Rochester Review

March–April 2010

Volume 72, No. 4

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCalley ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Jennifer Roach

Jonathan Sherwood ’04 (MA), ’09S (MBA)

Michael Wentzel

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Stephen Reynolds

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Published six times a year for alumni, students, their parents, and other friends of the University, Rochester Review is produced by University Communications. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, the editors, or their subjects and do not necessarily represent official positions of the University of Rochester.

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Their Finest Hour

By Joel Seligman

presidentTEAM EFFORT: Interim CEO Mark Taubman (right) and other senior leaders at the Medical Center “deserve our profound thanks” for guiding the Medical Center until Brad Berk (left) returned this spring as CEO. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

On January 19, I had the distinct pleasure to announce to a packed Flaum Atrium that Brad Berk would return as senior vice president for health sciences and CEO of our Medical Center and that Mark Taubman would become the new dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry on March 1.

For Brad, this was a triumph of character. Since his severe spinal cord injury on May 30, 2009, he has devoted himself to a course of recovery that has been heroic in his determination, discipline, and unrelenting good spirits. Brad’s triumph was a triumph, too, of his remarkable family. His wife, Mary, and their children, David, Sarah, and Mariah and Mariah’s husband, Anthony, provided support, love, and occasional gentle teasing at every step of the way.

For the remarkable senior leadership team of the Medical Center, this was “their finest hour.”

I will never forget joining Steve Goldstein, the CEO of Strong Memorial and Highland hospitals, Mike Goonan, the Medical Center’s chief financial officer, Ray Mayewski, the hospitals’ chief medical officer, and Peter Robinson, the Medical Center’s chief operating officer and executive director of government relations, at Strong Memorial Hospital a few hours after Brad was brought by helicopter for emergency surgery. We were all stunned, hopeful Brad would recover, and deeply concerned for Mary and Brad’s family.

Within a few hours that first day, we realized that we would need interim leadership for the Medical Center. I began a conversation with these four colleagues, and over the next 72 hours spoke to approximately 40 senior leaders of the Medical Center and of the University and Medical Center boards. A clear consensus rapidly emerged that Mark Taubman, chair of the Department of Medicine, the Medical Center’s largest department, was the right individual to serve as acting CEO. Before I had finished my calls, I telephoned Mark, who was then in Shanghai but already on his way to the airport to return home. I asked him to see me when he returned, and after completing my calls, asked him to be CEO until Brad returned. Mark did not hesitate.

Indeed none of the senior leaders in the Medical Center hesitated in the months that have transpired since that awful May day.

Not Steve Goldstein, who continued to run one of the most effective academic hospital systems in this country despite the pressure of unrelenting state budget cuts and unceasing uncertainty about the future of both federal and state laws governing health care finance and organization.

Nor Mark Taubman, who worked closely with the senior leadership team of the Medical Center to begin implementation of a new electronic medical records system and helped lead the redesign of a new bed expansion plan for Strong Memorial Hospital to make the plan more affordable and to begin bringing urgently needed beds online more rapidly. He also worked to implement cost-containment and quality and safety initiatives that Brad earlier had begun.

Nor Lissa McAnarney, the Medical Center’s chair emerita of pediatrics, who had begun serving as acting dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry shortly before Brad’s accident. Her first words to me after the accident were, “How can I help?”

Nor Rich Fisher, the director of the Wilmot Cancer Center, who took a leadership role in crafting an innovative expansion plan that will add three new floors to the Wilmot Cancer Center, creating space for 30 much-needed inpatient beds.

Nor Paul Levy, the vice chair of the Department of Medicine, who for a second time agreed to serve as acting chair of the department and who played a pivotal role mentoring several recently hired division chiefs.

Nor literally thousands of faculty, clinicians, nurses, and staff at every level in the Medical Center who stepped up their efforts in a time of need. CEO administrative staff members Joyce Goodberlet and Ellen Caruso, for example, responded almost instantly to revise calendars, maintain communications among the leadership team, and ensure that nothing material was lost.

All deserve our profound thanks. They not only preserved, but in some ways strengthened, a great medical center during unexpected and unsought circumstances. We have all come to appreciate how strong a team leads the Medical Center. And, as Brad put it so well on January 19, the Medical Center ultimately rededicated itself to being an institution with even greater focus on the care, safety, and centrality of all of our patients.

Letters

There ‘Otter’ Be a Reason . . .

Your article “The Mystery of an Anticancer Mechanism” (January-February 2010) was fascinating. Vera Gorbunova is doing groundbreaking work in cancer research.

One correction should be pointed out, however. Although Dr. Gorbunova may well have compared otter tissue to the tissues of other mammals (mice, squirrels, gerbils, capybara, chinchillas, naked mole rats), otters are not rodents. The other mammals mentioned in the article belong to the order Rodentia, and possess rodents’ trademark ever-growing incisors. Otters, however, belong to the order Carnivora and family Mustelidae, along with weasels, skunks, and badgers.

Suzanne Richardson-White ’93

Athens, Georgia

Regarding the great article about the anticancer mechanism, I am confused by the inclusion of otters with the other rodents. When I graduated from the UR as a biology major in 1966, the otter was firmly in the camp of the carnivores, not the rodents. Have things changed? Thanks again for the very interesting and informative article.

Stephen Barnes ’66

Tenants Harbor, Maine

Editor’s Note: We heard from several biology majors—as well as other astute readers—who wondered about the “out of order” inclusion of otters in the list of animals in our story about Vera Gorbunova, an associate professor of biology, and her team’s efforts to understand the biology of cancer in a small set of rodents. We mistakenly included otters as part of the research. Otters aren’t part of Gorbunova’s project because, well, they aren’t rodents.

The Doctor Ought to Listen

I loved your story about listening (“The Doctor Is Listening,” January-February 2010).

I worked (the now politically correct term) for over 20 years as a stay-at-home mom, raising four children. Yet my UR–trained mind made it impossible for me to stop thinking, thinking, thinking (and isn’t there a world of material for psychoanalysis and social commentary right there?). Without benefit of even one minute of graduate school, I came up with my own powerful and verifiable hypothesis about “other mothers” during chance encounters at the grocery store, the playground, the library, and so forth. My hypothesis was that within 10 seconds of initiating conversation, even mothers who have never met before would disclose to each other their chief concern about their children. Examples might include “He’s not walking yet,” “She bites the other babies,” “There are only two foods I can get him to eat.”

In 2000 I enrolled in a graduate counseling program where I encountered narrative therapy, which validates the expert status and deeply held wisdom we all possess about our own lives. As therapists-in-training, we were taught to listen for what the clients already knew about their questions and struggles, and to regard this content as infinitely more significant and valid than any so-called “interventions” we might unilaterally impose. Once I got over my shock at hearing phrases such as “how the client stories his life,” and overcame my aversion to using “language” as a verb, I became fascinated by the seemingly undeniable truth: the stories we tell ourselves and each other create our experience and sustain our understanding of who we are and how the world is supposed to work.

Hearing that young doctors-to-be are being trained at the U of R to listen to their patients’ stories gives me nothing but hope for the future, and no less than pride in my alma mater.

Clare Westropp Evancie ’76

Weybridge, Vt.

The article “The Doctor Is Listening” in the January-February issue was very interesting.

I’ve been retired for 27 years but I recall trying to promote something basic to the content of your article. I may be wrong but I believe it was [influential turn-of-the-20th-century physician and medical educator Sir William] Osler who admonished physicians and students to “Listen to the patient. He is giving you the diagnosis.” I tried to practice in that light. I hope that the program you describe takes hold in medical practice.

Julian Alexander ’49M (MD)

Rochester

Life Ought to Be Unwrapped

Kudos to Laura Carstensen ’78 (“Live Fully; Retire at 85“, Alumni Gazette, January-February). At 62 years of age, I realized my lifelong dream of attaining my PhD. Thank you, U of R.

I began my fifth working career as a research associate at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy, moved over to faculty and, at 78 years of age, am an adjunct assistant professor in the behavioral and community health sciences department where I teach several classes, serve on a palliative care committee, a faith/medicine initiative task force, and on an interview committee for prospective students.

In addition, I volunteer at the Grief Care Place and at a migrant worker’s clinic, carry out a grief ministry at my church and teach Bible study classes. My faith and my family remain my focus and strength. I am involved in my children’s and my 10 grandchildren’s lives, attending games, plays, award ceremonies, graduations, and helping with fundraisers and term papers.

I am a widow and a lung cancer survivor but refuse to let that limit or define my life. Life is a beautiful gift that we all must learn to continually unwrap.

Patricia Pakan ’93W (PhD)

Stow, Ohio

A Track Correction, Part 2

In our attempt to correctly place the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y., in the January-February issue (Letters), we mistakenly identified Marilyn Johnson Burday ’59 as a teacher at Emma Willard. We should have said that Ruth Burday, the daughter of Marilyn and S. Zane Burday ’57, ’61M (MD), is a history teacher at Emma Willard. 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 Box 270044, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0044; rochrev@rochester.edu.

UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION

Berk Returns to Lead Medical Center

“We can really do something unique, and I am very excited about that,” says Bradford Berk ’81M (MD/PhD) as he maps out new goals for himself and for the Medical Center.

By Michael Wentzel

berkCOMPONENTS OF CARE: Berk says his experience has convinced him that Medical Center caregivers should emphasize four key components in their work: quality, safety, care, and courage. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

He doesn’t say he beat the odds. He says he met a goal.

Either way, Bradford Berk ’81M (MD/PhD) returned March 1 from a serious injury—a cervical fracture and severe spinal cord injury—to assume full-time responsibilities as CEO of the Medical Center and the University’s senior vice president for health science.

“This is like climbing Mt. Everest. It is reaching a goal,” Berk says. “I am a goal-oriented person. I set goals. When you achieve your goals, it is exhilarating. Coming back and seeing the people in the Medical Center has given me so much energy. We have much to work on and there are huge opportunities for us as an academic institution and a health care organization.”

Berk has set new goals: to move ahead with Medical Center projects, to implement changes at the Medical Center based on what he has learned as a patient, and to work as hard as possible in rehabilitation so he can make maximum gains physically.

“The accident is a terrible thing but it opened up my eyes to a lot of other areas where we can really do something unique and I am very excited about that,” he says. “Part of what drove me to come back was the opportunity to take advantage of my personal experiences as a patient. I want to take the positives that I saw as a patient and make them happen routinely at the Medical Center, and I want to make sure the negatives don’t happen.”

President Joel Seligman announced Berk’s return during a January ceremony in Flaum Atrium at the Medical Center in front of an overflow audience that welcomed Berk with several standing ovations.

“Brad is one of the most determined, most talented, most focused individuals I’ve ever met,” Seligman said during the event. “We’ve all been the beneficiaries of his remarkable vision for the Medical Center, and we know that with his leadership and that of the Medical Center’s leadership team, we are poised for even greater progress in the future.”

As Berk returned to his position, Mark Taubman, who served as the Medical Center’s acting CEO, became the 10th dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

“We have a new dean, which is great. We’re recruiting several new chairs. I am looking forward to the change in the Medical Center’s senior leadership,” Berk says. “We have exciting plans for our Eastman Institute for Oral Health and our School of Nursing. Our goal is to integrate those schools successfully into our strategic plan.”

Berk also returned to what he calls “a very difficult budget situation.”

“The recession has left the economy in a shambles and it will take a while to grow the economy,” he says. “Upstate New York and much of the country has more people who are unemployed and more uninsured individuals. California is the only state whose government is in worse shape fiscally than New York’s. It is a very challenging environment.”

The key question for Berk: How does the Medical Center move forward when dollars are tight?

“We’ve trimmed expenses. We’ve improved our operation. We’re stronger and more competitive. We’ve found new approaches to projects. The Clinical and Translational Science Building is rising before our eyes. We are going ahead with our expansion of clinical beds. We will move forward,” he says.

Berk, an accomplished cyclist, was injured May 30, 2009, during a ride in the hills near his house on Canandaigua Lake in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. A car forced him to swing wide and leave the paved road. When he got off the road, a tire blew out and he went over the handlebars of his bicycle. He heard the crack of his neck and he felt his body go numb.

“Knowing what I had done, at that moment I told myself, if I got through this and afterwards if I did not need a ventilator but I was able to move in a wheelchair on my own, that would be okay,” he says.

Berk underwent surgery to stabilize his neck at the Medical Center. He spent 20 days on a ventilator, and a total of 101 days at the Kessler Institute in New Jersey, which specializes in spinal cord injuries.

“I have encountered so many wonderful caregivers,” he says. “If something felt really good, I would tell them that I really appreciated their taking extra time. That interaction, that communication, really makes job satisfaction much better for the caregiver. We need to change our dynamic and make sure that there is time for the interaction to occur. I hope we can find ways to legitimize this as part of the way we operate.”

When he returned to Rochester from New Jersey in September, Berk began working on Medical Center projects but devoted his afternoons to rehabilitation therapy.

While he continues to use a motorized wheelchair, Berk has made remarkable progress. He can stand, do squats, and walk with assistance. He can feed himself. He can brush his teeth. His left arm has recovered more strength and flexibility than the right. As of this winter, he couldn’t transfer from his chair to a bed, but he expected to be able to do that when he builds up strength in both arms.

Only minimal sensation has returned. His right side has much more sensation than his left, but he describes the sensation as “patchy and not normal.” By touch alone, he can’t tell the difference between fabrics—between a terrycloth towel and smooth cotton pants. His stamina has returned, and he keeps a very busy schedule.

“There’s a lot of progress, but it’s always too slow,” Berk says. “As long you continue to progress, you have to keep pushing ahead. I am counting on continuing to progress.”

Berk wants to apply his personal experiences as a patient to improve clinical care at the Medical Center through “quality, safety, care, and courage.”

“It is a great opportunity to make this an even better place for patients and providers,” Berk says. “That’s a key message: I’m not just doing this for patients but also for providers—not just for those who have direct contact with patients but for everyone who works here. Everyone who works here is part of a health care organization and they are here in part because they want to do good for people. So we should be able to improve job satisfaction across the whole institution. That’s the caring part. It’s as much about caring for each other as it is about caring for our patients.”

Michael Wentzel is the editor of Rochester Medicine.

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE & DENTISTRY

Mark Taubman Becomes Dean

berk_sideDEAN: A noted cardiologist and medical education leader, Taubman is the 10th dean of the medical school. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

The former chair of the Department of Medicine who served as acting CEO of the Medical Center for nine months is the new dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Mark Taubman, who came to the Medical Center as chief of the cardiology unit in 2003, is the school’s 10th dean. Effective March 1, the appointment follows this winter’s announcement that Bradford Berk ’81M (MD/PhD) is returning as CEO of the Medical Center after suffering a serious spinal cord injury last spring.

“Mark is the best possible choice for dean,” Berk said of Taubman’s appointment. “He is a physician-scientist who is active in the laboratory yet possesses a broad institutional view. As an active cardiologist, he also understands the challenges of practicing medicine.”

As chief of cardiology, Taubman was the guiding force behind the expansion of cardiac patient care services, faculty recruitment, strengthening treatments for those with heart arrhythmias and heart failure, adding new preventive cardiology programs, such as the women’s heart program, and forging strong regional services. Taubman also served as director of the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute, which he helped Berk to found.

Taubman became chair of the Department of Medicine and the Charles E. Dewey Professor of Medicine in May 2007. As chair, he directed the Medical Center’s largest single department, overseeing a $150 million budget and more than 1,000 faculty and staff in 10 units devoted to patient care, research, and education. He named division chiefs, including general medicine, cardiology, hematology-oncology, endocrinology, and infectious disease.

In 2006, Taubman was named editor-in-chief of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, one of five international medical journals published by the American Heart Association, and the leading journal in the field of vascular biology.

A graduate of New York University’s medical school, he interned at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital before completing his residency and cardiology fellowship training at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Taubman has held academic appointments at Harvard Medical School, Children’s Hospital Boston, and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. Prior to being recruited to Rochester, he was director of cardiovascular research at Mt. Sinai.

Elizabeth McAnarney, the chair emerita of pediatrics, served as interim dean since June, when former dean David Guzick became senior vice president for health affairs at the University of Florida and president of the University of Florida health system.

KENNEDY CENTER HONOREES

Student Composition

kennedy (Photo: Adam Fenster)

CONCERT ORDER: How do you get to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts? For Eastman students (this page, left to right) pianist Zhang Zuo ’10E, saxophonist and graduate student Doug O’Connor, percussionist Tomasz Arnold ’13E, and (opposite page) soprano and graduate student Rebecca Farley (seated), and her accompanists Markiyan Melnychenko (violin) and Lyndon Meyer (piano), the answer comes with one of the nation’s select honors for music students. Zuo, O’Connor, Arnold, and Farley were among a handful of talented artists chosen to give individual performances during this spring’s Conservatory Project, a semiannual showcase of the nation’s top music schools. How do you get a photo of six busy music students during recital week? In this case, the answer is to take more than one photo and merge them into a composite image that seems to show the students all together in Eastman’s Ranlet Lounge.

STUDENT ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Giving Shelter

tents (Photo: Adam Fenster)

CANVAS KING: Brian MacMillin ’10 cuts a section of canvas in Douglass Dining Center as part of his small sporting goods business that specializes in tarps and other camping shelters. MacMillin, a senior from Campbell Hall, N.Y., started the business after learning that many outdoor enthusiasts were unhappy with commercially available options. Because he needs a large indoor space to work, he spreads his materials out in Douglass during off hours.

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY

Big Dipper’s Binary Star Has Surprises

dipper (Photo: Courtesy Eric Mamajek)

There’s more to the Big Dipper than meets the eye.

In ancient times, people with exceptional vision discovered that one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper was, in fact, two stars so close together that most people cannot distinguish them. The two stars, Alcor and Mizar, were the first binary stars—a pair of stars that orbit each other—ever known.

Now Rochester astronomer Eric Mamajek has discovered that Alcor, one of the most studied stars in the sky, is actually two stars. Mamajek, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, led a team that made the discovery using computer algorithms to remove as much glare as possible from the image of a star in the hopes of spotting a planet near the star.

“Finding that Alcor had a stellar companion was a bit of serendipity,” says Mamajek. “We were trying a new method of planet hunting and instead of finding a planet orbiting Alcor, we found a star.”

Modern telescopes have found that Mizar is itself a pair of binaries, revealing what was once thought of as a single star to be four stars orbiting each other. Alcor and its newly identified companion, Alcor B, are apparently gravitationally bound to the Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet.

Mamajek is continuing his efforts to find planets around nearby stars, but his attention is not completely off Alcor and Mizar.

“Some of us have a feeling that Alcor might actually have another surprise in store for us,” he says.

—Jonathan Sherwood ’04 (MA), ’09S (MBA)

CITATIONS

Research Roundup

Newly Sequenced Wasp Genome May Have Many Uses

Scientists led by John Werren, a professor of biology, and Stephen Richards of the Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine have sequenced the genomes of three parasitoid wasp species, a project that could be useful for pest control and medicine. Because parasitoid wasps seek out and kill specific kinds of insects, understanding their genetics and evolution could help in the development of alternatives to chemical pesticides. The study was published in Science.

Study looks at Placebo Effect as Part of Treatment

Medical Center researchers used the placebo effect to treat psoriasis patients successfully with one quarter to one half of their usual dose of a widely used steroid medication. According to an early study published online in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine and led by Robert Ader, the George L. Engel Professor of Psychosocial Medicine, the Rochester team hope to explore whether treatment regimens can be designed that mix active drugs and placebos to maximize drug benefits, reduce side effects, and extend the use of drugs otherwise limited by addiction risk or toxicity.

Drug Shows Promise for Huntington’s Disease

An early stage clinical trial indicates an experimental drug may improve cognition in people with Huntington’s disease, according to a study led by Karl Kieburtz, a professor of neurology, and published in the Archives of Neurology. Mitochondria—the part of the cell that helps convert food to energy—are believed to play a role in the development of Huntington’s. The experimental drug dimebon (latrepirdine) stabilizes and enhances mitochondrial function, a result that has been shown to improve behavioral, cognitive, and functional outcomes in Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists speculate that it may have the same effect in patients with Huntington’s.

Simple Screening Could Bring Early Intervention for Children

The addition of a simple and systematic screening among children in foster care doubled the detection rate of developmental disabilities in a population that is at high risk for developmental problems, according to a study published in Pediatrics by Sandra Jee, an assistant professor of pediatrics. A brief, nondiagnostic questionnaire sent to foster families a week before well-child visits took providers less than five minutes to score and review with families. The screening also revealed more delays in problem-solving, personal-social, and fine motor skills than had previously been detected.

Tag-Team Approach Breaks Gene Therapy Size Barrier

Rochester neuroscientists have forged an unlikely molecular union as part of their fight against diseases of the brain and nervous system. The team has brought together the herpes virus and a molecule known as “sleeping beauty” to improve a treatment technology known as gene therapy, which aims to manipulate genes to correct for molecular flaws that cause disease. The work—led by William Bowers, an associate professor of neurology, and published online in Gene Therapy—has allowed Rochester scientists to reach a long-sought goal: shuttling into brain cells a relatively large gene that can remain active for an extended period of time. The breakthrough opens more diseases to possible treatment with gene therapy.

Study Links Vitamin D, Race, and Cardiac Deaths

Vitamin D deficiency may contribute to a higher number of heart attacks and stroke-related deaths among black Americans compared to whites, according to a Rochester study led by Kevin Fiscella, an associate professor of family medicine and community and preventative medicine, and published in the journal Annals of Family Medicine. A complex host of genetic and lifestyle factors among blacks may explain why the population group has lower vitamin D levels over the course of their lifetimes compared to other races. The analysis suggests that vitamin D may be a modifiable, independent risk factor for heart disease.

FINANCIAL AID

Thinking Outside the Boxing

A new scholarship recognizes the commitment of a boxing coach to his athletes and to his upstate community.

By Kathleen McGarvey

boxingRING MAN: Jonathan Vazquez ’11 is the first recipient of a University scholarship that recognizes an upstate boxing coach, a commitment that was sparked in part by ABC-TV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Growing up, Jonathan Vazquez ’11 looked up to his cousin, two-time world champion welterweight fighter Miguel Cotto. “He was always an inspiration,” says Vazquez.

Cotto’s example led Vazquez to try his own hand at boxing—and the sport, in turn, has led him to Rochester.

Vazquez, a native of Newark, N.Y., is the first recipient of the Geneva Boxing Team Scholarship, a new scholarship that honors Tim Hill, the coach of a boxing team in the Finger Lakes town of Geneva.

Hill, a former professional boxer, and his family have devoted themselves to helping young people, especially those at risk.

“I’ve never met anybody as caring as he is about his community,” Vazquez says of his coach. Hill’s boxing career ended when he broke his back in a construction accident. He returned to college to earn a social work degree, becoming a high school counselor and coach for the boxing team.

Last year, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition featured the Hills on one of its episodes, building a small boxing gym behind their renovated house. Jon Burdick, the dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, suggested that the University could help, too, with the creation of the scholarship.

The scholarship provides up to $400,000 in financial aid over a 10-year period to Geneva Boxing Team members who demonstrate a serious commitment to the pursuit of higher education at the University. Last year Vazquez earned his associate’s degree at Finger Lakes Community College, and became a student at the University in the fall. Through the scholarship, he’ll receive $40,000 toward his college expenses each year.

“No one in my family has graduated with a bachelor’s degree,” says Vazquez. He’s earning an undergraduate degree in economics and hopes later to pursue a graduate degree at the Simon School.

Vazquez has relished his transition to Rochester. “I love the atmosphere and the environment,” he says.

And while he’s busy with courses in areas such as economics and Chinese, he hasn’t left boxing behind. He continues to practice occasionally with the Geneva team, and he’s been coaching some University friends as well.

“I’m interested in starting a club,” he says.

The lessons he learned in the boxing ring about achievement are also guiding him in his work as a student.

Possibilities open, he says, when you’re “determined to do something. You can’t accomplish goals if you don’t believe you can.”

Q&A

Tackling the Big Questions

Economist Steven Landsburg ’74 (MA) uses concepts from mathematics and economics to explore some perennial philosophical questions in his new book.

Interview by Kathleen McGarvey

landsburgQUESTIONS: Long fascinated by the “big questions of philosophy,” economist Landsburg says he’s “finally gotten to a point in life where I had something useful to say about them.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)

In The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics (Free Press, 2009), Steven Landsburg ’74 (MA), a professor of economics at Rochester, takes an unconventional look at reality and unreality, knowledge and belief, and right and wrong. He discusses what it means to write about economics for a general audience and how other disciplines can help us think about philosophical questions.

What led you to write this book?

My whole life, I’ve been fascinated by the big questions in philosophy. I’ve periodically gone through stages of reading a lot of philosophy, and these are questions that have always been on my mind. I thought that I’d perhaps finally gotten to a point in life where I had something useful to say about them.

Are there philosophical questions mathematics, economics, and physics aren’t well-suited for grappling with?

Possibly. The questions I’ve chosen to think about are ones where these things are very applicable. It seems to me that if you think about anything hard enough, you’re going to find a way to apply the things you know to it.

What, if anything, for you best explains questions about the universe?

To me, the most plausible story—and I can’t possibly prove this is right—is that everything emanates from mathematics. There’s a fundamental sense in which mathematics is the fabric of the universe. It’s what everything is built out of. I expect that sounds strange and wifty if you haven’t read the book, but I hope that readers of the book will see that there’s a plausible, non-wifty sense in which that might be true, and it’s not at all inconsistent with the way mainstream physicists and mathematicians think about the world.

What do you think is key to making economics accessible to the general reader?

Constantly reminding oneself that the things that economists take for granted aren’t always taken for granted by everybody else—and realizing that even when an idea is very interesting, people aren’t going to read about it unless you find a way to make it fun. I take a lot of pride that my book The Armchair Economist (Free Press, 1993)—arguably the first of the pop economics books—is the book that economists give their mothers when they want them to understand what it is they do all day.

What are some things that economists take for granted that other people don’t?

First of all, that it’s very useful to think about extremely simple stories. When economists want to think about the implications of a free-trade pact, for example, they’ll often start by telling you a story about two people living on an island and trading with three people living on some other island, and working through carefully what happens when you open up trade in a situation like that. Most people react badly to that. They think that you are stripping away all of the important, real-world factors, whereas economists have learned—as I think all scientists have learned—that until you understand the simple stories, you’re never going to understand the complicated ones.

What would you say is a misconception about the field of economics?

That it’s all about money, or that it sets aside the actual desires of actual human beings, which is not just a misconception, it’s the exact opposite of the truth. The purpose of economics is to determine how it’s possible to fulfill the desires of actual human beings.

Is there something about the field that you wish could or would change?

No, I think it’s a pretty healthy field, actually. I think it’s mostly on track, and people are thinking about the right questions, and they’re thinking about them in the best ways that we can think about them. There are a lot of things that we need to think about better, and we haven’t figured out how to. But I think people are doing a pretty good job of making progress. A lot of things are understood now that weren’t 10 years ago—things like the extent to which monetary policy plays a role in business cycles and experimental data on what works in health and education policies, especially in poor countries. And a lot of things will be understood 10 years from now that aren’t today.

HAITI EARTHQUAKE

Rochester Reaches Out

The University community finds ways to assist victims of the earthquake in Haiti.

By Jennifer Roach

haitiMEDICAL ASSISTANCE: Haiti native Safira Amazan ’12 says the earthquake has reinforced her plans to study medicine so that she can return to her homeland to help the country in the future. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Safira Amazan ’12 is making new plans for spring break and for her summer. The Haiti native is determined to return to her homeland “to help wherever I can.”

Amazan, who was visiting relatives in Haiti just four days before the January earthquake devastated parts of the island nation, spent several frantic days this winter in long-distance communication to confirm the safety and welfare of family and friends. The experience, she says, has reaffirmed her dream of becoming a doctor and contributing to the future of the country.

“Haiti will always need an extra doctor, and it will be helpful and an honor for me if I can be a small part of the ‘extra’ or just one that can help make a difference in someone else’s life,” she says. “That is my hope.”

Amazan, who grew up in Les Cayes, about 140 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, is just one of many people at Rochester—students, faculty, and staff—who have personal connections to the Caribbean nation. In the days after the January 12 earthquake, they and other members of the University community responded by organizing and contributing to fundraisers, hosting special events, and by traveling to Haiti to assist in medical and relief operations.

In a statement to the University community, President Joel Seligman said, “Our hearts go out to those who are touched directly by this tragedy.

At times like this, we draw strength from expressing our concern for others and assisting them.”

Haiti native Jean Joseph, an associate professor of urology, says many people approached him after the earthquake about helping in Haiti. Working with the nonprofit organization InterVol, Joseph and a 12-member team of doctors and nurses made the trip in February to help staff a 50-bed mobile hospital near Haiti’s capital.

“When you look at the devastation online and in the media coverage, it’s hard to watch,” Joseph says. “The question becomes ‘what can I do to help?’ We have the skills and we are able to help others. I’m glad I can help.”

In another example, a team of Medical Center physicians spent a week in Haiti with volunteers from Cure International, a nonprofit organization that specializes in providing medical care in developing nations.

James Sanders, the chief of pediatric orthopaedics at the Medical Center, was a member of the team. “Haiti’s been devastated,” he told local reporters after returning to Rochester. “Lots of people with terrible injuries lost their families. It’s a very sad state.”

Jordan Hayes ’08E and Emeric Viani ’08E, who are both pursuing master’s degrees in ethnomusicology at the Eastman School, organized a benefit concert, “Harmony for Haiti,” featuring ensembles from Eastman and the College.

The pair also connected with their former voice teacher, Haiti native Louima Lilite ’08E (DMA), who performed at the benefit.

Lilite, an assistant professor of music at Oklahoma Baptist University, was about four hours away from Port-au-Prince during the earthquake. He was in Limbe at the North Haiti Music Camp, where he serves as the coordinator, and, like Amazan, waited several anxious days before he learned of the safety of his sister and her family.

Hayes and Viani say the benefit was successful because the Eastman community is a close network of musicians who go out of their way to help one other.

“This concert is but a continuing example of the closeness of Eastman’s community that extends beyond Gibbs Street and out into the world,” Viani says.

Jennifer Roach is an associate editor for University Communications.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Recording Spotlights Douglass

Project drawn from Rochester’s archives finds ‘A Sky with More Stars’ for Frederick Douglass.

By Kathleen McGarvey

douglass (Photo: Frederick Douglass Institute)

There’s an “inherent musicality” to the words of former slave, abolitionist, and longtime Rochester resident Frederick Douglass, says Jeffrey Tucker, director of the Frederick Douglass Institute and an associate professor of English.

A new CD, A Sky with More Stars—Suite for Frederick Douglass, proves his point, blending Douglass’s stirring writings and speeches with interpretative jazz inspired by his work.

Composers Tyrone Brown and John Blake wrote the original music for the CD, which is performed by the Tyrone Brown Ensemble. Interspersed with the jazz are selections from Douglass’s orations and publications, read by University Vice President Paul Burgett ’68E, ’76E (PhD), who is also a scholar of African-American music and an adjunct professor of music.

“His themes are as relevant today as they were two centuries ago,” says Burgett of Douglass. Brown says music was an important form of entertainment for slaves. “They did not have modern instruments—at best, a violin,” says Brown, who adds that Douglass played the violin, as did his wife and grandson, an accomplished musician. In honor of that, the violin has a lead role on most tracks. Part of a series featuring African Americans whose papers are preserved at the University, the recording includes liner notes by Tucker and graphic design work by Melissa Mead of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Recorded by John Trueberger at the Eastman School’s studios, the CD was produced and edited by Richard Peek, the director of Rare Books and Special Collections.

QUOTES

Rochester in the News

“This tug of war will continue as long as we have fundamental disagreements in the country over the role of money in politics.” —David Primo, an associate professor of political science, in the New York Times, responding to this winter’s Supreme Court ruling that the federal government may not ban political spending by corporations and unions in candidate elections.

USA Today

“Why weekends are better are the two factors of autonomy and relatedness. There’s more connection with other people and more self-direction. Wherever you don’t have autonomy or don’t feel relatedness, your well-being will be lower.”—Richard Ryan, a professor of clinical and social psychology, explaining his recent research on why people report greater happiness during weekends.

Wall Street Journal

“If we’ve learned anything, it’s that we need much more effective communication of danger signals in advance.”—Joel Seligman, University president and an expert on regulatory history, commenting on new rules intended to regulate Wall Street.

ABC News

“The illusions that you see in three dimensions in the movies [are] not exactly calibrated the same way that your eyes and your brain are. If your eyes are a little off to begin with, then it’s really throwing a whole degree of effort that your brain now needs to exert.” —Deborah Friedman, a professor of ophthalmology, explaining why some people get headaches watching three-dimensional movies or television.

New York Times

“What we are looking for is excellent work, from any language, eclectic modern fiction that is overlooked. Commerce does not enter the discussions; I wouldn’t know a commercial book if I saw one.”— Joanna Scott, the Roswell S. Burrows Professor of English, describing the editorial approach of Open Letter, the University’s literary translation press, in selecting literature for publication.

MSNBC

“It’s keeping the switch flipped and maintaining these new behaviors that becomes tricky.”—Edward Deci, a professor of psychology and the Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences, remarking on the difficulties of maintaining resolution when making lifestyle changes.

Chicago Tribune

“When we think about why we want to have a scientifically literate society, it’s not to have kids succeed in school science. It’s because we want them to be able to interact with their world.”—Joyce Duckles, a doctoral candidate in human development at the Warner School, discussing research suggesting that children are capable of grasping science sooner than previously thought.

BASEBALL

Making a Pitch for a Title

Returning pitcher Steve Guzski ’10 will help guide the Yellowjackets.

By Ryan Whirty

baseball TEAM LEADER: As the Yellowjackets’ only returning conference starter, Guzski is expected to provide leadership on and off the pitching mound. (Photo: Athletics & Recreation)

When Yellowjacket senior pitcher Steve Guzski ’10 takes the mound this spring, he’ll have his sights focused on a Liberty League title and a deep run in the NCAA regional tournament. Like all Rochester hurlers, Guzski would love to end his collegiate career with a bang.

But Guzski also is thinking further ahead. As Rochester’s lone returning conference starter, he’ll be charged with shepherding eight freshmen pitchers who are replacing a stellar graduating class. By teaching the youngsters the ropes, Guzski hopes to help set up the program for the future.

“I have only one year left,” Guzski says, “but they have their whole careers. I want this season to be a great stepping stone for future success.”

If last season is any indication, the 2010 campaign looks like a promising one. The Yellowjackets went 30–13 in 2009, setting a school record in wins, claiming the UAA championship, and finishing second in the Liberty League.

Head coach Joe Reina notes that, on paper at least, 2009 was the Yellowjackets’ best season ever, and he says this year’s squad has the potential to be just as good. The key will be how quickly a young team loaded with potential but short on experience can acclimate itself to the college level.

That’s where Guzski comes in. After going 3–3 with a 3.44 ERA and 28 strikeouts last season, the New Hartford, N.Y., native is poised for a breakout year, not only statistically but also as a leader. The pressure will be high, but Reina says Guzski thrives when the heat is on.

“Anytime you’re a conference pitcher, there’s pressure,” Reina says. “But this year Steve also has to take on a leadership role. The young guys will be looking to him and how he reacts in pressure situations.”

Guzski will be helped by new pitching coach Pete Dawes, a longtime assistant at Monroe Community College whom Reina has known since Reina’s days as a player. While Dawes hasn’t seen Guzski in action until this spring, he can tell that Guzski has what it takes to shine on the mound and in the clubhouse.

“His strength is his maturity,” Dawes says. “He’s mature enough to handle whatever teams throw at him.”

The Yellowjackets open the 2010 season in early March with a trip to Florida that includes the UAA tournament. The Yellowjackets haven’t made the NCAA tourney since 1999, and they hope that drought ends this year. But to make it happen, a lot of inexperienced players, with Guzski as their guide, will have to become good very fast.

“We have some guys who didn’t get a lot of playing time last year,” Reina says. “They need to step up and fill some big shoes, because the younger guys will get that opportunity.”

Ryan Whirty writes about sports for Rochester Review.

BASKETBALL

Two ‘Classic’ Tourney Titles

Rochester women claim fifth straight local crown; men win 10th title.

By Ryan Whirty

basketballWendy’s College Classic: John DiBartolomeo ’13 was named to the men’s all-tournament team and Melissa Alwardt ’11 (above) was the women’s MVP. (Photo: Athletics & Recreation)

The senior class of the 2008–09 Rochester women’s basketball team won an unprecedented four straight JP Morgan Chase Tournaments, the showcase of the Rochester area’s Division III hoops programs.

But that core of leadership graduated last spring, meaning this season’s Yellowjacket women brought a relatively young squad into the tourney, now called the Wendy’s College Classic. As a result, second-seeded Rochester wasn’t the favorite going into the event.

But by the end of the January tournament, the Yellowjackets were once again on familiar ground as they dismissed Roberts Wesleyan, 68–51, in the women’s final to clinch a record fifth consecutive title.

“That group of seniors won it four times in a row, so that’s a wonderful legacy for them,” says Rochester women’s coach Jim Scheible. “However, with what seems like a very new team this year, it was quite satisfying for (this year’s squad) to earn the title.”

The women were joined in the winner’s circle at the Palestra by their male counterparts, who topped St. John Fisher, 60–41, in their title game to give the men a record 10 tourney crowns.

“I believed that we were one of a handful of teams capable of winning the tournament, but I wondered if we had the maturity and poise to pull it off,” says men’s coach Mike Neer.

The Yellowjacket men were paced by a pair of surprisingly mature freshmen: forward Milan Moncrief, who became the first freshman on the men’s side to be named tourney MVP by averaging 11 points and four rebounds; and guard John DiBartolomeo, whose effort in the semis—30 points, nine rebounds and five steals—vaulted his squad into the title game.

For the women, junior guard Melissa Alwardt picked up MVP honors for her tourney average of 13.7 points and 6.7 boards.

Alwardt says she and the rest of the Yellowjackets used some observers’ lowered expectations of them as inspiration.

“People did not think we were the best team in the area this year, so everyone on the team was motivated to prove them wrong, and that gave us a little extra boost when playing,” she says.

Adds senior guard Jessica Mastronardi, who tallied 12 points in the finals win over Roberts Wesleyan: “I think people in the area felt that most of our success graduated with [last year’s seniors], but we had to prove we could still win.”

Avatar of Language

Paul Frommer ’65 is the creator of Na’vi, the native language of the humanoid heroes in director James Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

frommerHollywood set: Linguist and USC business professor Frommer says taking part in the making of Avatar was an “absolutely thrilling experience.” (Photo: Blake Little)

Paul Frommer ’65 has plenty of words to describe his introduction to the world of major motion pictures. It’s been remarkable. It’s been extraordinary. And it’s been total keye’ung.

That’s Na’vi for “insanity.”

Na’vi, the language of the humanoid inhabitants of the planet Pandora, the setting of the blockbuster film Avatar, is Frommer’s brainchild. And like any child, it’s changed his life considerably.

It all started in 2005, as the linguist-turned executive was teaching at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. A friend from the linguistics department, in USC’s college of arts and sciences, forwarded to Frommer an e-mail that he and the more than 20 other members of the department had received from a representative of Lightstorm Entertainment, the production company of director James Cameron. Cameron, the creator of Titanic, at that time the largest grossing film in movie history, was looking for someone to invent a new language, to be spoken by an extraterrestrial people who would be the focus of his next movie, then called Project 880.

Although he earned a doctorate in linguistics from USC and later published in the field, Frommer pursued a career as a strategic planner for a Los Angeles marketing firm and now teaches courses on business communication.

“When I saw the e-mail, I said ‘whoa!’,” he says. “I jumped on it.”

This spring, as the final product of Cameron’s vision, Avatar, has surpassed Titanic as the highest grossing film of all time, Frommer’s inbox overflows with messages—hundreds, he says—from fans of the movie who want to learn to speak and write in Na’vi. Fans have also launched a Na’vi Web site and a discussion forum, to which there are more than 100,000 posts.

He calls the response both “astonishing and gratifying.”

“People go to the movie, and they’re just swept away,” he says. “It touches people on a very deep level, and they come away wanting to connect with Pandora. One way to do that is through the language.”

At first glance, learning Na’vi might not seem so daunting. Its current vocabulary is small, consisting of a little more than 1,000 words. That’s miniscule compared to the vocabulary of a typical English-speaking adult, which is about 65,000 words, according to Rochester’s Elissa Newport, the George Eastman Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the chair of the department.

“But the size of the vocabulary isn’t what makes it a language or what makes it interesting,” she adds. “The size of the vocabulary is the least of the characteristics you would look at to decide, ‘Is this really a language?’ ”

Newport, an internationally recognized expert on language acquisition, says all languages have the same basic elements: A set of sounds (or hand signs—Newport studies signed languages as well), and a system of rules for combining those elements into words, and words into sentences.

So to create Na’vi, Frommer started, as a linguist would, by defining its sounds.

“Something that I enjoy doing, and I think many linguists do as well, is just playing around with sounds, just making funny sounds and rolling them around in your mouth, and seeing how it feels,” he says. “You realize you can have some very interesting combinations.”

But there should be some limit to those combinations. “You want to come up with something that has some sort of distinctiveness to it, and one way you do that is by deciding what sounds go into the mix, but just as importantly, what sounds are going to be left out,” Frommer says.

He compares the process to cooking. “When you’re cooking and you open your cabinet and see this array of spices, if you put in everything you have on the shelf, you’re going to get a mess,” he says. “It may be unpalatable, or it may have no particular distinction. But if you’re judicious, and you take certain things, and leave other things on the shelf, then you might get something that has character to it.”

Na’vi, for example, does not have the -b, -d, and hard -g sounds that are common in English. And although some sounds that appear regularly in English, such as the -ng sound, also appear in Na’vi, in Na’vi that sound appears at the beginning of words—words such as ngop (create) or nga (you)—as well as at the end, as in the English word ending -ing.

Among Na’vi’s most distinctive features are the “ejectives,” or “popping sounds” that Frommer says are heard in many Native American languages, as well as in Central Asia. “I put them in because they’re interesting sounds, and I thought they might arouse some interest in the language, kind of like an interesting spice that I was putting in.”

“The reaction I’ve gotten from a number of people who aren’t linguists is, ‘You know, that sounds like a real language,’” he says, with clear delight.

According to Newport, that’s because the listeners are beginning to recognize patterns.

“People start to learn the patterns, even in small doses. They’ll start to recognize the words that recur, and the word orders that recur, and the sounds that recur. In a two-and-a-half-hour movie, people probably are starting to recognize, even without realizing it, the patterns they’ve been exposed to.”

But it’s quite a leap from recognizing patterns to actually speaking the language. For the cast, mastering unfamiliar sound combinations, as well as the ejectives, took practice. Among Frommer’s roles was coaching the actors—Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and others—helping them both on and off the set to master Na’vi pronunciation. He was accompanied by a veteran dialect coach, Carla Meyer, who has worked on more than 40 films, including Pirates of the Caribbean, The Gift, and A River Runs Through It. Meyer and Frommer shared the task of determining the Na’vi accent—the accent that Zoe Saldana, for example, adopted as her Na’vi character, Neytiri, learned to speak English.

“We put our heads together to try to figure out exactly what they might sound like when they spoke English, and that’s not at all an easy question,” Frommer says. “One thing we played around with, is that there’s no -j sound in Na’vi, but of course the main character’s name is Jake. So if Neytiri was trying to say ‘Jake,’ what would she say? The closest sound that they have to -j is -ts, so it might come out ‘tsake.’”

A native of New York City, Frommer came to Rochester in the early 1960s on a Bausch & Lomb scholarship to study not languages, but astrophysics. “From the time I was eight, everybody knew ‘Paul is going to be an astronomer,’” he says.

As it turned out, he earned his degree in mathematics. And while he had studied a bit of French, German, Hebrew, and Latin, it wasn’t until after graduation, when he joined the Peace Corps, that he realized his love for language. He was sent to Malaysia, where he taught math in Malay. “I realized how much fun it was, and that I was pretty good at it,” he says.

In the mid-1970s, while a doctoral student in linguistics at USC, he spent a year in Iran and completed his thesis on an aspect of Persian grammar. When he entered the business world, he maintained a foothold in the field of linguistics, coauthoring Looking at Languages: A Workbook in Elementary Linguistics (Wadsworth) in 1994 with USC linguistics professor Edward Finegan. It was Finegan, in fact, who forwarded Frommer the e-mail from Lightstorm Entertainment, and the book itself that Frommer sent to Cameron in advance of the interview in which he closed the deal.

Now he finds himself a high-profile figure in a small but growing guild of language inventors—people from the fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien to the hundreds of computer scientists, linguists, mathematicians, and others who have invented languages as a hobby and shared them with one another over the Internet.

Frommer’s personal favorite among notable language inventors is Marc Okrand, an expert in Native American languages who created Klingon for the 1984 movie Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

Frommer says Klingon “changed the game” when it came to science fiction filmmaking. In the 1977 movie Star Wars, for example, the language of aliens was “pretty much gibberish,” he says. Klingon, on the other hand, is a “very well-developed, difficult language.” “Ever since then, it’s been understood that that’s the standard. Especially for someone like Cameron, who lavishes this incredible detail on everything he does. He wanted the detail in the language as well.”

Klingon inspired a cult following, as Na’vi appears to be doing now.

As Frommer’s Na’vi reaches a level of renown fast approaching Okrand’s Klingon, Cameron has indicated plans for an Avatar sequel. That’s good news for Frommer, who would like nothing more than to continue to expand on the 1,000-plus word language.

“ ’Ivong Na’vi,” he says. Let Na’vi bloom.

The Art of ‘Conlang’

frommer_sideLanguage arts: Invented languages can be enjoyed for their sounds and structure, say Higley. (Photo: University Communications)

Professor of English Sarah Higley says creating languages is a more common pursuit than many people might suspect. She would know: She’s the inventor of the language Teonaht, a board member of the Language Creation Society, and a member of an online Listserv of more than 500 people—linguists, computer scientists, mathematicians, humanities scholars, and others—who create languages for fun. They call such languages “constructed languages”—or conlangs—and pursue their hobby as an art form that can be enjoyed for its sounds, its script, or, for real aficionados, its grammatical structure.

“More people have done this in the past than we could ever tell,” says Higley. “The reason there seems to be a burst of people doing it is only because the Internet has put us in touch with each other.”

“We’re not nuts,” she adds, alluding to critics who dismiss conlangers as (she says dryly) “people who all live in our grandmothers’ basements and have nothing else to do.” Higley, for example, is a scholar of medieval language, literature, and poetic structure, who teaches courses on these subjects, as well as science fiction and fantasy writing, which can borrow heavily from medieval concepts of magic.

In her latest book, Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), Higley explores the invented vocabulary of the 12th-century German nun, placing it in the context of language invention in both the past and present.

Over the past decades, Higley has continued to transform Teonaht into a strikingly original language, both phonetically and structurally.

Not everyone remains focused on a single language for so long. Many conlangers create several languages. “They’re really interested in the structure,” she says. “They have a certain idea. And they get bored with it, and start a new structure.”

“Some people change languages like they change clothes. Others stick with one invention for a lifetime.”

—Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Poetic Appeal

Why does the art of poetry thrive in an age of instant communication?

By Kathleen McGarvey Photographs by Adam Fenster

poetryPoetic progress: “To write one poem, you have to read a thousand of them,” says poet James Longenbach, the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

A cell phone trills. A BlackBerry vibrates, bristling for immediate attention. “Tweets” accrete, each bearing fleeting news of someone’s latest passing thought on Twitter. Now, now, now, now, now.

In an era of such frenzied exchange of language, it might seem that there would be little place for the poem. But poetry never has been more alive at Rochester than it is today, in writing workshops and poetry readings, informal gatherings and solitary sessions where a writer confronts a blank sheet—or screen. Far from being blotted out by contemporary mores of communication, poetry provides a kind of corrective.

“Poetry, like all great writing, whether poetry or prose, forces you to be very slow,” says James Longenbach, the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English and an acclaimed poet and literary critic. “You have to read very slowly. You have to write very slowly. That’s what I say to people who say they don’t understand poetry.

If you try to speed through language the way we do in most of our lives, poetry will be not just irrelevant, but incredibly frustrating.”

Speed, succinctness, transparent and uncomplicated meaning—these are the currency of now ubiquitous electronic communications. But poetry, which also concerns itself with condensation of thought, is an art of shades of meaning, ambiguities of purpose, and the pleasures of language itself.

“We’ve become the culture of the sound bite—and poetry is precisely the opposite of that,” says Thomas DiPiero, a professor of French and of visual and cultural studies, as well as the senior associate dean of the humanities. “It’s a way of thinking—a very specific way of thinking. It’s been called ‘concentrated thought.’ ”

And, judging by the English majors as well as students from disciplines throughout the College who fill English literature classrooms each semester, it has a powerful appeal.

“There’s a strong sense, a thrilling sense, of writing among the undergraduates, and not just of poetry but of fiction as well; you can’t have one genre without the other,” says Longenbach, the author of critical works such as The Resistance to Poetry and The Art of the Poetic Line, as well as volumes of poetry including Draft of a Letter and Fleet River.

Offered through the English Department, the poetry workshops that Longenbach and colleague Jennifer Grotz, an assistant professor of English, teach are part of the department’s creative writing program. Directed by Joanna Scott, a novelist and the Roswell S. Burrows Professor of English, the program is grounded in an understanding that writing is a creative discipline that draws on the study of a wide range of literature.

“In workshops, half our time is spent reading the greatest poems we can read,” says Longenbach, whose poetry has also appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The New Republic, Slate, and The Paris Review. “To write one poem, you have to have read a thousand of them.”

Grotz, whose poetry volume titled Cusp won the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize in 2003, says that she teaches students to “read as a writer would.”

Joining the University faculty last fall, Grotz also translates French and Polish poetry and will teach in Rochester’s new literary translation program.

Grotz found her own way to poetry slowly, teaching herself by reading other poets before taking up the academic study of poetry. A Texan who grew up “in a house with no books,” she was “like a musician who could pick out a tune,” she says.

In her students, Grotz seeks to develop a facility with writers’ tools. “My philosophy of teaching at least introductory-level poetry is to break it down into what writers call ‘craft lenses.’ To have the students think of themselves as writers, with skills they want to develop—image, music, and so on.”

For Giulia Perucchio ’13, who took Grotz’s workshop last fall, that approach was invaluable. “We connect huge, fluid things with very specific images,” she says. A graduate of Rochester’s School of the Arts, she came to the University already focused on creative writing. “That’s the best thing I learned from her: how to be very specific, very direct.”

Poetry’s roots at Rochester run to the University’s beginning. Ashael Kendrick, a scholar of Greek and one of the professors who came to Rochester when the University was first formed in 1850, translated and anthologized poetry. In 1968, Anthony Hecht ’87 (Honorary), the former John H. Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry, received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry while at Rochester, where he was a member of the English department for 18 years.

In many ways, the name most closely associated with verse at Rochester is that of the late Hyam Plutzik, who preceded Hecht as the John H. Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry and taught at the University from the mid-1940s until his death in 1962. A widely published poet concerned with themes such as the relationship between science and poetry, Plutzik taught writing workshops and gave weekly poetry readings on campus.

Today he’s memorialized in the Plutzik Library for Contemporary Writing at Rush Rhees Library, where professor emeritus and poet Jarold Ramsey is also honored with the Jarold Ramsey Study. The library houses the William and Hannelore Heyen Collection, an extensive poetry archive assembled by poet Heyen. Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation also holds collections—including early editions, manuscripts, and correspondence—by John Dryden, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), John Gardner, Carl Sandburg, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and other notable poets.

Tyler Goldman ’10, an English major with a creative writing emphasis from Balacynwyd, Pa., took part in the literary translation program’s inaugural course, translating Roman lyric poetry into English. He says among the values of literary translation is its ability to heighten a writer’s awareness of language. “It allows you to think critically about the way language operates,” he says.

That awareness is key to any writer’s development, Longenbach says. “I teach poetry almost exclusively as craft,” he says, “how we focus and sharpen the way we harness language. I tell students we’re almost never going to talk about the subject of a poem. What’s unique is the way the language takes you through the experience.”

There aren’t a lot of different subjects for pop songs, he observes, but we listen to our favorites again and again. Why? It’s not that we can’t recall them—quite the opposite. It’s our attraction to how they express an experience. Poetry, which he calls a “sonic art,” is the same.

“You read a poem many times, not because you can’t remember the words, but because you want to inhabit the way it moves through language.”

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Galway Kinnell ’49 (MA) agrees. A poem is “not just an exposition of an idea or an event, but a reliving of it,” he says. That evocative force lies in the images and music its words create.

“In poetry workshops, I find, students learn to attend to the precision of their language more powerfully than in any other class I teach,” says Longenbach, who became interested in poetry in college, after having spent “a great deal of my youth involved in music, as a pianist.”

Such exactness is not what everyone anticipates, however. Grotz and Longenbach find ways to help their students appreciate that poetry—like all art forms—requires a blending of feeling and craft.

“You’re working with young people who feel passionately about something, and you’re helping them learn how to connect that passion to a passion for the beauty and accuracy of language,” says Longenbach.

Strong emotion can be an impetus for a poem, but it’s not enough. “People who write not-very-good poems have compelling emotions, too,” he says, “but they haven’t figured out how to get it on the page.”

In Grotz’s workshop, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, a slim volume of correspondence from Rilke to an aspiring poet, helps frame discussion of the emotive dimension of poetry. She delivers the book to students in a sealed envelope, just as a letter would arrive.

“To my mind, Rilke really helps to address the other reason young poets turn to poetry: expressing themselves, thinking about what it means to be human,” says Grotz. “I contain our ‘soul talk’ to Rilke. Otherwise we focus on technique. It helps us talk more clinically about the craft—but it’s very hard to talk about one without the other.”

“Technique is what allows empathy to come through as empathy and not just as ‘I have these emotions,’ ” says Emily Claman ’06. After graduating with a degree in philosophy, she earned an MFA with a concentration in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and credits her work with Longenbach and poet and former Rochester faculty member Sally Keith for her pursuit of a poetic career.

When he was an undergraduate, poet Ilya Kaminsky recalls, Longenbach spoke with him “on a line-by-line basis” about poets Frost, Lowell, Walcott, and Ashbery.

“Just think of it: James Longenbach, famous poet and literary scholar, has spent hours and hours of his time reading poems of a first-semester freshman who did not even know English well at that time,” says the Odessa, Ukraine, native who is now a professor of poetry at San Diego State University. “Such generosity of spirit is what makes education possible and what truly propels talent to grow.”

Workshops are not the only courses in which Rochester students encounter poetry, of course. And poetry doesn’t stand alone, says Longenbach—“There’s a climate of writing here: fiction, poetry, and increasingly, playwriting”—nor is it separate from the work of the larger English department.

When Kenneth Gross, a professor of English who has published extensively on Renaissance and modern verse, teaches his course on lyric poetry, he guides students in “slowing down, and dwelling on images and ambiguities.”

Such ambiguities are an irreducible part of poetry’s complexity, and its power—a dimension, in fact, of the very precision Grotz and Longenbach instill. “Poetry works, and sticks around, because it’s not clear. There’s something that can’t be put into words, even though it is words,” Gross says.

Poetry “makes you consider multiplicities—often contradictory multiplicities—of meaning,” says DiPiero. “Reading poetry is like reading the world.”

And while students in his courses—not just English majors, but an “impressive range,” says Gross—might be uncertain in approaching poetry, he reminds them that “they have a lot of experience with rhythmically shaped language: nursery rhymes, prayers, music lyrics, epitaphs, even jingles.”

In his lyric poetry course, Gross—author of books such as Spenserian Poetics: Idolatry, Iconoclasm and Magic and Shylock is Shakespeare—focuses on Shakespeare’s sonnets and the poems of John Keats, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Bishop. They’re short works that “give them a sense of a single poetic intelligence,” he says. “For these poets, the major poems are the intense, short lyrics. They’re very meaty objects of analysis.”

But he shows students, too, that poetic language inhabits places they might not expect. In one course, he spent a week examining with students the texts of national anthems such as the Star Spangled Banner and La Marseillaise.

“It made them take up things they didn’t think of as poems—or even as things to be read—and see them as rather charged.”

Not to be overlooked, either, is the sheer enjoyment that engaging with a poem as a writer or a reader can provide. “However dark or difficult a poem, in some way it has to foreground pleasure,” says Gross.

That pleasure is what feeds literary readings like the Plutzik Reading Series, which brings readings by contemporary novelists and poets to the Rochester community.

“The Plutzik Series pulls an audience beyond the classroom—and also feeds back into the classroom,” Gross says, as faculty members—particularly Longenbach, Scott, and now Grotz—incorporate work by visiting writers into their courses.

Like the Neilly Series, a writers’ lecture series supported by an endowment from Andrew H. ’47 and Janet Dayton Neilly, the Plutzik Series is “a huge part of the literary community here. It transcends poetry,” says Goldman.

“Often, when I taught poetry classes, even workshops,” before coming to Rochester, “there was a part of my job that was being a salesman” for poetry, Grotz says. “Here I don’t feel the need to sell poetry at all. The students come interested and hungry.” How to keep them fed, she adds, “is a wonderful problem to have.”

For Samantha Miller ’11, a double major in English and philosophy from Henrietta, N.Y., who is in Grotz’s workshop this semester, poetry counterbalances the more impatient and utilitarian interaction with language she has in other facets of her life. “We’re so used to text messaging, e-mails—instant gratification and immediate answers. And poetry takes a lot more time,” she says. “In a sense, poetry doesn’t fit with our times, but I think that makes it even more important and valuable.”

Miller hopes one day to teach poetry at the college level and says her literary study at Rochester has shaped not only her professional ambitions but also the very way she sees the world.

“What you can gain by studying poetry is a new set of eyes,” says Miller. “You have a new appreciation for even the most minute things around you.”

It engenders, says Kinnell, “a tenderness towards existence.”

Ultimately, Grotz suggests, there’s even something elemental to it.

“Everybody knows poetry isn’t what you do to make money,” she says. “And it’s not read the way popular fiction is, by any means. It may seem like an old-fashioned thing to do. But it’s the perfectly packaged thing for a human being. It’s totally human-shaped, human-made.

“It’s breath.”

The Measure of Mountains

Rochester earth scientist Carmala Garzione is changing the way geologists think about the rise of mountain ranges.

By Jonathan Sherwood ’04 (MA), ’09S (MBA)

garzioneMountain view: By analyzing the sedimentary strata in a high-elevation basin in the Andes, Garzione has found that mountains in the South American range rose several times faster than previous research indicated. (Photo: Courtesy Carmala Garzione)

More than 12,000 feet above sea level in the Andes mountains of South America, Carmala Garzione finds herself at the center of a seismic shift in how she and other scientists understand the forces at work beneath one of the world’s longest continental mountain ranges.

An expert on the geological processes that can push the Earth’s upper crust skyward, Garzione, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rochester, is pioneering a new approach that she and colleagues say offers a more accurate picture of how such mountain ranges rose to where they are today.

Based on news methods of paleoaltimetry, the science of judging ancient mountain heights, that Garzione helped developed, her research indicates that the Andes rose to their current height in as little as 2 million years sometime between 6.4 million and 10 million years ago.

That’s a remarkable growth spurt for a mountain range that now features peaks between 5,000 and 7,000 meters (17,000 and 23,000 feet).

“That’s several times faster than geologists had estimated before,” Garzione says, noting that some previous work estimated that the Andes took as long as 50 million years to reach their current heights. “It means there is some unexpected process going on beneath the Earth’s crust that’s creating mountains like these.”

Investigating how that process works has earned wide recognition for Garzione. In 2007, she received the Young Scientist Award from the Geological Society of America, which cited her research as “groundbreaking.” Last year, the New York Academy of Science followed suit, honoring Garzione with its Blavatnik Award.

Her findings, which are based on detailed comparisons of the mineral composition of sediment that erodes from mountains over the life of their growth, are forcing geologists to rethink how mountains form and even how their growth contributes to global climate change.

In a process that geologists know as “shortening,” mountain ranges such as the Andes and the Himalayas are formed when vast sections of the Earth’s lithosphere, called tectonic plates, collide and push against each other. The plates buckle like a wrinkling rug, pushing up a long range of mountains. Exactly how quickly a range of mountains rises has long been shrouded in mystery because few scientists can measure how high a mountain may have been when it first started its ascent.

Garzione’s research, geologists estimated that uplift by examining the fossils left by vegetation or by dating when certain minerals from deep underground began moving to the surface. But plant characteristics can change radically over millions of years, and changes in climate can also vary the speed of erosion, throwing significant question marks into the equation.

Instead, Garzione theorized that by examining the mineral composition of sediment and comparing it to atmospheric conditions at different altitudes she would have a better picture of the time it took for a mountain to reach its height.

“I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the possibility of retrieving atmospheric information from ancient sediment in the Himalayan mountains, dating it, and forming a record of the Himalayas’ and Tibet’s uplift history,” says Garzione. “Based on my estimates, southern Tibet and the Himalayas appeared to have been high throughout their depositional history, so I was eager to put this technique to the test in a place that appears to have been at a lower elevation more recently.

We focused on the sediment that was deposited in the high Andes mountains because fossil estimates put them much lower just 10 million years ago,” she says. “However, trees cannot grow at the modern elevations in the Andes, so this fossil-based approach cannot tell us when and how fast the mountains rose. “As a mountain range rises, it experiences different atmospheric conditions due to its change in height. Those atmospheric changes, such as temperature and the amount and composition of rainfall, are recorded in minerals that form near the surface at different altitudes on the mountainside.

“The challenge was to see if I could get a clearer idea of the Andes’ growth than we’d ever had before.”

In the Bolivian Altiplano—a high-elevation basin in the Andes—Garzione took samples of sedimentary rock that had accumulated between 12 million and 5 million years ago. Garzione analyzed the mineral composition of sedimentary strata in the Altiplano, studying the ratio between the mineral carbonate, which is released from surface water during erosion, and the isotopes oxygen-16 and oxygen-18.

More than 99 percent of the oxygen in water is made up of oxygen-16 and less than 1 percent is oxygen-18, but as vapor rises to higher altitudes in the form of clouds, oxygen-18 is removed from the clouds. As rain falls, the clouds are slowly depleted of the isotope. Because the change is locked in the minerals that form on the mountains’ surfaces, Garzione was able to uncover a record of the altitude at which the minerals formed.

Garzione also used a second method to look at the Bolivian sediment that focused on the temperature at which the surface-forming carbonates were created. Since air temperature decreases with altitude, the rocks’ original altitude should be preserved in a temperature-based mineral snapshot. Garzione, along with Prosenjit Ghosh and John Eiler of the California Institute of Technology, employed a technique developed at CalTech to examine the abundance of oxygen-18 and carbon-13 isotopes that bonded together.

Using the CalTech method, Garzione and the CalTech team gauged the temperature at which the carbonates formed—from the hot Amazonian jungle climate to the freezing peaks of the Andes. Both studies pointed to the same conclusion: Between 10 million and 6.4 million years ago, the Andes lifted more than a mile. “When I first showed this data to others, they had a hard time believing that mountains could pop up so quickly,” says Garzione. “With supporting data from the new paleotemperature technique, we have more confidence in the uplift history and can determine the processes that caused the mountains to rise.”

How did the Andes rise so dramatically, geologically speaking?

Garzione says the answer may come in the not-so-scientific-sounding process known as “deblobbing.” That’s the colloquial term given to a process by which a dense root in the Earth’s mantle becomes detached from the Earth’s crust. As plates thicken during mountain building, the dense lower crust and upper mantle also thicken and are heated to higher temperatures in the Earth’s interior. At hotter temperatures, they become unstable and begin to flow downward under the force of their own mass into the Earth’s mantle, much like a more dense blob in a lava lamp flows downward.

When two tectonic plates collide, such as when the Nazca oceanic plate in the southeastern Pacific collides with the South American continental plate, the continental plate begins to buckle. Floating on a less dense and partially molten mantle, the plates press together and the buckling creates the first swell of a mountain range.

Below the crust, however, there’s another kind of buckling going on in the more elastic portions of the upper mantle. The dense mantle “root” clings to the underside of the crust, growing in step with the burgeoning mountains above. The root acts like an anchor, weighing down the whole range and preventing it from rising, much like a fishing weight on a small bobber holds the bobber low in the water. In the case of the Andes, the mountains swelled to a height of one to two kilometers before the mantle root disconnected and sunk into the deeper, partially molten mantle. The effect was like cutting the line to the fishing weight—the mountains suddenly “bobbed” high above the surrounding crust, and in less than 3 million years, the mountains had lifted from less than two kilometers to roughly four.

The process had been proposed since the early 1980s, but it has never stood up to scrutiny because the techniques to estimate surface elevation have only been recently developed.

“People have largely ignored the role of the upper mantle because it is difficult to look 50 to 200 kilometers into the Earth; whereas we can easily see the deformation on the surface,” says Garzione. “Some geologists have guessed that the dense lower crust and mantle are removed continuously and evenly during mountain building. Our data argue that this dense material just accumulates down there until some critical moment when it becomes unstable and drops off.”

Garzione is seeking even more accurate measurements of mountain growth speeds. She has begun new research in northern Tibet that brings together what she describes as one of the largest collaborative efforts between climatologists and geologists yet assembled.

“This study is a first of its kind,” says Garzione. “We’re studying the Tibetan Plateau to answer how mountain formation changed the Earth’s climate in the region, and how that climate change in turn affected the mountains as they formed. In terms of the breadth of research, this is the biggest proposal that the earth sciences and atmospheric sciences programs at the National Science Foundation have ever supported.

“It’s really exciting to see how our field is changing,” she says. “We’re able to ask bigger questions, and we need researchers from across disciplines to come together to answer them.”

Jonathan Sherwood ’04 (MA) ’09S (MBA) is a senior science writer for University Communications.

Defying Death

A former chemical engineer and oil company executive, David Atwood ’63 is leading efforts to abolish the death penalty in Texas.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

atwoodALTERED STATE: The population of Texas is changing, and with that, so are attitudes about the death penalty, Atwood says. (Photo: AP Images/David Einsel for Rochester Review)

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Men Walking, has called him “an inspiration.” Supporters of the Texas victims’ rights group Justice for All have called him “a murderer lover.”

David Atwood ’63, a self-described “death penalty abolitionist,” provokes strong reactions for a man often described as soft-spoken. A longtime activist in Catholic peace and social justice organizations, he launched the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 15 years ago in Houston.

Today, as he travels around the state speaking to church, school, and civic groups, he finds Texans are more receptive to the coalition’s message: that the death penalty is not a deterrent, that it’s administered unfairly, and that it has sent people to death row who later were exonerated and released.

“Most people are wanting to get more information and are wanting to learn,” says Atwood. “They may say initially that they’re for the death penalty. But many times when they get more information, they’ll change their minds.”

In 2005, the national group with which the Texas coalition is affiliated honored Atwood with its Lighting the Torch of Conscience Award, citing his role as lead organizer of the Texas Journey of Hope. The journey is a statewide anti-death penalty speaking tour by family members of murder victims, death row inmates, and exonerated inmates designed to “touch hearts and change minds.”

Getting people to think more deeply about the death penalty was the goal of Atwood’s 2008 book, Detour to Death Row (PeaceCenter Books), in which he recounted his interaction with inmates, their circumstances, and the relationships he has developed with them, their families, and the families of their victims.

Allan Turner, a reporter for the Houston Chronicle who has observed Atwood for years, calls Atwood’s approach “low key.”

“Dave is highly respected as a sober, thoughtful person. He’s not going to be engaging in verbal street theater,” Turner says.

There is arguably no anti-death penalty activist with a more daunting task than Atwood’s. In the past quarter century, more than one third of all prisoner executions in the United States have taken place in Texas. Of those executions, one quarter have taken place in a single county: Harris County, home of Houston, where Atwood and his wife, Priscilla McKendrick Atwood ’63N, have lived since the early 1970s, and where they have raised six children.

Atwood attributes those statistics in large part to powerful and well-funded district attorneys who are virtually unanimous in their support for the death penalty.

But he also believes their days of power are numbered. “People are moving into this state, and it’s changing.”

In 2005, for example, the Texas legislature passed a law granting juries the option of life imprisonment without parole—over the objections of Harris County’s district attorney.

Atwood was at the cusp of that transformation. A chemical engineer, he began working for the Shell oil company in Trenton, N.J., and relocated when the company moved its headquarters to Houston in 1971.

Atwood describes Houston in those days as “an old southern city.” To ease his adjustment, he turned to his church and its social causes. His transformation was radical. In 1974, his family abandoned their suburban home to live close to the city’s impoverished Fourth Ward, near the free health clinic where the Atwoods volunteered.

In 1991, David retired from Shell and began to research the death penalty. “There was a real vacuum,” he says, “of leadership and action against it.”

He acknowledges the inmates’ crimes are often brutal. “I have struggled sometimes just in reading about them. Most guys on death row have committed an atrocious crime.”

Another struggle comes after he talks with inmates and their families.

“You go in and you start talking with a person, and he seems like a normal human being.”

“One of the hardest things for a person like me, when there’s an execution, is being there with the family of the person being executed.” Atwood has stood vigil with family members over 100 times and has witnessed three executions.

In 2009, Texas handed down nine death sentences, a historic low. Citing polls showing Texans are cooling to the death penalty, Atwood says, “politicians have used the death penalty to get a political advantage. I think that advantage is disappearing.”

Abolition, he says, “is on its way.”

An Influential Voice in a Toxic Debate

Toxicologist Deborah Rice ’77M (PhD) earns national recognition for her work to identify potential toxins.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

rice STANDARD BEARER: Rice’s research on methylmercury and other toxins is used by many states to set standards for exposure to potential health hazards. (Photo: AP Images/Joel Page for Rochester Review)

Deborah Rice ’77M (PhD) recognizes that harmful chemicals “have really captured the imagination of the general public in the last few years.” And she says that while the media may have fed that interest, the concern reflects sound science. Exposure to toxins, at potentially harmful levels, is not only the curse of certain occupations or regions. Increasingly, it’s part of everyday life.

“We’re exposed not only through the environment, through lakes and rivers and the air,” she says, “but through the products that we’re actually bringing into our homes and using every day.” Those products include things from cosmetics to the lining of aluminum cans—“things that even five years ago, no one was thinking about.”

A former risk assessor for the Environmental Protection Agency, Rice is now a toxicologist with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Last fall, she was one of 10 people nationwide selected by the Heinz Family Foundation to receive the annual Heinz award.

Established in 1993 in memory of the late Pennsylvania senator John Heinz, the awards recognize individuals who demonstrate a combination of vision, creativity, and “gritty determination” in work that has led to enduring improvements for humankind. Rice is the second Rochester alumna to receive the award in the past three years. Susan Seacrest ’78W (Mas) was recognized in 2007 for spearheading a national campaign for safe drinking water. While the awards usually honor individuals across fields, this year the foundation focused on champions of environmental protection.

Rice made her initial mark researching the effects of PCBs, lead, and modest levels of methylmercury—a toxin that forms when mercury released into the air combines with organic compounds—on the developing fetus. Her research, which linked even small amounts of methylmercury to cognitive, sensory, and developmental impairments, is used by many states to establish guidelines for the consumption of fish, in which methylmercury accumulates.

From there, Rice began researching synthetic chemicals. About 80,000 new chemicals have been developed since the end of World War II. And most, she says, “have undergone no testing whatsoever.”

Unlike new drugs, which undergo rigorous testing by the Food and Drug Administration before they can be made available to the public, “there’s absolutely no requirement to test a non-pesticide chemical before it goes out into the environment or into household products,” says Rice.

Chemicals are regulated under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which places the onus on the federal government to determine which chemicals already in use are potentially harmful. States can regulate chemicals according to stricter standards, and several have.

In 2007, the Maine legislature banned the use of the chemical decaBDE—a flame retardant used in furniture and electronics—a decision based in part on Rice’s research demonstrating that the chemical is a toxic agent that accumulates in the environment, wildlife, and in human tissues.

Later that year, Rice was dismissed from an EPA panel that was reviewing the safety of deca. While industry groups, such as the American Chemistry Council, question many of the scientific claims against small doses of deca and similar chemicals, Rice has a long list of supporters, such as Herbert Needleman, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh who pioneered research into the toxic effects of low doses of lead. In May 2008, he published “The Case of Deborah Rice: Who Is the Environmental Protection Agency Protecting?” in PLOS Biology, a peer-reviewed journal of the Public Library of Science.

“Deborah’s not afraid of controversy,” says Bernard Weiss, a professor of environmental medicine and pediatrics at Rochester, with whom Rice worked when she was a doctoral candidate. And “grit” is a quality Rice has in abundance, he says, adding that although a horseback riding accident left her partially paralyzed in a wheelchair nearly 25 years ago, “ever since she gets around the world, to conferences, giving talks, and just being as active as you possibly can be.”

Rice’s dismissal did spur a congressional inquiry. And she says, “it put the focus on the way the agency chooses these panels.”

Today, she says, the process “is not perfect, but it’s improved. And to the extent that that was triggered by my experience, I’m very happy.”

Q&A

Accounting for Success

Climbing the corporate ladder requires good mentors, communication, and risk-taking, says Kathy Waller ’80, ’83S (MBA)

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

waller IN CONTROL: “Nobody gets to be senior at an organization by themselves,” says Waller, who last year was named controller of Coca-Cola, the latest executive post in her two-decade career with the company. (Photo: AP Images/John Amis for Rochester Review)

Kathy Waller ’80, ’83S (MBA), a University trustee who became the controller of Coca-Cola last August, has reached a level in the corporate hierarchy at which men vastly outnumber women and in which there are few African Americans. After joining the company in 1987 as a senior accountant, she worked in various roles, including principal accountant for the Northeast Europe/Africa Group, financial services manager for the Africa Group and the Minute Maid Co., and chief of internal audit, before her promotion to controller.

In an edited interview, Waller talks about her experience navigating the hierarchy of one of the world’s most recognized global corporations.

What are some of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned in your 20-plus-year career in business?

Nobody gets to be senior at an organization by themselves. Everybody gets help of one kind or another—whether you call it a mentor, a sponsor, or whatever you prefer to call it. I tell young people: Talk to people who’ve done it before you have. Talk to people who can help you navigate and understand how to interpret things that you might not interpret correctly. Sometimes we get upset about things, and we shouldn’t. And other times we should. And you don’t necessarily know how to make that distinction early on in your career.

Who have been your mentors?

I believe in having mentors internally and externally. I would say, first of all, my sister, Audrey. She was my first mentor and she’s been a consistent mentor throughout my career. She’s not an accountant. So she comes at things from a different perspective. But she knows me better than anybody. She can say to me, “that was really stupid,” or “why don’t you go stick up for yourself.” She can tell me things that other people might not be willing to tell me. Another person would be my chief financial officer, Gary Fayard. I got to know him when I first joined the company and he was a partner at Ernst & Young on the Coke account. He knows me very well, and if I go to him and say, “this really bothered me,” he’ll say, nine times out of 10: ‘OK. I got it. That would bother me too. But you need to get over it, and here’s why you need to get over it.’ You might not always agree with a mentor. But you need to respond in a way that keeps the lines of communication open.

There aren’t very many women—either white women or women of color—in senior positions in American corporations. Is it because most women have trouble finding good mentors?

Well, I don’t think it’s a grand conspiracy that’s keeping us out. I think there are several factors. Access to information is very important. Men get information in a lot of different ways. They get it on the golf course, or having drinks after work, or by debriefings in very casual settings. Women don’t always have access to those casual settings. It’s not necessarily that they aren’t wanted, or wouldn’t be invited. Sometimes they have to go pick up the kids, or sometimes it’s just not comfortable for women to go hang out at a bar with the guys. I don’t think men think of what they’re doing in these settings as mentoring, but it is. And I think that’s what women are missing—that network which is outside of the day- to-day work itself. And that’s one reason it’s so important to make the connection with someone who is then going to be instrumental in helping you succeed.

Do you think men of color can face a similar kind of exclusion?

Yes, to some extent, although the men still have better access to the informal network than women do.

Do women face any other barriers?

Yes. I think women are very hard on themselves. I’ll give you an example. I was reading some research the other day about men and women who come out of the same graduate schools with the same type of grades and what happens to them after their first job. And the research suggests that men are further along in their careers than the women, even though they started out as equal. Part of the reason was that the woman was willing to start at an entry level job and the man wasn’t; and when they both started at entry level jobs, the men took several jumps, whereas the women took a steady pace up. Why is that? Well, she thought she had to prove that she could do this particular job. So she thought, “OK, I’ll start at entry level, I’ll work my way up, and I’ll prove myself.” He said, “I don’t need entry level to prove myself. I’m going to jump right in here at a higher level.”

Would you say you’ve hesitated to take risks?

Absolutely. I’ve had the same conversations with myself that a lot of women do. But I’ve been fortunate enough to have people who have helped me work through my hesitation and go after challenges. I’ve become aware of negative internal conversations and now I stop them. But if you look back at my career, I, too, started at entry level. And I’ve worked my way up. I’ve been at Coca-Cola for 22 years.

How can business schools help?

By making sure that women graduates immediately become competitive and don’t immediately knock themselves out of the competition. Business schools should encourage women to go for the higher level job versus starting at an entry level.

You haven’t mentioned the challenge of balancing work and family responsibilities, which is so often assumed to be a reason why women lag in status and pay.

I think this is changing to some extent with more companies offering flexible work arrangements and recognizing the importance of diversity to their success. Younger men are also driving the change. Next-generation men want to be there for their families just as much as women do. Everybody wants to be there for the soccer game. Everybody wants to be there for Little League. So that’s going to be interesting to watch. There’s a huge generational difference. These men are going to make sacrifices that are going to help men and women. It’s going to help level the playing field quite a bit.

In the News

in_newsFIRST GRAMMY: Bill Cunliffe ’81E (MM) won for Best Instrumental Arrangement. (Photo: AP Images/Mark J. Terrill)

Eastman Grads Claim Grammys

Soprano Renee Fleming ’83E (MM), tenor Anthony Dean Griffey ’01E (MM), and jazz pianist and composer and arranger Bill Cunliffe ’81E (MM) were winners at the 52nd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in January. Cunliffe’s award—for Best Instrumental Arrangement for his “West Side Story Medley” on Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute to Oscar Peterson (Resonance Records)—was his first. Fleming and Griffey, who both have two awards, picked up two more. Fleming won Best Classical Vocal Performance for her album of arias, Verismo (Decca), and shared Best Classical Crossover Album, for her role on Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs of Joy and Peace (Sony Classical). Griffey shared the Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance for his role on Mahler: Symphony No. 8; Adagio From Symphony No. 10 (SFS Media).

Reverend Paul McDaniel ’59 (MA) Appointed to Rights Commission

Paul McDaniel ’59 (MA), a community activist and pastor of the Second Missionary Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tenn., has been appointed by the state’s governor to the board of the Tennessee Human Rights Commission. The commission is a state agency charged with investigating and eradicating discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations. The board consists of 15 members, each of whom serves a six-year term.

Celena Evans ’96 is one of Atlanta Business Chronicle’s ‘40 Under 40’

Celena Evans ’96 is one of the top 40 business professionals in the Atlanta area under the age of 40. That’s according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Evans, who earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Rochester and a graduate business degree from Emory University, leads a team at the climate-control device company Heatcraft Refrigeration. She is also the vice president of a mentoring and networking group for executive-level women alumni of Emory’s Goizueta School of Business and a board member of an organization that teaches high school and college students how to manage their finances.

Alumna Awarded Largest Individual Grant in Arizona State’s History

Kimberly Sidora Arcoleo ’06M (PhD), an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation, has been awarded a $2.5 million grant—the largest individual investigator award in Arizona State’s history—by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health. Arcoleo will lead an interdisciplinary study on asthma disparities in Latino children, investigating the similarities and differences between Mexican and Puerto Rican families regarding beliefs about asthma and management strategies.

Rosalyn Engelman ’78 (MS) Wins Gold Medal at Florence Exhibition

Exhibiting alongside more than 800 artists from 78 countries at the invitation-only 2009 Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea di Firenze, New York City artist Rosalyn Engelman ’78 (MS) was awarded the Lorenzo di Medici “Il Magnifico” Gold Medal for Career Achievement in Art. Held every two years in Florence’s 16th–century fortress, Fortezza da Basso, the exhibition is judged by an international panel and sponsored by the Italian government, the United Nations, and various arts and civic organizations. Engelman displayed three paintings: Fog, Emotion, and Bal Harbour Sunset.

TRIBUTE

Alan Stockman: Scholar, Advisor, Friend

stockmanADVISOR: Stockman was known for his “open mind and good advice.” (Photo: Department of Economics)

I met Alan Stockman on a visit to campus in 1985, when I was considering Rochester’s doctoral program in economics. I liked him immediately, and ultimately he became my thesis advisor, coauthor, friend, and colleague until his death from cancer in January at age 58.

As the Marie C. and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Economics, he published pathbreaking research on exchange rates, business cycles, monetary policy, and inflation.

But he was also a beloved teacher and advisor. Three other women students in my graduate school cohort also worked with Alan. Even today, four is a big number when it comes to women in economics departments, and advising four women students in a single year probably put Alan in the national record books. We became known as “Alan’s Angels,” a wry reference to the cheesy 1970s television show Charlie’s Angels. All of us went on to professional careers in economics, supported by Alan’s guidance and mentorship.

As I moved through my career, Alan was always ready to discuss economic research with an open mind, and invariably, with good advice. He taught me, among other things, that economics is fun (“When it stops being fun, it’s time to find something else to do”). He taught me that good ideas are simple, and you will know when your idea is right. Long before the popular New York Times blog Freakonomics, Alan taught me that economics is at work in every facet of human activity. Lastly, he taught me that economics is a job (“Your family and your personal life deserve attention, because economics cannot, and probably should not, be the center of your life”).

I last saw Alan two years ago. I tried to talk with him about new problems I was working on. After a few minutes he said, “You know, fighting this cancer has just taken too much from me. Tell me about your kids.” I felt sad because it was clear cancer had robbed Alan of his love of economics. On the other hand (and economists always have two hands!), in the end Alan focused on what we both knew really mattered.

—Linda Tesar ’91 (PhD)

Linda Tesar is the chair of the department of economics at the University of Michigan.

Books & Recordings

Books

The Savvy Musician: Building a Career, Earning a Living, and Making a Difference

By David Cutler ’96E (MM)

Helius Press, 2010

Cutler, a professor of composition and musicianship and the coordinator of music entrepreneurship studies at Duquesne University, presents marketing, financing, and other practical advice to professional musicians, through vignettes of over 150 working musicians.

Toni Morrison: A Biography

By Stephanie Li

Greenwood Press, 2009

Written for a biography series intended for use by high school students, the book by Li, an assistant professor of English at Rochester, brings literary expertise to bear on Morrison’s life and writings.

Becoming Me: The Memoir of an Erudite, Music Loving, Left-handed Woodworker

By David L. Rosenbloom ’68

United Arts, 2009

Rosenbloom, a retired marketing and public relations executive, tells how he left the corporate world to become a custom furniture designer and craftsman, and how his recent battle with kidney disease has shaped his character and life philosophy.

Let’s Go Around Again

By Ellen Jespersen Williams ’59E

Cattail Press, 2009

Williams, a former piano teacher, composer, and secretary who left those jobs to become a psychotherapist, offers a collection of humorous and autobiographic essays, stories, and poems. Williams began writing eight years ago, after she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Radiation Hormesis and the Linear-No-Threshold Assumption

By Charles L. Sanders ’66M (PhD)

Springer, 2010

Sanders, a researcher at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, challenges the assumptions guiding radiation protection standards. The findings have implications for radiology, health physics, and public perceptions of radiation and nuclear power.

Heaven—God’s Wonderful World

By Robert B. Thompson ’65W (EdD)

Tate Publishing, 2010

Pastor and educator Thompson offers a story of a child who has died and entered heaven. The book is written for children with terminal illnesses to allay their fears about dying.

Craniofacial Embryogenetics and Development (Second Edition)

By Geoffrey H. Sperber ’62M (MS)

People’s Medical Publishing House, 2010

Sperber, a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, updates clinicians on treating craniofacial anomalies. A new chapter presents the most recent research on the genetics of craniofacial development and its significance to new diagnostic tools and surgical techniques.

The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline

By Jonathan Leeman ’95

Crossway, 2010

Leeman, an elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and the director of communications for the church reform organization 9Marks, criticizes the trend among evangelicals to dismiss the importance of church structure, membership, and discipline, arguing that the message of the Christian Gospels can be understood only within that context.

Victorian Vogue: British Novels on Screen

By Dianne Fallon Sadoff ’73 (PhD)

University of Minnesota Press, 2010

Sadoff, a professor of English at Rutgers University, demonstrates the ways in which popular films based on 19th-century British novels have been crafted to explore the concerns of the present, as well as the Victorian British past.

Detour to Death Row

By David Atwood ’63

PeaceCenter Books, 2008

Atwood, a former oil company engineer and founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, writes about his nearly 20 years of activism with the coalition and the Catholic peace movement. Atwood tells the stories of the death row inmates, their families, and the families of murder victims whom he met, worked with, and befriended.

Via Corsa Car Lover’s Guide to Arizona

By Ron Adams ’88

Via Corsa, 2010

As part of his car lover’s travel guidebook series, Via Corsa president and high performance driver Adams provides information on car auctions, shows, automobile museums, racetracks, high performance driving schools, and favorite drives in Arizona.

Tales from the Emergency Room: Remembrances from a Life in Medicine

By William E. Hermance ’56, ’60M (MD)

Xlibris, 2009

The memoir from allergist Hermance is a meditation on the satisfactions of practicing medicine, told as a series of humorous as well as sad anecdotes about the patients and events he encountered during his long medical career.

Handbook of Violence Risk Assessment

By Randy K. Otto ’81 and Kevin S. Douglas

Routledge Press, 2010

Otto, an associate professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, coauthors a survey of recent research on assessing the risk of violence among criminal populations and people with severe mental illnesses.

Dementia Beyond Drugs: Changing the Culture of Care

By G. Allen Power ’76, ’80M (MD)

Health Professions Press, 2010

Power, a geriatrician and associate professor of medicine at Rochester, proposes an experiential, “person-directed” alternative to the traditional biomedical approach used in treating patients with dementia.

Lobo: The Strange Life of William Jameson

By John H. Manhold ’41

SynergEbooks, 2009

Author and speaker Manhold tells the story of a farm boy whose adventures span the Oregon Trail, industrial England, and eventually, life as a fencing master, with a Creole paramour, in pre- and post–Civil War New Orleans. Manhold is also the author of The Elymais Coin (Cereb, 2008) and El Tigre (SynergEbooks, 2007), both of which were category finalists in the Indie Excellence Awards, recognizing independent and self-publishing authors.

Recordings

Psychotherapy Integration Over Time

By George Stricker ’60 (PhD)

APA Books, 2009

In a training DVD for mental health professionals, Stricker, a clinicial psychologist and professor of psychology at Argosy University, demonstrates one approach to psychotherapy integration—assimilative integration—through a case study of a married woman in her late 40s.

Facets: Contemporary Interpretations of Classic Hymns

By Todd Beaney ’85E (MM) and John Dolan

Self-Produced, 2009

Pianist Beaney and trumpeter John Dolan offer innovative and contemporary interpretations of 15 classic Christian hymns.

New Chamber Music with Double Bass

By William Blossom ’69E

Cicada Chamber Players, 2009

Blossom and the Cicada Chamber Players, a group he formed in 2007, are joined by pianist Kazuko Mayumi in the recording of music by Jon Deak, Ron Wasserman, Alvin Brehm, and John Mooney.

The Sound, the Speed, the Light

By Mission of Burma

Matador Records, 2009

Mission of Burma, the post-punk foursome that includes bassist Clint Conley ’77, presents 14 new tracks in the group’s third studio album since reuniting in 2002.

Threads

By the Bill DiCosimo Quartet

DiCosmic, 2009

Pianist, composer, and arranger Bill DiCosimo ’74E performs 12 original jazz-rock-fusion compositions, accompanied by quartet members on guitar, percussion, and vocals. In each selection, DiCosimo explores a personal reminiscence or observation.

Schulhoff / Schoenberg: Chamber Works

By Fenwick Smith ’72E

Chandos, 2009

Flutist Smith joins pianist Randall Hodkinson in a recording of rarely performed works by the innovative early 20th-century European composers Erwin Schulhoff and Arnold Schoenberg.

Piano Music of Rodion Shchedrin

By Marina Lomazov ’93E, ’00E (DMA)

Centaur Records, 2009

Lomazov, an assistant professor of piano at the University of South Carolina’s school of music, performs selections by the Russian composer and pianist Rodion Shchedrin.

Summer Play

By the Mountain Music Duo

Self-Produced, 2009

The duo that includes Tenly Polhemus Williams ’01E (oboe and English horn) and James Cline (guitar) interprets a wide-ranging selection of classical, pop, and jazz music.

Summer Day: The Complete Works for Violin & Piano

By Emma Lou Diemer ’60E (PhD)

Truetone Productions, 2010

The composer Diemer’s complete works for violin and piano, from 1988 to 2009, are performed by Diemer on piano and Philip Ficsor on violin.

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.

PLUTZIK LIBRARY

Poetic Papers

afterwords (Photo: Adam Fenster)

ARCHIVE: For much of the 20th century, the study of poetry at Rochester was synonymous with the name of Hyam Plutzik, a noted poet and the John H. Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry. More than 40 years after Plutzik’s death in 1962, his legacy lives on in campus programs such as the English department’s Plutzik Reading Series and in his collected papers housed at Rush Rhees Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Tracing the evolution of some works—such as “Bomber Base,” written when Plutzik was stationed in England with the Army Air Corps during World War II—the collection is a valuable resource for scholars and for publishers such as Wesleyan University Press, which is planning a 2011 edition of Plutzik’s long narrative poem, “Horatio,” together with other selected Plutzik poems.