Rochester Review

March–April 2014, Volume 76, No. 4

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Valerie Alhart, Adam Fenster, Melissa Greco Lopes, Susan Hagen, Peter Iglinski, Mark Michaud, Sara Miller, Dennis O’Donnell, Julie Philipp, Chris Roth, Leonor Sierra, Julia Sklar ’14, and Brandon Vick

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

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

ISSN: 0035-7421

Copyright © 2014 University of Rochester

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Contents

The Legacy of David Kearns

Letters

Water Proof?

Reunion Class

Pep in Their Step

Eyes on Education

Stellar Deaths and Celestial Jets

Historic Archives to Go Online

Funding Trends Worry Research Leaders

A Record-Setting Season

Jane Possee Honored by University

Center of Success

Profiles in Success

Seeking Eudaimonia

What’s Your Love Story?

Conquering Kool

Beyond the Taj Mahal

Prevailing at Pelham Bay

Grammy Round-Up

Marathon Mission

Barbara Burger ’83 Receives Wilder Award

Walter Oi: Economist Who Helped End the Draft

Fred Sherman: A Pioneer in Genetics

John Swanson ’83: ‘The Best of Us’

Books & Recordings

Real Cowboys

Celebrated Singer

The Legacy of David Kearns

By Joel Seligman

INSPIRING LEADER: David Kearns ’52 was “a crusader for educational opportunity” and “a fierce advocate for diversity.” (Photo: University Communications)

The role of chair of the University’s Board of Trustees is too often a little understood but extraordinarily consequential one in our history. Our first board chair, John Wilder, steadfastly led the effort to create our University in Rochester. Joseph Wilson ’31, Bob Goergen ’60, and Bob Witmer ’59 in recent decades have been decisive in presidential transitions and strategic planning. Our current chair, Ed Hajim ’58, deserves particular gratitude for his inspiring leadership and extraordinary philanthropy, which have helped make possible the success of our Meliora Challenge capital campaign. Now in his 26th year on our board, Ed has also played a pivotal role in strengthening our Investment Committee and helping recruit key senior leaders.

I want to recognize also a board chair who made a difference to us in the Rochester community, a friend who died just a few short years ago.

Rochester native David Kearns ’52 was a crusader for educational opportunity. David led Xerox Corporation to dramatic growth in the 1980s, served on the University’s Board of Trustees for nearly three decades—and for eight of them as chair—also chaired the National Urban League, and helped invigorate public education through his service in the Department of Education. He was a fierce advocate for diversity. Among David’s many legacies is the David T. Kearns Center for Leadership and Diversity in Arts, Sciences & Engineering at our University, which for over a decade has provided a foundation for students to pursue their educational and professional interests.

David wrote in his 2005 memoir that when he met someone for the first time, he always tried to get a sense of how the individual had been influenced or driven by his or her ancestors and family background. He recognized that the country grows more diverse every day. For a business, this means that customers will be more diverse. Marketing to them and understanding their needs requires diverse employees. He believed that having an executive team with different backgrounds and different experiences leads to better quality results.

A pioneer of social responsibility, David deserves credit for advancing equal employment opportunities at Xerox in the 1970s and 1980s. Xerox became a national model for development of minority and women business leaders. While David believed that affirmative action was the right thing to do morally, he spearheaded its advancement as a sensible business objective. “Our country is not populated by only forty-year-old white males,” he wrote in his memoir. In 2008, the University awarded David the Frederick Douglass Medal, honoring him as a champion of civil rights for his efforts to encourage the development of African-American leaders at Xerox.

Through his service as deputy secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush, David became an outspoken advocate for innovation, school-based autonomy, competition, and choice in education. When the L.A. riots erupted in 1992 after the attack on Rodney King, President Bush appointed David as White House liaison to help address the conflict.

To honor David’s monumental commitment to education and opportunity, the Kearns Center was created and announced at Meliora Weekend in 2002. The center has profoundly influenced the lives of thousands of students, providing educational guidance, scholarships, and supportive services to students who come from low-income families, are the first person in their family to earn a college degree, or who come from racial groups identified by the federal government as underrepresented in higher education. The Kearns Center programs, such as Upward Bound and College Prep Centers, generate remarkable results, often surpassing national averages for high school and college graduation rates, college acceptance, and pursuit of advanced degrees.

Just as in business, the success of a modern research university is linked to the diversity of its community. Our culture is one of transformative ideas. Our geographic and cultural diversity is critical to building the momentum that strengthens our faculty, programs, research, and innovation. The innovative accomplishments of universities rely on diversity of thought and opinion.

David firmly believed that education is fundamental to jobs and to American democracy. “We cannot continue to operate a system,” he wrote, “that turns some children into winners and consigns the rest to the scrap heap. That is simply not acceptable in our economy, and it should not be acceptable in this democracy.” David’s vision is alive and well through the variegated and thriving initiatives of the Kearns Center and many other programs at the University. He continues to inspire generations of students, faculty, and staff.

Letters

Famous Face

‘MEETING’ THE BEATLES: Robin Lynn ’70 (Photo: SOFA Entertainment, Inc.)

Like Amy Zimmerman Freese ’71, I was in the audience in 1964 at the Ed Sullivan Show when the Beatles first performed on TV (“ ‘Meet’ the Beatles” January-February).

Proof? I am the first close-up of a sighing, panting fan . . . even though my three kids still insist I am screaming.

Forty years later, in a “Where is she now?” segment on NPR, my son, Dan, and I discussed my reactions and whether I was a worthy icon to be linked to the Beatles. Either way, it only took five seconds on TV 50 years ago to keep my image and theirs together.

Robin Lynn ’70

New York City

You can listen to Robin’s and Dan’s story on NPR’s website at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1657557

SNOW SCENE: Alumni readers recognized the Nordic ski club from an archival photo published in the January–February issue. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Ski Patrol

Several readers wrote to help ID the skiers on page 52 in the January-February issue. A sample:

The lead skier is John Frittelli ’88. My brother, David Valvo ’90, was on the national cross-country skiing circuit and was able to ID John.

Christina Valvo Hellner ’95, ’98W (MS)

Leesburg, Va.

I was on the Nordic ski team from 1987 to 1989 (the first years of the women’s team). The lead skier is John Frittelli ’88. He was the founder of the ski team, which was started in 1985.

Laurie Whisler ’91

Lake Forest, Ill.

Celebrating Sanskrit

I read with great interest the article about Marcy Braverman Goldstein ’92 (no relation) studying Sanskrit at Rochester as an undergraduate (“When a Dead Language Is Cutting-Edge,” January–February). One of the reasons I chose to attend Rochester was because I saw Sanskrit listed in the catalog.

During my sophomore year, I and another student spent two semesters studying the language as an independent study with my linguistics professor, Rama Sharma, on condition that I commit to studying the language for at least two years. However, the experience of studying Chaucer with Professor Russell Peck that fall convinced me that I needed to begin studying Latin instead so that I could become a medievalist.

When I finally had the courage to inform Professor Sharma that I could no longer study Sanskrit, he was actually relieved to hear of my change of plans because he had just accepted a job at another institution as a professor of Sanskrit.

I never got very far with this beautiful language, but I had the advantage in Latin 101 of having previously studied a more highly inflected ancient language. And I did become a professor of medieval English literature.

R. James Goldstein ’73

Auburn, Ala.

A Mother’s Treasures

NURSING HISTORY: The daughters of Rosella Forrest Miller ’38N sent their mother’s 1930s-era uniform to the archives. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

We are pleased to be able to share some treasured memorabilia from our mother, Rosella Forrest Miller ’38N, who graduated from the University so many years ago.

We have enclosed copies of her school memories, along with her actual nursing uniform (with her name tag sewn into the collar) and caps (with hairpin). We hope you will consider incorporating these treasures into your school’s archives.

Our mother was a highly regarded health professional who, over the years, remained tied to her fellow nursing students. She attended her 50th reunion and maintained her Rochester school pride until the end of her life.

We hope you will treasure these memories as we do.

Sue Ann Miller and Mary Lou Miller Fodor

Tallahassee, Fla.

P.S. We have a new appreciation for her daily routine of pressing and buttoning her uniform!

Editor Scott Hauser writes: We were happy to make sure that Mrs. Miller’s uniform and other materials were delivered to the Medical Center’s Miner Library, where they are now part of the archives.

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.

LASER SCIENCE

Water Proof?

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

SELF-CLEANING SYSTEM: A water droplet hangs on the edge of a metal surface that has been treated with a Rochester-developed process to repel moisture. Developed by optics researcher Chunlei Guo, the system uses extremely short (on the order of 10–15 second) bursts of laser light to alter the shape of nano-sized structures in the metal to make it nearly impossible for water molecules to penetrate. Potential applications for such “super-hydrophobic” materials include sanitation and other areas where repelling water-borne pathogens is important.

FROM THE TOP

Reunion Class

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

CLASS PORTRAIT: When From the Top, NPR’s weekly showcase for young musicians, tapes a broadcast at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre in March, the production will visit the current home venue of several past performers on the show. Former From the Top guests who are now students at the Eastman School include (back row) Ben Fried ’14E (cello), Ryan Norville ’16E (flute), Quinn Delaney ’14E (bassoon), master’s student Kieran Hanlon (double bass), Jennifer Zhou ’14E (flute), and DMA student Eun-Hye (Grace) Lee (piano performance); (middle row) master’s student Stephanie Price (viola), Andrew Laven ’17E (cello), Dominic Giardino ’16E, (clarinet), and Aaron Bigeleisen ’17E (voice); (front row) DMA student Wei-Han Wu (piano performance), DMA student Oliver Hagen (conducting), and Emily Helenbrook ’16E (voice).

FAN CLUB

Pep in Their Step

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

YEARS OF YELLOWJACKETS: The University’s pep band celebrated its 10th anniversary of helping cheer on the Yellowjackets with a special performance at the Palestra in February. Greg Savich ’06, who is now a PhD student in optics (at left, in blue), founded the band as an undergraduate and rejoined the group as the guest conductor.

PRESIDENTIAL SYMPOSIUM

Eyes on Education

Community leaders, Warner School experts, educational innovators, and University officials commit to better education for Rochester’s children.

By Scott Hauser

COMMUNITY SPIRIT: Improving Roch-ester’s K-12 public schools will take the help of the entire community, said Mayor Lovely Warren, who delivered the plenary address at February’s Presidential Symposium. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Giving schoolchildren in Rochester the kind of education they need to succeed will take more than a village—it will take a city, a graduate school of education, a university, and a web of community partners.

That was the message from a special symposium focused on “Revitalizing K-12 Education in Rochester” held at the Interfaith Chapel in February. While recognizing that the city’s public schools face enormous challenges, community and University leaders, city school educators and administrators, educational scholars, and area educational innovators said they were ready to get to work.

“Let’s have no delusions,” said President Joel Seligman as he summed up a half day of plenary addresses, panel sessions, and presentations. “The problems are hard, and they persist.”

But Seligman found reason for optimism in the commitment of panelists who described the success of their initiatives and their ideas for the future.

“We’re all in this together,” he said, adding that a strong K-12 educational system in Rochester is necessary for a vibrant city, which in turn plays a role in the success of the University. “As our Board Chair Ed Hajim ’58 has often noted, ‘A great university can be no greater than the community in which it lives.’ ”

IDEAS: Superintendent Bolgen Vargas, Warner Professor Kara Finnegan, and Dean Raffaella Borasi offered ideas about K–12 education. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Bringing together members of the community to start a conversation on Rochester’s public schools was the goal of the February 4 Presidential Symposium, hosted by Seligman and Raffaella Borasi, dean of the Warner School of Education. They were joined by Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, Rochester City Schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas, faculty from the Warner School, representatives from area charter schools, and leaders of community programs that provide educational opportunities outside of a school setting.

Guests and panelists were frank about the challenges: in 2013, the City of Rochester ranked as the nation’s fifth poorest; the district, which enrolls 30,000 students, has a graduation rate that hovers at about 43 percent; and previous reform initiatives have been undermined by political and administrative skirmishes.

“Today in this city, for many people, their zip codes determine their futures,” said Warren, describing a “double standard” among some who assume families who rely on public schools should defer to policymakers and politicians who live outside the district to determine what’s best for children in urban neighborhoods. “I’m not naive. Chipping away at the double standard of public education will be hard work.”

She said one of her main initiatives in her first term as mayor will be to increase the availability of pre-kindergarten programs, noting that state and national leaders have also recognized the importance of early learning in improving K-12 education. She also emphasized that children in the city have fewer opportunities to take part in summer learning programs, which means their chances of “sliding” educationally during the summer are far greater than for other children.

Vargas echoed those themes, saying that expanding pre-kindergarten programs, providing more summer learning initiatives, and expanding enrichment programs are among the key elements in a strategy to improve educational outcomes for the district. “I’m very pleased with the conversation that we’re having today,” he said.

Borasi said the Warner School and the University have deep ties to the city’s schools and their students, providing professional development opportunities, developing after-school programs, initiating summer learning opportunities, educating teachers, and conducting research on urban education.

“We really want to be part of the conversation,” Borasi said. “We are a major part of the community, and K-12 education is a responsibility of the entire community.

“Over time, we have added concrete initiatives that we undertake in the community. And we continue to look for new opportunities where we can use our resources best. We can’t do it all, but there are specific things where we can try to make a difference.”

Seligman said that the University has a track record of supporting K-12 education in Rochester, noting that the Warner School has received nearly $20 million to support education reform in the Rochester area and western New York. In addition, the University commits $1.7 million each year in scholarships to graduates of Rochester schools, supports low-income students as they prepare for college through the University’s Upward Bound program, and works with programs at Rochester high schools. He also noted the success of programs such as the Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection, which provides education and training to middle and high school students, and said the University plans to increase its participation in the program from 120 to 275 students.

“When many universities have scaled back their support of schools of education, the University of Rochester is determined to invest in K-12 education as part of our commitment to the greater Rochester community and, most of all, its children,” Seligman said.

Acknowledging that the issues facing public education in Rochester are too large to solve quickly, he asked that the symposium reconvene in early 2015 to assess progress and map out new areas for discussion.

Warren said she looked forward to an ongoing conversation with the University on education and a range of issues, noting the role that the University plays in the region as the area’s leading employer.

“I think it’s important that we all come together to move our community forward in a way that’s realistic to the residents of our City of Rochester but also to our region,” she said. “The fact is that the University is the number one employer in our region. That’s not just the Mt. Hope area, but throughout the City of Rochester. It’s very important. Those relationships—in research, in education, in the businesses that have been developed around what’s happening at the University—are very important as we move forward.”

Stellar Deaths and Celestial Jets

JET SETTERS: Are binary star systems the reason some planetary nebulae collapse into colorful jets? (Photo: NASA/ESA & Valentin Bujarrabal (Observatorio Astronomico Nacional, Spain))

How do some round stars evolve into highly aspherical clouds of dust that often have jets of interstellar material shooting in opposite directions? Rochester researchers say the answer lies in the death throes of binary star systems.

In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Eric Blackman, professor of physics and astronomy, and his student Scott Lucchini ’13, aimed to refine astronomers’ understanding of how sun-like stars transition from one phase to another as they run out of hydrogen.

Astronomers have long known that such smaller stars often end up as planetary nebulae but have been puzzled why some emit powerful, bipolar jets of gas and dust. As sun-like stars die, they expand into discs of gas and dust that surround much smaller cores, a stage known as asymptotic giant branch stars. Past models suggested that as the discs enveloped nearby stars, they formed aspherical planetary nebulae. By

studying observational data and theoretical models, Blackman and Lucchini refined that idea, noting that current models don’t completely account for the creation of the powerful jets. In the new study, they were better able to calculate the strength and energy of the magnetic flows between stars and found that only two models, both of which involve the most strongly interacting binaries, could create the jetted versions of the nebulae.

—Leonor Sierra

Possible Parkinson’s Treatment?

A new Medical Center study shows that a population of support cells found in the brain called astrocytes could provide a new and promising approach to treating Parkinson’s disease. The findings may demonstrate that a single therapy could simultaneously repair the multiple types of neurological damage caused by Parkinson’s, providing an overall benefit that has not been achieved in other approaches.

In a study published in the European journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, lead author Chris Proschel, assistant professor of biomedical genetics, and his colleagues reported that by carefully manipulating a population of central nervous system cells called glial precursors, they were able to induce the precursor cells to produce a specific class of astrocytes.

Early results indicated that the new astrocytes, which differ from other types of astrocytes in a mature brain, were more effective at building connections between nerves and creating a suitable environment for growth and repair. Much like a repair crew, the implanted astrocytes helped the brain’s nerve cells recover and resume normal activity.

A progressive neurological disorder, Parkinson’s disease affects an estimated one million Americans. While the condition is associated with the loss of cells that produce the important neurotransmitter dopamine, the disease’s impact is more complex and wide-ranging, disrupting basic signaling functions and triggering the destruction of several other types of cells found in the brain.

Researchers say that while the preservation and restoration of dopamine-producing neurons is critical to slowing or reversing the course of the disease, it’s increasingly clear that successful long-term therapies have to both protect the areas of the brain under attack and foster the repair of many cell populations.

—Mark Michaud

How to Measure Stroke Care

Are measures of mortality providing an accurate picture of care for stroke victims? According to a study by Rochester researchers, that may not be the case.

Published in the journal Stroke, the study found that wide variation in the use of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders can significantly skew a hospital’s quality “ranking” based on mortality. In an examination of data from 355 hospitals in California from 2005 to 2011, the study looked at 252,368 stroke cases and found that some hospitals used DNRs in an average of 2.2 percent of stroke cases, while others used them an average of 23.2 percent of the time. As expected, the hospitals with a greater percentage of DNRs generally had higher mortality rates.

“With mortality increasingly being used as a marker for the quality of care provided to stroke patients, it is essential that we understand the impact of decisions made by physicians and families to limit or withhold care,” says Adam Kelly, a neurologist with the School of Medicine and Dentistry and chief of neurology at Highland Hospital.

Physicians have questioned whether mortality is an appropriate measure of stroke care because DNRs are often put in place to limit some life-extending interventions for patients who have had a severe stroke. But, the authors point out, mortality statistics do not distinguish between an individual who has died because of poor or unsafe care versus someone who died because a conscious decision was made to withhold invasive or heroic measures.

—Mark Michaud

Longer Life? Be ‘In Control’

The less education you have, the more your attitude counts when it comes to staying alive and well. That’s the finding of a new study conducted by personality researchers from Rochester and Brandeis University. Lead author Nicholas Turiano, a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry, and his team found that adults without college degrees live longer if they feel like they’re in control of their lives. Those who reported feeling little control had mortality rates that were three times higher than those who felt in control.

Published by the American Psychological Association’s Health Psychology journal, the study followed 6,135 people, ages 25 to 75, for 14 years. Respondents were part of an ongoing, national questionnaire called the National Survey of Midlife in the United States that collects assessments of perceived ability to exert influence over life circumstances. Turiano cautions that more research is needed to find out why or how people develop a strong sense of control, or when the development occurs, but researchers suspect innate and external factors contribute to a sense of control.

—Julie Philipp

TURF BATTLES: A lack of legislative focus often undercuts metropolitan areas, new research indicates. (Photo: iStockphoto)

Infighting May Undermine Large Cities in State Legislatures

Urban legislators have long lamented that they don’t get their fair share of bills passed in state governments, often blaming rural and suburban interests for blocking their efforts. A new study confirms one of those suspicions but surprisingly refutes the other.

In an analysis of 1,736 bills in 13 states over 120 years, authors Gerald Gamm, associate professor of political science at Rochester, and Thad Kousser of the University of California, San Diego, found that big-city legislation does get passed at dramatically lower rates than bills affecting less metropolitan areas, but the two conclude that infighting within city delegations often undermines legislative success for urban areas.

Reported in the American Political Science Review, the analysis was based on a study of so-called district bills, legislation that affects only a single locality or county. The researchers are the first to document the fate of big-city legislation and to test with hard data the reasons metropolitan areas are often stymied in state politics.

“The data show that because of their large numbers, delegations from major cities like Chicago or New York are more likely to be at odds on legislation than smaller delegations, muddling cues for others in the chamber,” says Gamm. “After all, if the delegates from a city can’t coalesce behind a bill, why should legislators from other parts of the state vote for the law?”

—Susan Hagen

Historic Archives to Go Online

SEEING THE SEWARDS: One of the largest and most-consulted of Rochester’s archives will go online over the next three years. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

One of the most comprehensive and extensive firsthand accounts of 19th-century American political and social life will soon be available online. A three-year project to organize, scan, and create a website featuring photographs, diaries, letters, and other papers from the family of noted 19th-century statesman William Henry Seward got under way this winter. The collection, housed in the Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation at River Campus Libraries, is the largest and most-consulted special collection in Rush Rhees Library.

Spanning the years 1730 to 1917, the collection includes journals, pamphlets, household accounts, estate records, and library inventories. Seward (1801–72) was a noted trial attorney, governor of New York, U.S. senator, and secretary of state under presidents Lincoln and Johnson.

The project is funded by a three-year grant from the Fred L. Emerson Foundation.

University and Eastman House Team Up for Degree

The study of the art, culture, history, and preservation of photography will have a new academic outlet in Rochester, thanks to a partnership between the University and George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. The two institutions have teamed up to offer a joint master’s degree in photographic preservation and collections management, beginning this fall.

The program is believed to be the only one in the United States dedicated to the study of the photograph as an object as well as the study of images in theoretical and historical context. Students will explore photography as part of material culture as well as its importance in conveying aesthetic, social, and political meaning, according to Thomas DiPiero, dean for humanities and interdisciplinary studies at Rochester.

In 2010, representatives from the University and the Eastman House agreed to establish broader and deeper research and teaching collaborations.

White House Recognizes Access Efforts

Rochester was one of nearly 150 colleges and universities whose initiatives to enroll low-income, first-generation, and minority students were highlighted as part of a daylong forum organized by the White House in January.

Known as the College Pipeline Initiative to Expand College Opportunity, the summit hosted by President Barack Obama was designed to mobilize efforts by higher education leaders as well as private sector, city, state, and philanthropic leaders to help connect more low-income students with college and ensure that they succeed once they get there.

Rochester was featured in a 90-page report, “Commitments to Action on College Oppor-tunity,” which was released by the Executive Office of the President just before the meeting got under way. In the report, Rochester outlined several of its current initiatives and plans for future efforts.

President Seligman Reappointed

Joel Seligman has been reappointed president of the University. In a statement from Ed Hajim ’58, chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, Seligman was praised for his accomplishments during his tenure.

“The Board of Trustees has enthusiastically endorsed Joel’s reappointment, and I share in that enthusiasm. He has done a great job,” Hajim said.

The University’s presidents serve indefinite terms at the pleasure of the board and are reviewed periodically, usually every five years. Trustee Tom Sloan ’65, ’67 (Mas), who chaired the reappointment committee, said the committee talked with trustees, University officers, and student leaders, as well as conducted a survey of the faculty.

“The results were overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic,” Sloan said. “People appreciate the job Joel has done in providing vision, injecting incredible energy, and in communicating openly with all the University’s constituents.”

UR MEDICINE: A new branding campaign highlights Rochester’s broad range of clinical services. (Photo: Medical Center Public Relations)

Introducing ‘UR Medicine’

Taking a page from the playbook of successful corporate brands, the University has introduced a new name for its fast-growing clinical network. The name—UR Medicine—is intended to better capture the breadth of patient care services that the University’s clinical units deliver across all affiliated institutions and collaborative programs.

The new identity will be used to brand all aspects of the patient care network, including Strong Memorial Hospital (along with its components Golisano Children’s Hospital, Wilmot Cancer Center, Flaum Eye Institute, Strong West, and others), Highland Hospital, Thompson Health, Eastman Dental, the Highlands at Brighton, the Highlands Living Center, and the University of Rochester Medical Faculty Group.

The new brand name was introduced with television commercials that were broadcast locally during the Super Bowl and the Olympics. To see the ads and for more about the new identity, visit www.urmedicine.org.

Jim Thompson Named Special Counsel

ADVANCEMENT: Thompson oversaw the launch of Rochester’s Meliora Challenge. (Photo: University Communications)

Jim Thompson, who has served as the University’s chief advancement officer since 2005, has been appointed special counsel to President Joel Seligman.

Thompson will advise Seligman on the future development of alumni relations and advancement as the $1.2 billion Meliora Challenge nears its conclusion.

“Jim has built an outstanding Advancement program and team. Working with our Board of Trustees, Jim took the initiative in developing an ambitious strategic and implementation plan that today is well ahead of schedule for virtually every area addressed in this plan,” said Seligman, citing the success of the George Eastman Circle, the University’s Annual Fund, and volunteer boards that provide outreach to alumni and friends throughout the country.

Thompson will “focus on the next chapter in our alumni relationships and fundraising” and will no longer be involved in the day-to-day operations of Advancement, according to Seligman.

Seligman said that Jim Osterholt will continue as interim senior vice president for Advancement, and there will be a national search for a permanent chief advancement officer. Dennis Barden of Witt Kiefer will lead the search.

Seligman also announced that Steve Dare, senior associate vice president, would become interim chief operating officer of Advancement.

“I am determined that while our capital Campaign may be completed on June 30, 2016, our momentum with respect to Advancement will continue,” Seligman said.

Stroke Program Recognized

Strong Memorial Hospital is joining an elite group when it comes to highly specialized and complex stroke care. The Joint Commission and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association recognized the hospital as a Comprehensive Stroke Center this winter, a designation that has been conferred on only two other hospitals in New York. The certification coincides with the launch of a new program dedicated to providing intensive care to patients with severe neurological disorders such as stroke.

The certification recognizes hospitals that have the infrastructure, staff, and training to receive and treat patients with the most complex neurological needs.

Currently located in the Kessler Burn and Trauma Center at Strong Memorial Hospital, the program is scheduled to move to a new Neuromedicine Intensive Care Unit later this year.

Initiative Looks at Business and Government

The Department of Political Science has launched an initiative designed to foster education, research, and discussion among students about the relationship between business and government in the 21st century. Called the “Politics and Markets Project,” the series is directed by David Primo, the Ani and Mark Gabrellian Professor and associate professor of political science and business administration. In the first event this winter, Primo moderated a panel discussion on the Affordable Care Act, “This Won’t Hurt a Bit: ObamaCare and Your Future.”

RESEARCH FUNDING

Funding Trends Worry Research Leaders

Is the United States in danger of falling behind when it comes to federal spending on research?

By Scott Hauser

At a Washington, D.C., forum of policymakers and journalists last fall, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told a story of meeting with his counterparts from several countries: each reported how much their budgets were increasing, but when it was his turn, he told the international group he’d be lucky if the NIH’s budget declined by only 5 percent. His counterparts didn’t know what to say. They had, Collins noted, modeled their systems for funding basic research on the success of the United States over the past 75 years.

“We have been the envy of the world,” Collins said, “but we’re starting to be the puzzle of the world as people look at our trajectory and wonder how we lost our way.”

While the comment is more sharply stated than most Rochester administrators would sum up the situation, there is growing concern about the future of federal support among those who oversee funding for the University’s research initiatives. As budgets for the NIH, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and other major agencies level off or, in some cases, decline, the United States is in jeopardy of losing its role as the world’s leader in scientific research, they say. A February report from the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation and serves as an advisory group to Congress and the White House, underscored the concern.

“Research funding has been stagnant or in most circumstances, declining,” says Josh Farrelman, director of governmental relations for the University. Farrelman says budget cuts included in the March 2013 sequester, along with spending caps enacted through the agreement to end the 2011 federal debt-ceiling crisis, have been detrimental to the University’s missions of research, education, and clinical care, as well as its ability to create new jobs and companies.

Going into 2014, the situation has steadied a little bit, he says, thanks to a bipartisan budget act passed by Congress last December. But while the two-year budget provides some relief, it falls short of restoring agencies like the NIH and NSF to pre-recession levels, and it reduces the effects of the sequester on the agencies’ budgets by only 25 percent for the 2015 fiscal year.

The result is that researchers at Rochester and other universities will find it increasingly difficult to win funding for their projects, says Rob Clark, senior vice president for research and dean of the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences.

“The competition has become even more fierce for an even smaller pot of money,” Clark says. “It’s important that we try to increase the budgets that fund the federally sponsored research agencies that we care very dearly about. If we’re able to increase the overall pot, we will be able to, we think, compete very well for funding.”

Rochester can claim considerable success in earning federal and other outside support. Over the past five years, the University has received nearly $2 billion in research funding, the majority of which comes from federally sponsored research agencies, including the NIH, NSF, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense. On a per faculty basis, the University ranks among the top 15 institutions in the country.

Clark says the funding is important not only because it keeps Rochester at the forefront of research but also because of the way University-based research resonates throughout the economy.

“We have a strong history of leveraging federal funds to develop technologies and research that have had not only a national impact, but also a global impact,” Clark says, noting Rochester’s work in vaccine development, optics, medical imaging, and other areas. “We’ve also created 56 spinoff companies since 1996.”

Although the NIH traces its roots to the late 19th century, it wasn’t until the end of World War II that it took on its current role as one of world’s leading funding sources for biomedical sciences. In 1950, Congress established the NSF as an independent federal agency “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense.”

The agencies and other federal programs modeled on them are credited with spearheading many of the technological, scientific, and clinical breakthroughs of the second half of the 20th century. The NIH alone traces more than 80 Nobel Prizes to research conducted by NIH–funded scientists.

That scientific infrastructure has been a key component of the nation’s economy, says Farrelman.

“Most economists agree that at least 50 percent of economic growth in the United States over the last half of the 20th century is a consequence of technological innovation, much of which results from federally funded scientific research,” he says.

That’s why it’s troubling to see the agencies in danger of losing their international standing, he says.

According to statistics gathered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), spending on research at higher education institutions in the United States increased from about $31 billion in 2000 to about $63 billion in 2012. But since 2010, the total has leveled off, going from $60.4 billion in 2010 to $62.5 billion in 2011 to $62.7 billion in 2012.

As a percentage of the nation’s GDP, U.S. support for research and development in higher education has gone from about 0.30 percent of GDP in 2000 to about 0.39 percent in 2012, according to the OECD. (For purposes of comparing across categories of data, the figures in the accompanying charts are in constant 2005 dollars.)

As countries like China, Korea, and Singapore emphasize the importance of research and development to their economies, they have increasingly invested in programs similar to those in the United States, and many of them are growing rapidly. For example, according to OECD figures, China has gone from spending $2.3 billion on higher education research and development in 2000 to about $18.5 billion in 2012. As a percentage of GDP, Chinese support has gone from 0.08 percent in 2000 to 0.15 percent in 2012.

“It’s important to look at the overall trajectory of federal investments in research and put it into context of what’s happening internationally,” says Clark.

He says that as Rochester and other U.S. universities have been at the forefront of research for the past several decades, the world’s top researchers and scientists often looked to the United States for their education, and usually stayed to launch their careers and build up their labs.

“That’s still the case, but now we’re trying to attract and keep the best and the brightest in a world where China, Singapore, South Korea, and other countries are making double-digit investments,” he says. “They’re competing with us to keep those folks in their own country or bring them home. It’s always been a competitive environment, but the competition has stepped up.”

Despite the tightening of federal budgets, Farrelman says there have been notable successes. In particular, the Laboratory for Laser Energetics received $64 million in the recently approved 2014 spending plan. That’s about $5.25 million more than the $58.75 million allocated to the lab last year under sequestration.

But that was a small bright spot in the overall, international picture, he says.

“One of the main reasons countries like China and Singapore are investing so heavily is because they are trying to replicate not only major research institutions like Rochester, but also agencies like the NIH,” he says. “They know that our process works and drives innovation and economic growth.”

Says Clark: “I think everyone involved in research leadership at Rochester is keenly aware of how competitive the environment is and how tough the political environment is. We are very engaged in an effort to keep Rochester at the forefront of scientific research.”

YELLOWJACKETS

A Record-Setting Season

Strong winter performances send track and field teams to conference championships.

By Dennis O’Donnell

TRIPLE THREAT: Boubacar Diallo ’16 was ranked 15th nationally among all Division III triple-jumpers late in the indoor track and field season. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

CHANGE OF SEASONS: Cameron Edwards ’16 (above, left) and Emily VanDenburgh ’15 helped lead the indoor track and field team while Nina Korn ’14 (below) is expected to help power the softball team. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

(Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

The Yellowjackets were set to be well-represented at the ECAC indoor track and field championships in early March. That’s after a series of record-setting performances throughout the winter season.

The team of Laura Lockard ’17, Cameron Edwards ’16, Emily VanDenburgh ’15, and Yvette Igbokwe ’15 broke Rochester’s 4-by-200-meter relay record by nine one-hundredths of a second in February at Ithaca College, earning a trip to the conference championship meet. The four posted a time of 1:45.91, breaking the Yellowjackets’ previous mark of 1:46.00 set in 2010 at the ECAC championships.

VanDenburgh is also ranked 16th among Division III long-jumpers.

Rochester’s 4-by-400-meter relay of Lockard, Edwards, Brittany Schutrum ’17, and Becky Galasso ’14 broke the school record at Boston University’s Valentine Invitational. They clocked in at 3:56.85, a time that was ranked as high as 10th in NCAA Division III and broke the previous Yellowjacket record of 3:58.35.

On the men’s team, Boubacar Diallo ’16 is one of the premier triple-jumpers in Division III. In late February, he was ranked 15th nationally in the event.

Altogether, 13 men and 17 women have qualified for the ECAC championships, which take place March 7 and 8 in Boston.

Rochester’s men and women will run at home twice outdoors in April—at the Alumni Invitational on April 5, and at the Spring Invitational on April 26.

Other highlights from the winter and spring seasons: Winter

Swimming and diving: Rochester women broke 15 records and posted 11 NCAA provisional qualifying performances, and the men broke nine school records and registered five NCAA qualifying marks at the UAA championships. The NCAA championships will be held in Indianapolis, Ind., in late March.

Squash: Rochester defeated the University of Pennsylvania to claim seventh place at the College Squash Association team championships in February. The Yellowjackets finished 8–7 overall.

Men’s basketball: Nate Vernon ’14 became the 27th man in 113 years to pass the career 1,000-point mark. With three games left in the season, he was 24th in career scoring.

Women’s basketball: As the season came to a close, Loren Wagner was averaging double figures in both points and rebounds for the Yellowjackets (ranked 12th in Division III in rebounds per game) and was ninth in career rebounding. One of Rochester’s key victories was a 72–68 win over Washington University at the Wash U. field house in St. Louis, marking the third straight year the Yellowjackets accomplished the feat.

Spring

Softball: The Liberty League champion earns an automatic bid to the NCAA playoffs this season with the addition of softball as a sport at Clarkson. With career home run leader Nina Korn ’14 and other Yellowjackets returning, Rochester is the preseason coaches’ poll choice to win the league title.

Baseball: The Yellowjackets return with a solid, experienced cast of players both in the field and on the mound. Rochester is picked to finish third in the Liberty League race.

Lacrosse: The Yellowjackets will look toward their top three scorers from the 2013 season as they battle for a Liberty League playoff berth.

Golf: In the fall, Rochester secured the top seed for the Liberty League match play championships and will host the finals in late April at the Mendon, N.Y., Golf Club. Earlier that week, Rochester will compete at Oak Hill Country Club in the University of Notre Dame Invitational.

Rowing: The Yellowjackets won the 2013 Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia, considered the small college national championship, with the first varsity eight boat. All eight rowers, along with the coxswain, return.

Men’s tennis: A four-match trip to the West Coast awaits during spring break. Rochester was 4–0 against Division III opposition early in the season. In late February, the Yellowjackets defeated Oneonta, 9–0, then lost to Division I Colgate the next afternoon.

Women’s tennis: A spring break trip to the West Coast will be a test for a young team that has only two seniors. Rochester’s fall schedule was filled with tournament-style competition.

Dennis O’Donnell is director of athletic communication for the Department of Athletics and Recreation.

ANTHONY AWARD

Jane Possee Honored by University

LEADER: Jane Possee received the Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Jane Possee, a longtime athletics administrator and former women’s basketball, lacrosse, and field hockey coach, received the University’s Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award in February. The award, presented by the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership, recognizes members of the University community who have achieved significant professional stature and have used their experiences and skills to help other women advance as leaders. “We are proud to honor Jane for helping change the landscape for female athletes on our campus and for supporting and guiding countless student athletes over the years,” said Catherine Cerulli, director of the Anthony Center.

Center of Success

The University earns high marks for initiatives to support students traditionally overlooked in higher education.

By Robin L. Flanigan

The idea of pursuing a PhD was new to LaFleur Stephens ’02 a decade ago. Now teaching at Princeton University, she was first introduced to the idea as a political science major at Rochester.

As a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, she took a course called The Culture of the Academy, developed and taught by Beth Olivares, associate dean for diversity initiatives in Arts, Sciences & Engineering. In the course, Olivares introduced students to the history of higher education, the roles of faculty and administrators, and the expectations for success among graduate students.

For students like Stephens, the course—which has since become a template for other universities—was the first time someone had clearly spelled out how higher education worked and how they could find a place in it.

A few years after graduation, Stephens began to entertain the idea of a graduate degree. Olivares, the director of the David T. Kearns Center for Leadership and Diversity in Arts, Sciences & Engineering, had kept in touch and offered to help her apply.

“My family always had high expectations for me,” says LaFleur, who later this year will join the Princeton faculty as an assistant professor of politics. “It was the expectation that I would go to college. I think most people’s parents have high expectations for them, regardless of race or class. Some of us are just fortunate enough to have more social capital to help realize those dreams.”

Helping provide some of that social capital has been a specialty of Olivares and her staff at the University for more than two decades. While issues of access to higher education—particularly for low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students—have recently gained traction in the nation’s political conversation, Olivares and her staff have quietly built a national model for supporting students who not too long ago would have been overlooked by most selective universities.

“Colleges and universities right now are more pivotal to economic security and the future of this country than they have been for most periods of our existence as a society,” says Arnold Mitchem, founding president and current president emeritus of the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

“One of the reasons I really praise and admire Dr. Olivares is that she has an appreciation for class and gap issues. She somehow got the attention of the leadership of the University to get seriously involved in doing something about these disparities. You’ve really engaged this issue and gotten results because you care, and that’s significant.” Richard Feldman, dean of the College, says issues of access to education are a priority for the University, but the personal commitment that Olivares and her staff bring to their work has helped the Kearns Center exceed all expectations for the program. “Beth has personally encouraged, nurtured, and invested in students in ways that have been transformative not only for individual students, but also for the University and our community,” Feldman says. “She really is a role model and an inspiration.”

As director of the Kearns Center, Olivares oversees programs for more than 1,000 students a year at Rochester and has extended the University’s system of support well beyond the River Campus. Established in 2002 and named for David Kearns ’52, a former Xerox Corp. CEO who championed diversity in education as a business leader, national policymaker, and University trustee, the center is a focal point for many of Rochester’s efforts to support low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority students in Arts, Sciences & Engineering. Earning more than $10 million in federal, state, and local grants over the past decade, Olivares and her staff provide academic as well as social support to both students and parents.

The center’s key goal is to help increase diversity in American academia, from the student body to the faculty.

“Authentic diversity is integral to the success of American education and research,” Olivares says. “Knowledge can’t advance as it should if large segments of society are virtually absent from advanced learning, as is now often the case.”

Among the center’s programs is its original initiative, the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, a U.S. Department of Education initiative named for Ronald Erwin McNair, a laser physicist who died in January 1986 aboard the NASA Shuttle Challenger.

In addition, the center supports about 20 Kearns Scholars each year as part of a program, partly funded by the National Science Foundation, to guide students to advanced study in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the so-called STEM fields—and

oversees the Xerox Engineering Research Fellows program, which provides intensive research experiences for students in engineering.

The center’s track record has impressed colleagues across the country:

- Among alumni Kearns Scholars, more than 50 percent are studying for graduate degrees in STEM fields.

- About 85 percent of Rochester McNair Scholars go on to graduate school, compared to about 45 percent among students in the national McNair Program.

- Since the McNair Program was established at Rochester in 1992, more than 100 students have earned doctorates. Olivares estimates that she has personally mentored more than 450 students, including 42 PhDs, 32 MDs, two doctors of pharmacy, and two doctors of psychology, as well as many others still in the educational pipeline. This year, Stephens becomes the first of her mentees to hold a faculty position at an Ivy League school. In nominating Olivares for one of the top mentoring awards from the National Science Foundation, Orlando Taylor, the president of the Washington, D.C., campus of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, highlighted her success in mentoring future leaders in STEM fields:

“[Olivares] is known throughout the McNair community as one of the nation’s leading mentors of underrepresented undergraduate students.”

Olivares says she and her staff have recognized that fostering the idea among young people that a college education is attainable requires a long-term engagement, what she calls “intensive services” about how to get into college, how college works, and the requirements for success.

As part of that effort, the center has expanded its programs to include children in the Rochester City School District, establishing college-readiness programs for children from kindergarten through 12th grade. Through two federally funded Upward Bound programs, as well as drop-in centers at area high schools, younger students get an early look at what goes into earning a college diploma. About 150 undergraduates each year serve as tutors and mentors for the programs.

As the holder of a doctorate in English literature, Olivares knows that each student has a compelling story to tell about his or her hopes and ambitions when given the chance to talk about the future.

“In the communities that many of our students come from, being academically smart is not seen as a marker of success,” she says. “It’s something to be mocked or hidden. We’re that safe space. We say, ‘It’s OK to be smart,’ and ‘No one will hurt you for wanting to do something different.’ We want students to blossom into who it is they’re meant to be.”

Anthony Plonczynski ’06, ’08W (MS), the center’s associate director, says one of the keys to the center’s success is the attention the staff pays to thinking about students’ lives both inside and outside the classroom.

That sometimes means being life coaches as well as academic advisors, he says, noting that staff members often offer support to students during emotional and social interruptions that interfere with their academic lives.

Identifying those needs, and thinking creatively about how to address them, is a hallmark of the Kearns Center, says Olivares.

Says Plonczynski: “We want to be a sanctuary for students. We take this calling very seriously. We’re family.”

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

Profiles in Success

Politics Professor

MCNAIR SCHOLAR: Joining the faculty at Princeton University, former McNair Scholar Stephens plans to continue her studies of race, politics, and public opinion. (Photo: Lisa Lake/AP Images for Rochester Review)

As a McNair Scholar encouraged to take her schooling to the highest level, LaFleur Stephens ’02 discovered a PhD would help her eventual career in more ways than she’d ever thought possible.

“I had no exposure to anyone with that degree, or even any idea what one would mean, before participating in the McNair Program,” she says.

Even so, it took the political science major “some convincing” to return to school, after a three-year break to work for a nonprofit hunger organization and a social policy think tank, to earn a master’s degree and PhD in political science at the University of Michigan. Beth Olivares, director of the Kearns Center—which formed the year Stephens graduated—kept in touch during that break.

“She was definitely influential,” says Stephens, who is spending 2013–14 in a postdoctoral position at Princeton University before joining the faculty there as an assistant professor of politics later this year. “In terms of advancement, I’d never thought much about what you could do with only a bachelor’s degree, and my perception of a PhD was that the degree was too far removed from the advocacy and social justice issues that I care about.”

Her research work as a McNair Scholar included documenting the political attitudes of African Americans in the post–civil rights generation, and, in a separate project, examining the gentrification of Rochester. The former morphed into her dissertation topic and current research exploring race, politics, and public opinion.

“Being exposed to this kind of academic lifestyle was vital,” Stephens says. “You really can drive your own research agenda, travel, meet interesting people, and answer interesting questions.

“To this day I speak very highly about the McNair Program,” she says. “Sometimes it’s all about exposure. You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Energy Consultant

KEARNS SCHOLAR: Now an industry consultant, Soto began studying issues in energy as a Kearns Scholar and a Xerox Engineering Research Fellow. (Photo: Tom Starkweather for Rochester Review)

Luis Soto ’11, ’12 (MS) was a junior when his grandmother died. He found it difficult to grieve while maintaining his grades, as well as juggle a part-time job and extracurricular activities. He sought refuge at the Kearns Center.

“The people there were understanding and a great support,” he says. “And they also reminded me of what my goals were. They said, ‘These are the opportunities available, but you need to put in the hard work.’ And then they told me I could do it. I don’t think I would’ve been as successful if it weren’t for them.”

Now a new product development manager in Manhattan at GlobalData, a research and consulting company for the energy and health care industries, Soto was a Kearns Scholar in 2008 and a Xerox Engineering Research Fellow in 2010. During an eight-month stint as a research assistant for Wendi Heinzelman, professor of electrical and computer engineering and dean of graduate studies for Arts, Sciences & Engineering, he studied radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.

Though originally set on becoming an electrical engineer with his electrical and computer engineering degree, it wasn’t until he received guidance from Kearns Center staff while filling out graduate school applications that he realized he wanted a career that would offer more socialization.

With an interest in energy, he received a master’s degree—the first person in his family to do so—in technical entrepreneurship and management (TEAM), a program offered jointly by the Simon Business School and the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences.

During graduate school, he worked as an assistant at the Kearns Center, conducting research to be used in grant proposals for educational programs.

“Being able to see things behind the scenes gave me a better appreciation for how much hard work and effort the center puts forth in trying to address students’ needs,” he says. “I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to give back.”

Optical Scientist

KEARNS SCHOLAR: With the goal of becoming a professor at a research institute, Rodrigues credits advisors at the Kearns Center with keeping him on track toward his undergraduate degree as a Kearns Scholar, McNair Scholar, and Xerox Engineering Research Fellow. (Photo: Joshua Mendez for Rochester Review)

Uncertain during his freshman year about whether to keep biology as a major, Sean Rodrigues ’12 talked over his interests with Nick Valentino, the Kearns Center’s assistant director for college programs, and wound up switching to chemical engineering as a sophomore. That year, when Rodriques debated whether to return home to Massa-chusetts to help raise his younger sister, Valentino stayed by his side, encouraging him to stick with his studies and support his family in other ways.

“I was always a motivated student, but Nick helped push me along the way when I’d have a rough week,” says Rodrigues, who’s working toward his master’s degree and PhD in electrical and computer engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “He was always behind me, even when I didn’t think I had the confidence, saying, ‘Give it a shot. Just try.’ He kept me accountable.”

Through the Kearns Center, Rodrigues became a Kearns Scholar as a freshman, a McNair Scholar as a sophomore, and a Xerox Engineering Research Fellow as a junior. Financial support that accompanied those designations—allowing him to cover housing and meal costs without acquiring extra sources of debt—aided his ability to accept summer opportunities, which included conducting research on membranes that have applications for fuel cells.

“I probably wouldn’t have gotten my foot in the door with that first chemical research position without the Kearns Center, and I just kept getting into more programs from there,” he says. “It was an incredible resource.”

Now working on nonlinear optics and plasmonics, Rodrigues, recently awarded a three-year stipend from the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, hopes someday to become a professor at a research institute.

“Nick still contacts me to see how I’m doing,” he says. “He keeps me actively engaged in the community.”

Digital Analyst

UPWARD BOUND: Participating in the Kearns Center’s Upward Bound programs at Rochester’s Wilson High School convinced Haywood that she could succeed in college. She earned her degree from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Before participating in the Kearns Center’s Upward Bound Math/Science Program, Jazmyn Haywood was extremely shy and unable to express herself freely.

“The staff found a way to get me out of my shell,” she says. “I was also surrounded by students with the same goals and aspirations, which encouraged me to develop the social skills I needed to become a more confident person.”

Haywood saw a flyer for Upward Bound as a junior at Rochester’s Joseph C. Wilson Magnet High School.

“I knew I wanted to go to college but probably didn’t have all the necessary tools,” she says. “It seemed like a great opportunity.”

Upward Bound advisors helped her mom and grandparents locate scholarships, understand the financial aid process, and fill out application forms to colleges and universities that Haywood thought were “probably out of my reach.” For her personal statement, they helped her feel comfortable sharing her desire to make her grandfather proud. They routinely checked in on her once she got into Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., and they wrote a recommendation letter that helped her study abroad in England during her junior year. She earned a bachelor’s degree in digital arts and sciences from Clarkson in 2013.

As an Upward Bound program assistant for two summers while in college, Haywood helped high school seniors develop their own personal statements and shared her personal experiences at Clarkson University. She hoped to boost self-confidence in students the same way that Upward Bound advisors had done for her.

These days, Haywood works as a digital analyst for an internet marketing company in Buffalo. Her goal is to continue developing her social skills and land a management position one day.

“I am very thankful to have been a part of Upward Bound,” she says. The people there “are like my second family. It’s a lifelong connection.”

Psychological Studies

KEARNS SCHOLAR: While working with faculty on research projects as a Kearns and McNair Scholar, Hannah realized that he wanted to become a psychology researcher. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Jarrett Hannah ’14 grew up listening to his mother tell him he was going to college—but that he would need a scholarship to limit the financial burden.

He was able to make that happen through the Kearns Center, becoming a Kearns Scholar as a freshman and a McNair Scholar as a sophomore.

“For the McNair Program, I was basically told it was for hotshot scientists across the country, and that I should be one of the unexpected people to succeed despite whatever obstacles were in my way,” says the double major in psychology and brain and cognitive sciences. “I never got any special attention in high school, and it was really cool for me to come here and have people understand that I didn’t have the easiest upbringing.”

During the summer between his sophomore and junior years, Hannah worked with Miron Zuckerman, professor of psychology, on a project to explore whether specially designed computer technology could help people increase their self-control.

“That experience was more than just a position for me,” says Hannah, who went on to work last summer at a research lab at the University of Toronto. There, he studied neurophysiology and neural functioning, areas of psychology that he hopes to research further in graduate school.

If everything goes as planned, he’ll be earning a PhD—and he says he has the Kearns Center in large part to thank for that.

“One of the reasons I still have my ambitions,” he says, “is because I’ve been pushed to do the best that I can at this University.”

Industrial Hygienist

KEARNS SCHOLAR: With the guidance of Kearns Center staff, Nicholas undertook research on mercury’s effects on child development, leading to his graduate school interests. (Photo: Kevin P. Casey for Rochester Review)

Tyler Nicholas ’12 opened himself to new career possibilities after hearing Kearns Center alumni talk about their graduate school experiences.

“They made me realize what I wanted to do after graduation, and that was to go to graduate school instead of medical school, which was my original plan,” says Nicholas, who became a Kearns Scholar as a sophomore and a McNair Scholar as a junior. “The Kearns Center helped me figure out what I was interested in, and how to tailor my education to that.”

Interested in environmental health after a class in epidemiology, Nicholas received help finding a yearlong research position in a toxicology lab at the Medical Center’s Department of Environmental Medicine. He landed a subsequent research position in the department’s exposure assessment lab.

Stressed out while applying to graduate school, Nicholas often retreated to the Kearns Center, where “there was always food and someone to talk to about anything.”

Prompted by staff members, he presented research on the effect of mercury on child development at two conferences as a senior.

“I didn’t realize at the time how important it was to have that experience,” he says.

With a degree in environmental science, Nicholas is now pursuing a master’s degree in environmental health at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, with the intention of earning a PhD in environmental and occupational health and, eventually, getting a job as an industrial hygienist. He hopes to focus on the growing nanotechnology industry.

“I never would’ve ended up in research if it weren’t for the Kearns Center,” he says. “Now I actually get to see the results of my research take form and potentially improve thousands of lives. It’s pretty astounding.”

Rising Senior

UPWARD BOUND: “I found out who I was,” Monroe says of her experience in working with the Kearns Center’s Upward Bound programs at Rochester’s East High School. “I hope to be a leader for life.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Imani Monroe is upfront about her “rough background.” Growing up in an unsupportive home, while dealing with identity issues stemming from her adoption, she feels as if she has had to raise herself.

The senior at East High School in Rochester credits her four-year involvement with the Upward Bound program with opening doors she didn’t realize were accessible to someone like her.

The Upward Bound staff, she says, provided the support she needed when her grades drastically slipped last year, when she wondered whether depression and stress would cause her to be “another student who failed.”

“The people there said, ‘We’re not going to let that happen. We know you have something in you that drives you, and we want to help pull it out of you.’ And I said I was going to fight back and succeed,” she recalls. “I want to break those stereotypes, make myself proud, and better my future.”

At the end of every marking period (she’s consistently on the honor roll), Upward Bound leaders tell Monroe they’re proud of her. When she feels she needs extra help in a subject, they provide tutoring. Buoyed by comments that she’s an inspiration to others, Monroe joined the program’s Student Leadership Council and is serving as president for the 2013–14 school year.

Her Kearns Center connections led to an internship this past summer with an asthma study team at the Medical Center, an experience she says gave her great insight into both medical research and working in an office setting.

Monroe plans to become a detective to provide protection and justice for others.

“With Upward Bound, I found out who I was,” she says. “I feel like with the support that was given to me, I should pay it forward. I hope to be a leader for life.”

Seeking Eudaimonia

How do we develop good character? Philosophers and social scientists are teaming up—and turning to Aristotle for guidance.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

NEO-ARISTOTELIAN: Curren says the revival of interest in Aristotle in the past several years is “remarkable,” and well suited to addressing many of the problems of our age. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

At a time when the phrase “ancient history” is a common pejorative, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t know that we are living in an age of Aristotle.

But interest in the Athenian sage, who lived and worked more than two millennia ago, has been an identifiable and enduring feature of the intellectual landscape of multiple disciplines for at least the last three decades. After centuries on the sidelines of secular intellectual discourse, Aristotelian ideas, particularly about ethics, can reasonably be counted as among the key influences of scholars not only in philosophy, but in psychology, development economics, education, and the law.

“It’s remarkable,” says Randall Curren, chair of Rochester’s philosophy department.

A scholar of Aristotelian ethics, Curren has crossed disciplines through much of his career. Although his primary appointment is in the School of Arts & Sciences, he’s had a joint appointment at the Warner School of Education since his arrival at Rochester in 1988. Since then he’s forged ties with psychologists studying well-being, who have carried out empirical tests of Aristotelian claims. He’s worked with educators to identify ways in which Aristotle’s ideal of eudaimonia or “human flourishing” might be fostered in schools. He’s joined forces with natural scientists concerned with environmental sustainability.

And although he hasn’t developed any formal ties with economists, he’s heartened by the influence of Aristotelian ethics in development economics. Capability theory, a new paradigm of human well-being developed in the 1980s by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and University of Chicago philosopher and law professor Martha Nussbaum, is associated with a new United Nations metric for international development efforts that takes into account non-monetary indicators. “Capability theory is self-consciously Aristotelian,” says Curren. “When people like Amartya Sen start adopting these ideas, it really is the age of Aristotle in some very interesting ways.

There’s no doubt about it. Aristotle’s got legs.”

The focus of Aristotle’s theory of ethics was the nature of a good life, the role of virtues in living a good life, and how civic institutions might be designed to enable human beings to work toward that ideal. Eudaimonia was the Greek term for living well—or living a flourishing life, as it’s been translated in English—and its essence was fulfilling one’s human potential well. Fulfilling one’s potential well

required virtue—at least two kinds of virtue, in fact. There were intellectual virtues, such as the capacity for knowledge and reason, and there were moral virtues such as courage, honesty, and self-restraint, among others.

OFFICE HOURS: Chair of the philosophy department in Arts & Sciences and a faculty member at the Warner School, Curren meets with Warner master’s student Jenna Tomaselo and philosophy doctoral student James Otis. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Aristotle argued that moral virtues, like any virtues, were obtained through guided practice. And a further, and arguably most challenging aspect of Aristotle’s ethics, was that in order for individuals to develop moral virtues, civic institutions, including schools, had to be designed to foster their practice. Individuals didn’t develop moral virtues on their own, but rather, through social interaction. Therefore, developing moral virtues was a civic enterprise.

At first glance, this might all sound rather high-minded. But Curren’s expertise in Aristotelian ethics has been in wide demand, and far outside the confines of academic conferences.

Curren has become a key figure in the Aristotelian revival for his work on character education. Character education—some of it Aristotelian, some not—gained traction in the United States in the 1990s. President Bill Clinton sponsored a series of White House conferences on the subject that brought together educators, researchers, and leading proponents of character education. Curren, a delegate to two of those conferences, consulted widely in the Rochester area in the mid-1990s as multiple area school districts began to craft character education programs.

In the last year, he’s taken on his biggest role in character education yet—in the United Kingdom. In November 2012, Kristján Kristjánsson, a leading scholar in Aristotelian ethics now at the University of Birmingham, asked Curren to take the position of chair of moral and virtue education at a new research center housed in Birmingham’s education school: the Jubilee Centre for Character and Values.

A so-called “fractional appointment,” it was designed to be compatible with his full-time role at Rochester. It would also be a joint appointment with the Royal Institute of Philosophy, an institution founded in the 1920s by Bertrand Russell with the intention of bringing the best work in philosophy before the public.

In his role at the Jubilee Centre, which began in May 2013, Curren offers intellectual leadership, through contributions to proposals, speaking engagements, and consultation with a group of resident scholars in disciplines such as psychology, education, and the law. Their work involves researching successful models for character education, and exploring how ethical values inform decision making in a variety of the professions.

Curren was formally inaugurated in his professorship at the Royal Institute of Philosophy, the first in its history, in January. A conference based on his work culminated in his keynote, “Meaning, Motivation, and the Good.” In the fall, he’ll lecture across Britain.

The Jubilee Centre emerged at a fraught time, in the aftermath of a spate of rioting in August 2011. The riots began in an impoverished neighborhood in London, after a police officer shot and killed a 29-year-old man, father to four children. Rioting spread throughout London, and to other cities, including Birmingham. It generated national soul searching, followed by the appointment of a commission, a study, and a final report with recommendations.

The commission noted Britain’s high levels of unemployment, feelings of hopelessness among many youths, and called for multiple improvements in the delivery of social services. But the report also noted the “strong potential” of educational programs “designed to help children build resilience and self-confidence as part of normal school life.” These “character education” programs, commissioners concluded, should be further studied and expanded nationally.

ACROSS THE POND: In London last January, Curren addressed the Royal Institute of Philosophy, as the 89-year-old institute’s first honorary professor. He’ll lecture throughout Britain this fall. (Photo: Paul Kraddock/Smart Docs: Science, Medicine, and Art on Film)

Curren concedes that character education can appeal to those concerned about rising levels of “hooliganism.” But the primary funder of the Jubilee Centre, the John Templeton Foundation, has been pouring resources into research in psychology and philosophy that has pointed toward more complex, less direct, and less immediate solutions to social upheaval than the critics of Britain’s young ruffians might imagine.

With Kristjánsson as its deputy director, the center would have an Aristotelian bent from the start. And for the research chair in moral and virtue education, the center looked for someone with a similar orientation.

“We were looking for someone who was at once an established figure in mainstream philosophy and a big name in philosophy of education,” says Kristjánsson. “We also wanted someone with a naturalistic, broadly virtue ethical approach to character education.”

“I’m completely on board with the mission of the Jubilee Centre,” says Curren. “But I don’t come to it assuming it’s a simple matter of people being unethical, and that there would never be riots again if there were adequate character education in the schools. That would be a very un-Aristotelian point of view.”

The phrases “character education,” and even more so, “moral education,” can be off-putting to some, Curren notes. “It can sound heavy-handed and didactic. People who are understandably skittish about moral education, who worry that it’s going to be indoctrinating—they have an image of it as a heavy-handed thing.”

But in his work with schools, Curren has seen the controversy dissipate when stakeholders such as teachers, parents, and administrators get together to define and list values and virtues. “It’s about common morality,” he says. “When you have public processes to define those lists, there’s a lot of convergence, across the political spectrum, among people with very different experiences. They converge on short lists of traits that are just, without controversy, traits that everybody wants their kids to have. And everybody at least intuitively understands that their lives are not going to go very well if they don’t have these traits.”

From the Jubilee Centre, researchers have fanned across Britain, interviewing teachers and students at a wide range of schools. They’ve asked about character education programs currently in place, attempting to find out from teachers what they believe their role should be; and from students how various aspects of their education might help or hinder their attempts not only to develop various virtues, but also to define them in the first place. The aim? To improve character education in the interest of the “flourishing pupil.”

A genuinely Aristotelian character education assumes that a particular virtue, like any skill, can be learned through practice. Practice begins by offering students a basic vocabulary—often a list of virtues they define through discussion—that reflect traits they admire, that they’d want their friends to have, that they’d like to have themselves. From there, it’s a matter of dialogue to determine how to interpret and apply virtues in various real-life situations.

“Many of us who come out of Aristotelian ethics use analogies like learning to play a musical instrument,” Curren says. “Initially, you practice with a lot of guidance. But the goal, in developing virtues of character as in musicianship, is for the student to learn to guide her own practice.”

That involves developing a vocabulary as to what constitutes good playing, as well as learning to carry out multiple tasks at once. There’s producing the sound, but also listening, and then responding to what you hear, as you play. “You need to listen for the right things,” says Curren, “and to want to get better.”

Curren discovered philosophy at a young age. He says he was attracted to logical systems and explanations. He spent his lunch money on philosophy books. It was a respite from everyday life, but life, its messiest and darkest aspects, were ever present for Curren. The life of the mind is often considered a luxury, but Curren may be a case in point that people can pursue a life of the mind under difficult circumstances. When Curren was eight, his mother committed suicide, leaving him and two brothers in the care of his father, who, like his mother, suffered from mental illness. “Having been taught little by my parents and left to ripen in Rousseau’s garden as I might, I had also enjoyed more than a little freedom to explore, invent, and pursue my interests as I pleased,” he writes in a forthcoming autobiographical essay. Libraries and bookstores, he found, were “well-ordered spaces to make my own.”

He devoured works by Bertrand Russell, David Hume, and many others. He also began reading works in psychology, starting with R. D. Laing’s Sanity, Madness, and the Family. He took out a subscription to Psychology Today.

By the end of high school, he’d developed his lifelong interest in the philosophy of education—as well as his signature tendency to seek practical applications of philosophical ideas. In an underground newspaper he founded with friends, he penned a critique of his school’s testing practices based on the ideas of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who posited three stages of learning, in which mastery of details was only one stage—the second—between inspiration and achievement of real understanding. Sales of the paper were “forbidden yet brisk,” Curren writes, and as it turned out, his math teacher responded by offering him the chance to design and teach the course’s unit on the slide rule, and to design and grade the unit exam.

Studying philosophy at his local college, the University of New Orleans, he moved on to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh, where the philosophy department is internationally distinguished for work in the philosophy of science. He pursued a wide range of interests, but gradually came to focus on the issue that would animate his career: the role of communities—Curren would say the responsibility of communities—in the formative development of children.

An Aristotelian revival was well under way by the time Curren finished graduate school in 1985.

“Debates in moral theory were getting a bit stale,” he says. An essay called “Modern Moral Philosophy,” by the British philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe laid out the problems, and her critique became enormously influential.

Moral philosophy should be “laid aside,” she wrote, starkly, “until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking.”

One by one, she struck down each of the most influential thinkers on ethics in the modern Western tradition. What all of them shared was a reliance on a duty-based notion of ethics, without reference to any authority, foundation, or reference point.

“When you’re trying to get people to respect moral tenets, there’s a long tradition of claiming divine sourcing of the norms,” Curren says. “The Greeks thought the laws were handed to their kings on stone tablets by Zeus. It’s the story of Moses. They all told that story.” Secular philosophers jettisoned the divine, but proceeded with concepts based on religious assumptions, Anscombe argued.

What Aristotle addressed, that no one else in the Western tradition had, according to Anscombe, were psychological factors such as intention and motivation. Her article helped to reignite interest in Aristotle among philosophers, and to pave the way for interdisciplinary work with psychologists.

Curren began to explore connections between Aristotelian ethics and modern theories of motivation when he arrived at Rochester. Here were the psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, founders of an influential theory of motivation called self-determination theory.

In a 1985 book Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Deci and Ryan identified basic human needs to develop our capacities, act according to our own will, and connect to others and to our social environment. Based on their preliminary research, they set forth three basic psychological needs—for autonomy, competence, and relatedness—necessary to develop the deepest engagement with life and greatest feelings of well-being.

“It’s enormously gratifying to me to actually be working with them,” Curren says about the collaboration with Deci and Ryan that developed over many years. It began with informal conversations about shared interests. Then, in 2007, they organized an interdisciplinary lecture series on happiness through the Humanities Project, an initiative begun by President Joel Seligman to foster discussion on campus regarding important humanistic questions.

Ryan had long harbored an interest in philosophy—he’d even majored in the subject in college. And when it comes to Aristotle, “my interest is longstanding,” he says.

In 2001, he and Deci first explicitly tied their work in self-determination theory to the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia in an article, “On Happiness and Human Potentials.” The article responded to psychologists who were seeking the roots of happiness, which they defined, broadly speaking, as the obtainment of pleasure and avoidance of pain. They declared self-determination theory eudaimonic, and the happiness-based approach to human well-being, hedonic.

Aristotle contrasted a eudaimonic life that fulfills human potentialities well, with lives devoted to wealth-seeking, status-seeking, and amusement. He postulated that riches and status were not sufficient for living well, and even detracted from it.

“As we pursued this connection,” Ryan says, “we saw that eudaimonic thinking offers many testable empirical hypotheses.” In collaboration with Curren, their research began delving further into the connections between virtue and fulfillment.

Last year, the three coauthored “What Humans Need: Flourishing in Aristotelian Philosophy and Self-Determination Theory.” Empirical psychological research concluded that across cultures, among both genders, and in a variety of age categories, people who pursued intrinsic aspirations, including contributions to their communities, close relationships, and autonomous pursuit of personal interests, reported higher measures of happiness and well-being than those whose successes were in extrinsic aspirations such as wealth, fame, and appearance.

It might sound like a truism. Who hasn’t been told that “money can’t buy happiness”? Or, for that matter, love? But how well do contemporary institutions reflect those adages?

Not much, the authors concluded. “There are strong global economic and social forces fostering consumptive, materialistic lifestyles and selfishly focused value priorities,” they wrote. And those forces have resulted, at least in part, from a philosophical tradition, forming the basis of much mainstream economic thought, that assumed “an inherent selfishness and self-interested calculus to all interactions—views that we regard as without foundation in evolutionary science.”

If you accept the arguments of Curren, Deci, and Ryan, then redesigning institutions to foster eudaimonia is a tall order. But, Curren maintains, “it’s entirely possible if one pays attention to what humans actually need.”

The challenge was steep for Aristotle as well. He lived in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, which had cost both Athens and Sparta dearly.

Both states had been exceptionally stable by the standards of their world. What set them apart was that they were successful conquest states. The Athenians relied on their colonies to relieve the poverty and conflict that toppled governments elsewhere. Many of their poor were sent off to colonies, and the conquered populations provided a tax base to subsidize the poor who remained in Athens.

“With conquest no longer possible after the Peloponnesian War, the question of how to live well without the spoils of conquest was a matter of intense philosophical interest,” Curren says. “Critiques of greed and injustice were common.”

Athenian social harmony, in other words, had rested on an insecure foundation. Curren fears 21st-century social harmony, resting on the promise of unending economic growth, is on a similarly unstable footing. When he began to consider the problem of sustainability in a world of declining ecological capacity and rapid population growth, “it struck me that what the Greek moralists were struggling with, is something that we’re actually struggling with, though we don’t fully understand it yet. Which is that we’re going to have to figure out what the alternatives are to endless economic growth as a basis for having any semblance of social tranquility.”

Nonetheless, Curren sees reason to be hopeful. “The good news, if Aristotle is right, is that moderation in wealth—as in everything—is enough.”

What’s Your Love Story?

Rochester research finds that talking with your spouse about movies may increase your odds of finding your own happy ending.

By Scott Hauser

KISS & TELL: Can having focused discussions about movies like Love Story (opposite) help reduce the likelihood of divorce for young couples? (Photo: Getty Images (Love Story); iStockphoto (television))

Cait Powalski ’08, ’11M (MPH) admits that her husband, Will Chesebro ’09, ’10W (MS), doesn’t like it when she asks questions while they watch movies at home.

But during a wintry night in February, the couple made a point of having a conversation as they streamed Indecent Proposal, a 1993 movie starring Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson. In the film, a financier played by Robert Redford offers the fictional couple $1 million if he can sleep with Moore’s character.

The movie makes a point of putting the couple in an emotionally wrought situation, one designed to test their relationship by pushing hard on some hot marital buttons—fidelity, trust, honesty, ambition, money.

Prompted by a 12-question guide designed by Rochester psychologists, Powalski and Chesebro discussed the fictional couple’s relationship—how they interacted, how they communicated, and how they treated one another—a conversation that took place during the movie and for a good 30 minutes afterward.

“I think it reaffirmed that we communicate a lot,” says Powalski, noting that while the movie brought up some touchy subjects, she and Chesebro were in agreement about how they handle the sometimes tense situations that crop up for newlyweds. And a

lthough it was “a little bit weird” to watch a movie as a way to think about their relationship, she and Chesebro agree that the experience was an intriguing way to jump-start conversations about marriage. “It was really worthwhile in thinking about our relationship and relationships in general,” Powalski says.

Could date night some day turn into marriage therapy night? While the answer to that will take a few sequels, an innovative study by Rochester researchers and colleagues at UCLA found that giving couples some direction on how to watch movies together may be a powerful tool for marriage counselors.

Led by Ronald Rogge, associate professor of psychology at Rochester, and Thomas Bradbury, professor of psychology and codirector of the Relationship Institute at UCLA, the researchers found that a relatively simple program of watching a handful of movies and talking about them over the course of a month was as effective in reducing the divorce rate for young couples as more intensive, workshop- oriented programs.

“We thought the movie treatment would help, but not nearly as much as the other programs in which we were teaching all of these state-of-the-art skills,” says Rogge, the lead author of the study. “The results suggest that husbands and wives have a pretty good sense of what they might be doing right and wrong in their relationships.

“You might not need to teach them a whole lot of skills to cut the divorce rate. You might just need to get them to think about how they are currently behaving. And for five movies to give us a benefit over three years—that is awesome.”

Involving 174 couples and published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, the study is one of the first long-term investigations to compare different types of early marriage education programs. In addition to the group that watched movies, one group of couples worked with trained counselors to learn how to better identify areas of friendship, agreement, and conflict, while another attended sessions on how to be more empathetic and work better as a team.

Overall, couples using the movie-and-talk approach had divorce rates of about 11 percent after three years, comparable to those in the traditional, educator-led programs, but less than half the 24 percent divorce rate of a group that completed none of the programs.

Scott Stanley, a research professor and codirector of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, says the study has important findings for people in the field.

“What’s nice about the study is that it raises important issues to grapple with in terms of the nature of what you do and the nature of what people respond to—and perhaps how they change,” says Stanley, who was not involved in the study. “It raises good questions, and it shows the importance of working with different strategies.”

With roughly half of all marriages in the United State ending in divorce, the researchers set out to test the underpinnings of many marriage education programs: whether couples will weather the friction of living together better if they can master certain relationship skills.

“When we started this study, the prevailing wisdom was that the best way to keep relationships healthy and strong was to help couples manage difficult, potentially divisive conversations,” says Bradbury.

The team randomly assigned newlyweds to one of three groups: one took part in a long-standing marital education program known as PREP; one participated in a new program designed by Rogge and his colleagues; and the third were enrolled in the cohort that used movies to become more aware of the dynamics of their relationships. The study concentrated on the first three years of marriage, because “relationship dissolution is front-ended,” says Bradbury; one in four ends in divorce.

The PREP group learned ways to communicate more effectively, learned conflict management techniques, and were given strategies to preserve positives aspects of their lives together. Earlier studies have shown the program to be effective at promoting happier and more satisfying relationships over three to five years.

The compassion and acceptance training cohort participated in an intervention designed by Rogge and his collaborators aimed at helping couples work together as a team to find common ground around their similarities. Couples were encouraged through a series of lectures and exercises to approach their relationships with more compassion by doing things like listening as a friend, practicing spontaneous acts of kindness and affection, and using the language of acceptance.

Both programs involved weekly lectures, supervised practice sessions, and homework assignments over the course of a month, for a total investment of roughly 20 hours, all but two of which were with a trained facilitator.

By contrast, the movie-and-talk group devoted half as much time to their assignments and all but four hours took place in their own homes. Participants attended a 10-minute lecture on the importance of relationship awareness and how watching couples in movies could help spouses pay attention to their own behavior. They then watched Two for the Road, a 1967 romantic comedy about the joys and strains of young love, infidelity, and professional pressures across 12 years of a marriage. Afterward, each couple met separately to discuss a list of 12 questions designed to explore both constructive and destructive examples of behavior that the onscreen couples engaged in.

They chose from a list of 47 movies featuring intimate relationships as a major plot focus and were asked to watch one a week for a month, followed by the same guided discussion for about 45 minutes.

HOME THEATER: Karla and Jonathan Hatley say they found the experience of discussing one of Karla’s favorite movies, Love Jones, “eye-opening” because they realized that their real-life relationship mirrors some of the behaviors portrayed in the movie. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Karla Hatley, a doctoral student in higher education administration at the Warner School, and her husband, Jonathan, say they found the process “eye-opening.” As with Powalski and Chesebro, the two were not enrolled in the study, but they completed the first assignment in the program, which was to watch a movie and then discuss it based on the questions devised by the researchers.

The Hatleys, who were married in 2010, watched Love Jones, a 1997 movie starring Larenz Tate and Nia Long about a Chicago couple who wind through an emotionally charged relationship. It is, Karla notes, one of her favorite movies, but watching it with the intention of having a focused discussion made her realize that the fictional couple’s relationship mirrored hers and Jonathan’s in ways she hadn’t thought about but that were helpful to discuss.

In particular, the characters take a long time to realize that they were undermining their relationship by failing to admit that they could be headstrong.

“They let their pride get in the way,” Hatley says. “That mirrored us as well. Pride sometimes gets in the way, and neither one of us wants to be the first to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

One of the questions in the program asks whether the partners approach problems constructively or “Did it seem like bringing up a problem became an assassination of the partner’s character?”

“We both do that to some degree,” Jonathan says. “We start off trying to build each other up, but it ends up being an assassination. It definitely opened our eyes.”

Rogge hopes that such self-directed reflection can open new possibilities for nurturing nuptial ties on a broader scale.

“It’s incredibly portable,” he says of the movie-and-talk approach. “There are really great marriage education programs available now but most require facilitators trained in a particular program to administer them. If couples can do this on their own, it makes it much easier to help them,” he says.

The results suggest that many couples already possess relationship skills, they just need reminders to put these into practice, the authors conclude. “And that’s an amazingly fertile idea. It’s more sensible and it’s cheaper,” says Bradbury.

The researchers note that religious groups have long-standing traditions of offering marriage preparation classes, initiatives that secular institutions are beginning to experiment with in efforts to reduce the likelihood of marital separation. For example, Fairfax County, Va., offers free “compassion training” to newlyweds, the U.S. military has an “oxygen for your relationships” program, and Oklahoma, home to one of the nation’s highest divorce rates, has poured millions into a “marriage initiative.”

Chesebro says that he and Powalski learned the lessons of communication early in their lives together. After they met on the River Campus in 2007, they were regularly separated by jobs and post-graduation pursuits that took them to different cities—and at times, different countries—before their marriage in 2012. They were struck by how in tune they were when they enrolled in a Pre-Cana workshop, the Roman Catholic Church’s premarriage counseling program required of couples who want to get married in the Church. The program made clear that couples have to be prepared to address a lot of touchy subjects over the course of a marriage.

“They really force you to talk at Pre-Cana about all aspects of marriage—finances, sex, relationships, everything,” he says, noting that he was surprised at how few of the couples in their group seemed to be able to articulate how they thought about such topics.

“We were like, ‘Oh, this is how we would handle that because we already discussed it,’ ” Chesebro says. “Pre-Cana was a way to see how we were communicating, and it reinforced that communication was important for relationships to work.”

But he imagines that he and Powalski could find themselves watching movies and having similar discussions in the future.

Rogge says it’s not that movies have a special magic when it comes to helping make relationships last. The goal is to help couples find a relatively easy way to keep important conversations going.

“I think it’s the couples reinvesting in their relationship and taking a cold hard look at their own behavior that makes the difference,” he says. “The sad truth is that when life knocks you down, you come home and the people you are most likely to lash out at in frustration are the ones you love the most. For these couples to stop and look and say, ‘You know, I have yelled at you like that before. I have called you names before and that’s not nice. That’s not what I want to do to the person I love the most.’ Just that insight alone, is likely what makes this intervention work.”

For Denver’s Stanley, the new study underscores that it’s important for couples to think about and talk about their relationships, which isn’t always easy to do. Some will be able to do that on their own through a program like watching movies, but many will need the prompting of a structured program.

“Anybody who’s going to invest the time, you’re going to get some traction in your relationship,” he says. “I haven’t thought for a long time that one approach is likely to be the be-all-and-end-all for all couples. I think this study is a great example that other thoughtful approaches, in fact, seem to work well.”

Rogge says that being able to provide alternatives to couples is important, especially for people who are uncomfortable with relationship workshops and group interventions.

“You might not be able to get your husband into a couples group, especially when you are happy,” says Rogge. “But watching a movie together and having a discussion, that’s not so scary. It’s less pathologizing, less stigmatizing.”

Since some of the newlyweds in the study had been together for as many as seven years, Rogge speculates that the movie method would be helpful for long-term marriages as well.

“Taking time to sit down and take an objective look at your relationship with your partner is going to be helpful for any couple at any stage. They can make it a yearly thing they do around their anniversary—watch a movie together and talk about it. That would be a fantastic thing to do and a great present to give themselves each year.”

Susan Hagen, who writes about social sciences for University Communications, contributed to this story.

Conquering Kool

Orane Barrett ’98 has a message for teenagers: embrace your inner nerd.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

KOOL KIDS: Channeling their inner nerds, Barrett and children from a Mount Vernon, N.Y., charter school model Barrett’s line of Kool (“knowledge out of learning”) clothing. The former engineer and investment banker started the company as a way to inspire academic excellence among urban children. (Photo: Charles Sykes/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Orane Barrett ’98 is proud to tell you that he’s a nerd. He likes being around other nerds, too. Not just in the dual worlds he’s inhabited of engineering and finance, but across fields.

“This is Kwame,” he calls out over speakerphone, introducing his business partner Kwame Delfish, who is seated across the room. “He’s an art nerd.”

As a cultural icon, the nerd is experiencing a heyday. In a world in which rewards increasingly flow to people with highly specialized skills and expertise, that’s not surprising.

But if adults know just how powerful nerds can be, it’s a message that doesn’t always get through to kids. For that to happen, Barrett says, the nerd’s signature qualities—qualities he boils down to “hard work, intelligence, and passion”—have to be recast as cool.

In December, Barrett left his job as a project manager at Credit Suisse to devote himself full time to his apparel start-up, Kool Nerd Clothing. Rest assured, that as a bona fide nerd, Barrett can spell; kool, he says, is an acronym for “knowledge out of learning.” The aim of the business is to manufacture and sell clothing that will function as “a billboard and a conversation piece” he says, for the idea that intelligence and hard work are cool.

Barrett is a social entrepreneur. Kool Nerds aims to donate a portion of proceeds and in-kind support to programs that support “STEAM”—science, technology, engineering, arts, and math—education.

His target market—kids in urban public schools—will be tough to penetrate. But he knows their world well.

Barrett was 10 when he moved with his family from Jamaica to the United States. Settling into the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush, the language was familiar, but the culture wasn’t.

“In the Caribbean, education is number one, and it’s pushed very hard by the parents,” he says. At his school in Brooklyn, “if a child was known as intelligent, it wasn’t looked upon in a positive way.” Kids who wore their intellect on their sleeves could be beaten up, or worse, “jumped—that’s when more than one person attacks you at the same time,” Barrett says.

In high school in Jamaica, Queens, Barrett’s grades began to drop—a drop that nearly 20 years later, he recalls with nerdish precision. “I started off with a 90 average, and by my junior year, it was 75.” It wasn’t that the work became difficult. “I neglected school in order to fit in,” he says.

He wasn’t even sure he was going to bother with college. But he recalls a life-changing incident at his after-school job at a local supermarket.

“The manager was belittling one of the workers, scolding him right in the aisle, and everybody was watching,” Barrett recalls. “The guy, a huge guy, turns to me afterwards and says, ‘A guy like that I would have broken in two. But now, I can’t do it, because I know I can’t get a job anywhere else.’ ” The man told Barrett he was a former inmate who’d had to struggle to be hired. “He said, ‘Young man, go to school and forget these streets.’ ”

With strong encouragement from his parents, Barrett turned his academic record around. He was accepted to Rochester, where he let his inner nerd shine, majoring in

chemical engineering and becoming a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. Shortly after his graduation, he was hired by Intel and sent to Ireland for training. “I was promoted into management, where I managed a small staff. I was doing very well,” he says.

At the prospect of getting transferred far from his East Coast home, however, Barrett changed course, toward a career in finance. After earning an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Barrett entered investment banking .

Barrett launched Kool Nerd Clothing with his own money, and has started on a small scale. He’s initiated partnerships with institutions such as the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry’s Black Creativity program, and the Amani Public Charter School in Mt. Vernon, N.Y.

At the Amani School, which serves grades five through eight, Kool Nerd Clothing sponsored an essay contest, in which Barrett provided winners Kool Nerd T-shirts and gift cards to Barnes & Noble Booksellers. “What we do closely aligns with Kool Nerds,” says Ann-Marie Ditta, director of development and community engagement for the school. When Barrett met with the students, “It was just amazing how they were totally engaged,” she says.

Since Barrett left investment banking to devote himself full time to Kool Nerds, the business has entered a new phase. Everything up until then—the initial batch of T-shirts, the company website and Facebook page—had been part of what’s called in the business world a proof-of-concept launch.

“I did not expect the response to be as positive as it was,” Barrett says. With the help of Delfish and Melanie Isaac, who is in charge of marketing, Barrett is working to attract investors. This year, he’ll be taking Kool Nerds Clothing to trade shows, and seeking investors and manufacturing contracts in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto. The company is also preparing to relaunch its website and social media presence.

Meanwhile, Barrett continues to visit schools. In February, he took his message to high school students in Rochester, as well as to first-generation University undergraduates, speaking to them at an event sponsored by the David T. Kearns Center for Leadership and Diversity in Arts, Sciences & Engineering.

“Just to have that kind of impact is something I really enjoy and hope this brand can start to do,” Barrett says.

“But we know we have to be cool first.”

Beyond the Taj Mahal

Malini Roy ’97, visual arts curator at the British Library, oversees one of the world’s largest collections of Mughal art.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

MUGHAL MOMENT: Once one of the world’s most powerful dynasties, the Mughal empire—and its 300-year literary and artistic tradition—often are overlooked by scholars of Indian art, Roy says. (Photo: Joel Ryan/AP Images for Rochester Review)

The Mughal Empire would easily make anyone’s short list of the world’s most powerful dynasties. At their peak, the Mughals, who ruled from the early 16th to the mid-19th century, presided over a quarter of the planet’s population, spanning the present-day Indian subcontinent, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

Yet, like many of the grand dynasties from centuries past, the Mughals don’t quite as easily make it on anyone’s short list of hot scholarly topics. This is even more the case in art history than in general history, says Malini Roy ’97, the Chicago native who is an expert in late Mughal art and curator of one of the world’s largest Mughal art collections.

The Mughals were noted patrons of the arts. But among scholars of Indian art, “the trend is to explore regional courts or kingdoms, or to focus on contemporary art,” she says.

Yet there’s still a great deal to explore in Mughal art. Britons were shown that in 2012, when Roy curated the British Library exhibition Mughal India: Art, Culture, and Empire. It was unusual in that it explored artistic life under all 15 Mughal emperors—not just the early, powerful ones, as is usually the case, Roy says.

“What might surprise the public,” she notes, “is that during the gradual collapse of the empire, the artistic and literary traditions actually experienced a revival, rather than a downturn.”

How did you come to your role at the British Library?

I came to London to do my master’s degree, and then my doctorate, at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. As a student, I had the opportunity to work at the British Library on short-term projects, and to really begin to learn about the collections and to enjoy working with them. While I was finishing up my PhD, the position opened up. I applied, and I was offered the role. And I’ve been here since 2008.

What’s the scope of the library’s visual arts collections?

Our collections date back to 1801, when the British East India Company established a library in London. It’s mostly Indian art or British art on the subject of India. It’s quite an enormous collection. There are more than 300,000 Indian paintings, British drawings, and photographs. Those are the main areas. But we also have sculpture and furniture.

When did you develop your interest in art history, and in Mughal art in particular?

I’d always been interested in history. At Rochester, I majored in both history and religion, and I focused on Asia and the Middle East. But growing up, and for my first couple of years at Rochester, I didn’t have much exposure to art history. Then in my junior year, I studied abroad in Italy. Part of my program was looking at Italian art history, and it was from then that I decided it would be interesting to learn about art and museums in general. When I got back to Rochester, I was offered an internship at the Strong Museum. I just started looking at different pockets of art. Then, during a trip to India, I spent some time at the Indian Museum in Kolkata and the National Museum in New Delhi, and those were my first real experiences looking at Indian art. It was quite colorful, and radically different from European art. And it was much less explored, which is why an art historian at the Strong Museum suggested to me that Indian art might be more rewarding to study than Western art. And from then I just started looking much more into the subject.

Your main interest is in the late Mughal period. Why?

When I started studying Mughal art, I was really looking at the 18th century onward. Early Mughal art has been exhaustively studied, and I really wanted to see what was happening when the empire was declining. British East India Company officers began to commission new works of art. Ultimately, this initiated a new style of art, or “Company” painting. This transitional period is what really piqued my interest.

What was your goal, from the outset, for the 2012–13 exhibition Mughal India: Art, Culture, and Empire?

When most people think about the Indian subcontinent, they think about the Taj Mahal, and many don’t realize it was commissioned by the Mughals. But we wanted to show people there was a Mughal culture beyond the Taj Mahal. We actually only included one picture of the Taj Mahal in the entire exhibition. And it was tucked away in a corner. That said, one of the things we found at the very end when we did our evaluation is that a lot of people were quite knowledgeable about the subject. And then there was a smaller percentage of people who were unfamiliar with the topic.

What did you learn as you were putting the exhibition together?

It was a pretty sharp learning curve. The exhibition was an opportunity to really explore the collection in detail. Because we have thousands of pieces in the collection, we went box by box, looking through pieces, and selecting things that were visually interesting, but then researching each item to see what historical connections could be drawn between them. It was amazing to discover unpublished material, including a manuscript of pigeon keeping and breeding. Of course, in the lead up to an exhibition, there’s never enough time to research all the manuscripts and paintings in great detail.

How did the exhibition help you set an agenda going forward?

Reviewing more than 300 years of painting, I was curious to explore why the tradition of Mughal art went into decline during the rule of the “puritanical” emperor, Aurangzeb, the last “Great” Mughal ruler. That’s something that hasn’t really been explored before. But there were other things we were looking at, such as natural history drawings. Both Mughal and European patrons were interested in learning about science and the natural world. There’s quite a treasure trove of natural history drawings at the library from the 18th and 19th centuries. So it gave me a chance to pull together smaller displays of this type of material.

In 2010, Britain and India agreed formally to build stronger artistic ties. Was this exhibition part of that effort?

The library itself has a memorandum of understanding with the Indian Ministry of Culture. And after the exhibition ended, we sent a facsimile version of the show, which was hosted at the Indira Gandhi Center for the Arts in New Delhi. It was really to share the British Library’s collections with the Indian public, and particularly artifacts related to the Mughal empire. It was inaugurated by the vice president of India. Unfortunately I had pneumonia, so I couldn’t go. But the head of our department was there to launch the show.

Prevailing at Pelham Bay

Attorney Mitchel Ashley ’87 helps families in a landmark lawsuit over a New York City toxic waste site.

By Husna Haq

IDEALISTIC ENDEAVOR: Helping families take on New York City in a legal fight over a toxic waste dump resonated with the idealism that inspired him to go to law school 20 years ago, says Ashley. (Photo: Shannon Taggart for Rochester Review)

The case began as almost all legal battles over toxic environments do, in the hospital, with parents of sick children talking with parents of other sick children.

While her daughter, Kerri, received chemotherapy, Bronx resident Patricia Nonnon commiserated with other parents whose children were also being treated for cancer. In the course of their conversations, they uncovered commonalities that at first were curious coincidences but that later became disconcerting.

They each had a youngster being treated for a childhood cancer. They all lived near Eastchester Bay, an inlet of the Long Island Sound, north of Manhattan. And they all were aware that on the shore of the bay was the Pelham Bay landfill, a New York City–operated dump that had been closed in the late 1970s and that the city admitted had been an illegal dumping ground for toxic chemicals and waste.

“That’s how our case started,” says New York City attorney Mitchel Ashley ’87, about a lawsuit that he first began working on as a law student at Hofstra University more than 20 years earlier.

Last August, after nearly a quarter century of litigation, the city agreed to settle the case without admitting that a connection could be proven between the illegal dumping and the health of nearby residents. Ashley, an attorney in private practice, and fellow lawyer Jeff Korek represented nearly a dozen families in the landmark $12 million agreement.

Nonnon, whose daughter, Kerri, died from her cancer at age 10 in 1989, was on the forefront of the legal battle.

“Thinking that my daughter died in vain and that the landfill caused her death— I think Mitchel saw the determination in all of us to prove something was wrong with the landfill, and that kept him going.”

Between 1963 and 1978 when the landfill was in operation, roughly a million gallons of toxic waste, including suspected carcinogens like benzene, were dumped at the 81-acre site. Investigations forced the city to admit in 1985 that some sanitation workers had taken bribes to allow companies to dump chemical waste into the landfill.

Tests later showed that the hazardous materials had seeped into nearby waterways.

As Nonnon and other families compared notes about what their families had been through, figures from a hotline turned up a large number of children from the area who had been diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia. The cancer incidence rate for kids living 1.5 miles from the dump was four times greater than those living farther away, a report later found.

In 1991, 12 plaintiffs filed the first of eight lawsuits against the City of New York. Three children from the area, including Kerri Nonnon, would ultimately die of cancer; another nine who were diagnosed with leukemia survived.

After studying political science at Rochester, Ashley began his career in the casino industry in Atlantic City, N.J., before deciding to pursue a joint JD/MBA degree. He planned to return to the casino industry, but

fter completing his second year of law school, he got a summer internship working on the Pelham Bay case.

“I fell in love with it. I just felt we were doing the right thing for the people affected.”

He abandoned his MBA and established his career in personal injury law, throwing himself into the Pelham Bay litigation.

The settlement was a testament to Ashley’s determination, says client Nonnon.

“He stuck with us and did not waver,” she says. “He was such a strong person to stick it out with us for this long. I think he was as determined as we were,” she says, adding that through the ups and downs, “Mitchel has become a lifelong friend and absolutely more than a lawyer to us. I owe him so much for believing in us.”

Ashley says the notion that he had a chance to protect people who faced overwhelming odds was part of his motivation through the long, challenging case.

“I got involved in the case as a very young idealistic law student,” he says. “To some degree, I never lost that. These people are exactly the type of people that you want to get involved in this type of profession to protect—they were the little guy against the City of New York saying, ‘City, you did something wrong to me.’ ”

“Ultimately, I believed we were right, that things were dumped in a residential community that shouldn’t have been, and that this destroyed the lives of three children, and nine children’s lives were affected for rest of their lives. I don’t know how anyone could turn a blind eye to that.”

Husna Haq is a New York City–based freelance writer.

Grammy Round-Up

Jazz composer, pianist, and bandleader Maria Schneider ’85E (MM) has won her third Grammy Award, and her first in the classical category. Her crossover album Winter Morning Walks (ArtistShare), featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw performing a song cycle Schneider wrote to poems by Ted Kooser, was named Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

Schneider won her first Grammy in 2004 for her album Concert in the Garden (ArtistShare). Named Best Large Jazz Ensemble Recording, the album was the first recording sold exclusively on the Internet to win a Grammy. Schneider won another Grammy in 2007 for Best Instrumental Composition for “Cerulean Skies,” from her album Sky Blue (ArtistShare).

Mastering engineer Bob Ludwig ’66E, ’01E (MM) picked up multiple Grammys for his work on the French electronic music duo Daft Punk’s album Random Access Memories (Columbia Records). The recording was named Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, as well as Album of the Year. Ludwig also won a Grammy for his work on the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Is My Darling—Ireland 1965 (ABKCO Films), which was named Best Historical Album.

Ludwig, who has worked for well-known artists from Jimi Hendrix to Barbra Streisand, has won four previous Grammys, including one Latin Grammy.

Martha Cluver ’03E and Eric Dudley ’01E won Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance as members of the a cappella octet Roomful of Teeth. The album Roomful of Teeth (New Amsterdam Records) is the group’s debut. Based in New York City, the octet came together in 2009.

Kent Knappenberger ’89E (MM), a music teacher and choir director at Westfield Academy and Central School in Westfield, N.Y., won the inaugural Music Educator Award. The Recording Academy and Grammy Foundation established the award to recognize music educators teaching kindergarten through college who have made lasting contributions to the profession and to the continuation of music education in the schools.

Knappenberger, who has taught in Westfield for 25 years and also teaches music in Rio de Janeiro as a volunteer, was among 30,000 people to be nominated and 10 to become finalists.

Also nominated for Grammys this year were David Slonaker ’80E (MM) and Tom Peters ’86E. Slonaker was nominated for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album for the David Slonaker Big Band’s recording Intrada (Origin Records). Peters, a double bassist, was nominated for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for his work on composer John Cage’s The Ten Thousand Things (MicroFest Records).

ALUMNI PURSUITS

Marathon Mission

Setting out on his first marathon a decade ago, an alumnus finds special meaning in long-distance running.

ROCHESTER RUNNERS: Mikyong Kim Hyun ’82, Chul Hyun ’83M (PhD), and their daughter, Sarah, often travel to sites around the world as part of Chul’s interest in running marathons. (Photo: Christopher Lane/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Chul Hyun ’83M (PhD) began running in his mid-40s to stay in shape, and decided in 2003, at 49, to complete his first marathon before he hit 50.

That was 56 marathons ago.

“Every one is precious,” he says. “You get to meet new people and see beautiful scenery. There’s endurance and hardship in running, but it does create a sense of well-being and accomplishment, and it makes me spiritually stronger as well.”

Hyun runs between five and six marathons a year. Besides completing the New York City and Boston marathons, he often travels with his family to race in places such as Rome, Barcelona, and Quebec City.

He typically runs about 30 miles a week, bumping his mileage up to between 35 and 40 miles a week when in full training mode. As a gastroenterologist in private practice, he schedules early morning procedures two or three days a week in order to finish by late afternoon, when he heads to a nearby trail, with 16 round-trip miles of rolling hills, along the Hudson River near his home in Palisades, N.Y. He doesn’t listen to music while exercising. “It gives me time to be alone,” he says.

Marathons are also great teachers, notes Hyun. Some of his best lessons: don’t be too happy to go downhill, because that just means there’s an uphill battle ahead, and never underestimate the strength and speed of an unstylish grandmother, who once beat his time at a race in the Steamtown Marathon in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Last September, he and his wife, Mikyong Kim Hyun ’82, ran the Rochester marathon, an event they make a point of running as a couple each fall. The course winds along the Erie Canal, not far from the Medical Center, and follows the Genesee River past the River Campus. The landmarks are special to the couple, who met while they were Rochester students—Chul studying biophysics and Mikyong studying studio arts—and to their families. Mikyong's sister, Mihea Kim ’86, and brother, Jong Kim ’80, also graduated from Rochester. Chul and Mikyong's daughter, 16-year-old Sarah, hopes to join the legacy to study medicine.

Hyun currently takes about four hours to run 26.2 miles, though his best time was three hours, 41 minutes.

His new plan for 2014? To complete one marathon a month.

“When you’re running in one,” he says, “you think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ But when you come to the finish line, you think differently. It’s ‘When is the next one?’ It’s really the joy of my life.”

—Robin L. Flanigan

Flanigan is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

ALUMNI HONORS

Barbara Burger ’83 Receives Wilder Award

HONOREE: Wilder Award recipient Barbara Burger ’83 is a founding member of the San Francisco Bay Regional Cabinet.

A business executive who leads efforts to innovate and commercialize new technologies for the Chevron Corporation was recognized for her support of the University this winter.

Barbara Burger ’83, the president of Chevron Technology Ventures, a unit of Chevron that focuses on new technology and commercial opportunities, received the John N. Wilder Award at a ceremony in San Francisco in January.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Rochester, Burger went on to receive a doctorate in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1987 and an MBA in finance from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1994. She joined Chevron in 1987 as a researcher and later held executive leadership positions before being named to her current role in 2013.

A founding member of the San Francisco Bay Regional Cabinet, Burger has also joined the Texas Regional Cabinet. She has served on her 30th reunion committee and is a member of the George Eastman Circle, the University’s leadership annual giving society. In 2012, she established the Barbara J. Burger Endowed Scholarship in the Sciences to support students pursuing degrees in biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, or physics.

Established in 2008, the Wilder Award honors an individual, family, association, corporation, or foundation whose philanthropy inspires others in support of an “ever better” University. The award is named for John Wilder, first president of the University’s Board of Trustees.

TRIBUTE

Walter Oi: Economist Who Helped End the Draft

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE: In a gesture marking his retirement as a full-time faculty member, Oi was presented with regalia for his service dog, Karl, by now President Emeritus Robert Sproull. (Photo: Courtesy of Eleanor Oi ’13S (MBA))

If you are an American male younger than 66, you should take a moment and give thanks to economist Walter Oi. He has had a profound effect on your life. He helped end military conscription in the United States.

Between 1948 and 1973, if you were a healthy young male in the United States, the government could pluck you out of almost any activity you were pursuing, cut your hair, and send you anywhere in the world. If the United States was at war, you might have to kill people, and you might return home in a body bag.

Walter, who was the Elmer B. Milliman Professor Emeritus of Economics at Rochester, did not think that was right, and it wasn’t because of his own age or health. When he started writing about the draft in the mid-1960s, just before he came to Rochester, he was well beyond the draft-eligible age range. Moreover, he was going blind, gradually losing all his eyesight in the 1960s. Nor did he choose his position against the draft because he had sons who were at risk. Walter had two daughters, and when he was writing on the issue, almost no one was advocating the conscription of women.

His passion for free labor markets was what motivated his work on the draft. His contribution was to point out—and estimate—two costs. First, the hidden cost imposed on draftees and “draft-induced” or “reluctant” volunteers, and second, the increased annual budget outlay needed to eliminate the draft.

Walter presented his results at the Conference on the Draft at the University of Chicago in December 1966. Some 30 years later, the economist Milton Friedman, who attended the conference, noted that the 74 invited participants “included essentially everyone who had written or spoken at all extensively on either side of the controversy about the draft.” He also wrote: “A straw poll taken at the outset of the conference recorded two-thirds of the participants in favor of the draft; a similar poll at the end, two-thirds opposed. I believe that this conference was the key event that started the ball rolling decisively toward ending the draft.” Six years after that conference, the draft was dead.

I got to know Walter when he was my colleague at Rochester. He helped recruit me as a young assistant professor in 1975, although, by the time I got to the Graduate School of Management (now the Simon Business School), Walter had moved over to the economics department.

He was one of the most courageous men I had ever met. Two stories stand out. Walter’s first academic job was a short-term appointment at Iowa State University that had the potential to turn into a long-term appointment. At the time, though, his eyesight was deteriorating badly. So who knew what his job prospects were? Recall that back then, it was still legal to discriminate against people with disabilities. Some of his colleagues were telling young students that they should major in agricultural business because there was a great future in agriculture. At a faculty meeting, Walter pointed out that agriculture was a declining industry and denounced his colleagues for being less than honest. Now that takes guts. He was out of that job the next academic year.

The second story begins with a phone call I received from Walter when I was a senior economist with President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers in the early 1980s. A government commission looking into the World War II imprisonment of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast had just come out with a report, and its recommendation was that each person imprisoned be compensated with a check for $20,000. Walter wanted me to get him a copy of the report.

Walter had been imprisoned as a child during the war. At Rochester, he’d told me about being taken prisoner by the U.S. government when he was 13 years old and, before being shipped inland, living with his family for the first few days in a horse stall at the Santa Anita race track in Los Angeles. He had some pretty strong feelings about his imprisonment. I told Walter I would get him the report and then asked, “So what do you think of the commission’s recommendation?”

“I’m against it,” he snapped. He then told me that yes, the Japanese Americans were treated unjustly, but that the best thing to do for Japanese Americans was to move on and not create a new government program.

Walter, who died on Christmas Eve 2013 at the age of 84, made many scholarly contributions. But if one measures his accomplishments by his impact on the lives of literally tens of millions of young men, his focused work on the economics of the draft dominates all his other accomplishments. One of the most important economic freedoms is the freedom to choose your occupation. The military draft removes that freedom. Walter Oi helped to restore it.

—David Henderson

Henderson is a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and taught at the Simon Business School from 1975 to 1979. This essay was adapted and reprinted, with permission from the author and publisher, from Defining Ideas. The entire essay is online at www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/164881.

TRIBUTE

Fred Sherman: A Pioneer in Genetics

LEADER: Sherman helped the biochemistry and biophysics department earn national stature. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Fred Sherman, a pioneer in genetics and molecular biology, was a member of the Rochester faculty for 52 years, from 1961 until his death last September. The breadth of his scientific contributions over the span of years that saw the development of modern molecular biology is simply breathtaking. Fred’s early scientific studies focused on the gene encoding the protein cytochrome c in baker’s yeast, establishing this as a powerful system that allowed him to make fundamental contributions to the initial deciphering of the genetic code. His determination of the DNA sequence of the gene encoding cytochrome c, one of the first eukaryotic genes to be sequenced, served as the basis for the first cloning of a gene from a eukaryotic organism.

Fred went on to make critical contributions in understanding control of gene expression, mechanisms of mutagenesis, RNA synthesis and degradation, protein synthesis, post-translational modifications of proteins, protein folding, intracellular trafficking of proteins, and degradation of proteins. Working with his wife, Elena Rustchenko-Bulgac, he also made important contributions to the genetics of the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans. In recognition of these accomplishments, Fred was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences and received an honorary degree from the University of Minnesota, among many other awards and accolades.

Fred is considered one of the founders of the modern field of yeast genetics, based both on his research accomplishments and on a summer course that he codirected at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. The course, which he cotaught for 17 years, mostly with Gerald Fink of MIT, involved rigorous scientific analysis, long hours of laboratory work, large doses of Fred’s zany humor, and after-hours sampling of the local night-life. It provided an introduction to yeast for many scientists who went on to become leaders in modern biology, including one of this year’s Nobel Prize winners, Randy Schekman of UC Berkeley, whose work has relied heavily on yeast genetics. Fred trained dozens of undergraduates, graduates, and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom now lead laboratories at major research institutions. Many of Fred’s trainees and colleagues from around the United States returned to Rochester for a memorial service in December.

Fred traveled widely, accepting countless invitations for seminars and meeting presentations, but, whether traveling through beautiful British countryside or enjoying a performance of Indian dance (dance was a major interest and activity of Fred’s), his thoughts and conversation quickly returned to yeast. His encyclopedic memory of 50 years of yeast genetics included much information that was never published and is now, sadly, lost. Fortunately, his engagement with science was tempered by humor that found expression both in a staple of often-repeated jokes for every occasion and in carefully crafted comedic remarks that he proffered in the guise of questions and comments at scientific seminars. He semi-seriously referred to himself as the world’s expert in yeast genetic nomenclature, and once tried to win a dispute with an editor about the naming of a particular yeast gene by announcing that he had tattooed the name he favored on his chest and that it would be extremely painful to have it changed. Despite his success, Fred maintained a skepticism of the scientific establishment exemplified by his often-repeated reminder that just because a certain result is published in a prestigious scientific journal, “doesn’t necessarily mean that it is wrong.”

Fred spent 16 years as chair, first of the Department of Biochemistry, then of the combined Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He recruited outstanding faculty, establishing the department as a recognized center of research in molecular biology. He went to great lengths to support the careers of faculty in his department and former members of his lab. He will be missed by all of us.

—Mark Dumont

Dumont is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Rochester.

TRIBUTE

John Swanson ’83: ‘The Best of Us’

CAMPUS TIMES: Swanson was editor in chief for the calendar year of 1982.

On February 1, a group of 30 gathered on Central Park West. Among them were four former Campus Times editors in chief from the early 1980s, when the paper was a daily—along with fellow CT editors and friends. They were there to honor a person who—as one attendee said—“was the best of us.”

John (Swanee) Swanson ’83 died in January in New York City at age 52, from cancer. He was many things: a reporter and editor; a baseball player and coach; a rock and roll connoisseur; and an expert in windows and doors. He was a husband to Lee Burnley ’83, a father to daughter Ellen ’16 and son Harry, and a friend to countless others, not only fellow alumni, but also parents at pools and baseball fields, colleagues in the building trades industry, and parishioners at church.

I met Swanee in Burton Hall the first day of our freshman year in 1979. We bonded over the Campus Times and Bruce Springsteen. In our sophomore year we joined other UR students (including Swanee’s future wife, Lee) to see Springsteen at the Rochester War Memorial.

Swanee wrote an inspired review for the CT. My favorite part is the last paragraph: “Bruce Springsteen is now the biggest thing in rock and roll, and last night’s performance only strengthens his position. He has believed all along that rock and roll can do almost anything for a person, and it will be interesting to see how much more it can do for him.”

Bruce Springsteen obviously went on to great success, and Swanee and I saw another half-dozen shows together over the years.

Swanee—himself a CT editor in chief—also went on to do great things. And like Bruce, his feet were always on the ground, and his head and his heart stayed focused on what mattered most: family, friendships, excellence in all he did.

Swanee was one-of-a-kind, an improbable mix of grace, humor, intelligence and—most of all—authenticity. He was the most genuinely cool person I’ve known.

—Gary Stockman ’83

Swanee was a great example for us even when we were too young to understand why. Back in the ’80s—when we thought the great ones needed to be bold, powerful, and serious—Swanee was the opposite. He enjoyed the moment. He was quiet and always the last to talk, but his observations usually built consensus. He never came across as ambitious, but everything he did—writing, playing baseball, teaching, appreciating music—he did with the zest of a lion. As I look today at what leadership and success are about, I realize Swanee had it figured out way back then before any of us.

What I will remember most about him was how he looked on a sunny weekday afternoon last August. Despite his failing health, he found a way to be the happiest guy on earth, watching Harry play at Yankee Stadium in a Little League championship game. He was living in the moment and focused on what mattered most. A lesson for us all.

—Mark Mozeson ’83

John was a great listener. And in his soft-spoken way—frequently leavened with dry humor—he transformed noise into harmony.

CT staff meetings were emotionally charged affairs, 50 of us packed into a low-ceilinged, windowless basement shoebox in Wilson Commons. The combination of sleepless young adults working for free, without academic credit—and struggling to balance classwork and a daily publishing schedule—sparked heated debates on matters meaningful and trivial. We lived for what we did in those grungy, fluorescent spaces. It was all deeply personal.

As voices rose, Swanee took it all in, and at the end brought us home with a thoughtful comment. He earned respect not through shouting or clamor but through the quiet intensity that led him to spend hours crafting a music review or, after his beloved Cubs lost in the 1984 playoffs, to walk fully clothed into a creek—displaying both the depth of his love and his need to cool off.

We more than loved Swanee—we looked up to him. His dedication and work ethic, his judicious powers of observation—his passion for everything he did—combined to demonstrate one word: leadership. Near the end he showed visitors a heartfelt note of gratitude from a young journalist he had helped train. It was testament to his lifelong impact on those around him, something we all could have written.

—Randall Whitestone ’83

Swanee was a leader, and yet often seemed oblivious to it. He said we would do things and so we did. The only time I saw Grand-master Flash and the Furious Five was when Swanee led us out to some club in suburban Rochester.

He loved being in New York even though he claimed to be a Chicago guy. In a group of cynics and short tempers fueled by caffeine and lack of sleep, he was the calm center. And although I saw him angry, I never saw him cruel. He had a remarkable way of accepting and observing the chaos around him.

—John McKeegan ’83

Swanee was a great teacher and leader, gifts he conveyed through a quiet but generous spirit of sharing. His impact on us was profound—I am hardly the only one in our group who would have to credit three- quarters of a vast music collection to Swanee’s discovery and influence.

Throughout our time with him, he taught and led by example, never more so than in the universal quest of how to live a good and happy life.

In his last months, he was still teaching. He endured life’s final trial with courage and grace, dignity and humility, and, above all, love and faith.

Swanee had many visitors in those days, and, to a one, we were all struck by his unflagging spirit, his unbelievable concern for how his condition was affecting others, his downplaying of the profound physical pain he was feeling.

He was sad to leave, but as a minister’s son and someone who lived a faith-based life, curious about the next chapter.

Swanee was a North Star we all sailed by, more than we realized before. I expect we’ll feel adrift for a very long time.

—Richard Keil ’83

Books & Recordings

Books

Radical Equality in Education: Starting Over in U.S. Schooling

By Joanne Larson

Routledge, 2014

Larson, the Michael W. Scandling Professor of Education and chair of teaching and curriculum at the Warner School, raises basic questions about the nature and purpose of schooling. She calls for fundamental reform of curricular, pedagogical, and assessment principles, pointing to examples in the Rochester region of what those changes might look like in practice.

Why Is English Literature? Language and Letters for the Twenty-First Century

By Thomas Bonfiglio ’72

Macmillan, 2013

Bonfiglio, professor of literature and linguistics at the University of Richmond, explores why literature, once routinely taught in the United States in the original language, came to be dominated by English literature, with non-English literature configured as foreign language study.

Integrating Music into the Elementary Classroom (Ninth Edition)

By William Anderson ’63E, ’65E (MM) and Joy Lawrence

Cengage Learning, 2014

Anderson, professor of music education at Kent State University, coauthors an updated edition of the classic elementary music methods textbook. Among other updates, the edition includes new sections on the integration of technologies such as tablet computers, smartphones, cloud-based resources, and social media in music teaching and learning.

My Search for the Beloved Community

By David Atwood ’63

Peace Center Books, 2013

Atwood, Houston peace activist and founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, chronicles his search for the “beloved community,” as envisioned and described by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his speeches and writings.

Prize Winners

By Dale Dapkins ’68

Absolutely Amazing eBooks, 2012

Dapkins offers a collection of offbeat tales about family and society in his self-styled genre of “social science fiction.” The collection includes “Alpaca Potato,” winner of the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, honoring emerging writers.

Musicianship: Composing in Band and Orchestra

Edited by Clint Randles and David Stringham ’03E, ’11E (PhD)

GIA Publications, 2013

Stringham, assistant professor of music at James Madison University, coedits a collection of essays by 35 teachers and composers on the importance of composition in instrumental music instruction, from elementary through college levels. The book includes a variety of lesson plans.

Studying Students: A Second Look

Edited by Nancy Fried Foster

American Library Association, 2013

Foster, a research associate in Rochester’s anthropology department, edits and contributes to a series of essays by University librarians on how college students use libraries and library technology in completing research papers. The essays, based on ethnographic research at the River Campus Libraries, point to multiple applications for research university libraries.

The Smiths of Pohoganut

Edited by Marian Ragan Halperin ’46

Martha’s Vineyard Museum, 2013

Halperin, former director and longtime volunteer at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, transcribes and edits the diaries of two sisters who inhabited the neutral island during the War of 1812. The sisters reflect on political events, as well as private matters, offering a window into the daily lives of Vineyarders during a time of conflict and change.

Celtic Spirit: A Wee Journey to the Heart of It All

By Jeanne Crane ’70

CreateSpace, 2013

Crane presents a work of travel fiction, in which a group of Americans embarks on a 12-day tour of ancient sites in Ireland. Written from the multiple perspectives of the travelers, the book explores “the very heart of the Celtic spirit.”

The Emancipation of Abraham Lincoln XL-3000 and Other Stories

By Robert Bly ’79

CreateSpace, 2013

Copywriter Bly presents a collection of science fiction stories.

Gludman’s Proof

By Matthew Marullo ’94E (MA)

CreateSpace, 2013

Marullo, a music teacher at Cold Spring Harbor High School on Long Island, offers his second novel, a mystery in which four scientists attempt to prove mathematically the existence of heaven.

Letters to a Young Math Teacher

By Gerald Rising ’48, ’51 (Mas) and Ray Patenaude

CreateSpace, 2014

Rising, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Buffalo, and Patenaude offer new math teachers a guide to “the real world of schools,” based on their experiences in urban, rural, and suburban schools, and work with math teachers.

Ways of War: American Military History from the Colonial Era to the Twenty-First Century

By Matthew Muehlbauer ’89 and David Ulbrich

Routledge, 2013

Muehlbauer, visiting professor of history at Manhattan College, and Ulbrich introduce students to American military history, examining military development in the wider context of American history and demonstrating the military’s central role in American culture and politics.

Bride at First Sight

By Maggie Adams

Boroughs Publishing, 2013

Margaret Blank Birth ’85, writing under the pen name Maggie Adams, offers a contemporary romance about an Indian-American girl unhappy with her impending arranged marriage.

Via Corsa Car Lover’s Guide to Northern California

By Ron Adams ’88

Via Corsa, 2013

In the third travel book in his Car Lover’s series, Adams explores Napa and Sonoma Valley wineries, as well as the region’s automotive museums and racetracks. The book includes an interview with champion race car driver Mario Andretti.

Documentary’s Awkward Turn: Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship

By Jason Middleton Routledge, 2013

Middleton, director of film and media studies and assistant professor of English at Rochester, explores the subgenre of contemporary film and television comedy based on awkward moments and awkwardness. The book is part of the series Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies.

Spanish Sojourns: Robert Henri and the Spirit of Spain

By Valerie Ann Leeds ’79

Telfair Books, 2013

Museum consultant Leeds explores the influence of Spain on the work of American Ashcan painter Robert Henri. Leeds is also the author of The New Spirit and the Cos Cob Art Colony: Before and After the Armory Show (Greenwich Historical Society), accompanying an exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of the groundbreaking modern art show.

Developing High Performance Tennis Players

By Edgar Giffenig

Neuer Sportverlag, 2013

In a book edited by retired teacher and tennis coach Edward Letteron ’52, Giffenig shares training tips designed for competitive tennis players and their coaches. Giffenig is a former national coach in the United States, Germany, and Mexico, and is director of the Giffenig Tennis Academy in Salisbury, Conn.

Recordings

Intrada

By Dave Slonaker ’80E (MM)

Origin Records, 2013

Jazz composer and arranger Slonaker leads his 17-member big band in performing nine original tracks. Featured are Bob Sheppard ’77E (MM) and Brian Scanlon ’81E, ’83E (MM) on woodwinds; Bill Reichenbach ’71E and Eastman associate professor of jazz Clay Jenkins on brass; and Ed Czach ’80E, ’82E (MM) on piano. Intrada received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.

Le Tasty

By Hop Sauce

Hop Sauce, 2013

The San Francisco jazz-funk band that includes guitarist Jonathan (Jono) Kornfeld ’92 presents its first recording. Kornfeld teaches piano, guitar, and music theory and composition in the Bay Area.

The Sharp Nine Sessions

By Brian Cunningham

Jazz Project, 2013

Jazz guitarist Brian Cunningham performs with fellow guitarist John Stowell and drummer Jud Sherman ’89 on Sherman’s Jazz Project label.

Mystic Places

By Phoenix Rising

Phoenix Rising, 2013

The duo of pianist and composer Wendy Loomis and flutist and arranger Monica Williams ’99E presents their second collection of original ambient compositions.

Runes: A Piano Fantasy

By Robert Dusek ’84E and Bryan Pezzone ’84E

Ravello Records, 2013

In their first collaboration in 25 years, composer Dusek and pianist Pezzone offer 12 new original pieces.

Edvard Grieg

By Peter Fletcher ’95E (MM)

Centaur Records, 2013

New York City–based classical guitarist Fletcher transcribes and records works by the Norwegian Romantic composer.

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, author or performer, a brief description, and a high-resolution cover image, 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.

Real Cowboys

At a historic Montana ranch, Jacqueline Lavelle ’88 introduces visitors to the lives of working cowboys.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

(Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

I’m superintendent of Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site, part of the U.S. National Park Service. In the 19th century, this was the home of a cattle empire. Today, we’re both a museum, consisting of 90 historic structures and about 30,000 artifacts, and an active, 1,600-acre cattle ranch with about 200 head of cattle.

The ranch’s founder, Johnny Grant, was from Canada and had Native American heritage and a Native American wife. Conrad Kohrs, the second owner of this ranch, was from Germany.

Many 19th-century cowboys were immigrants, Native American, and African American. Cowboy stories weren’t often recorded. These were not the folks who were making business decisions or sitting in a political arena.

The period when cowboys were trailing cattle from Texas up to markets in Kansas and Chicago was a very short time period in history, but that image of the cowboy is so pervasive. The purpose of moving the cattle was to get the cattle to cities so people on the East coast could have steaks. But it’s part of our culture that we’ve had these broad open spaces in the Western part of our country.

Today it’s very rare that cattle are moved long distances. But moving cattle from pasture to pasture is still a necessary skill set in a ranch like this one that raises grass-fed cattle. You have to rotate the cattle to avoid overgrazing. In Montana, Kansas, and Texas, many ranches are still doing this, going from higher ground in the summer to lower ground in the winter.

Cowboys are like veterinarians on the fly. They’re amazingly in touch with the animals. Watching our cowboys here who work with the draft horses and the steer, I realized that moving the animals is about really understanding what their mood is for the day. It’s quite a skill set, and something that takes a lifetime. Most of our cowboys started out riding horses bareback as kids. I haven’t met any of the truly skilled cowboys who have done this for less than their entire lives.

Cowboys have a very dirty job. I’m certainly not a cowboy, but every time I’ve gone out and done ranch chores with our cowboys, I come back filthy. Covered with hay, covered with manure, covered with mud. And cold and wet. If it’s freezing outside, and the creek is frozen, you have to break the creek open so the animals can get some water.

People can still come here and experience the West as it was. People can see the cattle grazing, the bunkhouse where all the wranglers slept, and experience all the sights and sounds and smells of what it was like.

At the same time, we’re having less and less an ability to see where our food comes from. Here at the ranch, we produce a lot of food on-site. It’s a reminder that these things have to come from somewhere.

Jacqueline Lavelle ’88

Deer Lodge, Montana

Superintendent, Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site/U.S. National Park Service

On her first major assignment: “Early in my career, I got trained in wild land firefighting. My daily job was as a fee collector. When fire season broke out in August, they would call me and say, ‘You need to come out West and fight these fires.’ I got to be a crew boss, taking fire crews, training them, teaching them how to use pumps and chainsaws, and then taking them out on fires and staying with a crew of 20 people for a 21-day fire assignment.”

WARFIELD SCHOLAR

Celebrated Singer

(Photo: Brandon Vick)

Stage Presence: Soprano Joel Dyson ’14E headlined this year’s benefit concert for the William Warfield Scholarship Fund, an annual event celebrating the legacy of opera singer William Warfield ’42E. Shown here with master’s student and guitarist Gabe Condon ’13E, Dyson performed works by Debussy, Massenet, and Gershwin, along with traditional spirituals, at Kilbourn Hall in January. A recipient of the scholarship in both her junior and senior years, Dyson is a student of voice professor Robert McIver.