Rochester Review

November–December 2011, Volume 74, No. 2

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Valerie Alhart, Sharon Dickman, Adam Fenster, Melissa Greco Lopes, Susan Hagen, Peter Iglinski, and Brandon Vick

Editorial Office

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University of Rochester

Box 270044, Rochester, NY 14627-0044

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E-mail: rochrev@rochester.edu

Design

Steve Boerner Typography & Design

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.

ISSN: 0035-7421

Copyright © 2011 University of Rochester

Credits

Alumni photographs, courtesy of the subjects. Unless otherwise credited, all others are Rochester Review photos.

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Rochester Review: http://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review

Contents

759 Million Thank Yous

Letters

Sing On, YellowJackets!

Surgical First

Play by Play . . . Blow by Blow

Visual AIDS

Discovery

‘Extreme’-ly Clean

In Brief

How Now, Brown Cow?

12 Inducted into Athletics Hall of Fame

Rochester Launches $1.2 Billion Campaign

Meeting the Challenge

150 Years of Support

George Eastman

What’s Your Meliora Moment?

Rachel Dickler Coker ’96

Norman Spack ’69M (MD)

Jill Mestel Squyres ’81

Larry Bloch ’75

Joan Sapiro Beal ’84E

Loretta Ford ’00 (Honorary)

Karl Nelson ’59

Arts Leader

Bright Lights, Small Cities

In the News

It’s Idiomatic

Quiz Kid

A ‘Savvy’ Scientific American

Annual Honors

Nora Bredes: ‘Politely but Firmly, Nora Spoke Up’

William May ’37: A Leader in Science, Education, and the Arts

Books & Recordings

Don’t be ‘PowerPoint-less’

Picnic Power

759 Million Thank Yous

By Joel Seligman

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

On October 21, I had the honor of announcing the public phase of our $1.2 billion comprehensive capital Campaign. For a University of our size, this is a truly amazing aspiration. I was particularly delighted to also announce that our alumni and friends already had provided or committed $759 million to our Campaign—some 63 percent of our goal.

My Meliora Moment is the opportunity to thank so many who have worked so hard in the years that led to the public announcement. For me, the two most important words in the English language are thank you.

Thanks to an extraordinary Board of Trustees, led by Ed Hajim, each of whom has made a commitment to our Campaign. The Board and other volunteer leadership have provided over 30 percent of Campaign gifts and commitments to date. We were deeply inspired by Ed and Barbara Hajim’s $30 million commitment to the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Rich and Martha Handler’s $25 million commitment to undergraduate scholarships: former Chair Bob Goergen’s greater than $20 million in lifetime support for our University; Ernie and Thelma Del Monte’s $10 million commitment to neuromedicine; and many other pivotal leadership gifts from our Board.

Thank you to our Campaign leadership, especially trustees Rich Handler and Cathy Minehan, who are cochairing our Campaign; our Campaign Cabinet of Ed Hajim, Rick Aab, Larry Bloch, Bernie Ferrari, Gail Lione, Phil Saunders, Tom Sloan, Bob Witmer, and Honorary Chair Bob Goergen and the many other Board and non-Board members who have assumed Campaign leadership positions. We have established volunteer leadership in each school and many programs as well as Regional Cabinets in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Texas, Chicago and the Midwest, Boston, Florida, the Delaware Valley, Washington, D.C., and four separate Cabinets in Metro New York. We have also organized special initiatives to lead our Annual Fund, Athletics, Diversity, Entrepreneurship, Estate and Planned Giving, the George Eastman Circle, the Memorial Art Gallery, our River Campus Libraries, and Scholarships. Our faculty and staff campaign will be led by Kevin Parker, Paul Burgett, and Lissa McAnarney.

Thank you to our friends like Tom Golisano, whose most recent $20 million commitment will make possible dramatically improved pediatric care at the new Golisano Children’s Hospital, and Phil Saunders, whose $10 million commitment to clinical and translational research portends notable advances in neuroscience.

Thank you to the University’s senior leadership. Our Medical Center and schools are a cornerstone of all we hope to achieve. Let me express especial thanks to our academic leaders: Ralph Kuncl, Brad Berk, Raffaella Borasi, Rob Clark, Rich Feldman, Peter Lennie, Doug Lowry, Joanna Olmsted, Kathy Rideout, Mark Taubman, and Mark Zupan.

Each member of my Cabinet has now made or is finalizing a Campaign commitment.

Thanks to our faculty and staff whose careers here are the human foundation on which all we seek to achieve is built.

Thanks to our students for their faith in us.

Thanks to the members of the George Eastman Circle, now over 1,920 strong, who have made five-year commitments of at least $1,500 per year and helped us double the size of our Annual Fund in five years, one of the fastest growth rates among our peers.

Thank you to more than 100,000 individual donors who have contributed to our Campaign in one way or another since it began on July 1, 2005.

Thanks especially to Advancement, led by Jim Thompson, and including Jonathan Schwartz, Cynthia Beach-Smeltzer, Francine Cronin, Rob Gibson, Jeff Gillooly, Matt Haag, Frank Interlichia, Jack Kreckel, Eric Loomis, Joe Meister, Erin Moyer, Jennifer Patterson, Becky Wehle, and Kevin Wesley. Jim and his entire team have poured blood, sweat, toil, and tears into this Campaign, and their efforts have been decisive.

On October 21, as one university we launched the largest Campaign in our history.

We call our Campaign The Meliora Challenge. We share a dream: to be one of the leading universities of the 21st century, a community leader and builder, home to outstanding faculty, students, and staff.

Let there be no delusions. Our aspirations truly do aim high. They are not easy, automatic, or yet achieved.

But the history of our University is the history of Ever Better. We accept The Meliora Challenge because our University, our faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends have never settled for good enough. As scholars, teachers, clinicians, performers, we have the talent to move the world. This Campaign will help provide the resources to reach our potential.

Letters

(Photo: Rochester Review)

About the Babies . . .

What a cute, bright-eyed baby on the September-October cover!

I date back to the Class of 1948, but I enjoy reading Review and seeing pictures of all the weddings and babies. I don’t understand all the bridesmaids wearing black but it seems to be very popular these days. I haven’t been back to Rochester since the 1960s so it’s interesting to learn of the changes that have taken place at the U of R and in the city.

Janet Leininger Onkey ’48

Huntsville, Ala.

. . . and the Architects . . .

Very cute child on your cover. Opening the magazine, I even found a short item identifying him, naming his parents, describing the process of selecting him, and, oh my, a weblink where I could see more baby pictures.

Then into the issue, I discovered whole articles about new buildings on the River Campus (“A Campus on the Move”). Since I am an architect, having gone on from the U of R to Columbia University to study and enter the profession, I was drawn to these stories (right after reading about the baby, of course.) But to my dismay I found not a mention of the architect for these buildings or the process of selection of that architect. Or even, for that matter, anything about why the buildings are being built where they are shown.

Is there a value system at work here? Yes, and those values are clear—humanities, yes; medicine, yes; culture, no. It was thus when I attended, and apparently it will never change. Who suffers from the default use of this value system? You do, and it affects you every single day.

James Hadley ’62

Orleans, Mass.

I am pleased to see the coverage given to new campus buildings and improvements (September-October).

Credit should be given to the architects for their contributions to the programming and vision to create structures that fulfill their intended uses and places. This is especially true when a picture is captioned “architect’s rendering.”

Andrew Robinson ’71

Orange, Conn.

. . . and the Arboretum

“Tree-Lined Campus” (July-August) was of great personal interest to me. To add some little known information about an alumnus connection, my late husband, Frederick I. Price, Class of 1938, was the son of Frederick W. Price, Class of 1911. Whenever we visited the campus in good weather, my husband would examine the flourishing condition of the Quadrangle landscape, and comment with pride on his father’s role in designing the arrangements and his participation in its execution. That was in preparation for the opening of the River Campus to the College for Men in 1930.

A nurseryman of some prominence in the community, Frederick W. Price sadly succumbed to a ruptured appendix at Strong Memorial Hospital on March 22, 1932, his son’s 16th birthday. His part in helping to establish the green environment so much enjoyed today is, I feel, a fitting addition to your article on the arboretum.

Lillian Price ’56 (MS)

Pittsford, N.Y.

Department of Corrections In a story on Rear Admiral Gretchen Specht Her

bert’s appointment as the new commander of the Navy’s Cyber Forces (“Cyber Warrior,” Alumni Gazette) in the September-October issue, we misspelled her maiden name. We apologize for the error.

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.

STUDENT LIFE

Sing On, YellowJackets!

(Photo: Lewis Jacobs/NBC)

NATIONAL STAGE: Rochester’s longest-running a cappella group has been lighting up the stage on the NBC reality competition The Sing-Off this fall, advancing to become one of seven remaining competitors as of the Oct. 31 episode. Judges Sara Bareilles, Ben Folds, and Shawn Stockman have had high praise for the YellowJackets’ musicianship, camaraderie, and social outreach—as exemplified by the group’s musical exchange with a village in Kenya—but the group’s final place on the show was yet to be determined as this issue went to the printer. To keep up with the group’s progress, visit www.rochester.edu/news/sing-off.

MEDICAL EDUCATION

Surgical First

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

CLASS PORTRAIT: Considered by many medical professionals to be among the last male-dominated specialties, surgery is getting a new face at Rochester. Doctors Candice Lee (Drexel), Roseanna Guzman (Rochester), Laura Nally (UC, Davis), Bianca Redhead (Rochester), Linda Ding (University of Washington), Melissa Mastroianni (Wisconsin-Madison), and Kristin Kelly (SUNY Upstate) represent the first all-female surgical residency class at the Medical Center, if not the country. Assigned independently to Rochester from some of the nation’s top medical schools, they began the second year of their training this academic year. Across the country, only about 19 percent of the nation’s 160,000 surgeons are women.

RESEARCH

Play by Play . . . Blow by Blow

Rochester researchers and football players collaborate to learn more about the sport’s risks.

By Kathleen McGarvey

ON THE LINE: Cumulative effects of repeated low-impact blows to football players’ heads—experienced especially by players in positions such as offensive and defensive lines—are the subject of research by concussion researcher Jeff Bazarian. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

John Whiting ’12 has a lot to think about when he’s on the field. The Yellowjacket offensive lineman from LeRoy, N.Y., has to worry about snap counts, play formations, and, most of all, blocking the defensive lineman he’s responsible for in order to give his Rochester teammates a better chance to move the ball down the field.

He doesn’t think much about how many times his head, cocooned in its protective helmet, gets knocked into. Going head-to-head in the trenches, as it were, comes with the territory.

“Once I'm on the field, there are so many other things running through my head that there really isn't time to think about anything else,” Whiting says.

A new Rochester study exploring the overall effect of multiple small blows to the head—the kind that are routine for many football players, for example—may give athletes, trainers, coaches, and sports medicine specialists much to think about in coming years.

Led by Jeff Bazarian, an associate professor of emergency medicine, neurology, neurosurgery, and community and preventive medicine, the study is investigating the possibility that less forceful but repetitive head blows may be at least as damaging to players’ brains as single, concussive blows. Bazarian’s team is following 10 Yellowjacket football players, each sporting a helmet specially outfitted with six sensors that show how many times, and with what force, players take head blows in the course of each practice and game.

“What we’re hoping to find out is, what’s the relationship between the amount of very subtle injury we can detect in a player’s brain and the amount of force the head receives over the course of a season?” Bazarian says.

For the past several years, the long-term danger posed to athletes—especially football players—has come into greater focus. A study commissioned by the National Football League, with results released in 2009, showed that former players in the league ran a substantially higher risk—a rate 19 times the normal one for men aged 30 to 49—of Alzheimer’s disease and related memory diseases.

“It may not be the single concussion that’s the problem long term. The brain does a pretty good job of recovering from that,” Bazarian says. “But when you have day-in, day-out hits, you don’t give the brain a chance to do what it needs to do to get better. And that may be the problem.”

FOR THE RECORD: Kirsten Ross ’11, a health project coordinator in the Department of Emergency Medicine, assists Bazarian, wirelessly downloading the data collected on each helmet after every game and practice of the season. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The research had its beginnings in a pilot study with students at a Rochester area high school in 2007. Bazarian was looking to see if it was possible to detect brain injury from the sport on a new kind of brain scan, called defusion tensor imaging (DTI), that allows researchers to look at the brain on the cellular level.

Bazarian and his collaborators scanned the high school students at the beginning and end of the season. By the end of the season, only one student had suffered a concussion.

“We looked at the scans, and we found that the one player who’d had a concussion had a significant amount of injury on the scan—but the other nine players, who didn’t get concussed, had almost as much injury,” he says.

He applied for funding from NFL Charities, a nonprofit foundation established by the league’s 32 member clubs, to further his research, and the group has provided 10 specially designed helmets that enable Bazarian and Kirsten Ross ’11—a health project coordinator for the Department of Emergency Medicine—to track how many head blows a player receives in each game and practice, where he is hit, and with what force. The 10 participating Yellowjackets received DTI scans at the start of the season and will again at the conclusion, and six months later. They also participate in blood testing and genotyping, to help researchers get a fuller picture of their condition. Five control subjects—Rochester students, but not members of the team—are also taking part in the study.

“We tried to target players who were getting multiple repetitive hits, not necessarily the big whack. We weren’t interested in studying the wide receiver who may not have any helmet impacts for several games but then goes out for a long pass and gets concussed,” Bazarian says. “We were more interested in the offensive and defensive linemen, the guys who are hitting and getting hit on every play, in every game.”

While football hasn’t been seen as a sport as dangerous to its participants as boxing, that’s changing—and if subconcussive, repetitive blows are a threat to brain health, perceptions of the sport could change dramatically. The numbers Bazarian is collecting are steep. “After the first practice, we looked at one player’s helmet impact data on the computer, and he’d been hit 70 times,” Bazarian says. “Seventy times, one player, one practice—it wasn’t even a game. So over the course of the season, players are going to be hit on the order of a thousand times or so, I think.”

The public health implications, he notes, are significant. “There are thousands of 9- and 10-year-olds playing Pop Warner football. They may play competitively for 8 to 10 years. If these low-level head hits cause injury, and if this injury builds up from year to year, we’d better find out. And we’d better find out soon.”

So many Rochester players were prepared to take part that Bazarian had to turn some away. He hopes to secure further funding to put helmets outfitted with sensors on all players and to follow his subjects for several years.

“I think it’s the nature of the student who’s drawn to this University—it’s a research university,” says athletic trainer Eric Rozen. Bazarian credits him with making the study possible, a vital liaison between players and researchers. “He has a lot of credibility with the players that I don’t have, and they know he’s looking out for their best interest.”

While team members are interested in the research, they’re not preoccupied with the hazards of the sport. Still, “it would be hard for it not to be a concern,” says Rozen. “It’s been so out there in the public.”

(Illustration: Steve Boerner for Rochester Review)

“While on the field in practice and in games, I don’t feel any more or less aware of the hits I am taking, but since we now must turn in the special helmets each night after practice, I find myself looking back on any headache-inducing hits and wondering what kind of damage it may cause to my brain or what kind of force was produced. Basically, I’m very interested in the results,” says Brendan Pigeon ’13, a mechanical engineering major from Oneonta, N.Y. A linebacker for the team’s defense, Pigeon is involved in the majority of plays on the field. With 60 to 80 plays in a game, “I probably have helmet-to-helmet contact on 40 to 50 of them,” he estimates.

The research exemplifies Medical Center–College collaboration with the participation not just of the football team but also of DTI “guru”—in Bazarian’s words—Jianhui Zhong, a professor of imaging sciences and biomedical engineering at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, and Eric Blackman, a professor of physics and astronomy in the College, who will interpret the impact data when the season ends.

Bazarian is hopeful that, if he’s able to follow the students for several years, he’ll find that the brain recovers when it’s given adequate rest. “That would be best case scenario: if we see any damage, with rest, it goes away.”

The investigations could also point the way to a threshold, a number of blows or a collective force at which coaches and trainers know it’s imperative to pull a player out of a game.

“Maybe the information could be used in a preventive kind of way,” he says.

LIBRARIES

Visual AIDS

The world’s largest collection of AIDS posters goes online.

By Kathleen McGarvey

HISTORICAL VIEW: Edward Atwater ’50, a professor emeritus of medicine, says his collection of AIDS posters represents 30 years of social history. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation)

It’s been three decades since AIDS was first identified as a disease. Now Rochester is launching a new online database of the largest collection of AIDS posters in the world, providing a unique resource for understanding the visual history of AIDS.

Edward Atwater ’50, an emeritus professor of medicine who taught in the School of Medicine and Dentistry for 37 years, collected the posters and donated them to Rare Books and Special Collections. “I started collecting them to chronicle history in medicine, but soon realized that it wasn’t medical history as much as social history,” says the one-time history major.

The AIDS Education Posters Project website (http://aep.lib.rochester.edu)—intended for the general public as well as researchers, historians, artists, and physicians—showcases a collection of more than 6,200 posters in 60 languages from more than 100 countries. It will continue to grow as new collection materials, research papers, and articles are added over time.

Richard Peek, director of Rare Books and Special Collections, calls the collection “an incredibly rich visual history,” one that he hopes will engage those in medicine and science, as well as the humanities. “Using the best tactics of Madison Avenue advertising, the graphic messages range from the humorous to the deadly serious, from national concerns to the concerns of politicized risk groups.”

The launch of the website is part of a yearlong 30th anniversary “Looking at AIDS 30 Years On” Humanities Project. Scheduled events included a talk by Michael Gottlieb ’73M (MD), who is credited as the first researcher to describe AIDS. For more about the project, visit the website at http://rochester.edu/college/ humanities/projects.

Discovery

A Toast to Moderation

For the first time, new research shows that patterns of alcohol consumption—a drink or two every night, or several cocktails on Friday and Saturday nights only—may be more important in determining alcohol’s influence on heart health than the total amount consumed. In the journal Atherosclerosis, scientists found that daily moderate drinking—the equivalent of two drinks a day, seven days a week—decreased atherosclerosis in mice, while binge drinking—the equivalent of seven drinks a day, two days a week—increased development of the disease, a hardening or narrowing of the arteries that can lead to a heart attack or stroke. “People need to consider not only how much alcohol they drink, but the way in which they’re drinking it,” says lead study author John Cullen, a research associate professor in the Department of Surgery. “Research shows that people have yet to be convinced of the dangers of binge drinking to their health; we’re hoping our work changes that.”

Is Marriage Good for the Heart?

Giving your heart to a supportive spouse turns out to be an excellent way to stay alive, according to new research. Happily wedded people who undergo coronary bypass surgery are more than three times as likely to be alive 15 years later as their unmarried counterparts, according to a study published online in Health Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association. The effect of marital satisfaction is “every bit as important to survival after bypass surgery as more traditional risk factors like tobacco use, obesity, and high blood pressure,” says Harry Reis, a professor of psychology. He coauthored the study with Kathleen King, a professor emerita from the School of Nursing.

But the marriage advantage plays out differently for men and women. For men, marriage in general is linked to higher survival rates, and the more satisfying the marriage, the higher the rate of survival. For women, the quality of the relationship is more important. Unhappy marriages provide virtually no survival bonus for women, while satisfying unions increase a woman’s survival rate almost fourfold.

How Chronic Stress Short-circuits Parenting

In the best of circumstances, raising a toddler is daunting—but parents under long-term stress often find it particularly challenging to tap into the patience, responsiveness, and energy required for effective child rearing. Now research helps to explain why chronic stress and parenting are such a toxic mix. A study published in Development and Psychopathology finds that ongoing strains like poverty or depression disrupt the body’s natural stress response, making mothers more likely to engage in a host of problematic parenting behaviors, including neglect, hostility, and insensitivity.

“Stress gets under your skin,” says lead author Melissa Sturge-Apple, an assistant professor of psychology. “It literally changes the way a mother’s body responds to the normal demands of small children, and those changes make it much harder to parent positively.”

The study is the first to measure physiological stress response in real time, says Fred Rogosch, research director at the University’s Mt. Hope Family Center and a fellow author on the paper. Researchers observed 153 mothers and their 17- to 19-month-old children, and participants’ reactions were captured using a novel wireless electrocardiograph monitor developed for the study by University engineers Zeljko Ignjatovic and Wendi Heinzelman. “Stress is not just in our heads, it’s in our bodies,” says Sturge-Apple.

Breaking Up, Continental-Style

(Illustration: Steve Boerner for Rochester Review)

Lava deposits that lie many thousands of miles apart share common chemical and isotopic signatures—an indication that they share a common source in the Gondwana supercontinent. That’s according to new research by Asish Basu, a professor of geochemistry.

The Sylhet Traps lava flows of the Shillong Plateau in northeastern India lie some 340 miles to the east of the Rajmahal Traps at the bend of the Ganges River as it flows south to the Bay of Bengal. Almost 1,000 miles to the south is the 3,000-mile-long Ninetyeast Ridge, rising a mile above the surrounding Indian Ocean floor, still beneath the seawater. And some 1,600 miles east of the southern edge of this ridge is the edge of western Australia, while 2,500 miles to the southwest is the underwater Kerguelen Plateau, just off Antarctica.

Basu’s findings, which were published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, show that the samples all came from the same lava plume that seems to have broken apart the Gondwana supercontinent. It formed about 500 million years ago by the amalgamation of the continental landmasses of Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar, Australia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian subcontinent. “It’s important to understand large regions of igneous rock formations—called large igneous provinces,” says Basu, “because they often break apart continents and are sometimes associated with environmental catastrophes, like mass extinctions.”

ON EXHIBITION

‘Extreme’-ly Clean

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

Danielle Julian Norton, an artist and faculty member at Columbus College of Art and Design, assembles her installation for Extreme Materials 2, an exhibition organized by the Memorial Art Gallery that features work created from unusual, often mundane, materials. Titled “Clear,” Norton’s installation is made up of about 12,000 bars of Neutrogena amber facial cleansing soap. Weighing more than 3,000 pounds, the work took seven days to assemble. The exhibition runs through Jan. 15, 2012.

In Brief

(Photo: Admissions)

See the World

When the Class of 2015 arrived on campus for the fall semester, they received a novel challenge: to fill in “passports” with the signatures of fellow classmates from geographic regions around the world. Among those who complete the project, one student—whose name will be announced in mid-November—will win a round-trip ticket anywhere in the world. Through the Freshman Passport Challenge, first-year students are encouraged to meet more of their peers and discover how diverse their class is.

“It’s an experiment,” says Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions and financial aid. “But I think it’s an activity that the entire class can participate in, have fun with, and hopefully, creates an appreciation for diversity across the world.”

Sneak Previews

Not sure what to read next? Three Percent, the literary blog at the University’s translation press, Open Letter Books, has some suggestions. With an eye to readers interested in perusing books before making a selection, the new blog Read This Next (readthisnext.org) offers a free preview each Monday of a work of international literature due to be published within the next month. Previews can be read online, printed, or downloaded to a phone, Kindle, or e-reader. An interview with the author or translator and a full review are also available.

Faces and Places: Appointments at Warner, Nursing, and Optics, and in Research

Raffaella Borasi (Photo: University Communications)

Raffaella Borasi has been appointed to a third five-year term as dean of the Warner School. A mathematics educator, Borasi—who holds the Frederica Warner Professorship—is known as an innovator in designing programs that prepare teachers to be effective leaders in the classroom. As Warner’s sixth dean, she has led the school during a decade of significant growth in student enrollment and research funding. Borasi is a graduate of the University of Torino in Italy and received master’s and doctoral degrees in mathematics education from the University at Buffalo. She joined the Warner School faculty in 1985.

Kathy Rideout (Photo: University Communications)

Kathy Rideout, a faculty member of the School of Nursing for more than 25 years, has been named interim dean of the School of Nursing, pending the outcome of a national search for a successor to Kathy Parker. Parker, who was appointed dean in 2008, announced in September that she was stepping down as dean to devote herself more fully to her research interests within the Medical Center as director of its Sleep Research Program. Rideout has recently served as the school’s senior associate dean for academic affairs. She has also worked as a nurse practitioner within Golisano Children’s Hospital.

Xi-Cheng Zhang (Photo: RPI)

Xi-Cheng Zhang, the director of the Center for Terahertz Research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, becomes the new director of the Institute of Optics in January. Zhang succeeds Wayne Knox, who is stepping down after 10 years to become associate dean of education and new initiatives at the Hajim School. Internationally regarded for his work in the field of lasers and electro-optics, Zhang has received some 30 honors and awards during his career, most recently the William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Photonics Society.

David Williams (Photo: University Communications)

David Williams, one of the world's leading experts on human vision, has been appointed dean for research in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering. The William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics and director of the Center for Visual Science, Williams has pioneered new technologies to improve the eyesight of people around the globe, from the legally blind to those with 20/20 vision. He succeeds Paul Slattery, a professor of physics who has overseen research programs in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering since 1998, a period in which total research funding more than doubled, to $135 million in 2010.

Gandhi Institute Has a New Home

The M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence has opened the doors to its new offices in the Plymouth-Exchange neighborhood across the Genesee River from the River Campus. Housed in the Interfaith Chapel for the past four years, the institute opted to move to a house on South Plymouth Avenue owned by David Skinner ’79, a chemist with Xerox, and David Knoll, a mortgage officer and the principal founder of Genesee Co-op Federal Credit Union, a Rochester community development institution. The rehabilitated 1890s house, vacant for the last 17 years, will give institute staff more workspace, as well as room for a community garden site and outdoor meeting space. The institute will maintain a strong presence on campus, with an office in the Interfaith Chapel and continued use of the Gandhi Reading Room in Rush Rhees Library for events and programs. The new location will provide greater opportunities to work directly with the community. “We’re excited about creating an on-the-street presence in Rochester so close to campus,” says institute director Kit Miller.

THREE QUESTIONS

How Now, Brown Cow?

Weighing in on the debate surrounding chocolate milk in schools.

Interview by Kathleen McGarvey

As Americans try to tackle the obesity rate, chocolate milk has become a target, with some schools across the country opting to ban it. Stephen Cook, an assistant professor of pediatrics and an obesity researcher, is the leader of the Greater Rochester Obesity Collaborative, a group selected last summer to serve as a national model for obesity prevention and treatment.

Why is chocolate milk being targeted by schools?

It’s not just chocolate milk that we need to get out of kids’ meals—it’s any sugar-added beverages. Kids don’t consume enough milk as it is, and the trends in national data from the past 20 years show milk consumption in kids and adults going down, and juice and soda consumption in kids going up.

Isn’t chocolate milk different from soda?

Chocolate milk or milk has vitamin D, calcium, phosphorous, magnesium—these are very important nutrients. It has protein, as opposed to just sugar. And it has some fat. It’s a mixed nutrient food product, unlike a soda or juice, which has maybe a few vitamins, if any, and a carbohydrate: sugar. You have a healthier mix of nutrients in a milk product. But you don’t need the added sugar, whether it’s in the form of table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. Metabolically, too much of either is bad—especially in liquid form because they’re absorbed so fast that the liver can’t handle them properly. Lowfat milk and water is all kids really need to drink.

What about media reports touting chocolate milk as a sports recovery drink?

For high performance athletes, that’s fine. Recovery products are a mix of protein, minerals, and nutrients. They don’t taste like milk, but essentially that’s the concept. In a fatigued, highly trained athlete, getting protein right after exertion is important for muscle recovery, and some studies are finding that chocolate milk is a good source for that. But how many kids really are athletes to that degree?

ATHLETICS & RECREATION

12 Inducted into Athletics Hall of Fame

INDUCTEES: The 2011 members of the Athletics Hall of Fame are (sitting, left to right) Jennifer Witz (accepting for Walter Campbell ’60), Elizabeth Tobin ’94, Kerey Schmergel (accepting for George Schmergel ’66), Tanya Durni ’83 (accepting for James Lennox ’50), Monica Farren Warnsmann ’92, ’96 (MS), George Angle; (standing) Richard Miller, Mark Kivitz ’73, Rishad Pandole ’96, Thomas Murray ’82, David Bence ’81, John Luther ’82. (Photo: Susan Kost for Athletics & Recreation)

A total of 12 new members were inducted into the Department of Athletics and Recreation Hall of Fame this fall, recognized for their success and commitment to Rochester athletics and to their achievements in their careers and communities. This year's inductees include:

- George Angle (Friend of Rowing). Known as the “Father of UR Crew,” the retired senior executive for University public affairs was an initial mentor and fundraiser for the original University rowing program in 1981.

- David Bence ’81 (Basketball). A four-year starter on the basketball team, including captain on the then winningest team in school history (20 victories in the 1980-81 season), Bence is director of sales and marketing for Embassy Suites Hotels, Hilton Worldwide Corporation.

- Walt Campbell ’60 (Football/Baseball). A three-year starter on the football team, playing fullback, linebacker, and kicker, Campbell was a member of the undefeated (8-0) football team of 1958. He ranks 10th on Yellowjackets' all-time scoring list, with 150 points.

- Monica Farren Warnsman ’92 (Swimming). As a swimmer, she earned All-America awards in three relays and eight individual events and is currently listed in the top 10 all-time in 12 events at the University. After graduation, she taught special needs children in Virginia and Massachusetts and now volunteers at her children’s elementary school and serves as a Girl Scout leader.

- Mark Kivitz ’73 (Tennis). In 1970–71, Kivitz achieved a perfect 10-0 record at positions No. 1 and No. 2 singles during his sophomore year and went on to win several collegiate events, including the NCAA Atlantic Coast Regional’s individual title.

- Rishad Pandole ’96 (Squash). Pandole was a first team All-America selection in his final three years at Rochester, earning accolades from former coach Peter Lyman '47, who described Pandole as the best squash player he worked with as Rochester's coach.

- Jim Lennox ’51 (Golf/Basketball). A three-time golf team captain, Lennox compiled a 6-3 individual record in the 1950 season for the Yellowjackets. He was also a two-year starter on the basketball team, where he was one of five players who played in every game of the 1948-49 season.

- John Luther ’82 (Cross Country/Track and Field). Luther was the 1981 champion in the 1500 meters (3:56.50) at the New York State Collegiate Track and Field indoor championships and finished fifth in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 1981 NCAA championships, earning All-America honors and setting a then University record in the event.

- Richard Miller ’66 (Football). Miller was a three-year starter on both the offensive and defensive lines and served as cocaptain his senior year. Former coach Don Smith credited Miller as being one of the finest leaders who played for him.

- Tom Murray ’82 (Football/Baseball). A two-time All-American in football, Murray led the team in total tackles during his final two seasons. He was also a three-year starter on the baseball team, where he led the team in batting average in both his freshman and sophomore seasons.

- George Schmergel ’65 (Soccer). A three-year letterman, Schmergel held the single-season scoring record (16 goals) at the time of his graduation. A Rochester lawyer, he practices in several legal areas, including bankruptcy and immigration, and is active as a volunteer in the community.

- Elizabeth (Libbie) Tobin ’94 (Soccer/Basketball). Tobin led the soccer team to four straight NCAA appearances, reaching the title game in 1991. She helped anchor a defense that compiled 47 shutouts over her four-year career. A two-year starter on the basketball team, she is currently 21st on the career scoring list with 705 points, and she finished her career in the top 10 in free throw percentage (3rd), assists (6th), and steals (10th).

—Dennis O’Donnel and Scott Sabocheck

For more about the Hall of Fame, visit www.rochester.edu/athletics/halloffame.

Rochester Launches $1.2 Billion Campaign

‘Together we will make history,’ says President Joel Seligman of the first comprehensive fundraising effort.

By Sharon Dickman

OPENING FANFARE: Eastman School Dean Douglas Lowry and an ensemble of Eastman students acknowledge an ovation after performing the premiere of Lowry’s Semper Ad Meliora, written to celebrate the launch of the University’s $1.2 billion Campaign. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

With a goal of raising $1.2 billion by 2016, the University has launched the largest fundraising effort in Rochester’s 161-year history. The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester is designed to advance the University’s leadership in research, teaching, performance, and patient care, and to enhance its service to society.

The Campaign invokes the shared values and learning that have inspired generations of students, faculty, and staff to be “ever better,” the common translation of the University’s motto, Meliora.

“We know our aspirations are high,” President Joel Seligman said in announcing the Campaign during a celebration at Meliora Weekend. “We share a dream: to be one of the leading universities of the 21st century, a community leader and builder, home to outstanding faculty, students, and staff. Together as one university we launch our campaign. Together we will make history.”

Accompanied by Ed Hajim ’58, chairman of the Board of Trustees, and Richard Handler ’83, a trustee and national cochair of the Campaign, Seligman announced that more than $759 million had been raised since the leadership phase of the effort began in 2005.

The initiative represents the first time that the entire University—all schools, units, programs, disciplines, and locations—is participating in a unified, coordinated effort to meet University-wide fundraising goals in order to achieve a University-wide vision. All private gifts, pledges, grants, and other support during the Campaign period will count toward the total.

Hajim’s $30 million commitment in support of scholarships and endowment to his namesake Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2008 is the largest Campaign gift thus far. “George Eastman used to say, ‘The progress of the world depends almost entirely on education,’” said Hajim. “I go a step further and say, ‘Education is the key to everything.’”

The University joins an elite group of the nation’s universities in embarking on a $1.2 billion fundraising goal; only 34 of the nation’s four-year institutions are currently in campaigns of $1 billion or more.

The Meliora Challenge will focus on five main objectives: $225 million for student support, primarily through endowed scholarships and fellowships; $350 million for faculty, primarily through endowed professorships; $375 million to support priority programs within the schools and units; $130 million for unrestricted support through the Annual Fund; and $120 million for renovations and new facilities.

The University hopes to significantly increase membership in the George Eastman Circle, the University’s leadership annual giving society, which currently has more than 1,920 members who have made five-year commitments from $1,500 to $50,000 a year as part of the Campaign. Established in 2006, the George Eastman Circle is one of the fastest growing Annual Fund programs in the United States.

Cathy Jones Minehan ’68, a trustee and national cochair of the Campaign, has watched strong partnerships develop between the University and its donors.

“Whether or not they and their families have directly benefited from a Rochester education, supporters recognize our distinctive strengths in many fields and the exceptional qualities of our students and faculty,” she said. “Great universities stand apart because of the faculty and students that they recruit, retain, and support.”

For more about The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester, go to the website at http://campaign.rochester.edu.

The Meliora Challenge

Goal: $1.2 billion

Objectives

- $225 million for student support, primarily through endowed scholarships and fellowships

- $350 million for faculty, primarily through endowed professorships

- $375 million to support priority programs within the schools and units

- $130 million for unrestricted support through the Annual Fund

- $120 million for renovations and new facilities

Raised: $759 million (as of Oct. 21)

Conclusion: 2016

Meeting the Challenge

Why universities are conducting $1 billion-plus campaigns and what The Meliora Challenge means for Rochester.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

LEADING THE WAY: Trustees Ed Hajim ’58, board chair (above), and Larry Bloch ’75 [below, shown with his son, Matt ’13S (MBA)], were on hand to help launch The Meliora Challenge, noting that the comprehensive fundraising initiative is vital to Rochester’s future as a top research university. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Larry Bloch ’75, a University trustee and chair of the Board of Trustees Development Committee, is ready to field some questions, but he also has one of his own.

“What about you?” he says into the telephone, from his home office in San Diego. “Are you noticing it?”

The “it” is the heightened energy, the quickening pace of activity apparent in ways both large and small at the River Campus, the Eastman School, and Medical Center alike.

New construction. Beautification. Parking lots that faculty and staff say are more crowded than they were just a few years ago.

And packed residence halls, as the College has considered record numbers of applications, and in some years, accommodated a higher-than-expected yield of freshmen who decide to accept the University’s offer of admission.

Since July 1, 2005, the day Joel Seligman began his job as Rochester’s 10th president, the University has embarked on a steady expansion leading up to the official announcement during Meliora Weekend of The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester. The $1.2 billion Campaign, Bloch says, is designed to ensure that Rochester, which grew into a major research university in the 20th century, more than keeps pace in the 21st.

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

“In order to continue to be a first-tier research university, we need to be able to continue to attract top-tier faculty, top-tier students, and have programs and facilities that are among the best in the country, and frankly, among the best in the world.” Put another way: “Major research universities require major resources.”

During the past six years, the University has raised more than $759 million in gifts toward the Campaign’s $1.2 billion goal. Those gifts have helped fund facilities at the Eastman School, the Medical Center, and the River Campus. They’ve endowed professorships that have attracted renowned faculty and provided for scholarships that have enabled all schools of the University to attract top students, regardless of the students’ ability to pay.

At the same time, the Campaign is about more than just money. When Seligman announced the intention to embark on the largest fundraising initiative in the University’s history, standing by his side was Jim Thompson, whom he’d recruited from Washington University in St. Louis and made Rochester’s new senior vice president and chief advancement officer.

“We’ll raise this money,” says Thompson. “That’s less the issue.”

The Meliora Challenge, he says, is really about “building a network to promote engagement and the University.” Building that network requires external relations—the marketing and promotional efforts to help define the University, its mission, and its ethos to a wide range of friends, from members of the local community to far-flung graduates. It’s an effort that’s been undertaken in a complementary fashion by University Advancement and a reorganized and strengthened office of University Communications, with the goal of helping to generate support that’s sustainable well into the future.

“Rochester, like many great research universities, has recognized that an external relations program isn’t an option,” Thompson says. “It’s an absolute requirement to be a vital, healthy, impactful university. We had definitely kept our light under the bushel.”

Rochester has not traditionally focused on fundraising because for decades, it didn’t have to. Says Ed Hajim ’58, the chair of the University’s Board of Trustees: “When I was in school in the 1950s, the endowment was the fourth or fifth largest in the country. There was a mentality at the school—it was pervasive—that we didn’t need to fundraise.”

LEADERS: Vice President Paul Burgett leads President Joel Seligman and Chief Advancement Officer Jim Thompson, along with 700 guests, in The Genesee during the program for The Meliora Challenge. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

In the 1980s, the University invested heavily in venture capital and private partnerships, a strategy that yielded poor results, adds Hajim, the past chairman and CEO of the investment banking firm Furman Selz. Hajim was instrumental in turning that strategy around, generating results more in line with the needs of the University.

Meanwhile, Rochester had begun falling behind, as many other universities were dramatically ramping up their fundraising efforts. In recent years, campaigns in excess of $1 billion—and, just in the last 10 years, far in excess of $1 billion for some of the nation’s larger research universities—have become a trend. Schools such as Cornell, Columbia, and Stanford have all launched campaigns in the $4 billion range in just the last five years. Public universities such as the University of Virginia, UCLA, and the University of Colorado—seeking to reduce their dependence on taxpayer support—have followed suit. Private colleges, accounting for size, have been no less ambitious, with institutions such as Mount Holyoke, Ithaca College, and others conducting campaigns ranging from $100 million to more than $300 million.

What’s driving these large sums? Echoing Bloch, Rae Goldsmith, a senior staff member at the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE, says rapidly advancing and changing technologies are major factors. As a result, she adds, fundraising is “critical” for research universities like Rochester, with strong programs in the sciences, and in particular, in the health sciences.

“It’s important for these research universities to be able to provide their students and their faculty the same modern facilities as other institutions,” she says.

The Board of Trustees hired Seligman in 2005 with development as his principal mandate, says Jonathan Schwartz, the senior associate vice president for advancement and the director of University campaigns, who, like Seligman and Thompson, also came from Washington University, in 2007. There

, Thompson and Schwartz had been part of a fundraising operation that had helped catapult the St. Louis university—once known as a local “streetcar college”—to national recognition. Thompson had been second-in-command of a program that has since completed a $1.55 billion campaign, the fifth largest in the history of higher education at the time of its launch. He helped build the infrastructure—the major gifts program, the capital projects program, the regional development programs, and programs in corporate and foundation relations, stewardship, and donor relations—to drive the campaign.

Since arriving at Rochester, he’s spearheaded a similar effort. There are now approximately 200 staff members working for University Advancement and extending its reach locally and nationally.

Hajim says the change has been stark. “We had a somewhat unsophisticated advancement effort,” he says of years past. “We have a sophisticated advancement effort now.”

For the past several years, Thompson, Schwartz, advancement officials at each of the University’s schools and units, professional staff in alumni relations as well as alumni volunteers, and trustees have been engaged in a coordinated effort to contact and engage thousands of Rochester’s more than 90,000 living alumni from across disciplines and schools. It’s an effort to tap into an institutional culture, to draw out its ethos and establish among the members of a far-flung family a sense of loyalty and stewardship.

Schwartz says campaigns are about “really focusing collectively on articulating—or rearticulating—what the mission is and what the pressing needs and opportunities are.”

Goldsmith says this type of advanced planning has become standard practice among the educational institutions CASE serves.

“There’s much more thoughtful legwork at the front end of campaigns today. They’re planned more strategically, addressing not only immediate needs, but positioning for the long term.”

LEARN: “I literally walk around campus, thinking ‘how did I ever get to be this lucky?’ ” chemistry major Emily Hart ’12 told guests at a celebration marking the launch of the Campaign. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The legwork for The Meliora Challenge began with each of the units of the University presenting coordinated strategic plans to the president and the board’s Strategic Planning Committee, chaired by Chair Emeritus Robert Goergen ’60. What’s ultimately brought to fruition depends as much on the priorities and visions of donors as it does on the sum total of resources raised.

In the end, it’s about ownership. Who owns the private university?

“The people who own the University are the alumni, the local community leaders, the parents,” says Thompson. “Because the University of Rochester, like any great research university, isn’t going to be sold. It isn’t going out of business. It’s not going to move. We’re in some ways the ultimate stakeholders in this community.”

“My dream is that by the time I’m buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery, and if God came down from the heavens and said, ‘Who’s responsible for this place?’ we’d have tens of thousands of people immediately raising their hands. That’s a healthy university. That’s a vibrant university.”

That depends on a philanthropic culture that has to be developed broadly.

Hajim, for his part, sees progress.

Take the reunions.

“At our 50th Reunion, we raised a record amount of money,” he says of the Class of 1958, noting that the record didn’t last.

“The Class of ’59 had never beaten the Class of ’58 at any reunion. Well, they beat us. And at the Class of ’60, they raised an absolute record.”

In the days leading up to Meliora Weekend 2011, Hajim offered his prediction that this year’s reunion giving would far surpass last year’s record.

Says Bloch: “I think that to the extent that we achieve our goals, it becomes a little bit self-fulfilling. We have to be smart enough to realize that when we finish this Campaign, what we’ve really done is taken step one toward building that philanthropic culture.”

“My opportunity to be at Rochester came in part on the backs of people who came before me,” he adds, noting that even full tuition “didn’t cover anything close to the real cost of getting an education at Rochester.

This is really our responsibility.”

150 Years of Support

A look at how its alumni and friends helped establish the University, 1850–2000.

By Kathleen McGarvey

EARLY DAYS: Founding trustee John Wilder (top) and then President Martin Brewer Anderson were key early figures as the University set up its “campus” in the United States Hotel in Rochester. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Since its earliest days housed in the United States Hotel building on Rochester’s West Main Street in the 1850s to its stature today as one of the nation’s premier research universities, Rochester has grown in size and influence. Helping lay the groundwork for the standard model of matter, the country’s first educational program in optics, one of the nation’s most highly regarded music schools, pioneering work in vaccine technology—the list of the ways that Rochester has made, and continues to make, a lasting imprint on the world is long. But none of its achievements would be possible without the engagement of the University community to make Rochester “ever better.”

In the past 161 years, the University has grown to 158 buildings, more than 200 academic majors, and more than 2,000 faculty and instructional staff. At every juncture, members of the University and Rochester communities have come together to provide for the institution’s future. Here are a few sample moments in the University’s philanthropic history.

1850

In 1849, sponsors of an earlier plan to relocate Madison University—now Colgate—from Hamilton, N.Y., to Rochester applied to the regents of the University of the State of New York for a provisional charter to establish an entirely new institution of higher learning in the Flour City. The regents issued the charter on Jan. 31, 1850, with the stipulation that the charter would expire if plans to raise $130,000—three-quarters of which would form a permanent endowment—were not realized. The ensuing campaign for funds took supporters of the would-be college throughout the state. Newspaper publisher Alvah Strong later wrote in his autobiography: “I myself went with Messrs. [John] Wilder and [William] Sage . . . from store to store and from house to house, in city and country, soliciting subscriptions to the University.” Wilder, an Albany businessman who had promoted Madison’s move, moved to Rochester in 1849 and, elected president of the Board of Trustees, took the reins of the fundraising effort. In 1861, the regents declared the charter to be permanent.

1900

‘A PEACE-VICTORY’: Susan B. Anthony was instrumental in gaining admittance for women. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

When, after a long effort by supporters of women’s education, Rochester trustees approved a plan to make the University coeducational, they did so on the condition that $100,000 first be collected to fund the expansion of the student body. “Glory, Hallelujah!” proclaimed Susan B. Anthony. “This is better news to me than the victory over Spain. It is a peace-victory, achieved only by the death of prejudice and precedents.” Rochester women—led by Helen Montgomery, a graduate of Wellesley College and cofounder, with Anthony, of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Rochester—embarked on a door-to-door campaign across the city. But the required amount of money was large, and after two years the committee still fell short, with only $40,000 to show for their efforts. In June 1900, the trustees were persuaded to lower the stipulated amount to $50,000 in subscriptions—a total that was dramatically achieved when Anthony pledged her own life insurance to cover the final $2,000 needed.

1920s

MODERN MEDICINE: Early School of Medicine and Dentistry professor George Corner leads an anatomy class. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

The Eastman School of Music, the School of Medicine and Dentistry, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, Strong Memorial Hospital, the River Campus—all trace their roots to the civic-minded leadership, vision, and support of Eastman Kodak founder George Eastman and a remarkably transformative period in the 1920s. Working with then President Rush Rhees, Eastman began his “great music project,” eventually committing $17 million to support the music school and to build Eastman Theatre. Also with Rhees and with the support of what’s now the Rockefeller Foundation, Eastman led efforts to establish an innovative “model medical school,” where physicians would train in science as well as in clinical care at the adjacent Strong Memorial Hospital (named for Eastman’s business partner, Henry Alvah Strong). Spurred by his own dental woes, Eastman insisted that the new school include dentistry. In the early 1920s, when it became clear that the University was outgrowing its Prince Street location, trustees embarked on a plan to move the College for Men to a bend in the Genesee River. Alumni and others—notably Joseph Alling, Class of 1876, president of the associated alumni—called on the University to look beyond securing its immediate needs and launch an ambitious campaign to provide for its future. Dubbed “Ten Millions in Ten Days,” the effort—begun in November 1924—garnered the participation of more than 10,000 subscribers. More than 70 percent of living alumni, along with faculty and students, also contributed. The campaign’s major single contributor was Eastman.

1950s

MODELING: President Cornelis de Kiewiet, in a photograph taken by Ansel Adams in 1952. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

One of the first challenges taken on by Cornelis de Kiewiet as president was the merging of the men’s and women’s colleges on the River Campus—a merger that brought with it a need for new funds to provide new facilities, such as a six-story residence to house the women who had previously lived on the Prince Street Campus, and other living, dining, and athletic facilities for men and women. The 18-month, $10.7 million campaign took as its theme: “A truly great U. of R. benefits us all. Will you help?” Advertisements filled newspapers, store windows, billboards, and buses. In January 1956, the campaign surpassed its target, with a total of $12 million.

1960s

GROUNDBREAKING: Board Chair Joseph Wilson ’31 (right) helped guide the University’s growth in the 1960s with president W. Allen Wallis (third from left). In the early 1960s, the two celebrated the groundbreaking of a nuclear structure laboratory with Rochester Gas & Electric CEO Robert Ginna (left), and physics professor Harry Gove. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Of the University’s dramatic rise in the 1960s under the leadership of then Board of Trustees Chair Joseph Wilson ’31, then President W. Allen Wallis noted the Xerox founder’s vision in shaping Rochester’s future: “[H]e inspired others to do it. He elevated everybody’s sights.” While Wilson and his family gave generously in support of brick-and-mortar improvements, their most heartfelt gifts were for less tangible purposes. With his parents and his wife, Marie, Wilson gave his “first great gift,” in Wallis’s words, to be spent in five years “on people and programs, not things.” The most substantial gift from him and his wife, a contribution of $15 million in 1967, was intended particularly for distinguished professorships. In a letter announcing the gift to Wallis, Wilson wrote: “There is no doubt that the University needs buildings desperately, and Peggy and I are delighted that we could help with that. But helping to improve the intellectual quality of the academic programs that go into those buildings is very close to our hearts indeed, and truly an exciting prospect for us.” In the late 1960s that vision also took shape as the University developed plans to accommodate an eightfold increase in faculty and students since the River Campus opened in 1930. A $38 million fundraising effort made possible the construction of some of Rochester’s signature structures—Wilson Commons; the Interfaith Chapel; the addition of the east wing on Rush Rhees Library; Hutchison Hall—as well as new facilities at the Medical Center, an enlargement of Sibley Library, and additional practice rooms and other improvements at the Eastman School.

1990s

HEAR YE: Robert Goergen ’60, then chairman of the Board of Trustees, rings the Anderson Bell to signal the official opening of the campaign victory celebration for the “Campaign for the ’90s.” (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

A five-year, $375 million “Campaign for the ’90s” concluded in June 1996 with a final tally of $421 million—$46 million over the goal. More than $303 million came from outside the Rochester area, an indication of growing national standing. “Campaigns create resources, and resources create new possibilities, new options, for people at the University,” Robert Goergen ’60, then chair of the Board of Trustees, told supporters at a victory celebration. He made one of the campaign’s largest individual gifts, $10.5 million, $10 million of which established an endowment for undergraduate programs. More than 78,000 donors contributed to the campaign chaired by Edwin Colodny ’48 and David Kearns ’52.

A FOCUS ON RESEARCH: The Medical Center’s “Campaign for Discovery” raised funds in support of medical research and provided for improved research facilities, including the Arthur Kornberg Medical Research Building, adjacent to the School of Medicine and Dentistry. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

The Medical Center made a major commitment to medical research in the 1990s with a plan to modernize its research facilities and recruit 70 research scientists and 400 technicians and support personnel by investing $400 million over 10 years—the largest effort since the School of Medicine and Dentistry opened in 1925. As part of a strategic plan to strengthen Rochester’s work in understanding and curing diseases and to enhance its reputation among the country’s top programs, the Medical Center launched the “Campaign for Discovery” in 1997, an effort to raise $35 million in five years. In just two and a half years, the goal was achieved, with more than $25 million in contributions coming from the Rochester-area community. The Arthur Kornberg Medical Research Building—named in honor of Arthur Kornberg ’41M (MD), who received the Nobel Prize in 1959 for unraveling the process of DNA replication and for his work as the first scientist to synthesize DNA in the laboratory—and the Aab Institute for Biomedical Science are among the fruits of the campaign.

For more on University of Rochester history, see A History of the University of Rochester, 1850–1962 by Arthur May (University of Rochester Press, 1977), the source of much of the information in this article.

George Eastman

COMMUNITY LEGACY: Eastman Theatre opened in 1922. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

No history of giving at Rochester could be complete without including George Eastman, the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company and Rochester’s most generous and influential donor.

In 1899, Eastman gave the University his first gift: a Cartridge Kodak #5 camera, donated to a geology professor to enable him to take photographs on glass plates or film. Over the years, as Eastman’s relationship with the University and its third president, Rush Rhees, grew, so did his vision for Rochester’s future.

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

In 1902, Rhees approached Eastman for the first time to ask for a contribution, explaining the University’s need for a physics and biology building. Eastman offered $5,000, but admonished Rhees that “I am not interested in higher education.” Ultimately, however, he decided to give Rhees a check for $60,000—the entire cost of the building. When the three-story, red-brick building opened in 1906, the ever-modest Eastman was chagrined to see it named in his honor.

His skepticism about the value of education was not to last. The “progress of the world depends almost entirely upon education,” he came to declare in 1924, and Rochester was an institution in which he had “unbounded confidence.” Shortly before he died in 1932, Eastman revised his will to leave most of the balance of his estate, valued then at more than $17.6 million, to the University.

What’s Your Meliora Moment?

A new initiative highlights the University’s influence on the lives of members of the University community.

Where were you when you realized what it meant to be “ever better?” Do you remember when the meaning of Meliora really struck a chord? If so, leaders of a new project sponsored by the University Advancement Office want to hear your story.

Called Meliora Moments, the project is an online compendium, where alumni, students, faculty, and friends can upload stories of how the spirit of the University’s motto has touched their lives and the lives of their families and friends. Part community history book and part social network, the site is designed to showcase—and to share—the larger lessons of the University’s influence.

Here’s an edited snapshot of a few of the stories collected so far. To read more, or to submit your own Meliora Moment, visit meliora.rochester.edu.

—Scott Hauser

Rachel Dickler Coker ’96

(Photo: Heather Ainsworth/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Director of Research Advancement
Binghamton University

Some of my most valuable UR experiences happened outside the classroom. Editing the Campus Times was the single most important thing I did to develop my writing abilities and prepare for a career in journalism. The friendships I formed there continue to sustain me in my 30s. I also had the good fortune to spend a semester in Paris. I improved my language skills and learned a lot about French art, architecture, and culture, but I also gained a new level of self-confidence and a new vantage point on American life. My travels were one part of my global experience; my roommates and friends in the International Living Center were another. Thanks to the ILC, I have friends in Turkey, Malaysia, India, Africa, the UK, Canada, and all over the U.S.

Inside the classroom, I had the humbling experiences of getting some not-so-good grades from some professors who could tell when I wasn’t living up to my potential. I read a lot of Shakespeare, the entire Bible, and everything Jane Austen and Toni Morrison ever wrote. I also studied cognitive science, linguistics, biology, and statistics. These offered just a taste of many topics outside my field, but they awakened in me a curiosity that continues to fuel my work as a science writer.

My advice to freshmen: Join at least one club or organization. Don’t eat too much. Buy some good boots and a warm coat. Take time to explore the city and go to Toronto, Niagara Falls, and Letchworth State Park. Have fun and take risks! And try a course outside—maybe way outside—your major.

Norman Spack ’69M (MD)

(Photo: Aynsley Floyd/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Pediatric Endocrinologist and Codirector, Gender Management Service
Children’s Hospital Boston

In 1967, during patient interview training at the beginning of third year at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, eight of us were blessed to be mentored by George Engel, a founder of the University’s biopsychosocial model, one hour a week as a group. As we left the patient’s bedside and retired to a conference room, Dr. Engel grilled us about every item of clothing the patient was wearing as well as the number of get-well cards, the title of the book being read, and all other discretionary bedside articles. As he put it, an inpatient (in the days when patients weren’t admitted and discharged a day later) creates an entire world around the hospital bed. Understanding that world provides understanding of the patient.

To this day, I do a “George” with the Harvard Medical School students at the bedside. They aren’t any better the first time around than we were. But just as was the case for us, as students in 1967, the current students will never forget George Engel’s sensitivity to the individual patient as we attempt to emulate him. I am sure this teaching technique will pass through the generations through multiple medical schools.

Jill Mestel Squyres ’81

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

Clinical Psychologist
San Antonio, Texas

I met with an academic advisor when I decided I wanted to go to graduate school in clinical psychology during my junior year. I’d skipped a grade so I was going to graduate from the U of R when I was only 20. The advisor gently informed me that I was unlikely to be accepted to a clinical psychology graduate program because I was so young and most graduate programs were looking for candidates with more maturity and experience than I had. I should still apply and do everything I could to put together a competitive application, but I needed to be sure to have a good plan B. The advisor gave me a list of the things I should do to improve my application and even reviewed my personal statement and gave me suggestions before I sent out my applications.

I sent out 20 applications to hedge my bets since these grad programs had only 2 to 3 percent acceptance rates. I formed a backup plan to get a doctorate in developmental instead of clinical psychology because it was much less competitive and my young age wouldn’t be considered a liability. I ranked the 20 schools in quartiles and decided I would be happy to get in anywhere and set my expectations low.

The application deadlines came and went and I heard nothing. I breathed a sigh of relief that I had apparently survived the first cut of rejections. Then 10 rejection letters arrived in rapid succession, including one from my first choice, UCLA. I refused to feel dejected. I was asked to interview at two schools. I went to both interviews and was told I’d done very well. And then I waited. Finally three thick envelopes stuffed my mailbox at the campus post office. Not only was I accepted at three of my top five schools, I was offered a full National Institute of Mental Health scholarship to each. In two out of the three programs, only one such scholarship was offered to the entire incoming class. It was mine if I wanted it.

I chose to go to USC. When I arrived I decided I was going to show them just how successful a “young” graduate student could be. I’ve never regretted my choice. Each year at USC I was “ever better.” I graduated with my doctorate at 26 with several peer-reviewed publications under my belt, and I have continued to enjoy a productive and successful career ever since.

I’ve never forgotten the push to make myself “ever better,” to succeed and overcome my limitations to get into graduate school and accomplish goals I’d never dreamed of. I hope I never lose the Meliora spirit.

Larry Bloch ’75

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

University Trustee
San Diego, Calif.

In 1974, I was a political science major and thought it would be a good idea to take Classics of Political Thought as background to modern political thinking. The course and professor shared a reputation for being very demanding. For the first half of the fall semester, we read works by Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle. The reading, as advertised, was difficult, and I studied intensely for our midterm exam. To this day, I can remember burying myself in the stacks, reading and re-reading the material covered. I walked into the exam thinking that I was relatively well prepared.

What hit next sent me into immediate panic. There were only two questions on the exam covering topics never discussed in class or covered by our reading. Question 1: from a Thucydidean frame of reference analyze the current (Nixon) impeachment crisis. Question 2: from either an Aristotelian or Platonic frame of reference tell me what you think about Gerald Ford as Nixon’s likely successor.

I sat frozen but eventually wrote something that I am sure must have read like total nonsense. I left the exam room feeling sick, not even sure what Professor Bluhm meant by “frame of reference.” A few days later, my worst suspicions were confirmed. For the first time in my life, I received an “F.”

Thankfully, we were only a few days from Thanksgiving break, and I went home and forgot everything I didn’t understand about classical political thought. Unfortunately, I still had to come back Sunday afternoon to face the remainder of the semester.

My next assignment, due Thursday morning following break, was to orally present a comparison of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the concepts of “freedom, love, and reason.” As one might expect, I approached the assignment with “great” confidence, looking forwarding to presenting to the class material about which I had no idea.

I remember going to Rush Rhees Library Sunday evening and taking out whatever books I could find on topic and relocating myself to the medical school library at the hospital. I figured if I was going to freak out, being at the Medical Center would be far more convenient.

I spent Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, and much of Wednesday at the hospital library, reading and trying to piece together what I might talk about. Despite intensive effort, I struggled with the reading. Nothing seemed to make any real sense, when all of a sudden around 11 on Wednesday night, I had an epiphany, an unexplainable “a-ha!” moment. Everything seemed to come together. Inexplicably, I now understood the midterm exam and why I had received an “F.” I wrote for an hour and then went back to my dorm. I was relieved. I knew exactly what I would speak about. I set my alarm for 5 a.m. and drove to the Mt. Hope Diner where I worked out the details of my presentation. I raced back to campus for my 9 a.m. class.

As the class settled in, Professor Bluhm invited me to the front of the room. Shaking, I began my argument. Time flew by, and when I finished, Professor Bluhm actually said “very well done.” He meant it. I got an “A” on the presentation and several weeks later an “A” on the final exam. He realized I finally understood the concepts and had learned to think on an entirely new level. He generously gave me a final grade of “A” for the semester.

Looking back 35 years, I realized that what I learned that night was far more important to my life than understanding the thinking of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Struggling with the material, I discovered for myself that all logical arguments must begin with a core premise upon which reasoning is applied to form a sound conclusion. With that discovery I materially strengthened my own powers of deductive reasoning which have served me well in business, as an investor, and in almost every other aspect of my life.

Joan Sapiro Beal ’84E

(Photo: Eric Reed for Rochester Review)

Commercial Recording Artist
Los Angeles

Growing up as the child of a music teacher and Eastman alumnus, the late Erwin Sapiro ’54E,’55E (MM), I heard many a Meliora Moment from my dad. He loved to recount his trips with the Eastman Wind Ensemble under Freddie Fennell ’37E, ’39E (MM), ’88 (Honorary), playing trumpet duets with his twin brother, Maurice ’54E,’55E (MM), on the Kilbourn Hall stage, or playing in the on-stage band for La Bohème in Eastman Theatre. Dad loved to share his treasured memories of his student days at Eastman, and they always inspired me. From an early age, I knew that I would be a musician, just like my dad. If Dad was disappointed when I put down the trumpet and decided I was a singer, he never showed it. He was always proud.

As a student in 1983, I was a soloist for the International Computer Music Conference in Kilbourn Hall. I was premiering a work by Eastman professor Allan Schindler, along with pianist Bryan Pezzone ’84E and a pre-recorded tape designed by Schindler. As the lush sonic landscape moved throughout the hall and I added my own voice, I realized that although this was very different from the classical music my father had taught me, it was finally my music. I was finding my own voice.

Now a studio singer in Los Angeles, I add my voice to many pre-recorded soundscapes. Working with my husband, Jeff Beal ’85E, on his scores is my greatest joy. I love to find new ways to use my sound to connect with the drama portrayed on the screen. And I remember that moment of discovery—finally finding my own musical voice.

Loretta Ford ’00 (Honorary)

(Photo: Ken A. Huth for Rochester Review)

Dean and Professor Emerita
School of Nursing

In 1972, I moved from the University of Colorado, a large, public academic institution, to become the first dean in the newly created School of Nursing at the University. This autonomous school, long the dream of the alumni and friends, came with great expectations for implementing a unique model of unification of nursing education, practice, research, and leadership under the newly appointed dean and director of nursing. A formidable task I was excited to undertake!

I had a lot to learn about UR’s institutional environment and the community. However, no new leader could have been more welcomed or supported by central administration, trustees, the faculties and staff of nursing and medicine, the alumni, and the community. Still it was a daunting task in uncharted waters, and there were many naysayers in other academic medical centers predicting doom.

There were days, I must admit, that made me question why, with so many other career choices, I had chosen Rochester. I had to remind myself that the struggles to change the role of nurses in advanced nursing practice, via the nurse practitioner, were futile unless the environments of health care policies, practice, and delivery changed as well. An enabling, receptive environment for advanced practice nurses was just as important as the preparation of the practitioner. Rochester offered that environment and an opportunity to demonstrate fully the potential and promise of the nurse practitioner, the clinical nurse specialist, and other advanced nurse practitioners.

Still, coming from a large, public, highly regarded and much politicized institution, as a newcomer with great expectations, I was often confounded trying to get my arms around UR’s uniqueness. Faced with preparing comments for the inaugural ceremonies for the new School of Nursing, I reviewed some materials that my “coaches” in central administration had provided on the mission and characteristics of the University. President Allen Wallis’s words were my Meliora Moment. He reminded me that the mission of UR was to “achieve and sustain excellence in the academic areas it has chosen to serve.” I remember writing that, while being chosen has enormous advantages, it also has huge matching responsibilities. Coupled with the mission were the UR characteristics that Chancellor Wallis identified: UR was advanced, coherent, small, diverse, independent, responsible, and rooted.

This Meliora Moment guided my decisions through many tough situations: it clarified my vision of the mission, value, and worth of UR, gave me direction for the future, and made the motto, Meliora, the holy grail.

Karl Nelson ’59

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

Retired Health Care Executive Volunteer Hospital Chaplain
Pittsford, N.Y.

At the end of my freshman year I was selected from the men’s Glee Club to become one of the 12 charter members of a new men’s vocal ensemble, to be called: YellowJackets!

What a thrill, for a very young freshman (I had just turned 18 a month before). For the remaining three years there were many other memorable moments: two separate Glee Club performances with the Rochester Philharmonic, one conducted by Eric Leinsdorf, performing on the Ed Sullivan Show, touring Colorado; and many other faith-building experiences as a member and president of the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.

But my most memorable Meliora Moment came 50 years later, during Meliora Weekend 2006. A 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of the YellowJackets was planned. There was an outstanding response. There were only two of us from that original 1956 group: Jerry Gardner ’58, ’65 (Mas), who was the emcee for the Friday evening banquet, and me. I brought reflections from the earliest days. On Saturday evening, a grand concert was held in a packed Strong Auditorium. A group from each decade presented a set of songs from their era. The two of us from the 1950s merged with the 1960s. The last set of the evening was a massed chorus of all of the YellowJacket alumni who were present.

In order for this large crowd to be assembled on stage, the curtains were drawn, and I was asked to kill time by providing some meaningless chatter for the audience. Then, at the appropriate time, the curtain was opened. I turned around to face 125 YellowJackets from every decade of our existence. What a thrill! To have started a group of 12, and to see that over 10 times that number had come to a reunion! I was awestruck. This fall, as the 2011 YellowJackets have appeared on national television, alumni YellowJackets are even more proud.

We celebrate a lot of history at UR. But to have been part of a history-making event which, by now, has a lifespan of 55 years, truly makes me a part of that history.

Arts Leader

The arts are part of everyday life, says Nancy Uscher ’72E. As the new president of Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, she works to keep it that way.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

USCHERED IN: Violist Uscher (above) was inaugurated as president of Cornish College of the Arts this fall, a celebration whose guests included Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn (below, right) and John Gordon Hill, the chair of Cornish’s board of trustees. (Photo: Stephen Brashear/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Nancy Uscher ’72E says she’s had a couple of epiphanies during her career, and the first was at Eastman. It was 1972, the year of her graduation and also the school’s 50th anniversary, a celebration that ran the course of the 1971–72 academic year and culminated with a performance by the Eastman Philharmonia at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

Uscher, a violist in the Philharmonia, was told she’d play sixth chair.

“I thought I was going to be disregarded almost,” she says, recalling the letdown she felt, especially having spent the previous year at the Royal College of Music in London, an experience she describes as “glorious.”

“Then I remember this incredible experience,” she continues. The concert featured a premier of Partita for Harpsichord and Orchestra, a piece written especially for the occasion by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.

(Photo: Stephen Brashear/AP Images for Rochester Review)

“We’d been rehearsing, and I see that I alone begin the piece for the entire orchestra. As the sixth chair.”

Uscher describes how Penderecki would approach her and sing the rhythm. “He would go ‘bump bump bump bump.’ He said, ‘You have to start without a conductor. You just have to remember the pulse and start it.’”

“I’ve thought about this many times,” Uscher says today, and the lesson she draws from it is that leaders can be drawn from anywhere. Even the sixth chair. So, she tells young artists: “Be ready.”

Inaugurated in October as the new president of Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, Uscher says the experience guides her approach to leadership. “Everyone can be a leader in his or her own way. I really believe that leadership should come from different sectors, and I don’t like micromanagement.”

Uscher has herself come from many different sectors of the arts world. After graduating from Eastman, she pursued scholarly and performance paths simultaneously, pursuing a doctorate in music at New York University and advanced study in viola at Juilliard. A series of guest teaching assignments and residencies took her around the world. And for six years, she was coprincipal violist in the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

She returned to the United States in 1984, eventually focusing on scholarship and academic leadership, working her way up to associate provost of academic affairs at the University of New Mexico, then provost of the California Institute of the Arts (or, CalArts), before being tapped as president of Cornish. In 1999, she returned to Eastman and delivered a talk, “The Artist’s Leadership Challenge: Defining Career Opportunity for a Changing World,” as part of the Arts Leadership guest speaker series.

Uscher says Cornish offers “a very unusual model.” It was founded almost a century ago by Seattle pianist and educator Nellie Cornish, who wanted her students to experience the “interrelatedness” of all the arts. In 1977, the school became an accredited college, offering bachelor’s degrees in visual arts, design, theater, music, dance, and performance production. With the exception of only two arts colleges she can think of—her previous employer, CalArts, and Philadelphia’s University of the Arts—Uscher notes that colleges of the arts are either colleges of the visual arts or colleges of the performing arts.

“It changes the context in which you learn,” she says, adding that at CalArts, the tendency of visual artists to articulate the concepts behind their work encouraged her to do the same as a musician.

In the 1930s, the Cornish faculty included the dancer Martha Graham and was the place where the avant-garde composer John Cage and the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham met one another and began their lifelong collaboration and partnership.

Nonetheless, the school floundered for decades following Cornish’s retirement as president, and its accreditation as a college in the 1970s failed to revive it. In the past decade, however, the college has experienced a notable turnaround, securing a move downtown, the integration and improvement of physical facilities, and growing visibility in the Seattle arts community and beyond.

With these changes, Uscher says, “Now we’re in a position to really fulfill our promise.”

Paul Nathanson, who’s the executive director of the National Senior Citizens Law Center and helped Uscher establish a Center for the Arts in Society when they were both at the University of New Mexico, thinks she’s well poised for the role. He recalls her success in designing innovative programs to bring arts into the community, and in finding funders to help them thrive.

“She’ll be able to push an agenda that shows the interconnectedness of the arts, and of the arts in society,” he says. In the music department at New Mexico, he adds, “Some of the faculty were pretty straight about what they were doing. Their attitude was, we’re doing composing, we’re playing, and the rest of this stuff”—such as Uscher’s activities at the center—“is just sort of weird. Nancy has a broad vision of the arts.”

Indeed, Uscher says if there’s one thing she wants to communicate to young artists, it’s that “they have a huge role in our world.” And lest anyone think that’s mere platitude, Uscher has an illustration of exactly what she means—her second epiphany, which occurred while she was in New Mexico.

She was on a town hall tour, in which the new president of the university and other leaders ventured far from the flagship Albuquerque campus into the mostly rural state, to see how the University could meet the needs of the state’s far-flung communities. In one of the towns, a young university doctor who had been offered a job to become that town’s only physician stood up and said, according to Uscher’s recollection: “You’ve offered me a really high salary, and I thank you, but I can’t come here, because my daughter can’t take ballet lessons, and I can’t go to a museum, and I can’t go to the theater and have my ideas challenged.”

It was a powerful illustration to Uscher of the centrality of arts to thriving communities.

“This is not separate,” she says, referring to the arts, and to her life’s work in helping to bring them to as many places and people as she can. “It’s integrated into the way people are thinking about their lives.”

Q&A

Bright Lights, Small Cities

Small industrial cities haven’t fared well. But they could thrive in a green economy, argues journalist and historian Catherine Tumber ’92 (PhD).

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

RENEWABLE: Small industrial cities like Flint, Muncie, Youngstown, and others are often seen as throwaways, but despite their challenges, they “have a lot to work with,” argues Tumber in a new book published this fall by MIT Press. (Photo: Aynsley Floyd/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Small-to-midsize industrial cities with illustrious pasts have more promise in the future than we’ve been led to believe, argues Catherine Tumber ’92 (PhD) in a new book, Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World (MIT Press, 2011).

Eclipsed by the strength of large cities such as New York, Boston, and Chicago, small-to-midsize industrial cities such as Syracuse, Akron, and Muncie, Ind., rarely find themselves included in debates about what the city of the future might look like. But beginning in 2008, Tumber, a journalist, historian, and research affiliate at MIT’s Community Innovators Lab, traveled to those and approximately 20 other mostly small industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest, and found healthy, intergenerational sustainability movements attempting, with some notable successes, to retool their communities for a green, low-carbon future.

Tumber—who grew up near Syracuse, attended college amidst the several small industrial cities of western Massachusetts, and earned a doctorate in history at Rochester—is frank about her personal affection for modest-sized cities.

“They can be really interesting, idiosyncratic places to live for people who don’t necessarily want to live in New York or Los Angeles. And they have a lot to work with,” she said in an interview in October.

What are some key assets of small-to-midsize industrial cities in a low-carbon future?

For one, they generally sit among some of the richest farmland on earth. And in the future that land will be essential to restoring local food systems, harvesting wind and solar energy, and producing biomass for alternative fuels. In Janesville, Wis., there’s a fight on between people who want to preserve some especially rich farmland that surrounds the city and those trying to develop that area for an eventual megaregional corridor stretching from Detroit through Chicago to Minneapolis–St Paul. These are two very different responses to climate change and globalization. Should cities grow even more concentrated into megaregions, or should these smaller cities retain not only their identities but their farmland and industrial infrastructure for productive use? Smaller industrial cities are also home to much of what is left of American manufacturing—in terms of both skills and industrial infrastructure. In Muncie—a place with a long history of making automotive transmissions—they’re transitioning to making gear boxes and other components for windmill turbines. They’ve attracted a couple of companies—unfortunately, not American ones—to the area because of the skills and infrastructure there. In addition, parts of Indiana are on a highly desirable wind shed. So they’re manufacturing their product near their ultimate market, a practice that will likely grow more common as transportation fuel costs rise. Muncie is a great example of a city using both its natural resources as well as its manufacturing legacy to plan for a low-carbon economic future.

Why have small-to-midsize industrial cities confronted so much more difficulty than big cities in the first place?

You have to go back to the 1960s to get to the root of their trouble. That’s when deindustrialization and outsourcing began in earnest. But federal disinvestment in cities and economic support for suburban development also played a large role and had consequences that were devastating for large cities, but catastrophic for smaller ones. Urban freeways, for example, were constructed in cities of all sizes. But while the Cross Bronx Expressway destroyed specific neighborhoods in New York City, in a city the size of Rochester, the Inner Loop destroyed the entire urban fabric of the central city. The flight of retail to the suburbs also disproportionately harmed smaller cities. Large, dense cities could still sustain a significant retail presence, but smaller cities were hollowed out by the retail exodus and became much less appealing places to live over time. That said, they also have disproportionately more to gain from reversing these and other ill-fated decisions.

You’re quite critical of some of the urban theorists and economists who’ve conceived of ways of revitalizing cities after the 1960s. Why?

They’ve made the metropolis the ideal urban form, when that had not always been the case. I lay much of the blame for that on Jane Jacobs—as much as I admire her—who framed the intellectual response to widespread urban decline, ignoring what she called “little cities and dull factory towns,” and arguing that urbanism thrives only in large and growing cities. She influenced the next two generations of urban theorists—people like Richard Florida and Ed Glaeser—who, while they don’t ignore smaller cities, advise them to do things like develop a creative class of artists, try to attract knowledge industries, and develop a tourist trade. These are not necessarily economic strategies that will work in smaller cities. As much as Scranton is a nice small city, it’s probably never going to have a substantial tourist trade. In the 1960s, there had been a debate between Jacobs and the social critic Lewis Mumford about different visions of urbanism. In the 1920s and 30s, Mumford argued against concentrating all of our wealth and cultural riches in large cities, and for valuing smaller cities as well, including the farmland and the ecological region in which they’re set. Jacobs basically won the debate, which is why we don’t really hear about Mumford’s vision.

You write that a localist movement has existed “in fits and starts” since the 1970s. Are you optimistic about its future?

Definitely. So much has changed since the 1970s. First, the environmentalist movement has become more urban-centered. A lot of localist talk was cast in terms of the rural back-to-the-land movement in the 1970s. Second, the smart growth movement has emerged. It didn’t really exist in the 1970s. And the smart growth movement tends to view cities as part of a larger economic and ecological region. And so when people talk about localism, they talk about it in a more expansive way. And then third and more recently, the local food and retail movement, inspired to some extent by Michael Pollan’s work, has mounted a serious challenge to our petroleum-drenched industrial food system. All of this has broadened the appeal of localism since the 1970s.

Will that be enough to reverse the fortunes of small industrial cities?

My book is really about the promise of smaller industrial cities in a low-carbon future, and that future is not really yet upon us. There’s little market incentive for the shift in thinking and political will that my book calls for. I wrote this book in the hopes that public officials, foundation leaders and an animated citizenry will take a longer view. Short of that, we can also impose cap-and-trade, fuel taxes, or things like that. But I don’t think we have the political will for that. Better for these places to quietly prepare for what’s likely to come.

In the News

Richard Kovar ’76 is National Family Physician of the Year

The American Academy of Family Physicians has named Richard Kovar ’76 the Family Physician of the Year. The award, national in scope, is given out annually to just one physician. Kovar, a practicing family physician and medical director of the nonprofit Country Doctor Community Health Centers in Seattle, serves predominantly urban, low-income, uninsured patients. His medical interests range from pediatrics and adolescent medicine to geriatrics, treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, and mental health and crosscultural health care.

Sports Journalist Ron Thomas ’71 Earns Lifetime Achievement Award

Ron Thomas ’71 has received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism. The award, given out by the Northeastern University School of Journalism and its educational and consulting center, Sport in Society, recognizes journalists who examine sports in social and cultural context. In addition to reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Chicago Daily News, BlackAmericaWeb.com, and other outlets, Thomas is the author of They Cleared the Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers (University of Nebraska, 2002) and was a researcher for the HBO documentary Fields of Fire: Sports in the ’60s (1995).

Civil Engineer Priscilla Nelson ’70 Honored for Research

Priscilla Nelson ’70, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, has received the 2011 Henry L. Michel Award for Industry Advancement of Research from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Nelson, a leader in the design and construction industry, specializes in geological engineering and its application to underground construction. She served as provost at the institute from 2005 to 2008, and previously spent 11 years at the National Science Foundation where she served as senior adviser to the director, and in various other leadership roles.

It’s Idiomatic

Has the world gone to hell in a handbasket? If so, don’t hem and haw. Hitch your wagon to a star . . .

We’ll bet dollars to doughnuts you’ve heard—and even used—a few phrases like these. When it comes to knowing their origins, make no bones about it: Steven Price ’62, author of Endangered Phrases: Intriguing Idioms Dangerously Close to Extinction (Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), is the bees’ knees.

Price is a writer specializing in guides, catalogs, and collections of quotes and stories, mostly about horses. But he’s versatile—a jack of all trades, one might say—with a knack for creating useful handbooks on other subjects, such as What to Do When a Loved One Dies, also published by Skyhorse.

Last year, Skyhorse’s publisher, Tony Lyons, approached Price about creating a collection of idioms and their origins. Price obliged, and began to research, consulting a host of dictionaries on usage, and watching quite a few movies and television shows. Literature, too, is a rich source of idioms, with 19th-century poets and Shakespeare the unwitting creators of quite a few.

These days, Price finds that a major appeal of idioms is nostalgia. “As I came across any number of phrases and expressions,” he writes in his introduction, “I heard in my mind’s ear the voices of my parents and grandparents and others of their generation. Other people had the same reaction, and I suspect you will too.”r

—Karen McCally

Quiz Kid

How many of the idioms, whose origins are described below, can you identify? (Source: Steven Price, Endangered Phrases: Intriguing Idioms Dangerously Close to Extinction. Skyhorse Publishing, 2011).

1. Meaning to make peace or settle differences, this expression refers to a ritual practiced by American and Canadian native tribes at the end of hostilities.

2. A person who’s so ignorant that s/he can’t even make Boston’s most famous dish is a person who ____________ .

3. Used to convey “delighted surprise at finding someone whose appearance was unanticipated,” this expression is the title of a 1950 hit by popular singer Eileen Barton.

4. This expression, which means to become useless, refers to the fate of chickens or other farm animals who’ve outlived their utility.

5. Meaning “the whole thing,” this expression, originating in the early 19th century, refers to all the parts of a working musket.

6. Meaning “to get into an argument,” Price writes that this expression “appears in an 1865 poem by Algernon Swinburne to describe the domestic disagreement of a heifer and her mate.”

7. An idiom of fairly recent origin, this one is used to express disgust. It originated in Southern California in the 1970s and was made famous nationally in a 1982 hit single by father–daughter duo Frank and Moon Unit Zappa.

8. Used to describe “an effete and spoiled goody-two-shoes young man,” this expression refers to the title character of an 1886 best-selling novel by the author and playwright Frances Hodgson Burnett.

9. Meaning “subjected to a harsh scolding or punishment,” this idiom refers to a device used to remove excess water from clothing in the days predating washing machines equipped with spin cycles.

10. Meaning “noisy confusion,” it appears in this quote, from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain? / When the ____________ ’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won.”

Answers

1. Bury the hatchet

2. Doesn’t know beans

3. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.

4. Go to pot

5. Lock, stock, and barrel

6. Lock horns

7. Gag me with a spoon

8. Little Lord Fauntleroy

9. Put through the ringer (or, wringer)

10. Hurly burly

A ‘Savvy’ Scientific American

Executive editor Fred Guterl ’81 helps the 166-year-old magazine thrive in the digital age.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

LIFE IN CYBERSPACE: Transforming print magazine features into digital events gives them “an alternative life” online, says Guterl, who is helping create digital enhancements at Scientific American. (Photo: Brian Ach/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Fred Guterl ’81 recalls that he was six or seven years old, growing up in Rockland County, New York, the son of an engineer, when science first lit his imagination.

“It was the 1960s and the moon race was on,” he says. “That stuff was in the headlines all the time, and I was completely taken by it.”

Those headlines, of course, were the big, inky kind that, on major news days especially—such as July 21, 1969, the morning after Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon—soiled your shirtsleeves and blackened your fingertips.

More than 40 years later, at a time when it takes more than newsprint or grainy analog television newscasts to ignite general interest in science, Guterl is helping the nation’s oldest, and many say most authoritative, popular science news venue to thrive in the digital age.

Guterl, who studied electrical engineering at Rochester, is a veteran science journalist who served in editorial roles at Discover, IEEE Spectrum (the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), and Newsweek before joining Scientific American as executive editor in April 2010.

He was hired to help spearhead the magazine’s latest redesign. At Scientific American, redesigns are part of a process of what editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina has fittingly described as evolution. “Everything evolves,” she wrote in October 2010, introducing the recalibrated and rejuvenated magazine.

But the struggle for survival in the wild world of media is a bit more daunting than usual. “It’s no secret that print journalism isn’t growing,” says Guterl. “Any magazine that wants to survive has got to figure out what to do about that. You can decide to hang on to what you have for as long as you can, or try to reinvent yourself, in addition to holding on to what you have.”

What Scientific American has had for some time, Guterl stresses, is pretty good: more than 500,000 loyal, highly educated print subscribers. What it has developed more recently is arguably even better. “We’ve got close to 3 million unique visitors to our website every month,” he says.

The October 2010 redesign of both the print and online editions changed the look of Scientific American, and updated several of its departments. Science journalist Charles Petit praised the redesign on the well-respected blog Knight Science Journalism Tracker, noting the magazine’s “increased readability, timeliness, and savvy,” and the American Society of Magazine Editors gave it one of its coveted “Ellie” awards—a National Magazine Award for General Excellence—at a celebration last May.

“That is real recognition from our peers that we’ve raised the bar here in terms of editorial quality,” says Guterl.

Now he and a team of editors are looking ahead toward creating more, and more impressive, digital enhancements for the magazine. “The really exciting thing we’re doing is getting all of our editors, including the ones who have worked mainly on print features, to think more broadly about our content across platforms,” says Guterl. Last January, in a sign of what’s to come, Scientific American launched its first special edition for the iPad. It drew content from two previous theme issues—“Origins: The Start of Everything” (September 2009) and “The End: Death, Endings, and Things that Should End” (September 2010)—and combined and transformed it to create a downloadable collection of articles, audio interviews, videos, and interactive graphics called “Origins and Endings.”

Guterl says Scientific American will continue to take feature articles and transform them into digital events with three-dimensional, interactive graphics, among other elements. Because while printed articles can be static, on the web, they live. As Guterl says, they have “an alternative life.” And helping ensure that those alternative lives have richness in content and meaning to readers will be Guterl’s job in the days ahead.

FAMILY & FRIENDS

Annual Honors

The University and its academic units recognized several alumni and friends for their achievements and service this fall.

ARTS, SCIENCES, AND ENGINEERING: Honored this fall were Joseph Cunningham ’67 (MA), Daniel Cantor ’81, Gail Lione ’71, Hugo Sonnenschein ’61, Mike Jones ’76, and Lynn Seppala ’74 (PhD). (Photo: Jan Regan)

Arts, Sciences, and Engineering

Dean’s Medal

- Trustee Hugo Sonnenschein ’61 Sonnenschein is the Adam Smith Distinguished Service Professor and president emeritus at the University of Chicago.

James S. Armstrong Alumni Service Award

- Trustee Michael Jones ’76 Jones is the senior vice president and senior portfolio manager for Federated Clover Investment Advisors.

Distinguished Alumnus Award, School of Arts and Sciences

- Trustee Gail Lione ’71 Lione served as the executive vice president, general counsel, secretary, and chief compliance officer for Harley-Davidson from 1997 to 2010.

Distinguished Alumnus Award, Hajim School of Engineering

- Lynn Seppala ’74 (PhD) Seppala is an optical engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he is the main optical designer for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

John N. Wilder Award

- Daniel Cantor ’81 Cantor is the managing member and chief compliance officer for the New York City–based CK Advisors, an investment company he cofounded in 2006.

John N. Wilder Award

- Joseph Cunningham ’67 (MA) Cunningham is a trial attorney and founder of the Washington, D.C., area law firm Cunningham & Associates.

MEDICINE: Dean Mark Taubman (second from right) presented awards to Robert Sutherland ’66M (PhD), Paul Griner ’59M (MD), Barbara Simms, John Brewer ’74M (MD), and Frank LoGerfo ’66M (MD). (Photo: Ken Huth)

School of Medicine and Dentistry

Dean’s Medal

- Robert Sutherland ’66M (PhD) A former Rochester faculty member and retired researcher, Sutherland helped found the University’s Technology Development Fund.

Distinguished Alumnus Award

- Trustee Paul Griner ’59M (MD) A senior lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School, Griner is a professor emeritus at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, where he also served as general director and CEO of Strong Memorial Hospital.

Humanitarian Award

- John Brewer ’74M (MD) A family practitioner for more than 30 years, Brewer served in impoverished areas of Africa and Appalachia and delivered care to urban poor residents and refugees in Michigan and Buffalo.

John N. Wilder Award

- Barbara Simms Simms has volunteered since 2004 as a “standardized patient” at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, helping medical students hone their diagnostic skills and improve their interpersonal relationships with patients.

Alumni Service Award

- Frank LoGerfo ’66M (MD) The retired chief of vascular surgery and chair of the Department of Surgery at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, LoGerfo is the William V. McDermott Distinguished Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

SIMON SCHOOL: Dean Mark Zupan (second from right) poses with the Simon School’s award winners, Martin Stern ’79, ’80S (MBA) (left), John Anderson ’80S (MBA), and John Davidson ’88S (MBA) (right). (Photo: Ria Tafani)

Simon School

Distinguished Alumnus Award

- Carol Anthony (John) Davidson ’88S (MBA) Davidson is senior vice president, controller, and chief accounting officer of Tyco International.

John N. Wilder Award

- John Anderson ’80S (MBA) Anderson is the president of Northern Capital Group, a real estate development and investment company headquartered in Rochester and a part-time lecturer in finance at the Simon School.

Alumni Service Award

- Martin Stern ’79, ’80S (MBA) Stern is a partner at K&L Gates, an international law firm with offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

NURSING: Honored by the School of Nursing were Patricia Stone ’97N (PhD), Jean Johnson, professor emerita of nursing, and Connie Lynn Leary ’59N. (Photo: Ken Huth)

School of Nursing

Dean’s Medal

- Jean Johnson Johnson is a professor emerita of the School of Nursing and former associate director of oncology nursing at the Wilmot Cancer Center.

Distinguished Alumnus Award

- Patricia Stone ’97N (PhD) Stone is a professor of nursing at Columbia University, where she directs the Center for Health Policy and the doctoral program.

John N. Wilder Award

- Connie Lynn Leary ’59N A nurse and nursing educator, Leary taught at the Rochester School of Practical Nursing until her retirement in 1996.

DENTISTRY: Eastman Institute for Oral Health Director Cyril Meyerowitz presented Jack Howitt ’56, ’62M (Pdc) with the Director’s Award. (Photo: Keith Bullis)

Eastman Institute for Oral Health

Director’s Award

- Jack Howitt ’56, ’62M (Pdc) Howitt is the founder and CEO of Midland Management, a real estate management firm, and its subsidiary, Midlakes Development & Construction. As an instructor at the University, Howitt helped design, establish, and direct the University's SMILEmobile program.

TRIBUTE

Nora Bredes: ‘Politely but Firmly, Nora Spoke Up’

ACTIVIST: Bredes fought for women’s inclusion as director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership. (Photo: University Communications)

Of the many events Nora Bredes organized in her 12 years as director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership, one that was powerfully symbolic was the annual Susan B. Anthony Legacy 5K. Nora was a runner herself, going out daily, rain or shine. For the Legacy 5K, a benefit for the center, she chose a route from Anthony’s house downtown to the chapel on the River Campus. She encouraged people to sign up in teams, to reflect the teamwork she believed generated so many strides (so to speak) for women’s rights. And she ensured that as participants approached the finish line, they’d hear Vocal Point—the University’s only female a cappella group—singing on the steps of Strong Auditorium, adding one more heart-squeezing element to the event, and ensuring that women’s voices would be heard—literally.

Nora died in August, at age 60, from breast cancer. She had already assembled a fresh team of guests for this year’s Stanton–Anthony Conversations, a roundtable discussion on an issue related to women’s leadership that Nora organized each Meliora Weekend. Each year she also led the Susan B. Anthony Legacy Dinner, a celebratory event honoring the spectacular young women who had already made a difference on campus and in the community as student leaders.

Nora worked tirelessly behind the scenes for women’s inclusion. Did a list of University events feature only men? Politely but firmly, Nora spoke up. Were only men consulted on key decisions? Again, Nora spoke up.

She fought especially hard to increase the number of women in elected government, not simply to provide full representation for half of humanity, but because the conversation literally changed when women were included (she was happy to provide the research proving it). Women worked more for consensus. Women were more likely to strive for long-term rather than short-term solutions. Women interrupted less and listened more.

Nora drew on the powerful example of Susan B. Anthony to demonstrate how a seemingly impossible goal is not, in fact, impossible when it is the right goal.

—Honey Meconi

Meconi is a professor of musicology at the Eastman School, a professor of music in the College, and director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies.

TRIBUTE

William May ’37: A Leader in Science, Education, and the Arts

ADVISOR: Trustee and engineer May served as advisor to the Hajim School. (Photo: Arthur Brower/The New York Times/Redux)

For his entire adult life, from his graduation from Rochester until his death in September at the age of 95, Bill May distinguished himself as a business leader, a fundraiser, and a leader in education. At Rochester, he served with distinction as a trustee since he was first elected in 1965. A chemical engineer who presided over the American Can Company during a long period of growth and transformation in the 1960s and 1970s, Bill was also an arts advocate who served on the board of the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts and founded the Film Society of Lincoln Center. From 1971 to 1986, he served as director of the New York Times Company, and later served as chairman and chief executive officer of the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation.

But despite his many great accomplishments and different roles, Bill made all of us feel like we were friends with him on a first-name basis. He would meet faculty, students, and department chairs, and place them instantly at ease with his abundant charm, optimism, humor, and friendliness.

As a member of the what’s now the Hajim School of Engineering Advisory Board, on which he served for many years, Bill traveled to campus at least once a year, at his own expense, to help improve programs and set goals. His knowledge of industry, universities, and not-for-profits—all gained from years of experience in leadership roles in each sector—provided an invaluable perspective that few others could match.

On a few occasions, I tried to express just how much we appreciated his involvement, and how honored we were to have the May Professorship at Rochester. He deflected the issue with his usual good-natured smile and natural grace, and returned to the issues facing the Hajim School. Those of us who benefitted from Bill’s advice and conversation will miss him greatly, but at the same time are profoundly grateful for his time with us.

—Kevin Parker

Parker is the William F. May Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and dean emeritus at the Hajim School, and a professor of radiology and of biomedical engineering at the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Books & Recordings

Books

Communities and Health Care: The Rochester, New York, Experiment

By Sarah F. Liebschutz ’71 (PhD)

University of Rochester Press, 2011

Through archival materials and interviews with business leaders and hospital officials, Liebschutz, a distinguished service professor emerita at the SUNY–College at Brockport, traces the development and later disintegration of the Rochester area’s regional health care planning initiatives.

The Wild Rose

By Jennifer Donnelly ’85

Hyperion, 2011

In the last novel of her Rose trilogy, Donnelly takes readers to World War I in an adventure spanning from London to the Himalayas.

Sutras & Bardos: Essays and Interviews on Allen Ginsberg, the Kerouac School, Anne Waldman, Postbeat Poets and the New Demotics

By Jim Cohn ’86

Museum of American Poetics Publications, 2011

The poet Cohn offers his third collection of prose, including writings on the development of poetry in his lifetime.

Pieces Missing: A Family’s Journey of Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury

By Larry C. Kerpelman ’63 (PhD)

Two Harbors Press, 2011

Kerpelman, a psychologist, health care writer, and editor in Acton, Mass., recounts his wife’s struggle to recover from a traumatic brain injury. Part memoir and part exploration of brain injuries and the efforts of the health care system to deliver care, the book recounts the family’s experiences of multiple emergency room visits, hospitalizations, brain surgery, and rehabilitation.

Time Cries: A Poet’s Response to 9/11/01

By Bruce B. Wilmer ’66

Winding Brook Press, 2011

In his fifth published poetry collection, Wilmer commemorates the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001, by exploring through verse the themes of “pain, recovery, remembrance, and hope.”

Blood at the Root: Lynching as American Cultural Nucleus

By Jennie Lightweis-Goff ’09 (PhD)

SUNY Press, 2011

Lightweis-Goff explores the relationship of lynching to black and white citizenship in the 19th- and 20th-century United States in a book that won SUNY Press’s Dissertation/First Book Prize in African American studies. Lightweis-Goff is the American Council of Learned Societies new faculty fellow in English and gender and sexuality studies at Tulane University.

Tyler Tiger Has Tonsillitis

By Rick Saupé ’96, ’00M (MD)

Tate Publishing, 2011

Saupé, an anesthesiologist in Pittsfield, Mass., tells the tale of Tyler Tiger, who undergoes surgery when a sore throat turns out to be tonsillitis. Tyler learns not only “how the operating room works, but also that having surgery isn’t as scary as he thought.”

Speaking as a Leader: How to Lead Every Time You Speak

By Judith Humphrey ’70 (MA)

John Wiley & Sons, 2011

The founding president of the leadership consulting company The Humphrey Group shares tips on how to engage and inspire listeners.

Keywords for Children’s Literature

Edited by Philip Nel ’92 and Lissa Paul

New York University Press, 2011

Nel, a professor of English and director of the graduate program in children’s literature at Kansas State University, gathers 49 essays on key concepts in the field of children’s literature, including identity, innocence, empire, and others.

Getting It Done: Experienced Healthcare Leaders Reveal Field-Tested Strategies for Clinical and Financial Success

Edited by Kenneth H. Cohn ’72 and Steven A. Fellows

Health Administration Press, 2011

Cohn and Fellows bring together professionals from 16 health care organizations to share case studies concerning issues in health care. Cohn, who holds an MBA in addition to an MD, practices general surgery and is CEO of the Boston-area consultancy Healthcare Collaboration.

Shakespeare’s Memory Theatre: Recollection, Properties, and Character

By Lina Perkins Wilder ’99, ’99E

Cambridge University Press, 2010

Wilder, an assistant professor of English at Connecticut College, explores Shakespeare’s use of mnemonic objects in plays such as Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Hamlet, and others.

Witch Hunt

By Linda Chalmer Zemel ’66, ’68W (MA)

Déjà vu Productions, 2011

Zemel, a former English instructor at Salem State University in Salem, Mass., presents a psychological drama in which a 40-something widow encounters multiple surprises when she moves to Salem to take a job as a radio host.

Unmasking Psychological Symptoms: How Therapists Can Learn to Recognize the Psychological Presentation of Medical Disorders

By Barbara Schildkrout ’69

Wiley, 2011

Schildkrout, a psychiatrist in private practice and clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, examines more than 100 physical disorders that may mask themselves by presenting psychological symptoms.

Prep for Success in Chemistry: A Bridge Between Math and Science

By Laurie Sorge ’82M (PhD)

Lulu, 2011

Sorge, a chemistry teacher with experience at the high school and college levels, offers a guide for students struggling to apply knowledge gained in math class to the successful study of chemistry.

A Sense of Shock: The Impact of Impressionism on Modern British and Irish Writing

By Adam Parkes ’93 (PhD)

Oxford University Press, 2011

Parkes, a professor of English at the University of Georgia, explores the influence of painting and philosophy on literary impressionism, through complex interactions among political, historical, and aesthetic factors.

Strive for a 5: Preparing for the AP European History Exam

By Louise Forsyth ’68

Bedford/St. Martin, 2009

Forsyth, the chair of the history department at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, N.Y., offers a study companion to John P. McKay’s History of Western Society (Houghton Mifflin).

Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World

By Catherine Tumber ’92 (PhD)

MIT Press, 2011

In her exploration of 25 rustbelt cities including Syracuse, Akron, Flint, and others, journalist and historian Tumber suggests the advantages of small cities over larger ones in a green, low-carbon future.

A Crack in Everything

By Angela Gerst ’65

Poisoned Pen Press, 2011

Gerst, a former correspondent for the Boston Globe and campaign organizer for candidates for office in Newton, Mass., tells a story of “politics, money, and love” in which an apparently random series of crimes turns out to be politically driven.

Bright Young Royals: Your Guide to the Next Generation of Bluebloods

By Jerramy Fine ’99

Berkley Books, 2011

London author Fine—“royalist, Anglophile, author, and wannabe princess”—introduces the “hip young royals” who frequent nightclubs and ski slopes around the globe. The book includes full-page profiles and colorful photographs. Fine is the author of Someday My Prince Will Come (Gotham Books, 2008).

Score & Rehearsal Preparation: A Realistic Approach to Instrumental Conductors

By Gary Stith ’79E

Meredith Music Publications, 2011

Stith, professor and coordinator of music education at Houghton College’s Greatbatch School of Music, presents a systematic approach to orchestra and wind band score study designed for both novice and seasoned conductors.

Recordings

Johann Jacob Froberger: Libro Quarto, 1656

By Webb Wiggins ’68E (MM)

Smithsonian Friends of Music, 2011

Wiggins, an associate professor of harpsichord at Oberlin, presents a complete survey of the 1656 works of the 17th- century organist and composer Froberger.

BassoonMusic

By Peter Kolkay ’00E (MM)

CAG Records, 2011

Kolkay, an associate professor of bassoon at the University of South Carolina, highlights 21st-century American music for bassoon— including Journey, by Katherine Hoover ’59E—accompanied by pianist Alexandra Nguyen ’03E (DMA).

One Nation Indivisible: Songs of the Civil War

By Derrick Smith ’88E (MM)

Derrick Smith, 2011

Smith, a baritone and senior associate voice instructor at the Eastman Community Music School, performs a collection of Civil War songs, accompanied by pianist Carolyn Ray ’87E, ’90E (MA).

Cookin’

By the Tortilla Factory

Tortilla Records, 2010

Percussionist and Tortilla Factory musical director Ian Fry ’05E performs with the band on its last—and Grammy-nominated—recording with the late trumpeter Tony (Ham) Guerrero.

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.

Don’t be ‘PowerPoint-less’

That’s the advice of Judith Humphrey ’70 (MA), who counsels executives on how to bring authority, urgency, clarity—and even a bit of literature—to their speaking.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

(Photo: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

One of my formative experiences happened at Rochester. I was writing a speech for a doctor at Strong Memorial Hospital. He had approached the English department to see if a graduate student could help him prepare an address he was to give for the opening of a school in Africa. I jumped at the chance. What a great opportunity to use my writing skills and earn a few hundred dollars! I advised him to have a message, develop it with key arguments—and apply the rules of Greek rhetoric. Somehow the speech came together, he loved it, and I found my passion. I have spent most of my career advising executives on how to speak.

I founded The Humphrey Group 24 years ago, with an actor, over lunch, on the back of a napkin. I was with Marshall Bell. I said to him, “If we could combine our skills—mine as a speechwriter and yours as a performer—we could create an amazing business.” And we did. He was my first partner. Today, there are 27 of us—writers, actors, and others—and we have offices in Toronto and Vancouver.

I never would have guessed that studying Medieval literature would have produced great ideas for speeches. But during the time in the 1980s when the big banks were seeking repayment for their Third World loans, I wrote a speech for a banking executive that began with the words from Chaucer’s Complaint to His Purse: “I am sorry now that ye be so light . . . For which unto your mercy thus I cry,/ Be heavy again, or elles must I die!” Today’s bankers could draw from the same poem.

People deliver far too much information without a point of view. Hence the overloaded, mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations we often see. True leaders have to inspire and create believers, whether they are making a point at a meeting or giving a speech. And they have to do so whether the audience is one or 1,000.

True charisma doesn’t lie in a flashy style, but instead from having our hearts, minds, and body fully present and aligned. It comes from speaking with deep conviction, bringing our ideas to life through clear arguments and simple language, and being fully present physically—through voice, energy, pace, and gestures. When our heart, mind, and body are present together in this way, we can inspire an audience. Great speakers—like Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, or Martin Luther King—show these qualities. But so can everyday leaders like a doctor talking to a patient, a young person being interviewed for a job, or an executive making a speech.

I emphasize different things for men and women. For men, this means learning to listen more and use inclusive language. For women it means using stronger language and projecting more confidence in their voices and body language.

Speaking as a leader means being authentic and showing emotion. Courage, conviction, and empathy are always qualities for a leader to show. Conveying anger can be effective if it’s expressed as deep concern. Emotions, properly channeled, play an important role in great speaking. They connect our audience to us.

Judith Humphrey ’70 (MA)

Toronto, Canada

Founder and president of the executive leadership and communication consultancy, The Humphrey Group; author of Speaking as a Leader: How to Lead Every Time You Speak (John Wiley & Sons, forthcoming in December 2011)

CAMPUS SCENES

Picnic Power

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

CHARGING UP: Alessandro Battisti ’15 of Rochester (left) and Sonya Bentovich ’12 of Cleveland plug in their laptops while sitting at a solar-powered picnic table installed on the River Campus this fall. The table—made from about 1,200 recycled milk cartons—features a 235-watt, solar-powered charging station to provide on-the-go power to laptops, cellphones, and other portable electronic devices—all while the owners of the technology enjoy a nice fall day outdoors.