Rochester Review

May–June 2012, Volume 74, No. 5

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

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

Editorial Office

22 Wallis Hall

University of Rochester

Box 270044, Rochester, NY 14627-0044

(585) 275-4121

Fax: (585) 275-0359

E-mail: rochrev@rochester.edu

Design

Steve Boerner Typography & Design Inc.

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.

Visit Us on the Web

Rochester Review: http://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review

Celebrating Tom Jackson and Dennis O’Brien

By Joel Seligman

president (Steve Boerner (Illustration)/Campus Planning, Design, and Construction Management (Rendering))

In May, we will celebrate the naming of our new residence hall on Wilson Boulevard as O’Brien Hall, after our eighth president, Dennis O’Brien, and Jackson Court, including O’Brien Hall, Anderson and Wilder residence halls, and the Sage Art Center, after our ninth president, Tom Jackson.

This is a particularly fitting tribute to two pivotal presidents in the history of our University.

O’Brien Hall appropriately faces the Genesee River toward the greater Rochester community. Dennis O’Brien was a leader in reaching out to our community. The construction of the pedestrian bridge across the Genesee is a physical embodiment of his determination to break down the belief that a great university in the 20th century could be wholly separate and apart from its surrounding community. Dennis stressed the challenge of undergraduate education, urging: “Let our signature be liberal education in a professional world,” and added the Take Five Scholars Program, among his many accomplishments.

Tom Jackson played a decisive role in further reenergizing undergraduate education at Rochester. Under his leadership, Arts, Sciences & Engineering designed and implemented first the Renaissance Plan and later the Rochester Curriculum, with its nationally recognized cluster system. Tom was a University leader, and during his tenure the Medical Center developed and implemented its highly effective 1996 strategic plan.

Great institutions build on their pasts. Both Dennis and Tom led our University during a time of economic challenge. Both were pivotal, as Tom put it, in “reasserting the greatness of the University of Rochester.”

After his service as University president, Tom Jackson has remained on our faculty and I have frequently met with him. He is the wisest of counselors, with a splendid memory, an experienced-based understanding of the realities of my work, and an absolute commitment to helping our University achieve the ideal of Meliora. I am especially grateful for his determination to make the transition between our two periods of service as seamless as possible, his support of different approaches that I have sometimes pursued, and his friendship.

Over 75 years ago, Rush Rhees stepped down as the third president of our University. Our central library was named in his honor. Since then, the University’s history has followed a complex and nonlinear path, one today in which libraries are facing a profound transition as part of a digital revolution. The reputation of Rush Rhees lives on. We are always mindful of the transformational role that he and George Eastman played in building the modern University of Rochester.

I hope that many years from now Dennis and Tom similarly will be remembered. Their leadership also was pivotal in helping fashion our University into one that is now a national leader in undergraduate education, among the nation’s leaders in sponsored research, home to a health care system that leads our region, and a place in our community as the leading employer and a good neighbor.

To reverse the Shakespearian adage, “may the good that men [and women] do, live after them . . .” Thank you, Dennis. Thank you, Tom.

Letters

lettersID, PLEASE: And thank you. Readers helped us identify Christine McGuire (left). As for the woman on the right, we heard from several readers, including Anne Gaffney Friday herself. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Peck of Letters

Thank you so much for your article “The Professor's Tale” about Professor Russell Peck and for the simply wonderful illustrations (March-April).

I, too, am one of the people whose life’s direction, seemingly off-track though it might be, was influenced by Professor Peck. I lived in the Medieval House my sophomore (1971–72) and junior (1972–73) years at Rochester. I was a classics major with a strong interest in medieval studies, and I was honored and quite delighted that the medievalists let me in.

Memories from the midnight Chaucer readings have stayed with me all these years. They were the best of fun, and Professor Peck deserves the credit for creating them. The living room in the Medieval House was always packed with students and professors. The text came alive off the page. Those late evenings were the height of my time at Rochester.

Visiting professors stayed in the guest room at the Medieval House during those years and they would actually take the time to talk with us. It truly enhanced my college experience to be able to interact with those professors in such an informal way.

I am highly amused that I now find myself where the Smokey, Pioneer, and Boulder mountain ranges meet in Idaho, not all that far from the Wind River Range in Wyoming, a place where I have backpacked and will go back to again. I had no idea, then, that Professor Peck was from Wyoming, and I would never have guessed that I would wind up in the Rockies myself.

Debra Kronenberg ’74

Ketchum, Idaho

I read with great pleasure “The Professor's Tale.” When I was an undergraduate in 1967–71, I was involved in the all-volunteer, no credit, theatrical productions the students put on twice a year. I well remember the start-up of Drama House (in a different format, I think), with Peck’s enthusiastic support and encouragement. Vic Becker ’69 was the instigator of the University of Rochester Summer Theater—I don’t recall if Peck was involved in that.

I ultimately became a professor myself and am fortunate that I encountered such a wonderful role model in Professor Peck during my formative years. I am a member of the Society for the 26-Hour Day, and note that Professor Peck is one of the cofounders.

Mark David Gottsegen ’71

Chagrin Falls, Ohio

I wanted to thank you for your article on Russell Peck.

Professor Peck is a rare treasure, and Myra Gelband ’71 has done an excellent job of encapsulating much of what makes him so: his enrapturing lectures, his astonishing mastery of subjects, his extraordinary courage, his indefatigable spirit, his pure generosity, his limitless good humor, and his genuine human kindness. He is the finest of leaders and the most loyal of friends, an absolute force of nature in all the best of terms. Well done, Ms. Gelband and Rochester Review!

That said, I think more can and should be said regarding the wider impact that Professor Peck’s life and career has had beyond the University. He is respected and loved around the globe by his colleagues, of course, but it should not be underestimated that he has mentored long lines of graduate students who are each, in their own small ways, trying to pass along his extraordinary legacy to their own students. I spent close to five years in Rochester, earning first a master’s and then a PhD under Professor Peck’s tutelage, and I am pleased to be able to think of him as both a mentor and a friend. The example of his leadership drives me daily to be a better teacher, a better researcher, and a better human being. You cannot spend time with him and not feel the same.

I asked him once how I could ever repay him for what he had done for me and my life. It was, in retrospect, a silly question to ask, since I knew the answer already.

In fact, I’d known the answer all along, from within my first hour of meeting him, years and years ago, when I visited Rochester and determined that I had no need to apply elsewhere for my graduate degree since I couldn’t imagine not working with Professor Peck.

Predictably, though, Russell didn’t scold me for asking my silly question. He simply smiled that warm smile, nodded, and told me what I already knew: “Just do the same for your own students when it’s your turn.”

I am trying, Russell. We all are. And if we can have half the impact that you have had, we will be most fortunate indeed.

Michael Livingston ’04 (MA), ’06 (PhD), Captain (UMSC)

Charleston, SC

The writer is an assistant professor of English at The Citadel, where he’s also the associate director of the honors program.

I worked at the River Campus for almost 10 years, 1987–97, and took advantage of the tuition benefits to earn an MA in English in 1992. Some professors were a bit perplexed by those of us “odd ducks” who were neither undergrad nor PhD students (I and two other colleagues pursued this degree at the same time), but Professor Peck welcomed anyone in his classroom who was eager and willing to learn.

And you had to be—the reading load was incredibly challenging—but he made it all so enjoyable with his boundless enthusiasm and incredible knowledge. I took his course on Classical and Scriptural Backgrounds, and learned more in that one semester than I did my entire undergraduate career. In fact, I just recently referred to something I learned with him in a conversation I had with my children about Greek mythology.

I also enjoyed accompanying undergraduates on his annual treks to the Shakespeare festival in Stratford, as the driver/chaperone who also took advantage of the incredibly affordable and very intense theater weekend. Five plays in three days, I believe it was, topped off by an evening of shared conversation and Pavlova, another “Peck Passion.” How rare, and how wonderful, to meet someone who is so thoroughly enamored of his profession that it inspires everyone around him—and how lovely to know that, many years later, this tradition continues, and many a student is still benefitting from Russell Peck’s expertise, enthusiasm, and energy.

Deb Howe Allen ’92 (MA)

Geneseo, NY

Kudos to Myra Gelband ’71 for her wonderful illustration of the life and times of Russell Peck. Like many Rochester students, I was fortunate in knowing Russell as a professor, advisor, and friend. My first year at Rochester was also, I believe, his first. My initial impression of this young assistant professor was striking. One day he was unaccountably late to his History of the English Language class, but then he rushed in, grabbed a piece of chalk, and wrote on the board in large letters of Old English—announcing the birth of his son, Gunther. The class turned into a celebration.

Decades later I returned to Rochester for an admissions position, and in touring the buildings I found all over the campus beautiful, framed prints on previously blank and unattractive walls. You might know: it was another Russell Peck project to beautify the Rochester campus. This seemingly small activity, in addition to the many student-centered programs he initiated, truly represented the ideal relationship of university, professor, and student.

I hope he knows how much he has influenced generations of Rochester students.

Russell Peck:

A Knyght ther was, and that a worthy man / That fro the tyme that he first bigan / To riden out, he loved chivalrie, / Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie / . . . And evere honoured for his worthynesse.

B. Ann Wright ’63, ’66 (MA) ’77 (PhD)

Austin, Texas

Poignant Profile

The article “Confronting Our Differences—Collaboratively” (Alumni Gazette, March-April), featuring Bonnie Thornton Dill ’65 was very poignant, as I was a classmate of both Bonnie and her roommate, Tina Scott ’65. I am moved to see the contributions that Bonnie has made, and to see their names after all of these years.

Thanks for the uplifting reportage—it never fails to inspire.

Dick English ’65 Aptos, Calif.

What Is Race?

Next to the picture of Stephanie Li (“Race Talk in the Age of Obama,” January-February) we read her assertion that: “We want to know racial identities because those are the handles by which we begin to establish intimacy.”

My mental reaction was instantaneous: “Only in America, the country unique in classifying its people in terms of mythical ‘races,’ could an intellectual express the belief that a person must know another person’s ‘race’ in order to ‘establish intimacy.’ ”

I contacted Professor Li, and she has graciously responded to my questions. Here is part of her explanation of that assertion: “I am thinking of the countless times in which I have been asked, ‘What are you?’ by strangers and new acquaintances who are bewildered by not being able to identify me racially simply upon meeting me.”

Such a thought has never entered my mind in my 79 years. Here in Sweden I have asked at least 50 people (more every day at the Red Cross) from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Sweden what they think of in a similar situation, and not one has ever mentioned “race.” The same is true for Swedish medical researchers.

When I have then revealed my reason for asking, Africans in particular have viewed the thought as strange at best, and several who have lived in the USA have even stronger negative opinions.

I have an ongoing project on this subject that keeps me in contact with American sociologists and a Northwestern University law professor, Dorothy Roberts, who in her brilliant new book Fatal Invention provides the intellectual foundation for my belief that designating people by “race” is a racist approach to human difference (“Race is the product of racism, racism is not the product of race,” p. 35).

I would like to hear from readers. If you are interested, sample my blog, Only- NeverInSweden.blogspot.com and then respond to the Gmail address there.

Lawrence Lundgren

Linköping, Sweden

Lundgren is a professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences.

Tuning into Radio Days

Editor’s Note: In the March-April issue, we included a photo of two Rochester students at the controls of the campus radio station. The undated, archival photo had no information about the identities of the two women in the photo . . . until now:

In regards to the photo on the first page of Class Notes (March-April), I’m the gal with the glasses—Anne Gaffney Friday ’58. Unfortunately I can't remember the last name of the other girl. Her first name is Chris and she was probably in either the ’60 or ’61 class. Hopefully someone else has identified her for you.

It was quite a surprise to see this picture from so long ago, but I’ve had lots of fun showing it to my friends out here in Seattle.

Anne Gaffney Friday ’58

Seattle

I think the woman on the left in the picture on page 51 is Chris McGuire, who was my sophomore year roommate. We had a lot of fun that year, but Chris transferred after that year and I have never heard from her since.

Marion (Rusty) Dearnley ’60, ’66W (Mas)

Treasure Island, Fla.

The woman on the left in the photograph on page 51 is Christine McGuire from Palmyra, N.Y. The photo was probably taken in the mid- to late 1950s.

Paula O’Brien Stewart ’63N

Cape Coral, Fla.

The young woman standing in the “Radio Days” photo is Christine McGuire, a fellow member of the Class of 1960, who graduated in nursing.

Takes me back to the fall of 1956 and my brief time as a DJ at WRUR.

Joan Briggs Ashton ’60

Loudonville, N.Y.

A Romance with Rochester

Reflections inspired by the “Rochester Romance” article (January-February) . . .

Joyful memories come to me after so many years. My life was illuminated with the great romance I had at the University of Rochester itself. It happened about one year after I arrived from my country looking for freedom. A feeling of sadness accompanied me. I had left behind my country, part of my family, my career, and that intense vocation that drove me to teach since the age of eighteen.

Dear University of Rochester,

You probably do not remember me, but my name is among your master’s degree graduates in the Warner School of Education. You opened your magnanimous doors to somebody with little knowledge of a new language, and whose dream was to teach again. You have been my love since then. Because of you I just completed 30 years of teaching in this country, achieving my goals with a lot of happiness.

I thank you and your staff for your support and kindness.

I will love you forever.

Dolores Martorell Pasarin ’69 (MA)

Miami

Remembering Nora Bredes

Thanks so much for the write-up on Nora Bredes (November-December 2011). I took a course with Nora during my time at Rochester and remain thankful for her many insights on dynamics of gender, leadership, and politics. As you acknowledged in the piece, Ms. Bredes always took the time to support women’s engagement at the University, and I am grateful for the opportunity she gave me to speak about the history of women at U of R during the 2002 Susan B. Anthony Legacy Dinner.

The Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership, the University, and its students lost a great champion of women’s leadership with Nora’s passing.

Lindsey Bickers Bock ’02

Durhman, N.C.

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.

PULITZER PRIZE

Prized Moment

puts (Photo: Photograph by Craig Ruttle/AP Images)

STEALING A SCENE: Composer Kevin Puts ’94E, ’99E (DMA) talks with his son, Benjamin, 2, at their home in Yonkers, N.Y., in April after Puts learned he had been awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his opera, Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts. The first opera that Puts has composed, the work was commissioned by the Minnesota Opera, where it had its premiere last November. Puts is the ninth alumnus to win a Pulitzer and the 13th winner with University ties. Photograph by Craig Ruttle/AP Images.

GRADUATION

Senior Portrait

mosaic (Photo: Rochester Review)

MOSAIC MEMENTO: A mosaic of photos taken during the last four years will serve as a memento for the Class of 2012. The project is the brainchild of class leaders Scott Strenger ’12 and Palida Noor ’12 who, working with Alumni Relations and the 2012 Class Council, plan to turn a similar mosaic into a jigsaw puzzle and give pieces to each classmate. Class members will be asked to “rebuild” the puzzle when they return for reunions. For more about the mosaic, visit www.rochester.edu/pr/Review.

ENGINEERING

Easier Rider

bicycle (Photo: Adam Fenster)

CRUISE CONTROL: Travis Block ’12, a biomedical engineering major from San Antonio, Texas, demonstrates a three-wheeled bicycle that can be steered with one arm. He and his team developed the prototype for their senior design project in engineering. The bicycle was one of several projects developed during the year-long course, a capstone requirement in which students work with health care, disability, and other Rochester-area agencies to conceive, design, and prototype devices that address a need among the agencies’ constituents. Photograph by Adam Fenster.

SCHOLARSHIP

The Power of Puppets

Professor Kenneth Gross explores the theatrical power of puppets to “bring a part of us back to play.”

Interview by Husna Haq

inrev_puppetsUNCANNY LIVES: “They are what we project onto them; they also project onto us,” says Gross, whose new book explores the roles that puppets—like these by artist Paul Klee—play in human imagination. (Photo: Zentrum Paul Klee)

Puppetry isn’t simply child’s play. While American audiences may be more familiar with hyperactive Sesame Street characters and a “Disneyfied” version of Pinocchio, the puppet in societies across the world has played the role of provocateur, historian, clairvoyant, and keeper of the faith, says Kenneth Gross in a new book, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life (University of Chicago Press, 2011). From re-enacting sacred texts in Balinese shadow puppetry to mocking authority in England’s raucous Punch and Judy shows, puppets are masters of metamorphosis and often, mirrors of ourselves.

“They are what we project onto them,” says Gross, professor of English at the University and an admired scholar of Shakespearean and Renaissance literature. “They also project onto us.”

During a year abroad in 2007–08, Gross traveled to Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, and Bali in order to study puppet theater. He talked with a wide range of artists, traditional and experimental, exploring literary incarnations of the puppet from Plato to Kafka. The result is an elegant, poetic meditation on the inanimate objects that we invest with life and meaning, in an attempt, muses Gross, to tap into buried pieces of ourselves.

How did this book come about?

I love writing about all kinds of theater, and there’s something very elemental about theater that puppets are able to show; there’s something very raw and immediate in watching their movements, gestures, and artificial life on stage, a life both assertive and secretive. I also liked the effect of writing about it, what it did to my language. I found that in order to do justice to this kind of theater, I had to simplify and loosen up, make my own writing more poetic or expressive. I had to think more like an essayist.

Were there memorable performances?

There was one theater in Berlin I used to go to a lot. It was the former GDR state puppet theater, a remnant of the Communist era. It was like returning to a small piece of the former East Germany. This was in a grim and bereft part of the city, a very small theater space, and I remember seeing things that ranged from creepy children’s shows to a remarkable version of King Lear—a solitary human actor as the king among a world of puppets—with a mixed audience of young artists, children, and old inhabitants of East Berlin. When a show started, you felt suddenly removed from this strange space of the city, caught up in the show. What I remember as much as particular plays is that experience of being completely removed, transported from the environment by the show. Something similar happened in watching shadow plays in rural Bali, performed at night on a cinema-like screen, but here the larger environment never disappeared. I stayed intensely conscious of the exotic place, the tropical air, the sounds, the gamelan music, people coming and going during the show.

What insights does the etymology of the word offer on puppetry and its history?

“Puppet” comes from the Latin pupa, for little girl or doll—that says something. The Latin term is still used in entomology to describe the middle stage of an insect’s metamorphosis. For me, it’s such an odd-sounding word, like a child’s word. The word was used in Renaissance England as a term of abuse for prostitutes or courtesans. Iconoclastic Protestants would call Catholic statues of saints “puppets.” There is sometimes an element in the word of something trivial or unserious, or that carries contempt—as in “puppet government” or “puppet ruler.” But such contempt often pushes away a strange power that people feel in the puppet.

You introduce a sense of morbidity to puppetry, writing that puppets are “the closest thing we have in the ordinary human world to the transmigration of the soul.”

In some cultures, for instance in Bali, puppets spring from death, revivifying departed souls, ancient heroes as well as gods and clowns. In a sense, they mediate between the living and the dead. Puppets were often used as a means of communication with the dead. They could bring the dead back to life, give form to spirits or ghosts. They belong to a kind of being that’s neither quite living nor quite dead. They’re like spirits themselves

As objects whose “words or actions are more able to slip under the radar of official censorship,” are puppets also a means of protest, or satire, even subversion?

They have a sort of natural gift for comedy, satire, mockery–it’s a talent that puppets have. Often they’re amazingly poignant and serious, as in that version of King Lear, but there is a certain bent toward the grotesque or satirical. It’s part of the uncanniness of puppets. Remember that in the original book from 1881, Pinocchio smashed that moralizing cricket with a cobbler’s mallet. There is also a tradition of overtly political puppet theater, exemplified by a company that’s been running since the ’60s, the Bread and Puppet Theater, now based in Vermont. They did amazing grotesque morality plays using oversize puppets and masks as part of Vietnam War protests, and they recently did a show in New York on behalf of Occupy Wall Street.

You write, “To find life in objects returns us to life.” What do you mean?

That part of us that finds life in objects is an aspect of the child’s imagination and instinct that is later hidden or sometimes let go of in adulthood. It’s something children are indeed more adept at, finding life and voice in objects. Puppets awaken that part of us. They bring a part of us back to play.

Husna Haq is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

DISCOVERY

Following Friends to Where You Are

discoverySOCIAL PICTURE: Mapping sets of data drawn from posts to social networks like Twitter and Flickr (this one is by the Google mobile programmer Eric Fischer) can reveal unexpected and intriguing patterns. (Photo: Eric Fischer)

Are we known by the company we keep? Perhaps more so than ever before. Rochester computer scientists have shown that a great deal can be learned about people from their interactions in online social media, even when users hide their personal information.

Analyzing location data from the friends of users on the microblogging service Twitter, Henry Kautz, professor of computer science, Jeffrey Bigham, assistant professor of computer science, and graduate student Adam Sadilek were able to pinpoint the location of individual people with surprising particularity. In one study the researchers came within a 100-meter radius with 85 percent accuracy.

Their resulting paper, “Finding Your Friends and Following Them to Where You Are,” won the Best Paper Award at the Fifth Association for Computing Machinery International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining. The team hopes to apply the models to such tasks as tracking and predicting the spread of communicable diseases.

—Peter Iglinski

Is Homophobia Self-Phobia?

A new study finds that intense hostility toward homosexuals may be linked to a repressed same-sex attraction, combined with an authoritarian upbringing.

Though such factors aren’t the only cause of homophobia, the findings suggest those “who have a discrepancy within themselves about their expressed versus unconscious sexual attraction find gay and lesbian people more threatening and are more likely to express prejudice and discrimination toward them,” says Richard Ryan, professor of psychology. He and Netta Weinstein of the University of Essex in England coauthored the study, which was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study measured discrepancies between what people say about their sexual orientation and how they react during split-second timed tasks.

Ryan says the study may help explain the personal dynamics behind some bullying and hate crimes and shed light on high-profile cases in which public figures who have expressed antigay views have been caught engaging in same-sex sexual acts. People in denial about their sexual orientation may lash out because gay targets bring an internal conflict to the forefront, the authors note.

—Susan Hagen

discoveryNEW LOOK: Rochester scientists are giving astrocytes new attention. (Photo: N. Kedersha/Photo Researchers Inc.)

Astrocytes: No Longer Just ‘Brain Glue’

A type of cell long considered mainly the stuff that holds the brain together and often overlooked by scientists more interested in flashier cells such as neurons wields more power than had been realized, according to new research published in Science Signaling.

Rochester neuroscientists report that astrocytes are crucial for creating the proper environment for brains to work, playing a key role in reducing or stopping the electrical signals in brain activity, determining when cells called neurons fire and when they don’t.

“It turns out [astrocytes] can influence the actions of neurons in ways that have not been realized,” says Maiken Nedergaard, professor of neurosurgery and leader of the study.

The new research indicates that in addition to astrocytes’ well-known roles in cleaning up excess potassium, the cells can cause potassium levels around neurons to drop, stopping neuronal signaling.

—Tom Rickey

Sending an Elusive ‘Wireless’ Message

A group of scientists led by researchers from Rochester and North Carolina State University have for the first time sent a message using a beam of neutrinos, nearly massless particles that travel at almost the speed of light. The message was sent through 240 meters of stone and said simply, “Neutrino.”

Many have theorized about the possible uses of neutrinos in communication because of one particularly valuable property: they can penetrate almost anything they encounter.

While Kevin McFarland, a professor of physics who was involved in the experiment, says the idea of using neutrinos to communicate isn’t currently practical, the project is a first step toward demonstrating its possibility. The team performed their test at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab, outside Chicago.

The group has submitted its finding to the journal Modern Physics Letters A.

—Peter Iglinski

discoveryWING GROWTH: Differences between closely related wasp species N. giraulti (left) and N. vitripennis help explain important genetic processes, say Rochester biologists. (Illustration: Michael Osadciw)

Scientists Find a Key to Growth Differences Between Species

The wings of the tiny jewel wasp are providing big insights into how growth is regulated, Rochester biologists say. John (Jack) Werren, the Nathaniel and Helen Wisch Professor of Biology, and doctoral student David Loehlin have discovered that changes in expression of a well-known cell regulator gene—called “unpaired”—accounts for wing-growth differences between males of closely related wasp species. The finding could lead to better understanding of cell-growth regulation and the underlying causes of some diseases.

The gene responsible for the wing difference was isolated using a technique called positional cloning. The biologists note that their discovery illustrates the principle that animals—from insects to humans—often use the same “genetic toolkit,” despite immense differences in their biology. The findings were published in the journal Science.

—Peter Iglinski

Stopping the RAGE of Alzheimer’s

Researchers have taken another crack at a promising approach to stopping Alzheimer’s disease that encountered a major hurdle last year. In research published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, scientists report that they have developed a compound that targets a molecular actor, known as RAGE, that plays a central role in damaging the brain tissue of people with the disease.

Scientists at Rochester and the University of Southern California synthesized a compound that stops RAGE—which stands for Receptor for Advanced Glycation Endproducts—in mice, reversing amyloid deposits, restoring healthy blood flow to the brain, squelching inflammation, and making old, sick mice smarter. But the scientists caution that the work has a long way to go before it’s considered a possible treatment in people. A 2011 study of another compound designed to stop RAGE was halted when scientists had questions about the compound’s safety at high doses.

—Tom Rickey

IN BRIEF

Key University Leaders Begin Second Terms

Bradford Berk ’81M (MD/PhD), senior vice president and CEO of the Medical Center, has been reappointed for a second five-year term. A former chief of cardiology, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute, and chair of the Department of Medicine, Berk was first appointed CEO in 2008. During his tenure as CEO, federal research funding to the Medical Center reached an all-time high, and the Medical Center has opened a number of new facilities, including the Saunders Research Building and the Ambulatory Surgery Center. Inspired by his own experiences following a serious spinal cord injury in 2009, Berk has also driven the Medical Center to adopt a rigorous approach to patient- and family-centered care, an effort that is boosting patient satisfaction scores across the health system.

Ralph Kuncl, provost and executive vice president of the University, begins a second five-year term this spring. He has also been named the University’s chief research officer. First appointed provost in 2007, Kuncl has helped direct the University’s initiatives in high-performance computing, including the Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation, which facilitates access to high performance computational resources for University researchers. He also has led efforts in corporate research collaborations, multidisciplinary initiatives, diversity, and online education. He’s been responsible for reviews of deans, the library, approximately 150 faculty promotion or tenure decisions, sustainability, and faculty-driven learning assessment initiatives.

inbriefHIGH MARKS: Coached by Dan Geba (center), Vincent Yu ’14 (left), Douglas Miller ’15 (right), and Xiaoqing Tang ’12 (not pictured) finished 15th at the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Math Teams Add Up Top Finishes

For the fourth year in a row, a team from the University has placed among the top 15 in one of the nation’s most highly regarded mathematics competitions. The team of Xiaoqing Tang ’12, Vincent Yu ’14, and Douglas Miller ’15 finished 15th among 460 teams in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. They were coached by Dan Geba, associate professor of mathematics. A total of 4,440 students from 572 colleges participated in this year’s competition. Harvard took top honors, followed by Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, Stanford, and MIT.

Win at the Met Puts Eastman Student on Prestigious Stage

Eastman School graduate student Matthew Grills was one of five winners of the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions this spring. He and four other winners were chosen among nine finalists. His winning performance included the aria “Ah! Mes Amis!” from Donizetti’s opera La Fille du Regiment, an aria which, with nine high Cs, has been called “the Mount Everest for tenors”—and which Grills reprised a month later to win the 2012 Lotte Lenya Competition for singing and acting. Nearly 1,500 singers entered this year’s Met auditions, which are considered the most prestigious in North America for singers seeking to launch an operatic career. Past winners include Renée Fleming ’83E (MM), Susan Graham, and Jessye Norman.

—Helene Snihur

inbriefPLANNED SPACE: Rendering of the new Golisano Children’s Hospital (Photo: Ballinger)

Plans for New Golisano Children’s Hospital Taking Shape

Updated plans for a new Golisano Children’s Hospital emphasize spaces for gathering, playing, resting, and finding respite. “Our families are so dedicated to participating in the care of their children while they’re hospitalized that our nurses have to firmly remind them to take care of themselves, too,” says Nina Schor, the William H. Eilinger Chair of Pediatrics and pediatrician-in-chief at Golisano Children’s Hospital. “Having these services so close will make it easier for all our parents to stay rested and nourished.” Designed by the Philadelphia-based Ballinger architectural and engineering firm, the new $145-million tower, attached to Strong Memorial Hospital, will feature eight floors and nearly 245,000 square feet of space. Groundbreaking is planned for later this year, with an expected opening in 2015. For more about the plans, visit www.urmc.rochester.edu/childrens-hospital.

University Joins National Effort to Improve Science, Engineering Education

Rochester is joining a national effort to develop a new generation of college-level science and engineering faculty. The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching & Learning, which began in 2003 with a handful of universities, has expanded to include 25 of the nation’s top educational institutions. Supported by the National Science Foundation and headquartered at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the center’s mission is to improve the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at colleges across the country. As a member, Rochester will have access to the teaching and learning innovations of other network members, as well as a platform for sharing its own successes, including the peer-led workshop model, the WeBWorK online homework tool for math and science, and diversity-oriented approaches for creating an inclusive campus environment.

—Peter Iglinski

Walters and Ferguson Headline Meliora Weekend 2012

Famed journalist Barbara Walters, a correspondent for ABC News, the host of The Barbara Walters Specials, and creator, cohost, and executive producer of The View, will be the keynote speaker at Meliora Weekend on Oct. 13. Comedian Craig Ferguson of The Late Late Show on CBS will be the headline entertainer as part of the weekend’s activities for alumni reunion, homecoming, and family weekend. More than 5,000 attendees are expected for four days of lectures, performances, seminars, and social gatherings, Oct. 11 to 14. For more information, visit www.rochester.edu/melioraweekend.

Where Is Flat Pi?

Flat Pi—the mascot for the University’s Pi Week celebration—has begun a trip around the world to demonstrate the universality of the mathematical constant and the role of math in our lives. In a project of the Society of Undergraduate Mathematics Students (SUMS) that combined mathematics awareness and social media, the initiative provided math-minded people with copies of the paper icon and asked them to share photos of Flat Pi at sites around the world. As of the end of April, the mascot had been spotted in Alaska, Finland, South Africa, and Thailand. To follow Flat Pi, visit www.rochester.edu/news/flat-pi.

—Peter Iglinski

Team-Focused, Community-Minded

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

It’s often said that sports are a great way to foster leadership skills. At Rochester, athletes aren’t waiting until after graduation to put leadership in action.

During this spring semester, the men’s and women’s soccer teams, as well as the women’s lacrosse team, reached into the community to show how sports can help improve bodies, minds, and quality of life.

“There’s no better way for our team to get involved in the community than through sharing our passion with young girls,” says Bridget Lang ’13, a goalkeeper on the women’s soccer team from Robbinsville, N.J.

On May 5, the team ran a clinic for girls ages 6 to 12 in the Rochester City School District. The Yellowjackets taught basic skills to the girls—many of whom had never kicked a soccer ball—played matches, and took them on a tour of the River Campus.

The Yellowjackets hope the clinic will lead to the formation of a girls team as part of the Riverflow Soccer Club, the only travel soccer club in the city of Rochester, which is currently made up only of boys’ teams.

In February, the men’s soccer team helped bring about the first Yellowjacket Cup soccer tournament to raise money for the Riverflow Soccer Club, as well as Grassroot Soccer Rochester, a University-wide student organization that brings evidence-based programs using sports to serve at-risk youths.

“The turnout was wonderful,” says Josh Richards ’12, of Grassroot Soccer Rochester. “We had 24 teams play in a World Cup–style tournament with group stages, then knockout rounds.”

And in April, the women’s lacrosse team teamed up with Friends of Jaclyn, an organization founded in 2004 by the family of then nine-year-old lacrosse player Jaclyn Murphy. The organization matches pediatric brain tumor patients with sponsoring sports teams. Sporting “Friends of Jaclyn” T-shirts in the warm-up before a game against Vassar College, the women joined Vassar players in honoring eight-year-old Grace Leva.

HIGHLIGHTS

Rounding Up a Busy Spring

By Dennis O’Donnell

inrev_sportsBASEBALL: Jon Menke ’13 earned UAA and Liberty League honors for a 7–0 shutout in April. (Photo: Athletics & Recreation)

A busy spring for the University’s athletic teams included several highlights. Softball has returned to a position of prominence by attaining a regional ranking. The men’s and women’s tennis teams have worked their way through a schedule pockmarked with some of the strongest teams in the nation. And golf is competing for a potential NCAA bid.

As April came to a close, here’s a rundown of some of the spring’s highlights:

Baseball: The Yellowjackets went into the last two weekends of the regular season trying to battle their way into a Liberty League playoff spot. In late April, Rochester beat 18th-ranked Ithaca on the road, then earned two victories over Vassar in the final at-bat. Jon Menke ’13 threw a three-hit shutout over Clarkson to reap three individual awards. Adam Sullivan ’13 was the team’s closer with three saves and just one earned run allowed in 11 innings of work. Ethan Sander ’14 was the top hitter, averaging .333. Nick Carlson ’14 led the team in home runs (3) and RBIs (16).

Golf: Nick Palladino ’14 won the UAA individual championship with an association record low score of 137 for 36 holes. He is the first man to win back-to-back UAA golf titles in the 25-year history of the UAA. Rochester was third at the NYU/Manhattanville Invitational and third at the McDaniel Spring Invitational. The Yellowjackets faced RPI in the first round of the Liberty League championships (match-play format) to determine which team would get the league’s automatic bid to NCAAs.

Lacrosse: Rochester had a nice three-player attack in Niki Holmes ’12 (19 goals, 8 assts., 27 pts.), Liza Maizel ’13 (20-5-25), and Lindsey Randall ’14 (16-4-20). The Yellowjackets defeated Becker College in Myrtle Beach, S.C., then returned north and posted a win over Bard College in Liberty League play.

Rowing: The Yellowjackets broke into the national rankings at No. 13 after a series of strong performances in March and early April. In successive weekends, they defeated both Ithaca and WPI, who were in the national poll. Two big races loom in May: the New York State championships, May 5–6, and the Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia, May 11–12.

inrev_sportsSOFTBALL: All–UAA selection Nina Korn ’14 (Photo: Athletics & Recreation)

Softball: Rochester earned the No. 2 seed for the Liberty League championships with an 8-2 record in league games. The Yellowjackets wrapped up April with a 25-12 record and were ranked third in the Northeast region by the NCAA Division III softball committee. Nina Korn ’14 (.375) and Meg Hennessy ’14 (.339) led a lineup with five .300 hitters. Korn had seven home runs by late April. Brittany Grage ’15 had six. A strong pitching nucleus revolved around Grage (9–4), Sarah Wayson ’15 (9–4), and Maddie Skellie ’13 (6–4).

Tennis: The Yellowjacket women’s team was 8–4 heading into the UAA championships in Florida in late April. Frances Tseng ’13 was ranked No. 6 regionally and No. 45 nationally as a singles player. Rochester’s record included wins over Whittier College, Ithaca, William Smith, and St. Lawrence. The men’s team was 6–14, ranked No. 18 regionally.

Track & Field: James Vavra ’12 and Lauren Norton ’12 competed at the Penn Relays in late April, trying to secure a berth in the NCAA championships. Vavra ran in the 10,000 meters, Norton in the 5,000 meters. At the Alumni Invitational, Rochester earned a total of 18 qualifiers for the ECAC championships–nine apiece for men and women. At the Cortland Classic, the women’s 4x400 relay ran the second fastest time in school history and the 19th fastest time in Division III in 2012. Rochester was getting set to host the New York State championships as May began.

O’Donnell is director of communications for the Department of Athletics and Recreation.

Tinkerer, Scholar, Hacker, Innovator

New initiatives aim to guide the creative energies of Rochester undergraduates in digital media and in engineering innovation.

By Scott Hauser

fea_digitalmediaROLL ‘TAPE’: Setting up their own equipment in practice rooms in Spurrier Gym, Jared Suresky ’12 (singing), Kevin Layden ’13 (left), Noah Berg ’12, Andrew Tomich ’14, and the rest of the Midnight Ramblers have recorded nine CDs, teaching themselves how to use new technology. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

For more than a week in May, Andrew Tomich ’14, Jared Suresky ’12, and other members of the Midnight Ramblers will hole up in makeshift recording booths in the basement of Spurrier Gym. There, over the course of back-to-back, 12- to 15-hour days, they will haul into the building their own microphones, their own portable recording system, computers loaded with professional software, and other equipment to record up to a dozen new songs.

At the end of the marathon sessions, the members of the a cappella group will emerge, bleary-eyed—maybe a little hoarse—but with a laptop containing the gist of their 10th “studio” album. The do-it-yourself method is how the Ramblers have recorded all nine of their albums over the last decade: on their own, late into the night, with their own equipment.

They have no faculty members to guide them, no tech support crew to troubleshoot problems, and no formal training in how to record digital music. They have just their own desire to create a collection of music they can share with their fans.

“We keep teaching ourselves how to do it,” says Tomich, a biomedical engineering major from Cleveland. “A lot of what we’ve learned is through experimentation, and through one generation of Ramblers handing off the knowledge to another generation.

“We kind of make do,” he says.

And make do very well. With albums regularly selected as among the best in the collegiate a cappella world, the Ramblers are something of an ongoing digital media enterprise. In addition to recording their own tracks (they rely on a professional engineering company to mix the albums), they conceive, record, and produce their own videos, and they oversee their own advertising and communications effort. All done digitally on their own equipment.

As the tools—the cameras, computers, software—that used to be available to only the most sophisticated professional have become practically standard on introductory laptops, if not on smartphones, students at Rochester and across the country are teaching themselves how to create their own artistic, personal, and professional digital portfolios.

And they take on the projects because they want to, regardless of their majors or whether they’ve taken classes or been formally trained in digital media. It’s not just for film geeks or photo mavens or computer jocks any more.

Couple that ubiquity with the 24/7, can-do, let’s-make-something-cool spirit that’s contagious among college students, and academic leaders say the University is poised not just to make advances in the world of digital media and art, but also to help rekindle a spirit of innovation.

Tom DiPiero, dean for humanities and interdisciplinary studies, says one of the hallmarks of students who have grown up in the Internet era is that they’re immune to the notion that creativity is bound within individual disciplines. Riffing on the British scientist C. P. Snow’s famous critique of academia and the danger of compartmentalization, DiPiero says students don’t think in terms of “two cultures” any longer, if they ever did.

“Any of us who are older still think in terms of the divides—the arts and humanities side and the science and engineering side,” says DiPiero. “That’s not how kids think today. They might have a predilection toward one or the other side of things, but they don’t think in those kinds of boxes.”

In an effort to further strengthen the connections among intellectual interests, Arts, Sciences & Engineering is launching a multipronged initiative this spring with the goal of providing students with an academic and cocurricular home for their multidisciplinary interests.

The clearest manifestation is a new building, which campus planners hope to break ground on later this year, that will house state-of-the-art space for students to explore, create, and study digital media, including video and audio production, website technology, and mobile applications.

Built to connect with Morey Hall, the new building will provide much of the technologically equipped studio space for two new majors designed to give students an academic structure to channel their interests in the arts, humanities, and digital technology. One major, in digital media studies, has begun enrolling students for the fall; the second, in audio and music engineering, is expected to be approved soon.

DiPiero says the new major in digital media is designed to give students a liberal arts grounding in perspectives about narrative, analysis, video production, film history, media, technology, and other humanistic approaches, complemented with production-oriented classes in video, audio, Web, and other technologies.

Such a program will not only improve the digital skills of students, but will also provide them with a broad perspective to think critically about the technology around them, he says.

“If you know the history, if you know the aesthetics, you are much more likely to be able to produce something that people will want to watch,” says DiPiero. “But we also want to address the fact that every educated adult needs to be both a critical reader of media—that is, they need to know how to look at media, how to understand them historically, socially, and even aesthetically—and at the same time, they need to know something about how to produce these forms of media.”

Tomich of the Ramblers says having a broader sense of the history and aesthetics of media production would only improve the quality of the group’s productions.

“As a non-major, I’m interested in those things; as a user I’m interested in those things,” he says. “If it was a major, I’d still be interested in those things. Knowing where things have come from enables you to create better work.

“I would have no qualms about taking a history class to understand why we have what we have, and how it has progressed to this point. I think that’s really cool.”

The idea of channeling student inquisitiveness and innovation guides a second main component of the new building—a state-of-the-art “studio for engineers”—known as the fabrication center, or “fab lab,” where students can fabricate prototypes and work with materials for shaping ideas into products.

Rob Clark, dean of the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, says the design of the fab lab and its placement within the new building acknowledges that innovative ideas come from across the spectrum of students.

He, too, has seen a trend among students to bridge what traditionally have been seen as distinct disciplines. For example, last year, when a computer-aided design course required for mechanical engineering students was mistakenly listed in the course schedule as having no prerequisites, the first 25 to 30 seats were filled with arts and sciences students. The Hajim School had to offer a second section to accommodate the additional demand.

Clark attributes the enrollment to students’ interest in the gaming industry and the growth of virtual online worlds, but he says it’s a fitting example of how students approach new technologies.

“Students here and at other institutions are less driven by the requirements and constraints put on any particular discipline,” Clark says. “They are interested in learning what they’re curious about at the time. They’re less interested in the boundaries between disciplines. I think this space creates an opportunity to say, ‘We encourage that.’”

Bradley Halpern ’12, president of the Students’ Association, says students have long been tinkering with media production, particularly campus performing groups who produce video and audio projects. Regardless of major, students think nothing of drawing on other disciplines to figure out how to solve a problem.

“People are starting to realize that you need crossdisciplinary study to solve the world’s problems,” says Halpern. “It’s a way of thinking that makes us, as students, more capable and more likely to take that approach when we’re in the workforce.”

An engineer, Halpern is focusing his major on human-computer interaction, a field that explores the social, cultural, and psychological ways that people interact with technology and how to improve that experience. He draws on his interests in computers, political science, music, and other fields as he explores ways to make technology more user-friendly.

fea_digitalmediaDESIGNING TIMES: Computer science professor Jeff Bigham says technologists have begun to recognize the contributions of humanists and social scientists in making technology more user-friendly. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Halpern works with Jeff Bigham, an assistant professor of computer science who helped draft the new major in digital media studies. Bigham says technological fields like computer engineering are just beginning to recognize how much artists, psychologists, and humanists can bring to the design of technology.

The new initiatives can only spark more collaboration among students, who, he agrees, no longer think in terms of “us” and “them” when it comes to digital culture.

“We older people might think that there are two groups,” he says. “Younger people are just thinking, I’m a digital media person and I might sample from computer science or I might sample from art and art history. They’re already doing it; why not just formalize it?”

Bigham notes that the willingness of students to explore the potential of technological tools is not new. Such creativity lies at the heart of what most people think of as “hacking,” or the nonmalicious approach of taking a gadget apart, figuring out how it works, and using its concepts and parts to create something new. In that sense, the arts and humanities are particular hotspots right now, he says.

“It used to be the computer scientists who were going off and gluing together hardware, and they were writing their own software to do stuff that they thought was cool, to get stuff done,” Bigham says. “Now, we’ve matured as a discipline; we have all this stuff. Now it’s the artists, who don’t have formal training in computer science or in electrical engineering, who are taking whatever they can find, gluing it together in whatever way they want to be able to achieve whatever art they want to create. They are the ones who are doing the hacking that really started with computer programming.”

For his part, Clark wouldn’t mind rekindling the idea that being a good engineer means being a good tinkerer.

As do other engineering administrators around the country, Clark notes that the profession’s success in making sure that students are mathematically prepared and comfortable working with computer technology has lessened the likelihood that incoming engineering students have experience in developing, producing, or improving physical products.

“Our students come in with great math and science skills,” he says. “That’s true across the field of engineering. It’s generational. But part of education is always to find the components of the things that someone needs to learn to succeed in a particular career. In engineering part of what you need to succeed is to understand how things work. To do that, you need to be able to take things apart or put them together and to conceive design.

“I want to encourage engineering students to use the space as an art student would use an art studio. If you’re a sophomore and you have an idea of some widget you want to build, then you should be able to figure out what tools you need to use to build the device and be able to go into the lab and build it.”

Cary Peppermint, assistant professor of art and art history, says artists have traditionally been willing to do exactly that—go into a studio and use the tools at hand to pursue an artistic vision. What’s new is that the technology is different and the approaches to art tend to be more collaborative and interactive than they’ve been in the past.

He’s the founder of an artistic collective that uses technology such as GPS programs, Web interfaces, and social media to analyze and question modern society’s connections with nature.

In his classes, he and his students explore ways to repurpose technologies to create new artistic works and to develop interactions between artists, viewers, and art.

“The collaborative and interdisciplinary component is different from an artist’s perspective,” he says. In contrast to the stereotypical image of the lone artist, most digital art requires a group of programmers, graphic designers, artists, digital video, and sound producers.

“No one can be an expert in all those things,” Peppermint says. “It’s a new way of working. That’s very exciting.”

fea_digitalmediaSTUDIO ARTIST: Nicolette Howell ’13, a studio arts major from Dacula, Ga., says an introductory class on digital art piqued her interest in learning more about how she can use technology to broaden the range of artistic expression she can bring to her photographic work. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

One of the students in Peppermint’s introduction to digital art class, Nicolette Howell ’13, says she’s used to tinkering as a studio arts major interested in photography. The brooding images in a recent portfolio of her work hide a menagerie of menacing shapes and shadows within swirls of computer-enhanced smoke. All created with imagination, vision—and software.

Like generations of photographers and artists before her, the junior from Dacula, Ga., is learning to experiment with her medium and her equipment to get the results she sees in her mind’s eye.

She’s already acquainted herself with Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and other commercial-level image and design programs. In the course on digital art last winter, she used software to animate her images so that they moved as viewers clicked them on a computer screen.

The project was her first effort at interactive art, and it piqued her interest in improving her skills with increasingly advanced technology. She doesn’t want to be a computer programmer, but she does want to know enough about software to help express her artistic ideas.

Says Howell: “I always think that learning about more things will make my work better.”

Introducing Digital Media Studies

Rochester is the perfect place to explore the connections between digital technology, critical analysis, production, and innovation, says Tom DiPiero, dean for humanities and interdisciplinary studies.

With its collegial campus, Rochester is known for its interdisciplinary approach to the liberal arts. Couple that with a tradition of expertise in imaging and entrepreneurship and ties to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and the time is right to focus on connections between digital technology and the arts.

“What we’re doing is addressing the fact that digital media are going to represent the new literacy for the 21st century,” says DiPiero. “That doesn’t mean that everybody has to be a whiz-bang, whiz-kid Web designer. But it does mean that in future employment possibilities, in the future of academia, of writing, more and more of the kinds of language, the kinds of thinking that we produce is going to be tied to these forms of digital media.

“So what we’re trying to do with this program is recognize the need to be a critical consumer of media as well as a savvy producer of media.”

The newest major in the College, the program was approved by New York State early this year. Students will begin taking courses in the program this fall.

The major incorporates disciplines from the arts and humanities as well as from engineering. Majors are required to take at least 12.5 courses across a wide spectrum of analysis, history, production, and technology courses, including at least 5.5 courses based in the humanities and 7 courses based in the natural sciences and engineering, or vice versa.

During their final year in the program, students will work in small groups to complete a capstone project that combines the approaches, ideas, and skills that they learned throughout the major.

“It’s one of very few majors that we have found across the country that combines the study, analysis, and interpretation of the media with its production,” says DiPiero. “Something else that distinguishes it is that it has a year-long capstone project in which all of the students in the major—they form a cohort—will bring an idea for a digital media object from its conceptualization through its production to fruition.”

DiPiero expects between 20 to 25 students a year to declare a major in the new program, but he admits the College won’t have a clear idea of the interest for a few semesters.

While the major will take advantage of the computer, recording, and fabrication studios in a new building, which is expected to open in 2013, instruction for the major will mostly take place in other campus classrooms.

“The building is designed as lab space, not as classroom space,” he says.

And while students who graduate as digital media majors may gravitate toward employment in communications, entertainment, and computers, DiPiero says the skills students learn in the program will give them the broad perspective of a grounding in liberal arts.

“Students will have the critical thinking and writing skills of liberal arts and the technical skills of engineering and production,” he says. “You don’t see these skills combined very often. We’re excited about that.”

—Scott Hauser

Designed for Collaboration

dms_side2 (Illustration: Steve Boerner for Rochester Review)

Much like its “embracing arm” that curves gently between Morey and Lattimore Halls, plans for a new campus building call for a welcoming, collaborative space where students from arts and sciences and from engineering can tinker with their ideas, explore their hunches, and work together in ways that foster an innovative and collaborative spirit.

Designed by the Boston-based architectural firm of Goody Clancy, the proposed 18,000-square-foot building would feature studio, production, fabrication, and small group meeting spaces over three floors, all connected by a glass-filled atrium.

Conceived as a space that would be open 24 hours a day, the building is designed with the understanding that inspiration—especially when it comes to creative and innovative projects—doesn’t strike at regularly scheduled times. Funding for the project will come from a combination of University resources and philanthropic gifts through The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester. For more information about the Campaign, visit http://campaign.rochester.edu.

What We Talk about When We Talk about Time

How do scholars and scientists from different disciplines think about time? That was the focus of the inaugural Ferrari Humanities Symposia.

By Kathleen McGarvey

fea_ferrarisymposiumSTOP TIME: How the arts, sciences, and engineering think about time was the focus of the first Ferrari Humanities Symposia, an annual initiative to explore multidisciplinary issues in the humanities. (Photo: iStockphoto)

Ask physicists what comes to mind when they think about time, and you’re likely to get an answer that’s worlds away from the answer you would get from historians. Or musicians. Or philosophers.

Every discipline in the University has its own particular way of thinking about time.

“We measure time by years, days, hours, and minutes, and in spans as large as a geological era or as small as a femtosecond,” says Tom DiPiero, dean for humanities and interdisciplinary studies. “Precise measurement of time is crucial in fields as diverse as physics, music, religion, and history. But there is a tremendous divergence between the ways we measure time and the varying, sometimes competing, ways that diverse cultures and different historical periods experience—and use—time.”

Bringing such wide-ranging perspectives together to explore a broad theme that touches many academic disciplines is the goal of a new, annual initiative supported by Bernard ’70, ’74M (MD) and Linda Gaddis Ferrari. Structured this spring around the broad theme of time, the inaugural Ferrari Humanities Symposia featured a multidisciplinary course titled The Art and Science of Time and a public lecture by prominent historian Anthony Grafton on the scholarship of early European chronology. During this spring’s course,

nine faculty members from six disciplines led discussions, exploring how their disciplines conceive of time, how those conceptions have influenced work in their fields, and how our conceptions of time have changed over, well, time. We asked a few of the participating faculty members to provide a glimpse of how their disciplines think about time.

Medieval Studies: ‘The Secularization of Time?’

Richard Kaeuper, Department of History

That a historical period called the Middle Ages—say 500 to 1500—existed is a product of our dividing up continuous historical time. Though created by negative value judgments of later humanists and Protestant historians, it actually holds together and can be given a completely different valence. Far from a static or uniform “dark age,” it created fundamental aspects of European civilization, especially from roughly the “renaissance of the 12th century”—demographic and urban take-off, increased trade, governing institutions and legal innovation, universities, cathedrals, vernacular epic and romance literature (to touch only some aspects). If the later medieval centuries endured the Plague and destabilizing warfare, many of the achievements continued into more modern times.

A noted scholar, Jacques le Goff, argues that the great growth of Europe required the secularization of time in order to allow “usury”—the selling of time through interest on loans and mercantile endeavor in general, mistrusted formally by clerics. Early commercial capitalism, far from representing popular set will, generated fears and uncertainties within the population at large. In practice, elite clerics enthusiastically employed merchant-bankers.

The technological measurement of time in this era is equally interesting. Moving beyond ancient water clocks and sundials, medieval fabricators created a wealth of mechanical clocks, especially from the utilization of a suitable escapement mechanism by late decades of the 13th century. The age was technologically innovative. Richard of Wallingford is just one example of that inventive spirit: the orphaned son of a blacksmith and an Oxford-trained abbot, Wallingford in the 1330s wrote astronomical and mathematical treatises (one on spherical trigonometry) despite the lack of good numerical notation, thus requiring him to explain all ideas in Latin prose. He built a machina mundi, a mechanical cosmographical “clock” that not only rang hours, but also showed planetary motion.

Over the next century clocks appeared prominently around Europe and helped to regulate life, even as they demonstrated medieval inventiveness.

Religion: ‘In and Out of Time’

Emil Homerin, Department of Religion and Classics

Time may be a fundamental dimension of the universe or an innate structure of the mind. But, in terms of religion, time is relative to something much, much bigger: eternity.

Religions have often sought to understand the connection between this timeless infinity and our finite temporal lives. Worship, prayer, revelation, and enlightenment are religious activities and states of mind that often aim to transcend the duality of space and time in order to approach and, perhaps, merge with an eternal reality. Though eternity may be forever timeless, finite creation exists in time, though time’s direction may vary depending on religious traditions. Time may be linear or circular, progressive, static, or degenerative, and time’s direction may profoundly shape a believer’s view of the world. Many ancient and tribal religions have often viewed time as cyclical and bound up with the rhythms of the natural world, with the alternation of day and night, the changing seasons, and the phases of the moon. Other religions, especially the monotheistic traditions, generally conceive of time as linear, with a sequence of moments composing a meaningful history in which God is often depicted as acting purposefully.

Yet, no matter if a religion conceives of time as linear, circular, or both, the limited temporal world can still assist the believer in transcending time for eternity. With such a view, believers may spend their lifetimes living in a spiritually meaningful way. For all religions, one’s time in the world, then, has a direct effect on one’s contact with eternity, and various religious traditions have designed rites and rituals to assist their followers in leading a proper life marked by sacred times. These occasions are often part of annual communal rites and rituals that revolve around holy days and other sacred times that serve to spiritually renew or re-create the world. Further, mystical traditions in many religions urge us to step out of time in moments of selflessness, receptivity, and union not in order to see new worlds, but to see our old world anew.

Optics: ‘A Snapshot of Now’

Carlos Stroud, The Institute of Optics

We generally think of the present, or “now,” as a moving boundary between the past and the future. As a boundary it would seem not to have any duration of its own. However, the limitations of human perception only allow one to determine which of two events came first if they are separated by more than about 1/20th of a second. Thus, one might reasonably argue that “now” lasts about that long. Technological advances in the past 150 years have allowed us to artificially expand the boundaries of “now” from the age of the universe, 1017 seconds (about 14 billion years) to the duration of the shortest laser pulse produced to date, 10–17 seconds. Our perception of reality changes completely depending on the duration of our “now.”

The argument is illustrated by a simple experiment using a picture of highway traffic, shown with exposure times ranging from 4 seconds to 1/4000th second. On long exposures, the cars vanish; on short exposures, we see a grainy picture due to the arrival of individual quanta of light, photons. With an exposure time of a few centuries, the highway vanishes, and at an exposure of a few tens of thousands of years, the river alongside it vanishes. Eventually even the solar system will vanish from our imagined picture.

Such ideas prompt a series of questions: Has our increasingly precise ability to define “now” changed our fundamental perception of reality? Do individual humans vanish on the time scale of eternity? Could intelligent creatures exist on time scales much different from ours? What are the time scales of nations and those of individual people generally? The speed with which information is communicated has increased from walking speed to the speed of light. How does this affect the relation between time and distance?

Media Studies: ‘Televisual Time’

Joel Burges, Department of English, Film and Media Studies

As a critic whose work is obsessed with temporality in the present, I am interested in exploring the narrative structures that give rhythm and tempo to the experience of television.

For me, TV is all about time. I devote a big chunk of my free time to it. And I am only one among many. As writer Clay Shirky has pointed out, Americans spend billions of hours annually in front of the “boob tube.” This is a debt of time that in a decade rivals the national debt that politicians have bemoaned so much these past couple of years.

The series I most love often require a temporal commitment not only to a season, but also to a series. The TV industry also thinks about TV in terms of time. Almost every episode we watch is constructed around a series of “beats”—industry-speak for scenes—typically no longer that 2.5 minutes that give a rhythm to the 30- and 60-minute shows we watch in huge numbers every day. All of this is to say that TV is defined by a medium-specific temporal magnitude: the broadcast signal is—or was—ongoing across many channels 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

How does an episode of Community that can be watched independently of any other episode of the series organize televisual time for us? How does a nonlinear series such as Damages play with our temporal expectations about the way televisual narration should work? How are both Community and Damages shaped by commercial time—that is, by the fact that almost every episode of almost every series is structured around advertisements that occur at predetermined moments? Are there types of time on television that are neither commercial nor narrative? In investigating these questions, I hope to get students to reflect on the centrality of TV to not just millions and millions of spectators’ sense of time in the past 65 years, but also to their own temporal sense now.

A Tour of Time

fea_ferrari_side2TIME SETTERS: Early European efforts to study chronology offer a model for interdisciplinary study today, says Grafton. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

When Anthony Grafton, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton, took the lectern to deliver the inaugural keynote lecture of the Ferrari Humanities Symposia, he took the audience that crowded the Hawkins-Carlson Room at Rush Rhees Library on a dizzying tour of early modern Europe’s efforts at chronology. How did scholars reconstruct ancient calendars, and reconcile biblical accounts of the past with other depictions of bygone events?

“Chronology transformed the study of history,” Grafton told his listeners, calling the historical effort “more cosmopolitan than what would be taught until the 20th century.”

“I think this is a kind of model for how to think about interdisciplinary study now,” he said.

Grafton’s lecture, titled “Maps of Time: Science, Scholarship, and History in Early Modern Europe,” launched a course for undergraduates called The Art and Science of Time that was taught by nine faculty members from six departments, including art, physics, and English.

The author of 10 books and the coauthor, coeditor, or translator of nine others, Grafton has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Balzan Prize for History of Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award. He was president of the American Historical Association in 2011. His research focuses on the cultural history of Renaissance Europe, the history of books and readers, the history of scholarship and education in the West from antiquity to the 19th century, and the history of science from antiquity to the Renaissance.

—Kathleen McGarvey

‘Bringing Knowledge Together’

fea_ferrari_side1NAMESAKES: A multidisciplinary outlook is key to understanding issues facing society, says Bernard Ferrari who, along with his wife, Linda, provided support to establish the symposia series. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

While an undergraduate studying science at Rochester, Bernard Ferrari ’70, ’74 (MD) took a course in medieval and Renaissance-era architecture and art. It kindled in him an enduring interest in the period and an appreciation for the arts and humanities.

Now Bernard Ferrari—a member of the Board of Trustees—and his wife, Linda Gaddis Ferrari, have established a humanities symposia and related curricula to explore collaborations between art and science. Thanks to their generous gift, which supports the $1.2 billion Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester, students, faculty and the public will take part in the Ferrari Humanities Symposia yearly.

The symposia will feature a public talk from a visiting scholar with expertise in humanistic thought from the 14th to 17th centuries. The visiting scholar also will participate in courses designed to complement the lecture. This year’s visiting scholar, Anthony Grafton—the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton—shared his most recent research project, on the science of chronology in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.

A Rochester native, Bernard Ferrari earned a law degree and an MBA while working as the chief operating officer of the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. He went on to have a nearly 20-year career as director and partner in the global management consulting firm of McKinsey & Company. A former medical researcher and banker, Linda Gaddis Ferrari is now a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“The study of the humanities provides people with the ability to better appreciate beauty, and better appreciate life,” says Bernard Ferrari, adding that the humanities are also relevant “to solving today’s problems when that knowledge is brought together with science and other disciplines.”

“Through the symposia, we hope to create another opportunity for students at the University to study, appreciate, and reflect on an extraordinary piece of history, while creating new collaborations for students in different academic disciplines,” he says.

—Valerie Alhart

Got Any Advice?

A new member of the Rochester alumni community calls on the collective wisdom of her fellow alumni as she prepares to leave campus.

By Maya Dukmasova ’12 (T5)

advice (Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

In the fall of my freshman year, Paul Burgett ’68E, ’76E (PhD) gave me and my classmates a piece of advice that I really took to heart. During one of his charismatic talks, the University dean advised us to seek out satisfaction in life, rather than happiness. No one can be happy all of the time, he noted; indeed, life never affords anyone that luxury.

Satisfaction, on the other hand, is the real barometer of your quality of life; it is having enough. To leave the dinner table full, but not painfully so.

After half a decade at Rochester, I am graduating this May. When I look back, I am clearly not the me I was in the fall of 2007, but Dean Burgett’s advice has stayed with me throughout my time on campus. As I prepared to leave Rochester, I turned to him and to other alumni, hoping to get their advice for the next phase of my life as a member of the University community.

With the help of Review and the Office of Alumni Relations, I called on the collective wisdom of generations of Rochester alumni. Dozens of people responded to my phone calls and emails. I asked the seemingly simple question: Do you have any advice for the graduating Class of 2012?

In the spirit of a commencement ceremony, alumni shared their thoughts across a spectrum of themes—love, career, communication, and more. The result is at times inspiring, at times sobering; as light-hearted and optimistic as it is cautionary and serious.

Career: ‘Passion, Ability Drive Ambition’

When I mentioned to Dean Burgett how much his talk five years ago had stuck with me, he reminded me that for most students, our choice of major has no real bearing on what we do in life. The point of college is to find our passions and then work hard to master them. “Passion and ability drive ambition,” he said. But that doesn’t mean, he reiterated, that our goals in life should be driven solely by a desire for happiness. “Life is too complex to reduce its objective to something like happiness. Because life has pain, it has sorrow, it has disappointment, it has failure, and none of us is immune to any of those things. Happiness is like a butterfly. A butterfly flutters around me and occasionally will treat me by landing on my shoulder, but I can’t own it. Happiness, whatever that word means, is not a constant.”

“Don’t be afraid to move in a new direction which appears and was not part of your original goal. Arriving at goals is not as important as enjoying and fulfilling yourself as you move toward them”—Pat Kraut Mossel ’55, former executive director of the Washington Opera and an instructor at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Delaware in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

“Stay positive, as it will serve you always”—Terri Feinglass Ross ’55, a real estate agent in Rochester.

“Keep your mind open to possibilities and you can accomplish anything you set your mind to do”—Patricia Dundon Larrabee ’77 (MS), founder and CEO of Rochester Clinical Research Inc. in Penfield, N.Y.

“Carve out at least a half an hour of time every day to read something that is thought provoking. And it does not have to be something related to your own field”—Les Loysen ’60, a nonprofit organization consultant in Middletown, N.J.

Ethics: ‘Your Personal Integrity Is Really the Only Thing You Have’

Regardless of the field in which we choose to focus our lives, alumni put a high priority on a strong commitment to ethical standards.

Speaking directly to Hajim School of Engineering graduates, Joe Carson ’76, an engineer for the Department of Energy in Knoxville, Tenn., said: “There are significant and persistent deficiencies to the scope and implementation of engineering ethics and, as a result, our profession enables much institutional evil around the world. My challenge to you—on your commencement as members of the engineering profession—is what can or should Meliora mean, given the significant and persistent deficiencies in the scope and implementation of engineering ethics.”

“Make sure you leave the University with a deep understanding of ethics, morality, and an appreciation of the extent to which history, ethnicity, culture, and economics give rise to the meaning of globalization in different countries”—J. Nelson Hoffman ’55, CEO of Rice Manufacturing in Snowmass Village, Colo.

“Your personal integrity is really the only thing you have, and it will last, and people will remember that. You’ll be judged on the quality of your work and not whether you outshine the person in the next office”—Robert Scala ’58M (PhD), a retired senior scientific advisor at Exxon Corp., now living in Tucson, Ariz.

“There are so many needs in the community and so many ways that a graduate of our University can help. We should all plan to participate in giving back throughout our lives to make the world a better place for everyone”—Carol Bieck Henretta ’62N (MS), ’94W (EdD), assistant professor emerita of clinical nursing at the School of Nursing.

Relationships: ‘Don’t Neglect Them’

Theresa Guenther ’90, an associate court attorney in Erie County Family Court, says it’s easy to dismiss the importance of other people’s perspectives. “I would urge students going out into the world to realize that everyone they come into contact with has something to offer; remember that, and respect others.”

“After 30 years of consulting with people and organizations, I have come to believe that success in anything you do—anything you do—is based on creating, developing and maintaining effective and meaningful relationships”—Jerry Gardner ’58, ’65 (MA), an executive coach in Atlanta, who specializes in following up on the “360- Degree Feedback” process.

“Do not neglect the importance of positive relationships with friends and family. This seems so trivial, but over the next few years, the memories you have with your classmates will be the ones that sustain you in the trenches of the real world. Preserve them, cherish them, and continue to nurture them”—Rene Herbert ’05, a program and budget analyst for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Silver Spring, Md.

“I realize it sounds very elementary, but proper communication is one of the most important components in a successful, productive career. And a good marriage between husband and wife. If I could go back to enhance my education and better myself, I would have taken a course in communication. I would have improved my diction, my enunciation of words, and the pace and cadence of how I spoke”—Howard Silbersher ’60, a retired family dentist from Princeton, N.J.

“You will meet individuals in the workplace who are not always supportive. This can be because of lots of subjective and irrational feelings—resentment, envy, etc. Just try to ignore them”—Chita Angeli Duval ’57, ’78W (EdD), an educational consultant from Eastham, Mass.

Networking: ‘Every Person You Meet Is a Connection’

As a recent graduate, Alvin Lomibao ’09, an academic associate at North Shore-LIJ Health System in Manhasset, N.Y., knows all about making the transition from college life. “Be aggressive in networking—every person you meet is a connection that might help you further down the road,” he wrote.

“Two words: Burt Nadler. He has been instrumental in helping me meet my career goals. As alumni, we are so fortunate to have access to experts like Burt and other individuals at the UR Career Center”—Mary Delbalso Salter ’04, ’07M (MPH), a social worker at Strong Memorial Hospital, referring to the director of the Gwen M. Greene Career and Internship Center at the University.

“Network, network, network. Always take advantage of getting to know your classmates, colleagues, and peers”—Jonathan Mahoney ’03, a credit risk manager, and Amy O’Byrne ’04, an elementary school teacher, in Buffalo, N.Y.

“Networking with people from different backgrounds expands your knowledge base and prepares you for a diverse world”—Malik Evans ’02, president of an M&T Bank branch in Rochester and president of the Rochester City School Board.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: ‘Be Prepared to Create an Industry’

Gregory Meditz ’08, a law student at American University in Washington, D.C., is convinced that the economic and personal challenges our generation faces will forge us into stronger, better people. “Surround yourself with people who make you happy, and never stop setting goals for yourself, including moving into your own place!”

“You are going to have to do real tough work to get ahead; no more easy opportunities to the top of any industry”—Thomas Kraus ’05, ’07 (MS), an optical scientist in Springfield, Va.

“Don’t hesitate to change even midstream if it’s something you don’t like. Nowadays we live so much longer than we used to; we’ve got time”—Mark Zaid ’89, an attorney in Washington, D.C.

“The idea of coming out of college and finding a job somewhere, I think that’s a dying concept. I think the mentality should be to be prepared to create an industry, to create some sort of marketable skill that you can use to employ yourself”—Henri Muhammad ’98, who after graduating from the College’s Department of Music, opened his own music school in Buffalo.

“You will probably spend half of your weekday working hours—8 out of every 16 hours—at a job for decades. So, unless you truly wish to waste your entire working life and be miserable, figure out what you love, and then do it! That means not chasing money, not listening to your parents’ career lectures, not trying to figure out where the job growth market will be, or any other such extraneous factors”—Bill Dingfelder ’74, a freelance grant writer in Bala Cynwyd, Pa.

“Try especially hard to avoid allowing the future to loom large over you. Take the time to find a passion by exploring the world, its people and its many jobs”—March Bishop ’08, a Harvard Business School student.

“Remember that few young people are adequately paid for the job they do on the way up. You have to earn the salary of the next position in order to eventually receive it”—Ed Russell ’55, a volunteer analyst for the Alzheimer’s Association in Charlottesville, Va.

“Find the best job that matches your strengths (resources) to the job opportunity in an organization. This relationship can change as you gain experience. You must have passion for that fit. And that fit should meet your moral and ethical values”—John Mather ’64, executive director of master’s programs at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

“Take pride in your work, dot your i’s and cross your t’s. If you do a great job each day, in the end you will be financially rewarded. In life, success takes place when one recognizes the problem to be solved and then offers a solution”—Barry Swidler ’77, an owner of several small businesses in Brookville, N.Y.

“While a nice boss might make you happy, a tough boss with high expectations might actually drive you to become the best version of yourself”—Alexander Pearlman ’07, director of human capital at ReNEW Schools in New Orleans.

Don’t Forget the U of R: ‘Stay Connected’

Marlene Caroselli ’80W (EdD), a Pittsford, N.Y., author, keynoter, and corporate trainer who has published more than 60 books, told me of the value of her Rochester education. “My degree opened many doors as I worked to establish my business. But it also helped me determine when to knock on which doors, when to put my foot into certain other doors, and when to avoid some doors that would not advance my career. The University enriches beyond the education and degree programs it provides.”

“UR taught you how to be humble and how to work hard. Those two traits that you now own will get you further than any one thing you learned your entire life”—Chris Johnston ’04, ’06S (MBA), a sales and marketing expert from Newburyport, Mass.

“Stay connected to your alma mater and with the friends you made during your time at UR. Those relationships helped shape you into a young adult setting out in the world and they can continue to nurture you all through life”—Lorri Kahn Diggory ’88, who works in public relations from her home in Webster, N.Y.

Listening to Advice: ‘Have the Confidence to Question Yourself’

Bill Robinson ’72, director of legal affairs and counsel for a Cambridge, Mass., health care company, has a veritable decision-making game plan: “Be confident in, and realistic about, your strengths and qualities and have the confidence to question yourself. Then act on your decisions, avoiding both impulse and foot dragging. “Afterward, live honestly with your choice long enough to evaluate how you are doing and with realistic confidence. Again, question and decide.”

But with all the advice being given to the graduating students, sometimes it’s hard to know what to take to heart. When all is said and done, sometimes you just have to blaze your own trail. As Bill Dingfelder says, “Ignore all advice.”

And maybe that’s the real lesson: It seems that the most important thing good advice does is that it inspires confidence. Good advice reinforces your power and capacity to make decisions that are good for you, and not live someone else’s vision for your life.

There is seldom a right answer or path. Think critically and take the time to realize who you are. Look to the advice of the people you trust. Seek out satisfaction and never stop trying to make the world and yourself better.

Perhaps it all comes down to one thing: Meliora.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Advice from the Advisee

fea_advicesideADVISEE: Maya Dukmasova (Photo: Brandon Vick)

When not busy gathering advice for soon-to-be graduates, Maya Dukmasova ’12 (T5) has been completing her Take Five year, researching how the American media cover current events in the Middle East.

A philosophy and religion major, she has been president of the Undergraduate Philosophy Council and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She’s also an aspiring journalist who has freelanced for Rochester Magazine, the Phoenix New Times, and the Daily News Egypt.

A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Dukmasova grew up moving around the United States, finally settling near Syracuse, N.Y.

Her own advice for students and graduates is to “take any opportunity, or make an opportunity, to travel.

“Nothing makes you grow more and understand yourself and the world better than being far away from home.”

—Kathleen McGarvey

A Nationwide Jurisdiction

Jimmie Reyna ’75 helps shape legal opinion as a federal judge on the nation’s second-highest court.

By Robin L. Flanigan

gaz_reynaEXPERT OPINION: An expert on international trade law, Reyna is a member of the U.S. court that hears appeals based on patent disputes, trade agreements, and international issues. (Photo: Kevin Wolf/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Jimmie Reyna ’75 watched the live vote on C-Span as 86 senators, one by one, gave a thumbs-up to confirm his nomination as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

People he hadn’t heard from in decades started calling. This wasn’t just a proud moment for Reyna and his family, but a historic one for the nation. When Reyna received his commission the next day, on April 5, 2011, he became the first Latino to serve on the country’s second-highest court, which has nationwide jurisdiction to hear appeals in patent law and other specialized cases.

“I didn’t think there were any ‘firsts’ left,” says Reyna, a recognized expert in international trade, trade policy, and customs matters. “I know it’s extremely meaningful, and I’m proud of it, but I don’t walk around as the Latino representative. I walk around as a judge with a position of great influence, one that I approach very seriously because of its importance in the stability and safety of this country.”

Established in 1982 by the merger of the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the appellate division of the United States Court of Claims, the court is unique in hearing appeals based on subject matter and type of law rather than on the basis of the federal district in which cases may have arisen. Given its federal jurisdiction, the court’s decisions can be appealed only to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Located in Washington, D.C., the court has 12 active judges, who typically consider cases in panels of three. Nominated for the court by the president, judges are confirmed by the Senate.

Reyna remembers the moment, in the summer of 2010, when the Department of Justice called to announce that President Barack Obama had green-lighted his nomination process. Driving at the time from his home in Silver Spring, Md., to Delaware for vacation with his wife, Dolores ’75, and one of their sons, he pulled onto a dirt road to hear the details. Despite the day’s scorching temperature, Reyna got out of the car and leaned his forearms on the car’s hot hood as he listened.

“I was frying and didn’t even feel it because of the excitement,” he recalls. “I hung up, and everyone’s staring from the air- conditioned car. I turned around and started running down that dirt road, and then I came running back, hands pumping. By the time I got back in the car, they knew what had happened.”

Reyna’s fascination with international relations grew out of his modest upbringing in Clovis, N.M. The son of Baptist missionaries who regularly drove with their five children to Mexico to visit relatives, he was raised to understand that both countries have a common history and overlapping interests. He was in junior high school when he felt the pull to be a lawyer, and he began his litigation career in Albuquerque, where he handled domestic relations, civil rights, tort, and criminal defense matters, many of which were pro bono cases.

After moving his family to Maryland in search of specialized care facilities for his eldest son, who has autism, he began building a career in international trade law, one that led him to write books on the subject and to serve on panels that decided international trade disputes.

“What makes him unique is that he has a strong perseverance, and he has become an expert on matters of international trade through his diligence and hard work,” says Roman Hernandez, an attorney in Portland, Ore., who met Reyna through the Hispanic National Bar Association in 2003. “He learned that area of the law, mastered it, and became a well-regarded expert—and this was before he joined the court. I have a deep respect for him.”

President of the Hispanic National Bar Association from 2006 to 2007, Reyna helped create a program to instill confidence and trust in the U.S. legal system, founded the association’s Journal of Law, and worked with the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, an umbrella organization serving 30 national Latino organizations. As a leader in the American Bar Association, he served on the Presidential Commission on Diversity in the Legal Profession, helped launch and direct the U.S.-Mexico Law Institute, and was a leader in the association’s Section on International Law.

Reyna says being a history major at Rochester prepared him to turn raw information into valuable research, a critical skill in his current job. He used to study with other students at the home of former history professor Winthrop Hudson, where he would read and sip hot chocolate by the fireplace. “That practicum was definitely a turning point in my education,” he says.

Despite a distinguished career that has earned him wide recognition—in 2009, he received the Ohtli Award, the Mexican government’s highest honor bestowed to a foreigner, for his contributions to the Hispanic community—Reyna has maintained an enthusiastic awe for his role as a federal judge and for what the position represents in the legal system.

“I come to work every day with a great sense of excitement and honor and privilege to be doing what I’m doing,” he says. “It’s just wonderful.”

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

‘Champion of Change’

Maureen Roche ’97, director of The Campus Kitchens Project, receives a White House honor.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

gaz_rocheWASTING NOT: Campus dining halls waste literally tons of food. Roche helps students nationwide to share the bounty with underserved communities. (Photo: Kevin Wolf/AP Images for Rochester Review)

“I was flabbergasted,” says Maureen Roche ’97, describing her response when she learned in January that she’d been selected as a White House Champion of Change.

The director of the Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit The Campus Kitchens Project, Roche joined seven other “champions”—Americans working in innovative ways to make big impacts in their communities—in accepting the honor and taking part in a panel discussion last January 12.

New Champions of Change are honored each week. Roche says she was particularly moved to be named one of eight champions “following in the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.”

“To be honored in his name—it was incredible,” she says. “This whole idea that there are people who are following in his footsteps and somebody thought that I was one of those people is really just mind-blowing.”

Roche has been at the project since 2007, and its director since 2008. “CKP” has helped students at more than 30 colleges and universities to set up community kitchens near their campuses. The idea is to tap into the bounty of college campuses—in food, energy, and talent—and share it with local communities in which access to affordable and nutritious food is a daily challenge. The project is a subsidiary of the D.C. Central Kitchen, a community kitchen established in the nation’s capitol in 1989 that carries out the dual role of serving donated food to the hungry and operating as a culinary job training program for unemployed men and women.

Roche emphasizes that students setting up campus kitchens are mastering a complex enterprise. A new kitchen, she says, is “not just a program that’s going to operate for a while and then it’s done. We require that it be sustainable.”

That requires that students, school administrations, and the surrounding communities all become stakeholders. For students, the demands are considerable. They establish relationships with community organizations, plan menus, organize food transport, and prepare meals. In some cases, they work directly with local farmers to establish farmers’ markets and community gardens.

Robert Egger, the nationally recognized nonprofit leader who founded the D.C. Central Kitchen, says Roche brings some unique assets to her role.

“She empowers other leaders to own the idea—so that they can interpret it in their school—and then share what they developed throughout the network.” He says she’s developed a cascading leadership model, which helps give each campus coordinator and team “the ability to mold the idea to fit their school, their community, and their vision of how to tackle hunger.”

Like the civil rights martyr in whose named she was honored, Roche embraces the idea that “we are our brother’s keeper.”

“The concept of being your brother’s keeper is one that my mother really instilled,” says Roche. Her grandmother, who emigrated from Ireland in 1930, was famous for nourishing not only blood relatives, but a larger “family” that extended deep into the community. “She would make these huge St. Patrick’s Day dinners. And there was never someone who wasn’t always welcome to the dinner table, whether you were a member of the family or not.”

A political science and psychology double major at Rochester, Roche immersed herself in politics, interning in the Rochester office of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter and later, as a participant in the political science department’s Washington Semester Program, in the Washington, D.C., office of then Congressman Charles Schumer. She notes that the Rochester campus and community are well attuned to the issue of hunger and the ethic of community service. “Most of the time students come to us,” she says, describing how the project has expanded across the country. That said, she adds she would relish the chance, if it came, to help establish a kitchen in Rochester.

For now, she’s focused on fundraising, site development and management, and, yes, trying to feed herself as well as she’s helped feed others.

It’s a challenge for driven professionals like Roche.

“It’s been my New Year’s resolution to cook more at home,” she says, noting that the chefs at the D.C. Central Kitchen serve excellent food.

“They always joke with me, ‘You don’t know how to cook.’ I said, ‘I don’t need to know how to cook, that’s why I work at a kitchen.’ ”

“They gave me a crockpot one year for Christmas because, according to the chefs at the kitchen, everybody can crock. Well, I’m slowly figuring it out.”

In the News

New Music Hall of Fame Features Eastman Grads

The first inductees into the new City of Rochester Music Hall of Fame include several Eastman alumni. Among the nine inductees were flutist Doriot Anthony Dwyer ’43E, formerly of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the first woman to win a principal chair in a major American orchestra; arranger, producer, and conductor Jeff Tyzik ’73E, ’77E (MM), now in his 17th season as the principal pops conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra; Charles Strouse ’47E, composer of “Those Were the Days,” the theme song of the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, as well as the scores for the Broadway musicals Annie and Bye, Bye Birdie; and smooth jazz artist Chuck Mangione ’63E, best known for his composition and flugelhorn performance on the 1977 hit “Feels So Good.” The inductees were formally recognized in April at a ceremony at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre.

Chemical Engineer Recognized for Environmental Achievement

John Seinfeld ’64, the Louis E. Nohl Professor and professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, has been named one of two winners of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, among the most coveted awards in environmental science. Seinfeld was cited for his research on the origin, chemical composition, and evolution of particles in the atmosphere. That research led to the development of a mathematical model used by many states to control smog and comply with the Clean Air Act. The John & Alice Tyler Prize, administered at the University of Southern California and consisting of a gold medallion and a cash award, has been presented annually since 1974.

Marine Scientist Honored by Virginia Governor, Science Museum

John Milliman ’60 has been named one of three Outstanding Scientists of 2012 by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and the Science Museum of Virginia in the state capitol of Richmond. The Chancellor Professor of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Milliman has focused his most recent research on river discharge—in particular, the impact of human activities on river discharge of water, sediment, and dissolved solids into oceans. This research culminated in his coauthorship of River Discharge to the Coastal Ocean: A Global Synthesis (Cambridge University Press) and the world’s largest database of scientific information on rivers, with records on 1,534 rivers around the world.

Across Seas, Across Generations

messingerROLE REVERSAL: Ram, once mentored by Messinger, hosts Messinger on a tour of the ancient Shore Temple, in Mahabalipuram, India, near Ram’s hometown of Chennai. (Photo: Courtesy of Marty Messinger)

In January, Marty Messinger ’49 traveled to the southern Indian province of Tamil Nadu. His host on the journey was Navin Ram ’95.

Marty, a life trustee of the University, is managing director of the investment firm Neuberger Berman. Navin is the CEO of OriginWave, an information technology company based in Chennai that serves financial services clients in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

The two met when Navin was a student. “One day I got this call in my office,” says Marty. It was Navin. “He said, ‘I’m on the debate team and I noticed you endowed the team,’” Marty recalls. “He’d worked his way to Rochester from India, and he asked if I’d mentor him.”

Marty did, the two kept in touch, and this past Meliora Weekend, Marty agreed to visit Navin in India.

Navin’s daily Blackberry messages to Marty’s family—Marty and his late wife, Joan, had four daughters and 10 grandchildren together—served as a journal of the trip, recording Marty’s arrival in the port city of Chennai in “flip-flops, sunglasses, sun cream, and hat;” barefoot walks through the temples of Kanchipuram; samplings of southern Indian cuisine (as well as a visit to KFC to fulfill a craving); visits to rural farming communities; a tour of a Brahmin village and house; and visits to several thriving arts communities.

Of their tour of Old Chennai, Navin wrote: “We started off at a beautiful Armenian church downtown. They were the first to come to Chennai along with the British, Portuguese, and Dutch. Marty walked through the streets, checking out vegetable vendors, asking lots of questions, dodging the cows, and breathing in the spices. He then got on a rickshaw and became the maharaja of the group as we toured the streets.”

“Chennai is undergoing incredible transformation and it’s a great cultural center,” says Marty. “It was a wonderful time.”

—Karen McCally

TRIBUTE

Lynn Gordon: ‘A Clearer and Deeper Understanding’

tribute_gordonWIDE-RANGING: Gordon made a mark in the College and at the Warner School. (Photo: University Communications)

“I know so well what I want of life: I want to understand all manner of things better. I should like to contribute to a clearer and deeper understanding of the things I understand. What I need: More knowledge. What I prize: Human relationships, of all kinds, passionate, tender, intellectual, understanding. What I want: A home which will be a center of life & illumination for people who can really contribute to the development of the humanities. My gifts: Interpretive; power to draw out & record others. My interests: All humanities. Politics; literature insofar as it is not precious but deals with living ideas; economics; all the attributes of civilized living—cooking, home furnishing—manners.”

Lynn Gordon, our beloved friend and colleague, quoted this passage from the diary of Dorothy Thompson, the pioneering journalist who was the subject of a biography Lynn had nearly completed at the time of her death. When we read that passage, we are reading about Lynn herself. Knowledge, understanding, a welcoming home, stimulating conversation, good food, warmth, intelligence, kindness: these were the things that she created in her life, for all who knew her.

She joined the faculty of the Warner School of Education in 1983, becoming also a member of the College’s Department of History in 1989. By the time she retired in 2011, she had left her mark on two branches of the University, and she had taught students in a range of subjects, from the higher education of women to the European cauldron of the interwar years to the history of Judaism to the crises in the Middle East.

A professor emerita of history and a scholar of gender, education, ethnicity, and diplomacy, Lynn died Feb. 9. She was 65.

She wanted passionately to contribute to our own “clearer and deeper understanding” of the things she had learned, through her lifelong quest to learn more. Those who had the privilege of studying or teaching with her will always remember her calm helpfulness in the face of our confusion.

I taught three courses with her—on the historiography of the Holocaust, on nationalism and ethnic conflict, and on modern Jewish history. We traveled together to Poland and Germany to prepare for this series of seminars and talked endlessly about the difficulty of conveying to our students—or understanding ourselves—both the sense and the irrationality of these sorrow-laden, infinitely complicated histories.

Lynn had a way of taking the measure of our muddled thoughts and, as though they were a pile of rumpled clothes stuffed into a suitcase, she would open the suitcase, take out the clothes, shake them, smooth out the wrinkles, fold them up properly, repack the suitcase, and allow us to carry on with a well-ordered mind.

Through her clarity of mind, sharpness of judgment, and patient generosity, we came to understand the world better.

In the words of George Santayana’s “In Memoriam”: “With you a part of me hath passed away . . . And I scarce know which part may greater be,—what I keep of you or you rob from me.”

—Celia Applegate

Applegate is a professor of history at Rochester.

TRIBUTE

Paul LaCelle: ‘Contribute or Make Trouble’

tribute_lacelleLEADER & MENTOR: LaCelle was known as a strong leader and advocate for students. (Photo: University Communications)

When Paul LaCelle first recruited me to Rochester, he provided me with far more support than a lowly postdoc had any right to expect. Then he insisted that I publish independently of him, sacrificing his own career in favor of mine. This sort of thing happened over and over again, not just in my own experience, but for many others.

A Medical Center faculty member for more than 40 years, Paul was always more interested in helping someone else succeed than in seeking accolades for himself. He died March 9 at age 82.

Paul was enormously talented intellectually, but so humble that you hardly knew it. One of the early pioneers in trying to understand the role of blood cell deformability in clinical pathology, he was interested not just in the biophysical properties of the cells, although he was a great fan of physics and physicists in general. Rather, he focused on the role that mechanics played in the pathophysiology of diseases related to red cell and white cell abnormalities, and how these abnormalities got in the way of blood flow and oxygen delivery.

In the latter part of his career, his main focus was administration, and he led the Department of Biophysics through a number of difficult but important transitions through the 1980s and 1990s. Later he contributed to the University as associate dean for graduate education in the medical school, a role where he had the opportunity to indulge his passion for fostering and promoting the careers of young scientists.

Paul had a great laconic wit. On one occasion (it must have been a particularly bad day in the chairman’s office) he advised me, “If you ever think about becoming a chairman, you should take three months off and get some therapy.” Even in the last stages of his illness, reflecting on careers, he commented, “It’s good to either contribute or make trouble.”

His passion for excellence and the attention and care he gave to those around him made him a truly exceptional individual, one who contributed a great deal to the University and to the community at large.

I owe him a great debt personally, and we all miss him dearly.

—Richard Waugh

Waugh is professor and chair of biomedical engineering; professor of biochemistry and biophysics; and professor of pharmacology and physiology.

Books & Recordings

Books

Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive

By Bruce Schneier ’84

John Wiley & Sons, 2012

Computer security expert Schneier explores the foundational role of trust in a functioning society—how it’s induced and what happens when it fails.

Sweet Dreams

By Rose Lewis ’77

Abrams Books, 2012

Lewis presents her fourth book for children, a lyrical bedtime story to lull children to sleep, with pen, ink, and watercolor illustrations by Jen Corace.

Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ‘A’ishah al-Ba’uniyah

Edited and translated by Th. Emil Homerin

Fons Vitae, 2011

Homerin, professor of religion at Rochester, translates into English for the first time a selection of poems by the prolific female 16th-century Islamic writer, scholar, and Sufi master.

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul

By John M. Barry ’69 (MA)

Viking, 2012

Author and historian Barry explores the pivotal role of the founder of Providence, R.I.—long regarded as the first American proponent of the separation of church and state—in formulating American conceptions of religious liberty.

Thinking Like A Canyon: New & Selected Poems

By Jarold Ramsey

Antrim House, 2012

Ramsey, professor emeritus of English at Rochester, presents a collection of poems he has written over four decades, inspired by the natural beauty of his native central Oregon.

Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All

By Bernard T. Ferrari ’70, ’74M (MD)

Portfolio Hardcover, 2012

Drawing on his 20 years of experience at McKinsey & Co. and his role as founder and chairman of Ferrari Consultancy, Ferrari offers a guide to active listening, rooted in his conviction that “listening is harder than it looks—but it’s the difference between business success and failure.”

Route 15 to Gettysburg: A Journey

By John Thomas Ambrosi ’84, ’97 (MS)

Ambrosi, 2012

Ambrosi, a former business executive and U.S. marine, pens a memoir set against his experiences traveling on Route 15 to Gettysburg—a Civil War battlefield and a place held sacred by many Americans. Throughout, Ambrosi comments on social, economic, and racial divisions that persist in 21st-century America.

Recording on a Budget: How to Make Great Audio Recordings Without Breaking the Bank

By Brent Edstrom ’91E (MM)

Oxford University Press, 2011

Jazz pianist, composer, and arranger Edstrom offers professional musicians as well as hobbyists a guide to making high-quality recordings from modest recording tools.

Contested Genres in Contemporary Asian American Fiction

By Betsy Huang ’04 (PhD)

Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Huang, associate professor of English at Clark University, draws on theories of representation, identity, and genre to demonstrate the ways in which popular prose genres have constrained Asian-American literary aesthetics.

An Awakening Heart: A Novel of the Moravians in Early America

By Barbara Dowd Wright ’51

Moon Trail Books, 2010

Wright, a former psychotherapist and expert on early American Moravian communities, draws on archival evidence and research to bring to life her ancestor, Christina Krause, who makes the passage from her native Germany to North America in the 18th century.

Leadership in My Rearview Mirror: Reflections from Vietnam, West Point, and IBM

By Jack Beach ’67

Mc Press, 2012

Beach, a senior consultant at IBM and a former colonel in the U.S. Army who helped establish the department of behavioral sciences and leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, explores the attributes of leadership.

Music: A Social Experience

By Mary Natvig ’81E, ’91E (PhD) and Steven Cornelius

Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2012

Natvig, professor of musicology at Bowling Green State University, and Cornelius advance an approach to teaching music appreciation that builds on students’ musical and non-musical experiences. The book explores topics such as music and ethnicity, war, love, politics, gender, and spirituality.

Manzanita Seed

By Edward Goodman ’78

Plain View Press, 2012

An Albuquerque attorney and a dog lover, Goodman tells a suspenseful tale of how a rescued dog changes an older man’s life.

Your Family Legacy: 32 Ways to Preserve Your Family’s ‘Wealth’ for Generations

By Michael W. Palumbos ’93

Collaborative Family Office, 2012

Citing a meager success rate for the transfer of family wealth from one generation to the next, Rochester-area family financial advisor Palumbos offers advice on how to preserve financial wealth by successfully passing on “three assets”—money, values, and knowledge.

God of War

By Christian Cameron ’87

Orion Hardbacks, 2012

Novelist and military historian Cameron tells an epic tale of how Alexander the Great conquered an empire.

Tariel’s Way: A Spiritual Adventure

By Michael B. Millard ’73 (PhD)

Huston Road Press, 2011

Millard, a financial-advisor-turned-literature-professor at SUNY Geneseo, explores spiritual questions through the story of an elderly man in 12th-century western Asia who offers advice to the young.

Summer of Red Rain

By Susan T. Davis ’64

North Country Books, 2012

Davis tells the coming-of-age story of Samuel Trask, a fictional 13-year-old caught up in the siege of Fort Stanwix, during the American Revolution. In 2011, Davis published Musket and Mobcap (North Country Books), her debut novel for middle school readers, also set during the American Revolution.

Did Jesus Believe Genesis?

By Charles L. Sanders ’66 (PhD)

Holy Fire Publishing, 2012

Sanders, a biophysicist and Christian, argues against the “theological modifications required for the acceptance of the biased assumptions and unproven ‘facts’ of evolution and the big bang.”

River Discharge to the Coastal Ocean: A Global Synthesis

By John D. Milliman ’60 and Katherine L. Farnsworth

Cambridge University Press, 2011

Milliman, the Chancellor Professor of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary, and Farnsworth analyze the processes affecting fluvial discharge of water, sediment, and dissolved solids.

Why Can’t Obama Fix the Economy?

By Jim Case ’62

Lulu, 2011

Case, a mathematician and science writer, argues that the global economic recession is rooted in “an unholy alliance between giant corporations, the mainstream media, and professional economists.”

Methodological Approaches to Community-Based Research

Edited by Leonard A. Jason ’76 (PhD) and David S. Glenwick ’76 (PhD)

APA Books, 2012

Jason, professor of psychology at DePaul University, and Glenwick, professor of psychology at Fordham University, present a collection of essays that explore methodological pluralism as an approach to community-based research. Jason has also coedited Recovery from Addictions in Communal Living Settings: The Oxford House Model (Routledge) with Joseph Ferrari.

Recordings

The Undeserved

By Comanchero

Horse Fuel Records, 2011

The Boston-based Americana jam band, including Andrew Kramer ’99 on bass and mandolin and Jim Levin ’99 on percussion, presents its third release.

Music of Frédéric Chopin

By Melody Fader ’99E

Centaur Records, 2012

Fader performs a selection of works by Chopin, including several preludes, nocturnes, a mazurka, and a scherzo.

Handful of Laughs

By the Doctors Fox

The Doctors Fox, 2012

The Doctors Fox, which includes David Ladon ’06, ’07 (T5), Jon Dashkoff ’06, ’07 (T5), and Ryan Aylward ’04, presents its second recording, “an explosive mash-up of genres, offering everything from funk and disco to frenetic Klezmer turmoil, bossa nova beats to guitar-driven rock.”

Neuroses

By Joshua Hatcher ’09

Self-published, 2011

The Ithaca, N.Y., singer, songwriter, and musician Hatcher explores relationships and internal struggle, with a touch of wit.

Love Scenes

By Chesley Kahmann ’52

Orbiting Clef Productions, 2012

Kahmann, on piano, performs 13 songs in which she’s joined by her son, Ames Parsons, on trumpet, and Jennnifer McBride on vocals. In 2011, Kahmann released Collision (Orbiting Clef Productions), a collection of 14 songs sung by the Interludes.

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.

Why We Can’t Get Along

Think partisan politicians are out of touch with the voters? The opposite is true, says political scientist Alan Abramowitz ’69.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

masterclass (Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

People often assume that partisan polarization reflects a disconnect between politicians and voters. The opposite is true. The most politically engaged and informed citizens are the most polarized. Political moderation is most prevalent among those who are less politically engaged and less informed. Politicians are reflecting trends among the most engaged citizens.

The kind of polarization we have now is very different from what we had 50 years ago. The public was deeply divided in the 1960s. But the divide didn’t fall along party lines the way it does now. It cut across party lines. What we’re seeing today is a growing divide between Democrats and Republicans, and that has had a major effect on partisan politics and electoral politics.

There are a number of factors that have contributed to this kind of polarization. First, there’s a growing racial divide between the parties. There were obviously great divisions over race and civil rights in the 1960s, but the difference now is that non-whites, who make up a growing share of the electorate, are heavily concentrated in the Democratic party, while the Republican party remains an overwhelmingly white party. That’s very significant politically. And it’s likely to continue.

Alan Abramowitz ’69

Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science, Emory University

Author, The Polarized Public: Why American Government Is So Dysfunctional (Pearson); The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy (Yale)

On political compromise: “A lot of times you find that compromise means that the other side should give us what we want; as in, ‘We’ll be glad to help them give us what we want. We’ll be happy to cooperate on that.’”

On personal politics: “My family were strong Democrats. My father was a very strong and early supporter of civil rights, and I absorbed a lot of that. I’ve remained definitely on the left, politically, but I think of myself as a political realist in terms of what’s possible.”

The public is also closely divided. In every election, everything’s at stake. There’s a sense that every vote is potentially a vote that could affect control of Congress, the White House, and the courts as well. If the stakes are that high, it compounds these divisions.

Someone like Rick Santorum certainly puts a much greater emphasis on social issues than Mitt Romney. But if you look at their actual positions on these issues, they aren’t that different. Increasingly, people who are conservative on social issues tend also to be conservative on economic issues. You don’t find many Republicans any more who are social liberals and economic conservatives. And there certainly aren’t many who are economic liberals and social conservatives. You might find more of those in the Democratic party, but there you don’t find many either.

Dick Niemi [the Don Alonzo Watson Professor of Political Science] came to Rochester during my senior year, and I took his course on methods. We had to choose an area of research and write a review of the literature. I chose voting behavior, and that’s where my interest in elections and voting behavior started. I also took [Distinguished University Professor Emeritus] Dick Fenno’s course on Congress and then served with him on a committee on congressional elections research in the 1970s. The political science department was a great department when I was a student, and it still is now.

STUDENT LIFE

Taking up Slack

backcover (Photo: Adam Fenster)

LINEMAN: Yoel Kim ’13 of Anaheim, Calif., walks a slack line outside the Goergen Athletic Center in April. He and other students took advantage of early spring weather to practice their balancing skills. Set up about four feet off the ground, the line and its tension can be adjusted to accommodate the skill level of individual walkers.