Rochester Review

May–June 2011, Volume 73, No. 5

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Alan Blank, Sharon Dickman, Adam Fenster, Melissa Greco Lopes, Christine Roth, Helene Snihur, and Brandon Vick

Editorial Office

22 Wallis Hall

University of Rochester

Box 270044, Rochester, NY 14627-0044

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Design

Steve Boerner Typography & Design

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

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

Copyright © 2011 University of Rochester

Credits

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

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The Great Partnership

By Joel Seligman

president (Photo: Adam Fenster)

On Sunday, May 29, at a ceremony in Jerusalem, the University’s pioneering chemical engineer Ching Tang will be awarded the Wolf Prize, considered by many to be second only to the Nobel Prize.

Now the Doris Johns Cherry Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Hajim School, Ching is a founder of the multibillion- dollar industry surrounding organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), a technology that features glisteningly sharp flat-panel displays that use less energy and are thinner than current displays. OLEDs are revolutionizing display technology.

Ching published his first paper on OLEDs nearly 25 years ago. That devices based on his ideas are just now coming online is not unusual in the labs of universities such as Rochester.

Ching’s story illustrates the long-term payoff that comes from investing in basic research. For the past half-century, the United States has been a model for a great partnership involving our leading research universities and key governmental and private support, including such agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. That investment has been vital to enhancing our nation’s global competitiveness, driving economic growth, improving health, and strengthening our national security.

Rochester is one of the top research and higher education institutions in the world today, thanks to that partnership.

In 2010, external research funding leveraged by the University increased 18 percent to $418 million—of which more than $313 million was awarded by federal agencies such as the NIH, the NSF, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense. This level of federal investment is an integral component of our successful history of translating the results of funded research into products and processes for public use and benefit.

Today there are more than 40 active start-up companies that apply University research to create new technologies. We make significant contributions to our community and our region, where we are the largest employer in the metropolitan area and the sixth largest employer in the state.

The commitment of the federal government, along with that of Eastman Kodak and Bausch & Lomb, to support optics research at Rochester during and immediately after World War II helped cement our University’s—and our region’s—leadership role in optics and imaging.

Our Laboratory for Laser Energetics, founded in 1970 with the support of the Department of Energy, has been a critical component in our nation’s pursuit of an independent energy future. The Laser Lab, which currently engages more than 500 people in its programs, has contributed more than $1.5 billion to the state of New York. The Laser Lab is participating with Lawrence Livermore and other national laboratories in one of the 21st century’s most critical energy experiments–the attempt to achieve controlled nuclear fission as a source of future energy. If successful, the University will play a lead role in a national effort to develop the engineering and science of fusion power plants. This is the equivalent of the Manhattan Project for our energy future. Laser fusion, unlike the nuclear fission of current plants, is safe, cannot melt down, is carbon free, nonradioactive, and potentially will provide an inexhaustible source of clean and environmentally benign energy.

In April, we celebrated the grand opening of our new Clinical and Translational Science Building, a first-of-its-kind facility to accelerate the clinical applications of biomedical research. Thanks to a $40 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and $50 million in funding from New York, the CTSB will become a model for how state and federal support can leverage the talents of universities like Rochester to transform technologies and provide tangible benefits to regional economies. The work conducted in the building is expected to generate $30 million annually and generate several hundred jobs.

Those jobs will have an enormous economic impact on our University and our region. The work of the CTSB will further our leadership in the biomedical sciences. But the enduring legacy of our partnership with our public and private supporters is that together we are building a foundation for future discovery.

Letters

letters (Photo: Rochester Review)

Translating Medical Records

I was pleased to see Dr. Arthur Moss ’62M (Res) looking remarkably unchanged in the years since I attended the medical school as a member of the Class of 1979 (“Found in Translation,” March-April). However, it seems ironic, while recounting a lifetime of clinical research, that he’s pictured in front of a massive wall of paper records. Certainly the availability, legibility, completeness, and retrieval of information would all be facilitated by electronic records. Tell us that the landmark translational research described is not dependent on manual transcription of every clinical visit, laboratory result, genetic test, ECG, and echocardiogram.

Steve Peters ’79M (MD)

Rochester, Minn.

The writer is a professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

Editor’s Note: Dr. Peters was not the only one to notice the irony of photographing a wall of paper records in the digital age. A few days after the March-April issue went to the printer, the Medical Center announced the launch of its new electronic health records system, known as “eRecord.” A centerpiece of the Medical Center’s strategic plan to improve quality and safety, the new system is designed to collect patient information so that physicians, nurses, and others providing care can easily share and update health records. Launched in late March, the system is being rolled out throughout the Medical Center and its units over the next few years.

Degrees of Fleming

While the March-April issue featured an excellent article and photos about Renée Fleming ’83E (MM) (“Dazzling Diva”), I was disappointed that there was no mention of her first alma mater, the Crane School of Music of SUNY Potsdam, where she received excellent training. Our other singer graduates also include mezzo-sopranos Stephanie Blythe and Maggie Lattimore and lyric soprano Lisa Vroman.

Art Frackenpohl ’47, ’49E (MA)

Potsdam, N.Y.

The writer is a professor of music emeritus at SUNY Potsdam.

A ‘Return’ of Africa?

In the story “A Global College” (January-February 2011), you noted, “This past year, however, marked a turning point for undergraduate admissions to Arts, Sciences, and Engineering. There are 11 students in the Class of 2014 who call Africa home.”

Perhaps it is a re-turning point?

The U of R had a number of undergraduate African students in the 1960s. My fellow political science major, off-campus apartment roommate, and friend for perhaps 18 months, the late Moses Garoeb ’66 from Namibia, was one of perhaps 15 or so African undergraduates in 1965–67. Many of them, especially those from colonies, may have been on full U.S. State Department scholarships. I’d heard that Rochester and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania were two gateways for African students before they fanned out to attend other U.S. universities; but many of them chose to stay and attend Rochester and Lincoln.

Moses was able to attend high school, which was not available to colonial subjects in Southwest Africa, because his village chief father’s friends, a South African Jewish family, hosted and sponsored him there. Moses was a member of the liberation movement SWAPO (Southwest African People’s Organization) and spent time in prison for political activities before coming to the United States. Unable to obtain a visa, he walked and rode hundreds of miles north to get to an independent country, where he could embark for the United States to obtain a college education.

With two exceptions—Macdonald Banda ’65 from Malawi and Humphrey Iroku ’66 from Nigeria—I don’t remember the names of the other students.

One special memory: Moses and I cooked for and hosted about five other African students for Thanksgiving dinner 1966, all but one from colonies. Even if a long weekend trip home had been feasible or affordable, they were in exile, having illegally left their countries to obtain a college education, with no clear path back home even after graduation. That evening, the homesickness was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. We talked for hours, with “An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba” playing over and over in the background. One of only a handful of black Namibian college graduates,

Moses worked for SWAPO for several years in Tanzania, but after some correspondence, we fell out of touch in the mid-1970s. After seeing a 1997 notice of his death in Review, I found out he was part of the Namibian government after liberation, serving as the minister of labor for several years. I heard more about him from Rochester alumnus George Ward ’65, the former ambassador to Namibia who met him in the 1990s, and Louis Rappaport ’66, who met some of his family on a trip to Africa after his death.

The African students I knew were part of the richness of my Rochester experience, with their humanity, intelligence, perspectives, and the experiences they shared, as much a part of my education as coursework. That experience added to my comfort level with people from diverse backgrounds, not part of my childhood in homogenous white suburbs, which helped in my later work with race relations.

I don’t know how many of these earlier African alumni have maintained contact with U of R, but it would be great to contact them and find out what they’ve accomplished against the impossible odds facing them on return.

Based on Wangari Maathai’s comments (the Nobel Prize winner from Kenya) in a documentary that her education in the United States was an important foundation for her environmental and political activism, perhaps we will discover that their education at the U of R had an equally positive impact on their lives and accomplishments?

Daniel Schesch ’67

St. Louis, Mo.

The writer is a cofounder of Bridges Across Racial Polarization.

Conserving More History

I was excited to see art conservation featured in the March-April issue. (“Conserving University History,” In Review). Our field of art conservation reflects the interdisciplinary education that I enjoyed at Rochester, combining chemistry and engineering with fine arts skills and art historical connoisseurship. After graduating in May 2010 with a BA in art history and Spanish I began what is known as a “preprogram” internship at West Lake Conservators in Skaneateles, N.Y. So far it’s been challenging and a lot of fun. I also have the pleasure of working with Rochester alumnus John Sutton ’68, ’69W (MA), who is a senior paintings conservator at West Lake.

One of our recent projects focused on a mural depicting Col. Nathaniel Rochester. Painted by Carl Raschen, it used to hang in a hotel in downtown Rochester and is now owned by the Rochester Historical Society.

Emily Wroczynski ’10

Auburn, N.Y.

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

Remembering the Motorcyclists

We received several notes from alumni in response to the undated photo of students riding a motorcycle on the Fraternity Quad that we featured as the opening photo of Class Notes for the March-April issue. Thanks to all who wrote—Editor.

Although I do not know the couple riding the motorcycle, I can identify the motorcycle as a 1960s Honda CC 160. This became something of a famous classic model and was called the “Dream Machine.” Honda produced these for several years in the 1960s without naming any specific year. The model has a flared front fender, whitewall tires and is all black and chrome, although they made a model that is white and chrome. I happened to own two of these in black and eventually sold them as antiques for much more than I originally paid.

Richard Merrell ’63E (MM)

We can identify the black and white photograph in the March-April issue.

The lady riding on the motorcycle is Jeanne Tapp Ozols ’67, ’70W (MA). She’s being taken to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity house for an afternoon weekend party by Bud Wilcox, the fraternity “little brother” of Dr. Robert Ozols ’66, ’71M (PhD), ’74M (MD). We are quite certain that it was taken in 1965.

Bob and Jeanne married after her graduation and have been married for 43 years. They have three children and two grandchildren and live in Solebury, Pa.

Jeanne Tapp Ozols ’67, ’70W (MA)

Robert Ozols ’66, ’71M (PhD), ’74M (MD)

Solebury, Pa.

The picture on page 41 of the March-April issue brings back many of the bittersweet memories of that time. The gentleman on the motorcycle is Armour David (Bud) Wilcox III. He left school shortly thereafter to fight for his country. He became a sergeant in the 9th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army. Tragically, he was killed in action during a firefight at Dinh Tuong, South Vietnam, on Dec. 8, 1968.

Dave was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. As president of the fraternity at the time, I received a long letter from his father in the winter of 1969 addressed to the entire brotherhood. Handwritten, it went on to describe how proud he was of his son and the sacrifice he had made.

It broke our hearts.

David Wilson ’69, ’74S (MBA)

Cohasset, Mass.

Memories of Susan B?

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies at the University. In preparation for the yearlong series of events to mark this milestone, we are interested in hearing from alumnae (and alumni!) of any traditions at the University connected with Susan B. Anthony, especially from the years before 1986. Please send any memories or thoughts to sbai@rochester.edu.

Honey Meconi

Director, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies

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.

CAMPUS GROWTH

A New Home for the Warner School

Scheduled to open in 2013, Raymond F. LeChase Hall is the first building project on the Wilson Quadrangle in 30 years.

By Kathleen McGarvey

warnerWARNER SCHOOL: Dean Raffaella Borasi introduces plans for a new hall, named in honor of the father of trustee R. Wayne LeChase. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

When Warner School students begin the spring semester in 2013, they’ll take their classroom seats in a brand-new building: Raymond F. LeChase Hall.

The first new building on the Wilson Quadrangle on the River Campus since Wilson Commons opened 30 years ago, the four-story hall will provide a unified home for the Warner School, which currently has an administrative home in Dewey Hall on the Eastman Quadrangle. The new building will feature an expansive suite of 14 classrooms on the first floor designed to serve the College during the day and the Warner School in the evening, providing an efficient solution to a critical need for classroom space on the River Campus. Additional classrooms, offices, and spaces designed to support the professional development of teachers and educational research and reform work will fill the other three floors.

warnerR. Wayne LeChase (Photo: Brandon Vick)

“My family and I are honored to be part of this new facility,” says R. Wayne LeChase, a University trustee. He and his wife, Beverly, made a $3.5 million commitment to the University in recognition of the role education plays in improving lives and strengthening the community. The building will be named in honor of LeChase’s father, the founder of LeChase Construction Services, who was a Rochester construction pioneer, a noted philan-thropist, and a dedicated supporter of education.

Raffaella Borasi, dean of the Warner School, says the new building will provide opportunities for Warner faculty and students. “This building will create an environment that will not only support teaching and learning, but allow us to work collaboratively with each other and the community to research complex education problems and forge effective solutions.”

The fastest growing academic division at the University, the Warner School has seen its student enrollment double over the past decade. During the same span, the school’s support from state and federal grants has more than doubled, and its overall budget and the number of fully funded doctoral students have tripled. The school currently has more than 600 full- and part-time graduate students and 60 faculty and staff members. The new building is expected to allow for up to an additional 20 percent growth.

CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE

Saunders Research Building Opens

ctsb (Photo: Adam Fenster)

ctsbNAMESAKE: A longtime supporter of the Medical Center, Saunders has funded programs to study neuromuscular diseases and other initiatives. (Photo: Medical Center Public Relations)

A Medical Center facility that’s home to the Clinical and Translational Science Institute as well as several research and academic programs has been named in honor of Rochester businessman E. Philip Saunders. The Saunders Research Building was formally dedicated in April at a ceremony attended by New York’s lieutenant governor and former Rochester mayor Robert Duffy, State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and other supporters of the project. The naming recognizes decades of support from Saunders for the Medical Center—including a $10 million gift announced in April to support research programs in muscular dystrophy, cancer, and translational medicine.

“This facility was created with the understanding that the future of medicine will be driven by institutions that assemble the teams and create the environment necessary to follow through on discoveries and make them relevant in terms of improving health,” says Bradford Berk ’81M (MD/PhD), CEO of the Medical Center.

—Kathleen McGarvey

BRAIN & COGNITIVE SCIENCES

Um . . . Let’s Learn

Rochester cognitive scientists find that ‘um’s’ and ‘uh’s’ help toddlers learn new words.

By Alan Blank

learningSCREEN TIME: Two-year-old Jackson Coles, of Webster, N.Y., watches a special monitor designed to track eye movements as his mother, Christy, identifies objects on the screen during a research study to explore how children use verbal hesitations as clues to understanding new words. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

There’s good news for parents who are worried that they’re setting a bad example for their children when they say “um” and “uh” when they’re searching for the right word.

A new University study shows that toddlers use their parents’ stumbles and hesitations to help them learn language more efficiently.

Say you’re walking through the zoo with your two-year-old, hoping to expand your child’s vocabulary of wild animals. You point to a rhinoceros and say, “Look at the, uh, uh, rhinoceros.”

As you’re fumbling for the correct word, you’re also sending a signal that you’re about to teach your child something new. In other words, your youngster takes your verbal hesitations—your disfluencies, as they’re known to cognitive scientists—as a sign to pay close attention, according to the researchers.

Richard Aslin, the William R. Kenan Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and one of the study’s authors, says young kids have a lot of information to process while they listen to adults speak, including many words that they have never heard before. Deciphering what a word means after it’s been spoken is a more difficult task for a young child’s brain, and a child is apt to miss what comes after the new word.

“The more predictions a listener can make about what is being communicated, the more efficiently the listener can understand it,” says Aslin.

The study, which was conducted by Celeste Kidd, a graduate student at the University, Katherine White, a former postdoctoral fellow at Rochester who is now at the University of Waterloo, and Aslin, was published online in the journal Developmental Science.

The researchers studied three groups of children between the ages of 18 and 30 months. Each child sat on his or her parent’s lap in front of a monitor with an eye-tracking device. Two images appeared on the screen: one image of a familiar item (like a ball or a book) and one made-up image with a made-up name (like a “dax” or a “gorp”). A recorded voice talked about the objects with simple sentences. When the voice stumbled and said “Look at the, uh . . . ” the child instinctively looked at the made-up image much more often—almost 70 percent of the time—than the familiar image.

“We’re not advocating that parents add disfluencies to their speech, but I think it’s nice for them to know that using these verbal pauses are OK—the “uh’s” and “um’s” are informative,” says Kidd, the study’s lead author.

In the study, the effect was only significant in children older than two years. The younger children, the researchers reasoned, had not yet learned the fact that disfluencies tend to precede novel or unknown words.

When kids are between the ages of two and three, they usually are at a developmental stage where they can construct rudimentary sentences consisting of about two to four words. And they typically have a vocabulary of a few hundred words.

The study builds on earlier research by Jennifer Arnold, a scientist at the University of North Carolina and a former postdoctoral fellow at Rochester, which found that adults also can use “um’s” and “uh’s” to their advantage in understanding language. Additionally, work by Anne Fernald at Stanford University has shown that it’s not the quality but the quantity of speech that a child is exposed to that’s most important for learning.

Alan Blank writes about the sciences for University Communications.

ARTIFACT

History and the Photographer’s Art

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

NATIVE CRITIQUE: History major Carlie Fishgold ’12 and Alexander Marr, a graduate student in visual and cultural studies, organized an exhibition of photogravure prints by early 20th-century photographer Edward Curtis as part of the 2010–11 Humanities Project. On display this spring in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, the exhibition Theatres of Memory: New Perspectives on Edward Curtis’s The North American Indian drew on a collection donated to the University by Hiram Watson Sibley. Beginning in 1904, Curtis spent 30 years on a project he believed was a last opportunity to document indigenous cultures. But his overt staging of his photographs later earned his work fierce criticism as “imperialist nostalgia”—a critique that the exhibition sought to place in a broader context. “These photographs have given rise to a host of contradictory and incompatible understandings of Native American life,” says Marr. “That’s what I find most interesting about Curtis’s work.”

BY THE NUMBERS

Counting Up Commencement

In May, Rochester will celebrate the accomplishments of its newest class of graduates. What goes into launching these proud alumni? Here are some of the ways that the campus prepares.

8,000 program books distributed throughout graduation weekend

5,154 guest seats set up for the College ceremony on Eastman Quadrangle

2,095 feet of pipe and drape for the Eastman Quadrangle seating area

1,890 feet of yellow rope for the processional walkway

1,400 muffins distributed at Hoyt Plaza before the College ceremony

1,320 feet of stanchions for the graduate line-up

954 School of Arts and Sciences undergraduate degrees conferred

440 Simon School degrees conferred

292 Arts, Sciences, and Engineering graduate degrees conferred

267 Eastman School degrees conferred

250 School of Nursing degrees conferred

160 Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences undergraduate degrees conferred

150 Warner School degrees conferred

107 School of Medicine and Dentistry medical degrees conferred

—Kathleen McGarvey

COMMENCEMENT

Blue + Yellow = Green

ecogownsGREEN GOWNS: Rainie Spiva ’12, an international relations major from Rochester, models this spring’s “green gown”: The fabric is spun from molten plastic pellets, and is softer and more breathable than traditional polyester; the size labels are stamped with soy ink; and the plastic bags used to store the regalia are made from recycled plastic. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

When Rochester students don their graduation caps and gowns this spring, they’ll be doing more than marking their academic success—they’ll be showing off their environmental smarts, too.

Bachelor’s and master’s degree candidates will be wearing regalia made of 100 percent post-consumer recycled bottles. It takes an average of 23 bottles to make each gown. With more than 1,500 gowns sold at the University’s bookstores each graduation season, 34,500 bottles will be repurposed to dress Rochester graduates.

Not only are the gowns “better for the environment, but the fabric actually feels softer and more comfortable than what we’ve used for previous commencement ceremonies,” says Maria Ferrante, general manager of the bookstores.

And for graduates who want to take recycling one step further, they can drop their gowns off at the bookstore after they’ve finished with them so they can be recycled into new fabric.

—Melissa Greco Lopes

STUDENT HONORS

First Fulbrights

fulbrights (Photo: Adam Fenster/Image composite by Steve Boerner)

MAPPING A MILESTONE: Rochester students Hannah Watkins ’11 and Nathaniel Lindsey ’11 (T5) put themselves on the map this spring when they became the first graduating students selected to study as Fulbright Scholars in the United Kingdom, the most competitive of student Fulbright awards. Watkins ’11, a biomedical engineering major from Kenai, Alaska, plans to research drug delivery at Imperial College in London; Lindsey, an interdepartmental engineering major from Skaneateles, N.Y., plans to pursue a master’s degree in geothermal energy at the University of Edinburgh. Also this spring, David Liebers ’09, who has been working in Poland during the 2010–11 academic year, was selected for the UK program to study at the University of Leeds. He has instead chosen to attend the University of Cambridge as Rochester’s first Gates Cambridge Scholar.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Street Smarts

Eastman professor Ramon Ricker shows music students how to succeed in business by really trying.

By Kathleen McGarvey

rickerSTREET WISE: Ricker aims to teach music students how to be savvy in business. “You have to be entrepreneurial. You can’t wait for something to come to you,” he says. “You need to make something happen.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)

What’s essential to a thorough music education? Answer “a grounding in theory and technique,” and Ramon Ricker ’73E (DMA) won’t disagree. But add “a good understanding of how compound interest works and knowledge of patents and trademarks,” and he’ll tell you you’re really on the right track.

Ricker, a professor of saxophone and senior associate dean for professional studies at the Eastman School, is author of a new book, Lessons from a Street-Wise Professor: What You Won’t Learn at Most Music Schools (Soundown Inc., 2011). A practical guide to navigating the professional music world, the book aims to help students develop the business savvy they’ll need to forge a musical career.

“The standard music curriculum has been about the same for the past hundred years, and it’s pretty prescribed—you take private lessons; you play in the band or orchestra, or sing in the choir; you take music theory and some music history. You play in a chamber music group. And you take a few humanities courses,” Ricker says. “That curriculum prepares people to know something about music and to have performance skills on their instrument, but what’s lacking are courses that bridge the ‘ivory tower’ and the real world.”

Tips for Starting a Musical Career

Ramon Ricker closes his book with “Ninety-Six Street Level Tips You Won’t Learn in Most Music Schools.” Here are a few:

Do your own thing, then figure out how to get paid for it.

Be nice to the stagehands.

Write down what you know.

Don’t confuse entrepreneurship with self-promotion or making something.

Always remember why you decided on a music career.

Ricker hopes his book, like his work as director of the Eastman School’s Institute for Music Leadership, will help provide that bridge.

“What we’re trying to do” at Eastman, he says, “is prepare our students for careers that start today and go 50 years. And that means you have to be entrepreneurial. “You can’t wait for something to come to you—you need to make something happen. You can craft what you do around your interests, talents, and abilities.”

The entrepreneurial nature of music is nothing new, Ricker says, calling Mozart and Beethoven musical entrepreneurs of their day. “Music has never been a job or an occupation where you just plug into something. You don’t have it ready-made for you. You have to create it,” he says.

Emmy Award winner and Eastman alumnus Jeff Beal ’83 calls the book “an essential guide for success on artistic and entrepreneurial terms that leverages that crucial aspect of any artist’s life journey—the passion to create, and to share that creativity with the world.”

Ricker’s advice in the book grew out of a course he’s taught for 20 years, Entrepreneurship in Music. It also mirrors a larger effort at the Eastman School to ensure its graduates are ready for the 21st-century musical marketplace. Established in 2001 with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Institute for Music Leadership has influenced the traditional curriculum at Eastman and guided students in taking an entrepreneurial approach to their careers, with courses, workshops, and other initiatives.

“It’s so easy, depending on your teachers, not to be prepared for a life in music,” Ricker says. “You can know an awful lot, but you’ll need to figure out how to survive. And many of the things I talk about in the book, and that we teach at Eastman, are things professional musicians would learn in the first five to ten years of their careers. We’re trying to smooth out the road and get rid of those speed bumps.”

With about 150 jobs opening each year in the nation’s top 50 orchestras—for all instruments combined—the keys to surviving and thriving are “street-level tactics and mindsets,” Ricker says.

He draws on his own experience in a varied 50-year-career. A professor, performer—he’s been a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra for 38 years—and author of books on jazz improvisation and saxophone technique, Ricker credits his entrepreneurial thinking for his success.

“Sometimes to get a gig, all you have to do is ask,” he says. “You go into a bar, or even a bank, and ask the managers if they would like music. “Musicians are small businesses, and we can’t wait for something to happen—we’ve got to make it happen. And the good news is we’ll never get bored if we do that.”

QUOTES

Rochester in the News

“Vitamin D and calcium [supplements] are the flavors of the month and it’s the impulsive nature of our society to get that quick fix instead of getting back to eating whole foods.” —Stephen Cook, an assistant professor of general pediatrics, on ABC News discussing a new government study showing the growing popularity of vitamin supplements.

New York Times

“Alan had strong feelings, as did I, that one of the things that can help new music, for the uninitiated listener, was the element of actually watching the music be performed. It clarifies it, or makes it more approachable, and often adds immeasurably to the piece.”—Nigel Maister, director of the International Theatre Program, describing the origins of 1969, a show that he developed with Alan Pierson ’06E (DMA) and other members of Alarm Will Sound, a group that began as a student ensemble at the Eastman School.

USA Today

“One way people might take that finding is to go out and start chasing attractiveness. I would caution them because research shows people who are chasing attractiveness are more unhappy.”—Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology, psychiatry, and education talking about a study on well-being that reported a correlation between happiness, economic status, and good looks.

Bloomberg Businessweek

“It’s a pretty clear message: There’s a discrepancy between what doctors recommend to their patients and to themselves.”—Timothy Quill, a professor of palliative care and director of the Center for Ethics, Humanities and Palliative Care at the Medical Center, responding to a study showing that primary care doctors often choose a different treatment option for themselves than what they recommend to patients.

TIME Magazine

“We kind of assumed in the academic world that if you have a healthy baby, everything would be fine.”—Emma Robertson Blackmore, an assistant professor of psychiatry, explaining research she led that showed women who have had a miscarriage or stillbirth report prolonged depression and anxiety surrounding the loss, even when they go on to have another child.

Science Daily

“The process of approving drugs for clinical use is progressively reaching an impasse in certain areas, and the problem will only be made worse with discoveries relating to personalized medicine, because there will be more drugs but smaller patient populations to test them in.”—Daniel Ryan, chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, commenting a proposal in the New England Journal of Medicine for a new model for testing medical therapies and devices in which companies would collaborate and share costs.

ESPN

“He was smart, the fact he recognized something was going on and sought medical attention early. It’s a common problem and Phil can tell his story.”—Christopher Ritchlin, a professor of immunology and rheumatology, reacting to golfer Phil Mickelson’s public awareness campaign for psoriatic arthritis, a condition with which he’s been diagnosed.

BRIEFING BOOK

Earthquake Readings

We ask Rochester experts to share some reflections and background on the March earthquake in Japan.

By Kathleen McGarvey

Radiation Risks?

A research professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Jacqueline Williams is the principal investigator of the University’s Center for Medical Countermeasures against Radiation.

The most fundamental effect of radiation is that it kills cells. Ionizing radiation has enough energy that when it comes into contact with an atom, it can remove an electron from its orbit, forming an ion. If that ion is in the DNA, you now have damaged DNA. If too many atoms within the DNA have been damaged, the cell will die. If only a few atoms have been damaged, then the cell can repair itself. In between—with damaged DNA that isn’t fully repaired but isn’t sufficient to kill the cell—you have a mutated cell. And if that mutation is in a tumor suppressor gene or an oncogene, then that cell can become a cancer cell. There’s a huge spectrum there of damage.

The most sensitive organ in the body is the bone marrow, although over time, other organs like the kidneys and lungs will show effects of radiation. Among survivors of the atomic bombs in Japan, the earliest major effect was that a lot of people developed leukemia—that was from DNA mutations in their bone marrow. In the 50-plus years since, we’ve also seen increases in lung and kidney diseases. Interestingly, the biggest increase is in heart disease and stroke. This is probably because of the sensitivity of the cells lining the blood vessels. There are still many unanswered questions about radiation. A hundred years plus since we first realized what radiation is, we’re still arguing about how much radiation it takes to cause a cancer. And we still don’t have any drugs that will prevent the later diseases.

We’re being bombarded by radiation all the time—from the sun, from the ground. You eat it. If you are a smoker, or you live with a smoker, you’re further exposed—one of the highest sources of radiation to a person who doesn’t work with radiation is cigarettes. Radioactive material in tobacco leaves is inhaled by smokers when they draw on a cigarette or by nonsmokers when they inhale secondhand smoke, and that radiation builds up in the body. Therefore when considering the risks from radiation from events such as Fukushima, you need to understand how much you are normally exposed to.

The hazards posed by radioactive materials vary according to the types of radiation they release. Some radioactive contaminants only release electrons; others release alpha particles. Plutonium is mostly an alpha particle emitter, and an alpha emitter is really bad—but only close up. Plutonium is only a danger if you eat it, breathe it in, or inject it into your bloodstream. Other radioactive isotopes release gamma or x-rays. And this is the problem when we’re told that the water near the Japanese reactors is contaminated. We need to know, what with? You can’t just say it’s radioactive because radioactivity takes different forms—and how dangerous it is depends on the form.

The mantra with radiation is, the farther away you are from the source, the less radiation you get. They’ve been really good in Japan. I cannot believe that in the midst of the chaos caused by an earthquake and tsunami they managed to get the population to go back 12 miles and then to move farther back a week or so later. The 50 people who stayed behind at the plant, they’re heroes.

Economic Effects?

Mark Zupan, dean of the Simon School, is a professor of economics and public policy.

We’ve discovered that nuclear power is less safe than we thought it was. This hasn’t been the case near term, but it’s going to put upward pressure on energy costs. We’re seeing China, Japan, and other countries rethink to what extent they can rely on nuclear power. So it’ll drive up natural gas and petroleum costs. It may not be bad because it will spur a greater search for substitutes over the long haul, but we’ll feel it at the pump in the interim.

What’s been holding down prices is just decreased demand right now from Japan. Once they start rebuilding and gear up automobile production and other industries, that will change.

The Japanese have been leaders in single-sourcing, “just in time” systems. You get better production, you develop stronger relationships, you take inventory out of the system—but the downside is when you have a major event like this, it can really throw a wrench into the works. How do we rethink the supply-chain side, organizing production? How do companies in other earthquake-prone areas, whether it’s New Zealand or California, have to restructure their sourcing? It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

We have about 150 Simon alumni in Japan. All are safe, thankfully. The number two person at Prudential Insurance is a Simon alumnus, and they have major operations in Sendai. They reported that the Monday after the earthquake, 70 percent of the people were back to work—so even in the most hard hit areas, the resiliency was pretty impressive.

The quake hit a pretty broad swath of the Japanese economy. You can point to fishing and tourism as areas that are particularly affected, but otherwise it seems to be a pretty wide variety of operations in the earthquake area.

The effect on the world economy will be fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Japan is the third largest economy, and there will be less demand for American products coming from Japan in the short term. But most important, it’s a horrible human tragedy.

Geological Guidance?

Cindy Ebinger is a professor of geophysics and editor of Geophysical Journal International. Her research focuses on geological hazards along continental margins, especially earthquakes and volcanic activity.

Japan has invested heavily in infrastructure and hazard mitigation. Over the past 20 years, Japan installed GPS sensors every 5 to 10 kilometers. We’re using real-time data, telemetered from these kinds of instruments—GPS, seismometers—to understand and better predict earthquakes. We generally are able to predict what will happen during an earthquake of a particular magnitude and whether a tsunami will be generated, but what happens afterward depends on the way that the rocks deep down in the earth respond to the forces, and we can’t replicate that in laboratories.

The destruction created by the Japanese earthquake and the resulting tsunami, despite all the precautions the Japanese people took, is a massive wake-up call for the United States. We haven’t had a major tsunami on the West Coast in historic memory—that’s obviously a good thing, but it’s also a problem, in the sense that we don’t think of it as a possibility. We don’t have the building codes that Japan has, we don’t have the earthquake and tsunami education, and we don’t have the density of observation devices.

In the global seismological community, we’ve been encouraged to act as a team, to work across political boundaries, and we’ve been doing that for 30 years now. But further collaboration and expansion of global networks seems essential, and the expansion needs to engage developing countries as equal partners, wherever possible. Those most at risk, the most vulnerable, live in developing countries.

To make progress in understanding earthquakes, it’s going to take teams of collaborative research across disciplines. For example, we’ll need collaborative studies to understand the physical processes that are happening in the locked fault zones between two plates. The plate slipping beneath Japan is carrying down sediments that have a lot of fluids in them. As they move deeper, they heat up and release water, causing chemical reactions in the surrounding rocks. The exchanges may facilitate or impede earthquakes, depending on the reactions and the rocks involved.

In just the past five years, we’ve documented a new kind of earthquake—it’s not a short, sharp earthquake, but a slower earthquake called “slow slip.” And we discovered it because of the development and regular use of broadband seismometers. Before, we could only detect a strong motion—we’d see the “short sharp,” a peak, but we didn’t realize there were these longer period slips going on. They’re equally important for the release of energy and earthquake predictions, but their detection required better instrumentation and new methods.

We’re discovering new phenomena all the time, and it’s because of the increasingly global nature of these instruments and our ability to telemeter information that we’re able to then correlate it to surface processes in real time.

We will learn a huge amount over the next 20 years about what and why and how the earth responds.

Earth’s processes are slow, and we haven’t seen all that can happen.

Research Roundup

Scientists Find a Key to Maintaining DNA

Scientists have discovered how DNA maintenance—a critical yet complex part of the aging process—is regulated, opening the door to interventions that may enhance the body’s natural preservation of genetic information. Robert Bambara, chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, led the research, which was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The new finding—that a process called acetylation determines the degree of fidelity in DNA replication and repair—may ultimately help researchers delay the onset of aging and aging-related diseases by curbing the loss of or damage to DNA, which makes people more susceptible to cancers and neurodegenerative diseases.

Iron Deficiency Harms the Developing Brain

A mother’s iron deficiency early in pregnancy may have a profound and long-lasting effect on the development of her child’s brain, even if the lack of iron isn’t enough to cause severe anemia, according to researchers. Low iron is so common that an estimated 35 percent to 58 percent of all healthy women show some degree of deficiency—and one in five women of childbearing age has iron-deficient anemia, a more serious condition. Led by Margot Mayer-Proschel, an associate professor of biomedical genetics, the research underscores the need for monitoring a pregnant woman’s iron status beyond anemia. The journal PLoS One published the study.

Larger Cities Drive Growing Wage Gap

Soaring salaries of many urban dwellers are behind a growing income gap in the country’s megacities, say researchers. A new study by Ronni Pavan, an assistant professor of economics, and Nathaniel Baum-Snow of Brown University and the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows that up to one-third of the growth in the wage gap between rich and poor is driven by city size, independent of workers’ skills. Using U.S. Census data and American Community Surveys from 1980 to 2007 across the nation, the researchers found that the larger the city, the wider the wage gap among its workers. The country’s largest cities—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—are home to the greatest extremes in incomes, while midsized cities experience relatively less wage inequality and rural areas, the least.

Research Clarifies ‘Obesity Paradox’

A new study shows that obese patients with high blood pressure and diabetes are at much higher risk for major complications following noncardiac surgery compared to otherwise healthy obese patients and patients of normal weight. The finding—which provides a simple, clinically useful way of identifying patients who may be at high risk—diverges from previous research showing that obesity is associated with a lower risk of death and complications after noncardiac surgery. It also helps to clarify the so-called “obesity paradox”—the notion that a high body mass index (BMI) confers a protective effect in certain circumstances. Laurent Glance, a professor of anesthesiology and community and preventive medicine, led the study, which was published in the journal Anesthesiology.

AntiDepressants Boost Brain Cells after Injury

Antidepressants may help spur the creation and survival of new brain cells after brain injury, according to a study by neurosurgeons. Jason Huang, an associate professor of neurosurgery, and colleagues undertook the study after noticing that patients with brain injuries who’d been prescribed antidepressants were doing better in unexpected ways than their counterparts who didn’t take such medications. Not only did their depression ease, but their memory also seemed to improve compared to the other patients. The team’s study of the antidepressant imipramine suggests that it boosts the number of neurons in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory. The findings were published online in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

PHILANTHROPY

Musical Gifts

Martin ’49 and Joan Messinger endow the deanship at the Eastman School.

By Helene Snihur

messingerDEANSHIP: The endowed deanship, named in recognition of Martin Messinger ’49 (above) and his late wife, Joan, will be held by Douglas Lowry (below), the school’s sixth dean. (Photo: Eastman School)

messinger (Photo: University Communications)

Douglas Lowry, the Eastman School’s sixth dean, will be named the first Joan and Martin Messinger Dean of the Eastman School of Music, thanks to a commitment from Martin Messinger ’49, a life trustee of the University, and his late wife, Joan, who died in April.

The endowed deanship provides a source of permanent funding in support of programming and areas of critical need for the dean of the Eastman School.

“Marty has been a steadfast believer in the University, and his support of Eastman has been truly inspirational,” Lowry says. “Joan and Marty’s values, wisdom, and sense of family are only a few of their admirable traits, and we treasure their being part of the Eastman family.” Messinger has been a member of the Eastman School’s Board of Managers since 1998, and his family has supported programs and initiatives across the University, including Rush Rhees Library and its facilities. The Messingers also have established funds supporting the Judaic studies program, the student Debate Union, and the Messinger Library Recognition Award. At Eastman, the Messingers helped to provide a new home for the Eastman Community Music School at 10 Gibbs St., a facility dedicated in 2005 in memory of Messinger’s mother, Anne Waltuck Messinger.

“I am proud to be associated with the Eastman School of Music, one of the world’s premier institutions for music performance, scholarship, and entrepreneurship,” Messinger says. “This commitment is just the beginning. It is my hope that others will join us in honoring the Eastman School’s legacy of innovation and artistry through generous endowed funding for its faculty leaders.”

Lowry will be officially installed in the new deanship this fall.

Helene Snihur is an assistant director of public relations at the Eastman School.

UPDATE

Student Found Not Guilty

Judge rules that junior Daren Venable acted in self-defense in stabbing.

A Monroe County District judge ruled this spring that junior Daren Venable acted in self-defense when he fatally stabbed fellow junior Jeffrey Bordeaux Jr. during a fight on the Fraternity Quad last winter.

The April ruling by Judge John DeMarco found Venable not guilty of all the charges he faced in the incident.

In electronic messages to the University community, President Joel Seligman acknowledged that criminal trials are difficult for all who are involved in them, but he requested that students, alumni, faculty, and staff respect the verdict.

“No one who was not in the courtroom throughout the entire proceeding can fully appreciate the full extent of evidence that was presented to Judge DeMarco,” Seligman said. “The overarching tragedy remains that our student, Jeffrey Bordeaux Jr., has died. Let me again articulate my sadness and empathy for both families. Regardless of the trial verdict, the death of Jeffrey Bordeaux will weigh heavily on Daren Venable the rest of his life.

“I urge all in our community to respect this verdict, regardless of their feelings,” he said. “Let us also always remember Jeffrey Bordeaux Jr.”

Venable was charged in January after Bordeaux died from stab wounds suffered in a fight at a fraternity house on campus. DeMarco issued his ruling after hearing testimony during a weeklong, nonjury trial.

Sue Stewart, University vice president and general counsel, expects to finish an internal investigation of the incident this spring.

—Scott Hauser

STUDENT ADVISOR

Dean Paul Burgett Shifts Duties

burgettADMINISTRATIVE ADVICE: Burgett will focus on campus and community issues. (Photo: University Communications)

Paul Burgett ’68E, ’72E (PhD), senior presidential advisor, University dean, and friend to thousands of Rochester students, alumni, staff, and the area community, is redefining his high-profile role to allow more time for emerging interests and travel.

Burgett, who will retain his titles of vice president, senior advisor to the president, and University dean, will step down as general secretary as of July 1, retaining the flexibility to contribute to important University decisions and initiatives.

“It is rare that one individual can serve the all-encompassing demands of a major university like ours while building so many personal relationships and bonds of trust as Paul Burgett has,” says President Joel Seligman. “He is and will continue to be my closest advisor for a variety of issues, including the University’s relationship with the Greater Rochester community. Paul is not retiring but cutting back his overall commitment to focus on our campus and our neighbors by giving up the role he played with our board.”

Seligman intends to recommend to the University’s Board of Trustees that Lamar Murphy, his chief of staff, succeed Burgett as general secretary to the board, one of Burgett’s key responsibilities.

—Sharon Dickman

Sharon Dickman is University spokesperson.

NURSING

Hall of Fame

Loretta Ford, a nursing pioneer, is honored for her influence.

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

Loretta Ford, founding dean of the School of Nursing, will be honored for her legacy this fall when she is one of 11 inductees into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

From her home in Wildwood, Fla., Ford, who is now 90, acknowledges that the magnitude of the honor hasn’t quite sunk in yet. She’s “been overwhelmed by the outpouring of good wishes” from people across the country, especially former colleagues and current faculty and staff at the Medical Center and the School of Nursing, which she led from 1972 to 1985.

Ford’s nearly 50-year career transformed the nursing profession and the delivery of health care itself. She codeveloped the nurse practitioner role at the University of Colorado in 1965 and at Rochester, and implemented the unification model of education, practice, and research, which connects the classroom to real-world experience. It’s an approach now replicated by nursing programs across North America.

There was a “marriage of education and practice that was vital to nursing,” Ford says. “Rochester had the philosophy and the interdisciplinary aspects needed to develop a team approach and a system that was receptive and responsive to new ideas.”

Ford will be inducted during ceremonies in Seneca Falls, N.Y.—birthplace of the American Women’s Rights Movement—on September 30 and October 1. For more information, visit www.greatwomen.org.

—Christine Roth

Christine Roth covers nursing education and research for the Medical Center Public Relations and Communications Office.

TRACK & FIELD

Seniors Set Sights on National Meet

Brian Lang ’11 and Yaneve Fonge ’11 cap record-setting careers with NCAA bids.

By Ryan Whirty

trackMAKING TRACKS: With school records under their belts, steeplechaser Lang (above) and hammer thrower Fonge (below) will represent Rochester at the NCAA track and field championships in May. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

track (Photo: Adam Fenster)

It’s the nature of track and field competition: You always want to run a little faster or throw a little farther.

Yellowjacket seniors Brian Lang ’11 and Yaneve Fonge ’11 are turning that drive into a trip to this spring’s NCAA Division III outdoor track and field championships—Lang in the men’s steeplechase and Fonge in the women’s hammer throw.

In 2010, Lang, a statistics major from Baldwinsville, N.Y., placed third at the national meet, becoming the fourth Yellowjacket to earn All-America honors in the event. With the two runners who finished ahead of him now graduated, Lang comes into the 2011 outdoor campaign as one of the favorites to claim a national title.

“It definitely means I’m right there,” he says. “I’m a competitor for it.”

Fonge, a microbiology and immunology major from Cheshire, Conn., hopes to improve on her 15th place finish last year. The holder of the Yellowjacket record for shot put, Fonge, who was a New York state finalist for a Rhodes Scholarship last fall, didn’t begin competing until her sophomore year.

“Hopefully I’m on to bigger and better things,” she says. “Consistency is the big thing, being focused from the start and knowing that (All-America status) is a possibility.”

Sam Albert ’01, ’02W (MS), director of track and field, says Lang’s stellar performance at last year’s national championships should set the senior up for an even better 2011.

“It’s given him a lot of confidence going into his senior year,” Albert says. “He’s set some pretty high goals for himself this spring. His performance (at NCAAs last year) confirmed to him that he could compete at that level.”

If the start of the 2011 season was any indication, Lang could be well on his way to achieving that goal. At the University’s Alumni Track & Field Invitational in April, he smashed the school record in the steeple- chase with a time of 8:56.76, a mark that automatically qualified him for the NCAAs.

That effort spurred Lang to modify his objectives for the season.

“I would like to show up at nationals knowing that I’ve run faster than any other competitors in the field,” Lang says. “That would give me a nice confidence to really go after my ‘pie in the sky’ goal of 8:45.”

Like Lang, Fonge jumped out to a quick start in the 2011 outdoor season. At April’s Alumni Invite, she won the hammer throw with a mark of 52.47 meters, which provisionally qualified her for NCAAs and fell just shy of hitting the automatic standard.

That followed a stellar performance at the 2011 NCAA indoor championships in March, when she placed second in the nation in the 20-pound weight throw.

Albert says that Fonge will use the lessons from last season to find even more success.

“Coming into her senior year, she really understands what to expect at the NCAA championships,” Albert says. “She’s entrenched herself as one of the best, if not the best, thrower in the region. She’s getting better and better every week.”

Teaching Centered

Faculty members from across disciplines are developing new methods of teaching, informed by research on the brain and human learning.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Teaching and research. These are the stated missions of research universities such as Rochester. While the two are often viewed as separate enterprises, Terry Platt, a professor of biology, biochemistry, and biophysics, says they shouldn’t be.

“One of the models that I try to use is the research lab group,” says Platt, who has been teaching at the University since 1985. “Research labs generally have a lab meeting once a week. Everybody from the undergraduate dishwasher to the principal investigator talks about the problem. What were your results? What are the alternative explanations?”

It’s an approach that mirrors the way life and physical scientists think about their work as researchers and teachers, but would it work as well in other disciplines?

Platt is among a group of faculty members across the University who have joined with learning specialists on Rochester’s professional staff and Provost Ralph Kuncl to explore such questions. They've established a set of initiatives to help faculty share teaching methods and to encourage new research-based approaches that have emerged over the past few decades.

Those initiatives—the Year One program for new faculty, the Future Faculty Initiative for aspiring academics, the Sharing Innovations in Teaching lunchtime seminar series, among others—cover a wide range of topics. How humans learn. Group dynamics. How to assess students’ progress. And using technology creatively and effectively. (See “Teaching Resources at Rochester,” below.)

In the coming academic year, the College plans to launch a Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning that promises to bring a new focus to the role of teaching and to serve as a hub in which faculty as well as graduate teaching assistants across the disciplines in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering can discover and share approaches to teaching.

teachingASSISTING PROFESSORS: Since 1990, Vicki Roth, the founding director of the College Office of Learning Assistance Services, has collaborated with faculty members to bring innovative teaching methods to University classrooms. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

Vicki Roth, the director of the College Office of Learning Assistance Services, will oversee the center, while its day-to-day operations will be in the hands of Jennifer Hadingham, a pedagogy expert from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

In January, in his annual address to the Faculty Senate, Kuncl cited two landmark studies that drew on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology to suggest teaching practices in higher education need to change: a 1998 report funded by the Carnegie Foundation, Reinventing Undergraduate Education; and a 2000 National Research Council report, published as a book, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (National Academies Press).

“What we now know about the conditions most conducive to learning,” said Kuncl, referring to the reports, “flies in the face of most traditional approaches to teaching.”

In higher education, perhaps the most universal approach—and one that has distinguished it from education at the secondary level—is one in which a professor lectures and a classroom of students, from as few as 20 to well over 200, take notes.

Judith Fonzi, an associate professor at the Warner School and the director of its Center for Professional Development and Education Reform, advances one explanation why the lecture has proved so enduring.

For a long time, she says, “we thought that people were just these empty vessels. And you just had to tell them clearly enough what you wanted them to learn, and all they had to do was listen carefully enough, and of course, practice it enough, and then they would know it, whatever the ‘it’ was.”

As masters of their subjects, professors have a great deal to tell their students. And their students have tended to be young adults, who, it’s been long assumed, don’t need or benefit from the educational strategies necessary to engage younger learners.

Teaching Resources at Rochester

The new College Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning builds on the work of several programs and offices at Rochester designed to enhance the quality of teaching at the University.

Center for Workshop Education: www.rochester.edu/college/CWE

Leadership in Education: www.rochester.edu/ucis/leadershipineducation.htm

Office of Faculty Development, School of Medicine and Dentistry: www.urmc.rochester.edu/education/faculty-development

College Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable: www.rochester.edu/college/ctltr

UR Year One: www.rochester.edu/diversity/faculty/uryearone

Future Faculty Initiative: www.rochester.edu/provost/futurefaculty

But recent research on the brain challenges those assumptions. Fonzi taught mathematics at the kindergarten through graduate school level before becoming a specialist in math education and instructor of aspiring math teachers. When she became director of the Warner Center, she says, “I had to start thinking about education in other areas, and I discovered that there was a kernel that was in common, and it didn’t matter what you were teaching, or really even who you were teaching.”

That kernel involves taking students beyond mere information gathering and helping them develop real knowledge.

“We can share information, but it’s just information,” says Fonzi. “It doesn’t become something that’s learned, or knowledge that students have gained, until they actually do something with that.”

Educators call this type of learning “inquiry-based.” Active rather than passive, inquiry-based learning draws information out from within a framework, such as a research question or hypothesis that students pursue themselves, with guidance from the instructor and interaction with fellow students. Inquiry-based learning is what faculty do in their research.

In fall 1995, the College embraced inquiry-based teaching with the introduction of “Quest” courses. Designed for freshmen, Quest courses permit a small number of students with a shared interest to explore that interest, together under the guidance of a professor, through research. Faculty leading such courses teach students how to formulate good questions, develop reliable methods for exploring them, use a variety of sources, and draw conclusions.

But do the advantages of inquiry-based learning mean that the lecture is outmoded? To the extent there’s consensus, the answer is “no” at Rochester. But the lecture should be supplemented by other, inquiry-based course components, say faculty members such as

Alyssa Ney, the James P. Wilmot Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the College. Among her courses is Introduction to Philosophy, a survey of the works of notable thinkers, from antiquity to modernity, and their ideas on topics such as the nature of truth, relativism, and free will. The class seems made for lively discussion.

But, says Ney, “You still need lectures.” Using the example of the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, she says, “there are certain facts about what Descartes did say and what he didn’t.” At the introductory level, students need that clarification to grasp the complexities they encounter in their readings.

Platt, too, says lectures are an important component in his Introduction to Biochemistry course.

“My job as a lecturer is to illuminate—to help students make the connections,” he says. “And in courses like biology where the content is enormous, it’s to help them sort out the wheat from the chaff.”

Platt is also codirector, along with Roth, of Rochester’s Center for Workshop Education, a pioneering effort to use a workshop model based on “peer-led team learning.” Workshops are groups of about 10 students who work through problems collaboratively, guided by a trained peer facilitator who has performed well in the same course, usually as recently as the previous year.

In 1995, the late Jack Kampmeier, a professor of chemistry and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, joined with Roth to craft a workshop model for Kampmeier’s organic chemistry class. Rochester joined an early consortium of universities that had experimentally adopted the workshop model.

Students registered for the course could choose to sign up for either a workshop or a traditional recitation. Roth, who had already been experimenting with forming student-led study groups, recalls they divided roughly in half. And when the grades were in, “the half of the class in workshops did so much better than the half in recitations that we were quite sure we were doing something useful.”

Roth, who has worked with faculty for nearly two decades to hone the workshop model and train peer leaders, says the workshop model spread largely through informal networks—through students talking to professors and through professors in one department talking with counterparts in another. In 1996, Kampmeier made workshops universal in organic chemistry, and the model spread to other courses and other departments largely in response to student demand.

In recent years, they’ve been adopted in select courses at the Simon School and the School of Nursing as well. Formal studies at other universities as well as one coauthored by Roth, Kampmeier, and Platt have shown over several years that students in workshops consistently scored higher on exams, earned more grades of A or B, and had lower rates of withdrawal from the courses than student in recitations.

Faculty who have used workshops argue that a peer leader is essential. Ney says she wishes that she could see her Introduction to Philosophy workshops in action. “But if I were to sit in, it would just disrupt the whole dynamic,” she argues. When the professor leads discussion, she says, students become “very tentative in their responses. They’ll look at me and wonder ‘Well, what is she looking for?’” rather than develop confidence in evaluating their own arguments and conclusions.

Platt, too, says that working under the guidance of a peer leader forces students to wrestle with problems rather than look at an authority to provide answers.

“In real science, when you get an answer, there’s not a thunder clap from on high telling you ‘Hey! You got the right answer!’ Or ‘Nope, sorry, that’s wrong.’ You have to, among other things, develop the tools to decide what confidence level you have in your answer, and maybe at the same time, what are the alternative explanations for your answer that you can now test with a subsequent experiment,” he says.

What’s also compelling about the workshop method, faculty note, is that it’s an innovation that is not based on new technology.

Discussions about student engagement often lead to questions such as, Which technologies, used in which ways, enhance student engagement? And are there ways in which technology can undermine it?

“It’s a challenge for any instructor to sort from all of the burgeoning educational technology that’s out there,” says Roth. “Almost every day there’s something new or emerging. How do you sort out what’s useful or valuable out of any of that for the sort of things that you want to do as an instructor?”

Based on the “prototypes” of the initiatives already in place, the goals of the new center include helping foster such discussions so that new, aspiring, and senior faculty can find support and resources for their roles as teachers.

Fonzi says she hopes the center, which will begin in the College, will eventually become a resource for the entire University.

Right now, she says, many University-wide teaching initiatives have no permanent home. The Future Faculty Initiative “is running out of the briefcases of six or eight of us who put it together and keep it going.” The same is true, she says, of the Leadership in Education cluster, an informal group of faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdocs who organize the Sharing Innovations in Teaching lunchtime seminars.

Roth, who will oversee the College’s new center for teaching as it gets under way later this year, hopes the new initiative sparks a robust discussion about teaching at Rochester.

“A faculty member may bring us something that they want to share,” says Roth about her vision for the center. “They may have just tried a new idea. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering. It doesn’t have to be paradigm shifting. But maybe it’s a small way that they’ve made something go better.”

Profiles in Teaching

By Kathleen McGarvey/Photographs by Adam Fenster

The Goergen Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching recognize the distinctive teaching accomplishments and skills of faculty in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering. Presented each year since 1997, the awards were established by trustee Robert Goergen ’60 and his wife, Pamela, to recognize, reward, and encourage strong and innovative undergraduate teaching.

“The Goergen Awards have really driven a University-wide discussion about the importance of teaching,” says Andrew Berger, a professor of optics and a recipient of the award in 2007.

As the College Class of 2011 leaves Rochester’s classrooms, meet a few of the recent winners who have inspired them.

Carmala Garzione, 2010

teachers_garzione (Photo: Adam Fenster)

It was love of the outdoors that first drew Carmala Garzione, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, to her field of sedimentology and tectonics—but more abstract attractions have provided its enduring appeal.

“Many geologists will tell you the ability to spend time outside is a big draw,” she says, “and for me, early on, it was. But I also really like the big questions I ask in my research. What does the elevation history of mountains tell us about how they grew? How have mountains altered Earth’s climate over time? What are the larger-scale tectonic processes at play in convergent tectonic settings?”

When Garzione teaches her undergraduate courses—Introduction to Geological Sciences and Sedimentology and Stratigraphy—she leads her students to the terrain of those large questions, but she never loses sight of their own grasp of the material.

“I think that’s what’s really important about teaching—you can’t teach in the same mode for all levels,” she says. “You have to understand where the students are in their understanding. You really need to develop a dialogue that’s consistent with their level.”

And dialogue is fundamental to Garzione’s courses, even when she’s lecturing. She aims never to convey facts and concepts alone, but to guide students to comprehend the thought processes behind them.

“It’s a really active approach to learning,” she says, and she works toward solutions to problems in class rather than laying out information.

“I love to use chalk and overheads—which I know seems old-fashioned. But it allows me to write student feedback on the median. PowerPoint just isn’t as dynamic.”

Garzione teaches her introductory lab course as a workshop, breaking students into teams with a peer leader—a fellow student who’s taken the course before and performed well—who helps guide the team by asking questions.

“The ideas in this course are more challenging than what they’d encounter in a typical lab, where the problems often have single-response answers,” Garzione says.

She often includes undergraduates in her fieldwork teams in places such as Bolivia and Tibet, determining the age of rocks, collecting chemical information, and interpreting their depositional environment in a quest to unlock mountains’ secrets about their growth mechanisms and the paleoclimate of the region.

“They usually do a lot of grunt work, but that’s what we all do in the field as geologists.”

Back in the classroom, she relies on a whittled down approach. “Initially I tried to put everything in my classes. But over time I’ve realized it’s not the volume of information but the thought process that gives students an intellectual edge.”

G. Bingham Powell, 2009

teachers_powell (Photo: Adam Fenster)

G. Bingham Powell, the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Political Science, is an avid observer and analyst of political systems—with a particular taste for tensions and disputes and the divergent paths they can take.

And teaching, he says, is a way to impart his curiosity to others.

“I was drawn to political science by my interest in conflict,” Powell explains. “Teaching is a chance to share my interest in and enthusiasm for political science.”

As incoming president in 2011–12 of the American Political Science Association and a highly regarded expert on comparative politics and European politics, Powell nonetheless works day to day with Rochester students just dipping their toes into the field with the course Introduction to Comparative Politics.

“It’s an opportunity to argue to them that there are a lot of ways to run a political system—the way we do it isn’t the only one,” he says.

Coauthor and coeditor of a leading undergraduate comparative politics text, Comparative Politics Today, Powell aims to give the course a narrow focus, such as how citizens use elections to influence politics, while familiarizing students with basic political science theories and concepts.

“I’ve found, historically, that if I try to do everything, it satisfies nobody. The course becomes a welter of unconnected facts and concepts.”

In his upper-division undergraduate courses, Powell focuses on how democracies work and how conflict functions within them.

“Disagreement in politics is everywhere,” he says. “Sometimes the disagreements are expressed through institutions. And sometimes things boil over.”

He tends to concentrate these courses on a handful of countries. “When I’m feeling brave, which is most of the time, I let the students choose one of the countries. Sometimes it’s one I know well, and sometimes not. Then I have to go to the books.”

That plunge into new information—studying the development of democracy in South Africa, for instance, or the political workings of India—are “fascinating. They pull me out of my comfort zone, which is European democracies.”

Even in large courses, Powell aims to foster dialogue with students. “Political science is in some ways straightforward,” he says, “but it’s more subtle in its concepts than students often realize. Discussions can help them make their way through that.”

“In so far as there’s a common denominator” in what appeals to him about teaching, “it’s sharing something you care about,” he says.

“It’s always seemed to me that politics is intrinsically interesting. And most of the students find it so, too.”

Susan Gustafson, 2006

teachers_gustafson (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The courses taught by Susan Gustafson, the Karl F. and Bertha A. Fuchs Professor in German, are full of magical and mysterious things: monsters, wizards, aliens, and ghosts. But the true enchantment, she says, lies in the love of learning.

“The very best learning is ultimately the result of a magical, personal excitement about something on the part of the students,” she says.

Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures and a specialist in 18th- to 20th-century German literature, Gustafson uses students’ own curiosity as the fuel that drives her courses.

“I want students to own the class, to follow their inspirations,” she says. In service of that goal, she never assigns paper topics, asking students instead to develop projects of their own conception.

“They follow what they’re passionate about. That’s what we do as scholars.”

Gustafson teaches courses on German literature and culture, comparative literature, and women’s studies. As she guides students through works by Edgar Allan Poe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, and others, she trains them in the scholarly practice of close reading, helping students attune themselves to the significance of the smallest textual details.

“I like to look at minute changes and structural shifts in a text,” she says, asking students to consider where a particular passage leads its reader. And she emphasizes the importance of rereading and rewriting—the process of scholarship.

“At the beginning of my career, I was much more lecture-oriented,” she says. “And I didn’t let students rewrite their essays. But over the years I’ve seen what’s more successful. Unless students are actively engaged in analyzing texts, they’re just wondering, ‘How did you see that?’”

Gustafson’s department is a multidisciplinary one, and her own courses—often informed by theories from other fields, such as gender studies, psychology, and film studies—draw a wide variety of students.

Gustafson credits her students and her own former teachers for her success in teaching, and places her interactions with students at the top of her professional responsibilities.

“Teaching is why we’re here.”

Andrew Berger, 2007

teachers_berger (Photo: Adam Fenster)

When Andrew Berger got his first taste of teaching—as a volunteer tutor in the New Haven, Conn., public schools—he was hooked. As a graduate student, he sought out teaching opportunities in a program that didn’t require them.

Now, as an associate professor of optics, Berger helps students to navigate their way through electromagnetic theory and to tackle advanced lab courses devoted to building lasers and studying how to manipulate light.

“I’m always energized by the thought of how I can reach students, how I can help them wrestle with this material,” he says.

Advisor to alternate-year incoming optics freshmen and chair of the Institute of Optics undergraduate committee, Berger is captivated by the college experience.

“Everyone’s transformative process is fascinating,” he says. “How do you guide people to what’s best for them” as they consider possible fields to pursue?

A specialist in biomedical optics, particularly spectroscopic diagnostic techniques, Berger admits to being an actor on the side. And in the optics classroom, his emphasis is on pulling back the curtain so that students can look carefully at what’s happening “backstage.”

“In optics, the challenge of teaching to undergraduates is not to be too abstract—to put your energy not into presenting a seamless train of thought but into chopping it up,” he says. So he uses peer-led workshops, and in lectures checks in with students frequently, using questions, hypothetical scenarios, and other techniques to engage them.

“If the students don’t understand most of the content of what’s discussed, you’ve wasted very precious time in the classroom.”

Berger thinks of himself as the students’ guide in working with difficult material, always explaining explicitly what he’s trying to teach them and keeping their questions at the forefront of the course. The biggest challenge, he says, is building in the time to listen during class.

“As long as I’m prepared, I love being up in front of people. I’m as happy as the next guy to hear myself talk,” he says.

“But I try to fight that temptation. I strive to talk as little as I can.”

James Farrar, 2005

teachers_farrar (Photo: Adam Fenster)

For James Farrar, a professor of chemistry, it’s all about clarity.

“When I can explain something clearly to a student, I understand it better,” he says. “As a teacher, I’m also a learner.”

Teaching freshman chemistry—a large lecture course, with only a small fraction of students who go on to become chemistry majors—has given Farrar much occasion to think about how to make an often difficult subject clear, comprehensible, and even fun.

He models himself on favorite teachers he himself had. “My teaching style comes from taking things I admired in them. They were very good at connecting words and equations. They wrote good explanations. And they had a sense of humor.”

Farrar tries to put a “more human face” on science by sharing jokes and stories about eminent chemists, figures who’d otherwise just be names in textbooks for the students.

“The freshmen come in with boundless enthusiasm,” he says. “They’re interested in everything.” And whether they become majors or not, “the way of thinking about science, and logical thinking about science, will be part of their lives.”

To help students master that thinking, he uses peer-led workshops—crediting the late chemistry professor Jack Kampmeier with inspiring him to bring that method into play. He relies on them, too, in his physical chemistry and other upper-division courses.

“I learned I could improve my teaching through workshops, and for that I’m grateful to the culture of this department,” he says. “Workshops are an arena where people have to make their thinking visible to others. And that’s where the real learning gets done—explaining and defending your thinking to other people.”

Farrar’s father was a chemist, “and he’d say I became one despite his advice.” But he finds the challenge of science irresistible.

“I like thinking about atoms and molecules and how they interact with each other,” he says simply. In his research, he uses molecular beam techniques to investigate where energy goes in chemical reactions.

But while he’s proud of his research, he finds more fulfillment “when I think about the people I’ve worked with over the years.

“I take satisfaction in watching people succeed. I think that’s the bottom line.”

Emil Homerin, 2005

teachers_homerin (Photo: Adam Fenster)

“In the humanities, I believe we’ve implicitly taken a ‘Socratic oath,’” says Emil Homerin, a professor of religion. “In times of crisis or loss, we can help people ask cogent questions to address the situation.”

Recent history has kept Homerin, a specialist in Islam, Arabic literature, and mysticism, particularly busy. A committed teacher, he takes the work of his classroom beyond the campus, talking with the media and addressing local groups to promote greater understanding of Islamic cultures and societies.

Homerin—who says he knew from the second semester of his freshman year in college that he wanted to be a professor—is the University’s first professor of Islam.

At the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, “there weren’t people on most faculties who were experts” on Islam, he recalls. By the time he completed his doctorate in 1987, at the University of Chicago, universities were hiring specialists.

“I’ve had to cap my classes since I came,” he says. “Student interest was here.”

Homerin teaches an introductory course on the history of Islam and another, called Islam and the Third World, that examines effects on the religion from historical, political, social, and economic factors in the developing world.

Another course—Speaking Stones—was inspired by Homerin’s efforts to draw undergraduate students into the process of academic research. Students meet at Rochester’s historic Mt. Hope Cemetery, the sprawling, Victorian resting place of Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, some of Rochester’s wealthiest citizens, and some of its most vulnerable—one corner holds the graves of children who died at the city’s orphan asylum.

Homerin’s primary area of research is medieval Arabic poetry. The difficulty of learning Arabic is an almost insurmountable obstacle for drawing students into research there, but he realized that his work on medieval Muslim saints does offer a way in.

“Essentially, I’m looking at gravestones and reading obituaries,” he says. So he devised a course in which students learn about Western funeral rites and practices and about funerary art. They turn to the rich resources of Mt. Hope Cemetery to carry out original research on a gravesite there of their own choosing—work that has repeatedly found a home in local historical publications, Homerin notes with pride.

He weaves poetry into all of his courses—something many students aren’t used to reading, he says, but an art form of enduring popularity in the Middle East.

“Poetry can bring an emotional dimension to learning that’s often lacking—to see into the world of others, and perhaps, through that, into our own.

“When you can help students understand others, you’ve done something.”

Teaching Innovator

Remembering Jack Kampmeier, a former dean, professor of chemistry, and a champion of teaching at Rochester.

kampmeierTOP TEACHER: Shortly after joining the faculty in 1960, Kampmeier emphasized ways to improve teaching, first in his home department of chemistry and later through initiatives such as peer-led teaching workshops and other efforts throughout the University. (Photo: University Communications)

Every month or so, at 7:30 in the morning, a small group of faculty from across divisions of the University meets for breakfast at the Mt. Hope Family Diner, about a half mile from the River Campus, just south of the Medical Center.

It’s a gathering of friends with a common interest and a serious purpose: to foster innovative teaching at the University, grounded in the copious research on the brain and human learning that has emerged in the past couple of decades.

This spring, there’s an empty seat at the group’s circular table. That seat belonged to Jack Kampmeier, professor emeritus of chemistry, who by many accounts did more than any single person at the University to promote innovative teaching since he joined the faculty in 1960.

Kampmeier died in March after a short illness. Although he’d become a professor emeritus in 2005, he was “the most unretired retired person I’ve ever known,” says Vicki Roth, the director of Learning Assistance Services at the College who collaborated with Kampmeier on many projects.

Just weeks before his death, he was in the midst of preparing a lunchtime seminar as part of a program called Sharing Innovations in Teaching, spearheaded by the Mt. Hope group.

“In my last meeting with him, he asked me, in the nicest possible way, if I would kind of pick up the pace a little bit on some work that we were doing together,” says Roth. “He wanted me to keep up with the work he was doing. He was very busy at the end of February, with a lot of things he was planning to do and work with us on.”

Kampmeier demonstrated his commitment to teaching early in his career. In the late 1960s, he led an overhaul of the undergraduate chemistry curriculum, making students better prepared for independent research. He won the two most prestigious teaching awards for faculty who teach undergraduates: in 1974, the Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and in 1999, the Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

As dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, a position he held from 1988 to 1991, he oversaw the hiring of Roth to establish Learning Assistance Services. The two worked side-by-side developing and honing the workshop model of teaching and learning at Rochester (see “Teaching Centered,” page 22). That model, in which undergraduates who have previously excelled in the course lead groups of between eight and ten students as they work through problems collaboratively, began in Kampmeier’s organic chemistry class. The method was later adopted, largely in response to student demand, in other chemistry courses, as well as in biology and philosophy courses, and in graduate courses at the Simon School and the School of Nursing.

The success of the workshop program inspired Kampmeier to forge a University-wide interest group, called a cluster, in Leadership in Education. Established in 2008 and funded by the University Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies, the cluster members organize lunchtime seminars in which a guest faculty member shares methods of teaching developed in one discipline, with the idea that often methods adapted to one discipline may inspire effective innovations in others as well.

In his annual address to the Faculty Senate last January, Provost Ralph Kuncl reflected on the attributes found in the finest teachers: passion for the subject, caring for the students, and confidence in the ability of learners to take materials and form connections on their own.

About midway through his address, he asked the group: “Are excellent teachers born, or is teaching excellence a skill that can be learned?”

Kampmeier stood up and said, simply, “There is a reliable research literature about how people learn. And the more we learn about that literature, I think we can hone and develop our skills.”

—Karen McCally

View Finders

Rochester students turn their lenses to the world in Rochester Review’s third annual Study Abroad Photo Contest.

abroad (Photo: Isthier Chaudhury)

Where have you been lately? That’s the question we ask Rochester undergraduates each spring in our Study Abroad Photo Contest. The answer for 2010 included entries from 40 students who studied in 33 countries in more than three dozen academic programs recognized by the Center for Study Abroad and Interdepartmental Programs.

Students sent us 142 photos, covering the categories of people, culture, and the physical world.

This year’s grand prize winner receives a Playsport video camera from Eastman Kodak Co., the competition’s lead prize sponsor. Winners of each category as well as those earning honorable mention also receive prizes.

To see all the entrants in this year’s contest, visit www.rochester.edu/pr/Review.

Paperback Writer

You may know him from Lemonade Mouth, a hit Disney Channel movie adapted from his second novel that premiered this spring, but Mark Peter Hughes ’88 has always been a writer. Even when he was an engineer.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

hughesMEET THE AUTHOR: Addressing an audience steeped in social media, Hughes is adept at relating to readers of his fiction, connecting to them through Facebook, Twitter, and the sites www.markpeterhughes.com and www.lemonademouth.com. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The past year has been a wild ride for Mark Peter Hughes ’88.

In August, he released his third teen novel, A Crack In the Sky (Delacorte), the adventure of a 13-year-old boy and his pet mongoose, who save the planet from environmental catastrophe. In

April, he, his wife, Karen, and their three children traveled from their home outside Boston to New York City to attend an advance screening of Lemonade Mouth, a Disney Channel movie adapted from Hughes’s 2007 novel of the same title. The story follows five maladjusted freshmen who are thrown together to form the most beloved band ever to grace the stage at their fictional high school.

“You have to remember,” says Hughes, “I’m a guy who lives in a small cape house. And we’ve got a couple of really old cars. And there I was at this very real, unbelievable dream moment.” For someone who earns accolades for his ability to bring a fresh perspective to such “dream moments” in the lives of fictional teenagers, it seems fitting that Hughes is getting a taste of what it’s like to find success in pursuit of a dream. Since his 2005 debut novel, I Am the Wallpaper, Hughes has specialized in crafting winning portraits of precocious underdogs who find their voices and discover that they can achieve more than they thought possible. “It was over-the-top surreal,” says Hughes of seeing his work brought to life on screen, a week before its national premiere. Arriving at Rochester in the fall of 1984 to study electrical engineering, thinking at the time that it was “a safe bet,” Hughes has been writing for a long time. Like many successful authors, pretty much his entire life. He chronicles his interests in writing and storytelling through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and on www.markpeterhughes.com and www.lemonademouth.com. The venues are particularly important for tween and young adult novelists, because their audience, more than any other, will not only turn online for sources of information, but also wants to feel personally connected to the writers of the books they like. In all these outlets, Hughes is as vivid and colorful as the characters he creates.

Sometimes he’ll address his fans on video. Occasionally he’ll appear on video and in song, as in a recent post featuring Hughes answering a reader’s letter in a tune he sings and plays on his ukulele: “Lemonade Mouth Letter Song (Dear Mark).” And there are plenty of pictures of him with his three children Evan (13), Lucy (11), and Zoe (9).

Hughes was the director of data analysis at a Boston-area health care company when he got the break any fiction writer would die for: an offer from Random House to publish his first novel, I Am the Wallpaper. He had entered the manuscript in Random House's Delacorte Press Young Adult Novel Competition. It was among five finalists, attracting the attention of a Delacorte editor, Stephanie Lane Elliott.

“She worked with me on a rewrite and then offered me a contract,” says Hughes. “Stephanie and I have worked together ever since.”

I Am the Wallpaper tells the story of 13-year-old Floey Packer, the frumpy little sister of a much more popular girl, who feels very much like wallpaper. The book established Hughes’s reputation for wild humor and uncanny insight into the lives of adolescents—as well as his tendency to insert references to the Beatles into his work, in this case, the 1967 song, “I Am the Walrus.” (A bit of Hughes trivia: He was born in the Fab Four’s hometown of Liverpool, England, and in the very same hospital as John Lennon).

hughesHIS GUITAR DOESN’T WEEP: Finding the inspiration for Lemonade Mouth in the 2000 book The Beatles Anthology, Hughes (who, like his character in the novel, Stella, really does play the ukulele) has been widely praised for his portayals of sympathetic, true-to-life teen characters. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Like Disney Channel movie favorites High School Musical and Camp Rock, Lemonade Mouth centers on music and big dreams. Its heroes are five freshmen at fictional Opequonsett High School who face social challenges at school and in their lives at home. They feel small, but then make it big—at least among their classmates—when they form a band they call Lemonade Mouth, which comes to overshadow the once hands-down school favorite among garage bands, Mudslide Crush.

Hollywood film producer Debra Martin Chase, whose movie credits include big tween and teen hits such as The Princess Diaries and The Cheetah Girls, first noticed Lemonade Mouth. Talking with Women and Hollywood in April, she noted that many young adult novels that come across her desk are “cookie cutter, not original.” But not Hughes’s novel. “The moment I finished Lemonade Mouth I knew that it was something special. The characters are rich and textured, the messages age appropriate but nonetheless mature, the drama universal and compelling.”

The story is told in the first person, not by one narrator, but by at least five, and arguably, six. Naomi Fishmeier, the self-described “Scene Queen and Official Biographer of Lemonade Mouth,” as well as a columnist for the student newspaper, introduces the book. From there, band members take turns telling the story of themselves and of Lemonade Mouth.

Hughes says he got the idea for the structure from The Beatles Anthology, a 300-plus-page hardcover coffee-table book published in 2000 that, in scrapbook style, offers the foursome’s “own permanent written record of events.” Constructed from interviews conducted over years by both print and broadcast sources, as well as from the private archives of the then three surviving band members, the book is arranged to construct a chronological narrative.

Lennon opens the anthology, but in Lemonade Mouth, it’s trumpeter Wendel (Wen) Gifford. Much of Hughes’s success derives from his penchant for the absurd, and it’s a preposterous chain of events that culminates in Wen’s expletive, which lands him in detention where he meets his future bandmates, each of whom lives under challenging circumstances.

A Fab Five

Much like the five underdogs who form Lemonade Mouth, here’s a list of five extraordinary tween books that might have escaped your notice, but are exceptional nonetheless—and deserve a place on bookshelves.

—Mark Peter Hughes ’88

How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O’Connor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). A story about a southern town, a homeless family, and a girl with a plan to fix everything.

The Outlandish Adventures of Liberty Aimes by Kelly Easton (Random House, 2009). A wild, raucous ride in a magical world a lot like our own except with mutant animals, terrifying inventions, and a talking chicken with human feet.

Galaxy Games by Greg R. Fishbone (Tu Books, Fall 2011). The first in a series about a boy who stumbles into greatness after an alien spaceship visits Earth to recruit a team of kid athletes. Out this fall, I was lucky enough to get to read it early.

Newsgirl by Liza Ketchum (Viking, 2009). During the gold rush of 1851, a young girl in San Francisco must disguise herself as a boy to sell newspapers and ends up in an accidental balloon ride adventure.

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman (Putnam, 2008). Set in India in 1941, it's the first-person account of a teenage girl in the middle of political and family turmoil.

Stella Penn (electric ukulele) comes from “a family of geniuses,” she says, with an older sister at Brown. As the story opens, Stella has opened a letter reporting her IQ test result of 84. Mortified to be “a documented dummy,” as she puts it, she shines as a leader, activist, and spirited rebel whose fashion faux pas—at least in the eyes of the school’s administration—places her in detention.

Olivia Whitehead (lead vocalist) is quiet and taciturn offstage, the product of a mother who abandoned her and a father who’s in prison for armed robbery and manslaughter. She lands in detention after cutting American Lit class, instead savoring the assigned book, The Great Gatsby, for the third time, alone in a janitor’s closet.

Mohini (Mo) Banerjee is an overachieving, has-her-life-all-planned-out daughter of Indian immigrants who strives to balance her parents’ expectations with her desire to assimilate into the American teenage mainstream.

And then there’s Charlie Hirsh. He’s a twin, but his brother, Aaron, was a stillborn, and his birthday celebration never takes place without a family visit to Aaron’s grave. Chubby, with unruly, frizzy hair, Charlie secures his path to detention when he retaliates to a spitball attack, missing his target and hitting Mo instead.

“They’re all part of me,” says Hughes of his eclectic cast of characters. “Stella is a lawbreaker and a defier and means really well and doesn’t always get it right. And that’s me. Olivia, on the other hand, is quite different. She’s very quiet, and she has a very hard time talking about herself, and her own work, and that’s me too, at different times.”

Mo is drawn from Hughes’s own experience as well. Although raised in the United States, Hughes was born in England to an English family—a “very, very English” family, he adds. “I’m American, but I’m also British. I never feel more American than when I’m in Britain. And there are plenty of occasions here where I feel very British in the midst of America.”

Hughes says the movie leaves his story and characters “pretty much intact.”

“What struck me,” he says, “was how little they actually changed from my book. The characters are all there, and they are my characters. The story is there, and it’s my story.”

When Hughes wrote Lemonade Mouth, he was still working full time as a data analyst. After the novel’s publication—and its favorable reviews—he quit his job to become a full time writer, a story he told in May 2007 on National Public Radio’s “Take This Job and Shove It” segment.

“Suddenly dropping the job is way out of character for me,” he told Michele Norris, the host who interviews Americans who have left steady jobs to chase their dreams.

But the success of Lemonade Mouth may well have depended on that decision. That summer, Hughes took his entire family on an eight-week book tour across the country in the family’s minivan, a 1996 Honda Odyssey wrapped in bright yellow plastic with images that mimicked the novel’s cover art. Hughes gave readings and book signings at 60 stores across 38 states. And the car that was already 11 years old traveled more than 12,000 more miles on the journey.

For the time being, the opening of the movie has overshadowed Hughes’s latest novel. But he has no intention of letting A Crack in the Sky remain in the shadows. True, he’s at work on a sequel to Lemonade Mouth. But he’s at work on a sequel to A Crack in the Sky as well.

He’s not giving any hints about what’s to come. But one thing is certain. Both sequels will be about big, dramatic events, because books about teens have to be.

“They’re looking at their successes as the greatest triumphs known to humankind. And their failures as the deep depths of depression and awfulness,” says Hughes of the modern teen.

“At that particular time in our lives, we see everything as one extreme or the other.”

Birth Pangs

A longtime advocate for alternatives to hospitalized childbirth, Suzanne Davis Arms ’65 explores the bonds between newborns and mothers.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

armsBIRTH DAYS: “It matters how we bring humans into the world,” says Arms, the founder of the nonprofit Birthing the Future (www.birthingthefuture.com). (Photo: Courtesy of Suzanne Davis Arms ’65)

For more than 30 years, Suzanne Davis Arms ’65 has been an activist and social critic on behalf of a natural approach to childbirth and maternal care.

In the 1970s, she was among the most articulate among a small group of feminist critics of mainstream American medical practice who began to argue that medical interventions in childbirth, while appropriate in some circumstances, had become standard for most women, raising the risk of harm to both mother and baby.

Her book, Immaculate Deception: A New Look at Women in Childbirth (Houghton Mifflin), included in the New York Times “List of Noteworthy Titles” for 1975, earned Arms a place on the syllabi of many women’s studies courses at colleges and universities in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1995, she published a revised and updated 20th-anniversary edition, Immaculate Deception II: Myth, Magic, and Birth (Celestial Arts), in which she built on the themes she had introduced at a time when chemical and surgical interventions in childbirth were far less prevalent.

In April, she organized a gathering of experts in medicine, psychology, and anthropology—20 in all, from five continents—on the island of Tenerife, off the western coast of Africa, for a six-day roundtable that she hopes will spark a larger exploration of whether such medical interventions create unnecessary trauma for newborns, disrupting the bonds between mothers and babies in ways that lead to other social ills.

“Our approach to childbirth is an unending sequence of interruptions in the biological process—of overriding it with artificial substances, chemicals, and other interventions,” she said this spring.

Moreover, she says that modern medicine has been so successful at handling genuine emergencies in childbirth that the obstetrical approach to childbirth has been structured to avoid emergencies that happen far less often, she maintains, than most women fear.

Betsy Naumburg, a professor of family medicine at Rochester and a contributor to the 2010 volume Woman-Centered Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth (Radcliffe), agrees, pointing to many reasons for the evolution of modern childbirth.

“My sense is that the main factors include the illusion of a perfect outcome that technology offers, the pressures on mothers to be perfect, values that place a priority on freedom from any pain rather than on the empowering experience of childbirth, and a medical field that continues to practice on the basis of fear of litigation rather than on the basis of the medical evidence.”

In a foreword to Immaculate Deception II, Christiane Northrup, a Dartmouth- educated obstetrician, wrote that as a self-described progressive in the 1970s, she believed that Arms had “overstated her case” in the earlier edition. Twenty years later, Northrup praised Arms for the updated edition that was no less sweeping, expressing the view similar to Arms’s that “our system for birth flows seamlessly out of the values of the technologically driven, materialistic society we live in, a society that is too often cut off from nature’s wisdom.”

With no formal medical education when she launched her critique in the 1970s, Arms has earned respect among some in the medical profession by making her case through her own research in medical libraries, interviews, visits to maternity wards arranged by physicians sympathetic to her views, the experience of giving birth herself (her daughter, Molly, was born in 1971), and, she adds, her studies in English and anthropology at Rochester, which “opened my mind and honed my sensibilities in so many ways.”

In a new initiative, Arms and her partners hope to spearhead an exploration of the mother-baby bond and whether trauma during the “primal period” from conception to age one is connected to later social problems for children, such as violence, depression, and social alienation. The goal of the Tenerife roundtable was to create a blueprint for the project, which she calls The Time Is Now.

Arms says research in the field of epigenetics—the ways in which environmental factors permit or inhibit gene expression—buttresses her case. Through our environment, she says, “we literally program ourselves to be in a state of growth or defense.” By traumatizing humans in their earliest stages of development—as their brains, nervous systems, and other organs are forming—“we create a more defensive, fear-based human being,” Arms says.

Naumburg says it’s an important discussion to have.

“I do think that the environment a fetus is exposed to throughout pregnancy, including the emotional and physiological state of the mother, probably does have an effect,” she says, adding that a birth marred by unnecessary medical interventions and personal stress “is a missed opportunity for women to experience their own power, which can then translate into a solid foundation for mothering.”

Arms, who describes herself as “passionate” on the subjects of childbirth and the mother-infant bond, agrees.

Far from simply a means to an end, birth is a process with inherent value. Says Arms: “It matters how we bring humans into the world.”

In the News

newsKen Megan ’73E (Photo: Courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard Band)

Strike Up the Band

The U.S. Coast Guard Band, under the direction of composer and arranger Ken Megan ’73E and saxophonist and assistant conductor Richard Wyman ’92E, ’93E is scheduled to perform a gala concert over Memorial Day weekend featuring the music of George Gershwin. The concert celebrates the reopening of the band’s home, Leamy Hall, in New London, Conn., after extensive renovations to enhance the hall’s acoustics and other amenities. Established in 1925 to perform at official functions and promote public goodwill toward the Coast Guard and the United States, both at home and abroad, the ensemble features several Eastman School alumni, including Robert McEwan ’90E (percussion), Stephen Lamb ’00E (tuba), and Megan Sesma ’02E, ’02RC (harp).

Norman Neureiter ’52 Honored by Japanese Government

Norman Neureiter ’52 received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star decoration, among the highest honors bestowed by the Japanese government, at a ceremony at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo last November. Neureiter, who earned a doctorate in organic chemistry from Northwestern after graduating from Rochester, was recognized for his many years of work promoting U.S.–Japan relations and cooperation in science. In 1963, he joined the National Science Foundation’s Office of International Affairs, becoming the first permanent U.S. program director for the U.S.–Japan Cooperative Science Program initiated by then president John F. Kennedy. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was the director of Texas Instruments Japan and the vice president of Texas Instruments Asia. From 1994 to 2000, he cochaired the American side of a joint U.S.–Japan panel to negotiate trade disputes and, in 2000, he was appointed the first science and technology advisor to the secretary of state. He’s a senior advisor for the Center for Science Diplomacy and the Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy, an office he directed for five years after it was created in 2004.

Jonathan Samet ’70M (MD) Appointed to National Board

Jonathan Samet ’70M (MD) has been appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Cancer Advisory Board. Samet is the Flora L. Thornton Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California’s medical school and director of the school’s Institute for Global Health. An internationally recognized expert on indoor and outdoor pollution and the health effects of smoking and secondhand smoke, Samet has served as an expert witness in litigation challenging tobacco companies and counseled legislators at the federal, state, and local levels on a variety of issues related to public health.

A. John Popp ’63 Wins Honor in Neurology

A. John Popp ’63 is the recipient of the 2011 Harvey Cushing Medal, a prestigious honor named for the pioneering brain surgeon and awarded for distinguished service by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. A specialist in the treatment of aneurysms, vascular malformations, and brain tumors, Popp is the chair of the neurosurgery department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and training director for the neurosurgery residency programs at Boston Children’s Hospital as well as Brigham and Women’s.

Smart App

Dave Moreau ’98S (MBA) creates an app to help you learn a little history.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

moreau (Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

Dave Moreau ’98S (MBA) says he’s “not really a computer guy.” But he says if you’ve got an idea, “don’t let the technology stop you, because there are experts who are good at it who can walk you through it.”

An engineer at the Marietta Corp. near Syracuse and a self-described history buff, Moreau says that when he drives through unfamiliar towns, he likes to know something about their history. A small GPS device got him thinking.

“I said to myself, ‘What if it told me something else about this town that we’re driving through? How would I take this device and modify it?’”

The result is GeoReader, an app for smartphones that provides historical narration about sites as you approach or pass them. Moreau is hoping to tap into the blossoming market for apps, specialized computer programs that have been developed to take advantage of the arrival of smartphones—Blackberries, iPhones, and Android-powered devices. Built for Google’s Android operating system, Moreau’s app combines the location technology of the built-in GPS in most smartphones, a database of “talking points,” and the phone’s ability to “read” text aloud.

moreauDRIVING PAST: Because it can be hard to read historical markers while driving, Moreau’s phone app, GeoReader, does it for you. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

GeoReader was a finalist in the 2010 European Satellite Navigation Competition, which recognizes the most innovative uses of satellite navigation.

After initial inspiration struck, Moreau turned his attention to his own smartphone, knowing that it had a built-in GPS, the ability to hold large quantities of data, and the ability to “read” data aloud. “I went online and started reading about how to make an app,” recalls Moreau. “And I quickly realized this was way beyond my personal capabilities.”

No matter. “I formed a little LLC,” he says. He explained the concept to programmers and hired them to do the technical work, while maintaining all the rights to GeoReader. Moreau maintains a website, www. mygeoreader.com, which contains an introduction to the app along with written instructions and a video demonstration.

As programmers were building the app, Moreau collected the information to place in the GeoReader’s database of talking points.

“I was befriending people who had websites that contained large amounts of data,” says Moreau. “And they graciously offered it to me to include in this app. I was able to get a lot of data as a starter set so no matter where you were in the country you could hear something.”

Moreau estimates that he edited between 30,000 and 40,000 bits of data into discrete, crisp talking points associated with specific sites or geographic coordinates. “I would do that every evening,” he says.

Moreau no longer shoulders that burden alone. The app allows users to enter talking points themselves and make them “public” to all GeoReader users. “Everybody is an expert in their local area. It definitely is designed to encourage people to contribute,” says Moreau.

A free application, GeoReader has made no money for Moreau; it’s been a net expense. Underscoring that point, Moreau says, “My plan is to launch it on the iPhone when I get enough funds.”

Moreau doesn’t envision GeoReader—primarily a labor of love—necessarily as a profitable venture.

Nonetheless, the Simon School graduate who credits that program with enhancing his problem-solving skills—“I felt like when I graduated I could handle almost any problem thrown at me”—notes he’s begun to court advertisers, whose messages could be activated on GeoReader much like talking points.

“Space in a high-traffic area is more valuable than in the middle of the woods,” he says. “But there’s value everywhere.”

Seniors in College

Five years into retirement, Bob Carlson ’69W (EdD) embarked on a new challenge.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

carlsonCONTINUING ED: The zest for learning is ageless, says Carlson, the director of the Sarasota-based Pierian Spring Academy, which offers enrichment education to retired seniors. (Photo: Steve Nesius/AP images for Rochester Review)

For more than 25 years, Bob Carlson ’69W (EdD) taught in the education school at the University of Vermont, served as an independent educational consultant, and authored three books on school reform. Then the Buffalo native retired along with his wife, Donna, to the milder clime of southwest Florida.

Five years later, he was back at work.

“I think I was looking for some challenge having been out of the university and missing that kind of dynamic socialization with faculty and graduate students,” he says. He’s now in his seventh year as executive director of the Pierian Spring Academy, a Sarasota nonprofit that offers college-level, seminar-style courses targeted to the area’s sizeable population of retirees.

Carlson first encountered the academy as a student. He began taking courses on philosophy, and in discussions on thinkers from Plato to Camus, Carlson made an impression—so much so, that seven years ago, the academy’s director asked Carlson to be his replacement.

“He had heard about me and my background from some of the students in the classes I was taking,” Carlson explains. “I was a little hesitant to take it on.

“But I saw a lot of interesting possibilities.”

The Warner School graduate whose research, administrative, and consulting work had all focused on topics such as organizational change and educational planning and evaluation, adapted easily to the task of building the then modest-sized academy into a thriving institution modeled after a small college.

“We had one venue and maybe about a dozen courses, and I just saw so much more potential for its growth,” he says. Now the academy offers more than 70 courses to more than 600 students at three venues. A dean of faculty is in charge of recruiting and retaining the academy’s instructors, most of them professors at local colleges and universities or retired professors from around the country.

Stan Nikkel, a former professor of sociology who serves as the academy’s dean of faculty, says “the instructors we’ve recruited are very, very good, and Bob has had a role in that.”

Nikkel adds that Carlson has offered “a sense of direction, as well as the practical side of finding venues and handling registrations.” Those registrations became numerous enough under Carlson’s watch that the academy also hired a full-time administrator.

“Obviously we’re fulfilling an important need,” says Carlson.

Indeed. Retirees in the United States are not only becoming more numerous; they’re becoming better educated. And that means an expanding market for educational and cultural programming targeted to people over age 65.

It’s a need that’s being filled by retirement communities, assisted living facilities, or independent organizations like the academy. Sometimes universities play a direct role. Rochester, for example, offers “UR Always Learning”—a series of lectures and enrichment courses taught by university faculty—to residents of the Highlands, a senior community affiliated with the University.

The academy is similarly focused on the liberal arts and sciences, as opposed to “how-to” courses. And academy students—many of them retired doctors, lawyers, teachers, and even a few college presidents, according to Nikkel—are frequently adventurous, delving into the controversial, new, and contemporary. Courses on the politics of race and gender, modern geopolitics, and world religions are popular standards. Carlson, who’s also a faculty member, teaches Understanding American Education, an examination of a system he describes as “overly subscribed and undernourished” as well as “the most complex and political of any educational system in the world.”

Students can delve into courses to the degree they choose. Some, according to Nikkel, come to listen, while others will devour the recommended reading assignments.

Carlson offers a similar assessment.

“We have some pretty interesting and challenging courses,” says Carlson—who, in one of the academy philosophy courses, developed a keen interest in the not-so-accessible 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault. “The people who show up to those classes—not everyone, but a lot—have read the background material, they’ve got questions, they engage the faculty member, and sometimes they have as much background as the faculty member, if not more.”

Not surprisingly, however, things don’t always go smoothly. “With 1,000 registrations, 50 faculty, 2 staff people, and 12 board members, there are issues that come up,” he says, laughing.

His most striking observation is the motivation of the students.

“This is something that is almost ageless: I see it in people in their mid-80s. They’ll tell you they have not lost the zest for learning,” says Carlson. “To me, that’s a very interesting phenomenon.”

Documenting War

raadINTERPRETIVE VIEWS: Focusing on the contemporary history of his native Lebanon, Raad works in several media, including still photography—above, prints from the series, “Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut)_Plate 050” (Photo: © Walid Raad/Courtesy of Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London)

Contemporary media artist Walid Raad ’96 (PhD) has a long list of awards to his name. In March, he added another, one that some fine art photographers consider the grand prize in the field, the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography.

Working in a variety of media—still photography, video, audio, performance, and essays—Raad has focused his art on the contemporary history of his native Lebanon, and in particular, on the representation of traumatic events during the civil war that took place there from 1975 until the early 1990s.

Raad spent most of his childhood and his early teens in East Beirut and settled later in the United States, where he earned his undergraduate degree in fine art photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 1989, he entered Rochester’s then new Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies.

In an online chat moderated by the foundation following the announcement, Raad said, “Some extreme situations permit artists, writers, and thinkers to produce new concepts and forms.” As far as his focus on the wars in Lebanon, he said, “There are certain images, sounds that I cannot get out of my mind. They stay with me.”

The Hasselblad Foundation has recognized a single photographer annually since 1980. “Walid Raad is one of the most original and singular contemporary artists using photography,” the five-member award committee noted in a joint statement regarding their decision.

—Karen McCally

TRIBUTE

Jack Kampmeier: Colleague, Mentor, Friend

kampmeierINNOVATOR: Kampmeier was widely recognized for his interest in teaching. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Jack Kampmeier was the first faculty member I met when I visited Rochester to interview for a faculty position nearly 30 years ago. I distinctly remember two things about our meeting. First, Jack was extraordinarily friendly. Second, he showed a genuine interest in me.

In the years that followed, I came to recognize that Jack had a deep curiosity about everyone and everything. He believed that you could learn something from everyone and thought one should never pass up a new opportunity to learn.

Jack, who passed away in March after a brief illness at age 75, loved the University and worked tirelessly on behalf of its students for over 50 years in a variety of roles: professor of chemistry, chairman of the Department of Chemistry, associate dean for graduate studies, and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

After arriving at Rochester in 1960, Jack quickly established an outstanding research program in the emerging field of organic free radical chemistry. Later, his group did groundbreaking research in organometallic chemistry. A hallmark of Jack’s research was the clarity, intellectual rigor, and imagination that he brought to contemporary problems in chemistry.

Jack became nationally known for his efforts to develop and disseminate a pioneering educational initiative, Peer Led Team Learning. In this learning model, students meet in small workshop groups each week under the guidance of a peer leader to work on specially designed problems that actively engage them in discussion and debate. Students thrive in workshops because they provide them a supportive place to express their ideas, test their opinions, and construct their own views on the subject material. Jack was an evangelist for the workshop model, both here at Rochester and across the country.

Throughout my career Jack was a mentor to me and I could not have imagined anyone better. I never missed an opportunity to share ideas with Jack, because he showed such delight in hearing them and invariably offered insightful suggestions.

Jack firmly believed that a university should not differentiate between research and teaching. As he liked to say, “one should do the best possible research because that’s the best way to teach.” Jack also believed that universities should educate everyone—in his words, “from freshman to postdoc.” I liked to kid him that he sold himself short with that phrase because, based on my experience, it should have been “from freshman to faculty member.”

Jack left an indelible mark on me, as he did with many others. We are fortunate to have known him as a teacher, colleague, and friend.

–Joe Dinnocenzo

Dinnocenzo is a professor of chemistry at the University.

Books & Recordings

Books

The Needle

By Jennifer Grotz

Houghton Mifflin, 2011

In her second book of poems, Grotz, a prize-winning poet and assistant professor of English at Rochester, presents a collection set in Krakow.

Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World’s First Globalized Industry

By Leon Fink ’77 (PhD)

University of North Carolina, 2011

Fink, the Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, explores the evolution of labor relations and labor law in the world’s first globalized industry, merchant shipping.

I Take Off My Hat: Respectful Yet Pertinent End-of-the-Age Essays

By Julian Hartzell ’66

Dorrance Publishing, 2010

In letters and essays, San Francisco author Hartzell argues that Americans need “a shared national vision, enabled by and rooted in our history.” He relays inspiring and relevant examples from the Founding Era.

Visions of the Multiverse

By Steven Manly

Career Press, 2011

Drawing from research in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string theory, Manly, a professor of physics at Rochester, explains for a popular audience why many physicists believe in the existence of multiple universes.

Buglette the Messy Sleeper

By Bethanie Deeney Murguia ’93

Random House, 2011

In her debut picture book, Murguia introduces a ladybug, Buglette, who “tosses, turns and kicks while she dreams of doing big things.”

Smart Time

By Rick Kremer ’78

iUniverse, 2011

Kremer’s first novel is the story of Paulie Weston, a developmentally disabled adult with a limited ability to speak, who’s chosen as the subject of a groundbreaking research project that gives him the ability to communicate for a limited time.

Pathfinder: An Action Plan

By Frank Leana ’74 (PhD)

iUniverse, 2010

Leana, a lecturer and counselor with practices in Manhattan and Cambridge, Mass., offers a guide for parents and educators to help students make the most out of high school.

Nonviolent People

By David Atwood ’63

PeaceCenter Books, 2010

Atwood, the founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, reflects on the lives of Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Caesar Chavez, and other figures whose nonviolent teachings and actions have inspired him.

Hal Hartley

By Mark L. Berrettini ’00 (PhD)

University of Illinois, 2011

Berrettini, an assistant professor of film studies at Portland State University, offers a critical overview of the realist narrative filmmaker Hartley.

A Physician Under the Nazis: Memoirs of Henry Glenwick

Edited by David Glenwick '76 (PhD)

Hamilton Books, 2011

Glenwick, a professor of psychology at Fordham University, presents the memoirs of his late father’s first 40 years (1909–48), which focus on his experiences as a physician—first in Russian-occupied Ukraine after the outbreak of World War II and subsequently in labor and concentration camps in Poland and Germany.

The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation?

By Gary L. Francione ’76 and Robert Garner

Columbia University Press, 2010

Francione and Garner debate the moral status of nonhuman animals: Francione maintains humans should stop exploiting animals, while Garner argues that a more humane approach to animal use is possible. Francione is Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law and Garner is a professor a politics at the University of Leicester.

Defamation, Libel Tourism, and the SPEECH Act of 2010: The First Amendment Colliding with the Common Law

By Harry Melkonian ’71

Cambria Press, 2010

Melkonian, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, offers a critical examination of the federal legislation passed in 2010 to prevent “libel tourism,” in which defamation suits against American media companies are initiated in foreign countries without an established tradition of free speech.

Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (Third Edition)

Edited by William Anderson ’63E, ’65E (MM)

Rowman & Littlefield, 2010

Anderson, a professor emeritus and founding director of the Center for the Study of World Musics at Kent State University, edits an updated and expanded edition of the collection of essays and lesson plans for music educators.

Octogenarians Say the Darndest Things!

By David L. Anders and Rebekah Yates Anders ’53M (MD)

David Anders, 2011

Rebekah Yates Anders, a retired physician, and her son, David, a geriatrician, recall the humor, wisdom, pathos and surprises they’ve experienced while caring for older patients.

The Wellspring Weight Loss Plan

By Daniel Kirschenbaum ’71

BenBella Books, 2011

Kirschenbaum, the vice president of clinical services at Wellspring, a nonprofit provider of weight loss support, presents a weight loss program based on “science, simplicity, and sustainability” to help overweight adults and youths make behavioral changes to lose weight.

Camelot, Inc.: Leadership and Management Insights from King Arthur and the Round Table

By Paul Oestreicher ’79

ABC-CLIO/Praeger, 2011

Entrepreneur and communications expert Oestreicher explores leadership challenges by relating contemporary examples to the lessons of Arthurian legends.

Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser

By James A. Knapp ’98 (PhD)

Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Knapp, the Edward Surtz, S.J., Professor of Shakespeare and Textual Studies at Loyola University Chicago, examines the relationship between visual perception and ethical action in early modern English literature.

Terror in a Troubled Land

By Mario Sparagana '51, '55M (MD)

Peppertree Press, 2010

In the murder mystery by Sparagana, a retired professor of medicine at Loyola Stritch School of Medicine, an investigation follows a 1980 bomb explosion in a Bologna, Italy, train station.

Human Autonomy in Cross-Cultural Context: Perspectives on the Psychology of Agency, Freedom, and Well-Being

Edited by Valery I. Chirkov ’01 (PhD), Richard M. Ryan ’81 (PhD), and Kennon M. Sheldon

Springer, 2011

Chirkov, Ryan, and Sheldon coedit a collection of essays exploring the nature of personal autonomy, self-determination, and agency, building on self-determination theory developed by Ryan and Edward Deci, professors in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology at Rochester. Chirkov is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Saskatchewan.

You Are Not Your Brain: The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life

By Rebecca Gladding and Jeffrey Schwartz ’73

Avery, 2011

Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at the University of California at Los Angeles, demonstrates how we can “rewire” our brains through the techniques of mindfulness.

Ben Graham Was a Quant: Raising the IQ of the Intelligent Investor

By Steven Greiner ’87 (PhD), ’89 (Flw)

John Wiley & Sons, 2011

Greiner, the head of risk research for FactSet Research Systems, shows investors how to create models based on the ideas of value investing pioneer Ben Graham.

Final Mercy

By Frank Edwards ’79M (MD)

Zumaya Publications, 2010

Edwards, the founder and medical director of Delphi Emergency Physicians and a clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, presents his first thriller.

The Depression Code: Deciphering the Purposes of Neurotic Depression

By Roger Di Pietro ’04M (Pdc)

Lulu, 2010

Clinical psychologist Di Pietro explores the low-level depression known as dysthymic disorder, arguing that it’s a personality-based condition in which depressive symptoms may be used by sufferers to achieve goals within a social context.

Recordings

Piano Praise 2

By Todd Beaney ’85E (MM)

Self-published, 2010

In a follow-up to Piano Praise (Self-published, 2005), the pianist and composer performs original arrangements of classic hymns in a variety of musical styles. Beaney is also the author of “We Have Met to Worship”: Captivating Expressions of Praise for Piano (Lorenz, 2010), a collection of arrangements and compositions for solo piano.

String Quartets and Trio

By Katherine Hoover ’59E

Parnassus Records, 2010

The composer Hoover presents performances of her compositions String Quartet 1 and String Quartet 2, by the Colorado Quartet, and Trio, by the Rogeri Trio.

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.

The Weight of the Matter

Psychologist and weight control expert Dan Kirschenbaum ’71 on facing the challenges of biology and America’s ‘obesogenic culture.’

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

masterclass (Illustration: David Cowles)

About 13 years ago, the World Health Organization declared that obesity had become a worldwide epidemic. Food is still relatively cheap and, in many places, incredibly abundant. The United States leads the trend. Our culture has become obesogenic. This is a relatively new term to describe environments that promote excessive weight gain.

In the United States, unhealthy eating has become normalized. Many people think of a cheeseburger, fries, and a big, sugary drink as a normal lunch, and from a nutritional standpoint, that’s a travesty.

The number one reason so many people fail in their efforts to lose weight is that they don’t understand what it takes and what they’re up against. It’s like going into battle without knowing anything about the enemy.

Moderation, though it’s the prevailing view, doesn’t work. My approach focuses very much on helping weight controllers become like athletes in training. Part of that includes eliminating fat from the diet in addition to introducing several other scientifically based principles to reduce appetite while retaining enjoyment of food.

Dan Kirschenbaum ’71

Chicago, Ill.

Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University Medical School; Clinical Director and Vice President of Clinical Services, Wellspring; author of The Wellspring Weight Loss Plan (BenBella Books, 2011).

Thoughts on River Campus food, 1967–71: “It seemed pretty good to me. My mother was a terrible cook.”

The next steps are consistent exercise and self-monitoring. The latter is a cornerstone of cognitive-behavior therapy. Self-monitoring means writing down what you’re doing and evaluating it, leading to the development of a “healthy obsession.” It doesn’t take a lot of time to self-monitor, just a couple minutes a day once you get used to it.

When you’re considering buying books on weight loss or any other aspect of health, check out the references section to see if the authors have published research on the topic in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The authors of best-selling diet plans, such as the Zone Diet, the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, the South Beach Diet, or the Atkins Diet, may seem like experts because they have doctoral degrees, but they have published little to nothing in scientific journals.

As a therapist and designer of weight loss programs for adolescents, I talk to kids a lot about the question, “Why do this?” They can’t really relate to the possibility of avoiding cancer in 50 years, but they do want to feel stronger and happier as well as look better in clothes. Immersion programs that feature cognitive-behavior therapy can help them believe they can do it.

The concept I convey is: Obesity is a disease. Treat it like a disease and not like a social affliction. Most people don’t make the kind of major changes required to lose weight permanently just by reading about diet and exercise. There are great sources of information, particularly on the web—Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” (www.letsmove.gov) or WebMD’s “Fit” (www.fit.webmd.com), for example. But information alone usually doesn’t produce lifestyle change.

CAMPUS LIFE

Sweet Sculpture

backcover (Photo: Adam Fenster)

CAKE RUSH: Dessert chef Dana Herbert puts the finishing touches on a cake shaped like Rush Rhees Library. Herbert, the winner of cable network TLC’s Cake Boss: The Next Great Baker, visited the University this spring to demonstrate the art of pastry. The owner of Desserts by Dana, Herbert has also been featured on WeTV’s Wedding Cake Wars and TLC’s Ultimate Cake Off. See more photos: www.rochester.edu/news/photos/cake-boss.