Infant Development—that uses puzzles, pretend play, and memory challenges to gauge the youngsters’ cognitive development. They also evaluated the security of the attachment between the mothers and their babies. Secure attachment, O’Connor says, results when a caregiver reliably and predictably soothes the baby’s stress. Such reliable comforting allows the child to see the caregiver as “a secure base for exploration.”

With cortisol levels, relationship-quality results, and cognition scores in hand, researchers analyzed how the first two measures might influence the third. For children showing signs of an insecure attachment to their mothers, a high prenatal cortisol level was linked with shorter attention spans and weaker language and problem-solving skills. But for babies who showed signs of secure attachment, there was no link between elevated prenatal cortisol levels and cognitive development.

O’Connor notes that there are a couple of important nuances of the study. For example, the source of the in-utero cortisol is hard to pinpoint. It might be passed along the placenta from an anxious mother to her unborn baby—or it could be created and excreted directly by a stressed fetus.

“While many large-scale studies have observed that prenatal stress may influence child development, our particular study sheds some light on ‘how,’ ” O’Connor says. “Still, much more research is needed to better pinpoint the exact mechanisms behind a mother ‘transferring’ her stress to her unborn baby.”

This study plays into the much larger theory of fetal programming, which suggests that exposure in the womb may prime the developing child for long-term health and developmental outcomes. Past studies have found a pregnant mother’s diet can sway a child’s long-term risk for heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Along with diet, prenatal stress has emerged as a factor looming large in such programming.

“Our results support this emerging theory,” says coauthor Glover. “In neurology, the idea emerging is that unborn children sense their mothers’ stress hormone levels, programming them for greater watchfulness. We’re trying to determine whether or not that sensitivity comes with greater anxiety during childhood, and if so, what we can do about it.”

The team will revisit the children in the study when they turn six. At that point, researchers hope to give the group a battery of tests to see how the interplay between in-utero cortisol levels and sensitive parenting pans out in the long term. Those tests would include imaging studies of the children’s brains, looking to see if the higher cortisol levels may be linked to anatomical changes.

The findings are of broad public health significance, O’Connor says. “Stress in pregnancy is really something we need to attend to seriously.

“This is a helpful lesson for neuroscience and neuroscientists. We don’t want to leave behind a focus on family relationships while we investigate what happens under the skin and between cells.”

Becky Jones is a writer for Medical Center Public Relations and Communications. Additional reporting by Kathleen McGarvey.

EXCERPTS

Celebrating Books

You can’t judge a book by its cover, but it can be a nice way to get acquainted. As part of an effort to showcase scholarly research, performance, and creativity, University authors and artists were honored this spring at the third annual Celebration of the Book. Featured were more than 60 publications released this year. Here’s a taste of just a few. To see the full list, visit www.rochester.edu/pr/Review.

bookcelebration (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Michael Jarvis, Associate Professor of History

In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (University of North Carolina Press)

“If we discard Europeans’ predilection for placing north at the top of maps and approach British America from a mariner’s point of view, a more authentic geography encompassing the full scope of British America emerges. Jamaica and the quasi settlements of Belize and the Mosquito Coast in the Caribbean and Hudson Bay excepted, nearly all of British America was arrayed along a continuous curving arc of islands and coastline stretching from Newfoundland to Tobago. Bermuda lay at the center of this vast British American crescent, roughly equidistant from all points on its rim.”

bookcelebration (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Peter Milonni, Professor of Physics Joseph Eberly, the Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics

Laser Physics (John Wiley & Sons)

“The word laser is an acronym for the most significant feature of laser action: light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. There are many different kinds of laser, but they all share a crucial element: Each contains material capable of amplifying radiation.”

bookcelebration (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Barry Goldstein ’81M (MD), ’82M (PhD), Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics

Gray Land: Soldiers on War (W. W. Norton & Company)

“I have no political agenda: no one indicts war more powerfully than an experienced soldier, and no one enumerates more eloquently the reasons for serving. Collectively, their stories convey the many, often conflicting, emotions that any soldier deals with in a war zone and returning home.”

UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION

Two Join Board of Trustees

Rochester entrepreneur, business consultant selected for board.

By Sharon Dickman

trusteesBoard Members: Murray (left) and Kessler have been elected to five-year terms. (Photo: Courtesy of the Subjects)

Laurence Kessler, a Rochester entrepreneur and owner of restaurant development companies, and Kathleen McMorran Murray ’74, the owner and founder of a consulting firm that specializes in business improvement initiatives, have been elected to the University’s Board of Trustees.

Ed Hajim ’58, chairman of the board, says the two will bring valuable perspectives as trustees.

“They bring their considerable personal and professional strengths to an already outstanding board that is fully committed to taking the University to the next level.”

The founder and co-owner of The Kessler Group Inc. & Kessler Family LLC, Kessler and his brother, Dennis, who is the Edward J. and Agnes V. Ackley Executive Professor of Business Administration at the Simon School, are longtime supporters of the University.

They have established the Kessler Family Burn/Trauma ICU at the Medical Center. Kessler earned his bachelor’s degree at Adelphi University.

Murray founded McMorran Strategists LLC in 2008 after holding leadership positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers as managing director of operations, Aetna Inc. as senior vice president of Aetna Retirement Services, and chief operating officer of Aetna Business Resources, among other roles. She has established the Kathleen McMorran Murray Endowed Scholarship Fund to support students. In addition to her degree from the University, Murray graduated from the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

Sharon Dickman is University spokesperson.

THREE QUESTIONS

Vivian Lewis Leads Diversity Efforts

vivianlewisLEWIS: The former medical school associate dean oversees University diversity efforts. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

For Vivian Lewis, creating change is about getting everyone involved.

As the new deputy to the president and vice provost for faculty development and diversity, Lewis will assist deans and department chairs in identifying, recruiting, and retaining faculty to increase diversity within the University’s schools and departments.

She’ll also oversee initiatives designed to enhance diversity at the University, such as faculty mentoring programs. In the spring, Lewis organized the first University-wide diversity conference.

A professor of obstetrics and gynecology and, until her new appointment, the associate dean for faculty development for women and diversity at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, Lewis took the job on an interim basis last October, succeeding Lynne Davidson.

What’s the greatest challenge in diversifying the faculty?

It’s getting the whole University engaged in the work of creating a more diverse and inclusive community. Our senior leadership has committed to the goal of a more diverse campus, but that is really just the beginning.

What’s the best way to address that?

We need more champions for diversity throughout the University who are willing to contribute their creativity, ideas, and sustained commitment to changing the culture.

Why did you decide to take on this position?

It affords me the opportunity to be part of a transformative change for the entire University. What could be more exciting?

—Kathleen McGarvey

BASKETBALL

New Men’s Basketball Coach Introduced

basketball (Photo: Adam Fenster)

MEET THE COACH: Luke Flockerzi, a one-time Rochester assistant basketball coach, will lead the men’s basketball team when the Yellowjackets open the season in November. The former head coach at Skidmore College was introduced this spring as the successor to Mike Neer ’88W (MS), who retired after leading the men’s basketball program for 34 years. Flockerzi (pronounced flah-CURT-see) is no stranger to Rochester’s program, having served as an assistant to Neer in the 2006–07 season. In 2007, he moved to Skidmore and by his third season, he led the Thoroughbreds to a record-tying season for conference wins and overall victories. His teams also were recognized for their classroom work, leading the Liberty League in All-Academic Team selections in 2009–10.

SPRING SPORTS

Baseball Repeats as UAA Champion

Finishing the season with a 29–14 overall record, the Yellowjackets baseball team claimed its second straight University Athletic Association title and won the Liberty League regular season crown.

Rochester was led by senior shortstop and second team Academic All-American Nate Stein ’10, who hit a team-best .413 and led the Yellowjackets in RBIs (52), total bases (96), slugging percentage (.600), and on-base percentage (.495). Starting all 41 games, the financial economics major from Rochester also was named MVP for the season by both the UAA and the Liberty League.

Softball: Rochester was third in the Liberty League, went 4–4 at the UAA championships, and posted an overall record of 22–19 behind outfielder Kim Grimes ’12. The psychology major from Oak Park, Ill., led the team in batting average (.348) doubles (10), home runs (10), RBIs (34), total bases (82), and slugging percentage (.713).

Golf: The Yellowjackets were paced by Ryan Williams ’11, who took third individually at the UAA championships, where the squad finished third overall. Also at UAAs Michael Chudacoff ’12 came in eighth individually. The team finished third at both the Kravetz Invitational and the MacDaniel Invitational.

Lacrosse: Midfielder Amanda Case ’10 finished the 2010 season with a handful of honors, including second-team all–Liberty League accolades after leading Rochester in scoring and ground balls. Case also earned all-Liberty League honors in field hockey in the fall and received the Merle Spurrier Award for her outstanding contributions to Rochester women’s sports.

Rowing: The Yellowjackets finished their first varsity year with an excellent showing at the prestigious Dad Vail Championships. On the way, the team won the University Rowing Association crown in both the Varsity 8 and Novice 8 races. Rochester also made its mark in the polls, ascending to third in the NCAA Division III East Region.

Men’s Track & Field: Rochester’s distance corps ran away with the spring season: Brian Lang ’11 placed third in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the NCAA championships, picking up all-America honors. Lang also won the ECAC steeplechase with a conference record of 9:05.24.

Women’s Track & Field: Hammer thrower Yaneve Fonge ’11 earned a trip to the NCAA championships, where she placed 15th, after a season in which she also was second in the hammer at both the ECAC and state meets. As a team, the Yellowjackets placed third at the state championships and 14th at ECACs. Hurdler Jacqueline Cinella ’11 was named Track Athlete of the Meet at the New York State Collegiate Track Conference championships.

Men’s Tennis: The team took seventh at the UAAs and finished the year with a dual-match record of 11–11. Brian Bowman ’10 played at first doubles for four years and first singles for three years, captained the squad for two years, and earned the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s Scholar-Athlete Award for two straight years.

Women’s Tennis: Rochester finished the season ranked 20th in the country, after posting an overall dual-match mark of 12–6 and earning fourth place at UAAs. The Yellowjackets were paced by Lia Weiner ’11, who earned all-America honors from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, and Frances Tseng ’13, who received all–UAA accolades and UAA Rookie of the Year honors.

–Ryan Whirty

Self-Determined

What motivates you? Two Rochester experimental psychologists are challenging some cherished assumptions.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

deciHUMAN TOUCH: “We came at motivation from a humanistic perspective,” says Deci (right) of his and Ryan’s work. “At that time, there were virtually no experimental psychologists who took that approach.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Ten years ago, the popular business reporter and author Daniel Pink began researching why an increasing number of people were leaving jobs in large organizations to work for themselves. He encountered—“in a pretty cursory way,” as he explains it—work on human motivation by Rochester experimental psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.

Two years later, Pink began researching how people might be motivated to do creative work. He returned to the work of Deci and Ryan. What he found, he says, was “an absolute treasure trove of research on human motivation”—much of it generated from initial research led by the two professors in Rochester’s Department of Clinical and Social Psychology. In his 2009 book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Pink placed Deci and Ryan front and center.

“Deci and Ryan, in my view, are the sun around which all this other research orbits,” Pink says. “They’re true pioneers. Forty years from now, we’ll look back on them as two of the most important social scientists of our time.”

What motivates us? How do we get motivated? And why do we describe some people as motivated and others not?

In the roughly century and a half that psychologists have studied such questions, most have explained motivation in terms of instincts (the Freudian approach) or in terms of responses to stimuli (the behaviorist approach). For several decades beginning in the 1950s, the behaviorists held almost uniform sway over the study of motivation, producing voluminous research showing the ways in which the provision of rewards could condition human behavior over time.

But after several years of collaborative research, Deci and Ryan emerged with Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985). In their pathbreaking work, they articulated self-determination theory, a comprehensive repudiation of behaviorist orthodoxy regarding human motivation.

In the broadest sense, the theory, as it has developed over the past quarter century, maintains that motivation develops from within us, grounded in our basic human needs to develop our skills and capacities, to act of our own accord, and to connect to others and to our environment—needs Deci and Ryan refer to as “competency, autonomy, and relatedness.” Self-determination theory, known among psychologists as SDT, holds that we are most deeply engaged, and that we do our most creative work, when we feel that we are acting according to our own will on behalf of goals we find meaningful.

Deci’s and Ryan’s most startling finding was that rewards such as prizes and money were not only less effective than behavioral psychologists had long supposed, but under some circumstances could actually diminish people’s feelings of engagement and motivation.

“We were out of the mainstream,” Ryan says of the early research. “The idea that rewards would sometimes undermine motivation was anathema to behaviorists. There was a lot of resistance to looking at this set of ideas about motivation.”

As is the case with any challenge to long-held wisdom, resistance—or skepticism—endured. But in 1999, Deci and Ryan could point to over 100 studies that confirmed and extended their findings. More important, adds Ryan, “Self-determination theory has gone far beyond these early reward studies.” For example, it now addresses how values get internalized, how different life goals affect well-being, and how cultures influence motivation.

As funded research on the theory has expanded, so too have applications of the theory to workplaces, schools, doctors’ offices, and a host of other arenas. Says Deci, “There’s been an exponential increase in interest in the theory, and it’s showing up in all the indicators.”

For example, standard indexes for measuring scientific productivity and impact, such as the online database ISI Web of Knowledge, rank Ryan and Deci among the world’s leading researchers in psychology based on their publication record and the number of citations their work has generated.

And in May, the University of Ghent in Belgium hosted a four-day international conference on self-determination theory that drew 550 researchers who presented 128 papers. That marked almost twice the attendance at the previous conference on the theory, held in 2007 at the University of Toronto, and six times that of the inaugural conference on the River Campus in 1999.

A major reason for this burgeoning interest is that Deci and Ryan have attracted growing numbers of students (as well as established researchers) to Rochester to train with them. Deci, who is now a professor of psychology as well as the Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences, and Ryan, who is a professor of psychology, psychiatry, and education, have together trained almost 100 doctoral graduates, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars in their Human Motivation Research Labs. For more than two decades, the scholars have continued to develop SDT and find new applications for it.

And they’ve taken it around the globe. In addition to drawing researchers from North America, this spring’s conference attracted scholars from nearly every country in Europe, as well as China, Russia, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Jordan, Iran, South Africa, Peru, and Colombia.

Bart Soenens, a professor in Ghent’s department of developmental, personality, and social psychology, and an organizer of the 2010 conference, expects the interest in self-determination theory to continue to grow.

“The theory has the potential to become more than just a theory, and to develop into a major tradition in psychology,” he says.

Deci and Ryan began collaborating shortly after their first meeting on the River Campus in 1977. Deci, who held a Wharton School MBA as well as a psychology doctorate from Carnegie Mellon, was teaching experimental psychology, and Ryan, whose background was in philosophy, was in Rochester’s clinical graduate program. Although their work was rooted in distinctive methods and approaches, they shared an interest in motivation.

“As we compared research and theoretical ideas, something jelled,” says Ryan. As a clinician, Ryan was intrigued by the potential of experimental research to test and hone clinical hypotheses in ways that might prove persuasive to behaviorist skeptics, who almost uniformly adopted the experimental method. Deci, whose initial findings on motivation had put him at odds with many experimental psychologists, was pleased to find a philosophically minded clinician eager to embark on controlled experiments. “We came at motivation from a humanistic perspective,” he says, “and at that time, there were virtually no experimental psychologists who took that approach.”

Their initial research addressed the implications of an experiment Deci had conducted in 1971. The Soma cube study (see sidebar, page 21), now a landmark in motivational psychology, made use of the popular three-dimensional puzzle by the same name. It provided a clear example of a case in which the offer of a monetary reward, based on performance, seemed to dampen the desire of participants in the experimental group to continue working on the inherently engaging task. For the paid group, the focus had shifted from the activity to the compensation.

“When people say that money motivates, what they really mean is that money controls,” Deci wrote several years later, explaining the significance of his Soma cube experiment.

In the early 1980s, Ryan began working with Deci to clarify their findings, demonstrating for example, a distinction between the effects of rewards offered as incentives (which often dampened motivation) and those offered as ex post facto recognition of exemplary work (which often enhanced motivation). In the years since, Deci, Ryan, and scores of other researchers have produced hundreds of studies that they say show variations on that theme. For example, studies showing grade-schoolers who weren’t told they’d be tested performing better on assessments than the students who were informed. Or studies showing that kids permitted a range of choices were better at regulating their emotions and behavior over time than kids raised in authoritarian environments. And studies of adults showing a correlation between job autonomy and the ability to respond creatively to challenges.

Of course, critics point to evidence to the contrary. Indeed, it’s not hard to find grade-schoolers who ace more tests when promised candy. Or teenagers who obey curfews when threatened with the loss of driving privileges. Or adults who continue to work at jobs they hate because the pay is lucrative.

In a 1990 book on goal-setting, psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, two persistent critics of self-determination theory, disputed the theory on conceptual grounds while noting that if rewards proved detrimental to motivation, “it is doubtful that [self-determination theory] has much application to real life.”

In fact, Deci and Ryan maintain that rewards can be effective and appropriate for simple and rote tasks. But in the context of the complex tasks that make up most of our lives in the professions, the trades, as athletes, artists, or as parents, the motivation that rewards generate is shallow and short-term. More importantly, adds Ryan, people who focus on rewards “miss out on the inner resources of intrinsic motivation and volition that are the wellsprings of true engagement and creativity.”

All of which points to the daunting challenges the theory poses: Just how do you create the conditions in which intrinsic motivation can flourish? And more specifically, how do you guide that motivation toward specific outcomes—at work, at school, or even at the fitness center? Says Deci, “control is easy.” Creating an atmosphere in which people feel free to act autonomously and creatively toward shared goals, he says, “is much, much harder.”

But an increasing number of researchers are making the effort, and so far, with promising results. At Rochester, for example, Geoffrey Williams ’93 (PhD), a professor of medicine, psychiatry, and psychology at the Medical Center and director of its Healthy Living Center, draws on self-determination theory to support people who want to live healthier lives. Among the center’s biggest successes is its tobacco intervention program. “Smokers are highly ambivalent about quitting,” says Williams, who is a medical doctor as well as a psychologist. “It means leaving something that makes them feel good.” The starting point is “to really find out if the person wants to quit or not.” Once you do, he says, the key is teaching what is called “autonomous self-regulation”—in this case, “learning to manage your emotions without the nicotine.”

At the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Marvin Berkowitz, who teaches courses on character education, is using self-determination theory to teach kids to take responsibility for their work, actions, and school community. Through the “Caring School Community” model, Berkowitz says, “we have nearly 100 schools in this region not only talking this language, but engaging in deep school reform. SDT is making a big difference in the St. Louis region.”

And in Singapore, at Nanyang Technological University, Ryan has helped established the Motivation in Education Research Lab, where scholars are applying the theory to the development of practical guides for teachers in a nation not typically noted for its encouragement of personal autonomy.

Together, Deci and Ryan have consulted with private companies, schools, counseling centers, health care agencies, and other institutions around the world seeking to implement the findings of self-determination theory.

As its applications spread across disciplines, both Ryan and Deci stress that the theory will need to be continually refined. “There are very few macro theories in psychology,” Deci says, “and refinement is in integrating all these dimensions.”

Says Ryan, “We’ve seen our work grow from just the two of us to be the kind of phenomenon it is now, which I think is kind of surprising to both of us. When we walked into that convention, more than 500 people were in the room. And they were all doing research on just this theory.”

Adds Soenens, “SDT is still under development. New and exciting research lines are still emerging.”

What’s a Boss to Do?

Self-determination theory does not offer a license for permissiveness, say Deci and Ryan. Nor is it meant to promote individualism, an idea that assumes the needs of individuals and the community are in conflict. Instead, the theory relies on shared commitments and responsibilities. So how do you, as a boss, a teacher, a parent, or a doctor, encourage autonomy while ensuring that goals are met? Here are some guidelines:

Share decision making. It’s not practical in all circumstances, but it is in more cases than we often assume. If goals are non-negotiable, allow people to determine how they will get there. The more people participate in the decisions that affect them, the more engaged they will be.

Explain the reasons for goals and rules. Unless you’re dealing with a small child, explaining why a rule exists, or how a task is important to a larger objective, is almost always useful in promoting engagement.

Adopt the other’s perspective. Once you understand another’s perspective, it's easier to work out—together—how you might help achieve valued aims.

Foster an alliance. Hierarchical relationships have their place. But work-related or behavior-related goals are often shared. The manager is not responsible for an employee’s mistakes, but she is responsible for the final product. Make your mutual interest clear—as well as your offer of support.

Adapted from “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being” (American Psychologist, 2000) and “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior” (Psychological Inquiry, 2000) by Ryan and Deci.

Motivation ³

Like the Rubik’s cube of the early 1980s, the Soma cube puzzle game, released by Parker Brothers in 1969, was wildly popular. Consisting of seven pieces that could be assembled into a cube as well as a variety of other three-dimensional shapes, it was known to captivate adults and children. While still a graduate student, Edward Deci used the mesmerizing cube in a study that's now a landmark in motivational psychology.

In brief, Deci divided college students into two groups and placed each group in a room with a Soma cube and an assortment of magazines. He instructed the participants to work on the puzzle, but he offered to pay the members of one group for each design they correctly assembled. After a period of time, Deci told the students that puzzle-solving time was up, adding that he would leave for about 10 minutes to record data and would return with a questionnaire.

But rather than record data, he observed the groups from outside the rooms. He saw a noticeable difference: To a significant degree, paid participants were more likely to put down the puzzles and pick up the magazines. Participants who weren’t paid, on the other hand, were more likely to continue to work on the puzzles.

It was an instance, as Deci later explained, of “no pay, no play”—and an inspiration for decades of research on human motivation.

—Karen McCally

Home Work

A partnership involving University and community scientists and educators has become a model for reducing the risks Rochester children face from lead poisoning.

By Kathleen McGarvey

lead HOUSE HAZARDS: The former principal of a Rochester elementary school, Ralph Spezio began advocating for new lead safety rules after discovering that lead poisoning was common among his students, many of whom had been exposed to the toxin in their own homes. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

As principal of Rochester’s Enrico Fermi School 17 from 1990 to 2002, Ralph Spezio did everything he could to serve his students well. He created a Montessori preschool on the elementary school campus, collaborated with the Medical Center and another local hospital to establish a community health and dental clinic attached to the school, forged a partnership with the Eastman School to create a stringed orchestra for students, and fostered an active, expansive parent-teacher association.

“I thought it was my job to level the playing field” for children at the school on Rochester’s west side, says Spezio, in a neighborhood with a 98 percent poverty rate.

But despite his best efforts, some of Spezio’s pupils seemed beyond his help. “I had a core of kids with real, serious behavior and learning problems,” he says. They had poor memories, trouble with language, and difficulty focusing. They were hyperactive, impulsive, and sometimes enraged.

One day in 1999, in a regular meeting to assess students for placement in special education, Spezio heard one nurse in attendance say to another as she looked at a child’s medical file, “Here’s another one.”

Spezio asked what she meant. She pointed to the blood lead level marked in the file. “This child’s lead poisoned,” she said. “They’re all lead poisoned.”

Spezio was startled, and horrified. He contacted the county’s health director, Andrew Doniger, also a clinical professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, to review his students’ public health records. Spezio credits Doniger’s responsiveness as key. “If he had circled the wagons, that would have made it much more difficult,” Spezio says. “But as a pediatrician, he put children first.”

What Spezio discovered in the files was arresting: 41 percent of the children at his school had a history of elevated levels of lead in their blood.

And those were just the children who had had their blood lead levels tested. Although New York state law mandates tests at ages one and two, many children aren’t tested. “I had a whole other group with symptoms and no test,” he says.

Spezio went public with his discovery, and Rochester doctors, nurses, educators, community leaders, and others came together for an emergency meeting at School 17; in 2000, they coalesced into a formal group, the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning.

In December, the coalition—in which the University is a partner—received one of five 2009 Environmental Justice Achievement Awards given by the Environmental Protection Agency. In part through the coalition’s efforts, lead poisoning of children in Monroe County has fallen 84 percent over the past decade, and Rochester has become a model for other cities combating their own lead problem. The effort has been successful in great part because it has involved such a broad swath of the community, those behind it say: child advocates, neighborhood organizations, doctors, nurses, educators, housing officials, researchers, public interest lawyers, health insurers, property owners, and concerned citizens.

“That’s the beauty of this coalition,” says Mel Callan, a board member of the coalition and a family nurse practitioner at Highland Family Medicine Center, a University affiliate. “I’ve been involved in so many community organizations, and this has been a stellar effort, where so many people from the community came together to solve this one problem.”

It’s a problem with high stakes. Studies at the time of the coalition’s founding showed that children in the city of Rochester had a rate of elevated blood lead levels 10 times the national average. Lead poisoning has no cure, and its effects are lifelong. “If you steal someone’s IQ—and that’s what lead does—you’ve stolen their future,” says Spezio, who’s now a doctoral student at the Warner School, studying how children’s brains might compensate for the effects of lead poisoning.

lead COMBATING LEAD: For some properties, EPA–certified workers are needed to conduct a full lead abatement, but in most cases, lead hazard work doesn’t require such measures—a key aspect of Rochester’s lead safety success. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

A soft metal, lead has been in human use since about 3500 BCE. In the 1970s, the federal government mandated its removal from paint and gasoline; paint became lead-free in the United States in 1978, and lead was phased out of use in fuel between 1976 and 1996. As a result, the nation’s population experienced a drop in its lead levels, and lead removal was hailed as a public health success.

But lead lingers.

In homes built before 1978, residents are still at risk of exposure to lead paint. And in the city of Rochester, where the housing stock is among the oldest in the state, 87 percent of homes were built before 1970.

“There’s not much hazard if paint is intact,” says Stanley Schaffer, an associate professor of general pediatrics who has been a member of the coalition since its first days. Danger comes when paint degrades or is ground into dust from friction on windows, doors, floors, or stairs. As children ingest paint chips and inhale paint dust, lead enters their bodies. And in Rochester’s poorest neighborhoods, much of the housing stock is in neglected condition.

The numbers bore out the grim threat. A 2002 report commissioned by the Monroe County Department of Public Health found that almost 25 percent of children living in Rochester’s high-risk neighborhoods—in some neighborhoods, the number topped 30 percent—had blood levels above 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, what the Centers for Disease Control calls a “level of concern.” Nationally, that figure is 1.6 percent.

The data also showed a stark racial disparity: a third of African-American children under age 5 in upstate New York live in one of the state’s 36 high-risk zip codes for lead poisoning; so do 12.3 percent of Latino children, and 3.9 percent of white, non-Hispanic children.

And in Rochester, nearly 78 percent of Latino children and 80 percent of African-American children under age 5 live in a high-risk zip code.

Children’s brains grow most in the period up to age three, when synaptic connections are forming. “Yet at the same time, these children are at greatest risk of being exposed to lead,” says Schaffer. Toddlers are mobile and busy putting things in their mouths, “and the lead can have devastating effects on their brain development.

“The kids are being set up to fail, and they’re much more likely, research has shown, to drop out of school, get in trouble with the law, and even be incarcerated, at some point,” Schaffer says.

“The downstream costs for lead poisoning are astronomical,” says Callan, in special education, health care, and criminal justice.

Because lead poisoning can’t be cured, the key is prevention. Primary prevention, as public health officials call it, aims to clean up lead conditions before children are affected. Secondary prevention—monitoring kids’ lead levels and then acting to clean up lead hazards in the homes of those with elevated levels—“uses our kids as the canary in the coal mine,” says Callan.

Recognizing that primary prevention is preferable, the federal government adopted the national goal of ending childhood lead poisoning by 2010.

To achieve prevention, coalition members knew they had to tackle the housing stock. University research and outreach played important roles in bringing about changes.

Studies carried out in the 1990s at the Medical Center showed that even slightly elevated levels of lead in children’s blood have an impact on cognitive development and IQ—and, critically, the research directly tied blood lead levels to levels of lead in dust on the floors of the children’s homes. University researchers, including Deborah Cory-Slechta, a professor of environmental medicine, also participated in a landmark study published in 2003, indicating that children experience health problems even when their blood lead levels are below those deemed safe by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I’ve been of the opinion there should be no specific ‘level of concern’ since any exposure to lead potentially can cause harm,” says Schaffer. “There’s no level below which lead is safe.”

Today, through the Environmental Health Sciences Center and other departments, University researchers continue to investigate lead’s role in osteoporosis, fetal growth restriction, and brain cancer.

Joan Roby Davison, cochair of the coalition and coordinator of the Empire State Housing Alliance, credits the University not just with producing vital research but also with helping to make that research accessible.

“I’m not a scientist; I’m not a researcher,” she says. “I’m a community advocate, but I couldn’t do my work without that research and without people who can help me understand the data and convey it to the city council” and other decision makers.

lead LEAD TESTERS: Steven Turner from Rochester’s Action for a Better Community and Katrina Korfmacher from the University’s Environmental Health Sciences Center discuss lead testing in a Rochester neighborhood. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Katrina Smith Korfmacher, an assistant professor of environmental medicine, works explicitly to bridge the University and the community on matters of environmental health. She’s the deputy director of community outreach and education at the Environmental Health Sciences Center. In March she won one of the 2010 Dr. David Satcher Community Health Improvement Awards for her efforts to reduce lead exposure for children in Monroe County. The award—created by the Center for Community Health—is named in honor of the former surgeon general, a 1972 graduate of Rochester’s pediatric residency program, and recognizes those who have made significant contributions to community health in the greater Rochester region through research, education, clinical services, or outreach efforts.

“My research focuses on the use of science in policy decisions, especially when community groups are involved,” says Korfmacher. She has had a role in many dimensions of the coalition, from helping to make the science accessible to laypeople and analyzing and promoting local and state policy changes to supporting the coalition’s organizational development and contributing to its projects and programs.

One such project was Get the Lead Out, a partnership with Orchard Street Community Health Center, local government agencies, and several community groups to test the homes of children at risk of lead poisoning. Medical students helped to educate families about lead’s dangers, followed up with property owners, and managed data. In the years since the coalition’s founding, University faculty, staff, and students have worked with the county, the city school district, and community organizations to promote public awareness, provide assistance to landlords, homeowners, and renters, and facilitate blood lead testing.

Cost was an issue from the start. Korfmacher and other coalition members knew that they could only convince the city to act if they could demonstrate that mandated lead repairs would be affordable. Lead abatement—the full-scale removal of lead from a structure—was simply too expensive. But new research showed that such inexpensive measures as repainting, scraping “friction” areas down to bare wood—lead dust is generated when painted surfaces are rubbed and worn, as when a window is raised and lowered—and installing vinyl liners in window frames could make the needed difference. The city and its landlords might not be able to remove lead completely, the coalition argued, but they could afford to contain it to make Rochester “lead safe.”

The University and coalition partners created a “lead lab” to demonstrate, borrowing a house and, with volunteers, making it lead safe for just $500 more than a landlord would have spent otherwise to ready it for a new tenant.

“People would come in and say, ‘Oh, this is what you’re talking about. This isn’t rocket science,’” Korfmacher says.

lead CLEAN UP: Korfmacher takes dust samples from a porch, a site where lead is commonly found. Thanks in part to the work of the University and community coalition, the simple dust test is required for rental properties in areas of Rochester at high risk for lead. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The coalition’s efforts culminated with the 2005 passage of an ordinance requiring inspection for lead paint hazards as part of the city’s certificate of occupancy process. To pass inspection, a residence must have intact paint inside and out, have no bare soil around the edge of the house, and—in high-risk areas—pass a test for lead in dust.

Because a 2002 county study identified “hot spots” of lead poisoning in the city’s most economically distressed neighborhoods, the legislation was tailored to target those areas first.

The effort to combat lead poisoning in Rochester continues, with an ongoing education campaign for parents and health care providers to be sure that they are following state requirements for lead testing. Even today, just half of the two-year-olds in Rochester’s Monroe County are tested.

“Although tremendous progress has been made, there’s still a lot of work to be done, and we dare not declare victory and say the problem has been solved—because, unfortunately, this is a problem that’s going to be with us for some time to come,” says Schaffer.

Spezio, who is now a senior associate and community liaison in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, attributes Rochester’s success to two factors. “I get calls from around the country asking how we’re sustaining our work,” he says. “We’re putting children first, always, and we have partners with us for the long haul. And one of those is the University.”

And while the fight isn’t over, Korfmacher sees hope for other public health and environmental challenges in the strides the coalition has already made.

“Problems of environmentalism and public health often require solutions at the local level. Our role in figuring out a way of bringing together all the different actors” to tackle together the problem of lead “is already being used as a model for addressing other issues, such as childhood obesity, in this community and others.”

Living Lead-Safe

Found in many urban, rural, and suburban houses built before 1978, lead can be inside or outside or in soil around homes. Here are some simple steps you can take to protect your family from lead:﻿

Arrange for a lead inspection to be sure your home is lead safe, and consult with your pediatrician on testing your kids for lead exposure.﻿

Make sure children don’t chew painted surfaces.﻿

Wash children’s hands often, especially before eating.﻿

Clean floors, windowsills, and other surfaces with a wet mop or sponge.﻿

Remove street shoes when you enter your home.﻿

Regularly wash toys and other items children put in their mouths.﻿

Use a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter, which traps lead dust.﻿

Use lead-safe work practices when remodeling.﻿

Plant grass to cover soil with high lead levels.﻿

Provide children with foods high in calcium and iron, which help reduce the absorption of lead.﻿

For more about lead safety:﻿

Rochester’s Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning: www.leadsafeby2010.org﻿

The EPA’s National Lead Information Center: 800-424-LEAD﻿

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead﻿

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: www.hud.gov/offices/lead﻿

Double Duty﻿

As more Rochester students expand their studies to include a second— and sometimes a third—major or degree, we ask a few members of the Class of 2010 why they went that extra step.﻿

By Kathleen McGarvey Photographs by Adam Fenster﻿

Sometimes the best choice you can make is to make no choice at all. So say some freshly minted Rochester graduates who decided to pursue not one major but two or three . . . or even more than one degree.﻿

“Freedom is the hallmark of our curriculum, and students often find that they have the time to concentrate in more than one area if they want to,” says Suzanne Jagel O’Brien ’59, associate dean of the College.﻿

This spring, more than 170 undergraduates graduated with double majors, and more than 70 received two or more degrees.﻿

Here are a few of those students and the paths they’ve taken.﻿

Marika Harada﻿

Tsukuba City, Japan﻿﻿

Majors: Chemistry and Religion﻿﻿

harada (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Science and religion are often pitted against each other as mutually exclusive ways of thinking, but for Marika Harada, they’re of a piece.﻿

When she arrived at Rochester as a freshman, Harada was certain she’d be majoring in the sciences, but she didn’t expect to add a religion major. Then she started taking courses on Hinduism “out of curiosity.”﻿

The philosophy behind the religion intrigued her, Harada says, adding that the appeal took her by surprise because she hadn’t grown up with religion. But she followed a trail that she set for herself and “took courses according to what interested me.”﻿

And while the classes she chose tended to examine Eastern religions, she stepped into fresh territory again this year when she wrote her senior thesis for her religion major on Mayan ritual.﻿

At the same time, Harada has also been absorbed by the study of chemistry, serving as a teaching assistant in organic chemistry and spending two summers working in research laboratories, first at the University of Pennsylvania, and then at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.﻿

“I really like working in the labs,” she says. “It’s cool to experiment with what you’ve learned.”﻿

Harada sees herself as simultaneously a scientist and a humanist. “I appreciate both sides,” she says. “It’s challenging, but interesting, to bring these fields together.”﻿

Science and religion may share a commitment to seeking truth, she says, but they conceive of truth differently.﻿

“Finding truth from a religious perspective is more about finding what’s true for you. There can be different kinds of truth. And the circumstances of science and religion are so different.”﻿

Now that she has graduated from Rochester, Harada is headed back to the Berkeley lab for a year. She plans to apply to medical schools.﻿

“My curiosity about religion’s not going to stop,” she says. “Studying medicine, it’s important to understand each patient’s background, and religion could be an important part of that.”﻿

Chase Hermsen﻿

Bayville, N.J.﻿﻿

Majors: Computer Science, Japanese, and Linguistics﻿﻿

hermsen (Photo: Adam Fenster)

You could say that Chase Hermsen and computers are old friends.﻿

“My dad worked for Apple, and I learned to program before my age was in the double digits,” he says. “It was a natural for me” to opt for a major in computer science.﻿

His interest in languages, in contrast, was something he stumbled upon as a high school student at a Japanese language immersion camp in Minnesota.﻿

At Rochester, he encountered the more systematic study of language that is linguistics, and ultimately Hermsen found himself with a triple major.﻿

His curiosity fueled his course selection. “I didn’t take more classes than I was going to anyway. This way, I was applying every class to a major.”﻿

His three areas of study brought illuminating convergences: one semester, three of his courses were examining the concept of the sentence diagram—breaking down the sentence to analyze how it conveys meaning—each from its own particular perspective. The exploration of a concept through the lens of three fields simultaneously gave him greater insight into the assumptions and goals of each one, he says.﻿

Now Hermsen, who also earned a certificate in literary translation in the College’s new literary translation program, is poised to enter the field of computational linguistics—a field that’s involved “anytime languages meet computers.” (He cites automated telephone customer support as one familiar example.) “It ties two of my majors together.” He’ll enter a master’s program at the University of Washington this fall.﻿

His years at Rochester were rich ones, Hermsen says. Despite the rigors of completing three majors, “I’m not a workaholic.”﻿

At Washington, he plans to find time for some of the leisure activities he enjoyed on the River Campus: hanging out with friends, juggling, and practicing “the hobby of finding new hobbies.”﻿

Dale McElhone﻿

Tuckahoe, N.J.﻿﻿

Degrees: BM, Applied Music; BS, Applied Mathematics; BA, Physics﻿﻿

mcelhone (Photo: Adam Fenster)

When Dale McElhone attended graduation ceremonies in May, he collected not one degree, but three: a bachelor of science in applied mathematics, a bachelor of arts in physics, and a bachelor of music from the Eastman School in applied music for saxophone performance.﻿

“I feel like people who want to do dual degrees are generally the organized type,” says McElhone, with perhaps a touch of understatement. He completed his music degree in four years and spent an additional year completing requirements for his other two degrees.﻿

“It’s been an ideal situation because it allowed me to pursue everything at the same time, to try everything and see where it took me.”﻿

It has taken him interesting places: London’s Royal College of Music, where he studied saxophone and harpsichord; the research laboratory of Mark Bocko, a professor of electrical and computer engineering; the stages of the Eastman School, where he studied under Chien-Kwan Lin, an assistant professor of saxophone who “made me the musician I am today”; and soon, the campus of Penn State, where McElhone will pursue a graduate degree in acoustics.﻿

With Bocko, who is conducting research on digital signal processing technology in music, McElhone has worked to find ways to recreate electronically all the things a musician can do with a saxophone. What began as a summer research project grew, and Bocko “gave me an awesome opportunity with this research,” he says.﻿

McElhone’s not sure where the study of acoustics will take him, but he’s willing to follow his curiosity. He’s interested in concrete issues surrounding sound, like how to direct airport noise away from neighborhoods. Physics gets pretty abstract, he says, and he likes problems he can wrap his hands around.﻿

His dad’s a carpenter, and he can see some of the same inclinations in himself. “Picking up a saxophone—a machine you make music with—has always fascinated me.”﻿

He and his father are working on plans to build a harpsichord themselves, and ultimately McElhone says he may decide to try his hand at designing speakers, or musical instruments.﻿

“I like the idea of being able to figure things out.”﻿

Amanda Case﻿

McLean, Va.﻿﻿

Majors: Microbiology and Russian﻿﻿

case (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Talk for a while with Amanda Case and you realize that she’s a person who appreciates small things.﻿

She was always interested in animals, she says, but when she came to Rochester and began her biology studies, her focus narrowed.﻿

“Once I was taking classes, I realized I wanted to take it down to the basics, to the single cell.﻿

“I like how microbiology focuses on the beginning, on how life started. You see how our body systems relate to microbiology.”﻿

At the same time that Case was probing the building blocks of life, she was also exploring an entire culture with her dual major in Russian.﻿

Again, it was smallness that appealed. She responded to the intimacy of the program, she says. “I liked that I could get to know every faculty member.”﻿

She strengthened her bonds with other Russian majors during the program’s summer trip to Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Novgorod.﻿

“I think having the Russian major has helped me in microbiology because I can think more ‘out of the box,’” says Case, who was also a four-year starter in field hockey and lacrosse and was named all–Liberty League in both sports during her senior year. Facing the challenges of finding her footing in a new language and culture “has given me a more open mind when solving things.”﻿

As a microbiology major, Case did independent research, working in the lab of Mingtao Zeng, an adjunct professor of microbiology and immunology who is pursuing a botulism vaccine.﻿

She loved having the chance to see how scientists develop ideas, she says. “You hear about how they do these things, but to actually see it was really fun.”﻿

While she enjoys research, Case prefers to pursue a clinical path, and she’ll spend next year volunteering in a hospital in her home state of Virginia to get additional hands-on experience before applying to medical school.﻿

And she takes satisfaction in her experience at Rochester, straddling the humanities and the sciences.﻿

“You get the best of both worlds.”﻿

Nicholas Hamlin﻿

Ipswich, Mass.﻿﻿

Majors: Mechanical Engineering and History﻿﻿

hamlin (Photo: Adam Fenster)

When Nicholas Hamlin was a high school student looking at colleges, the ease of coordinating two fields of study was a “major factor” in his ultimate decision to attend Rochester.﻿

Before even beginning college, he’d already developed some prowess at historical research: He and a team of fellow students won the National History Day Contest, a historical research competition entered by more than half a million high school students each year, for a documentary they made on the ice industry in 19th-century New England.﻿

But he also relished the challenges of engineering—and he didn’t want to abandon the study of either one. Rochester, he says, made it not just feasible but comparatively simple to pursue both.﻿

“It was much easier than I thought it would have been” to accommodate both majors in his schedule, he says.﻿

“Being a mechanical engineer has made me a better historian, and being a historian has made me a better mechanical engineer,” he says. In both cases, you’re trying to solve a problem.﻿

Doing both has led me to approach problems in a slightly different way than the major alone would have led me to do—and I think that’s beneficial.”﻿

Hamlin continued to broaden his perspective during his just-completed Take Five year. He examined ethnomusicology, with courses in anthropology, linguistics, and music. Music, he says, is another long-held interest for him, and he was a member of the Midnight Ramblers, directing the group for two years.﻿

“The Midnight Ramblers has been an important part of my education.” He credits his participation with teaching him “leadership, and all sorts of random things you wouldn’t necessarily think would be associated with a music group,” from tour management to music technology to accounting.﻿

Now Hamlin is considering graduate school, perhaps with an eye toward a career in international development, something he says could bring his love of engineering and history together. He’s one of the students who established the new chapter of Engineers without Borders at the University.﻿

He’s cautious about being overly focused on any one goal, however; following his instincts has worked well for him so far.﻿

“Most of the things I decided to do here at Rochester weren’t intentional,” he says.﻿

“I just thought they were cool.”﻿

Alyea Canada﻿

Dublin, Ohio﻿﻿

Majors: Film & Media Studies and Comparative Literature﻿﻿

canada (Photo: Adam Fenster)

After spending the past four years absorbed in film and media studies as well as comparative literature, “I can’t watch anything now without analyzing it,” says Alyea Canada.﻿

Her critical acumen may get in the way of spending an evening unwinding in front of the TV, but it’s made her an astute reader of everything from international classics of screen and page to contemporary pop culture phenomena.﻿

Canada began at Rochester by plunging into the unknown.﻿

“I decided to start college learning about a country I didn’t learn about in high school,” she says—and so she began taking courses on Russia through the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures.﻿

While her study didn’t turn into a Russian major—Canada opted to minor in Russian—it did give her a keen interest in culture, and how it relates to the act of storytelling.﻿

Through her film and media studies major, she learned about Russian films, as well as those of France, Germany, and Britain.﻿

Instead of concentrating on individual directors or genres, she focused on national cinematic traditions. “It was surprising to me how much crosscultural influence there is,” she says.﻿

At the undergraduate research conference sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures in the spring, she presented her senior project for comparative literature, an examination of the relation between Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation, Apocalypse Now.﻿﻿

Canada says she’s interested in how national film traditions can challenge “official” accounts of history.﻿

“I think the key” to cultural analysis “is getting a solid understanding of history,” she says. “You need to know the historical context.”﻿

Canada took her interest in cultural expression out of the classroom, too, as a member of Radiance Dance Theatre—she has danced since she was three—and UR Concerts, the student group that brings musical acts to campus.﻿

Now that she has graduated, Canada is considering whether she’d like to begin working or continue her studies in graduate school. In either case, she appreciates having been able to develop her interests in both film and literature.﻿

“It’s good to know that if you’re really torn between two areas, you don’t have to choose.”﻿

‘Baptism by Fire’

Tom Daly ’04 embarks on a personal mission to find meaning in the sacrifices of his fellow marines in Iraq.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

dalyFIGHTING WORDS: “I thought if I didn’t put this story out on paper, then it would be something that was glossed over as Americans paying Iraqis to fight for them, and what did these guys sacrifice their lives for, then?” says Tom Daly ’04 about Rage Company, a memoir of his experience as a marine in Iraq. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Tom Daly ’04 was little more than two years out of Rochester when, as a newly minted Marine lieutenant, he set out on a life-shaping tour of duty in Iraq’s most turbulent region, Al Anbar province. After attending Rochester on an NROTC scholarship, Daly, the son of a marine who had never seriously envisioned any other career, began training to become a field artillery officer. In September 2006, he sailed out of San Diego as part of a Marine expeditionary unit that would be stationed in Kuwait.

In November, the mission changed. The unit would enter Iraq. And there, it would help carry out Operation Squeeze Play: an effort to root al Qaeda out of their Anbar strongholds, the cities of Rutbah, Haditha, and the provincial capital, Ramadi.

As he writes in a new memoir, Rage Company: A Marine’s Baptism by Fire (John Wiley & Sons), a frustrating and often fruitless effort by U.S. forces to outwit and defeat al Qaeda became a strategic alliance with former enemies—secular Sunni militias who had found a common interest with the United States in defeating the terrorist organization.

Daly is now a project manager at the ITT Corp. and lives in Auburn, N.Y., with his wife, Aimee, and daughters, Clara, 2, and Elise, 3 months. The memoir began as a personal project to find meaning in a mission in which three marines—friends Anthony Melia, Clinton Ahlquist, and Steven Chavez—lost their lives. Sailing back from Iraq, he says, “many of the marines were questioning the purpose of their sacrifice.”

Daly concedes it was a hard question to answer. But nothing helped him clarify his thinking more, he says, than reports that the United States was turning the corner in Iraq by paying Sunni militias to do its fighting. Daly had just come from a joint mission with exactly those militias. “They rose up and fought al Qaeda out of a determination to defeat them,” says Daly of the movement now referred to as the Anbar Awakening.

“I thought if I didn’t put this story out on paper, then it would be something that was glossed over as Americans paying Iraqis to fight for them, and what did these guys sacrifice their lives for, then?” says Daly, who argues that the American presence was critical to the war’s momentum in early 2007.

While the story of the Anbar Awakening has been widely reported, Daly, both a forward observer and an intelligence officer, recounts his journey much as he experienced it: day-by-day, with all the complexity of a mission full of shifting alliances, disguised combatants, split-second decisions, and imperfect information.

Bing West, an author and an assistant defense secretary during the Reagan administration, writes in a foreword to the book, “Rage Company is a straightforward, honest account of what U.S. soldiers and marines do when placed in a hostile urban area.”

Three years after his deployment, as the violence in Iraq continues, Daly, reflecting on his experience handling intelligence, argues that the outlook is often better than it seems.

Factional violence, he says, “is easily picked up by the news cycle. However, the daily grind of hunting down, capturing, or killing militants, or the flipping of tribes to our side, is easily overlooked or simply too classified to even be released.”

Why We Fight

The author of a new memoir about his service in Iraq ponders his role in the war.

By Thomas Daly ’04

Seven minutes into our first patrol in Ramadi, the point man was shot in the throat. The wounded Marine apologized to his lieutenant for getting hit. Then he went unconscious.

Another day at war, another firefight, another casualty. After the confusion and chaos of our brush with combat, I couldn't stop wondering: What did this Marine’s sacrifice accomplish? We didn’t kill or detain any al Qaeda operatives. We didn’t discover any hidden weapons caches. Ramadi didn’t feel any safer because of our presence. So what was the point? In past wars, the answer to “Why do you, or we, fight?” was easy. In World War II, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Nazis’ expansion, provided a call to action. Today, it isn’t so clear.

Throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, the nature of each traumatic injury or death may be different, but the question of “why” that follows is still the same. To ignore the why erodes the basic principle that provides what every combatant needs to fight: the reassurance that the cause is worthy of the ultimate sacrifice. Once this basic principle is no longer true, soldiers and Marines fight for self-preservation, and each other, not a heroic cause or just peace, as politicians might like to think.

In Ramadi, our lives were reduced to a collection of missions, during which we tried to identify and kill an unseen enemy before he could do the same to us. We weren’t fighting for any noble objective, or to protect the U.S. from weapons of mass destruction. We were fighting for survival.

Then, halfway through the deployment, in the vast farmland east of Ramadi, an answer came. In January of 2007 an Iraqi citizen militia approached my unit, wanting to help us defeat al Qaeda. In the series of pinpoint raids that followed, I realized that I wasn’t fighting for America. I was fighting for the Iraqi people. The more I interacted with the militia, understood their suffering, the more I became convinced in their cause against al Qaeda. The brutal murder of a father while his wife and young children were forced to watch and the placement of children’s heads in baskets because their “tribe” was not fighting the Americans were no longer statistics. They knew the hard reality of life under brutal terrorists. Their pain was real. And because of that reality, the fathers, sons, mothers and daughters that made up the militia became my, and America’s, greatest opportunity. They revealed to me my unseen enemy. Al Qaeda was no longer a shadow in the dark. My unit now had a purpose. Our war finally had meaning.

We conducted raids with former insurgents, men who were once our enemy but had switched sides. We adapted to an unconventional style of warfare, which resulted in the capture and killing of dozens of militants, including the second highest-ranking insurgent in Anbar province. Most important, our actions directly contributed to what came to be known as the “Anbar Awakening”—the uprising of thousands of Anbari tribesmen against al Qaeda. That, in turn, led to the collapse of the terror network in cities like Fallujah, Haditha and Ramadi.

This was why we fought. Not for the reasons politicians championed from behind lecterns hundreds of miles away. We fought for the Iraqis. So they could live free from terror.

When the president and other elected officials send soldiers and Marines into battle, they know they’ll go willingly, at a moment’s notice, without questioning why. Eventually, though, that question will bubble up to the surface. It took me six months to figure it out.

I’m glad I did. Because you never want to be a looking at the body of a fallen comrade, searching for the meaning of his sacrifice.

A version of this essay appeared originally in the Washington Post blog, Impact of War, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/impact-of-war/. Reprinted with permission.

At Kent State, Aiming High

Kent State University President Lester Lefton ’74 (PhD) leads the institution through two major milestones in 2010.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

leftonVISIONARY: A long-time professor of psychology, Lefton studied at Rochester’s Center for Visual Science. “Rochester is where I learned to have academic aspirations,” he says. (Photo: Kent State)

Five years ago, Lester Lefton ’74 (PhD) was the provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Tulane when Hurricane Katrina struck, bursting levees and flooding the New Orleans university.

“It was life-altering,” Lefton says. Within days of the arrival of students for the fall semester, the university closed, and he, the president, and a handful of other officials relocated to Houston, where they prepared the transition into a daunting and unpredictable future.

“We had a lot of changes take place,” he says. “But if I ever wanted a crash course in how to run a university, and how to manage crises, it was certainly the Katrina experience.”

A year later, Kent State University, seeking its 11th president, figured Lefton would be up to the job.

A vast organization, Kent State enrolls almost 40,000 students who are spread across its main campus in Kent, Ohio, and seven regional campuses. It plays an increasingly important role in the economy of northeastern Ohio, a once-flourishing region struggling to emerge from a long decline following the collapse of its steel industry.

One of Lefton’s earliest, and biggest, successes was in offering a home at the university’s then nascent research park to AlphaMicron, an expanding high-tech green manufacturing company founded by three faculty members from Kent State’s Liquid Crystal Institute. The company had outgrown its facility in Kent and was on the verge of moving out of town. In 2009 the Kent Record-Courier declared the company’s new home at Kent State’s Centennial Park a “triple win for the community,” crediting Lefton for making the research park— and hence the company’s home—a reality.

For many American baby boomers, however, Kent State is less likely to conjure up images of liquid crystal technology than it is the memory of May 4, 1970. That’s the day the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of students, some of whom were protesting the Vietnam War, killing four and wounding nine others. The shooting became a watershed moment in post–World War II American history. This year, Lefton shepherded the Kent State community through the 40th anniversary of that tragedy during a year that also marked the university’s centennial celebration.

“What happened at Kent State in the aftermath was not particularly good,” Lefton says of the 1970 shooting. “They tried to sort of forget about it.” This year, he says, “we have embraced May 4th,” while driving the point home that the anniversary and the centennial are inextricably related to Kent State’s mission as a major research and teaching institution.

“The lessons of Kent State are about civil discourse, and open dialogue, and free speech,” he says. “We’ve embraced May 4th as a teaching moment—to learn, to inquire, and to reflect.” The two-day commemoration featured guest speakers and roundtable discussions, as well as a ceremony to mark the listing of the site of the shooting on the National Register of Historic Places.

It’s an approach well-integrated with Lefton’s overall message that while Kent State primarily serves a regional population, it’s also an open, diverse, and cosmopolitan institution. Lefton’s initiatives include expanding international student exchange programs and opportunities for students to study abroad. He’s also set higher standards for faculty, which has led to an overall increase in funded research.

Lefton is overseeing the development of a downtown hotel and conference center that he hopes will enhance the ability of faculty to run national conferences and, Lefton believes, better connect students to the town. “I’d like Kent to resemble Ann Arbor or Ithaca more than it does right now,” he says of the “college towns” of the University of Michigan and Cornell.

Michigan, in particular, is a model. “We see ourselves looking more like the University of Michigan 10 years from now than we do a local community college. We’re not there yet; but that’s our goal.”

In the News

Jonathan Lunine ’80 Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Jonathan Lunine ’80, a professor of planetary sciences and of physics at the University of Arizona, has been elected into the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors awarded in the fields of science and technology. An expert in the formation and evolution of planets, brown dwarf stars, and other celestial bodies, Lunine has made significant contributions to spacecraft technology and space exploration.

Hugo Sonnenschein ’61 Honored for Work in Economics

Hugo Sonnenschein ’61, the Adam Smith Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and president emeritus at the University of Chicago, has earned international recognition for his contributions to economic theory. In June, Sonnenschein, a Rochester trustee, received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in economics, finance, and management from the BBVA Foundation. BBVA stands for Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, and is a global financial services group based in Bilbao, Spain. Sonnenschein shared the award with one of his former students, Andreu Mas-Colell, the secretary general of the European Union Research Council.

Rochelle Steiner ’97 (PhD) Named Dean of USC Fine Arts School

Museum, gallery, and public art curator Rochelle Steiner ’97 (PhD) has been named the new dean of the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Fine Arts. A graduate of Rochester’s doctoral program in visual and cultural studies, Steiner is the former director of the Public Art Fund in New York City. In that role, she helped secure the commissioning and installation of several notable contemporary works in public spaces throughout the city, including “The New York City Waterfalls,” a series of large and striking outdoor waterfalls by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson that was on display in 2008.

James Jimenez ’75, ’76S (MBA): ‘Super Lawyer’

Los Angeles business and real estate attorney James Jimenez ’75, ’76S (MBA) has been designated a top California lawyer by Southern California Super Lawyers magazine. A national umbrella group, Super Lawyers magazine honors no more than 5 percent of attorneys in any state with the special status. Super Lawyers are selected based on peer nominations and professional achievements. Jimenez has been practicing law in California for three decades, founding his own firm, the Pacific Business Law Group, in 1988.

So You Want to be a Flamenco Dancer?

Rebecca Thomas ’98 makes a career out of an improvisational art form.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

tomasDANCE PROGRAM: Improvisation plays an important role in flamenco dancing, Thomas says. “There’s a lot of back and forth, like in jazz, between the musicians and the dancer.” (Photo: Maly Blomberg Photography)

Rebecca Thomas ’98 was spending a semester in Grenada when she encountered the captivating art form of flamenco—a combination of music and dance that would inspire the native of West Hartford, Conn., to return to Spain several more times.

Now, with formal training at Madrid’s renowned Flamenco Academy Amor de Dios as well as a year of ethnomusicology under her belt, Rebeca Tomas, as she’s known on the stage, makes her living in Manhattan as an up-and-coming flamenco dancer, choreographer, producer, and educator.

What is flamenco dancing?

Flamenco is an art form, a combination of music and dance, that started in the south of Spain hundreds of years ago, from a mixture of cultures that included Spanish Christians, Sephardic Jews, Arabs from North Africa, and Gypsies who came over from India. The most notable thing about the dancing is the footwork. We use heeled shoes with nails. There’s lots of handwork as well. And a lot of suffering and pain that you see often on flamenco dancers’ faces, which comes from the suffering of the Gypsies and the Arabs and the Jews. A lot of this is expressed in the voice and the lyrics. But then that’s interpreted—the emotion of it—in the dance. It’s also very improvisational. I don’t rehearse a lot with my musicians. I just go out there. There’s a lot of back and forth, like in jazz, between the musicians and the dancer.

How did you get into flamenco dancing?

I went abroad for a semester. I was majoring in psychology and I was studying in Grenada. I went to a flamenco show there, and I was dumbfounded. I was on a program where we had to keep a journal. And I wrote in my journal: “I have to do this. I have to know this. I have to be a part of this.” So I started classes. I was a musician, and the footwork was amazing. And in flamenco dancing, as a dancer, you’re a musician.

What does your family think of your career choice?

At first they were nervous. I went back to Spain, to Madrid, and took more classes. But then I got to a good enough level that the dance program at Rochester invited me to do a lecture and demonstration. And because I had studied ethnomusicology I could talk about flamenco in addition to dance it. That’s when my parents realized I could actually do something with it.

So you don’t have a day job?

No. This is my career. I teach and I do a lot of arts education. Flamenco is such a cultural art form that there’s a lot of demand for it in schools. I can go to schools and give workshops and give performances and teach kids about it. And I do gigs. I can show up with just two musicians and just dance on a floor and people want to see it.

KUDOS

University Honors Alumni at Commencement

honoreesHONOREES: Cathy Jones Minehan ’68, Vincent Lenti ’60E, ’63E (MA), and Robert Keegan ’72S (MBA) were among the alumni recognized this spring. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Alumni from Arts, Sciences and Engineering, the School of Medicine and Dentistry, the Eastman School, and the Simon Graduate School of Business were recognized by the University for their professional accomplishments during this spring’s commencement ceremonies.

Vincent Lenti ’60E, ’63E (MA), Cathy Jones Minehan ’68, and Arthur Moss ’62M (Res) were awarded the Charles Force Hutchison and Marjorie Smith Hutchison Medal, the University’s highest alumni honor.

A member of the Eastman School’s piano faculty since 1963, Lenti served for 26 years as director of the Eastman Community Music School. The author of articles on church music and liturgy, he also is the Eastman School’s historian.

After almost 40 years in the Federal Reserve System, Minehan retired in 2007 from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where she had served as president and chief executive of the Boston Bank and was a member of the Federal Open Market Committee. She chairs the executive committee of Rochester’s Board of Trustees.

Moss is a professor of medicine and founder and former director of the Heart Research Follow-up Program at the Medical Center. He’s widely recognized for his contributions to the study of coronary disease and heart-rhythm disorders.

Linda Birnbaum ’67 and Richard Thaler ’74 (PhD) were each awarded an honorary doctor of science degree, and Robert Keegan ’72S (MBA) received an honorary doctor of laws degree.

Birnbaum directs the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program. An authority on environmental chemicals, Birnbaum oversees a multidisciplinary research program designed to understand the environmental contributors to disease.

Thaler, the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, is a pioneering theorist in behavioral economics. A codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s behavioral economics project, he directs the Center for Decision Research at Chicago.

The chair of the board of directors of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Keegan served as CEO and president of the company for the past seven years. He’s credited with helping transform Goodyear’s operations and products and successfully integrating its tire brands in Europe.

Young-Kee Kim ’90 (PhD), a professor of physics at the University of Chicago, received the Rochester Distinguished Scholar Medal. Since 2006, she has served as deputy director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

TRIBUTE

Cyrus Hoy: Inspiring Mentor

hoy‘SCHOLAR’S SCHOLAR’: Hoy was known for the range and depth of his knowledge. (Photo: Department of English)

In 1980, during my first year of graduate study in the English department, Cyrus Hoy was interviewed by a reporter from the Campus Times about his just-published four-volume Introductions, Notes, and Commentaries to Texts in “The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker,” edited with Fredson Bowers. Two things about the CT article remain in my memory after three decades: Cyrus was quoted as saying, with mischievous humility, that probably few people would have the Dekker edition on their bookshelves. And the reporter described him as “piquant.”

Then, as now, I wondered what the writer had in mind. Tart? Sharply provocative, stimulating? Critical and biting? Cyrus could be all those things, although his criticisms were invariably humane no matter how pointed. When I met with him in his office to discuss the first chapter of my dissertation—30 pages of my best ideas—he said, “Patrick, sometimes you sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And then he laughed as he often did, close-mouthed and high-pitched, bouncing slightly in his chair. I didn’t laugh with him, but I got the point. (I threw out the chapter.) Somehow, that felt like an act of fatherly kindness. I don’t know if Cyrus was really piquant, but he was certainly charming.

And brilliant. His knowledge of literature and the arts was encyclopedic, and not only in his area of specialty, the English Renaissance, but on an impressively wide range of topics. He was a scholar’s scholar: nearly single-mindedly devoted to learning and the life of the mind. And he wrote the most beautiful prose. We graduate students were a little in awe of him, actually. Faculty reminded us that when W. W. Norton & Company wanted an editor for their critical edition of the play, they selected Cyrus to edit Hamlet.

Cyrus, who was the John B. Trevor Professor Emeritus of English, retired from teaching in 1994 and died in April. He was an inspired and inspiring mentor, and I and many others are fortunate to have known and learned from him.

—Patrick Scanlon ’84 (PhD)

Scanlon is a professor in the department of communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

TRIBUTE

Robert Rosenblum ’59M (Pdc), ’61M (MS): ‘Always Learning’

rosenblumMENTOR: Rosenblum practiced and taught orthodontics for 40 years. (Photo: Courtesy of Mark Rosenblum)

In 1958 I was fortunate in being assigned a student locker adjacent to the one already inhabited by Bob Rosenblum. It was a random selection but it was the beginning of a long and meaningful friendship. Bob was enrolled in the graduate orthodontic program offered at the Eastman Dental Center, and I was trailing two years behind him. Our friendship continued unabated for 52 years, up until his passing this past October at age 82.

Bob was an absolutely superb orthodontist. In 1961 he established a private practice in the Rochester area that continued for 40 years. Shortly after graduating from his orthodontic program, on a part-time basis he initiated a long-term affiliation with the teaching staff of the Eastman Dental Center and the University, reaching the academic rank of associate professor. His students and I personally learned much from him as he approached patient diagnosis and treatment planning very rationally, methodically, and ethically. He was always learning and always had a very open mind regarding new ideas. Bob was also very active in research, having presented several scientific papers and was periodically honored throughout his career.

Upon reflection, it was the personal side of Bob that meant the most to me and to others who knew him well. Integrity, intelligence, and compassion are words that quickly come to mind. Bob also was always active with hobbies and many forms of physical activity, especially skiing. We shared many ideas and opinions, all of which fostered wonderful discussions. Bob, along with his late, dear wife, Harriet, was socially very liberal. He had great concern for the well-being of others.

—Leonard Fishman ’61M (Pdc)

Fishman is a member of the clinical faculty at the Eastman Institute for Oral Health.

Books & Recordings

Books

Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America﻿

By Thabiti Lewis ’90, ’91W (MA)﻿

Third World Press, 2010﻿

Lewis, an assistant professor of English at Washington State University Vancouver, counters the widely held view that sports have been a force of racial progress for African Americans.﻿

Putting Children First: Proven Parenting Strategies for Helping Children Thrive Through Divorce﻿

By JoAnne Pedro-Carroll ’84 (PhD)﻿

Avery/Penguin, 2010﻿

Pedro-Carroll, a Rochester clinical psychologist and noted expert on children and divorce, offers advice to divorced parents based on 30 years of research and clinical practice.﻿

Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source﻿

By Terry Jacobs Walters ’88﻿

Sterling Publishing Co., 2009﻿

Holistic health counselor Walters offers a guide to buying seasonal and locally grown ingredients, and over 200 vegan recipes organized into spring, summer, fall, and winter chapters.﻿

The Kirov Murder and Soviet History﻿

By Matthew E. Lenoe﻿

Yale University Press, 2010﻿

Rochester associate professor of history Lenoe draws on newly available archival materials to explore the long-speculated role of Josef Stalin in the 1934 assassination of Leningrad communist party chief Sergei Kirov.﻿

Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movements and Science in Late Twentieth-Century America﻿

By Benjamin E. Zeller ’99﻿

New York University Press, 2010﻿

Zeller, an assistant professor of religious studies at Brevard College, examines the ways in which three emerging religions—the Hare Krishnas, the Unification Church, and Heaven’s Gate—have responded to the challenge of science.﻿

The Tube Has Spoken: Reality TV and History﻿

Edited by Ken Dvorak and Julie Anne Taddeo ’87, ’96 (PhD)﻿

University Press of Kentucky, 2009﻿

Dvorak and Taddeo, a visiting associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, edit and contribute to the collection of essays offering a crosscultural and historical analysis of reality TV. The book examines shows from the 1950s to the present, including Candid Camera, Big Brother, Wife Swap, Kid Nation, and The Biggest Loser﻿.﻿

Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English﻿

By Theresa Lillis and Mary Jane Curry﻿

Routledge, 2010﻿

Curry, an associate professor of teaching and curriculum at the Warner School, coauthors the book examining the pressures on scholars worldwide to publish their works in English. The book is based on an eight-year study of 50 academics working in Europe.﻿

Laser Physics (Second Edition)﻿

By Peter W. Milonni and Joseph H. Eberly﻿

John Wiley & Sons, 2010﻿

The updated second edition of the classic textbook by Milonni, a professor of physics at Rochester, and Eberly, the Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics and Professor of Optics at Rochester, incorporates new developments and applications in laser technology from the past two decades.﻿

Workplace Violence in Mental and General Healthcare Settings﻿

By Michael R. Privitera ’83M (Res)﻿

Jones and Bartlett, 2010﻿

Rochester associate professor of psychiatry Privitera provides clinicians, health care administrators, and professionals in law enforcement an overview of research on workplace violence, along with a practical approach toward its control and prevention.﻿

Gray Land: Soldiers On War﻿

By Barry Goldstein ’76M (MS), ’81M (MD), ’82M (PhD)﻿

W. W. Norton & Co., 2009﻿

Photographer, biophysicist, and Rochester associate professor of medical humanities Goldstein presents the words and pictures of over 50 American soldiers of the Iraq War. Goldstein conducted the interviews over two years, including periods in which he lived and patrolled with an Army unit.﻿

Temporal Data Mining﻿

By Theophano Mitsa ’91 (PhD)﻿

Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2010﻿

Mitsa, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, provides a guide to drawing information from temporal data, and to applications of data mining in such fields as medicine and bioinformatics, financial forecasting, and others.﻿

She Bets Her Life: A True Story of Gambling Addiction﻿

By Mary Sojourner ’75 (MA)﻿

Seal Press, 2010﻿

Author, essayist, and National Public Radio commentator Sojourner offers a personal memoir of her addiction to gambling, chronicling her efforts, and those of the other women in her support group, to break their addictions. Sojourner also released a novel, Going Through Ghosts (University of Nevada), in February.﻿

Winning Investment Decisions﻿

By Walter F. Wild ’68 (PhD)﻿

Self-published, 2010﻿

Cognitive and behaviorial psychologist Wild, who holds an MBA degree in addition to his Rochester psychology doctorate, teaches investors how to meld market knowledge and emotional self-awareness to make sound investment decisions.﻿

City Folk: English Country Dance and the Politics of the Folk in Modern America﻿

By Daniel J. Walkowitz ’64, ’72 (PhD)﻿

New York University Press, 2010﻿

Walkowitz, a professor of history and social and cultural analysis at New York University, traces the history of English country dance from its 18th-century roots in the English countryside, to its transatlantic leap and revival in the late 20th-century United States.﻿

Bedside: The Art of Medicine﻿

By Michael A. LaCombe ’64, ’72M (Res)﻿

University of Maine Press, 2010﻿

LaCombe draws on his 18 years of practicing family medicine in western Maine, and his 12 years as a cardiologist, in a collection of fictional stories about Maine doctors, nurses, patients, and families.﻿

Demystifying Psychiatry: A Resource for Patients and Families﻿

By Charles F. Zorumski and Eugene H. Rubin ’71﻿

Oxford University Press, 2009﻿

Rubin, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University’s school of medicine, coauthors the book that aims to reduce stigmas associated with psychiatric illnesses and to help patients and their families access appropriate treatments.﻿

Rage Company: A Marine’s Baptism by Fire﻿

By Thomas P. Daly ’04﻿

John Wiley & Sons, 2010﻿

Daly, a captain in the Marines who served in Iraq’s Anbar province during the troop surge of 2007, offers a memoir of the efforts of Rage Company to forge an alliance with Sunni guerilla forces to drive al Qaeda from Iraq.﻿

Recordings

Haydn Sonatas: Galanterien to Sturm und Drang﻿

By Ulrika Davidsson ’07E (DMA)﻿

Loft Recordings, 2009﻿

Davidsson, an assistant professor of organ and historical keyboards at the Eastman School and music director of the Rochester City Ballet and the Draper Center for Dance Education, performs six keyboard sonatas by Haydn on a historically accurate clavichord and fortepiano.﻿

Dieterich Buxtehude and the Schnitger Organ, Vol. 3﻿

By Hans Davidsson﻿

Loft Recordings, 2009﻿

Eastman organ professor Davidsson records the third volume of the repertoire of the 17th-century organist thought to have influenced J. S. Bach. Davidsson’s performance on the four-manual organ in Gothenburg, Sweden, suggests how Buxtehude’s music might have sounded in the composer’s time.﻿

Wishing Well﻿

By the Ellen Rowe Quartet﻿

PKO Records, 2010﻿

Pianist Ellen Rowe ’80E, ’82E (MM) performs original compositions as well as an arrangement of the standard Alone Together with the quartet she formed in 2002. Rowe is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan.﻿

Escapades

By Harold Danko﻿

SteepleChase Productions, 2009﻿

The pianist Danko, professor and chair of the Department of Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media at the Eastman School, performs a selection of jazz standards and lesser-known songs, including an original composition, along with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Jeff Hirschfield.﻿

Serve and Volley﻿

By Bob Sneider ’94 and Paul Hofmann﻿

Origin Records, 2010﻿

Sneider, a jazz guitar instructor at the Eastman School and the Eastman Community Music School, joins community school jazz piano instructor Hofmann in a performance of original compositions as well as covers of Bill Evans’s Peri’s Scope and McCoy Tyner’s Inception﻿.﻿

Books & Recordings is a compilation of recent work by University alumni, faculty, and staff. For inclusion in an upcoming issue, send the work’s title, publisher information, author, and author’s class year, along with a brief description, to Books & Recordings, Rochester Review, 22 Wallis Hall, P. O. Box 270044, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0044; or by e-mail to rochrev@rochester.edu.﻿

BRAGDON FAMILY PAPERS

Necessity of Beauty

afterwords (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

MODEL MODERNIST: An 1896 poster by the modernist designer Claude Bragdon for the magazine The Chap-Book is one of nearly 300 items drawn from the University’s Bragdon Family Papers for an exhibition on display at Rush Rhees Library through Oct. 16. Known for his architectural and stage designs, Bragdon “was both a craftsman and an intellectual who applied his ideas to architecture,” says Jean France, a retired adjunct art history professor who helped open the exhibition. Bragdon’s influence on American modernism is also being celebrated this year with an exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery (opening Aug. 13) and in a new book, Claude Bragdon and the Beautiful Necessity, published by RIT.

STUDENT LIFE

Pillow Fight!

pillow (Photo: Adam Fenster)

BATTLE STATIONS: To celebrate the last day of classes this spring, students armed with pillows and an enthusiasm for epic battles faced off on the Eastman Quadrangle. The brainchild of Derek Crowe ’10, a biomedical engineering major from North Tonawanda, N.Y., and Stephen Keeley ’11, a physics major from Pittsford, N.Y., both of whom helped guide the action from the balcony of Rush Rhees Library, the event featured about 60 students divided into two opposing sides.