Rochester Review

January–February 2012, Volume 74, No. 3

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Valerie Alhart, Sharon Dickman, Adam Fenster, Susan Hagen, Heather Hare, Melissa Greco Lopes, Peter Iglinski, Leslie Orr, Tom Rickey, Helene Snihur, Brandon Vick, and Leslie White

Editorial Office

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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.

ISSN: 0035-7421

Copyright © 2012 University of Rochester

Credits

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

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Bravo YellowJackets!

By Joel Seligman

presidentEVER BETTER: Seligman with some of the Jackets on campus last fall (Photo: Brandon Vick)

The Rochester YellowJackets represent the best of our University. The group’s success on the NBC television show The Sing-Off was the culmination of an extraordinary year. For those of us who have been able to enjoy their performances on and off campus, it’s clear that the Jackets exemplify what’s special about our University and our approach to undergraduate education.

They are interdisciplinary: United by an interest in music, the members of the group include a wide range of majors in the College, students enrolled at the Eastman School, and graduate students pursuing degrees at the Simon School and the Warner School.

They are community-minded: The Jackets raised money on their own to travel to the village of Maseno, Kenya, so they could establish a musical exchange with students there. As YellowJacket and KEY Scholar Aaron Sperber puts it: “We’re pretty passionate about how music can bring people together.” Aaron, who’s an applied music major at Eastman and an international relations major in the College, organized the YellowJackets as volunteer musical mentors, helping vocal students at World of Inquiry School No. 58 of the Rochester City School District with their goal of establishing a music program.

They are entrepreneurial: Like all student groups recognized by the Students’ Association, the YellowJackets are responsible for budgeting their resources, their time, and their energies to accomplish the goals they have set for themselves. The YellowJackets are continuing to put together a documentary, titled United We Sing, which will tell the story of their work in Kenya.

They are engaged University citizens: Many University organizations call on the YellowJackets to perform at events throughout the year—often on short notice. They invariably are more than willing to help in any way that they can—and always with a sense of humor. They bring to the University community a tradition and spirit that often leaves listeners teary eyed.

But the most important attribute of the YellowJackets is this: They are not unusual among Rochester students in terms of their interests, abilities, and engagement with the communities in which they live.

I’m proud to say that many of our a cappella groups, performing groups, ensembles, clubs, organizations, and groups display the same sterling qualities. The YellowJackets represent the best of our University because they demonstrate the defining ethos of a Rochester education: We seamlessly integrate the academic and cocurricular environments of undergraduate education so that students live where they learn, and they learn where they live.

Through our Rochester Curriculum, students pursue their academic interests with the passions of true scholars. At the same time, our students pursue their social, cultural, and community interests with the freedom of engaged, responsible citizens. We educate the whole student.

Our campus abounds with examples. In athletics, 80 varsity Rochester athletes have been named Academic All-Americans since 1980, and two Rochester students have been named Academic All-American of the Year over the past decade. More than half of our University’s varsity teams have been honored by their national coaching body for outstanding cumulative GPA.

Since 2008, the University’s Urban Exploring Club has hosted ArtAwake, an innovative collaboration that brings students and the community together in a singular function that celebrates Rochester’s historic architecture and commitment to the visual and performing arts. Organizers of ArtAwake received the 2009 Student Driven Program of the Year award from the Association of College Unions International.

At the Eastman School, opera fans most recently saw Eastman senior Garrett Rubin singing the lead role of John Wilkes Booth in Eastman Opera Theatre’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins. Garrett, a voice major at Eastman and an international relations major in the College, helped found George Eastman Day, an annual day of service for the Eastman School community.

While some colleges and universities have made “service learning” a required part of their curricula, at Rochester, our students on their own have adopted the idea that to be a wholly educated citizen, you have to be engaged in the communities in which you live.

Our students have discovered that their leadership outside the classroom enriches their academic pursuits and that their scholarly perspectives are broadened when they share their time and talents with the wider world.

It is the embodiment of our mission statement: “Learn, discover, heal, create—and make the world ever better.” Our students deserve our heartfelt applause as they make our University and our world Ever Better.

Letters

The Quality of Admissions

During the years from 1961 to 1963 I worked in the admissions department with then director Charles Dalton ’20, ’43 (MA) and then associate director Caro FitzSimons Spencer ’20.

There were far fewer of us working directly with applicants. We prided ourselves on taking a personal interest in every applicant. I was very excited to read that this process is still very important at the U of R (“The Admissions Mission,” September-October.)

From my experience with children and grandchildren I feel this attention is not always the case at other institutions. I feel strongly that one of the reasons the U of R has maintained such a high standard among universities of its size is because of the quality of its admissions procedures.

Barbara Merritt Roberts ’59

Chireno, Texas

Dating NROTC

I question the information contained in the Class Notes submission from Hugh (Bud) Garvin ’51 (Class Notes, September-October). He states, “Don [Stocking] and I were members of the first NROTC class at the U of R . . . originally scheduled to graduate with the Class of 1950.”

I had been transferred to the U of R from Cornell in the Navy’s V-12 program in September of 1944. I graduated with the U of R Class of 1947 and was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve from the NROTC program, the first to do so. I stayed on in the Navy, retiring in 1974 as a captain (Civil Engineer Corps), U.S. Navy. Among others in my ’47 class (NROTC) were Robert Prochnow ’47, who was listed in the In Memoriam section for that issue. Others graduating included Richard Carlson ’47, Arthur Bailey ’47, Edward Kern ’47, ’72S (MBA), William Shriver ’47, Edward Dowling ’47, ’48 (MS), Edward Spurgiesz ’47, Joseph Mack ’47, Henry Sakrison ’47, William Coffey ’47, and Samuel Miserendino ’47. Not a complete list as I recall.

Nelson Simonson ’47

Wernersville, Pa.

Editor Scott Hauser notes: According to Arthur May’s A History of the University of Rochester, 1850–1964, the University’s NROTC program was established in November 1945, and according to May and to contemporary issues of Rochester Review, the program’s enrollment was filled almost entirely from transfers from the University’s earlier V-12 unit, transfers from the V-12 units of other universities, and transfers from the Navy fleet. The September-October 1946 issue of Rochester Alumni-Alumnae Review notes that the fall of 1946 marked “the beginning of the peacetime NROTC program at the River Campus.” If the fall 1945 NROTC program couldn’t accommodate new students because of the V-12 enrollment, students enrolling in fall 1946 would have been the first to be able to complete all four years in NROTC.

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.

ATHLETICS HISTORY

Standing Tall

basketball (Photo: Adam Fenster)

UNDEFEATED: For the first time in Rochester’s athletics history, the women’s basketball team includes eight players who stand six feet or taller, a roster that has helped the Yellowjackets get off to an undefeated 10–0 start as of the winter break. The streak, which includes a record-setting seventh straight title at the Wendy’s Collegiate Classic, has vaulted the team to a No. 5 ranking. Lining up in the Palestra with 5' 2" point guard Laney Ming ’14 of Burbank, Calif., are (left to right) Danielle McNabb ’14 of Bethel Park, Pa., Madeline Korber ’12 of Glastonbury, Conn., Jodie Luther ’12 of Gibsonia, Pa., Emily Trapani ’14 of Syracuse, Amy Woods ’13 of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., Kate Agan ’12 of Elmira, N.Y., Loren Wagner ’14 of Traverse City, Mich., and Katie Weiner ’14 of Briarcliff, N.Y.

PERCUSSIVE ARTIST

Marimba Master

marimba (Photo: Adam Fenster)

SOLO SHOWCASE: Tomasz Arnold ’13E earned first prize at the Percussive Arts Society’s 50th Anniversary International Solo Competition last fall. Part of the society’s international convention, the competition featured performances on solo marimba, multiple percussion, and timpani as well as a concerto, with different sets of judges at each round. Arnold, a percussion major from Poland who as a freshman won Category 1 of the 2009 International Marimba Competition, was one of four finalists in the society’s solo competition. As the winner, he was featured in the convention’s showcase concert.

PEDIATRICS

‘The Right Thing to Do’

As Golisano Children’s Hospital launches its capital campaign, Pediatrician-in-Chief Nina Schor explains what’s at stake.

By Kathleen McGarvey

hospitalLOOKING AHEAD: Pediatrician-in-Chief Nina Schor says a standalone children’s hospital will provide “services that people need every day” and offer continually improving care through research, recruitment of experts, and training for future generations of caregivers. (Photo: Ken Huth/Courtesy of the Medical Center)

What is reassuring to children? Parents beside them. Siblings and loved ones near at hand. A place where they can play. A favorite song.

“Children associate activity with health, and it’s a sign to a child and a family that a child is getting better. It’s a sign of hope,” says Nina Schor, the William H. Eilinger Chair of Pediatrics and pediatrician-in-chief at Golisano Children’s Hospital.

In October, the Medical Center launched a campaign—a component of The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester—to build a new Golisano Children’s Hospital, one that will deliver the spaces, the people, and the programs children and their families throughout the region need.

“A space that’s designed with a child in mind is a very important thing,” Schor says. “As we’ve learned more and more about the way a child thinks and processes information, about what makes a family better able to care for a child at home after an illness, and about what prevents a child from being readmitted to the hospital, we’ve realized there are some critical things that we can’t optimally provide in our current location.”

Plans call for a six-story, 200,000-square-foot facility, to be built alongside Strong Memorial Hospital—the largest capital project in University history. Among the building’s highlights are an expanded neonatal intensive care unit, a pediatric intensive care unit and pediatric cardiac intensive care unit, and pediatric imaging facilities. To undergo common tests in the present building, children must travel through adult areas and non-patientcare spaces in the hospital—a journey Schor calls “frightening for a child, and off-putting for a family that already has enough on its mind.”

The new hospital will also offer 56 private rooms. The existing hospital has private rooms only for intensive care patients, making it hard for a parent to stay with a child, hard for families to visit, hard for caregivers, patients, and families to speak confidentially, and hard to operate at capacity while preventing the spread of infection.

“Our current space was state of the art 35 years ago, when it was constructed. It was ahead of its time for the way we practiced medicine 35 years ago,” Schor says. “But many of the assumptions we made about what children need when they’re hospitalized weren’t correct. And even more than that, the way we practice medicine now is so different, and the technologies are so different. We couldn’t have anticipated that 35 years ago.”

The existing children’s hospital contains five units: an intensive care unit, a neonatal intensive care unit, and three units organized by the age of the children. But such an arrangement can be isolating, Schor says.

“To have a four-year-old child just diagnosed with cystic fibrosis on a ward where all the other children are their age but nobody has the same kind of illness they have—usually what goes through the imagination of that child and that family is far worse than what the reality is.” How much better, she says, for the four-year-old and his family to have a room alongside that of a 17-year-old cystic fibrosis patient who’s making plans for her adult life.

“To see the light at the end of the tunnel, to learn from families, to support one another—the thinking now is, that is a lot better.” And grouping patients by condition rather than age brings another critical advantage: the hospital can train a group of nurses, social workers, and therapists in the skills required for that patient population.

While the new hospital will be the most tangible product of the campaign, the fundraising effort also focuses on providing key people and programs to address the needs of children and families in the region. By funding directorships, professorships, and fellowships, as well as innovative projects and programs—throughout the hospital, but particularly in the seven areas of autism spectrum disorder, cancer, cardiovascular disease, eating disorders, neonatology, supportive care, and surgery—the campaign will help the hospital to recruit specialists, advance research, and provide essential services.

Schor gives an imagined, but common, example. A child with a disease that affects multiple organs in her body lives four hours from the Medical Center. When she and her family come to the hospital, they depend on the assistance of supportive services to orchestrate getting them an appointment on the same day in each of the subspecialty clinics. “It’s the right thing to do for families, to coordinate that care,” says Schor. But without an endowment to provide the staff for such services, the hospital must scramble to secure needed funds.

“I have to be able to say to families, whether your child is ill this year, next year, or 10 years from now, we’ll provide the service they need,” says Schor. The hospital serves more than 74,000 children and families each year.

That service extends beyond direct clinical care to encompass the training of the next generation of caregivers and the research that drives improved pediatric standards and better outcomes. A baby born at 23 weeks’ gestation can go home close to his due date and “pretty close to a healthy child,” Schor says, in part because of research produced 20 years ago at Rochester, when scientists led by Robert Notter, professor of pediatrics, administered lung surfactant to premature infants, improving the survival rate of babies born more than 12 weeks before term.

As federal funds become scarce—Schor notes that just 8 percent of grant proposals to the National Institutes of Health receive funding—fundraising campaigns play a vital role in supporting research. “We’re not going to make clinical care better 10 years from now unless we do that research right here, where the patients are,” she says. From

the stimulating surroundings of the new hospital—with bright colors, interactive artwork, and playrooms—to the programs and professionals it will provide, Schor sees the campaign as a way to address deeply felt needs in the community.

“I’m passionate about this,” she says.

The new hospital “will say, very loudly and very clearly, to the children and families of this region, ‘This is your space.’ ”

Discovery

Nerve Cells Key to Making Sense of Senses

discoveryPARALLEL PROCESSING: Neurons firing in the brain. (Photo: Jonathan Clarke/Wellcome Images)

How does the human brain manage all the sensory information it receives from the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin? New research by a team of scientists from Rochester, Washington University in St. Louis, and Baylor College of Medicine suggests that the answer lies in a relatively simple computation performed by single nerve cells, an operation that can be described mathematically as a straightforward weighted average.

Published online in Nature Neuroscience, the study represents the first direct evidence of how the brain combines multiple sources of sensory information to form as accurate a perception as possible of the environment. The discovery may eventually lead to new therapies for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders that impair a person’s sense of self-motion, says study coauthor Greg DeAngelis, professor and chair of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

The study confirms and extends a computational theory developed earlier by Alexandre Pouget, a brain and cognitive scientist at Rochester and at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and a coauthor of the new paper. According to the theory, neurons fire in a manner predicted by a weighted summation rule. While that was largely confirmed by the study’s data, the neurons followed a pattern that was slightly off target from the predictions, a difference that could explain why behavior also varies slightly among subjects, the authors conclude.

“Being able to predict these small discrepancies establishes an exciting connection between computations performed at the level of single neurons and detailed aspects of behavior,” says DeAngelis.

—Susan Hagen

Age a Big Factor in Prostate Cancer Deaths

Contrary to common belief, men age 75 and older are diagnosed with late-stage and more aggressive prostate cancer and thus die from the disease more often than younger men, according to a Rochester study published in the journal Cancer.

The study is particularly relevant in light of a recent controversy about prostate cancer screening. In October, a government health panel said that healthy men age 50 and older should no longer be routinely tested for prostate cancer because the screening test in its current form doesn’t save lives and sometimes leads to needless suffering and overtreatment. Patient advocates and many clinicians disagreed with the finding.

“Especially for older people, the belief is that if they are diagnosed with prostate cancer, it will grow slowly, and they will die of something else,” says lead author Guan Wu, assistant professor of urology and of pathology and laboratory medicine. “We hope our study will raise awareness of the fact that older men are actually dying at high rates from prostate cancer. With an aging population, it is important to understand this, as doctors and patients will be embarking on more discussions about the pros and cons of treatment.”

—Leslie OrrResearchers Identify Health Disparities with Deaf ASL Users A new study conducted by Rochester researchers represents the first time a deaf community has used its own data to assess its health status.Using communication tools that enabled deaf people to identify health priorities, the study—published in the American Journal of Public Health—found higher rates of obesity, partner violence, and suicide but lower rates of smoking than in the general population. Traditionally, deaf people who use American Sign Language (ASL) are excluded from health research and thus are medically underserved, the study noted. “This is a monumental step toward eliminating health disparities and advancing the health of deaf people,” says Thomas Pearson, the Albert D. Kaiser Professor in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine. He directs the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the National Center for Deaf Health Research at the Medical Center. The University has worked with community partners to apply successfully for research grant funding to address three health priorities identified by the study: obesity, suicide risk, and violence. —Leslie Orr

discovery (Illustration: Steve Boerner for Rochester Review)

New Sources Found for Accumulated Dust on Chinese Loess Plateau

Geologists have long thought that the loess—or fine silt—that accumulated on the Chinese Loess Plateau was carried on winds from desert regions to the northwest over the past 2.6 million years. But new research indicates the loess may actually have come from due west, which would change conventional thinking about wind patterns during that period.

A Rochester-led team of geologists from the United States and China compared the composition of uranium and lead in zircon crystals excavated from the plateau and potential source sites. The scientists found that the ages of the crystals from the Chinese Loess Plateau matched with samples from the northern Tibetan Plateau and the Qaidam Basin, both of which are due west.

“The research should help us better understand how the earth behaves as a system,” says lead author Alex Pullen, a postdoctoral associate in earth and environmental sciences. “With that knowledge, we’ll be able to improve our climate models.”

The results were published in the journal Geology.

—Peter Iglinski

Medical Center Awarded Patents

Cervical Cancer Vaccines

The University has been awarded a U.S. patent for research essential to both human papillomavirus vaccines on the market. The patent recognizes the work by three University virologists—Richard Reichman, William Bonnez, and Robert Rose ’94M (PhD)—who were the first to demonstrate that HPV virus-like particles, a harmless mimic of the infectious virus with no risk of infection, provoke a protective immune response against the types of HPV that cause cervical and oropharyngeal cancer. The Rochester technology has been incorporated into Gardasil and Cervarix, two vaccines approved for use against HPV.

‘Living Chip’ Technology

The Medical Center has also received a patent for a medical device that could revolutionize the way that physicians monitor the health of their patients. The device—which consists of an implantable “living chip”—is designed to give doctors real-time information about their patients’ health and, more importantly, alert them to changes in their conditions. Spencer Rosero, associate professor of medicine and director of the Pacemaker Clinic, developed the technology behind the device.

—Tom Rickey and Leslie White

Q&A

Race Talk in the Age of Obama

President Barack Obama’s rhetorical approach to race is one we see often in contemporary American literature, argues English professor Stephanie Li, in her new book.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

liA POST-RACIAL ERA? We’re not there yet, nor is it necessarily an ideal, says Li. “We want to know racial identities because those are the handles by which we begin to establish intimacy.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Stephanie Li has been interested in Barack Obama for as long as he’s been a political figure. An assistant professor of English at Rochester, she’s in good company among literary people who took an early interest in the author of Dreams From My Father, the memoir that Obama wrote in 1995, after his election as the first black president of Harvard Law Review but before he launched his political career.

The book won praise as a work of literature from the likes of Toni Morrison and Philip Roth. And Li, a scholar of African-American literature who grew up in Minnesota as the product of an interracial marriage between a Chinese-American father and a Mexican mother, identified profoundly with the young Obama—a “racial outlier,” she says, who, like she did, sought guidance and solace in literature.

At Rochester, she teaches undergraduates and graduate students in her courses on Toni Morrison, Race in American Fiction, Narratives of Immigration and Assimilation, and others.

In her latest book, Signifying Without Specifying: Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama (Rutgers), Li examines Obama’s rhetorical approach to race, both on the campaign trail in 2008 and in his written works, alongside the works of novelists Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, and Jhumpa Lahiri. She argues that Obama, like these novelists, evokes race through coded language—in his case, a language that carries cultural resonance for African Americans without explicitly naming race.

What do you mean when you say that Barack Obama is our first “signifying president”?

Obama is distinctive not simply because he’s our first black president. Even as a presidential candidate, his rhetorical strategies, I think, distinguished him from other, previous black presidential candidates—from Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton, for example. My analysis rests on how Obama uses and manipulates his racial identity. So when I identify him as our first signifying president, I’m identifying the way in which he adopts racial code switching according to different audiences to maximize his identification with the widest array of voting populations.

You compare Obama’s means of talking about race—which you call “signifying without specifying”—to an approach Toni Morrison has long employed and has called “race-specific, race-free” language. What does she mean by that phrase, and where has she demonstrated it in her work?

Morrison introduced the phrase “race-specific, race-free language” to refer to language that carries cultural resonances that are specific to African Americans but is free of explicit references to race. A wonderful example is the letter of endorsement of Obama she made public in January 2008. She rejected the premise that she was supporting Obama specifically because of his racial identity. She said that explicitly. But then she went on to state that she supported him because he manifested a quality that she identified as “wisdom.” That was totally perplexing, because Obama had not even finished a full term in the Senate, and he’s one of our youngest presidents. Wisdom is really not the quality that we would attribute to someone of his age and his experience. And as I demonstrate to my students in the Morrison class that I teach, when we look at Morrison’s larger body of work, we see that wisdom is a reference to the ancestor—an ancestral figure that guides the protagonist and helps him or her to establish a close relationship to their own identity—in particular, their racial identity. The wise ancestor is one of the key qualities Morrison identifies as essential to black literature. So for Obama to be identified as “wise,” I think, is a code word for “black.” That is, he’s invested in his blackness, he understands where he came from.

But it’s not only African Americans who employ this racialized language. Where else do we see it?

As I write in my book, we see it in the stories of the South Asian–American author Jhumpa Lahiri. Another great example is A Gate at the Stairs, the most recent novel by Lorrie Moore. Moore is a white author from the Midwest. In this novel there are these wonderful scenes in which a young college student is taking care of the black child of white adoptive parents. And the parents have convened a support group for parents of children of color, which includes both white and minority parents. Tassie, the babysitter, is taking care of these kids upstairs and listening to the conversation downstairs. So she can only hear the voices. She doesn’t know who’s speaking what. And so you have this mixture of conversation between white people and people of color, and it’s all coded through the language. Race-specific, race-free prose is a kind of device which is being used not simply by black authors, not simply by Obama and Morrison—though I think they’re the progenitors of this—but is an idea that’s being taken up much more broadly within contemporary American literature.

In what ways do you, along with Morrison, see race-specific, race-free prose as an ideal?

I understand race-specific, race-free prose as the language of intimacy. It’s language that recognizes difference without harping upon difference. And that’s, I think, what happens when you know and love somebody within your family, within your circle of friends, within your community, and you understand their racial identity, you understand that’s crucial to who they are. But it’s not the only component by which you recognize their totality.

How did race-specific, race-free language work in your family as you were growing up?

It’s hard, actually, to give specific examples. There was just an understanding that we were very different. But as a young child, it was also hard for me to know, is our difference specific to race? Because my mother’s first language was Spanish, she spoke with an accent. My mother also worked full time, as a scientist, which was different from most of my friends’ mothers. So there were all of these ways that difference manifested in my life. It was hard to know. Were we isolated because we’re racially different, because my mother’s an immigrant, because my mother works full time, because my parents are scientists and none of my friends’ parents are scientists? It’s hard as a child to figure out what are the salient differences in life. But certainly I think race played a significant role in that. I think race is part of how we understand people in society. We want to know racial identities, because those are the handles by which we begin to establish intimacy. And so now I’m as forthcoming as I can be. I prefer to have my racial identity known as quickly as possible. Because once that’s out of the way, once those things can get known, that’s the only way that you can get past it toward some greater degree of intimacy.

You also talk about some of the drawbacks of race-specific, race-free language, particularly as they manifest themselves in public conversation. What are they?

When I identify race-specific, race-free language as the language of intimacy, I’m locating it and its uses specifically within a domestic or a personal space. Once you start using it in a broader, more politicized, grander scale, it’s certainly subject to problems. It can engender a sense of paranoia, that sense that everything is coded, that everything is really about race. I don’t think that’s always constructive when it comes to deciding public policy.

In Brief

National Hispanic Institute Honors Rochester

The National Hispanic Institute has named Rochester its College of the Year. Established in 1979, the institute is an international organization that provides young Latinos with opportunities for leadership training, community service, and personal development. The award recognizes Rochester’s commitment to creating a welcoming, inclusive environment for students enrolled in the institute’s programs—most notably, its Lorenzo de Zavala Youth Legislative Session, which Rochester has hosted for six years.

The University began its partnership with the institute in 2006, bringing 150 high school students, mostly from Texas and California, to the Northeast for the first time to participate in the legislative session.

—Melissa Greco Lopes

Futurity Joins ‘The Conversation’

Futurity, the website hosted by the University that features research news from top universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, is going “Down Under.” The Conversation, a leading online source of information and commentary from universities and research institutions in Australia, now features Futurity news on its site.

Futurity’s partners are the Association of American Universities, the Russell Group of universities in the UK, and Australia’s Group of Eight Universities. The website was launched in 2009.

—Kathleen McGarvey

Web Apps for Would-be Students

As the 2011–12 admissions cycle gets under way, Rochester is offering two website innovations designed to provide high school students with more information about the University and the admissions decision-making process.

ROCRes showcases 3D models of residential halls and 360-degree views of select dorm rooms. While not intended to replace traditional campus tours, the site is a tool for those who can’t visit campus or are applying from abroad, says Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions and financial aid.

New software updates also now allow applicants to trace their applications at each step of the process. Students can log in to a personalized account to see updates; pose questions or discuss the process; and see whether a decision has been made. Admissions decisions will continue to be conveyed by letter. For more: http://enrollment.rochester.edu/admissions.

—Melissa Greco Lopes

inbriefMEDALIST: Tony Award–winning choreographer Garth Fagan helped mark the 25th anniversary of the Frederick Douglass Institute, where he was recognized for his leadership in the arts. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

Douglass Institute Marks 25th Anniversary with Year of Celebration

Recognized as “one of the great reformers of modern dance,” choreographer Garth Fagan helped usher in a year of celebration for the Frederick Douglass Institute as it turns a quarter century old.

Founded in 1986, the institute promotes African and African-American studies at the University through a research-oriented undergraduate major, residential scholarships, film series, lecture series, and conferences. The institute also sponsors postdoctoral and predoctoral fellows, many of whom will be invited to return to campus this year to share their scholarly work.

“When it comes to intellectual diversity, the Frederick Douglass Institute, for the past 25 years, has been part of the solution,” says Cilas Kemedjio, director of the institute and associate professor of French and Francophone studies. “FDI has contributed to the development of graduate students and young scholars who have gone on to make significant contributions to the scholarship and teaching of African and African-American studies.”

Best known as the founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance, the celebrated choreographer has taught for more than three decades at the State University of New York at Brockport and is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of the State University of New York. He’s the recipient of several honorary doctorates, including one from the University and one from the Juilliard School, and was awarded the University’s George Eastman Medal in 2003 for “outstanding achievement and dedicated service.”

Both popularly and critically acclaimed, Fagan has been showered with recognition for his choreography of Walt Disney’s The Lion King, earning the Olivier, the Tony, the Helpmann, and the Ovation awards for that work. More recently, Fagan’s Mudan 175/39 was named the third top dance performance of 2009 by the New York Times. —Susan Hagen

Tech Transfer Meets the Treble Clef

Wondering how to interpret the flute solo in Ravel’s Bolero? Unsure about the tempo for the second trombone in Mahler’s Symphony No. 5? The Eastman School’s Institute for Music Leadership has a new online resource for you—Speed Lessons, designed to help students gain insights into the orchestral repertoire of their instruments.

More than 100 lessons are available featuring faculty artists Bonita Boyd, flute; Michael Burritt, percussion; Kenneth Grant, clarinet; Mark Kellogg, trombone; and Peter Kurau, horn. Available at www.esm.rochester.edu/iml/ speedlessons, each lesson focuses on a single instrument in a major orchestral work, and includes a 20- to 45-minute video of a teacher working with a student and the sheet music for the instrumental performance. Once purchased and downloaded, the lessons don’t expire and can be viewed on computers, iPads, smartphones, and other devices.

“It’s the 21st-century way to present musical material, our version of ‘tech transfer,’” says Ramon Ricker, director of the institute and senior associate dean for professional studies at Eastman. “We’re using technology to ‘transfer’ the knowledge and expertise of Eastman faculty and give students in-depth insights into musical works.”

—Helene Snihur

PSYCHOLOGY

Tips to Keeping New Year’s Resolutions

A leading motivational psychologist says the best way to keep on track with your goals for the new year is to think hard about why you’re pursuing them.

By Susan Hagen

newyear (Photo: Getty Images)

As anyone knows who has rung in the new year with a vow to lose weight, exercise more, or stop smoking: resolutions are easy to make, but hard to keep.

For advice on how to stick to our well-intended pledges, we turned to Edward Deci, one of the nation’s most influential psychology researchers and a cofounder of self-determination theory, one of the most widely regarded approaches to human motivation. During the past three decades, the Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences has collaborated on scores of experimental studies and clinical trials on changing the kinds of health behaviors that typically top resolution lists.

Deci says that being able to keep a resolution over the long haul is directly dependent on why you want to change.

“If you’re deciding to lose weight because someone is pressuring you to, it’s not going to last very long, because you don’t endorse it as your own,” he says. “And even if you’re doing it because you think you should and you’d feel guilty if you didn’t, that’s not going to last long either, because we don’t like to be forced to do things even by a voice in our own head that says, ‘You’ll be guilty if you don’t.’”

But if you can search deeply and come to the point of believing and understanding that a behavioral change or other resolution is meaningful, important, or perhaps intrinsically interesting, then, says Deci, chances of long-term success are good.

With that in mind, here are Deci’s five tips for staying motivated in the year to come:

No. 1: Think deeply about why you want to make a resolution

It’s very important that you give it serious consideration. Don’t make snap judgments. Don’t say, ‘Oh yeah, this is the thing that I should do for the new year.’ But think about why you want to do this. Why would I make a decision of this sort?

No. 2: Do it for yourself

Don’t do it for somebody else. Don’t do it because someone else wants you to. Do it because you think it’s really important for you. If you can get to the place in yourself that you really want to do it because it’s meaningful and valuable for you, then you’re likely to be quite successful.

No. 3: Plan how to integrate the change into your life

Give some real consideration to how you’re going to integrate your resolution into your life. If you make a resolution to exercise for an hour a day, then where are you going to get that hour? It’s not like very many of us have a lot of free hours in the day, so you have to think it through. How are you going to be able to carry through on this?

No. 4: Manage the environment

What are the obstacles you are likely to face? Be proactive in terms of managing the possible obstacles. For instance, if you are planning to eat healthier foods, don’t have a bunch of unhealthy snacks around the house, because it’s going to be just too tempting, and it’s going to take too much to try and keep your resolution. So manage the environment in ways that support you rather than ways that interfere with your goals.

No. 5: Take slip-ups in stride

Most people who make resolutions are going to fail at times. There will be a day when you were going to exercise, and you just didn’t do it. When you find that you failed, don’t blame yourself. Don’t beat yourself up for it. Acknowledge that you failed, and then recommit. Don’t get into the place of thinking of yourself as a bad person. Then you can just move through the little slip-ups.

Susan Hagen writes about the social sciences for University Communications.

HIGHLIGHTS

Swimming Teams Sweep Liberty League

sportsLIBERTY LEADERS: Both the men’s and the women’s (above) swimming teams claimed Liberty League titles this winter, including six new league records for the women and three records for the men. (Photo: Athletics & Recreation)

The men’s and women’s swimming teams each took home the Liberty League crown as Rochester’s winter sports season got off to a fast start, including a top-five ranking for women’s basketball. The fall seasons wrapped up with multiple All-America and league honors for Yellowjacket athletes.

Football: Defensive end Chris Bickford ’12 was named first-team All-American by the American Football Coaches Association, the first Rochester player selected for the honor in 18 years. The team finished with a 4-5 record.

Field hockey: Forwards Allison Beardsley ’12 and Anna Dobrzynski ’13 were selected to the All-America team, the sport’s highest honor, as the Yellowjackets racked up a record of 13-6.

Men’s soccer: Rochester went 9-5-2 overall, including wins over nationally ranked Washington University and Calvin College. The team placed fourth in the UAA and won the Flower City Tournament.

Women’s soccer: Forward Ellen Coleman ’12 was named first team all–UAA for the fourth straight year and All-American for the third straight year. The team finished at 8-7-1, including a hard-fought draw against nationally ranked Case Western.

Men’s cross country: Paced by repeat All-American James Vavra ’12, the Yellowjackets took 22nd as a team at the NCAA championships. Rochester also placed sixth at UAAs, fifth at NCAA regionals, and second at states.

Women’s cross country: Rochester took third at states, eighth at UAAs, and 13th at NCAA regionals behind solid efforts from Zarah Quinn ’13, Danielle Bessette ’14, and Hillary Snyder ’12.

Golf: Behind Rafael Baez ’14, Michael Chudacoff ’12, and Nicholas Palladino ’14, the Yellowjackets qualified for the spring Liberty League championships.

Rowing: The team’s Varsity 8 earned gold at the Western Ontario Invitational. In addition, the Varsity 4-plus took bronze at the Head of the Genesee.

Squash: Rochester made it five Liberty League titles in a row by going 4-0 at the league championships.

Volleyball: The Yellowjackets went 21-15 overall in the fall, including a fifth-place finish at UAAs. They also shared the team crown at the New York Regional Volleyball Challenge.

Men’s tennis: Boris Borovcanin ’14 enjoyed a stellar fall season, both at singles and doubles, where he frequently teamed with Brian Rice ’12. Overall, Rochester posted a 2-2 mark on the season.

Women’s tennis: Frances Tseng ’13 reached the singles finals of the ITA regional championships, where Danielle Shreck ’12 won the consolation bracket.

Men’s swimming and diving: The Yellowjackets, who were ranked 21st heading into winter break, roared to another Liberty League title, beating runner-up RPI by more than 200 points. Rochester won 14 events, Adam Bossert ’13 was named Male Swimmer of the Year, and Brian Wong ’15 picked up Rookie of the Year accolades.

Women’s swimming and diving: The women, ranked 20th going into winter break, dominated the Liberty League championships, winning 13 events, including four by freshman Lauren Bailey ’15. Emily Friedline ’15 was named Rookie of the Year, while Megan Braun ’13 and Sara Spielman ’13 were named Co-Divers of the Year.

Men’s basketball: Rochester took third at the Wendy’s Classic by topping Brockport in the consolation game. Rochester finished strong in the first half of the season with an 8-2 record, knocking off two unbeaten teams in four days. Going into the winter break, the team was ranked in the top 25.

Women’s basketball: The Yellowjackets claimed the Wendy’s Classic crown for a seventh straight year and climbed to No. 5 nationally with a mark of 10-0. Center Danielle McNabb ’14 picked up weekly UAA Player of the Week honors.

Men’s track and field: The team started the winter season at the RIT Early Season Invite, where Greg Hartnett ’12 won the 1,000 meters and Mark Rollfs ’15 triumphed in the 5,000 in his collegiate debut.

Women’s track and field: The Yellowjackets won three events at the RIT Early Season Invite, including Ashanna Lynch ’13 in the shot put and Yvette Igbokwe ’15 in the 60 meters in her first collegiate meet.

—Ryan Whirty

Making a New Lesson Plan

A Warner School program aims to bring talented professionals and students to the math and science classrooms of high-needs school districts.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

noyceCOFFEY BREAK: Developing a rapport with students, such as Craig Stanford (left), is an important part of his teaching, says Coffey, who won the Rochester City School District’s Career in Teaching Award for First Year Teachers in 2010. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

It’s a Thursday afternoon at John Marshall High School, in northwest Rochester, and the students in Sean Coffey’s Life Science class are growing restless.

It’s been 10 minutes since, working in small teams, they’ve buried two slices of pineapple—one fresh, the other canned—into two separate cups of jello. And so far, not much has happened.

“Coffey!” shouts a student standing at a black lab table at the back of the classroom.

“Are they going to change colors?” he asks.

“I don’t know. What did you predict?” Coffey says, approaching the student.

Coffey ’09W (MS) is in his third year teaching at John Marshall. The students in his Life Science class, who range from 14 to 20 years old and from freshman to senior, have been learning about enzymes and substrates. By now they know that enzymes bond with substrates to generate chemical reactions. They also know, however, that enzymes and substrates work like locks and keys, meaning that enzymes and substrates have to form a perfect chemical “fit” in order to bond.

In just a couple more minutes, one team notices a slight change to one of its pineapple slices. Five minutes later, all of them have. The once-yellow slices of fresh pineapple are now the color of grapefruit. And they’ve softened.

Emboldened by their observations, the students reach for colored markers and the poster board on which each team records its predictions, findings, and explanation.

About 40 miles southeast of John Marshall High, Anne Baughman ’09W (MS) is teaching general science to high school vocational students at the Finger Lakes Technical and Career Center. The center is located amidst the fertile farmland of central New York. Overseen by the Wayne–Finger Lakes Board of Cooperative Educational Services, it operates a half-day program for high school students, who spend the remainder of each day in a traditional academic program in one of nine surrounding school districts.

On an afternoon in late November, Baughman stands underneath the string of Christmas lights framing her smartboard. She removes one bulb, notes that the rest of the bulbs remain lit, and asks her classroom of diesel technology students, “Are these bulbs arranged in parallel or in series?”

After a brief review, Baughman gives each student a packet consisting of more than 20 circuit diagrams, each with instructions about which bulbs to light in either a parallel, series, or combined arrangement. For the remainder of the 80-minute class, the students, working either solo or in pairs, map circuits using colored pencils and then test their predictions by creating the circuits on actual circuit boards.

To many educators, policymakers, and not least, scientists, Coffey and Baughman are the kinds of teachers American schools will have to continue to attract if the nation is to remain competitive in science and technology. Coffey excelled as a biology major at SUNY Geneseo, and by the time he graduated, he had worked in the labs at the Rochester-area biotechnology company Genencor International. He might easily have pursued a career in research or medicine.

Baughman is a career-changer who studied chemical engineering at Northwestern University and worked at Kodak, where she helped reduce the environmental impact of photochemical processes. Later she earned a master’s degree in environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and conducted research on indoor air quality.

Both Coffey and Baughman attended the Warner School as Robert Noyce Scholars. The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program, a program of the National Science Foundation, is designed to interest students who’ve excelled in math and science majors or professionals in science and technology in becoming secondary school teachers in districts where they’re most needed—usually poor urban and rural ones. For more than 10 years, the foundation has been dispensing scholarship money on a competitive basis to hundreds of colleges and universities identified as having stellar undergraduate programs in science, technology, and mathematics, and stellar teacher preparation programs.

Thirty Noyce Scholars have graduated from the Warner School of Education since the school received its first Noyce grant in 2007. As of the 2010–11 school year, 95 percent of those graduates held teaching positions in mathematics or science across the country, according to Constance Flahive, a program evaluator at the Warner School. Last September, based on the success of the school’s first round of Noyce Scholars, the foundation awarded it a second grant to fund 27 additional scholarships starting in 2012.

The program helps address three vexing problems in American education. How do you attract bright math and science majors—or professionals in science and technology—to become secondary school teachers? Once they’ve made that decision, how do you prepare them for teaching? And how do you get more well-qualified teachers to take assignments in some of the poorest school districts?

Public school officials have know about those problems for years. In 2000, almost one third of school districts nationally reported that they experienced “serious difficulty” finding qualified candidates to fill math and science teacher vacancies. That’s according to the National Center for Education Statistics, an entity within the U.S. Department of Education that collects and analyzes data.

Raffaella Borasi, dean of the Warner School and principal investigator on the grant, cites two reasons Rochester was successful in winning the Noyce grants. The first is the strength of Rochester’s programs in math, science, and engineering in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “That really gives us a qualitative and competitive advantage,” she says.

The second is the curriculum for the Warner School’s science teacher preparation program. Among the program’s distinctive features is the requirement that students begin their studies over the summer, working with kids in nontraditional settings, such as summer camps. It allows education students to begin to master the inquiry-based teaching methods the Warner program is known for without the pressure to prepare students for high-stakes exams. Borasi notes that in the foundation’s written review of her grant application, “they pointed to the innovativeness of our program.”

noyceCIRCUIT BUILDER: Baughman assists diesel technology student Jeremiah Aquilano, of Bloomfield, N.Y., as he arranges a set of circuits. He and his classmates will apply the concepts they learn in Baughman’s general science class to diesel engines. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Borasi is a mathematics educator, who earned undergraduate degrees in mathematics and education at Italy’s University of Turin before earning her doctorate in mathematics education at SUNY Buffalo. A faculty member at the Warner School since 1985 and dean since 2001, Borasi has refined and promoted an inquiry-based, student-centered approach to teaching mathematics. Active rather than passive, inquiry-based learning introduces concepts using research questions or hypotheses that students pursue themselves, with guidance from an instructor and interaction with fellow students. Inquiry-based learning mimics what people do in everyday problem solving and what scientists do, of course, in experiments. While there’s a role for rote learning, that part comes only after students have mastered concepts through hands-on learning experiences—only after, in other words, students have a context for whatever facts they’re asked to commit to memory.

Nine years ago, April Luehmann was hired to lead the design of the Warner School’s science education program. Now an associate professor of education, Luehmann studied mathematics and education as an undergraduate, and earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan in science education and industrial and operations engineering.

“I had my charge spelled out for me very clearly about developing and supporting reform-minded science teachers,” Luehmann says. “We’ve known what works in science education. We’ve known how people learn and how to support them at least since, and even before, the National Science Education Standards were published in 1996,” she says, referring to guidelines published by the National Research Council after a four-year collaborative process involving thousands of scientists and science educators. “But if you go to any science classroom, it’s really rare that you see the kind of teaching and learning we know that research is calling for.”

She designed Warner’s science education program in concert with other faculty at the Warner School and with input from faculty from the School of Arts and Sciences and the Hajim School.

The program begins unconventionally. “In the first of the series of experiences, we throw the master’s students out into Lake Ontario and ask them to design their own investigation around the question, ‘Why is Charlotte Beach always closed and what can we do about it?’,” says Luehmann, referring to water quality problems that have plagued the beach north of Rochester for years. “That gives them the chance to experience for themselves the richness, messiness, complexity, and excitement of hands-on, student-centered science learning.” In the following weeks, they’ll lead a group of middle school students through a similar investigation.

Luehmann says the significance of beginning in summer camps is that campers don’t have to earn grades or pass high-stakes exams. That’s a plus for beginning education students. “They have support from faculty to plan and debrief every day,” she says. Among the topics students and their Warner professors discuss are, “how to appropriately confine the investigation for middle school kids who’ve never done a science investigation before, and how much freedom to give the kids to ask their own questions, collect their own data, and analyze it.”

At a place like the Finger Lakes Technical and Career Center, this hands-on approach is a natural fit. And Baughman, with her research background, warmed to an inquiry-based program. She felt well prepared to work with the center’s practically minded students.

Take her approach to Newton’s Laws. Teaching auto body and auto mechanics students, she decided to show videos of simulated car crashes and ask students to analyze them as a group in terms of the 17th-century scientist’s universal laws of motion. “It connects to something they know, and they’re really getting the concepts down before they just see these equations,” says Baughman.

Scott Benedict, who teaches diesel mechanics at the center, says Baughman’s class is essential for the students, and her approach has struck exactly the right note.

“She’s really embraced a hands-on approach to teaching,” he says. “She breaks concepts down. We’re going to transfer those skills to bigger equipment down the road,” he adds, gesturing toward a series of small, diesel engines aligned along workbenches in an expansive garage just downstairs from Baughman’s classroom.

Over the next few weeks, Benedict says, he’ll be introducing the students to electrical systems. “When we start talking about electrical systems—batteries, starting systems, charging systems, lighting systems—what she did today, explaining series and parallel—that will relate directly to what we’ll be talking about with batteries. Because we hook up batteries in series or parallel depending on the truck or tractor they’re on.”

“What I say to the kids,” says Benedict, “is, ‘When we do electrical here in a few weeks and I say hook that battery up in series, you’d better know what I mean, because I’m not going to spend two days doing what Ann just did.’”

Coffey’s challenge is different. He’s required to prepare his students for the New York State Regents Living Environment exam. He describes a “colossal disconnect” between the inquiry-based approach he learned at the Warner School and the memorization and drilling that New York’s high-stakes testing can encourage.

Coffey designed the pineapple experiment with his mentor at the Warner School, JoAnn Morreale, adjunct professor of teaching and curriculum. “We get together every Wednesday for two hours, and we just plan,” he says.

For every unit, “we look back at the last 10 Regents exams, which are all online, and for whatever topic it is, we’ll pull out all the questions from it,” says Coffey. “So we have a really good idea of what they’re going to ask and how they’re going to ask it.”

“We’ll design activities that are not just memorizing how to answer that question, but give them some sort of experience to hang the knowledge on that they’ll need to answer that question. So we kind of work backwards,” he adds.

As the Warner School begins its second round of Noyce grant funding, Borasi says she’s started to step back and analyze what they’ve learned so far. One area she wants to research is how to retain teachers like Coffey and Baughman—both of whom have exceeded their two-year commitment to teach in high-needs districts—in the places they’re needed most. “The turnover in high-needs schools is well documented across disciplines,” Borasi says.

noyceDEAN’S MESSAGE: Borasi, dean of the Warner School, notes that in awarding the Warner School the Noyce Scholars grant, the National Science Foundation paid particular attention to the school’s innovative, inquiry-based science education curriculum. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

One element she expects is key is mentorships and ongoing professional support from other reform-minded teachers. “Having even just a seminar or a forum that meets a few times a year, where people can come back, share their issues, have a way to talk about and get some advice—everyone pointed that out to be very, very valuable,” says Borasi, referring to feedback from graduates now in the field. Those graduates, she notes, “are benefitting from such opportunities now, as part of Noyce post-graduation activities.”

One thing she says she’s sure about is that the scholarship money is a critical component to attracting top talent to the profession. “Scholarships really do matter,” she says, adding that the Noyce program not only attracted more applicants to the Warner School’s math and science teacher preparation programs, “but a more diverse, more interesting, higher caliber of people.”

To maximize their impact, the foundation has required that the scholarships pay the entire cost of tuition. But like many grant programs, the Noyce program covers only a portion of the total costs—in this case, half the tuition for each student. The other half comes from the Warner School.

“It’s a significant effort,” says Borasi, of the Warner School’s financial obligations to the program. “But we get such fabulous students that I knew it was worth it.”

When the next 27 Noyce Scholars graduate, the Warner School will no longer be eligible for National Science Foundation funding. If it wants to continue to offer scholarships, it will have to find funding of its own.

Meanwhile, science education faces another challenge: fiscal problems within the school districts themselves. The Noyce Scholars have been successful in finding jobs. But as the last hired, they’re the first to be moved or even laid off. Baughman, during her two years in the Rochester City School District, was moved twice, and laid off and rehired once. At the Finger Lakes Technical and Career Center, Baughman is a one-year replacement for a colleague seeking to leave teaching for administration. Her future at the center depends on that colleague’s success, and on the financial outlook at the center.

John Marshall High School is what the Rochester City School District has designated as a “phase-out school”—a school, usually with an especially high concentration of children in poverty, slated for gradual closing. Coffey, with three years of teaching experience and a strong commitment to urban education, sees himself remaining in the district.

When Borasi applied for the grant in 2007, she held up as one of her goals a partnership with the district to help provide it with well-qualified, well-trained science teachers. She considers the current climate a bump in the road. “Warner graduates are prepared to weather the current economic climate. The scholarship program has created a unique opportunity to attract talented professionals and students who can have a meaningful, positive impact in math and science education,” she says. “They are the ones who will stand out in the competitive job market.” That job market is also national in scope. In many districts across the country, the problem of finding qualified candidates to fill math and science teaching positions remains, even in a tough economic climate. “If people are willing to relocate,” says Borasi, “the jobs are still there.”

Singing in the Spotlight

Part of a vibrant a cappella scene at Rochester, the YellowJackets find fame on a national stage while giving back locally and internationally.

By Scott Hauser

singingHOMECOMING: With their guests Pentatonix—the a cappella group that won last fall’s NBC television competition The Sing-Off—members of Delilah—a group that was also on The Sing-Off—and children from Rochester’s World of Inquiry School No. 58, the YellowJackets sold out two shows at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre in December. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Ninth-grader Quinterra Robinson had no idea who the YellowJackets were last fall when the group first arrived to help mentor her and her fellow Rochester city school students who were interested in singing.

Then she and her classmates from World of Inquiry School No. 58 saw the Rochester student ensemble on The Sing-Off, a national TV show that pitted 16 a cappella groups in a competition to win a Sony recording contract.

The YellowJackets opened the show with their rendition of “Wavin’ Flag” by Somali-born musician K’naan.

“When they did the first song,” Quinterra says, “I was like, ‘Wow, those guys are amazing! Wow!’”

Consider Quinterra a fan. And count in her classmate Erika Tryon. And Jahlil Bell, a fourth grader in the music program at World of Inquiry. Add to them the 5,000 people who packed Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre in December for two sold-out shows organized by the group to raise money for their outreach efforts.

They, like many in the University and Rochester-area communities, have been bitten by the YellowJacket bug.

And don’t forget the emails from admirers around the world, the marriage proposals proclaimed on Twitter, the key to the city, and all the other stop-you-in-the-street moments that come with being in the national spotlight.

“We had no idea what was coming our way,” says Aaron Sperber ’11, ’11E, a KEY student and a former director of the YellowJackets. “This year has changed our lives. It hasn’t just changed the shape of the YellowJackets, it has changed our lives, personally and as a group.”

Not since the Men’s Glee Club from the former College for Men made a national television appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1960 have fans of Rochester’s vibrant a cappella culture had so much to cheer about. The YellowJackets’ performances on The Sing-Off were “must-see TV” for many on campus and among the University community this fall. Finishing in The Sing-Off’s final set of seven groups, the YellowJackets remained favorites among the show’s fans, winning first place in NBC’s online vote after each performance and landing in the Top 10 for online sales on iTunes.

The show’s judging panel of Sara Bareilles, Ben Folds, and Shawn Stockman had high praise for the YellowJackets’ musicianship, camaraderie, and social outreach, as exemplified by the group’s musical exchange with a village in Kenya. But ultimately, the group Pentatonix won the 2011 season of The Sing-Off.

The YellowJackets say they hope to parlay their experience on The Sing-Off to further their musical and outreach efforts. In addition to working with the children of World of Inquiry School, the group began a musical exchange last spring with children in the village of Maseno in Kenya. They’re working on a documentary—scheduled to be released later this year and titled United We Sing, the film follows their African exchange—and are hoping to put together more touring opportunities.

The Sing-Off is opening doors—as well as ears and hearts, says Sperber.

“We came in as musicians with a lot of passion and a lot of heart,” he says. “What The Sing-Off helped us to do was to channel that and to focus it and make it not just about how much heart we were feeling, but finding ways to use music as a tool to share and communicate that heart with our listeners and have people feel what we’re feeling.”

Sperber is not alone in the College in his passion for music and its power. While the YellowJackets, which were founded in 1956 as an offshoot of the Glee Club, have the longest history, the group is one of four supported by the College’s student government. The three others—the all-male Midnight Ramblers, the all-female Vocal Point, and the coed After Hours—all have a loyal fan base, regularly produce CDs, and perform widely on campus, at alumni and University events, and in regional and national competitions.

As many as 60 students routinely try out for only a handful of openings in each of the groups each year.

Jamie Wilson ’13, the music director for Vocal Point, says she’s seen interest in cocurricular vocal music grow over the past three years. The popularity of television shows like Glee, the Fox dramedy that follows the travails of a fictional high school musical performance group, and The Sing-Off, the NBC show that completed its third season this fall, have helped spur that interest, she says.

singingIN TUNE: Vocal students from World of Inquiry School No. 58 (above) shared the stage with their mentors at a ceremony during which the YellowJackets received a key to the city from Mayor Thomas Richards. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

“I knew there was a big a cappella environment here,” says the music major from Levittown, N.Y., “but since my freshman year the popularity of a cappella has spiked tremendously.”

Jared Suresky ’12, the publicity director for the Midnight Ramblers, was also looking for a campus awash in music when he arrived at Rochester from Goshen, N.Y., and he’s found a “second home” at Rochester with the Ramblers. He enjoys being able to pursue an interest outside his major of economics and says a cappella groups reflect the wide-ranging academic, social, and cultural endeavors of the Rochester student body as a whole.

“We’re composed of many different people with many different backgrounds, majors, interests, and perspectives,” Suresky says. “But we’re also a bunch of goofy River Campus students who like to sing.”

The Ramblers, too, have found success and some time in the spotlight. Their version of “Fireflies,” by the group Owl City, was selected to be included on the 2011 compilation Best of College A Cappella 2011, produced by the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. The Ramblers turned up on TV last spring on the game show The Price Is Right, serenading host Drew Carey and the studio audience after Rambler Aaron Michalko ’14 was selected to participate on the show. The group had made an impromptu decision to attend a taping while on a spring break performance tour in Southern California.

And this winter, former Rambler Chris Aguilar ’10 was a winner of a national Austrian TV singing competition (see age 48).

Such an experience—of performing in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of a nationally televised competition—is enormously beneficial for a group of musicians, says Jamal Moore ’12E, a vocal performance major at the Eastman School and director of the YellowJackets.

Musically, the group has matured by leaps and bounds because of The Sing-Off, says Moore, who, as the 2011-12 William Warfield Scholar at Eastman, has sung at some storied campus venues.

“We’ve grown to a whole new level as far as our musicality,” says the Augusta, Ga., native. “We’ve developed a really professional approach and attitude now.”

And while the group’s success on the show has altered the course of their careers, the YellowJackets almost passed on the chance to try out for the show. Asked to audition last May after the show’s producers heard the group’s most recent album, Bad Bromance, the request came during finals week. And it came during the whirlwind of planning the trip to Kenya and getting ready to leave the country.

But, after a performance at the George Eastman House, the group drove overnight to New York City for the audition. When band members said that they couldn’t return for a round of callbacks, the producers asked them to do their callback right there, Moore says.

After returning from Kenya, the group flew to Los Angeles where The Sing-Off started taping in July.

When band members returned to campus in the fall, Sperber asked them to work with him on a Kauffman Entrepreneurial Year project with World of Inquiry School. For two hours a week, the YellowJackets met with the schoolchildren, leading the younger group in performance and music lessons.

“We’re pretty passionate about how music can bring people together, help kids who might feel alone at certain times in their lives to feel not so alone,” Sperber says. “It can also be not just an outlet, but a place to learn, where maybe kids don’t even realize they’re learning, but they’re learning about the importance of acceptance and respect and collaboration and especially hard work. And even the music itself—I think music can be the thing that gets kids to school in the first place.”

The group’s social outreach represents a desire to give back to Rochester and to others who have helped support the YellowJackets and their music over the years, says Sperber, who grew up in the Rochester suburb of Pittsford.

“We’re not just the 15 guys that you see on stage. We’re now plus 91,” he says, referring to the schoolchildren, “plus the thousands of people in Rochester who have helped us along the way and really have made us who we are.”

Moore agrees.

“We’ve realized that our music can help shape the lives of people all over the world.”

YellowJackets

The longest-running male a cappella group is finding new fame.

yellowjacketsIN STEP: The YellowJackets (left to right) are Michael Pittman ’13, Simon School graduate student Matt Francis ’11, Ross Pedersen ’13, Simon School graduate student Jonathan Greenhalgh ’09, Matt Carlin ’14E, Warner School graduate student Christopher Young ’11, Jordan Fontheim ’13, Galen Dole ’13, Simon School graduate student Abhishek Sharma, Nick Wiggins ’11, ’11E, Jamal Moore ’12E, and Aaron Sperber ’11, ’11E, ’12 (KEY) (not pictured: Kiernan Kriss ’12, Aden Brooks ’14E, and Danny Rubenstein ’11). (Photo: Brandon Vick)

Jamal Moore ’12E admits he was unfamiliar with a cappella music when he arrived at Rochester as a freshman at the Eastman School to study opera performance.

In the four years since then, he’s not only come up to speed with the genre, but he’s taken a leadership role in helping shape the current edition of the YellowJackets as musical director. And he’s discovered that he’s become part of a rich tradition of musical performance at the University.

“It’s not just a performance ensemble,” says the senior from Augusta, Ga. “It’s like a brotherhood. These are 13 or 14 of my best friends.”

Moore, who is the Eastman School’s William Warfield Scholar for 2011–12, says the close bond is a key element in the group’s success—both historically and as new members are welcomed into the group each year. As YellowJackets, the members spend a lot of time together, rehearsing as many as 8 to 10 hours a week along with performing several times.

Founded in 1956 as an offshoot of the Men’s Glee Club, the YellowJackets are the longest-running male a cappella group on campus.

Moore says interest in the ensemble has skyrocketed since the group’s performance last fall on the NBC reality competition The Sing-Off, and he says he and the YellowJackets are trying to balance their newfound fame with their lives as students and their commitment to social outreach projects, including working with schoolchildren in Rochester and in Kenya.

Is it a lot of work?

It is, says Moore. “But it’s so rewarding that, in the end, you don’t worry about that.”

Vocal Point

The University’s only all-female a cappella group charts its own course.

vocalpointIN HARMONY: Vocal Point features (back row) Cory Robinson ’14, Jamie Wilson ’13, Da Hye Oh ’12, Lindsey Garrison ’11, ’12 (T5), and Amanda Page ’13; (front row) Sophie Fishbein ’15, Baily Gripshover ’13, Lindsay Forbes ’13, Eliza Barnes ’15, and Hannah Silver ’12; (not pictured: Sun Hae Park ’15, Gillian Friedman ’12, Claire Crowther ’13, and Allison Eberhardt ’14). (Photo: Brandon Vick)

For someone interested in composing and in music education, Jamie Wilson ’13 says, Vocal Point is the perfect group.

Founded in 1969 as a women’s ensemble with accompaniment, Vocal Point officially joined the a cappella community in the early 1980s. Since then, the group’s members have prided themselves on arranging nearly all the music that they use in performances.

“Ninety percent of our repertoire is arranged by a current member or alumnae members,” says Wilson, a music major from Levittown, N.Y., and the musical director for 2011–12.

A member of the group since her freshman year, Wilson has watched interest in a cappella music grow during her time on campus. As many as 60 women audition each semester for as few as two or three open spots in the group.

Once in, the members commit to more than six hours a week of rehearsal and four to five performances a month. Vocal Point is in the midst of recording a new album that they hope to release in late April. They also will compete in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella competition in February.

Planning to pursue a career in music education, Wilson says Vocal Point—and the University’s broad support for cocurricular a cappella—have been extraordinary complements to her musical interests.

“It’s a really great environment now for different types of people who can be united by music,” she says. “It really becomes a community.”

Midnight Ramblers

Founded in 1998, the group considers campus its home.

ramblersAT HOME: The Midnight Ramblers are (left to right) Noah Berg ’12, Andrew Tomich ’14, Daniel Slavin ’14, Kevin Layden ’13, Matthew Watman ’12, Gregory Corrado ’14, David Keener ’15, Eric Quesada ’15, and Aaron Michalko ’14; (kneeling) Jared Suresky ’12. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

Fourth-year Midnight Rambler Jared Suresky ’12 says the all-male a cappella group likes to keep its repertoire as “all over the board” as the wide-ranging nature of the majors and interests represented by the group’s members.

But, Suresky says, the ensemble has one main interest when it comes to performing.

“Our priority is the campus and student community,” says Suresky, an economics major from Goshen, N.Y., and publicity director for the group. “Our roots are here at the U of R.”

And while the group travels widely—a trip to Southern California to perform at charity events turned into an impromptu appearance on the TV game show The Price Is Right last spring—the group prides itself on collaborating and interacting with fellow student organizations. “Improvapella,” an annual show featuring the student-run improv group In Between The Lines along with the Ramblers, is an example.

Founded in 1998 as a group dedicated to performance and innovation, the Ramblers have become a campus mainstay. The group’s ninth studio album, Revival, was released last November.

In addition to three two-hour rehearsals a week, often late at night when group members are more likely to be free, the Ramblers perform six or seven times a month and schedule two major shows, one each semester. As many as 60 students audition over the course of the year, and the group takes in, on average, three new singers each year.

Suresky says that while he doesn’t plan to pursue music professionally after graduation, he’s learned important lessons about working with a large group of people whose perspectives often differ from his own. And he’s learned about working toward a goal.

“It takes focus and determination,” Suresky says. “It’s not always going to be easy but to get the results you want, you have to work hard, and you have to be persistent.”

After Hours

The coed group brings a contemporary sound to campus.

afterhoursALL TOGETHER: After Hours features (clockwise from left) E.J. Kim ’15, Liana Buniak ’12, Alex Murray ’13, Alaina Sawyer ’13, Rohini Rege ’14, Caitlin Mack ’12, Natalia Wannon ’13, Quinlan Mitchell ’13, Tad Bezerra ’13, Ben McCormack ’13, Jalon Howard ’15, Rei Ramos ’15, Caroline Sterling ’15, and Ethan Lobenstine ’12. (Not pictured: Maddie Freeman ’15) (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Ethan Lobenstine ’12 is pretty clear about the role that the After Hours a cappella group plays in his life on campus.

“After Hours has been the defining force of my college career,” says the music major from Rochester, who joined After Hours as a freshman and has been with the group ever since. He serves as musical director this year.

“We are essentially a group of friends who love music and who love performing together,” he says of the group that includes students from a wide range of majors and interests, both academic and cocurricular.

Founded in 1998, the ensemble began life as a vocal jazz group, but within a few years had transitioned into rock and pop music and is now known for its contemporary repertoire. Each year, the group presents two major campus shows—one each at the end of the spring and fall semesters. During the year, After Hours performs as much as one show a week—whether on campus, in Rochester, or traveling to other campuses and cities in the Northeast.

Add to that at least six hours of rehearsal time each week along with other duties that come with being in a large group, and the commitment adds up. But Lobenstine says the members wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We don’t just sing,” he says. “We’re very much friends.”

Masters of a New Universe

With a new degree program in New York City as well as new degrees in health care and technology, Rochester aims to meet the needs of students looking for master’s level education.

By Robin L. Flanigan

master_degreesFINANCIALLY CENTERED: Raquel Antonious ’06, a student in the Simon School’s new Manhattan-based master’s program in finance, says the location of the program is key. “I want to stay in New York, and the network here is very powerful.” (Photo: Shannon Taggart for Rochester review)

Eight stops on the train from Queens, New York, to the middle of Times Square, and Barclay Keith is in class to earn a master of science degree in finance from the Simon School of Business.

For Keith, recently promoted to account manager at Bloomberg L.P. in Manhattan, earning a salary while furthering his education is crucial, which is why he was drawn to a program that brings Simon’s experts in finance, accounting, and economics to where the action is—Manhattan.

“It’s a lot more work, I’m not going to lie,” Keith, who holds an undergraduate degree from Kennesaw State University and a master of science degree in management with a concentration in global entrepreneurship from Babson College, says of juggling his 10-hour workdays with nightly homework.

“But they have a bang-up lineup as far as professors go, and I can use what I’ve learned the very next day. Just being able to experience how the material is actually used, that adds value right there. It’s not just all in theory anymore.”

While Keith has no current plans to leave Bloomberg, where there is significant internal flexibility, he’s confident that the finance degree will help him move faster up the ranks than he would without it.

“When it comes down to who’s more qualified and the scope of the job I can move into,” he says, “it’s definitely going to pay off.”

The master’s program, offered through the Simon School, is one of several new, flexible, and often interdisciplinary graduate programs being offered by the University. No longer seen merely as a step along the way to a higher degree, specialized master’s degrees are being sought after by those searching for innovative ways to do their current jobs better and differentiate themselves come promotion or hiring time in a highly competitive, continuously volatile job market.

According to a 2010 report by the Commission on the Future of Graduate Education, a national group of higher education officials, advanced training is a strategic national asset, one that’s necessary for the United States to remain viable and strong in the 21st century. The report calls for state and national efforts to increase graduate school enrollment.

For its part, the University has added several new master’s degrees over the past two years, ranging in fields from business to health care to engineering and literary translation.

“It’s about offering the opportunity to get a deeper appreciation and understanding of a particular field,” says Wendi Heinzelman, dean of graduate studies for Arts, Sciences, and Engineering. “And one of the advantages of having a wide range of unique programs is that they appeal to a diverse group of students.”

Structured for working professionals, the 13-month, part-time MS in finance program includes 10 courses in midtown Manhattan on alternate weekends and two weeklong programs, one at the University’s campus in Rochester and another in Europe. And with approximately 3,000 alumni in the tri-state area, the program also offers opportunities for networking, mentoring, and support.

Of the 19 students in the inaugural class, which will graduate this spring, at least five have already started new jobs or been promoted.

“People recognize the Simon brand and come to us for a rigorous and highly respected degree,” says Janet Anderson, director of Simon’s part-time programs, both in Rochester and New York City. “To be able to get that while continuing to work in New York City, the globally accepted mecca of finance, is a real strength for their résumé.”

Raquel Antonious ’06, who majored in mathematics and statistics as a Rochester undergraduate, enrolled in the program to broaden her résumé after spending three years in equity research. “I knew I wanted to stick to the financial sector, but I felt like I specialized so early, and that there was more for me to learn,” she says. Antonious has since moved into financial management consulting at KPMG, and predicts the degree will guarantee her a lengthy, upwardly mobile career in Manhattan.

“It does give us a lot of leverage,” she says. “I want to stay in New York, and the network here is very powerful. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this opportunity.”

Jack Chang ’09, who earned an undergraduate degree in optical engineering, has equal appreciation for his master of science in technical entrepreneurship and management, or TEAM, degree, which he says was the reason he started fielding job offers four months before graduation in 2010. The hybrid degree, jointly administered by the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Simon School, combines the latest advances in both engineering and business.

“I was prepared more holistically, which made me a better candidate,” he says.

Two months before earning his graduate degree, Chang secured a job as a supporting sales engineer with a Rochester-based manufacturer of high-end optical components. He has since taken another job designing optical filters, hoping that the niche work will ultimately translate into a new business.

“To stimulate an economy, you need a more entrepreneurial mindset,” he explains. “You need to have more people who are willing to take risks, and that’s where TEAM plays an essential role.”

TEAM students create business plans to commercialize patented technology from the University’s Offices of Technology Transfer, compete and apply for start-up funding, and have the potential to launch their own businesses based on University technologies.

Seventy-five percent of graduates from the Class of 2010 received multiple job offers before receiving a diploma. The Class of 2011 had its own impressive statistics, with every graduate placed either in a full-time job, an internship, or a continuing education program.

“It’s not just about business savvy, and it’s not just about technical research,” says TEAM executive director Andrea Galati ’05, ’11W (MS). “It’s about being well-versed in two different languages.”

Matt Munderville ’07, a 2011 TEAM graduate, says that bilingualism is responsible for much of his success at a start-up company in Pristina, Kosovo, where he’s working to bring small-scale wind power to rural farms. He has developed a clear financial plan for the company, which he presents to development groups and potential local investors.

“The program really focuses on giving students the tools necessary to tackle the unknown in a structured manner,” says Munderville, who was a physics and English double major as an undergraduate. “TEAM helped me develop an intuition I can rely on, and a résumé that lets others know that they can rely on it, too.”

Interest in the program is growing. The number of applications grew from 75 to 140 in the last year, and given that prospective students began sending in applications in September for the 2012–13 academic year, the program is on track to grow even more.

“You’re always going to need people who are real specialists, who can do a deep dive into an area or discipline,” says Duncan Moore ’74 (PhD), vice provost for entrepreneurship. “But these students understand the market opportunities at the same time, so they’ll be much better at doing that deep dive. That’s what will differentiate them in the marketplace.”

master_degreesEXPANDING ROLES: A student in the University’s new master’s degree in health professions education, Christine Arnold is also a nurse who teaches in the School of Nursing. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

With market opportunities increasing all the time in the swiftly expanding health care field, Christine Arnold, both a student and a nurse currently teaching at the School of Nursing, enrolled in the master of science in health professions education program to develop a more sophisticated level of expertise. Rochester is the first university in the region and one of a small number worldwide to offer the comprehensive, interdisciplinary master’s degree.

Raised in a culture of lectures and written exams that she says was more about convenience than education, Arnold appreciates an integrated approach that has her learning alongside doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, dentists, and other health care professionals.

“A lot of medical professionals are trained separately in silos, and then we throw them together and say, ‘OK, take care of this patient as a team,’ and they’re not well-equipped to do that,” she says. “This program goes a long way in promoting professional collaboration, increasing communication, and leveling the hierarchy that’s in health care right now. I’m not intending to go anywhere soon, but I certainly have become a much more competitive and valuable candidate with this education behind me.”

Up and running for about a year and developed by the Warner School of Education, the School of Nursing, and the School of Medicine and Dentistry, the health professions education program draws on faculty from each of the schools, and all courses are aimed at helping students become more effective teachers, faculty members, professional development providers, and patient and family educators. The idea is that by focusing on how people learn, their efforts will have a far greater impact.

“This is a very nontraditional way of thinking about teaching in education,” says Raffaella Borasi, dean of the Warner School. “We recognized the need for complementary expertise, which is an important piece for the next generation of practitioners.”

The demand for such candidates is expected to escalate as hospitals and other health care institutions turn more and more to the business world for its expertise in cost and quality control.

In response, Rochester is offering an MS in business administration with a concentration in medical management that’s geared toward students with few to no years of work experience. The program is in addition to Simon’s long-running part-time program for more seasoned professionals. With close connections to Strong Memorial Hospital and other local health care institutions, both programs allow students to use what they learn in the classroom to help medical professionals solve real dilemmas.

“For younger candidates with less work experience, the new degree will go a long way to helping them land their first position,” says Samuel Ogie, director of the Simon School’s programs in the health sciences.

The MS in biomedical engineering with a concentration in medical technology innovation, one of the University’s newest offerings, is another nod to the increasing demand for collaborative expertise in the workplace. Launched this year with a focus on cardiovascular device design, the program is expected to expand across fields of medicine

“Historically, there has been a big hole in combining biomedical engineering and medical center technologies,” says Pia Bunton, recruiting and marketing manager for graduate programs in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering. “A student coming out of this program will have all the knowledge to make a real impact on the medical device field.”

And taking cooperative learning to a new level, Rochester Institute of Technology and the School of Medicine and Dentistry have teamed up to offer a master of science degree in medical informatics. The degree combines the computing strength of RIT’s College of Computing and Information Sciences and the expertise of the medical school—an attractive mix to employers.

Eight students are enrolled in the program, which began in September and is the first joint degree offered by the two institutions.

“With the tremendous uptick in the implementation and acquisition of electronic health records by providers, offices, and medical centers, the need for qualified ‘health informaticists’ who understand how to improve health care through the use of technology has skyrocketed,” says David Krusch, chief medical information officer, director of medical informatics, and professor of surgery and informatics at Rochester. He adds that the program is designed to give students “a practical, applied working knowledge” of the skills required to meet that need.

Providing such a grounded understanding of a new field is a key element of other new degree programs at the University.

A new master of science program in alternative energy targets the increasing demand for development of sustainable energy through solar cells, fuel cells, biofuels, and nuclear fusion, using the chemical engineering faculty’s strong research programs in advanced materials, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.

Meanwhile, the master of arts in literary translation studies program includes a requirement to complete a book-length translation of publishable quality, an important skill as global boundaries shrink and access to foreign literature becomes more important.

“Only 3 percent of literary works published today are works in translation, and we’re trying to remedy that,” says Thomas DiPiero, dean for humanities and interdisciplinary studies. “There is so much literature being published every year, partly influenced by the speed of communication, and we’re past the period in which the only thing that matters are Western languages.”

The need for leading-edge education isn’t diminishing anytime soon.

“We’re going to stay at the forefront of the trends,” says Heinzelman, the dean of graduate studies for Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, “and develop new degrees that meet evolving demands.”

Robin L. Flanigan is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

Rochester Romance

Did you find your heart at Rochester? In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we ask a small sample of alumni couples to tell us their stories.

Profiles by Robin L. Flanigan | Introduction by Susan Hagen

After more than 40 years of researching relationships, Harry Reis is struck by how our connections to other people are central to human life.

One of the most compelling findings of the research, the Rochester professor of psychology says, is “just how extensively relationships pervade every part of our lives. There is almost nothing that is not impacted in a profound way by our relationships—school, work, health, you name it.”

And while Rochester alumni have many connections to their alma mater—friends, classmates, family, other members of the University community—for about 10 percent of graduates, the ties are a little deeper.

According to University records, about 9.5 percent of Rochester’s roughly 108,000 living alumni are married to another alumnus. That’s not counting those who are in long-term relationships but who are not married.

Such long-term relationships are especially beneficial to each partner’s well-being, says Reis, the author of more than 120 papers on how the connections between people affect their psychological and social health. The longer couples are together, he notes, the more each partner reaps a host of benefits, including longevity, happiness, overall health, and more productive work lives.

“Relationships are a source of support. They help people deal with stress, and make people happier,” he says. “People have a need to be connected, and when they have those needs met, they have more energy for other pursuits as well.”

That’s not to say long-term love is always a bed of roses. Hundreds of studies have shown that the No. 1 ingredient in a healthy relationship is the ability to handle conflict in a constructive way. Being able to really listen, to recognize the other person’s perspective, and to compromise are also essential, Reis says.

“Lifespan research shows over and over, if you ask a senior what’s important in life, they say, ‘Pay attention to your relationships.’ Look at tombstones. No one writes, ‘. . . worked at this or that business for 28 years.’ They write: ‘Husband, mother, sister, brother.’”

With that in mind, we asked a small sample of alumni couples to tell us the stories of their Rochester romance.

‘A Lasting Union’

Allan ’54M (MD) and Helen Uebel Inglis ’49

romance_inglisAfter meeting on a double date with friends, Allan and Helen Uebel Inglis married in 1955. “We had a lot of fun,” says Allan of life on campus as a couple. (Photo: Bill Koustron/AP Images for Rochester Review)

romance_inglis (Photo: Courtesy Allan and Helen Inglis)

A mutual friend invited them to dinner, and after a lively evening, Allan Inglis ’54M (MD) offered Helen Uebel ’49 a ride home.

He was characteristically quiet, but weeks later called to invite Helen out to dinner and a movie. She told him she had plans to attend a concert, but that she’d love a raincheck. The next invitation came a month later, to accompany him to a class party. They arrived early, so Allan, a squash player, brought Helen over to the squash court, where she took off her high heels and chased after balls in her stockinged feet.

“I didn’t expect her to be very good, but I thought we would have a good time,” says Allan. “My classmates cheered us on.”

Over Christmas break, back home in Oregon, Allan kept mentioning Helen’s name. His mother was on a plane to Rochester that January.

“She came to look me over,” Helen recalls. “I was an Easterner, for heaven’s sake. And worse yet, a redhead.”

Helen passed the test, and Allan passed a similar one with Helen’s friends months later at a party she hosted before departing on a European summer vacation with a friend. “All the girls were circling around him and doing a ‘Oooh, where did you find him?’ kind of thing,” she says. “I acted nonchalant.”

The couple married in June 1955. They went on to have seven children, two of whom are doctors. They moved 10 times between Allan’s graduation from the School of Medicine and Dentistry and their decision to settle in Rye, N.Y.

The Inglises agree that the University gave them a nice start to their lasting union.

Says Allan: “It was a lovely place to spend the first year of our wonderful marriage.”

‘Best Thing That Ever Happened in My Life’

romance_scalaThe first of three generations of Rochester students, Robert and Janet Eddy Scala met on campus in the early 1950s, while Janet was working toward her nursing degree and Robert was a PhD student at the School of Medicine and Dentistry. (Photo: Rick Scuteri/AP Images for Rochester Review)

romance_scala (Photo: Courtesy of Robert and Janet Eddy Scala)

romance_scala (Photo: Courtesy of Robert and Janet Eddy Scala)

Robert ’58M (PhD) and Janet Eddy Scala ’55N

A month after starting medical school, Bob Scala ’58M (PhD) ended up in the emergency room. It turned out he had significant internal bleeding, and after being moved into a private room, was told his vital signs would need to be checked every 30 minutes.

“The first person through the door was a young student nurse to whom, it is claimed, I said, ‘Get the hell out of here and leave me alone,’” he says. “She turned on her heel and walked out.”

She went back in, of course, and over time even brought him up to the roof in a wheelchair so he could get some air. Janet Eddy ’55N was a second-year nursing student then.

“I just kept peeling off one layer after another,” she says. “He was such an interesting guy.”

They howled through a Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin comedy on their first date, and have been laughing—and playfully teasing each other—ever since. Married 54 years, with four children and 10 grandchildren (other Rochester graduates include son John ’80 and grandson Andrew ’11), the couple lives in Tucson, Ariz.

“For me, Rochester has meant two great things,” says Robert. “I got to meet this lady, which was the best thing that ever happened in my life, and I got a superior education, which has led us to be pretty regular contributors to the school. We’re proud of that.”

Janet echoes her husband’s assessment of the University, as well as his affections, though with one last ribbing about his overdue proposal: “I don’t think there are ever any coincidences in our lives. I’m an old romantic, and I could easily say he just lit up my life. Apparently, after four years, I lit up his.”

‘Constantly at Each Other’s Sides’

romance_taggart“It’s where I met the love of my life and my best friend,” says Chris Taggart of meeting Elizabeth Pedro Taggart during the first few months of their freshman year in 1978. (Photo: Jim R. Bounds/AP Images for Rochester Review)

romance_taggart (Photo: Courtesy of Chris and Elizabeth Pedro Taggart)

Chris ’82 and Elizabeth Pedro Taggart ’82

During the first week of NROTC freshman orientation, Chris Taggart ’82 came across to Elizabeth Pedro ’82 as straightlaced and much too eager.

“We wanted to be dismissed and do other stuff, and he would continue asking questions,” she says. “We would all sink further down into our seats.”

But about a month later, at a party, the two got to talking and found they had a lot in common. They’d both come from military families, participated in student government, and been involved in speech and debate in high school. Shortly after that, Elizabeth asked Chris on a date.

“She took pity on me,” he says. “I told her I had 8 a.m. chemistry classes and went to bed every night at 10 p.m., and she couldn’t believe I had such an austere, non-social life. So she took me to see Barry Lyndon.”

Commissioned into the Navy first, Chris then commissioned Elizabeth, and after exchanging vows in a military wedding in 1983, the couple lived in several states before settling in Greensboro, N.C., where they raised their two children. They both now work for the same defense industry contractor.

Though they haven’t been back to Rochester since 1986, the Taggarts are looking forward to attending their 30th class reunion this fall, and are members of the planning committee. They say they carry with them four years’ worth of shared memories that include swim meets, sorority events, and educational spring break trips. Even their wedding photos pay homage to their alma mater—a University of Rochester sticker is prominently displayed in the foreground of an image of the pair sharing a kiss through a car’s back window.

“We were constantly at each other’s sides our entire time there,” says Elizabeth.

Adds Chris: “It’s where I met the love of my life and best friend.”

‘It Was Love at First Sight’

romance_reynaMarried as freshmen in 1972, Jimmie and Dolores Ramirez Reyna will celebrate their 40th anniversary this spring. (Photo: Kevin Wolf/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Jimmie ’75 and Dolores Ramirez Reyna ’75

With brown hair that fell past her knees and green eyes, Dolores Ramirez ’75 had Jimmie Reyna ’75 hooked.

“I have the event indelibly inscribed in my mind,” Jimmie says of the moment he noticed her at an orientation program just before their freshman year. “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. It was love at first sight for me.”

The relationship moved fast, with Dolores bringing her new beau home to the Bronx three months later for Thanksgiving, and with Jimmie announcing to his parents over Christmas break in New Mexico that he was very serious about his new girlfriend. They courted over games of backgammon and chess—“I used to beat him at chess,” notes Dolores—and during the spring semester, on March 4, they married.

The newlyweds moved to an off-campus apartment, but when the woman in charge of married student housing, at the time available only to graduate students, discovered they were crossing the railroad trestle over the Genesee River to get to classes, she offered them a small place to live.

Now, about to celebrate their 40th anniversary, the Reynas live in Silver Spring, Md., and have two adult sons (including Justin ’99). Last year, Jimmie was appointed by President Barack Obama to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Dolores is a high school counselor.

They are each thankful for the opportunity to attend the University on full scholarships—even as they raised a family, aligning their schedules so that one would be home while the other was in class.

And all these years later, Jimmie can easily snap back to his first experience as an undergraduate and that unforgettable impression of his soon-to-be wife.

“Everybody tells me how lucky I am,” he says. “I know that.”

‘The Rest Is History’

romance_bernsteinAfter meeting during a fall weekend in 1968, Arthur and Margaret Stolze Bernstein graduated together in 1970. In 2008 they celebrated the 40th anniversary of their first meeting by having a bench installed at the spot on campus where they met. (Photo: Marc Serota/AP Images for Rochester Review)

romance_bernstein (Photo: Courtesy of Arthur and Margaret Stolze Bernstein)

Arthur ’70S (MBA) and Margaret Stolze Bernstein ’70

As a graduate student walking past Todd Union with a friend, Arthur Bernstein ’70S (MBA) wanted to meet the attractive coed a few steps in front of him, so he tapped her on the shoulder and asked for directions to the football stadium.

“She looked at me like I was clueless,” he recalls.

Still, Margaret Stolze ’70 accepted his invitation to attend a business school function that night. They got engaged the following fall, and married the summer after that.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of that day in 1968, Arthur arranged for a bench to be installed near the spot where they’d met. He decided to surprise Margaret with it during Meliora Weekend in 2008, while making their way from one event to another.

But when they walked by the bench, several people already were sitting on it. Arthur suggested that they relax on a different one nearby, and after stalling for quite some time, proclaimed the day a beautiful one and recommended moving to another spot—the just-vacated bench—to enjoy the sun a while longer.

Margaret, a bit confused by her husband’s behavior, noticed the plaque before sitting down.

“I said, ‘Wow, that plaque has your initials on it,’” she says. “Then I looked again and said, ‘Wait a minute. It has my initials, too.’ I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe it.”

Except for this past fall, the Bernsteins, who have two sons (Jeff ’04 and Brett), have traveled to Rochester from their home in Boca Raton, Fla., every year for Meliora Weekend. (They’ve already made hotel reservations for 2012.) And every year, they stop to rest on their bench, reconnect, and reminisce about their Rochester days, which included Arthur having Margaret’s father, the late William Stolze, as a business professor.

The simple phrase inscribed at the bottom of the bench plaque says it all: “The rest is history.”

A Global View of Public Health

As president of an international nonprofit that fights avoidable blindness, Barbara DeBuono ’76, ’80M (MD) takes on a new mission in public health.

By Husna Haq

debuonoWORLDWIDE APPROACH: As president and CEO of ORBIS International, DeBuono oversees an organization that helps treat and prevent blindness in more than 85 countries. (Photo: Shannon Taggart for Rochester Review)

Barbara DeBuono ’76, ’80M (MD) credits literature with sparking her lifelong interest in medicine and public health.

She was just 14 when she read Microbe Hunters, the Paul de Kruif classic detailing science’s advances against infectious diseases over the previous several centuries.

“It was such a great book, I thought, ‘Wow, I want to save the world,’” says DeBuono. “That started me on my journey toward public health and medicine.”

DeBuono’s latest stop on that three- decade journey is her role as president and CEO of ORBIS International, a worldwide nonprofit organization that supports hands-on public health education and training for local ophthalmologists in more than 85 countries. Based in New York City, the organization and its

global commitment are symbolized by its state-of-the-art Flying Eye Hospital and through its permanent country offices in Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India, Vietnam, and South Africa.

“What interested me was its mission, the idea of working in the developing world to address blindness,” says DeBuono. “I frankly didn’t know anything about eye health, and this gave me the opportunity to learn something completely new and different, and to work on a global level, with an NGO with an interesting mission.”

A biology major at Rochester, DeBuono earned her MD from the School of Medicine and Dentistry, followed by a master’s in public health from Harvard University. Specializing in infectious disease and epidemiology, she’s built a three-decade career in both the public and private sectors.

Her leadership positions include appointments as director of health of the state of Rhode Island, where she established a comprehensive breast cancer–screening program and authored AIDS legislation. She also served as the commissioner of health for New York state under Gov. George Pataki, where she shaped a health care reform agenda that included developing the state’s Medicaid managed care program and implementing the Child Health Insurance Program.

In the private sector, she has served as chief executive at the New York Presbyterian Healthcare Network, executive director of public health and government at Pfizer, and chief medical officer and global director of public health and social marketing at Porter Novelli.

Her work as a physician and public health professional has been guided by another important lesson learned from literature. In high school, DeBuono read Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, a play about a doctor who discovers that the baths in his coastal Norwegian town are being contaminated by a nearby tannery. When he tries to persuade the town to close the baths, a source of pride and tourism, the doctor is denounced as a lunatic.

“That was very powerful and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from reading it,” says DeBuono. She adds that a central tenet of public health is not simply determining appropriate actions, but taking into consideration your audience, environment, and politics to most effectively communicate information and influence change.

“I am a public health physician at heart,” DeBuono says. “I’m one of those people who likes to roll up my sleeves and solve problems, and at the end of the day come up with solutions that work, that make a difference, and that have an impact. That is what has always motivated me.”

Her sister, Laureen DeBuono, an attorney and business executive who has worked with DeBuono to establish the MAIA Foundation—a public charity that strives to improve the health and health literacy of women in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on reducing maternal mortality—says her sister

“has been very driven, persistent, and focused from a relatively early age.”

DeBuono has traveled to Uganda and Rwanda for MAIA and to Africa and Asia with ORBIS. In February, she plans to travel to the Philippines for the first time with the Flying Eye Hospital and its volunteer faculty.

“It’s good to get out and actually roll up your sleeves and see what’s going on firsthand,” she says. “You understand so much more about what’s the right strategy to approach a public health issue if you get out there and embed yourself in the environment.”

It’s a lesson she learned in the pages of Ibsen, and one she’s taken to heart ever since.

Husna Haq is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

Finding the ‘Wei’ of Chocolate

Lisa Reinhardt ’85 infuses her chocolate business with the lessons of her spiritual journey.

By Husna Haq

reinhardtSUCCESSFUL “WEI”: Reinhardt is guided by the idea that her chocolate works on several levels: “Good for the body, good for the mind, good for the environment, as well as karmically clean.” (Photo: Rick Scuteri/AP Images for Rochester Review)

A self-described “small town girl” from western New York, Lisa Reinhardt ’85 has traveled far to become a meditation-advocating, socially responsible chocolatier.

Like the path to Nirvana, her journey to vegan chocolate-making was long and winding, characterized by an open mind and a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants philosophy.

The result? A unique, Phoenix-based business that turns out chocolates infused with Reinhardt’s Eastern philosophy and global sensibility. It’s an approach that she hopes will give those immersed in the hustle and bustle of Western culture food for thought.

“I realized that if you put an exquisite piece of chocolate in someone’s mouth and tell them to just let it melt, not to chew, they would do the same thing they would do if meditating—rest in the present moment in rich mindfulness,” Reinhardt says. “Chocolate works in this culture; everyone speaks the language of chocolate.”

Founded in 2007, Wei of Chocolate—“wei” is a Chinese character that means “transformative action”—specializes in dark chocolate made from organic, vegan, and fair-trade ingredients. Featuring an assortment of chocolates infused with homeopathic flower, spice, and herb essences, including favorites such as “Wei Gratitude,” “Wei Love,” and “Wei Inspired,” the company is guided by Reinhardt’s philosophy of balancing mind and body.

“I didn’t want to make something bad for people,” she says. “For me, it had to be clean and healthy on every level: Good for the body, good for the mind, good for the environment, as well as karmically clean.”

An English and history major at Rochester, Reinhardt says French classes with the late professor Charles Carlton helped launch her journey as an entrepreneur.

“It was Professor Carlton who got me started on the whole odyssey,” she says, explaining that he encouraged her to apply for a fellowship to teach English in France. “I was just a small town girl,” Reinhardt says, “So when I got the fellowship, it turned my whole life upside down.”

Reinhardt worked in France for two years. One day she found herself in a Parisian park, knocking at the door of a Tibetan temple. There, a teacher began schooling her in Tibetan meditation practices. Reinhardt, who had practiced Zen Buddhism, but never the more colorful Tibetan meditation, says she was immediately intrigued.

“I didn’t want to just get a secondhand version, I really wanted to hear it straight from the source,” she says. “At the end of my time in Paris, I left for Asia.”

There, Reinhardt spent the next 11 years in Nepal, Tibet, and India, working in a monastery, meditating, living at times in a cave, and learning the Tibetan language. She adopted the Tibetan philosophy that everything should be done for the benefit of all living beings, a worldview that would later guide her entrepreneurial ventures.

When Reinhardt returned to the United States, in part to be near her aging parents, she experienced a case of culture shock.

“I missed a whole generation, and a lot had changed,” Reinhardt says, recalling how surprised she was by the frenetic pace of life in the U.S. She wanted to teach Americans meditation, “but everyone was too busy,” she says. “No one wanted to hear about it.” So Reinhardt worked in publishing, advertising, and marketing as she decided her next move.

When friend Katie Hess, owner of Lotus Wei, an Arizona-based company that specializes in flower essences and oils, brought herb- and spice-infused chocolate truffles for a tea ceremony one afternoon, Reinhardt says, a light bulb went off.

Before she had even cooked up a plan, Reinhardt quit her job and began researching chocolate, researching the health literature, attending food shows, and talking to chocolatiers and suppliers.

Agreeing to participate at a local farmers’ market the same week that important pieces of her equipment arrived in the mail, Reinhardt launched Wei of Chocolate. Today, Reinhardt sells chocolate at 10 area farmers’ markets every week, as well as online and to spas nationwide.

For reviewers such as the online outlet the Mother Nature Network, the company is hitting a sweet spot. “Even flower essence skeptics will love the taste of Wei of Chocolate—deliciously creamy organic, vegan, and fair trade dark chocolates in decadent flavors. My favorite? Wei Love—chocolate with a kick of cayenne, plus cinnamon, ginger, mace, and maca, all of which give this treat a creamy yet grainy texture,” blogger Siel Ju wrote last summer.

And in December, Reinhardt was invited to showcase her chocolate at the ABC Home Store in Manhattan for a holiday shopping event.

“Lisa has been fearless about changing the paradigm of chocolate,” says Hess, who has worked closely with Reinhardt in founding and growing Wei of Chocolate. “She’s not afraid to try new things and innovate, and is especially talented at educating people about the more profound side of her business.”

Like the Chinese character her business is named after, Reinhardt is amazed at how Wei of Chocolate has transformed her life—and those of others.

“I created something where there was nothing before, and found a really creative way to accomplish something of meaning,” she says, “Something that could actually make people’s lives better.”

Husna Haq is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

In the News

newsNOMINEE: Renée Fleming as Violetta in the Royal Opera’s production of La Traviata (Photo: Catherine Ashmore/© Royal Opera House)

And the Grammy Nominees Are . . .

Nominees for the 54th annual Grammy Awards, which will be presented in Los Angeles on Feb. 12, include several Eastman alumni. Among this year’s nominees are:

Ron Carter ’59E, bassist. Best Improvised Jazz Solo for “You Are My Sunshine” on the album This Is Jazz (Half Note Records).

Renée Fleming ’83E (MM), soprano. Fleming performs the role of Violetta in the Royal Opera House production of Guiseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, which is up for Best Opera Recording.

John Hollenbeck ’90E, ’91E (MM), percussionist and composer. Best Instrumental Composition for “Falling Men” on the album Shut Up and Dance (Bee Jazz).

Christopher Lamb ’81E, percussionist. Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his performance in Joseph Schwantner’s Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, recorded with the Nashville Symphony, on Schwantner: Chasing Light . . . (Naxos American Classics).

Alias Chamber Ensemble, including founder and violinist Zeneba Bowers ’94E, ’96E (MM), percussionist Christopher Norton ’83E, ’86E (MA), hornist Leslie Norton ’84E, harpist Licia Jaskunas Vercruysse ’94E, ’96E (MM), and eight other musicians. Best Small Ensemble Performance for Hilos (Naxos American Classics).

Robert Ludwig ’66E, ’01E (MM), mastering engineer. Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for Music is Better than Words (Universal Republic), performed by Seth McFarlane.

Archaeologist Discovers Ice Age Art

A discovery made by a team led by University of Tübingen archaeologist and paleoanthropologist Nicholas Conard ’83, ’86 (MS) has turned out to be the earliest example of cave painting ever to be found in Central Europe. Archaeologists have long known about Ice Age cave paintings in France and Spain, but Conard’s discovery of the 15,000-year-old paintings in southern Germany’s Hohle Fels Cave, near the city of Ulm, is considered a breakthrough. The paintings consist of parallel rows of red dots, made from mixing hematite with calciferous drops of water, on limestone fragments.

The paintings aren’t the only groundbreaking discovery Conard and his team have made in the Hohle Fels Cave. They also found a flute made from bone and fragments of flutes carved from mammoth ivory dating from approximately 35,000 years ago, and a female figurine, dating from the same period (“Finding a New ‘Venus,’” Rochester Review, July-August 2009).

Unglaublich! Er ist Pop Star!

Incredible!—Chris Aguilar ’10, an alumnus of the a cappella group the Midnight Ramblers, is an Austrian pop sensation.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

aguilarRAMBLE ON: Last fall, Aguilar helped keep an Austrian reality television audience riveted. With his shaky German, would he be able to rise to the top, making it into the final boy band, Kilmokit? As it turned out, “Ja” was the answer. (Photo: Gerry Frank)

“It’s hard enough to get a master’s degree, but to be a pop star on top of that? That’s even harder,” says Chris Aguilar ’10, over Skype, from his apartment in Vienna, Austria.

And one more thing: He’s really, really glad to be doing an interview in English. “You have no idea how frustrating it is to give an interview in a language you’re not so good at,” says Aguilar, who has been in Austria for a year.

An environmental studies major and German minor at Rochester, Aguilar has been a master’s student in international relations at Webster University Vienna (his courses are conducted in “English, thank God”), as well as a bartender, a tutor, and an English teacher’s assistant.

Now he’s a member of the three-man band Kilmokit, hailed as Austria’s “first boy band,” whose debut CD, Atemlos, rose to No. 4 on iTunes Europe during the first week of its release last December.

It all started last fall, when at the suggestion of a friend, he auditioned for Popstars Mission Austria, an Austrian version of American Idol and other reality television series. “I don’t usually go to castings,” says Aguilar. “But I missed singing so much,” he adds, alluding to his years as a member of the River Campus a cappella group the Midnight Ramblers.

Over two months, Popstars judges Fernanda Brandao, a Brazilian-German dancer and pop star, and Detlef D! Soost, a storied German choreographer and street dancer, went on a casting tour, holding auditions in all eight provinces of Austria. Over the course of a television season, 50 callbacks were whittled down to nine women and nine men, shown living, training, and competing against one another at a mountain resort. The object was to make—and then to stay in—either the three-member girl band, BFF, or the boy band counterpart, Kilmokit. Aguilar not only made it into the final Kilmokit, but helped the band prevail over BFF in a season finale contest decided by viewer votes. The victorious trio of “Chris, Flo, and Patrick” came away with a Sony recording contract, a series of promotional gigs on radio and television, and 100,000 Euros.

Each band member had his own challenge. For Aguilar, who was born in Mexico and raised bilingually in the United States, it was singing in his newest language. “Anything with an umlaut is really hard,” says Aguilar, who struggled through his lead vocal role in the band’s single “Keine Träne.” “I sang with a very thick accent, and there was a lot of laughter in the studio.”

Aguilar overcame that challenge in part because he can be a bit of a taskmaster. “They used to call me Mr. Perfect on the show, because I’m very—I want discipline a lot. I want to do a very good job with the choreo, with the voice, with everything.”

The camera-friendly former Rambler is enjoying overnight fame. “When I ride the metro, it’s an adventure. I’ve had people from an older couple to young children recognize me. One little girl was really cute. She didn’t think I was real,” he says, chuckling.

While Kilmokit is a pop group, with a drummer and guitarists, Aguilar says they often sing a cappella. “We’re doing photo shoots, we’re doing autograph signings,” he says. “We always want to perform at these events, so we often do a cappella. Being with the Ramblers, I learned so much about group dynamics, about leading, about a cappella blending, harmony, and melody.”

In fact, says Aguilar, “So many things from Rochester really prepared me. It’s ridiculous. It’s like the best training school for life.”

MELIORA MOMENTS

Kate Gruschow ’11S (MS)

Staff member, Simon School Advancement

moments (Photo: Adam Fenster)

How many of us have thought twice about getting a paper cut? Simply slap a Band-Aid on it, maybe some Neosporin, and off you go. If it were not for the care I received in the Kessler Burn & Trauma Center at Strong Memorial Hospital, a paper cut would have killed me. A paper cut.

While working for the Simon School of Business and staffing an alumni event in Charlotte, N.C., in late January 2011, I received a paper cut while setting out our nametags. A week later, it became infected. A week or so after that, I was in the Kessler Burn & Trauma Center fighting for my life.

I had developed toxic epidermal necrolysis (TENS, also known as Stevens Johnson Syndrome), an incredibly rare and potentially fatal allergic reaction to the antibiotic I was prescribed. I was given a 50 percent chance of survival, and my epidermis “burned” off over 95 percent of my body.

My Meliora Moment is threefold.

First, the care I received from Dr. Derek Bell and the staff at the Kessler Burn & Trauma Center literally saved my life. They healed this then 29-year-old mother of two and returned me to my family. It is truly medicine of the highest order.

Second, I am incredibly grateful to Dennis and Larry Kessler for their support of the unit at the Medical Center. I had visited another local hospital (closer to my home) three times before going to Strong with no diagnosis. At Strong, they knew immediately what it was and how to treat it.

Lastly, the outpouring of concern from the staff at the Simon School and University Advancement was overwhelming. A constant stream of cards was delivered to me at Strong (many eager visitors were declined due to my condition). Meals were arranged for my family upon my discharge. Everyone’s concern and thoughtfulness motivates me to be an “ever better” colleague.

At the time of my hospital stay, I was also a part-time student at Simon, and the faculty worked with me to get caught up. I am happy to report that a mere three months after discharge I walked across the stage at Eastman Theatre and received my master of science degree in business administration.

I am now a grateful patient, staff member, and alumna.

For more Meliora Moments, and to submit your own, visit http://meliora.rochester.edu.

TRIBUTE

Gail Ingersoll: Powerful Intellect, Gentle Soul

tribute_ingersollLEADER: Ingersoll’s research in clinical nursing is credited with leading to improvements in patient care and in the work environment for nurses. (Photo: Medical Center)

Gail Ingersoll was one of kind. She had a powerful intellect, but a gentle soul. She was a renowned researcher and clinician, but she also loved music, art, and the written word. She understood the power of education in transforming people and ideas, and committed her life’s work to serving others.

As director of clinical nursing research at Strong Memorial Hospital and the Loretta C. Ford Professor of Nursing at the School of Nursing, Gail conducted pathbreaking research in clinical nursing that led to improvements in patient care delivery and the work environment for nurses both in Rochester and across the country. Gail died in November at the age of 62.

Those of us who knew her well recognized that she could be incredibly focused and determined. She was persistent in achieving her own goals and unselfishly worked to help others accomplish theirs. Those of us who loved her witnessed these traits right up to her last moments.

Gail surrounded herself with beauty. Her home was filled with the works of local artists and artisans. Since the birth of her grandnieces, Evangeline and Aneliese, Gail included their masterpieces in her home as well, and considered these her most precious works of art.

Gail was a voracious reader. She kept a running list of the books she read, including a short summary of the plot and her personal rating of the book’s overall value. If you were looking for a great book to read, you only had to ask Gail. She could list immediately five or six “must read” books that she felt would be just right for you.

Gail was a fabulous and gracious hostess and her annual Christmas party was a special event, one that we all looked forward to each year. She worked for days preparing for the event, making unique and wonderfully delicious hors d’oeuvres and desserts. Although her home was large, with plenty of room to roam, we all seemed to congregate in the kitchen or around the dining room table, enjoying the good food and conversation. At the end of the evening, Gail willingly shared any and all recipes, which often became favorites in our own households! Gail chose to become a nurse because she believed that making a difference in someone else’s life enriched her own.

She found great pleasure in her role as mentor, and those of us who benefitted from her mentoring over many years have become better people as a result of her influence. We will greatly miss her insight and advice, but most of all we will miss her presence in our lives.

—Lisa Norsen and Patricia Witzel

Norsen is the associate dean for innovation and community outreach at the School of Nursing, and Witzel is the associate vice president of the Medical Center and the chief nursing officer at Strong Memorial Hospital.

TRIBUTE

T. Franklin Williams: A Pioneer in Geriatrics

tribute_williamsPHYSICIAN TEACHER: A founder of the field of geriatrics, Williams served as a director of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. (Photo: Medical Center)

In the early 1980s, Frank Williams, then a professor of medicine at Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, began one of the first training programs for physicians to learn the new field of geriatrics, the medical field dedicated to the health care of older adults.

I was privileged to be one of his first fellows. Many of us were drawn to this new field because the established specialties of medicine taught us well how to treat diseases but often ignored how people were feeling and functioning. Under Dr. Williams’s leadership, vision, and example, we learned to care for patients, and not just their illnesses.

While humble and gentle, Dr. Williams was also forceful in his convictions and expectations. He inspired us to find our own path, to never compromise on excellence, and to contribute to the improvement of the lives of those around us. He was the defining influence in my career.

Over the years, in his roles as a physician, investigator, national leader, teacher, and mentor, Dr. Williams changed the way geriatric medicine is practiced and investigated. In 1983, he became the second director of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. In this position, he promoted greater rigor in the investigation of the biologic changes that occur with aging and the medical, cognitive, psychological, and social problems that are faced by older adults. He enhanced the scientific credibility of geriatric and gerontological investigation. Thanks to the research supported by the institute during his years as director, there is a better understanding of what happens as people age and what can be done to reduce the burden of chronic diseases. Millions of people have benefited from this research.

Through the years, as Dr. Williams advanced in prominence and national leadership, he never lost sight of his true life’s work, the care of elderly patients and the education of medical students and young medical trainees. Dr. Williams influenced the lives and careers of several generations of clinicians and investigators. His attraction for young trainees is perhaps best evidenced by the legions of medical students who gave up their Saturday mornings over the years to spend time with Dr. Williams at his beloved Monroe Community Hospital.

Integrity is having one story—one set of beliefs, values, and priorities. True integrity is rare, particularly among individuals in positions of influence. Frank, who died in November, one day shy of his 90th birthday, was the same man, whether testifying before Congress or caring for a frail patient at Monroe Community Hospital. He had integrity.

—Mary Tinetti ’84M (Flw)

Tinetti is the Gladys Phillips Crofoot Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine.

Books & Recordings

Books

Medieval Music

By Honey Meconi

Ashgate, 2011

Meconi, professor of music in the School of Arts and Sciences and professor of musicology at the Eastman School, offers an overview of major issues in medieval performance practice as part of Ashgate’s Library of Essays on Music Performance Practice series. Meconi is also the author of commentary accompanying Extreme Singing: The La Rue Requiem and other Flemish Masterpieces of the Renaissance, by the Ann Arbor–based a cappella group Vox Early Music Ensemble (Self-published, 2011).

When the Pastor is Your Husband: The Joy and Pain of Ministry Wives

By Donna Bordelon Alder ’71 (MS)

Beacon Hill Publishing, 2011

Analyzing responses to her own national survey of American pastors’ wives as well as results of six other surveys, Alder distills advice on the “joys, the challenges, the discouragements and the success strategies” of women married to ministers from a variety of denominations, geographic regions, and age groups. Alder is a professor emeritus of biology at Roberts Wesleyan College and ordained as a pastor. Her husband, father, son, and son-in-law are pastors.

Signifying Without Specifying: Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama

By Stephanie Li

Rutgers University Press, 2011

Li, assistant professor of English at Rochester, argues that American politicians and writers of color have adopted a new means of talking about race: one that avoids explicit references to race in favor of terms that carry cultural resonance within specific racial groups. The book explores literary works by Barack Obama, Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and others.

Documents in Crisis: Nonfiction Literatures in Twentieth-Century Mexico

By Beth E. Jörgensen

SUNY Press, 2011

Jörgensen, professor of Spanish at Rochester, explores 20th-century Mexican nonfiction literature—such as autobiographies, memoirs, historical essays, and testimonies—as responses to the natural and industrial disasters and political and social unrest that overshadowed Mexican life in the last century.

Managing Temperature Effects in Nanoscale Adaptive Systems

By David Wolpert ’04, ’11 (PhD) and Paul Ampadu

Springer, 2012

Wolpert, a chip back-end design engineer at IBM, and Ampadu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rochester, coauthor an overview of new methods for controlling the effects of temperature on nanoscale circuits and systems.

Active Consciousness: Awakening the Power Within

By Amy L. Lansky ’77

R. L. Ranch Press, 2011

Lansky—a computer scientist and former artificial intelligence researcher who left the field of computer science in 1998 to pursue an interest in homeopathic medicine—offers “a wide-ranging exploration of human consciousness that weaves together the science of the paranormal, the teaching of mystics, and meditative exercises.”

From There to Here: Anatomy of a Divorce

By William E. Powell ’56, ’60M (MD)

Strategic Book Group, 2011

A retired obstetrician who studied English as an undergraduate at Rochester, Powell tells the story of the fictional Peter Wyse from his courtship and engagement to his true love, Sarah, to the disintegration of the marriage as a result of “deceit, betrayal, and infidelity.”

Bible & Music: Influences of the Old Testament on Western Music

By Max Stern ’69E

KTAV Publishing House, 2011

Stern, a composer, professor of music at the Ariel University Center, and music critic for the Jerusalem Post, offers an overview of the influence of the Bible on the history of Western music. The book explores key biblical characters and themes across genres of music, including traditional, folk, liturgical, popular, classical, and contemporary.

Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson

By Joseph Vogel

Sterling Publishing, 2011

Drawing on music reviews, news stories, and interviews with Jackson and major collaborators, Vogel, a doctoral candidate in English at Rochester, traces the development of Jackson’s music in its social and historical context.

Print, Visuality, and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Satire: “The Scope in Ev’ry Page”

By Katherine Mannheimer

Routledge, 2011

Mannheimer, assistant professor of English at Rochester and a specialist in 18th-century print culture, explores the uses and meanings of elaborate typographical design among satirists such as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and others.

The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context

By Grant H. Kester ’97 (PhD)

Duke University Press, 2011

Kester, professor of art history and chair of visual arts at the University of California at San Diego, argues that the global proliferation of collaborative art in the past two decades is fostering a redefinition of artistic autonomy, representing an important transition within the continuum of the avant-garde.

The Lives of Transgender People

By Genny Beemyn ’01W (MS) and Sue Rankin

Columbia University Press, 2011

Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Rankin, associate professor of education at the Pennsylvania State University, examine the varied experiences of gender nonconforming individuals in the United States today through interviews with transgender people.

Shear Murder

By Nancy J. Cohen ’70, ’70N

Five Star Press, 2012

South Florida hairdresser Marla Shore returns in a new installment of Cohen’s Bad Hair Day Mystery series. A friend’s wedding turns into a funeral when Marla, a bridesmaid, finds the matron of honor dead under the cake table, the cake knife protruding from her chest.

The Critical Reception of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises

By Peter Hays ’59

Camden House, 2011

Hays, professor emeritus of English at the University of California at Davis, surveys the history of the critical reception of The Sun Also Rises from the novel’s release in 1926 to the present as part of Camden House’s Literary Criticism in Perspective series.

Handprint Data Capture in Forms Processing: A Systems Approach

By K. Bradley Paxton ’71 (PhD)

Fossil Press, 2011

Paxton, the founder and CEO of Advanced Document Imaging, offers a guide for professionals working with large surveys, data capture, and processing, on how to extract data from forms, both accurately and cost- effectively. The book is based on Paxton’s work with the U.S. Census Bureau on both the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

Gender, Honor, and Charity in Late Renaissance Florence

By Philip Gavitt ’72

Cambridge University Press, 2011

Gavitt, associate professor of history at St. Louis University, examines the evolution of charitable institutions in Florence during a time of social unrest and growing economic inequality. While new institutions formed and old ones expanded, elite Florentine families guided this process to maintain their wealth, power, and prestige, Gavitt argues.

Recordings

Verdi Requiem

By the Sacramento Choral Society & Orchestra

SCSO, 2011

The Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra, led by founding conductor Donald Kendrick ’85E (DMA), perform Verdi’s Requiem live at the Mondavi Center of the University of California at Davis in March 2011. The group also recorded a live performance with the Sacramento Children’s Chorus of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in 2010 at the Mondavi Center.

Variations by Brahms and Schumann

By Robert Silverman ’70E (DMA)

Stereophile, 2011

The pianist Silverman performs Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Händel and Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes. Silverman also released Complete Mozart Sonatas (IsoMike) in 2010.

Westland

By the Westland Trio

Westland Trio, 2010

The jazz trio that includes Damon Zick ’97E (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet) performs a mix of jazz, blues, folk, and pop. Zick also performs with the world music group Quarteto Nuevo on their self-titled recording (Quarteto Nuevo, 2010), which features a mix of Middle Eastern, Indian, Mexican, and flamenco music.

Crossing

By Ben Kono ’89E

Nineteen-Eight Records, 2011

Woodwind performer and composer Kono leads a sextet in his debut recording. The sextet includes percussionist John Hollenbeck ’90E, ’91E (MM). Kono is the woodwinds chair in the musical Jersey Boys, now in its sixth year on Broadway.

Collision

By Chesley Kahmann ’52

Orbiting Clef Productions, 2011

Pianist, singer, and composer Kahmann performs 14 new original songs. Collision is volume six in The Kahmann Touch song series.

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.

Past Prescriptions

Jeffrey Reznick ’92 offers a glimpse inside the world’s largest biomedical library.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

masterclass (Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

I’ve been at the National Library of Medicine for two years. I started as deputy director of the History of Medicine Division, and I was appointed chief of the division last fall. After I graduated from Rochester, I earned a doctorate in history from Emory University.

The National Library of Medicine dates from the 1830s when the U.S. Army Surgeon General at that time had the foresight to purchase books and journals for active-duty medical officers. It’s the largest biomedical library in the world. The History of Medicine Division is steward of some of the library’s most treasured collections, allowing researchers to explore medical and public health history from as early as the 11th century to the present.

One of the most remarkable items in our collections is the first summary of the genetic code. It was created by the American biochemist and 1968 Nobel laureate Marshall Nirenberg and records his deciphering of the genetic code contained in DNA. Here is the very discovery of how sequences of DNA—known as “triplets”—direct the assembly of amino acids into the structural and functional proteins essential to life. Nirenberg’s work ranks with that of James Watson and Francis Crick in our understanding of the genetic basis of life on earth.

Jeffrey Reznick ’92

Rockville, Md.

Chief, History of Medicine Division,

National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health

Dr. Nirenberg wrote this summery in now-fading ballpoint pen, on several sheets of 8 ½” x 11” paper attached together with tape. The very physical state of the chart makes it a prime candidate for conservation.

Another remarkable item we hold—one that is near and dear to my own heart as a cultural historian of the First World War—is our unique collection of U.S. military hospital magazines dating from 1918–1919. These were published internally by U.S. military hospitals around the country that cared for sick and wounded soldiers. Interestingly, both hospital staff and patients contributed to these publications. Very few historians have ever looked at these materials, but they provide a spotlight on how the war played out in local communities around the United States.

We also have a traveling exhibition program. One of the most popular exhibitions is on Harry Potter. It’s called Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine. It shows the Renaissance roots of Harry Potter’s world, and how those traditions played major roles in the development of Western science and medicine.

My most formative experience was doing independent research with professor Thomas Hahn. I was a National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholar in the summer of 1991, and he supervised my grant project. It was a cultural-literary study of the remarkable kinship of Julian of Norwich’s 14th-century classic, Revelations of Divine Love, with Ted Hughes’s 1968 children’s story, The Iron Man, and Pete Townshend’s 1989 rock opera of the same name. That research experience, combined with the great courses I took from professors Borus, DiPiero, Kaeuper, Lasch, McGrath, and Weaver, inspired me to pursue a doctorate in history. It also taught me to appreciate that history and literature go hand-in-hand in learning about the past, and that it’s “the journey, not the arrival, that matters.”

‘SHAVE TO SAVE’

Head’s Up

backcover (Photo: Adam Fenster)

LOCKS OF LOVE: Abby DeWitt ’15 of Nashua, N.H., reacts as cosmetologist Nicole Schoonmaker of Mane Attraction in Wilson Commons holds DeWitt’s newly cut locks during Colleges Against Cancer’s “Shave to Save” event in December. As part of the event, cochaired at Rochester by DeWitt, students shaved their heads or donated eight or more inches of hair to support cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and to raise money for the American Cancer Society.