Welcome to the latest SAS in Focus, a newsletter that reports what’s happening in the School of Arts & Sciences.

 

Edward Deci, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Rochester whose pioneering work transformed how human motivation is understood and shaped generations of scholars, practitioners, and students worldwide, died in February at the age of 83.

He was best known for his work on self-determination theory, which he cofounded with his University colleague Richard Ryan. The theory became one of the most influential frameworks on human motivation and wellness in contemporary psychology, with its reach extending far beyond academic journals.

“Ed had a profound passion for understanding human motivation and for putting that knowledge into practice,” says Ryan, a professor emeritus of psychology and longtime collaborator. “He was remarkably generative as a scholar, but what mattered just as much to him was supporting younger scholars—helping them think clearly, work honestly, and grow into themselves.”

Read the tribute to Edward Deci

 

During For Ever Better: The Campaign for the University of Rochester, Eric T. Lincke ’54, ’57M (MD) has given $1.5 million to establish the John F. Randolph Professorship in Mathematics within the School of Arts & Sciences.

The endowed gift honors Randolph—Lincke’s late mentor—and provides vital, permanent support for faculty in the math department. Maria “Masha” Gordina has been named the inaugural holder of the professorship and chair of the department.

 

Congratulations to Michela Andreatta, an associate professor of Hebrew Language and Literature in the Department of Religion and Classics, and co-director of the Center for Jewish Studies at URochester. Andreatta was awarded finalist in Jewish Literature and Linguistic category of the 2025 Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards by the Association for Jewish Studies at the AJS Conference in December. AJS, the main academic organization for Jewish Studies in the United States, annually awards one winner and one finalist in each category of the annual book prize.

Andreatta was named a finalist for her book Hell Arrayed (Tofteh ‘arukh): A Seventeenth-Century Hebrew Poem on the Punishment of the Wicked in the Afterlife (Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies at the University of Toronto,2023). Completion of the book was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities individual fellowship (NEH Fel-267562-20).  The book was previously selected for Honorable Mention (Best Translation) for the Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection 2025. Hell Arrayed is now available open access thanks to a dedicated grant by the Humanities Center at URochester.

 

New research from the URochester has found that echo chambers might not need to be a fact of online life. Published in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, the study argues that they are partly a design choice—one that could be softened with a surprisingly modest change: introducing more randomness into what people see.

The interdisciplinary team of researchers, led by Professor Ehsan Hoque from the Department of Computer Science, created experiments to identify belief rigidity and assess whether introducing more randomness into a social network could help reduce it.

Adiba Mahbub Proma, a computer science PhD student, is first author of the paper. Other authors include Professor Gourab Ghoshal from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, James Druckman, the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science, PhD student Neeley Pate, and Raiyan Abdul Baten ’16, ’22 (PhD.

Take a look at the study’s findings

 

New book How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most (Harper, 2026) is based on decades of research on happiness and human connection.

How to Feel Loved is co-authored by Sonja Lyubomirsky, a distinguished psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, and  Harry Reis, a professor of psychology at URochester and Dean’s Professor in Arts and Sciences.

“Many people believe that in order to feel love, they need to make themselves more lovable,” Reis says—by becoming more impressive, more attractive, more successful. While these strategies can be effective in the short term, they’re more likely to create distance in the long term. The feeling people are after, he says, doesn’t come from polishing the surface. Instead, the way to feel more loved is to build a loving connection with another person.

Read more about feeling loved

 

About 200 students attended the First-year Student Celebration on Feb. 10 Feldman Ballroom in Douglass Commons.  The event hosted by the Dean’s office in the School of Arts & Sciences featured food, games, and more.

 

Production THOUGHT/CRIME, an immersive performance inspired by George Orwell’s 1984 , will be presented by the UR International Theatre Program February 26 – March 7 in Smith Theatre, Sloan Performing Arts Center, River Campus.

In this work conceived, co-written, and directed by guest artist Charlotte Brathwaite, audiences navigate a world of surveillance, censorship, and fractured intimacy—where language is weaponized, bodies are policed, and connection carries consequence.  As the performance unravels, so do the rules. What begins as control collapses into something else: a chance to gather, to question, to speak. THOUGHT/CRIME asks what it means to feel, to think, to stay human when silence is the cost of survival.

Showtime is 8 p.m. The 2 p.m. matinée on March 1 is ASL interpreted. Go to the International Theater website for more information and tickets.

 

Send your SAS in Focus news tips to Director of Marketing and Communications Sheila Rayam at sheila.rayam@rochester.edu. Let her know about unique research, awards, publications, community collaborations and other interesting news. Please put “SAS in Focus” in the subject heading.