Rochester Review

November–December 2010, Volume 73, No. 2

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

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

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

Copyright © 2010 University of Rochester

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Education Pays

By Joel Seligman

president (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The argument that young people are wasting their time and money by going to college is sometimes made. The disparaging stereotype of higher education as an “ivory tower” disconnected from the realities of the “real world” is one that cycles periodically through our nation’s political discourse, mass media, and popular commentary. We’re in the midst of a new round of attacks from cultural critics who argue that the entire field of higher education has lost its way. If you want to write a bestselling book in this genre, you inevitably pick one with a snappy title such as the recent work Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—And What We Can Do About It.

As someone who over the course of a 34-year academic career has been affiliated with several different universities, the picture such analyses paint of higher education is wildly divorced from my experience. I do not mean to suggest that universities are perfect or that we cannot do better in balancing our priorities among our missions of teaching, research, service, and clinical care. But isolating a set of important numbers—tuition, for example, or faculty salaries—as these books usually do, and presenting them out of context is a simplistic and troubling form of analysis.

Particularly troubling is the failure to recognize that higher education is one of the best investments a young person—and that young person’s family—can make. As the College Board titled an October 2010 report, “Education Pays.” In simple financial terms, the report shows that there is a correlation between level of education and earnings over time. The 2008 median earnings of people age 25 and older who have a bachelor’s degree were $55,700, about $21,900 more than the median earnings of people with high school degrees. For individuals with master’s degrees, the median was $67,300; for people with doctoral degrees, $91,900; with professional degrees, approximately $100,000. Putting this in other terms, the expected lifetime earnings of college graduates were 66 percent higher than for those with high school degrees; master’s degrees, about double those with high school degrees; doctorates or professional degrees, over two and one half times those of high school degrees.

Beyond the financial return, individuals with college degrees are more likely to be active in the life of their communities, to lead healthier lifestyles, and to be more engaged in the education of their children. There are also intangible benefits of education: the broadening of social and personal horizons as young people learn from their professors and from one another.

We know college education comes with a price tag in the form of tuition, and much of the criticism results from the “sticker shock” of paying for education. Tuition is a burden for many families. At the University of Rochester, we have made concerted efforts to increase the financial aid that we can offer many families. All of us have heard painful stories of young graduates of the nation’s colleges who cannot pay off their loans or who cannot find appropriate work in their fields. But as the College Board points out, based on median earnings, by age 33, typical four-year college graduates have earned enough to pay back their tuition costs and student loans, and to compensate themselves for being out of the workforce for four years.

Where does the money go? The critics contend that tuition is lavished on the salaries of faculty who don’t teach, on cocurricular facilities such as dining halls, and on programs such as athletics. Building and maintaining one of the nation’s most highly regarded private research universities such as Rochester is a competitive environment, and we compete on all levels to attract and retain the finest teachers, scholars, and researchers. Outstanding faculty are the essence of what makes a research university outstanding. But throughout our history, we have put a premium on the collegial, academic, and scholarly relationships students have with their professors. Students at Rochester know they will get to work with faculty on research projects, be able to meet with faculty in smaller classes, and be part of a scholarly community.

That includes athletics, a frequent target of higher education’s critics. While some NCAA Division I schools have earned censure, Rochester, like all Division III schools, takes a different approach to the role of athletics. We have no special scholarships for athletes, who play for the love of their sports. Nearly without exception, our student-athletes excel in all facets of their lives on campus.

Education at Rochester focuses on an often rigorous curriculum. We have learned that our most successful academic approach recognizes that we are educating whole persons, whose health, ability to work with others, cultural life, and leadership skills fundamentally matter.

Finding the right balance between providing the opportunities for students to achieve academically as well as socially and personally with the necessary financial costs such opportunities entail is a continuing task. We take it seriously, and we recognize that much depends upon those decisions. As the College Board report stated, “[O]ur challenge is to make the most promising paths readily available to students from all backgrounds. We will all be better off if we continue to make progress in this direction.”

Letters

Library Looks Great

While each issue of Rochester Review has something of interest, the picture of the renovated Messinger Periodical Reading Room (“Room by Room,” In Review, September-October) and the adjoining Graduate Study Rooms really caught my eye. These rooms on the west side of the library have been restored wonderfully!

The story makes mention of the fluorescent ceiling lights that were installed in the reading room in the 1960s. By the 1970s the lights, which largely obscured the beautiful ceiling above them, had started to go out. I had a part-time job working with the campus electricians and spent much of the summer of 1976 up on a scaffold inside that room working above my head to replace lighting ballasts and bulbs in what seemed like an infinite number of light fixtures.

While that may have improved the light coming from those fixtures, I have never been so pleased to see some of my work made obsolete. The room looks so much better than it had back then. I had a number of jobs while at school, learning both inside and outside the classroom. I’m glad to see that things have gotten even better in so many areas at the U of R—library lighting included!

Bob Strong ’77

Niskayuna, N.Y.

To see views of the Messinger rooms, named in honor of trustee Martin Messinger ’49 and his family, visit Review’s Web site at www.rochester.edu/pr/Review. We’ve posted 360-degree panoramas as well as before and after photos —Editor.

Thanks, Mitch

Karen McCally’s article on the illustrious career of Mitch Miller ’32E (“An Unlikely ‘Prince of Pop,’ ” Alumni Gazette, September-October) failed to note that he was a 1928 graduate of Rochester’s East High School.

In 2003, my wife and I (along with some 1,600 other East alumni) attended the celebration of my high school’s centennial. Mitch, class of ’28, who was accompanied by his two brothers (classes of ’30 and ’31), was honorary chairman and featured speaker at the event which was held at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center.

As Mitch began his talk, I imagined that some may have been expecting to hear a litany of his accomplishments in the music business. How wrong that turned out to be. His talk centered on how the Rochester public schools, especially his teachers at East, proved to be such a lasting influence on his life and career; needless to say, just what his audience wanted to hear. As we all filed out that night, the pride etched on the faces of 1,600 alums was indeed palpable.

Thanks a lot, Mitch!

Dan Riley ’52

Clifton Park, N.Y.

The author is a 1943 graduate of East High —Editor.

Role of Congress, White House?

The efforts of Drs. Gary Gorton ’83 (PhD) and Kenneth French ’78S (MBA), ’83S (PhD) as reported, are certainly a worthy endeavor (“Crisis Responders,” September-October). However, there was little to no mention of the “elephant in the room”—Congress and the White House.

Of course, banks and other financial institutions overreached in risk and ethical behavior. But that doesn’t remove the devastating effect of Congress and the White House. In fact, we now learn that again more pressure has been applied on banks to lend, perhaps presaging the next meltdown.

The question remains: How can one preempt Congress and the White House from causing undesirable consequences?

Raymond Harrold ’54

Northborough, Mass.

Department of Corrections

A story on violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins ’93E (“Sharing Music, Feeding Souls,” Alumni Gazette, September-October) should have noted that she serves occasionally as the concertmaster of the New York Pops. While she is the concertmaster for the Chamber Orchestra of New York, she doesn’t serve that role full time with the Pops.

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

HONORS

A White House Salute

Pioneering researcher Esther Conwell ’44 (MS) is the first faculty member to receive a National Medal of Science.

By Kathleen McGarvey

conwellCONGRATULATIONS! Conwell receives hugs from her grandchildren, eight-year-old Charles and six-year-old Vivian Rothberg of Pittsford, N.Y., after a campus press conference announcing her selection for the National Medal of Science. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

When Esther Conwell ’44 (MS) took a job at Western Electric in the 1940s, she was hired as an assistant engineer.

Except her employers told her they had no way to classify a woman assistant engineer on their payroll, so she went on the books as an “engineer’s assistant.”

“It’s obvious what that did to my salary,” Conwell says.

Today Conwell—a professor of chemistry at Rochester—is reaping the recognition she was denied as a young scientist. She has been chosen by President Barack Obama to receive a National Medal of Science, one of the nation’s highest accolades for scientific achievement.

Conwell, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, helped launch the computer revolution by explaining how electrons travel through semiconductors. Her research has earned her membership in both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Discover magazine named Conwell one of the 50 all-time most important women in science.

“Esther Conwell’s breakthrough scientific work on electron transport in semiconductors is still important scientifically and technologically more than a half-century after her initial work,” says Provost Ralph Kuncl. “Her scientific achievements are further amplified by her commitment to encouraging future women scientists and mentoring the next generation of scientific leaders. We are indebted to her for her crucial contributions to our nation’s scientific development, and delighted to call her a colleague.”

Conwell—who, at the age of 88, still maintains a daily presence in the chemistry department, where she’s currently studying the movement of electrons through DNA—was born in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn. She showed an early aptitude for math and a love for discipline and challenge.

She became a physics major as an undergraduate at Brooklyn College (now part of the City University of New York) and came to Rochester in 1942, a 20-year-old ready to work on her doctorate.

But soon after her arrival many of Rochester’s physicists had left campus to pursue research for the government in World War II. After a year’s study, Conwell took her master’s degree—under quantum mechanics theorist Victor Weisskopf—and produced with him what is today known as the Conwell-Weisskopf theory, which described how “impurity ions” impede the flow of electrons and led to a better understanding of the materials used in making transistors and integrated circuits.

Conwell continued her studies at the University of Chicago, where she worked under 1983 Nobel Prize winner Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and earned a doctorate in physics in 1948.

She embarked on a career in industry, working at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1950s, then at GTE Laboratories until 1972, and at Xerox Corp. from 1972 until 1998.

First serving as an adjunct professor at Rochester in 1990, Conwell became a full-time member of the faculty in 1998, after her retirement from Xerox.

“Esther’s 70-year-long and still active career has greatly contributed to the technological revolution,” says Robert Boeckman, the Marshall D. Gates Jr. Professor of Chemistry and the chair of the chemistry department, who calls the National Science Award the “ultimate recognition a U.S. scientist or engineer can achieve.” Her work has “directly led to the practical devices we use every day.”

While women have made great strides in the sciences, Conwell says, there’s “still a long way to go.”

She has done what she can to close the gap, her efforts earning her the 2008 American Chemical Society Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences. The society recognized Conwell for her own career accomplishments and for her “unwavering dedication to and advocacy on behalf of women in chemistry and chemical engineering.”

“You have to work harder than a man to get to the same kind of job, but it’s a lot more possible now,” says Conwell, who recently celebrated her 65th anniversary with husband Abraham Rothberg and works alongside their son, Lewis Rothberg, a professor of chemistry at Rochester.

The National Medal of Science was established by Congress in 1959 and is awarded by the president to recognize “outstanding contributions to knowledge in the sciences.” A committee of 12 scientists and engineers, appointed by the chief executive, nominates individuals for the award, but the final decisions are made by the president.

Conwell calls the award a “humbling gift,” and she met the attention surrounding the news with both modesty and the commitment to hard work that has propelled her through her career.

As Conwell sat beside him at the post-announcement press conference, Boeckman revealed that she had commented to him about the hoopla, “You know, all this is doing is preventing me from finishing my next paper.”

Who Has Won a National Medal?

Conwell is the first Rochester faculty member to receive a National Medal of Science, joining several alumni who have earned national medals for their work.

National Medal of Science

1986: D. A. Henderson ’54M (MD), ’77 (Honorary), a longtime faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, was honored for leading the team that eradicated smallpox as a disease in humans.

2003: John Prausnitz ’51 (MS), a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was recognized for improving the design of large chemical plants to make them safer, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly.

National Medal of Freedom

2002: Henderson was honored for his return to federal service after September 11, 2001, to help with anti-bioterrorism efforts.

National Medal of Technology and Innovation

1995: Alejandro Zaffaroni ’49M (PhD), ’51M (Flw), ’72 (Honorary), who through his career in industry is associated with the invention of the birth control pill, the “patch,” and controlled drug delivery, was recognized for his contributions to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

2005: Dace Viceps Madore ’69 and Maya Koster ’82 were chosen as part of a four-person team from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals credited with developing the children’s vaccine Prevnar, which helps prevent invasive pneumococcal disease—a vaccine based on technology developed by Medical Center scientists David Smith, Porter Anderson, and Richard Insel.

National Medal of the Arts

1995: David Diamond ’37E, who left Rochester before completing his degree, received the medal in recognition of his achievements as a composer.

—Kathleen McGarvey

Q&A

The Future of Fusion

Will nuclear fusion help power the nation’s energy supply? The director of the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics says Rochester has set the course for finding out.

Interview by Larry Arbeiter

laserLASER VISION: Successful tests of the National Ignition Facility draw on decades of research and development at Rochester, says Robert McCrory, director of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics since 1983. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

In discussions of the nation’s need to develop safe, clean, renewable power, nuclear fusion has long been acknowledged as the technology with perhaps the greatest potential payoff. But that recognition comes with the caveat that the necessary breakthroughs may never be achieved.

With the recent commissioning of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the U.S. government is making a $3.5 billion bet that fusion eventually will be part of the nation’s energy mix.

The Omega and Omega EP laser facilities at the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics reigned as the world’s most powerful lasers for fusion and high energy density physics research until they were surpassed this year by NIF. The LLE remains the largest user facility for research in this field, with scientists from around the world performing experiments at the South Campus site. Founded in 1970 and supported by approximately $70 million annually, mostly from the federal government, the lab and the scores of scientists who conduct research there have laid the foundation in laser inertial confinement fusion research on which the NIF is built (see sidebar)

As director of the LLE since 1983, Robert McCrory has had a leading role in developing the nation’s strategy for achieving nuclear fusion as a form of energy production. For his own research on laser-driven plasmas and their applications to controlled thermonuclear fusion, McCrory was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he won the international Edward Teller Medal. In 2002, the Hajim School selected McCrory for its Lifetime Achievement Award.

How has the work at the LLE made the NIF possible?

LLE was a significant partner in NIF’s design and construction, including coating about half of the large optics. In addition, research carried out on the Omega Laser Facility has led to improved understanding of inertial confinement fusion and the results have been incorporated into the design of ignition targets for the NIF. This includes new technologies developed at LLE, such as high efficiency frequency tripling and smoothing by spectral dispersion, which are essential to NIF meeting its performance goals.

What do you say to the critics who argue the NIF is perhaps too large and complex to reliably meet its design goals of achieving nuclear ignition?

The NIF is about 50 times larger than the Omega laser facility but was built upon the experience gained from Omega, and from the Nova laser at Lawrence Livermore before that. The innovations in the laser architecture incorporated in the NIF make it possible for it to meet its design goals. It’s worth noting that the new Omega EP laser was built using these same innovations and, while much smaller (4 beams compared to 192 on NIF), is operating reliably. The initial performance of the NIF is very encouraging. The Lawrence Livermore team, with its national partners, did a masterful job of completing the project. In fact, the Project Management Institute named the NIF as its Project of the Year in October, selecting NIF from three finalists drawn from worldwide nominees. The other finalists were the monumental Cowboys Stadium, the NFL’s superstructure in Dallas, and the Norton Brownsboro Hospital, a facility featuring the latest in health care technology, in Louisville, Ky.

Why should we spend so much money and energy to try to achieve fusion when we already have nuclear power in the form of fission-based reactors?

It is true that nuclear fission is in widespread use in the U.S. and worldwide. There is sufficient fuel so that nuclear fission could play a significant role in meeting the nation’s carbon-free energy needs over the next century. However, no new nuclear fission plants have been built in the U.S. in the past decades. This is, in large part, due to the public’s fears about nuclear fission, the possibility that there could be a meltdown and concerns about how to store the spent radioactive fuel, and difficult regulatory and licensing requirements. The U.S. was planning for long-term storage at Yucca Mountain and spent over $8 billion on it, but that has been abandoned. By contrast, nuclear fusion offers the advantages of an essentially unlimited supply of fuel—contained in water—no risk of meltdown, and very little radioactive waste. Fusion also avoids many of the nuclear proliferation dangers and concerns associated with fission reactors.

With all of the advantages of fusion, why are there hundreds of nuclear fission power plants but not a single one powered by fusion?

Achieving fusion ignition in the laboratory is much more difficult than making a nuclear fission plant work. One of the reasons that nuclear fission power plants were successfully developed was the research carried out by the Navy to develop nuclear-powered vessels under Admiral [Hyman] Rickover. This was the precursor to the nuclear power industry. We are at a similar stage now with inertial confinement fusion, which is in the development stage. After a successful demonstration of ignition on the NIF, a significant inertial fusion energy program will likely begin with the goal of demonstrating a nuclear fusion power plant by the middle of this century. A National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering study will begin late in 2010 to assess the potential of inertial fusion energy.

Some financial and environmental activists are complaining that the NIF may not reach all of its deadlines on time, and should therefore be penalized or reconsidered. How do you respond to them?

Achieving nuclear fusion ignition in the laboratory is difficult, and there is a significant national research program to demonstrate ignition. But this is a research program, not an engineering project, and we cannot provide a definitive date by which ignition will be achieved. The deadlines are goals that we hope to reach, but in a research program, new discoveries can influence how the goals are met. This can make things take more, or sometimes less, time than originally anticipated. While the date that ignition will be demonstrated cannot be guaranteed, I am confident that ignition can be achieved in the next few years.

If ignition is soon achieved, and assuming we and other nations continue to pursue the long-term challenge, how far off is the payoff likely to be?

After the demonstration of ignition, an inertial fusion energy program could begin with the goal of demonstrating a nuclear fusion power plant by the middle of the century. If that is successful, nuclear fusion could meet a significant fraction of the nation’s electricity needs by the end of the century. This will require the continued support of the federal government over the next few decades. It is unlikely that private industry will become a significant player until after a prototype power plant has been demonstrated.

Larry Arbeiter is associate vice president for University Communications.

Laboratory Stars

laser_sideIGNITION: Heated by the 192 laser beams at NIF, the surface of the target fuel ablates, squeezing the remaining fuel into a dense core—which undergoes nuclear fusion. (Illustration: Steve Boerner)

Nuclear fusion, the release of energy that occurs when the nuclei of hydrogen atoms are fused together, is something of the holy grail of energy production. Potentially providing manyfold as much energy as nuclear fission, which releases energy by splitting apart the nuclei of heavy atoms like uranium or plutonium, nuclear fusion not only would produce enormous amounts of energy efficiently, but it also would create a thousandth of the radioactive waste created by fission. While one of the isotopes needed to power the reaction must be manufactured in a reactor, the other can be found in water.

So far the only power plants using fusion as a routine source of energy are stars, which have the advantage of enormous mass to create the millions of degrees and hundreds of billions of atmospheres of pressure needed to overcome the powerful electric repulsion that exists between the positively charged hydrogen nuclei.

So how do you recreate in a lab a process that happens naturally only in stars? That’s the goal of the National Ignition Facility—to compress and heat pellets of hydrogen fuel sufficiently to induce a fusion reaction that generates more energy than was required to begin it.

Scientists refer to that as thermonuclear “ignition.” While

achieving ignition doesn’t guarantee the feasibility of limitless, clean fusion power, it’s perhaps the largest single step on a path to a new role for nuclear power.

—Scott Hauser

TRUSTEES

Robert Keegan ’72S (MBA) Joins Board of Trustees

trusteeTRUSTEE: A former chairman and CEO of North America’s largest tire maker, Keegan joined the University’s board this fall. (Photo: Courtesy of Robert Keegan ’72S (MBA))

Robert Keegan ’72S (MBA), recently retired as chairman of the board of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., has been elected to a five-year term as a University trustee.

Keegan, who has long-standing associations at the University and within the Rochester community, stepped into Goodyear’s leadership ranks as president and chief operating officer in 2000, and in 2003 he was also named CEO and chairman of North America’s largest tire maker. He stepped down as president and CEO in April 2010, retiring as chairman in October.

“Bob Keegan has excelled as a leader in diverse and demanding business environments, and we are particularly fortunate to have him join our Board of Trustees at this exciting time,” says Ed Hajim ’58, chairman of the University’s board.

Under Keegan’s direction, Goodyear transformed its strategy and culture, and the company enjoyed improved profitability and a steady stream of innovative and award-winning new products. In 2008, Fortune magazine recognized Goodyear as the world’s most admired company in the motor vehicle parts industry. In 2009, Forbes magazine named Goodyear as America’s most respected automotive company.

Before joining Goodyear, Keegan—who earned a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from LeMoyne College before receiving his MBA with a concentration in finance from the Simon School—was the executive vice president of Eastman Kodak Co. and president of its consumer imaging business during his 26-year career there.

A charter member of the George Eastman Circle, Keegan received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Simon School in 2007, and the University awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree at the 2010 Simon commencement.

—Sharon Dickman

STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS

Veterans Affairs

gillibrand (Photo: Adam Fenster)

ROCHESTER YELLOW: Army medic Rory Hamilton ’14 (left) talks with U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., (right) about his plans as a student at Rochester as Jesse Kinsella ’12, a Navy petty officer, looks on during a campus press conference this fall announcing the reauthorization of a federal program to support veterans enrolled in college. In 2009, the University launched the Rochester Pledge Scholarship in anticipation of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Yellow Ribbon Program, which was included under a revised G.I. Bill. The University’s contribution, combined with the Yellow Ribbon benefits, guarantees full tuition for qualified veterans attending the College, the Eastman School’s undergraduate program, and the Simon School. A physics major from Cookeville, Tenn., Hamilton was stationed in Germany and completed a 15-month deployment to Iraq. A native of Rochester, Kinsella is majoring in economics. He transferred to Rochester from Buffalo State and plans to attend the Simon School after graduation.

NAMESAKES

Medical Center Honors Brothers

Burn and trauma services are named in recognition of longtime donors Dennis and Laurence Kessler.

By Michael Wentzel

kesslerTEAM SUPPORT: Brothers Dennis (left), the Ackley Professor at the Simon School, and Laurence Kessler, a trustee, hope to help ensure future improvements in burn and trauma services at the Medical Center. (Photo: Medical Center Public Relations)

For patients experiencing sudden injuries, burn and trauma services at the Medical Center are literally lifesavers. Injury is the fifth leading cause of death in Americans under age 44, and the University is home to the only Level One trauma program in its region.

Now those services have been renamed to honor two local brothers—restaurateurs Dennis and Laurence Kessler—who have raised millions to support the services and who share a vision for developing regional burn and trauma care even further.

Founders and co-owners of the Kessler Group Inc. & Kessler Family LLC—which operates 21 Burger King and 48 Friendly’s restaurants in the greater Rochester area—the Kesslers have given more than $3 million to the Medical Center’s burn and trauma services. With a new commitment of $1 million more, they’ll create an endowment intended to ensure future growth of the programs, as well as provide support to other University projects.

In recognition of the Kesslers’ generosity, the Medical Center has renamed the entire program the Kessler Burn & Trauma Center. It encompasses all areas within the Medical Center that provide emergent, inpatient, and outpatient care for patients with traumatic injuries and burns.

“Rochester is our community, and we are thrilled to be able to support the families in our region,” says Laurence Kessler, who was named to the University’s Board of Trustees this spring. Dennis Kessler is the Edward J. and Agnes V. Ackley Executive Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Simon School and is a member of the Medical Center’s board of directors.

The center treats more than 3,000 people each year with severe blunt and penetrating injuries and features the area’s only dedicated burn service.

“Year after year, the Kesslers have been the largest individual donors to Strong Memorial Hospital,” says Bradford Berk ’81M (MD/PhD), CEO of the Medical Center. “Kessler donations have given us the area’s best facilities for treating patients with traumatic injuries or burns. Their ongoing commitment to the center’s endowment will ensure that our program meets regional needs and sets the pace nationally among centers that treat burns and other traumatic injuries.”

With the endowment funded by the Kesslers, the center hopes to attract more specialists who can offer a wider array of treatment options, as well as to expand clinical research and improve patient care and surgical training.

Michael Wentzel is the editor of Rochester Medicine.

COURAGE BOWL

Game Face

courage (Photo: Adam Fenster)

TEAMMATES: Honorary coach Patrick Karr, 6, of Rochester and Yellowjacket linebacker Edward Dauphin ’11 of New Hartford, N.Y., prepare to walk to the coin toss before the start of the this fall’s Courage Bowl in downtown Rochester. The annual game pits Rochester and St. John Fisher College in a crosstown rivalry that serves as a fundraiser for Camp Good Days and Special Times, a Rochester-area nonprofit organization that offers summer camping experiences and other activities for children facing cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. Each year, several campers like Patrick serve as honorary coaches and cheerleaders, attending practices and joining the teams on the field. This fall, the game was played in Marina Auto Stadium, a 14,000-seat venue that’s home to Rochester’s professional soccer team. After pulling ahead with two late second-quarter touchdowns, the Cardinals defeated the Yellowjackets, 49–21.

FILM STUDIES

History, in Celluloid

Joanne Bernardi introduces students to the delicate art of preserving films—and to the enduring appeal of “monster/creature” movies.

By Kathleen McGarvey

bernardiMONSTER KING: Bernardi (with her own collection of monster movie memorabilia) teaches a course on Japanese monster films, a genre that has established Godzilla (above) as a fixture in global popular culture since the postnuclear lizard’s debut in 1954. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

There are many iconic images of the nuclear age, but among those spawned by pop culture, perhaps none is more familiar than a certain enormous lizard. Atomic Creatures: Godzilla, a film and media studies course taught this fall by Joanne Bernardi, an associate professor of Japanese and a member of the film and media studies program faculty, takes a look at the phenomenon that generated and helped define the Japanese kaiju eiga, or monster film.

“I think it’s the most important course I teach—it’s a matter of life and death,” says Bernardi, who says the films bring together cultural and historical responses to nuclear issues. The larger context of the course is a critical investigation of the science-fiction/horror/creature feature film inspired by the dawn of the nuclear age. The kitschiness of many American postatomic creature movies resulted in part from limited awareness of the full effects of nuclear weapons. Photographic footage taken immediately after the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t seen in the United States until the 1970s, Bernardi says.

Godzilla had his start in the movies in 1954 with the original Japanese film Gojira, directed by Ishiro Honda, sometimes a second-unit director for Akira Kurosawa. More familiar to most American audiences is the 1956 remake starring Raymond Burr, Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

But those making Gojira and its cultural offspring weren’t only thinking of an antinuclear message, Bernardi says. They were also trying to entertain. Even as she outlines the somber questions she leads her students to discuss, she can’t help but break out in a grin at the thought of a good monster movie.

Bernardi was already well at work on her doctorate in Japanese and film studies at Columbia before she ever encountered the original Gojira. It played at the Public Theater’s Summer in Japan film series in New York City in 1982.

“It simply wasn’t available then,” she says, noting that while a restored version was released theatrically in 2004, the original Gojira had only very limited screenings

Seeing the 1954 movie lit Bernardi’s interest in the genre and in what it reveals about the postwar period. But her chance encounter with the movie also heightened her awareness of the precariousness of films’ availability. Two decades later, Bernardi enrolled in a certificate program of the Jeffrey L. Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester.

Drawing from her experiences in the Eastman House archives—one of the four major film archives in the United States, where she was trained in restoring, preserving, and caring for films—she developed a new course for Rochester students, Film as Object.

“Knowledge of film preservation enables a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of filmmaking,” she says. “It’s easier to understand the diversity of national film industries, and helps students become more aware of the breadth of film and media studies as a discipline. It also gives us an appreciation of all kinds of film—not just Hollywood feature films, but industrial films, films for advertising and promotion, and government propaganda films.

It was in part student questions that led her to pursue the Selznick program certificate, she says.

“They wanted to know where films come from, where they go, and why we see some films—and not others.”

Students are aware that such knowledge is especially pertinent today, Bernardi says, with the accumulation of more than three decades of evolving home viewing formats, TV-release versions, and film prints that have weathered the wear and tear of storage and use under unregulated, highly variable conditions.

“The titles screened in Atomic Creatures: Godzilla are excellent case studies of how films can be—and have been—altered over time both deliberately, for marketing purposes, for example, and inadvertently through their continuous use,” she adds.

“Students have a keen awareness of films as artifacts and not just as abstract, individual 'film titles' presumably passed down to us in the same condition in which they were made.”

Going to the Movies

bernardi_sideANCESTORS: “I treat King Kong and The Lost World as films leading up to Godzilla,” says Bernardi (Photo: Getty Images)

Here are a few of Joanne Bernardi’s top recommendations for films that helped set the stage for the Godzilla series:

The Lost World (1925): The silent film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel pioneered cinema special effects in its depiction of scientists in a land of prehistoric creatures.

King Kong (1933): The original ape-meets-girl flick was rereleased worldwide in 1952 and 1953, earning more revenue than in its original release and priming audiences for Godzilla’s debut the following year.

The Thing from Another World (1951): An American 1950s creature film that walked a thin line between the science fiction and horror genres, it introduced a conflict between scientists and military men that became a staple of these films.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953): Opening with footage of the Crossroads Baker atomic test shot, the film—about a dinosaur, thawed out by an Arctic nuclear test, that makes its way to Manhattan—was an obvious precursor to the Godzilla story.

Them! (1954): Not all the creatures in creature films towered over city blocks. The monsters of Them! were mutant ants, the result of Alamogordo atomic bomb tests.

—Kathleen McGarvey

ACQUISITIONS

On the Map

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

LANDMARKS: The first published map in the colony of New York, “A Map of the Countrey of the Five Nations,” is one of more than 50 historic maps, prints, books, and copper engravings donated to Rush Rhees Library by Seymour Schwartz ’57M (Res), a highly regarded map historian and the Distinguished Alumni Professor of Surgery in the School of Medicine and Dentistry. The map was created by Cadwallader Colden in 1723 during his appointment as Surveyor General of New York. Although the image was later published in Colden’s Papers and in his History of the Five Nations as a supplementary map, the 1724 engraving is one of just two extant copies of the original printing.

“The map is very primitive, yet it conveys so much,” says Nancy Martin, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist. “It shows how they visualized the country, which was virtually a wilderness at that time.”

The map, and the collection as a whole—which also includes the earliest known visual image of western New York—is a “landmark acquisition for the library,” Martin says. Although created for utilitarian purposes, these rare images are “almost accidentally, wonderfully artistic.”

“I’ve always been interested in history, both medical and American history,” says Schwartz. “Maps are graphic representations of history. Many of them are very elegant works of art.”

“Charting Western New York,” an exhibit of the Schwartz collection, opens November 11 in the library’s Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation.

—Kathleen McGarvey

BY THE NUMBERS

Research Funding Hits a Record

Funding for research climbed to historic levels during the year that ended June 30, with an 18 percent jump to a total of $415 million. That’s double what the University received 11 years ago.

“Pound for pound, our faculty are among the most successful and productive in the nation in attracting research dollars,” says Provost Ralph Kuncl. “Research and development funding is the lifeblood of innovation, and Rochester has a strong track record of leveraging its research activity into new ideas and technologies that both benefit the greater society and strengthen the local region’s economy.”

Here’s a breakdown of the numbers for the 2010 fiscal year (July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2010):

$415 million

Total research funding for 2010, an increase of more than $64 million over the total in 2009.

$42.7 million

Additional awards from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Excluding ARRA, the University saw growth in funding from all federal sources and across nearly all divisions in 2010:

$211 million

National Institutes of Health, an increase of 17 percent

$16 million

National Science Foundation, an increase of 34 percent.

$73 million

Department of Energy, an increase of 29 percent.

Excluding ARRA, awards to the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences grew by 37 percent, and awards to the School of Arts and Sciences grew by 26 percent.

The Medical Center saw research funding jump by $35.7 million in 2010 over the previous year.

—Kathleen McGarvey

The ‘Eastman Evolution’

As music—and the business of music—rapidly changes, the Eastman School continues to look forward.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD) | Photographs by Adam Fenster

eastmanDEBUT: The opening of a new wing—highlighted by the new Wolk Atrium featuring a sculpture by noted glass artist Dale Chihuly (opposite)—marks the latest chapter in achieving a vision set out by founder George Eastman, says Dean Douglas Lowry (below). (Photo: Adam Fenster)

It was almost 20 years ago that chamber musicians David ’92E (DMA), Janet ’92E, Philip ’91E, ’92E (MM), and Timothy ’91E (DMA) Ying arrived in the rural town of Jesup, Iowa, population 2,000. Fresh out of the Eastman School, the siblings who formed the Ying Quartet were in Jesup as part of a chamber music outreach program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. For two years, the townspeople of Jesup had in the Yings their very own “resident string quartet.”

“It was a huge opportunity for us,” says Philip Ying, now chair of the Eastman School’s chamber music department. “We were placed in an environment where we had to articulate for ourselves and to anyone we wanted to be an audience, what was so great about this music that we play? We had to think about what connects our art to people—people in Iowa who had little exposure to live string quartet music. We had to ask ourselves, what does it have to do with them? What does it have to do with community? What does it have to do with being a human being?”

Today, a slightly reconstituted quartet (violinist Ayano Ninomiya has replaced Timothy Ying) resides at the Eastman School, where its members have yet to run out of answers to these questions. They’ve pushed the creative boundaries of what two violins, a cello, and a viola can accomplish together—by mixing musical genres, for example, and incorporating other art forms, such as poetry and dancing, into their performances.

eastman (Photo: Adam Fenster)

And they’re a symbol of the spirit of innovation and optimism that Douglas Lowry, the dean of the Eastman School since 2007, evokes as he describes what he’s come to call “the new Eastman evolution.”

“Quite simply,” he says, “we’re completing George’s original vision.”

Founded by George Eastman in 1921, the Eastman School was the first music conservatory in the United States to serve simultaneously as a center for the academic study of music. But it was never to be an ivory tower. Eastman intended for the school to serve the community through musical education and appreciation. The words “For the enrichment of community life” were etched into the Eastman Theatre façade.

Eastman also had planned for the school and theater to occupy the entire stretch along East Main Street from Gibbs to Swan Street, but he was unable to purchase a final lot along Swan at a reasonable price. Thus, part of the new Eastman evolution includes a major expansion of the school’s performance and rehearsal spaces—in exactly the location Eastman had intended.

In December, students, faculty, and guest artists will present a series of concerts to celebrate the completion of the nearly 40,000-square-foot addition abutting Eastman Theatre. Within that space will be the 222-seat Hatch Recital Hall, outfitted with live Web streaming capabilities, and a design that permits acoustics to be modified to suit different types of instruments and performances; a new and acoustically updated rehearsal hall spacious enough for large ensembles; a recording control room; teaching studios; and the multistory Wolk Atrium, housing a box office and a gift shop, lighting up East Main Street through a glass façade.

But an even larger aspect of the school’s evolution is a series of changes that have been taking place in its approach to professional music education—changes that Lowry says reflect George Eastman’s pioneering spirit and his vision that musicians engage and connect with broad audiences.

It’s not only an exciting time, but also a challenging one, for Eastman and for music schools generally. The core of the faculty and student body are educated as classical musicians, yet symphony audiences are aging, and many American orchestras exist on the financial brink. Advances in computer technology, digital recording and listening devices, and the rise of the Internet have made it possible for new artists to record and deliver their music more widely, and with less overhead, than ever before—although those very same technologies may often make it more difficult for musicians to earn a living through their craft.

And the mixing of musical genres, although not new, has spurred an extraordinarily creative era in music, while providing musicians with the potential to attract fresh audiences.

Among the most widely cited points of pride for the school is Break of Reality, a self-described “cello rock” band. Formed at Eastman in 2003, the group today consists of three cellists, including Patrick Laird ’07E, as well as percussionist Ivan Trevino ’06E. Earning national attention and praise, the group has offered an opportunity in which, in the musicians’ own words, “the fans of Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, and Yo-Yo Ma are finally getting acquainted.”

Alarm Will Sound, a 20-member ensemble formed at Eastman in 2001, offers musically and visually rich performances of contemporary music that have also been widely applauded. Allan Kozinn, a classical music critic for the New York Times, praised the musicians of Alarm Will Sound as “young, virtuosic, and full of lively ideas,” making the group “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene.”

Across the school’s 13 departments, faculty members point to such adventurous groups as evidence that Eastman graduates are well-equipped to lead in an uncertain musical environment. The

Eastman School began looking forward nearly 20 years ago, when then director Robert Freeman began a formal dialogue on how the curriculum might be revised to better serve students. Ramon Ricker, senior associate dean for professional studies and professor of saxophone, was part of that effort. He now directs the Institute for Music Leadership, founded in 2001 to carry out curricular reforms and inspire students to take an entrepreneurial approach to developing their professional careers.

“We were looking at the music school curriculum, which had been the same for the past 100 years,” says Ricker. “You took a one-on-one lesson on your instrument, you played in the orchestra or band or you sung in the chorus, you learned about music theory and music history, and you took a few humanities courses.”

The first center of its kind in the nation—and a model that schools such as the New England Conservatory, Oberlin, and others have since adopted—the institute established new courses, workshops, and other initiatives to “bridge the ivory tower with the real world”—not only to meet that world on its own terms, but to help shape it as well, by training musicians to think more broadly about their music and their potential roles in society.

Today, the institute’s Catherine Filene Shouse Arts Leadership Program offers students half-semester and semester courses on digital portfolio creation, intellectual property protection, recording, outreach, and other practical and philosophical aspects of building a musical career. Above all, says Ricker, it encourages musicians to think of themselves as a small business—as the “sole proprietors” that he says is what most musicians, in effect, are.

“I’ve known for 50 years that you’ve got to create your own situation to create a career in music,” says Ricker. “I’ve always played a lot of jobs. I’ve done a lot of commercial work.” And that’s on top of his roles as an Eastman professor and a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra for nearly 40 years.

Percussion chair Michael Burritt ’84E, ’86E (MM) advances a similar view. Seated across from his five-octave marimba—a form of the instrument he notes didn’t yet exist when he was a student at Eastman—he says, “I feel like Eastman’s always been a school that’s tried to look forward. I think it’s set a lot of trends in higher music education, whether it’s the Institute for Music Leadership, or the jazz program, or the wind ensemble, which was the first pre-eminent ensemble of its type.”

And Christopher Azzara ’92E (PhD), a pianist, arranger, and chair of the music education department, says, “There’s a lot about Eastman that’s unique that will help us to be a leader.” Azzara, who is also an affiliate faculty member of the jazz studies and contemporary media department and an expert on improvisation, says that he has been able to develop courses in improvisation—a longtime requirement for jazz musicians—for classical musicians as well.

eastmanSTATE OF THE ARTS: Jamal Rossi, executive associate dean and professor of woodwinds, stands in the balcony of the new Hatch Recital Hall. The hall’s acoustics and its multimedia details reflect the role of technological advancements in the performance and delivery of music. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Their optimism is a response to a widely felt concern at music schools around the United States that classical music, the core interest of many music students, and perhaps the majority at Eastman, is facing a “crisis.” But Lowry draws a clear distinction between the music, which he says still flourishes, and the business model which has sustained it in the past. If there’s a crisis, it’s the business model, and not the music itself, that’s the source of it.

That business model is one that confined classical music performance to fixed contexts like the concert hall, and centered it on the permanent symphony orchestra. A century ago, symphony orchestras and large concert halls were financed by wealthy benefactors who believed in the notion that the music of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century Western Europe, commonly understood as “classical music,” could both edify and elevate humanity.

But ornate concert halls and commonly accepted performance strictures alienated potential audiences, says Phillip Ying. “Sometimes when you keep music in the concert hall exclusively, people come in and they think they’re supposed to behave a certain way, to dress a certain way, they worry about whether should they clap between movements.” In the unexpected settings such as hospital waiting rooms, bank lobbies, or prisons where the Ying Quartet performed in Iowa (and occasionally still performs), “people react in more spontaneous ways to the music,” says Ying. “It deepens our appreciation for how music touches our humanity and expresses our humanity.”

Lowry is confident that classical musicians will continue to find audiences both inside and outside the concert hall, and thrive in doing so. He turns to history for perspective, noting that the concert hall has not been the only arena for music.

“If you were to step back into the 1600s, most of the music that we consider as part of the Western European canon, has its roots in the music of the Church,” he says. “Then, as we move through history, we see vocal music and choral music transform itself into opera, a staged medium, and instrumental music move out into the concert hall.”

Today, says Lowry, one of the most common stages for musical performance is the computer screen. And it can be a powerful tool for musicians who want to expand their reach.

eastmanWINDS OF CHANGE: The musicians of the Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet, trying out the rehearsal hall in the Eastman School’s new wing, balance wit and seriousness, pop arrangements and classical performances. Last spring, their video “Lady Gaga Saga” made them a YouTube sensation, garnering more than 200,000 viewings. From left to right are Yuki Katayama ’11E, Kara LaMoure ’10E, Eryn Bauer ’10E (on leave this year), Lauren Yu ’10E, and Brittany Harrington ’10E. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Last spring, for example, bassoonists Kara LaMoure ’10E, Eryn Bauer ’10E, Brittany Harrington ’10E, and Lauren Yu ’10E, became a YouTube sensation with a video performance not of a classical piece, but a medley LaMoure had arranged of hits by the pop icon Lady Gaga. Featuring the four bassoonists in Gaga-style platinum blond wigs, short skirts, and heels, the video, which the musicians placed on YouTube primarily for the amusement of their friends, received more than 200,000 hits in a matter of days, showing up on Facebook pages, in band classrooms, and even on a Baltimore Sun blog.

To be sure, the bassoonists had been known beforehand for their humor. They are, after all, a “bassoon quartet,” and the bassoon, says Harrington, with its low-pitched buzz, “definitely has a reputation for being goofy.” And they call themselves the Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet.

But LaMoure says she took some lessons from the experience. It reinforced her view that genre is not as useful a concept as it once was. “People should be more fearless about the way that they’re playing music and the kinds of pieces that they’re playing,” she says. “I feel like music should be adapted to any instrumentation.”

Concert Celebration

The Eastman School will celebrate the completion of its new wing with a series of concerts from Dec. 6 through Dec. 12. The celebration will feature student, faculty, and guest artists and will take place in all of the school’s venues, including Hatch Recital Hall, Kilbourn Hall, and Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. For more information, visit Eastman’s Web site at www.esm.rochester.edu.

“I know that we have been reaching some people who really don’t know anything about classical music,” she adds. “So we’re doing some serious stuff, to see if we can get people exposed to that now that we’ve lured them in with our Lady Gaga.”

But it’s also true that transcribing and arranging popular music for nontraditional instruments can provide musicians a novel kind of challenge. Harrington, who is playing this year with the Rochester Philharmonic and Syracuse Symphony Orchestras, says “we have a lot more arrangements now that we’ve all done, more than we can get through in one rehearsal.” Those include songs from the iconic 1970s rock group Queen, some show tunes, and even some hip-hop.

All of the bassoonists are pursuing graduate study in performance. But beyond that, at a time of artistic, cultural, and technological transformation, their career paths aren’t clear-cut. One thing that will not change, says Ricker, is the need for the drive and initiative that have always been necessary for musicians. Musicians have to be, in a word, entrepreneurial. But Ricker stresses that this has, to some extent, always been true. “Someone once asked me who the first entrepreneur in music was. And I thought: Mozart. Because Mozart was one of the first to not have a regular appointment in the court, working for royalty, or in the Church.” Contrast Mozart to Bach. Bach, Ricker says, “had a church job and he cranked out work every week for that.”

Hardly the vision of Bach cultivated in the concert hall. But a long-standing reality of the business of music, to which the Eastman School—faculty, leadership, and students alike—continues to respond.

A Fresh Look at Lake Champlain

In an award-winning documentary, filmmaker Caro Thompson ’81 shows the vibrant social history of tranquil Lake Champlain.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

thompsonLAKE EFFECT: Lake Champlain’s role as an economic and political nexus has long been overlooked, says Thompson, who focused on the lake (opposite) and its place in American and Native history in her award-winning documentary The Lake Between. (Photo: Andy Duback/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Vermont’s Lake Champlain: a placid vacation getaway or a nexus of geopolitical conflict and cooperation?

For most of its history, says documentary filmmaker Caro Thompson ’81, it was the latter.

A generation or two ago, American schoolchildren were taught that the French explorer Samuel de Champlain discovered the lake in 1609, and that his explorations were among the starting points of American history. Champlain, you may recall, usually appeared somewhere in Chapter 1.

But in her award-winning documentary, The Lake Between, Thompson describes Champlain’s arrival less as a beginning than as a “turning point.” “The lake between,” or Bitawbakw (pronounced bit-awe-BOK-wah) as it had long been called by the Abenakis of the Algonquin Nation, had been an economic and political nexus long before Europeans arrived. It served as a geographic barrier between the Abenakis and their rivals, the Mohawks, part of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois, as the French called them) League. But it was also a link—a “maritime highway”—that facilitated economic and social ties among natives and Europeans, including the Abenakis, Mohawks, French, English, and Dutch.

Thompson, who produces documentaries under her sole proprietorship, Broadwing Productions, specializes in projects related to the local culture and heritage of Vermont, her adopted home. After graduating from Rochester with a degree in art history, she embarked on a quest to study dance in New York, which led to a job as a production assistant on a video about dance. “I followed totally unexpected opportunities as they arose,” she says. “Life is serendipitous when you keep your eyes opened.”

The Lake Between was a collaboration with Vermont Public Television to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Champlain’s arrival at the lake’s shores. Thompson provides narration, weaving together historical reenactments, still photographs of maps and documents, and video commentary from scholars. In 2009, the film won a Boston/New England Regional Emmy Award. In early 2010, Thompson worked with Vermont Public Television to create educational resources that won the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s My Source Education Innovation Award. The resources have been distributed to schools in New York and Vermont, and the documentary has been made available to almost 100 public television stations in 43 states.

Thompson says that placing the history of Lake Champlain in its proper, international context is especially important for audiences of local schoolchildren. “The approach is to give them a sense of place. In rural areas, it’s still very easy to feel left out of the global economy, even though it may not be true. You look around you as a young person, and you don’t see a lot of people, and you don’t see a lot going on,” says Thompson, who grew up in small towns in four Midwestern states—Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Contrast that to the expansive metropolitan areas that line the East Coast. “Everybody learns about colonial history,” she says, “but it’s all about Boston and Philadelphia and New York and Virginia.” In reality, “this landscape was also engaged with those cities, and in fact an economic driver of the growth of the colonies.”

Darren Bonaparte, a Mohawk historian who served as a consultant for the film, says it emphasizes that Europeans learned and adapted themselves to native ways. Bonaparte, who also consulted on the 2006 PBS miniseries The War that Made America, on the French and Indian War, says Thompson “didn’t come in with any preconceived notions. She was open to how we saw our place in the universe.”

Thompson says she’s heartened by praise from native historians and culture bearers. In making the film, she says, “I entered Native communities and built relationships and had to build trust, because filmmakers do not have a very good record of portraying Native peoples.” Besides, she adds, “I’m conscious of the fact that my ancestors are newcomers to this continent. I’m a secondgeneration Dane.”

Perhaps no accolade has delighted Thompson more than the one she received from the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In September, the cultural heritage group that formed over a century ago and whose membership is limited to women “who can prove lineal descent from a patriot of the American Revolution,” honored Thompson with its History Medal and invited her to be the keynote speaker at the Vermont chapter’s annual conference.

“I looked out on the audience and saw heads nodding,” says Thompson. “It was a very special moment.”

Keeping It Clean

Terry Jacobs Walters ’88 is a rising star in a movement that emphasizes the importance of fresh, local, organic food.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

waltersCHEW ON THIS: Guided by the principle that natural foods offer tremendous flavor on their own terms, Walters, author of Clean Food, encourages “eating foods from living plants, not processing plants.” (Photo: Michelle McLoughlin for Rochester Review)

It’s every dieter’s dream: simply to lose the taste for the sweet, processed, high-fat foods that lead to so many health problems. To find the doughnut unappealing and the French fries nauseating. To crave field mix—without any fatty dressings.

Terry Jacobs Walters ’88, a health counselor who has spent over a decade creating recipes from fresh, locally grown organic ingredients, says it is indeed possible for our tastes to change.

“When you begin to change your diet, one food at a time, your taste buds change slowly, and your body and your constitution change slowly,” she says. “And that kind of slow transition creates much more long-lasting change.”

Last year, Walters released her first book, Clean Food (Sterling Publishing, 2009), a compendium of over 200 of her recipes, nutritional information, and a sweeping history of the transformation from natural eating to the world of processed foods. Her second book, Clean Start, will be released by the same publisher in November.

Walters, who studied psychology at Rochester, has always been interested in food, not just as a source of sustenance, but also as a means of familial and social connection. Growing up in Connecticut, she says, “We had always had a home full of natural food. My mother made all of her meals from scratch.”

When she had her own family—she and her husband, Chip, have two daughters, Sarah and Sydney—her interest in food and nutrition took off. Largely self-taught, she honed her skills at Manhattan’s Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and by 2000, began seeing individual clients and conducting cooking classes at her home in Avon, Conn.

These days, although she still sees clients in an office near her home, she’s often on the road, giving cooking demonstrations, lectures, and workshops at farmers’ markets, groceries, and other venues.

Among her animating principles is that natural foods offer a tremendous variety of flavors to be savored on their own terms. “Sometimes people come to me and say they want an alternative to this or that,” says Walters. “And I say to them, ‘You have to let go of that.’ Because this isn’t about turning your turkey sandwich into kale and having it taste like turkey. The point is finding foods that are delicious for their own sake. And then, if you’re going to have a turkey sandwich, have a really good, high quality turkey sandwich.”

Walters says we don’t often give adequate consideration to the role that food may be playing in common ailments such as fatigue, pain, anxiety and irritability, and mild attention problems. “Ultimately it’s very challenging to know what your body is responding to,” she says. “So there are all sorts of ways of doing elimination diets and experimenting with different foods and food combinations.”

Thomas Campbell, the William Rocktaschel Professor and Chair of Family Medicine at Rochester, calls Walters “a cross between Jane Brody and Michael Pollan,” referring to the popular New York Times personal health columnist and cookbook author and the thought leader on food and the environment whose books, such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Rules, have been perennial bestsellers. “Physicians usually don’t spend as much time as they should discussing nutrition,” says Campbell, who has taken to recommending Pollan’s Food Rules to his patients.

Walters’s recipes, which are all vegan (meaning they contain no animal products), are generally low in calories. But there are exceptions, such as her peanut butter chocolate chip teff cookies, one of several types of cookies Walters has created from the high-protein, no-gluten grain native to Ethiopia. “They have nothing bad in them,” says Walters of her teff cookies. “I’ll give my kids those cookies for breakfast and feel totally good about it.”

And surely, they’ve earned them. Another family favorite? “Tofu kale lasagna,” says Walters in a flash. “I’ll make it, and it will be gone in a second.”

In the News

Wayne Cascio ’74 (PhD) Recognized for Human Resources Research

Wayne Cascio ’74 (PhD) has won the Michael R. Losey Human Resource Research Award in recognition of his work on downsizing, employee turnover, and the financial effects of human resource policies. The award was presented by the Society for Human Resource Management, an international professional organization of human resource professionals. Cascio is the Robert H. Reynolds Chair in Global Leadership at the University of Colorado Denver’s business school and a senior editor of the Journal of World Business.

Was that Sara Pruss ’99 in National Geographic’s Clash of the Continents?

Sara Pruss ’99, an assistant professor of geosciences at Smith College and a specialist in invertebrate paleontology and marine geology, was a featured expert in the National Geographic channel documentary Clash of the Continents: Part 2—End of Man, which aired in August. Pruss focuses on the geology of the western United States and Newfoundland during the Cambrian and Permian geologic eras.

Peter DuBois ’80E is the Host of National Public Radio Program

Peter DuBois ’80E, organist and director of music at the Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, and an assistant professor of sacred music at the Eastman School, has been named host of With Heart and Voice, a national radio program featuring sacred choral and organ works. The program is produced at Rochester’s National Public Radio affiliate, WXXI-FM, and broadcast to more than 100 stations nationwide.

Peter Perkowski ’92 Honored by National LGBT Bar Association

Peter Perkowski ’92, a partner in the Los Angeles office of the law firm Winston & Strawn, has been recognized by the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Bar Association as one of the top “under 40” attorneys in the nation, as measured by professional distinction and demonstrated commitment to equality for LGBT citizens. Perkowski specializes in patent, intellectual property, and commercial litigation.

Lawyers and Superheroes—Now That’s Comical!

zaidSUPER EXHIBIT: Lawyer and collector Zaid curated the “Superheroes in Court!” exhibition at Yale’s law library, drawing on his own collection of materials from the so-called Platinum, Golden, Atom, and Silver ages of vintage comic books (the 1930s through the mid-1960s.) (Photo: Courtesy Mark Zaid ’89)

In the summer of 2009, Mike Widener, a rare book librarian at Yale’s Lillian Goldman Law Library, was contemplating a new exhibit on law and popular culture. He started thinking about comic book superheroes and villains, stark caricatures of good and evil, or in one superhero’s case, of truth, justice, and the American way. When he started making inquiries, one thing was clear: designing a comic book exhibit was a job for Mark Zaid ’89.

“Mark’s name was the one that kept coming up,” says Widener. Zaid is not only a “Super Lawyer,” whose Washington, D.C., practice in the areas of national security, intelligence gathering, and secrecy policies has earned him that coveted title from Super Lawyers magazine. He is also a noted collector of vintage comic books who maintains a Web site, www.esquirecomics.com, devoted to buying and selling high grade comics (those from the so-called Platinum, Golden, Atom, and Silver ages, from the 1930s through the mid-1960s).

Widener contacted Zaid and asked him if he’d be willing to curate an exhibit for the Yale Law Library. Zaid responded, if not faster than a speeding bullet, then certainly more swiftly than lawyers are wont to. “It took me all of perhaps three seconds, if that, to respond in the affirmative,” he says. The result is “Superheroes in Court! Lawyers, Law and Comic Books,” an exhibit based on Zaid’s collection that launched in September and remains on display through mid-December in the library’s rare book gallery.

“Comic book companies and characters have lived and died at the hands of lawyers and court decisions,” Zaid notes, underscoring that the exhibit shows not only the workings of the law in the lives of superheroes, but “how comic books and their titles have been trademarked and copyrighted, as well as litigated.”

According to Widener, the exhibit has attracted a diverse group of visitors, including a reporter from the New York Times, whose article on the “quirky” exhibit appeared in the newspaper in September. As for that kind of coverage, says Widener, “We were blown away.”

—Karen McCally

KUDOS

Alumni and Friends Honored

The University honored several alumni and friends this fall for their commitment and service. Here are some of the 2010 award winners.

Arts, Sciences, and Engineering

Dean’s Medal

Trustee Robert Goergen ’60, chairman and CEO of Blyth Inc.

James S. Armstrong Alumni Service Award

Trustee Larry Bloch ’75, chairman of Diversified Global Graphic Group

Distinguished Alumnus Award, School of Arts and Sciences

Trustee Lou Lange ’70, partner at Asset Management of Palo Alto, Calif.

Distinguished Alumnus Award, Hajim School of Engineering

John Major ’67, president of the Technologies Solutions Group

John N. Wilder Award

Nomi Bergman ’85, president of Bright House Networks

School of Medicine and Dentistry

Distinguished Alumna Award

Ruth Lawrence ’49M (MD), ’58M (Res), medical director of the Ruth A. Lawrence Poison and Drug Information Center at the Medical Center

Humanitarian Award

Rick Hodes ’82M (MD), medical director for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

John N. Wilder Award

Frederick Parker Jr. ’58, ’62M (MD), professor emeritus at SUNY Upstate Medical University

Alumni Service Award

Robert Scala ’56M (MS), ’58M (PhD), former senior scientific advisor of Exxon Biomedical Sciences Corp.

Simon Graduate School of Business

Distinguished Alumnus Award

Jay Steven Benet ’76S (MBA), chief financial officer of the Travelers Companies

John N. Wilder Award

Evans Lam ’83, ’84S (MBA), senior vice president of investments at UBS Financial Services Inc.

School of Nursing

Dean’s Medal

The family of the late Ruth Miller Brody ’42N, ’46 (EdM): Bernard Brody ’51M (MD), Rachel and David Bandych, and Sarah and David Epstein

John N. Wilder Award

Evelyn Lutz ’55N, ’63, a retired faculty member at Rochester, Case Western Reserve, Kent State, and Xavier universities

TRIBUTE

Economics Pioneer Lionel McKenzie: ‘Scholar’s Scholar’

mckenzieLEGACY: “Every economics graduate student” learns McKenzie’s proof of what economists call “general equilibrium,” say colleagues and contemporaries (Photo: University Communications)

Lionel McKenzie, a professor of economics at Rochester since 1957 and most recently the Wilson Professor Emeritus of Economics, died in October at age 91.

“He was one of the great leaders in the field of economics in the ’50s, ’60s, and on into the ’70s,” says Jerry Green ’67, ’70 (PhD), a professor of economics at Harvard and one of McKenzie’s PhD students at Rochester. “He was a pioneer in general equilibrium theory, demand theory, and welfare measurement, and the theory of economic growth—all central topics in economic theory in those days.”

McKenzie’s contributions were to “high mathematical theory—the nuts and bolts of what economists learn—the core of their craft,” says E. Roy Weintraub, a professor of economics at Duke who has written a retrospective on McKenzie’s work. “He was the first to provide the now most widely employed proof for how economies, through competitive pricing, find a state in which the amount of every good supplied is equal to the demand, a condition economists call general equilibrium,” says Weintraub. "Every economics graduate student today has to learn that proof."

McKenzie was the founder of the University’s doctoral program in economics, a program he launched in 1957 when he joined the economics department. By 1995, the program was ranked among the top 10 in the country by the National Research Council.

“He had a vision for the department,” says Ronald Jones, the Xerox Professor of Economics at Rochester and McKenzie’s first hire to the fledgling program. “He wanted to bring quantitative and theoretical approaches to areas like economic history and labor economics, where they had yet to be applied.”

Many of McKenzie’s doctoral students hailed from Japan, where his influence is celebrated. He’s known as “the father of Japanese mathematical economists,” according to the Kyoto Newspaper, and he was inducted into the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun, a governmental honor rarely given to American professors. A replica of his personal office, complete with original copies of his books, photographs, papers, and DVDs, is preserved at Kyoto University, where scholars from around the world can sift through the 2,200-piece collection.

McKenzie “was a wonderful advisor primarily by his example,” says Green. “He was a scholar’s scholar. He taught us that if you stick with a problem, and you work hard, eventually you’ll get the answer.”

—Susan Hagen

Hagen writes about the social sciences for University Communications.

Books & Recordings

Books

The Iron Key: Poems

By James Longenbach

W. W. Norton, 2010

Longenbach, the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English at Rochester, offers a meditation on beauty and its consequences in his fourth published collection of poetry.

Presbyterians in Zion: History of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Utah

By Frederick G. Burton ’71M (PhD)

Vantage Press, 2010

Burton, a lifelong Presbyterian who moved to Utah in 1989, provides a historical overview of the Presbyterian Church in Utah from its beginnings in the 1860s to the present.

Bad Land Pastoralism in Great Plains Fiction

By Matthew J. C. Cella ’96

University of Iowa Press, 2010

Cella, a visiting assistant professor of English at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, examines the work of Willa Cather, James Fenimore Cooper, Tillie Olsen, Annie Proulx, and other authors who “chronicle the dialogue between human culture and nonhuman nature on the Great Plains.”

Mother Tongues and Nations: The Invention of the Native Speaker

By Thomas P. Bonfiglio ’72

DeGruyter, 2010

Bonfiglio, the William Judson Gaines Chair in Literature and Linguistics at the University of Richmond, discusses the metaphors “mother tongue” and “native speaker” as products of the anxieties of national identity in emergent nation states.

Grasping Heaven: Tami L. Fisk, a Young Doctor’s Journey to China and Beyond

By Annelies and Einar Wilder-Smith

Deep River Books, 2010

Annelies and Einar Wilder-Smith, a public health physician and a neurologist at National University in Singapore, tell the story of Tami Fisk ’94M (Res), who fulfilled a childhood dream of providing medical care to the poor overseas before her death from melanoma at age 39.

A Crack in the Sky

By Mark Hughes ’88

Delacorte, 2010

In a science fiction adventure for young adults, Hughes features a teenage boy and his mongoose, who attempt to survive in a disease-ridden and storm-laden futuristic wasteland.

Silver Serenade

By Nancy J. Cohen ’70N

Wild Rose Press, 2010

In Cohen’s latest book, a science fiction romance, a beautiful assassin and a desperate fugitive join forces to catch a terrorist and prevent an intergalactic war.

1947 Santoshabad Passenger and Other Stories: Translations of Telugu Short Stories

By Dasu Krishnamoorty and Tamraparni Dasu ’91 (PhD)

Rupa, 2010

Dasu, a statistician as well as the director of the not-for-profit, online literary magazine Literary Voices of India: Translations of Contemporary Fiction, coedits an anthology of English translations of short stories in India’s second most widely spoken language, Telugu.

Ghosts in the Cemetery II: Farther Afield

By Stuart Schneider ’72

Schiffer Books, 2010

Lawyer and author Schneider offers 86 color photographs of “night spirits” from cemeteries across the United States and France, as well as legends about each of the apparitions.

The Pebble Path: Returning Home from a Forest of Shadows

By Jan Hasak ’76 (MS)

Outskirts Press, 2010

Hasak, a breast cancer survivor and retired patent attorney for Genentech, recounts her experience of cancer in an inspirational allegory interlaced with poetry.

When Can I Go Home?

By Joseph J. Sivak ’92M (Res)

Niagara Press, 2010

Sivak, a psychiatrist in Duluth, Minn., offers his perspective as both a doctor and a son in his memoir of becoming a primary caregiver, at age 17, to his mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

A Practical Approach to Improvisation for the Church Organist

By Robert C. Lau ’71E (MA)

Paraclete Press, 2010

Lau, a faculty member at Penn State University’s school of humanities as well as an organist and choirmaster, provides a guide to simple improvisations for church organists. Topics include improvising hymn introductions, adding nonharmonic material, and embellishing melodies.

The Pressures of Teaching: How Teachers Cope with Classroom Stress

Edited by Maureen Robins ’78

Simon & Schuster, 2010

Robins, a middle school assistant principal and author of books about education, edits a collection of essays by teachers on managing the stress that arises in dealing with students, parents, administrators, and everyday challenges in the classroom.

Crash to Cash

By David B. Sussman ’63

Disability Research, 2010

Sussman, an orthopedic surgeon in Allentown, Pa., argues that the combined work of tort lawyers, doctors, and insurance companies is detrimental to auto accident victims because of excessive testing, unnecessary treatments, and damaging surgery.

The Settlement of Western New York With a Review of Early Records of the Town of Gates 1809–1837

By John Robortella

Gates (N.Y.) Historical Society, 2010

Robortella, the associate director of marketing and communications at the Simon School, tells the story of the founding of Gates, N.Y., situating the town’s early history within the context of the settlement of western New York.

Numerical and Statistical Methods for Bioengineering: Applications in Matlab

By Michael R. King ’95 and Nipa A. Mody ’08 (PhD)

Cambridge University Press, 2010

King, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Mody, a postdoctoral associate in biomedical engineering, both at Cornell, integrate modelling concepts with statistical analysis in a methods textbook.

Edmund Lewandowski: Precisionism and Beyond

By Valerie Ann Leeds ’79

Flint Institute of Arts, 2010

In a book accompanying the first retrospective of the American precisionist Lewandowski, curator and author Leeds, who also organized the exhibition, surveys the long and varied career of the renowned second-generation artist known for his images of industrial, urban, and architectural subjects.

Public Sector Leadership: International Challenges and Perspectives

Edited by Jeffrey A. Raffel ’66, et al

Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009

Raffel, the Charles P. Messick Professor of Public Administration at the University of Delaware, coedits a volume of case studies examining the ways in which public sector leaders around the globe have addressed new financial, security, and demographic challenges.

Talking to the Sick

By Richard Ugoretz ’69M (Res)

Self-Published, 2010

Ugoretz, a retired medical oncologist and clinical professor of medicine at the University of California at San Diego, presents a clinician’s guide to effective communication, covering subjects ranging from medical interviews to issues related to death and dying.

Darwin’s Disciple: George John Romanes, A Life in Letters

By Joel S. Schwartz ’62

American Philosophical Society, 2010

Schwartz, a professor emeritus at City University of New York and an expert on 19th-century natural history and the work of early evolutionists, presents the life and letters of a friend and early advocate of Charles Darwin.

Recordings

Abide With Me: Hymns and Spirituals

By the Los Angeles Philharmonic Trombones

Los Angeles Philharmonic Trombones, 2009

The trombone section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including Herbert (Sonny) Ausman ’68E, Ralph Sauer ’65E, and the late Steve Witser ’81E, recorded 30 well-known hymns and spirituals, featuring “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace.”

You Can Have Your Moment

By Kneebody

Winter & Winter, 2010

Kneebody, a quintet founded at the Eastman School that includes Shane Endsley ’97E, Kaveh Rastegar ’01E, Ben Wendel ’99E, and Adam Benjamin ’97E, performs 12 new “genre-bending” instrumental pieces.

All Might and Majesty: The Organ Music of Edwin T. Childs

By Edwin T. Childs ’74E (PhD)

Hesed Music, 2009

Brenda Heck Portman performs Childs’s original hymn-based organ music. Childs is an organist, composer, and instructor at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

Don’t Touch Me

By Donna Coleman ’87E (DMA)

OutBach, 2010

Coleman, a pianist at Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne, Australia, performs selections by the 19th-century Cuban composer Ignacio Cervantes, whose work she describes as “steeped in Afro-Cuban rhythmic verve and Chopinian pathos.”

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.

Sports Stories

Scholar and author Thabiti Lewis ’90, ’91W (MA) says the tales we spin about sports can illuminate, as well as transform, some common assumptions about black men.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

master_class (Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

When I was 12, and in middle school in St. Louis, our school had a great basketball team. But you had to pay to go to the games, and I rarely had extra spending money. One day our class got to go to the game. But the deal was that our teacher wanted everyone to write about the game. After we turned our work in, the vice principal, who was also the team’s coach, read my piece and summoned me to his office. He said: “I want you to be the school reporter. You’re going to write about the team. You’ll get to travel with the team and go free to all the games.” And I realized, at the age of 12, the privilege that comes not just with knowing about sports, but with having a skill that wasn’t physical. I said, “Hey, I can write my way out of the classroom!” That always stuck with me.

I was always a very good student but also a very good athlete. Because of my athleticism, I was permitted to engage and reveal my intellectual ability without repercussions like bullying or people picking on me. Because they respected my athleticism, my intellectual endeavors were, to use a word I don’t like, tolerated.

One of the more privileged positions in the sports world is that of the writers. One of the major problems regarding diversity is that if you look at the number of sports editors and sports writers, they’re completely imbalanced in terms of both race and gender. Therein lies the question, Who’s spinning these tales?

Thabiti Lewis ’90, ’91W (MA)

St. Louis, Mo.

Majored in English and History

Associate professor of English at Washington State University Vancouver, and author of Ballers of the New School: Race, Sports, and American Culture (Third World Press, 2010).

There’s a narrative among sports writers and commentators, and it’s not necessarily conscious. When you read or listen to the commentary, you notice there’s often a divergence between the way white and black athletes are discussed or written about. For example, white quarterbacks are more likely to be described in terms of their mental game. And while there are more black quarterbacks these days, they’re more likely to be described in terms of their physical abilities. But the more “athletic” athlete is not necessarily the athlete of color.

The media success of Tiger Woods is due in part to his construction of a nonracial persona. We haven’t transcended race in the way that we sometimes say we have, given the fact that he even needed to say, “Well, look, I’m ‘cablinasian’ [a term Woods derived by combining Caucasian, Black, (American) Indian, and Asian] Since his infidelities were revealed, he’s gone from a nonracial, neutral figure to a point where photographs of him in the media have been darkened.

One the other hand, someone like Dennis Rodman was able to exploit certain stereotypes of black men as aggressive. This is a guy who wasn’t a big scorer, but he found a way to make himself really visible, and really marketable. It’s a shame that it worked. This stereotype has legs, and it will continue to have legs when people profit from it.

DANCE & MOVEMENT

Studio Executive

dance (Photo: Adam Fenster)

BIG STEPS: Missy Pfohl Smith, the director of the Program of Dance and Movement, leads a session of the class Contemporary Dance: Context and Practice at Spurrier dance studio this fall. Named director in May, Smith has launched several initiatives to highlight the program’s connections throughout the University and in the community.