Rochester Review

January-February 2015, Volume 77, No. 3

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Valerie Alhart, David Barnstone, Sean Dobbin, Adam Fenster, Peter Iglinski, Melissa Lang, Bob Marcotte, Melissa Mead, Mark Michaud, Sara Miller, Dennis O’Donnell, Leslie Orr, Monique Patenaude, Scott Sabocheck, and Brandon Vick

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E-mail: rochrev@rochester.edu www.rochester.edu/pr/Review

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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 © 2015 University of Rochester

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

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Contents

Everybody’s Friend

Letters

Chemical Bonding

The Very Model of a Major Collection

Go, Yellowjackets, Go!

Setting the Course for Eastman’s Future

Can We Have a Snow Day?

Getting to the Root of STEM Education

New Tool Targets Rare Brain Disease

Family Ties

South Campus Scene

Rochester Helps Create First Map of Human Lungs

Global Rochester: Poland

A League That They Own

Yellowjackets Named Academic All-Americans

Yellowjackets Start Strong in Winter Seasons

Fifty years ago Paul Burgett arrived at the University. Neither has been the same since.

A Destination in the Fight against Cancer

Chasing the Past

At Sea

On Tour, with Robin Lynn ’70

At the Scene of Sound

Mortal Words

Alumni Honors

Rita Shane: ‘A Unique Star Among Us’

Esther Conwell ’44 (MS): ‘Lived and Breathed Science’

Books & Recordings

User-Centered

Leave It to Us

Everybody’s Friend

By Joel Seligman

FAMILIAR FACE: Dean Paul Burgett has embodied the University for generations of students. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

In October the Board of Trustees unanimously voted to name our Intercultural Center in honor of Paul Burgett, recognizing his first 50 amazing years as part of our University family. Formally Paul is vice president, senior advisor to the president, and University dean.

Anyone who knows Paul knows he is much more than that. He is a personification of all that is good about our University—his passion, his sense of fairness, his sensitivity to others, and his commitment to making our University ever better are an invaluable inspiration.

He is a treasure—someone with a gift of near perfect institutional memory, an ability to light up a room when he enters with his radiant warmth, his basso profundo voice, his ingratiating charm, his storyteller’s wit. As I wrote to him when I autographed a copy of the new University history for Paul, “You are UR.”

Fittingly, Paul wrote the afterword to the history.

Paul arrived at the Eastman School of Music as a freshman in 1964. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in music education at Eastman, writing a doctoral dissertation that addressed the aesthetics of the music of black Americans.

“Dean Burgett,” as he is known by generations of students, enthralled students and alumni with his rendition of the “Fiery Furnace,” Paul’s homily of how the University transforms its students. Paul has worn many hats in the last half century. He served as the Eastman School’s dean of students from 1981 to 1988 and vice president and University dean of students from 1988 to 2001. Since 2001, he has been a key part of the President’s Office, first as vice president and general secretary, more recently as my closest advisor on a plethora of key issues.

His impact on our University is both programmatic and personal. Paul helped plan the Eastman Student Living Center, worked to improve programs at the Interfaith Chapel, Wilson Commons, University Health Service, Counseling and Mental Health Services, the Office of Minority Student Affairs, the International Student Office, Residential Life, and Athletics and Recreation. More recently he has been pivotal in helping launch the new First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival.

But always throughout his career, Paul’s was the office that welcomed all who needed a friend. He is located just a few feet away from my office, and often has students waiting to see him in the lobby between us. Some are beaming with good news to share. Some are sad eyed. But always they brighten when Paul opens his door and welcomes them.

Paul is everybody’s friend.

We sometimes kid each other that we live in different time zones. On Sundays, I often am finishing hours of work when Paul arrives. I regularly wander down to his office and kibitz. Our discussions range from who was the greatest popular jazz singer, to Shakespeare, travel, and the news of the day. Paul is my friend, too. Paul’s contributions to the Greater Rochester community have been legion. He has served as chair of the board of trustees of the Strong Museum; as chair of Rochester’s Zoning Board of Appeals; and on the boards of directors of the Genesee Country Village and Museum, the Hillside Family of Agencies, the Arts and Cultural Council of Rochester, the YMCA, the United Way, the Urban League, and the Hochstein School of Music and Dance. He also served on the international advisory board of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago, the Mt. Hope Family Center’s advisory board, and the Rochester Rotary Club’s board. He is a true ambassador to the Greater Rochester community.

Paul loves the fact that the Intercultural Center will be named after him. The center promotes cultural awareness and engagement, fosters understanding about the differences among cultures, and provides opportunities for cross-cultural programming among faculty, staff, and students. Students are encouraged to learn how to work and learn with those from other cultures, regardless of socioeconomic status, political belief, racial and ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, and religious affiliation. These are not only University values—these are Paul’s values.

Together with his spouse, Catherine Valentine, professor emerita of sociology at Nazareth College, Paul has seen much of the world and brings a global understanding to his leadership at the University.

I know I speak for all members of the University of Rochester family throughout the world in expressing our deep gratitude to Paul for his first 50 years of dedicated and exemplary service.

But I serve notice: the title of the new University history is Our Work Is But Begun.

I feel that way about Paul and our University, too.

Letters

FREQUENT FLIER? Eleanor Roosevelt (left) made several campus visits in the 1950s. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Tea with Eleanor Roosevelt . . .

When I saw the photo and article about Eleanor Roosevelt (“Ask the Archivist,” November-December), I was taken back to an afternoon on the Women’s Campus in 1950 when about a dozen of us had tea with Mrs. Roosevelt during the visit described in the article. The tea was arranged by Dean Margaret Habein so that some of us could meet Mrs. Roosevelt. She sat in an armchair while we sat around her on the carpeted floor. We were all dumbstruck in the presence of this great lady and did not know what to say.

After a short, awkward pause, Mrs. Roosevelt began telling stories about her experiences and soon we were asking questions as we forgot how awed we were by her. I realized that she knew that we didn’t know how to handle the situation so she set about making us feel comfortable. Her unselfish and generous spirit came through—she wasn’t thinking of herself but of us.

Although I have had many reasons over the years to admire her, this is the impression that I have carried with me and tried to emulate.

Dorothy Botkin Rosenthal ’55, ’83W (EdD)

Amherst, Massachusetts

. . . Her Other Visits to Campus . . .

Eleanor Roosevelt was also at U of R in the mid-1950s. I was a student from 1952 to 1956, and I distinctly remember going to hear her speak at Strong Auditorium. I sat in the first row and never forgot her dynamic speech. It was probably 1954–55.

I still recall that as a highlight of my college experience.

Arlene Eichen Stolnitz ’56

Venice, Florida

Eleanor Roosevelt was at U of R in fall of either ’52 or ’53 as I was the head waiter at the Faculty Club in Burton dorm and waited on her and President de Kiewiet and Dean Atkins for the chef, Mrs. Hanson. We served steak, baked potatoes, green beans, and apple pie. She casually ate her whole plate and kept right on talking. Then she reached over to the president’s plate with no hesitation and took his uneaten potato and ate it, too. Needless to say, it was an experience I have never forgotten.

Don Brady ’55

Greensboro, North Carolina

I distinctly remember that Mrs. Roosevelt made at least one more visit to the River Campus after the one in February 1950. I recall it clearly because as a geeky undergraduate, my tongue was tied on a quiet Saturday morning when I held open the door to Todd Union as she entered, unaccompanied. I couldn’t muster up even enough courage to say, “Good morning, Mrs. Roosevelt.”

Since I arrived in fall 1951, it had to have been after the visit you wrote about.

Ed Russell ’55

Charlottesville, Virginia

. . . and Benjamin, the Dentist

I was accepted to the U of R in 1952 for the Class of ’56. At the end of my freshman year, I was selected for the Sophomore Honor Society Yellow Key for the following year, 1953.

In the winter of that year, Eleanor Roosevelt was invited by the University to speak to a joint class of men from the campus and women from Prince Street, all sophomore honor society members, at Todd Union. As I recall, there were about 15 to 20 students seated at a round table with Mrs. Roosevelt. She was, at the time serving with Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. She went around the table asking us what our names were, what our major was, and what we planned to do with our lives.

When she came to me, I told her that my name was Benjamin Levy, I was majoring in psychology and chemistry and that I was planning to apply to dental school after my third year at Rochester, which was an option at the time. She then went into an animated discussion with me about the terrible state of her teeth as a result of periodontal disease and that her dentist in New York was going to remove all her remaining teeth and place an immediate denture in order for her to continue working without looking “peculiar” as she put it.

I, quite naturally, had no idea what an immediate denture was nor did I know what periodontal disease was. I just kept nodding to this famous and quite intimidating lady and tried my best to look intelligent. She then completed the table and spoke about human rights at the UN and how she did not particularly care for Ambassador Stevenson.

It was a very engrossing experience for me.

At the end of my sophomore year, I was elected to the junior honor society, the Mendicants, and Mrs. Roosevelt was again invited by Dr. de Kiewiet to speak to the honor society members at Todd Union. This was now 1954. When she appeared, her appearance was much different. Her face and hair were much improved, as was her mouth. The new dentures were obviously in place and functioning properly. She again went around the table and when she came to me I told her that I had, indeed, applied to dental schools, and was hoping for an acceptance to the NYU School of Dentistry, which had a program to accept third-year students who had completed their chemistry, biology, and physics requirements successfully. After successful completion of their first year in dental school, the students would be granted their U of R bachelor’s degrees.

She got all animated again and told us all the experience of having this innovative dental treatment performed and how much better she felt about herself because she looked so much better. She asked me to repeat my name and said she would remember it; and if I was accepted at NYU, I should come to her office at the UN and report on my progress.

I was indeed accepted at NYU in January of 1955 and began classes that September. During one of my gross anatomy labs in the winter of 1955, the professor of anatomy came over to my table and said to me that I had a very emotional telephone call from my father and that I should take the call immediately.

I thought the worst, that someone in our family had died. But that was not the case. Apparently, while walking on First Avenue past the UN building, my dad encountered Mrs. Roosevelt getting out of her limousine without any secret service accompaniment.

I had told my parents the story of what had happened at Todd Union and right here in front of him he saw the star of the piece. He approached the former first lady and said, according to his story, “Hello, Mrs. Roosevelt. My name is Charles Levy and I believe you met my son, Ben, at the University of Rochester last winter.”

To his amazement, Mrs. Roosevelt replied, “Oh yes, Mr. Levy. You must mean Benjamin, the dentist.” My father told me after that he could barely speak and mumbled something—he didn’t remember what, shook her hand, and walked away.

After a few moments thinking about what had just occurred, he stepped into a local pharmacy and called the dental school. When he spoke to me, I swear he was crying—and my dad was not all that emotional a guy. He said to me, “Ben, do you know Eleanor Roosevelt knows who you are!”

Several years later my wife and our two children traveled to Hyde Park to see the FDR home and estate. My family knew the story and wanted very much to see the graves. When we stepped into the burial area, I broke down recalling how close I came to this terrific lady and that she knew who I was.

Benjamin Levy ’56

Wilmington, North Carolina

Eternal and Imperial—But Not BCE

I was delighted to see that my alma mater is paying some attention to “Eternal Rome” (“Models of History,” November-December), but it would be better still to keep the facts and dates straight. Professor Renato Perucchio’s research does indeed deal with “Imperial Rome,” which is Rome circa 200 CE, not 200 BCE, and it might be worth mentioning that Rome’s lack of a “civil engineering code” in any period was a matter of comment even in antiquity.

Some of us do study Rome circa 200 BCE, though, and even use computer modeling techniques to do so. You will find a sample at http://hvwc-server.ats.ucla.edu/.

Sander Goldberg ’70

Los Angeles

The writer holds the title of Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Chemical Bonding

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

Biomass Moment: Chemical engineering students Daniel Napolitano ’15, Yuqi Guo ’15, Jisu Jiang ’15, and Andrew Stark ’15 (left to right) work on their senior design project this fall in Gavett Hall. The group is studying environmentally friendly and economically efficient alternatives for converting cow manure into a carbon-based fertilizing compound known as “biochar.” The Department of Chemical Engineering is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

LIBRARIES

The Very Model of a Major Collection

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

Matters vegetable and Mineral: A selection of posters featuring the Victorian-era comic operas of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan took center stage this fall at Rush Rhees Library. Drawn from a collection of 150 posters from the 20th century donated by Hal Kanthor ’66M (MD), a Rochester-area pediatrician, the exhibition also featured programs, souvenirs, and photographs representing the work of the British team that produced some of the English-speaking world’s most memorable stage productions. More about the collection: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/gilbert-sullivan.

CROSS COUNTRY

Go, Yellowjackets, Go!

(Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

Host Field: Yellowjackets Eric Franklin ’17 (232), Jeremy Hassett ’16 (235), Dan Nolte ’17 (237), Mark Rollfs ’15 (237), Joseph DiFabio ’16 (behind Rollfs), Austin Davis ’15 (230), and Andrew Zeccola ’15 (238) set off at the start of the NCAA Division III regional cross country meet, hosted by Rochester this fall in Genesee Valley Park. Rollfs and Franklin earned All-Region honors. In the women’s race, Catherine Knox ’16 placed 10th, qualifying for the national championship race, where she finished 56th in a field of 275 runners.

ADMINISTRATION

Setting the Course for Eastman’s Future

New dean Jamal Rossi discusses his plans for the school, and a changing musical world.

Interview by Kathleen McGarvey

LOOKING AHEAD: Rossi says the musical world has changed dramatically in the past 25 years, due largely to technology, and that the Eastman curriculum should prepare students for careers and opportunities that no one can yet foresee. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

In October, the University hosted a formal investiture of Jamal Rossi ’87E (DMA) as the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean of the Eastman School of Music. Rossi is the school’s seventh dean and came to Eastman in 2005 as senior associate dean. Two years later, he was promoted to executive associate dean—a position in which he oversaw the project to renovate Eastman Theatre and construct the Eastman East Wing, among other responsibilities. Rossi is a saxophonist and chamber musician featured on many recordings. Prior to coming to Eastman, he was assistant and then associate dean of the School of Music at Ithaca College from 1989 to 2000, and was also dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina from 2000 to 2005. A graduate of Ithaca College in music education and performance, Rossi earned a master of music degree from the University of Michigan before receiving his doctor of musical arts degree at Eastman.

What is your vision for the Eastman School?

We are committed to educating musical leaders who will have the curiosity and ambition to continually learn, adapt, and contribute to the world around them. We have an exceptional curriculum, one that has prepared generations of outstanding musicians. But as the music world continues to change, Eastman must prepare our students to be ready for careers and opportunities that we do not yet anticipate. That means continuing to develop a curriculum that is progressive, integrative, and forward thinking.

How is the music world changing?

It has changed dramatically in the last quarter century, largely due to technology. The recording industry has been transformed to something very few people ever anticipated. Symphony orchestras, opera companies, and other organizations face unprecedented financial challenges. Music and musical styles continue to evolve, and the lines between genres continue to merge and dissolve—so what was once very clearly labeled “classical music” today can combine elements of improvisation, jazz, and other styles of music. We need to make certain that Eastman students have the preparation and versatility to engage with many styles of music and opportunities.

What’s the best way to do that?

It’s impossible to teach everything that a musician will ever need to know in an undergraduate or graduate degree. It’s important to focus on the essentials—and to me these are an emphasis on musical artistry and comprehensive musicianship. Beyond that, though, we need to make certain that our students have opportunities to explore many facets of music, perform in multiple genres, and develop skills relevant in the 21st century. And our goal is to elicit curiosity in our students, and an awareness that a life in music is a lifelong career in learning. It is through their own curiosity and ambition that they will constantly learn and adapt to a changing music world.

How do you adapt the curriculum?

All stakeholders in Eastman’s future are currently engaged in a conversation about the remarkable school we plan to be in the future. We are currently examining what we do, why we do it, and how we can do it better. Last year, we laid the groundwork for new degree programs in contemporary media composition, convergent artistry, and music leadership. While many of our students currently pursue an arts leadership certificate, we are exploring the possibility of a discrete degree in executive music leadership. We are also in the early stages of considering programs in creativity and improvisation, and in contemporary music. Eastman has a responsibility to educate students who will develop the next era of music so that they can be strong advocates and lead music organizations.

>What are some of the challenges you’re facing?

One of our challenges is providing enough scholarship support to make an Eastman education attainable for the highly talented students who typically have very strong scholarship offers from other top-tier music programs. Enrolling the very best students has become increasingly competitive, and my top priority is increasing our scholarship support.

Second, we’re at a point in the next several years where there will likely be a significant turnover of faculty. I want to make certain we have the financial resources to recruit, hire, and retain the very best faculty in the world. Therefore, a second priority is increasing the number of endowed professorships at Eastman.

A third challenge is related to facilities. We have some spectacular facilities at Eastman—but they are approaching 100 years old and in need of infrastructure and cosmetic improvements. Two priority projects are developing the parking lot located across from the Eastman Theatre into a new cultural gateway to the city, and completing the renovations to Messinger Hall—the home of the Eastman Community Music School.

You’ve been involved in improving facilities before, and in community outreach through founding RocMusic. Can you talk about that?

Being involved in the Eastman Theatre renovation and addition was a real privilege. We had a tremendous team of individuals who were committed to bringing to reality a decades-long dream for new performance and rehearsal facilities. I believe the outcome of that project reflects the excellence that really is the hallmark of Eastman.

RocMusic is a project I care very deeply about. I believe every child deserves the opportunity to experience the joy of making music. Simultaneously, I fear that one of the most serious challenges facing music in the future is the marginalization of music education in the public schools. I am committed to working with leaders in music and education to stem this trend and to advocate for the importance of music in the lives of children.

RocMusic is an initiative we started nearly three years ago when I approached the leaders of the Eastman Community Music School, the Hochstein School of Music and Dance, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Rochester City School District to ask if we were satisfied with the impact our organizations were having on students in the heart of inner-city Rochester. We agreed that while we were all engaged in good efforts, none of us was reaching students as effectively as we desired. So we teamed together, along with the City of Rochester, to form the RocMusic collaborative. Today, 70 students, ages 8 to 18, come to the David F. Gantt Community Center three days a week for intensive music instruction in general music and string instruments. Besides the fact that these students are developing a love of music, we know that students who are involved in music stay in school. It is our hope that these students will experience opportunities they never before imagined. We also hope to expand the RocMusic program in the years ahead to two or three additional community centers, so that hundreds of students might experience the same opportunities.

What has best prepared you for your role as dean?

I have been in music leadership positions at three different institutions since 1989, so I have a broad understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing musicians, the music industry, and schools of music in higher education. I am passionate about music, teaching music to future generations of students, and the Eastman School of Music. Serving Eastman as the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean is a tremendous honor, and I look forward to working with my faculty and staff colleagues as together we advance the mission of our school.

Listening to Eastman

While it’s hard to limit the choices to just five—“there are so many more titles worthy of inclusion in this list,” says Jamal Rossi—the following small selection of recent recordings are his picks for representing the Eastman School sound.

Jazz at Eastman 2014

Eastman School of Music

“A great collaborative and learning experience,” says Rossi of the recording, which features student jazz combos. A donor funded the project, and the compositions were chosen in a competition.

Stravinsky Octet/L’Histoire du Soldat

Avie

The recording is by the Eastman Wind Ensemble and the Eastman Virtuosi, a joint faculty-student ensemble.

Thomas Gaynor Plays the Organ of Wellington Cathedral Saint Paul

Organism

Gaynor earned his master’s degree from Eastman last spring and is now a doctor of musical arts candidate. He is the winner of many international organ competitions.

Stars, Stories, and Song

Ravello Records

The recording of sonic narratives is by two composition faculty members, David Liptak and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.

Diaries: Works for Large Ensemble

Urtext

Performed by the Eastman Broadband Ensemble, the recording features compositions of faculty member Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez. He founded Eastman Broadband with Zohn-Muldoon several years ago, and the ensemble is made up of current students and recent alumni.

ASK THE ARCHIVIST

Can We Have a Snow Day?

A question for Melissa Mead, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian.

WINTER WONDERLAND: While the idea of celebrating all four seasons is part of the fabric of Rochester life, there are times when too much winter has forced the cancellation of classes. (Photo: Rochester Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

“When was the last time the school officially closed for [a] snow day?”—@curdriceaurora [Rahul Srinivasan ’11 (MS)], via Twitter

During a blizzard that left at least 18 inches on the River Campus during spring break in 2014, the @UofR Twitter feed posted cancellations of classes at the Simon Business School and the Warner School of Education as well as other closures and changes to campus services. The weather also prompted questions from several alumni.

Prior to the Second World War, University records do not easily disclose occasions when undergraduate classes have been cancelled due to weather-related events: most major storms of the 20th and 21st centuries seem to have occurred on weekends or during breaks, and the schedules of student and University publications seem to have determined which events were recorded.

A December 11, 1944, storm brought 22 inches. With the headline, “UR Chow Halls Defy Snowstorm,” an article in the Campus applauded those who “wad(ed) through the drifts” to provide meals, while admitting to being “happy to know that our profs were snowbound during the recent snow siege.”

Twenty years later, the University Record (the precursor to the faculty-staff newspaper Currents) reported that a January 1966 blizzard began after exams finished and before the new term began. The grounds crew cleared snow for three days, while Food Service administrator Donald Scott and storeroom clerk Julius Reicis managed to provide food for some 550 students, noting, “Neither (of us) have any cooking talents . . . we were just lucky we didn’t have the usual 2,000 students here. . . .”

A 1977 blizzard caused the University to shut down on Friday, January 28. The Campus-Times reported that 75 mile-per-hour wind gusts and extreme cold were the main threats. A widespread natural gas shortage did not affect the University, which was still using coal at the time. Smitty’s Birdland reportedly delivered 50 chickens, and the weekend Winter Carnival proceeded after a few schedule adjustments.

Two blizzards occurred in 1978. The University shut down on the morning of January 26 in advance of dire predictions. The storm bypassed the area, and some professors held classes despite the closure. A week later, on February 5, the University closed again, as 25 inches of snow and high winds “brought the UR to a standstill.”

And, as if to confirm Bishop McQuaid’s observation that the climate in Rochester was generally good except for March, a 1999 blizzard suspended classes just before students left for spring break.

Other kinds of storms have caused severe damage as well as cancellations: an ice storm in December 1929 glazed trees on the Prince Street Campus and destroyed newly planted elms on the River Campus, still under construction.

The historic March 3–4, 1991, ice storm closed the University for two days, and was estimated at the time to have caused $1 million of damage on campus. It should also be noted that after the opening of Strong Memorial Hospital in 1926, the University as a whole has rarely, if ever, closed because of weather. As a major health care provider, the Medical Center provides essential services to the area and can’t suspend operations completely. That’s not the case for classes and other academic programs.

From 1888 to 1920, geology professor Herman LeRoy Fairchild served on the faculty and published landmark studies of the glacial history of western New York. During his tenure, Fairchild experienced a great deal of Rochester “weather,” including a March 1900 snowstorm that dropped a three-day total of 43.5 inches. A contemporary report in the Campus included an admiring (and teasing) portrait of Jane Rich, an assistant librarian who staffed the Sibley Hall library: “Although the wind blew and the snow fell deep, Miss Rich was there. We are proud of our persevering Librarian who will get that book you have out, in spite of any assistance the Fates may give you.”

Need History?

Do you have a question about University history? Email it to rochrev@rochester.edu. Please put “Ask the Archivist” in the subject line.

STUDENT LIFE

Getting to the Root of STEM Education

Undergraduates reach out to young students to boost science learning.

Interview by Kathleen McGarvey

HANDS ON: Students explore density and liquids as STEM Initiative volunteers Matthew Mullen ’15 and Vivy Ngo ’18 look on. (Photo: Courtesy of STEM Initiative)

George Iwaoka ’16, a biology and economics major, and Jenny Yoon ’16, a microbiology major, established the student organization STEM Initiative—STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math—to connect young students with undergraduates who are passionate about math and science. Now in its second year, the group has started an after-school science program at Adlai E. Stevenson School No. 29, a Rochester city school, and a Family Science Day.

How did you develop the idea for the STEM Initiative?

We both went to the same vocational magnet high school in Hackensack, New Jersey, attending its Academy of Medical Science and Technology. We were encouraged to seek STEM education through coursework and research from a very early age, and we were fortunate enough to freely pursue higher-level education in the sciences. After coming to Rochester, we immediately realized that STEM education was lacking just a few steps away from campus. We wanted to create opportunities for undergraduates to volunteer for science tutoring and workshops. So we decided to act on that.

How does it work?

We have more than 300 members on our mailing list, and as of November, 68 students had attended at least one volunteer session at School 29. At Family Science Day last April, we had 21 on- and off-campus organizations host STEM activities at booths, while more than 300 family members from the Rochester community attended to enjoy fun and educational hands-on science.

STEM Initiative doesn’t offer incentives for people to volunteer. We want volunteers to be passion-driven. As corny as it may sound, we think many of our volunteers keep volunteering with us because they see how the kids react when they see cool chemical reactions or build exciting things. You can see them become more and more interested as we have more workshops with them.

What made science exciting and accessible for you, and how are you trying to duplicate that for students at School 29?

Our high school put a lot of money into funding a research program—we housed two biosafety-level labs, two electron microscopes, and a lot of other instruments that you wouldn’t normally find in a public high school. In an environment where we were supported in researching any topic, science became something more enjoyable than memorizing facts in a textbook. When you’re the one controlling test reactions and building things, you start to understand why things might work. We want the kids at School 29 to feel the same, so we strive to include a hands-on component for every lesson we do with them.

What has been the biggest challenge, and the biggest surprise?

The biggest surprise by far has been the support and interest we’ve been getting. We’re a very new organization, but we have people from both the University and the local community asking us to collaborate with them or volunteer at their events.

Finding a good balance between the quality of the lessons and the resources we provide has been a challenge. We need to provide supplies, and we’ve been running on a minimum amount of money. We hope in the future to have a constant budget to create more complex lessons that will leave a lasting impression on our students.

We’ve realized how receptive and attentive young students can be if encouraged with a supportive attitude. In the beginning, students had a difficult time participating or asking questions—but by the end of the semester, they’d interrupt lessons with questions so they could engage and learn, volunteer for demonstrations, and even request specific lessons.

What are your future plans?

Within the next year, we’re hoping to expand to other campuses, starting with local universities. We’re also thinking about registering as a not-for-profit organization, which would open the doors to collaborations, grants, and so on. But we want to establish some traction before we take this big step.

New Tool Targets Rare Brain Disease

(Photo: iStockphoto)

Researchers have developed new insight into a rare but deadly brain infection. Most frequently found in people with suppressed immune systems, the disease, called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) disease, had long evaded study as well as tests for new treatments.

In the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Steve Goldman, the Dean Zutes Chair in Biology of the Aging Brain and Distinguished Professor in Neurosciences, and Maiken Nedergaard, the Frank P. Smith Professor of Neurosurgery, reported that a tool they developed provided a new platform for studying the elusive disease and the virus that causes it.

The two, who are the codirectors of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine, say that the new model revealed that the virus attacks cells known as astrocytes rather than oligodendrocytes, as previously believed.

Researchers estimate that the virus behind the disease is so common that 70 to 90 percent of Americans have been exposed to it and may carry it in a dormant form. For the vast majority, the virus will never become infective or trigger disease. But in some people with compromised immune systems, the virus can eventually make its way to the brain. Once there, it can trigger PML, an almost uniformly fatal infection of the brain’s white matter.

First seen in leukemia and lymphoma patients in the 1950s and ’60s, PML became more common during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, prior to the widespread use of antiretroviral treatments. More recently, it has been increasingly observed in people undergoing long-term immunosuppressive treatments for autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis.

The findings may enable researchers to focus on potential ways to identify the early symptoms of the disease, as well as to develop new therapies.

—Mark Michaud

Playing Action Video Games Can Boost Learning

A new study shows for the first time that playing action video games improves not just the skills taught in the game, but learning capabilities more generally.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by Daphne Bavelier, a research professor in brain and cognitive sciences, the study first used a pattern discrimination task to compare action video game players’ visual performance with that of people who don’t play action video games. Then the team conducted another experiment to see if habitual players of the games may be endowed with better templates independent of their game play, or if the action game play led them to have better templates.

Prior research by the group and by other scientists “has shown that action gamers excel at many tasks. In this new study, we show they excel because they are better learners. And they become better learners by playing the fast-paced action games,” says Bavelier.

Being a better learner means developing the right templates faster and thus achieving better performance—and playing action video games, the research team found, boosts that process. The researchers also found that the action gamers’ improved performance is a lasting effect. When tested several months to a year later, the action-trained participants still outperformed the other participants, suggesting that they retained their ability to build better templates.

Bavelier’s team is now investigating which characteristics in the games are key to boosting players’ learning.

“Games other than action video games may be able to have the same effect,” she says. “They may need to be fast-paced, and require the player to divide his or her attention, and make predictions at different time scales.”

—Monique Patenaude

Damaging Brain’s ‘Garbage Truck’ May Accelerate Dementia

A new study in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that traumatic brain injury can disrupt the brain’s waste removal system, allowing toxic proteins to accumulate in the brain and setting the stage for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

“We know that traumatic brain injury early in life is a risk factor for the early development of dementia in the decades that follow,” says Maiken Nedergaard, the Frank P. Smith Professor of Neurosurgery and senior author of the research. “This study shows that these injuries set into motion a cascading series of events that impair the brain’s ability to clear waste, allowing proteins like tau to spread throughout the brain and eventually reach toxic levels.”

The findings are the latest in a series of insights that are changing how scientists understand neurological disorders. In a 2012 study, Nedergaard and colleagues described a previously unknown system of waste removal that’s unique to the brain and which researchers dubbed the “glymphatic system.”

The body’s normal waste removal system doesn’t extend to the brain, but waste removal is essential to prevent the accumulation of toxic proteins and other debris. The team showed that mice, whose brains are similar to those of humans, pump cerebral spinal fluid—the fluid that surrounds the brain—through brain tissue, flushing waste from the spaces between the brain’s cells.

The protein tau helps stabilize the fibers, or axons, that nerve cells use to communicate with their neighbors. But during trauma, large numbers of these proteins are shaken free from the axons and drift into the space between the brain’s cells. Once unmoored, the sticky proteins are attracted to each other and, over time, form “tangles” that can become toxic to brain function.

—Mark Michaud

Concussions Derail Batting Performance for MLB Players

The message “When in doubt, sit it out” flashed on video boards throughout the 2014 World Series, and with good timing: a new analysis of Major League Baseball statistics shows that concussed players may not be fully recovered when they’re cleared to return to the batting lineup.

In a study that looked at MLB players who suffered a concussion between 2007 and 2013, Rochester researchers found that during the first two weeks back, the concussed players’ batting performances were significantly worse than another group of players who were rusty because of being away on leave during the same period.

Lead author Erin Wasserman, an epidemiology doctoral student, presented the data at the 142nd annual meeting of the American Public Health Association last fall.

Brain injuries are most often associated with contact sports, but they’re prevalent in baseball, too. At the high school and college levels, baseball concussions are rising at a rate of about 14 percent a year, researchers say.

In the MLB study, players returning after a concussion had lower batting averages (.234 versus .264), lower slugging percentages (.359 versus .420), and lower on-base plus slugging percentages (.654 versus .747) compared to players returning from bereavement or paternity leave.

“Although players who sustain a concussion may be symptom-free and cleared by MLB protocol to return to play, the residual effects of concussion on the complex motor skills required for batting may still be a problem,” says principal investigator Jeffrey Bazarian, associate professor of emergency medicine and a national expert in sports head injuries.

When a batter’s at the plate, the brain and its neural networks must be in top form to master hand-eye coordination, intense visual acuity, fast reaction time, postural stability and balance, and swing control in just 400 milliseconds—the estimated time it takes most balls to pass from pitcher to batter, Bazarian says.

After a concussion, brain function can be impaired for weeks or months, resulting in such symptoms as slowed thinking or response speed, and poor concentration. Understanding the impact of concussions on batting performance can help to inform decisions about when to return to the lineup, the study says.

—Leslie Orr

Infants’ Scores Linked to Congenital Herpes

Babies with congenital infection of a herpes virus known as human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6) are more likely to score lower on a 12-month mental development test, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.

The study, led by Mary Caserta, professor of pediatrics and infectious disease, assessed 299 newborns over their first year of life. Scores on the test were similar for the infected babies to those of infants exposed to lead or cocaine in the womb.

The differences were not large—all results fell within the normal range.

One of eight herpes viruses that infect humans, HHV-6 infects every human, usually in the first two years of life. But for a small portion of the population, the virus is integrated into the chromosomes, which causes a parent to transmit the virus to offspring still in the womb. About 1 percent of newborns have been infected with the virus congenitally.

Caserta developed the study with the late Caroline Hall, a longtime professor of pediatrics who spent her career studying HHV-6 and other viruses. Next, Caserta plans to study older children with learning or cognitive disabilities to check their infection rate.

—Sean Dobbin

Family Ties

How did music, politics, and worship intersect in early modern Europe?

MOTHER ANNE: An engraving by Albrecht Durer, circa 1512, shows Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. (Photo: iStockphoto)

Musicologist Michael Alan Anderson examines music dedicated to Saint Anne to shed light on Renaissance culture.

Why Saint Anne?

Saint Anne gets way more than her due in history because of her relationship to the Virgin Mary, who is a central figure in Christianity. As a historical figure, Mary had to have a mother, and the legend has given the name Saint Anne to her mother. And so she’s important because of her connection to the most powerful woman in Christian theology.

Her story is known to us from an apocryphal source in the second century. It’s not accepted as part of the official canon of the church, but it was widely circulated. And her legend picks up later in the Middle Ages when a lot of poetry and music and other texts were written about her. So in the book I was trying to put on the musicologist’s hat and look at all the things that had been ignored.

What has been ignored?

It wasn’t just a matter of saying prayers to Saint Anne, or regular devotion. People in the Middle Ages felt a real, visceral connection to these saints. Because Saint Anne was more or less an imagined figure, people started to think up some interesting areas of intercessions. If people wanted to pray for wealth or well-being, they’d pray to Saint Anne. She could help in childbearing or fertility. She could help widows. She didn’t really have a biography, so people thought up things for her, based on what little they knew.

The most important thing is that she was a politically advantageous saint to worship. I think people who look at the book will do a double take and say, politics? And sainthood? But Saint Anne was not only the mother of the Virgin Mary; legend says she was also mother of two other Marys, which connects Saint Anne to an impressive network of relatives, including Jesus, but also disciples and other figures. It was known as the “Holy Kinship,” a big, impressive family tree with Saint Anne at the top—and isn’t it the goal of kings and queens to produce great lineages? By worshipping Saint Anne, you’re worshipping someone who sits atop the most important family in Christianity. Rulers are emulating that, and so it would make sense for them to sponsor music, paintings, and poetry for Saint Anne.

What kind of music do you examine in the book?

I explore two kinds. One is chant, which is music for one voice or unison voice, without harmony. It was the central style of music for the entire Middle Ages and Renaissance. I’m trying to remind people with this book that chant has always been at the heart of sacred music.

The second is the glorious, elegant, beautiful choral music called polyphony. This is the most decorative style—but these pieces were exceptional. They were the best music money could buy, and no small amount of polyphony was written for Saint Anne.

There’s no zinger of a piece in the book, no musical outlier. It all fits in the music of the period. Rather, what I’ve done is to bring anonymous music to the foreground. The tendency in our field is that if we don’t know the composer’s name, then we have nothing to say about the piece. I tie pieces about Saint Anne to people who cared about Saint Anne—I don’t care if we don’t know the composer.

Is this a typical musicology project?

We’ll see. I think the field is headed in this direction. Twenty years ago, musicology was perfectly comfortable saying, here’s what happens in this piece and here’s what it’s about. It’s like art history; our fields are very close. But now we’re looking at who a piece belongs to and how it fits into something bigger. We’re asking questions not just about the object, but about how it fit into a culture or place or institution.

—Kathleen McGarvey

INEQUALITIES: The wealthy but miserly Ebenezer Scrooge lives like Bob Cratchit (above)—illustrating the idea that income inequality isn’t the same as consumption inequality, though both are increasing. (Photo: Corbis)

Consumption Conjunction

Is consumption inequality growing with income inequality?

A macroeconomist who specializes in the labor market, Mark Bils is coauthor of a study finding a rise in consumption inequality in the United States.

Why is it important to look at consumption inequality?

There’s a lot of emphasis on inequality of income or wealth. But that might not map into consumption inequality. If the rich save their incomes, or give them away, then they free up resources for someone else’s consumption. Take Ebenezer Scrooge, for example—it’s very unequal that Scrooge has so much wealth. But he’s so miserly that he lives kind of like Bob Cratchit. That’s true even before he gives his money away. Inequality in consumption is presumably what we most care about, but it’s hard to measure.

Why?

There’s not much survey data on household consumption. There are two ways one might estimate household consumption, and both are difficult. The standard way is to ask people how much they spent. For the United States, that’s done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics through the Consumer Expenditure Survey, or CE. You can also estimate it indirectly—if you know somebody’s income and know how much they saved (or borrowed), you could estimate consumption by income minus savings. But that’s a noisy estimate in practice, so rarely considered.

Some researchers have suggested that consumption inequality hasn’t risen with income inequality. Why?

Income inequality has gone up substantially over the past 30-plus years, the time period that Mark Aguiar and I consider in our paper. Researchers have shown that, based on the CE survey, consumption inequality went up much less than did income inequality. When Mark and I estimate consumption inequality directly from the CE data, we similarly find that measured inequality in total expenditures increased by only about a third as much as income inequality, comparing high to low-income households. Those direct measures of expenditures underlie the view that consumption inequality didn’t rise that much.

What prompted your study?

There are two things that motivated Mark and me to look at this in another way. One is that the conventional wisdom—little rise in consumption inequality—is extreme in the following sense. Given the rich are getting relatively richer, if their consumption didn’t go up much, their savings rate would need to have exploded upwards; and we don’t think we’ve seen that over the past 30 years. Our main motivation, however, is that the CE data have done an increasingly poor job of measuring household consumption over those last 30 years. That is, it fails to capture the average growth in consumption spending shown by retail measures of aggregate spending. We had concern that it may increasingly fail to capture spending by richer households, causing it to undermeasure the true rise in consumption inequality.

What did you do differently?

We focus, not on how much households report spending in total, but on how they report spending across different categories of goods—specifically luxuries versus necessities. Just as examples, consider entertainment spending, say going to events, versus spending on groceries. Entertainment spending is a luxury—its share of spending is higher for richer families—while groceries are a necessity. We estimate changing consumption inequality from how rapidly high-income families shifted spending toward luxuries (like entertainment), compared to what we see for poorer families. We can estimate changing consumption inequality by this approach even if the data fail to capture the growth in spending for rich versus poorer households and fail to capture overall spending growth on luxuries versus necessities.

And what is your bottom line?

We see that higher-income households shifted their spending much more toward luxuries than did lower-income households. That shift requires a sizable increase in consumption inequality over the past 30 years. In fact, we conclude that the rise in consumption inequality mirrored the rise in U.S. income equality over those years. So that differs dramatically from what had been concluded based on the direct measures of household spending.

—Kathleen McGarvey

South Campus Scene

(Illustration: Steve Boerner)

Several projects are designed to improve access to the Medical Center, the River Campus, research and alumni facilities on the South Campus, and new commercial developments near the University.

New On- and Off-ramps

Work on a $70 million effort involving federal, state, and local officials is helping ease traffic congestion along Interstate 390 near the University. The culmination of a decade-long initiative, the project is designed to help facilitate the growth of the University, as well as improve access to Monroe Community College, Rochester Institute of Technology, and nearby commercial developments.

Larry and Cindy Bloch Alumni and Advancement Center

In October, the University celebrated the dedication of the Bloch Center, named in recognition of University Trustee Larry Bloch ’75 and his wife, Cindy. Home to the offices of Alumni Relations and University Advancement, the center hosts events and activities throughout the year for alumni and friends of the University.

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

Introducing the Prince Athletic Complex

Rochester’s athletic facilities, including Fauver Stadium, are undergoing a significant renovation and expansion.

Construction began this summer and includes infrastructure and other improvements to Fauver Stadium, the Lyman Outdoor Tennis Center, the baseball field, and outdoor practice areas.

The complex has been named the Brian F. Prince Athletic Complex in recognition of a lead gift from Brian Prince ’86, ’89S (MBA) in honor of his parents, Richard and Christine Prince. Brian

Prince, the president and chief executive officer of ORIX USA Corporation, was recruited to the University’s men’s soccer program in 1982, and he served as team captain.

MOREY MELIORA: Named the Ronald and Karen Rettner Gallery, the lobby of Morey Hall has been revamped to serve as a more elegant and inviting gathering space. The work is part of an initiative to update several spaces in the Eastman Quadrangle buildings. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

Eastman Quad Evolves

Buildings on the Eastman Quadrangle are getting some of their historic luster back, thanks to an initiative supported by University Trustee Ronald Rettner.

Rettner has established the Ronald Rettner Campus Improvement Fund to support work to revamp the iconic halls as learning spaces and to bring them up to date for the 21st century. The project began last summer with a multifloor renovation of Morey Hall that had its debut during Meliora Weekend.

Work begins this year on Bausch & Lomb Hall, directly across the quad from Morey.

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

Sculpture Makes Its Debut at the Medical Center

DNA DISPLAY: A sculpture that highlights the intertwining of art and science graces a space between the School of Nursing and the Saunders Research Building at the Medical Center. Titled “A Dream of Two Snakes (DNA),” the work by noted sculptor Ilan Averbuch was donated by Martin Messinger ’49, a life trustee of the University. The sculpture pays homage to the double helix nature of DNA, drawing on a story about a dream in which James Watson, one of the scientists credited with discovering DNA, reportedly saw two intertwining snakes as a clue to the molecule’s structure. The 21-foot sculpture was installed last fall.

Rochester Helps Create First Map of Human Lungs

DEEP TISSUE: A Medical Center team will collect data to build a 3-D map of human lungs, a project designed to improve diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary diseases. (Photo: iStockphoto)

Rochester researchers hope to create the first comprehensive 3-D map of human lungs to help measure how the organs develop from birth through childhood and how that development influences conditions such as emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

As part of a $20 million, multi-institutional initiative supported by the National Institutes of Health, Medical Center scientists led by Gloria Pryhuber, professor of pediatrics and environmental medicine, will help build the map over the next five years. The Medical Center received $6.1 million for the project, called the Human Lung Molecular Atlas Program, or LungMAP.

Data generated from the project will be accessible to the public online at www.lungMAP.net.

University Office for Veterans Opens

An office designed to help veterans move from military life to the world of college opened this fall at the University.

The Veteran and Military Services Office, which is staffed by two full-time Veterans Association–certified officials, will serve as a liaison between veterans and a number of services provided across campus.

The staff will also help military students use University programs like the Yellow Ribbon Program, which is designed to help students with up to 100 percent of out-of-pocket tuition and fees that may exceed GI Bill tuition benefits.

There were 84 veterans enrolled at the University last fall, a 50 percent increase since 2010, according to Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions and financial aid, who noted that the numbers are expected to increase as more post–9/11 veterans return to civilian life.

Ferrari Symposia Host Celebrated Humanist

Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar Stephen Greenblatt, whose 2011 book described the influence on the Renaissance of an ancient Roman literary work, was the guest of the Ferrari Humanities Symposia this fall.

Greenblatt, the John Coogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, presented a keynote lecture tied to his book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, and took part in workshops and group discussions.

In The Swerve, Greenblatt recounts the discovery in the early 1400s of a copy of the poem On the Nature of Things, and how the work by the Roman philosopher and poet Lucretius shaped Renaissance thought and influenced modern ideas about politics, religion, and culture.

Thomas Hahn, professor of English and organizer of this year’s sessions, said Greenblatt’s work describes a “cultural disruption that changes the way people think,” noting that Greenblatt’s work has “had a similar influence, shaping the way scholars approach literary studies.”

Global Rochester: Poland

A medical exchange program links European and American neurology training.

INTERNATIONAL MEDICINE: Rochester neurologist Ralph Józefowicz talks with Jagiellonian medical student Mark Prodger. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

For 20 years, Ralph Józefowicz, professor of neurology, has been traveling to Kraków, Poland, as part of a medical exchange program he founded between Rochester and Jagiellonian University. He received the Polish university’s Merentibus Medal last year in recognition of his services to the school.

Since the program began in 1995, 111 Rochester medical students and 58 Rochester neurology residents have taught neurology in Kraków, while 170 Jagiellonian University students have traveled to Rochester for clinical electives. The two universities have also hosted eight medical exchange conferences in Kraków and Rochester.

“Our students and residents will tell you it’s the best experience they had in school. The future of medicine is international. And when you go outside your own country, you see that certain things are very different, and some are very similar,” says Józefowicz.

Raised in a Polish-American community in Brooklyn, with grandparents who emigrated from Poland, Józefowicz grew up bicultural and bilingual.

He first traveled to Kraków, Rochester’s sister city, in 1989, when he and a colleague were invited to Kraków Children’s Hospital to explore the creation of an exchange program. In 1992, Józefowicz received a Fulbright Scholarship, the first physician to receive a Fulbright to Poland. He calls his year at Jagiellonian University a “phenomenal experience.”

The university, which celebrated its 650th anniversary in 2014, is central Europe’s second-oldest. In 1993, it established its School of Medicine in English. Józefowicz was invited to organize and teach the program’s neurology clerkship; he travels each year with Jeffrey Lyness, professor of psychiatry and senior associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Medicine and Dentistry and now brings 10 medical students and six neurology residents.

“The European approach to teaching medicine is more theoretical,” he says. Rochester students function as teaching residents, teaching how to take a medical history, perform a neurological exam, and present a patient, while residents perform as teaching attending physicians. The program brings up to 16 Polish students to Rochester each year for three months of mostly clinical work.

“I teach them neurology, but they also learn a lot of clinical skills. Students there don’t have responsibility for patients. We teach them how to interpret symptoms, how to work up a patient,” says Józefowicz, adding that these principles are now being applied in the Kraków medical school. “Poland is a leading country in medical education reform in Europe. We’ve introduced problem-based learning, and the changes we’ve made here have influenced medical education there.”

–Kathleen McGarvey

Rochester and Poland

People

5 current students

15 alumni living in Poland

8 student Fulbright recipients since 2002

33 study abroad undergraduates in last decade

The Skalny Center

The Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Founded in 1994 through a grant from the Louis Skalny Foundation and housed in the Department of Political Science, it offers a variety of programs in research, education, and community outreach, including summer study at Jagiellonian University, courses by visiting faculty from Kraków, the Skalny Lecture and Artist Series, and the Polish Film Festival, an annual, five-day festival showcasing some of Poland’s best films and featuring actors and directors who speak about their work.

Thirty professors have visited from Poland through the Skalny Center, teaching and doing research for a semester or academic year. Among the participants: Grzegorz Kolodko, former prime minister of Poland, and Henryk Szlajfer from Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In November, Andrzej Mania, vice rector of Jagiellonian University, came to Rochester to celebrate the anniversary. And seven Rochester postdoctoral fellows have traveled to Poland for international relations research.

SWIMMING & DIVING

A League That They Own

The women’s swimming and diving team captures its sixth straight Liberty League title, while the men pick up their third in four years.

By Dennis O’Donnell

SIXTH STRAIGHT: The women’s swimming and diving team won the program’s sixth Liberty League championship in a row in December. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

Swimmer Lauren Bailey ’15 may have her own record book by the time she graduates in May. The senior chemical engineering major from Ossining, New York, was named the women’s Liberty League Swimmer of the Year for the third straight year, winning four individual events and playing a key role as the women won their sixth straight league championship in December.

In one of the meet’s marquee races, Bailey edged out the league’s second- and third-seeded swimmers to win the 200-yard butterfly by nine-one-hundredths of a second and provisionally qualify for the NCAA championships in February.

The win capped a meet in which Bailey also won the 100-yard butterfly as well as the 200-yard intermediate medley and the 200-yard freestyle. She helped power winning relays in the 200- and 400-yard freestyle and the 400-yard medley.

In a dominating display by the Yellowjackets at the Speegle-Wilbraham Aquatic Complex, both the women and the men won league titles.

CHAMPIONS, AGAIN: The men’s swimming and diving team captured the Yellowjackets’ third Liberty League title in the past four years. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

The men won five events and two relays to claim their third team title in the last four years. The men have won six league swimming and diving crowns over the last nine years.

Freshman Gunnar Zemering of Delmar, New York, was the men’s Rookie of the Year, winning the 50- and the 100-yard freestyle and placing first in the 200-yard freestyle. He also swam on four winning relays: the 200- and 400-yard freestyle and the 200- and 400-yard medleys.

Danielle Neu ’18 of Hammondsport, New York, won Diver of the Year honors, finishing second on the one-meter board and first on the three-meter board. Joanna Wallace ’16 of Fairbanks, Alaska, was third overall at three meters.

During the two-day meet, the Yellowjackets set several pool and league records. They included:

Bailey’s time of :57.02 in the 100-yard butterfly set a pool mark and qualified her provisionally for the NCAAs. She also set a pool record in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:54.71.

The Yellowjacket team of Julia Herman ’19, Alex Veech ’18, Khamai Simpson ’18, and Emily Simon ’18 set a pool record of 1:48.35 in the 200-yard medley relay.

Herman also set a league record in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of exactly one minute.

The 400-yard freestyle relay team of Simon, Hongjue Wang ’19, Bailey, and Simpson set a league and pool record with a time of 3:35.01.

The 200-yard medley team of James Frauen ’16, Patrick Davis ’16, Brian Wong ’16, and Zemering set a league record with a time of 1:35.67.

The 400-yard freestyle team of Frauen, A. J. Brewer ’18, Zemering, and Dylan Sharkey ’16 posted a league record of 3:10.57.

In the 400-yard intermediate medley, Sharkey’s time of 4:12.76 was also a league mark.

Dennis O’Donnell is director of Athletics Communications.

HONORS

Yellowjackets Named Academic All-Americans

Matthew Mender ’16 (top), Alex Swanger ’15 (bottom left), and Griffin Drake ’15. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

Three fall sport athletes were named Capital One Academic All-Americans by the College Sports Information Directors of America.

Football defensive lineman Matthew Mender ’16 was named to the second team. The biomedical engineering major from Glens Falls, New York, is the first Rochester football player to earn the honor since 2007. A total of 10 Rochester football players have earned 16 Academic All-America honors.

Alex Swanger ’15 and Griffin Drake ’15 were named to the men’s soccer team. Earning his second straight honor, Swanger, a financial economics major from Penfield, New York, was named to the second team. Drake, a double major in political science and philosophy from Indianapolis, was selected to the third team.

HIGHLIGHTS

Yellowjackets Start Strong in Winter Seasons

HOME COURT: Playing in the No. 1 spot, Mario Yanez ’17 helped lead the squash team to victories over top-ranked Harvard and 11th-ranked Princeton at home. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

The Yellowjackets’ winter sports teams had momentum on their side going into 2016.

Squash headed into the semester break with a 5–1 record after home court wins over Princeton and top-ranked Harvard. Men’s and women’s basketball each won the Chuck Resler Invitational. Men’s and women’s swimming hosted and won the Liberty League championships.

That’s after fall teams concluded successful seasons. Tara Lamberti ’16 and Michelle Relin ’16 were named All-Americans in field hockey. And men’s soccer qualified for the NCAA playoffs for the ninth time in 10 years. Finishing 10–5–4, Rochester was ranked 20th in the final Division III national poll.

Squash: Rochester finished second in the Liberty League championships with a 3–1 mark. The Yellowjackets defeated Hobart, Vassar, and Bard before losing to second-ranked St. Lawrence. On the first weekend of December, Rochester defeated 11th-ranked Princeton and followed that with a victory over top-ranked Harvard, the defending national champion.

Ryosei Kobayashi ’17 clinched the Princeton match with a 3-1 win at the No. 2 position. Mario Yanez ’17 won, 3–0, at No. 1. In the Harvard match, Neil Cordell ’16, Kobayashi, Meng Xiaomen ’17, and Yanez all won to even the match at 4–4. Tomotoka Endo ’18 won, 3–1, at the No. 4 position to clinch the victory. Endo did it in dramatic fashion, building a 2–1 lead in games and winning the fourth game, 13–11.

Women’s basketball: Boosted by a large group of talented newcomers, Rochester raced to a 7–1 start and moved back into the national rankings. The Yellowjackets were ranked No. 22 in the USA Today/WBCA poll. Rochester won the Chuck Resler Invitational, beating Ferrum College in the final. The high-powered offense topped 80 points five times in six games as Rochester reached the championship game of the Wendy’s College Classic before falling to Roberts Wesleyan College.

Al Leslie ’18 and Ally Zywicki ’15 have provided a solid inside-outside scoring touch with Leslie getting 15.4 points and 9.6 rebounds per game. Zywicki was averaging 10.5 points a game.

Men’s basketball: Rochester stood at 4–4 with two games left before the holidays. The Yellowjackets won the Chuck Resler Invitational by defeating Gordon (Mass.) College and Utica College. Kevin Sheehy ’15 was named the MVP. Mack Montague ’17 was named to the all- tournament team. Sam Borst-Smith ’17 was named to the all-tournament team for the Holiday Inn Airport Thanksgiving Classic as well as the Wendy’s Classic.

Fifty years ago Paul Burgett arrived at the University. Neither has been the same since.

By Kathleen McGarvey
Photographs by Adam Fenster

PASSION AND ABILITY: Burgett, known familiarly as “Dean B,” brings a vibrant enthusiasm to his interactions with students in and out of the classroom. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

It’s a mid-September morning, and members of the Eastman School of Music’s freshman class arrive at Hatch Recital Hall. They’re about three weeks into the semester, just long enough to have had a taste of Eastman life, just short enough for everything still to be new. They chat and shift in their seats.

And then Paul Burgett ’68E, ’76E (PhD) takes the stage. His voice—sonorous, animated—his gregariousness, his humor, and his sheer joy in seeing them capture their attention immediately.

Coming to the Eastman School, he tells them, is for him “coming home”—because, 50 years ago, he, too, was an Eastman freshman, a young violinist from St. Louis.

“I was a ‘regional treasure,’ ” he tells them. “Just like you—you’re all regional treasures.”

Rochester, he thought, was a detour on the way to being a national, even an international treasure. Upon his arrival at the school, Burgett went to the practice rooms. “It was just us freshmen who were here,” he says, “and I took my fiddle out, put my music on the stand, and began to play the Vitali Chaconne. Big piece, muscular. It makes you sound like a million dollars. I’m not really practicing—I’m playing it. And I leave the practice room door open, just a little bit.”

The students laugh knowingly.

“I wanted all within earshot to appreciate this regional treasure who had arrived,” he says. That feeling lasted until the other undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty returned: “At which point, I have a moment of epiphany. My whole notion of talent gets radically redefined. I pull that practice room door shut, I push that handle down—you all know—put a piece of paper over the window and a bag over my head so no one can see who’s making all that noise!”

A young woman in the audience murmurs in response, seemingly unaware she’s speaking aloud: “That’s how I feel.”

Once again, Burgett has made a connection—warm, affable, empathetic—with a student. He has made such connections thousands of times, and not just with students, but also with colleagues, alumni, community members—really, with everyone he meets.

“I think that he is so many people’s mentor, and we don’t all know each other. It’s like Friends of Bill Clinton: Mentees of Paul,” says Melissa Mead, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian.

This academic year marks half a century since Burgett arrived in Rochester, and most of those years have been spent with the University. Fifty years would be notable enough—but in that half century, Burgett has come to embody the spirit of Rochester. “In many ways, he’s the face of the University,” says attorney John LaBoda ’02, ’03 (T5).

“He has personified this institution in a way that not only makes him a beloved figure, but that also makes others love the University more. That is quite a gift,” President Joel Seligman says.

COMMAND PERFORMANCE: Burgett addresses Eastman freshmen in this year’s version of his legendary speech, “The Fiery Furnace.” In it, he tells them about his own experiences as a new Rochester student, and about the journey that awaits them. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The speech Burgett gives to this year’s Eastman freshmen— nicknamed “The Fiery Furnace,” and to an earlier generation of students, “The Black Ball”—had its origins in a brief talk he gave as a sophomore, when the planned speaker, Eastman’s then director, was stranded at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. It’s “a sharing of personal history, a true sharing of himself, that is frankly remarkable. And the notion that he has sustained it for thousands of students in multiple decades is extraordinary if not unique,” says Samuel Huber ’99, ’04M (MD).

With “The Fiery Furnace,” Burgett welcomes students to campus and tells them about the journey on which they’re embarking. Undergraduate education is about the “confrontation with ideas,” a process that’s sometimes fun, but more often hard, soul-searing. It’s like stepping into a furnace, he tells them: hot, intense, at times terrifying. “But you will step out of that furnace strong, tempered like steel.”

And then he makes a promise: “We will not abandon you. We will never abandon you.”

As generations of students attest, he’s a man as good as his word. The guarantee he makes on behalf of the University is a personal credo, too. Burgett cares fiercely about other people, and the charisma and natural gift for performance—the full force of his personality—that he displays on the Hatch Hall stage is matched in power by his capacity to listen and observe, to enter into dialogue, and to express and act on a deep and genuine affection for the people around him. “He is one of the most generous and kindhearted men I’ve ever known,” says John Covach, chair of the College’s Department of Music.

Burgett earned three degrees—a bachelor’s of music with a major in music education and violin in 1968, a master’s in music education and violin in 1972, and a doctorate in music education in 1976—at Eastman. After working as executive director of the Hochstein School of Music and Dance in Rochester in the early 1970s, as a music teacher in the Greece, New York, Central School District, and as an assistant professor of music at Nazareth College, Burgett returned to Eastman in 1981 as its dean of students. He has been at the University ever since, rising through the ranks of the administration as vice president and University dean of students, then vice president and general secretary and senior advisor to the president. Today, having dropped only the title of general secretary, he is semiretired—but you would never know it. He is a constant presence on campus and in the city of Rochester: teaching, advising students, consulting with the president, meeting with community members, and serving on the boards of local institutions.

He has flourished in all that he has put his hand to, but he eschews the title of administrator. “I’m a musician and a teacher,” he says.

That 50 years have passed is a surprise to him. “That’s not been relevant to me, because I hang around students who never age, do they? They’re always 18 to their mid-20s or so, some a little older. And when they get to the end of their studies, they leave and are replaced by newcomers. So I forget how old I am, until I look in the mirror and see my father looking back at me—at which point it’s, well, startling, I suppose.”

EARLY DAYS: Burgett as a toddler, cradled in the arms of his father, Arthur Burgett (above), and as a budding violinist at age nine (right). (Photos: Courtesy of Paul Burgett ’68E, ’76E (PhD))

Burgett was born in St. Louis, the eldest of six and the son of two musicians. “There was always music in the house,” he recalls. “It was an integral part of my family’s life.”

But the harmony in his home contrasted with the discord he found outside it. Of his hometown at the time of his youth, he says: “Racist is not too strong a word. St. Louis was a segregated town. I’m the product of a biracial family: my father was African American and my mother was Italian.” Anti-miscegenation laws prevented Burgett’s parents from being married in Missouri, so they went to Illinois for their wedding before returning to St. Louis.

“My early years were before the dismantling of the racist legal architecture that enabled greater access,” Burgett says. As a high school student, he played violin with the St. Louis Philharmonic, a semiprofessional orchestra, and took a music theory course at Washington University at St. Louis. On his way home, he would walk through an “affluent” neighborhood. “What stands out in my mind from those long walks home was the police car pulling up, most often unmarked,” he remembers. “And as soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what was happening. I’d always have my fiddle and my book bag, and I’d put both down, and put my hands on the hood of the car, and spread my legs while they frisked me and interrogated me. In one instance, my parents told me, I was actually arrested and taken to the police station. My father came to get me. I must have repressed that memory completely because I can’t recall it.”

Burgett cites a passage from W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk as personally meaningful. The young DuBois, growing up in Massachusetts, took part in a school game distributing visiting cards with the other children. “The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, —refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil,” DuBois writes in his 1903 book.

Burgett knew—knows still—that veil. When he was eight, his parents moved the family from an African-American neighborhood to one that was “in transition,” he says. “One of my new friends there was a fellow named Dennis, who was white and whose father was on the faculty of Washington University. So Dennis, my brother, and I got it into our heads to go to the movies on a Saturday—it was probably cartoons. The three of us made our way to the movie theater, and Dennis put his 35 cents on the counter and got his ticket and went into the theater. And then my brother and I went up to the ticket window, and the woman—I can still picture her—the woman in the ticket window looked down at us and said ‘We don’t allow your kind in here.’ And in what I can only describe as a nanosecond, it was—nothing more needed to be said—the veil descended, and I knew there was once and forevermore a cleavage between her and us, between them and us. And so that was a seminal moment in my growing up.”

His parents worked to provide Burgett and his siblings an intellectually rich environment and to shield them from prejudice. “We were a working class family with high aspirations for the children,” he says. “My parents accomplished so much with very few resources. They provided a stable home and sought opportunities for us, especially in the arts and education. They surrounded us with a world of smart, talented, and interesting people, music, the arts, and ideas that enabled our social, cultural, and intellectual fluency. And, looking at my brother and sisters, I think that produced adults of stature and outstanding achievement.”

At the same time, his parents “formed a safety net around us, to try to protect us, recognizing that it’s not really possible to do that completely, but they did the best they could. There always worked in the back of our minds concern about what was safe and what wasn’t safe, where we could go and couldn’t go, and the fact that we were an interracial family made us peculiar because that just didn’t exist much at all back then. So I lived this sort of split life.”

Experiences of his youth have left a lasting mark, Burgett says. “The anxiety associated with that continues to this day, in very subtle ways. For instance, when I was a boy growing up, going into a business establishment and having the businessperson say, what are you? Are you colored or are you white? Which always puzzled me—I thought, if you can’t tell, you know? I mean, please. But my answer was always, ‘I am a Negro.’ We didn’t have the word biracial back in those days. ‘I’m a Negro.’ And if I had any anxiety that I might be rejected, I wouldn’t go in. And so the way that still plays itself out is, there’s a voice in the back of my head—it’s a soft voice any longer—but it’s a voice where I will still hesitate. And in our travels—travel is a great thing for my spouse and me—I have been known to say to her, go in and be sure that it’s OK. Because that voice is still there, and the anxiety associated with rejection on the basis of the accident of birth, I still carry that inside of me. The veil, once it descends, doesn’t easily lift. I have been able to pull it apart and look through it, and develop social and cultural fluency as a result of doing that, but the veil still has an effect.”

Burgett’s parents met at the Catholic church, St. Elizabeth’s, where his father’s family were parishioners and his mother taught and played the organ. His father, who hadn’t graduated from high school, was drafted into the army to serve in World War II. After the war, he returned to St. Louis and earned his diploma while in his 30s. From there he went to St. Louis University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in music education and voice.

“My father was an artist, and what he really wanted to be was what Eastman alumnus William Warfield became,” Burgett says, making reference to the famous African-American concert baritone and 1942 graduate, with whom his father once performed. “My father was well-known in St. Louis and the Midwest, and in fact he was the first African American to sing with the St. Louis Symphony.” But while he yearned for a musical career, he soon had six children to support—which he did with a job as a building mechanic for the telephone company. There was a divided quality to his father’s life, too, Burgett says. “He finally had a college education, but opportunities for black males especially were limited. And what he really wanted to do was get on the stage and sing.”

His father left for work every day in a suit and tie. One day, he forgot his lunch, and Burgett’s mother sent her two sons, Paul and his brother, Peter, to deliver it. “We got into the building and we called him to come up, and he came up—and he was wearing his work uniform, which was overalls. It was the only time I’d ever seen him like that, before or since. I was shocked. That wasn’t the dad I knew. He took enormous pride and pleasure in the development of his children, but I think deep inside was a profound sadness that he didn’t have a career in music.”

When casting began in New York City for a traveling company performing Porgy and Bess, Burgett’s mother gave his father money she had saved for him to travel east for an audition. He won a role, but decided not to accept it “because my mother was struggling back in St. Louis with all these children—I think there were maybe four of us by then. He made the decision not to go abroad with the company, but rather to come home and pick up his job with the telephone company, and that’s what he did. He got home late at night. And I can still remember his arrival because it was a moment of total and utter ecstasy that Daddy was home. And as ecstatic as I was, he must have been saddened and depressed by it. But he kept that pretty much to himself. It was just not going to be. He decided that his first responsibility and his first priority was to his family, and so he went back to St. Louis and put his overalls back on.”

Burgett’s mother gave piano lessons in the family home, and Burgett began playing at age five. When he was nine, a family friend and violist with the St. Louis Symphony, Edward Ormond, observed that the boy had good hands for the violin and offered to teach him himself. When Ormond moved to the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra when Burgett was 12, he was devastated to lose his teacher, but continued his study at the community music school. By the time he was 16, Burgett had been selected to attend the International Congress of Strings, a summer music program at Michigan State University. Just two string players were chosen from each of the 50 states, plus Mexico and Canada. It was the same year that he joined the St. Louis Philharmonic and that he was accepted as a student by St. Louis Symphony concertmaster Melvin Ritter. Burgett calls the effect of those experiences “life changing.”

He auditioned in St. Louis for the Eastman School. Ritter wrote to Eastman admissions director Edward Easley that Burgett “hadn’t had rigorous training, but the raw material was there, and he works his tail off,” Burgett remembers. He was admitted, and Easley later told him he was “persuaded you would be a fine music teacher.”

Arriving at Eastman was a “watershed moment” on a number of fronts. “I was at the mountaintop, musically,” Burgett says. And he arrived in the fall of 1964, just after the passage that summer of the Civil Rights Act. Surrounded by fellow musicians, he found himself in an atmosphere where he could thrive. “The issue of race took a backseat, and the veil began to rise,” he says. The bonds of similar passions between the students overcame other differences. Eastman allowed him to develop socially in ways not possible for him before, even though Rochester was “still smoldering,” he says, from the 1964 riots that convulsed the city.

“In the environment of Eastman, I took enormous comfort. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder all the time.” He was elected president of the freshman class, and “that stunned me. Qualities of my makeup were unleashed because my classmates accepted me. I can’t even begin to explain how important that was.”

The profound changes Burgett felt were perhaps not as visible from the outside. Vincent Lenti, professor of piano and Eastman School historian, was a second-year faculty member when Burgett arrived as a freshman. He was “very congenial, outgoing, confident. I can’t think of a time when Paul wasn’t Paul,” Lenti says. “He’s not one of those people about whom you say, gee, it’s a miracle he turned out as he did.”

In his “Fiery Furnace” speech, Burgett explains that he chose to stay at Eastman, despite his initial fears that his talents didn’t measure up, because of his love of music. “I was passionate about it. I got to this place, and I found that I didn’t have to explain myself to anybody. It was just simply understood. Music was the totem to which all of us were drawn. I couldn’t think of anything I would rather do than be in this environment.”

Passion is a touchstone of the speech, and he tells the students—eventually leading them in a chorus—words that he believes can guide them through their college years and beyond: “Passion and ability drive ambition.” What you major in, he tells them, isn’t all that important. It’s what you care about, what you feel compelled to do, coupled with the necessary skills, that will lead you to a successful and meaningful life.

“My undergraduate experience was heady and wonderful, and allowed me to grow in ways not possible before,” Burgett says. “My freedom became the centerpiece of my education—and isn’t that what it’s supposed to be?”

After graduating from Eastman in 1968, Burgett was awarded a National Defense Education Act Fellowship to earn a doctorate. He did one year of study, but eligible for the draft in the Vietnam War, he opted instead to join a military band in the Army Reserves, in which he played the tuba. He was executive director of the Hochstein School for two years, and then returned to Eastman for his doctorate.

He thought “long and hard” about his research topic. “I decided that I’d had the best education that a person could hope to have. The musical titans for me were Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, Mozart, Mahler, et cetera. But I couldn’t tell you what Charlie Parker played, much less whether there were any black classical composers. I didn’t know.” Burgett told his advisor, Paul Lehman, that he wanted to do something that spoke to his heritage. “So he told me to go into the Sibley Music Library and spend the next year reading. Just reading. I remember Dr. Lehman saying to me, ‘I don’t know much about the subject, but we’ll learn together.’” The work, Burgett says, “was irresistible. I couldn’t not do it.”

He spent the next three years writing his dissertation, “Aesthetics of the Music of Black Americans: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Selected Black Scholars with Implications for Black Music Studies and for Music Education.” It is dedicated to the memory of his father. “My father’s nickname for me, all my life, was Doc. That’s what he called me,” says Burgett, his eyes rimming with tears. “And he would call me Doctor Bones, because I was incredibly skinny as a boy. But then Doctor Bones got shortened to just ‘Doc.’ And when I was a doctoral student, I would say to him, I’m on my way to authorizing your nickname of me. But he died before I finished it. So he got the dedication.”

Burgett took a post teaching violin at Nazareth College in the Rochester suburb of Pittsford, first as a lecturer and then as an assistant professor of music. But in 1981 a new opportunity appeared: Eastman was hiring a dean of students. When Lenti learned that Burgett was interested in the job, he wrote a letter to Eastman director Robert Freeman telling him, “I understand Paul Burgett is applying. Look no further.”

Freeman listened, appointing Burgett. “In the days when I knew him at Eastman, he was close enough to the age of the students that they all trusted him. We all did. And should have,” Freeman, now a professor of musicology at the University of Texas, says. “He came from an atmosphere that was deeply unfair, and Paul has not only survived but conquered brilliantly.”

Colleen Conway ’88E, ’92E (MA), a professor of music education at the University of Michigan, remembers that Burgett—in days long before the Internet—knew each freshman’s name, where they came from, and what they played before they arrived on campus. “That little piece of showing care and interest—it makes me tear up, because I feel like that really set the teacher that I then became.”

As president of the Eastman student association, Conway saw Burgett’s responsibilities up close. “I remember getting a window into what his job was like—meetings starting at 7:30 in the morning. And I could see the schedule, and when I’d go in at 1, I’d think, how did he make me feel special when he’s seen 20 other people today? You’ve got to be there in the moment, and he’s just really good at that.”

As dean, he influenced students profoundly without having classroom time with them, she recalls. “And that’s really powerful. Somehow he’s able to do that just through hallway conversations. He wasn’t teaching me classes—he was teaching me to be a person. There are more important things than the musical learning, and that’s something I learned from him. And I think you could say that across campus—there’s more important learning in ages 18 to 22.”

Burgett’s intuitive sense of how to relate to other people was a priceless gift in his work as dean, Freeman says. “Something we don’t teach college students enough is how to read other people’s body language and listen very carefully to what they’re saying. Paul understood what motivated people, which of course is what a dean of students has to do: act not just as a disciplinary agent but as a friend who can help a student find his own best way.”

Essential, too, was Burgett’s own experience at Eastman, and his abiding affection for the place. “The foundation of his education was performance and applied music but he also had a strong interest and background in academics, pedagogy, and communicating with people,” says Marie Rolf, senior associate dean of graduate studies at Eastman and professor of music theory. “It gave him a great knowledge base; he had immediate understanding of people coming from all aspects of music and deep empathy because he’d been there.”

Adds Betsy Marvin, professor of music theory: “It was palpable how much he loved Eastman. He seemed to be part of the whole fabric there.”

Nevertheless, after seven years, Burgett felt that he had done all he could as Eastman’s dean of students—just at the time that the University was looking to create a similar position.

Dennis O’Brien, president from 1984 to 1994, says undergraduate education was a focus of his presidency. “I decided we needed someone who was at the vice-presidential level, so that he was dean for all students, at Eastman and the River Campus. I wanted a student-oriented person who was a member of the president’s cabinet, so that I could get immediate feedback on student affairs.”

In a survey of students about their perceptions of the University, one student responded that “Rochester was a ‘cold and distant place,’ and there was a hint that the University was cold and distant, too,” O’Brien says. “And Paul is the least cold and distant person I’ve ever met.”

“He took the place by storm. Paul is such an enthusiastic person. He loves people, and people love him in return,” says G. Robert Witmer Jr. ’59, chair emeritus of the Board of Trustees, who had led a committee examining the River Campus’s structure for student activities and affairs. At that time, he had identified Burgett as “the epitome of the type of person we are looking for.”

O’Brien was pleased with his choice. “He did a number of things I admired greatly: he liked being called Dean Burgett. He thought Vice President Burgett sounded kind of pompous. And he wanted to set up shop in Wilson Commons, where the students were. That’s right on—this is someone who wants to be known as a dean, and he’s going to move in right where the students are.”

You can hardly imagine him anywhere else. “Students are my most favorite people in the world,” Burgett says. “I adore them. I love students. My idea of the closest thing to great potential and to efforts at human perfection, for me that’s to be found in students.”

And while he feels that regard for them en masse, his attention has always been specific and particular, too. “Even though there are thousands of students at the University, people always felt he took an interest in every single one of them,” says Malik Evans ’02, now a bank business growth manager who marvels at Burgett’s “boundless energy. I don’t know if I know anyone to this day who has that energy.”

Logan Hazen, associate professor at the Warner School and former director of residential life, was the first person Burgett hired in his new position. His “contagious enthusiasm, his upbeatness—I mean, there’s a message in there,” says Hazen. Even for students meeting with Burgett in a disciplinary capacity, “they could always see Paul valued them, Paul cared for them, and what he was doing was the right thing to do.”

Part of his success in doing that may stem from Burgett’s determination to know and interact with people beneath their appearances and defenses—a product, perhaps, of his own youth. His goal has always been to “gain admission to the backstage” of students’ lives. Much of all our lives, he says, is theater: that which we perform when others are watching us. “But the backstage is where real life is lived, where the costume comes off and where the human being emerges in all of her or his realities.”

For 24 years, his assistant was Beverly Dart. “Bev and I developed over time a theory of our lives with students, and the theory was very simple: when a student came to us, regardless of the reason—and sometimes they came to us and I had to be the sheriff; sometimes they came to us with tragedy—our first goal was to treat them in a way so that when they left, they felt no worse than when they arrived, and if we were really successful, they felt better. Our second goal was that in their conversation with me, whatever the issue was would be defined more precisely. Oftentimes people come thinking the problem is one thing, but the problem may be something else. So spending the time—and that’s what it’s about—it’s spending time with the person across from you long enough to gain clarity about the issue. And then the third goal was to assist the person across from me in articulating options for moving forward. A plan.”

“He’s a good listener, and I think he always made students feel important when they came to see him,” says Donna Brink Fox, associate dean of academic and student affairs at Eastman. “He was careful to listen and counsel them in a way that never came across as too directive. Not ‘You need to do this’ or ‘You’d better do that,’ but ‘Have you thought about. . . ?’ He even does that with me. To me, that’s just his style, whether he’s talking to an undergraduate who’s questioning life as a musician or talking to a colleague or a faculty member. I think he’s the same, and that’s a great quality to have. It’s genuine.”

As University dean of students, Burgett took what had been an underdeveloped student affairs program and made it robust, Hazen says. At Eastman, he had planned the Eastman Student Living Center; at the River Campus, he improved programs at the Interfaith Chapel, Wilson Commons, University Health Service, Counseling and Mental Health Services, Residential Life, and Athletics and Recreation. Through it all, he was an unflagging presence at student events.

PIZZA PARTY: Chatting with academic advisees at one of his signature pizza get-togethers. “Eleven months a year, if a student group said, ‘We’re having pizza at 11 o’clock at night; can you make it?’ Paul would be there,” says Logan Hazen, former director of residential life. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

“Eleven months a year, if a student group said, ‘We’re having pizza at 11 o’clock at night; can you make it?’ Paul would be there—even if he had an 8 a.m. meeting with the president,” says Hazen. “But day one of the 12th month, Kay”—Burgett’s spouse, Catherine Valentine, now a professor emerita of sociology at Nazareth College—“would take him to other places around the world. That’s how he kept his battery going. It’s hard to keep up with the man. One of my favorite stories: Kay found a village somewhere in rural Vietnam, and she was headed to an artifact shop there. They arrived in an area remote enough that there was no electricity. And then Paul hears a voice calling, ‘Dean Burgett!’ It was an American-Vietnamese Rochester student, so excited to see him there.”

Not all the responsibilities that fall to Burgett are as happy. “He probably makes the hard parts of his jobs over the years look easy because you don’t see them. Dean of students isn’t just a cheerleader for the student experience; there are brass tacks there that are unpleasant for anybody,” says Huber, now a psychiatrist.

Burgett has “all that surface charm and energy, but when there were emergencies, he was always there. Paul would be there and take care of it, and talk to the parents, if that was necessary. He was very hands-on with the kinds of emergencies that would come up,” O’Brien says.

Burgett recalls one instance when a student was experiencing an emotional crisis. Her mother had come but was having difficulty communicating with her. The mother called Burgett and asked him to join them. The student “was crying very, very hard. I took her in my arms, and just rocked her. And hummed. Told her, ‘It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be OK.’ So we stayed in that situation for, I don’t know, an hour, maybe, and then she said, ‘I’m ready to go to the hospital.’ That’s what it took. The human situation is complex, but we gain nothing from abandoning people.

“I often have said to parents, just be patient, just wait—and above all, do not abandon the person. With our students, with novice adults, we must not ever abandon them. They must know, as they try to develop enough confidence to become fully enfranchised adults, they must know that we’re here, and that we’re about creating an environment of safety.”

Burgett doesn’t just make students feel safe—reaching back to his own early life, he expands their sense of who they can be.

“A lot of folks will tell you, when he’s talking with students, he’ll call you Doc. The student will say, I’m not Doc, and he’ll say, don’t worry, you will be,” says Hazen.

It’s something many alumni mention. “Dean Burgett would always refer to us as Doctor so-and-so—he set the bar that anything you want to do is possible, and this is a place where you can make that happen,” says Tiffany Taylor Smith ’91, founder of the consulting company Culture Learning Partners.

In 2001, Burgett ended his tenure as dean of students, becoming vice president and general secretary and senior advisor to the president, then Thomas Jackson. It’s a position he continued when Seligman took over the presidency four years later. Burgett trimmed his duties in 2011, stepping down as general secretary to the Board of Trustees.

MUSIC AND IDEAS: Burgett doesn’t think of himself as an administrator. “I’m a musician and a teacher,” he says. “Paul lives classes,” says President Seligman. Here Burgett responds to students’ rhythm patterns in his History of Jazz course. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

He continues to devote considerable time to teaching. Each fall, he teaches either the History of Jazz or Music of Black Americans. “His courses are extremely popular,” says Covach. Adds Seligman: “There are a lot of people who teach classes. Paul lives classes.”

The passion he feels for working with students is borne out in his teaching, in the “disciplined attention and enthusiasm for the music and ideas that I try to bring to my students in the classroom,” he says. Rochester medical student Jarrod Bogue ’10 took the jazz course as a sophomore, drawn by his interest in the saxophone and the chance to be taught by Burgett. “I’d heard he was a good professor—that’s the feeling on campus. He’s one of the really good ones. He puts so much effort into each lecture, and they keep building. I loved the class.”

Partial retirement also provides Burgett more time for the travel that he and Valentine have long enjoyed, visiting much of the world in the past 35 years.

In October, the Board of Trustees resolved that the University’s intercultural center would hereafter be known as the Paul J. Burgett Intercultural Center. It’s a fitting honor. The center brings students together to work with and learn from those from other cultures, backgrounds, beliefs, socioeconomic statuses, sexual orientations, and more. In its resolution approving the naming, the Board of Trustees praised Burgett as a “tireless advocate for justice and equity for all.” Burgett was delighted with the honor, writing in a note of thanks that he is “an intercultural product . . . from birth.”

“The really interesting thing to me about Paul is his way of bringing people together, seeing growth opportunities in others, and connecting people to both his vision and the vision of others. I see that as one of his most masterful skills. Many people will talk about his charisma, his energy, but that underlies it,” says Huber.

Burgett uses that skill of bringing people together on behalf of the Rochester community, too. “His name always comes up when people think about how they want to connect with the University. They say, is Paul Burgett still there? Let’s call him. They know he cares about Rochester. He’s connected to Rochester, and he believes in Rochester,” says Evans, a member of the Rochester City School District Board of Education. Burgett has served such groups as the Urban League, the Mt. Hope Family Center, the Rochester Arts and Cultural Council, the United Way of Rochester—even the Zoning Board of Appeals for the city.

“He has touched the Rochester community as deeply as anyone I know,” Seligman says.

“Paul was our ambassador to Rochester forever, I guess. That’s a big part students and staff didn’t see a lot,” says Hazen. “All the community activities, all the boards, all the times representing the institution as somebody from the University the community trusted—because we weren’t always trusted. But Paul’s a man of his word, and if you worked with him, you trusted him. He didn’t talk much about it. I don’t think he toots his own horn as much as he toots it for other people,” says Hazen.

Says Mead: “You ask any one person what Paul does, and they say X, and maybe Y, but they don’t know the full alphabet of everything he’s doing.”

“I can’t remember any time that Paul’s ever asked for anything back,” Huber says. “The amount of pizza he’s eaten, lunches he has purchased, advice he has dispensed just by listening and reflecting: I don’t think he ever asks for anything back. Genuinely I can’t remember a time when he’s said, Sam, I need a favor. And you’ve got to think his favor bank, there’s a good balance there. And I don’t know anybody who would say no to him.”

And now Burgett, in the latest phase of his career, has taken on the task of immersing himself in the University’s history, poring over documents in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, speaking to alumni, new faculty, and students about what the University stands for and how it came to be.

“I’m having a grand time in this new part of my life, that I didn’t anticipate, as sort of the University’s storyteller: where we came from, who our predecessors were, on whose shoulders we stand, and our responsibilities as stewards of their legacy.”

“He knows more about a lot of the documents than I do,” says Mead.

“There’s a part of what Paul has meant to this University that really needs to be emphasized—he is the institutional memory of the office,” says Seligman, referring to the president’s office. “And he has an almost artistic sensibility to the nuances of history. When I want to understand someone in our past, I turn to Paul.”

In his talks, Burgett makes reference to the University’s history of “inspired, effective, and generous leadership,” Mead says—adding that the phrase applies equally well to him, with a special emphasis on generosity. “I think there’s a lot of people who wouldn’t be where they are without Paul’s advice, his encouragement, and his caring—and his ‘inspired, effective, and generous leadership.’ ”

It’s a phrase that complements his motto from the “Fiery Furnace” speech: passion and ability drive ambition. You can put those two phrases together as guiding principles, she says: the first part is for you; the second is how you fit in the University, in the world, in life.

It’s not surprising that Burgett would have some perspective on how to create such a fit. In the years since he was a small boy in Missouri, he has found a way to carve for himself a place in the world—in the community, in the University, in the lives of generations of students, faculty, staff, and alumni—that is unique. Lively, funny, insightful, caring: “He is a presence,” says O’Brien.

“There are very few people you can maintain as a hero through the really tumultuous portions of growing up,” Huber says. “Who you see as a hero when you’re 18 is different than when you’re in your 30s or 40s or 50s—but he, for me, maintains that status.

“If I had Paul all figured out, there would be two of us—I would do what he does.”

A Destination in the Fight against Cancer

Four decades into the nation’s ‘war on cancer,’ the Wilmot Cancer Institute prepares for the next era in the fight.

By Robin L. Flanigan

PATIENT FOCUSED: Physicians, researchers, and caregivers use their experience with patients to help guide their plans for the Wilmot Cancer Institute, says director Jonathan Friedberg. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Four decades after President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, launching what was to be a full-scale attack on the deadly disease, the battle wages on.

The disease is responsible for one out of every four deaths in the United States. That’s approximately 1,600 people every day. The American Cancer Society estimated that there would be 1.6 million new cancer diagnoses in 2014 alone. Medical expenditures connected to cancer cases are expected to reach between $158 and $207 billion by 2020, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

But there’s been a great deal of progress. Because of early detection, more sophisticated treatment, and greater awareness of the disease and its symptoms, nearly 14.5 million adults and children in the United States can call themselves cancer survivors.

Rochester has been an important part of that story from the beginning. Tracing its roots to the Department of Medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital in the 1970s, the University’s first cancer center grew out of the Division of Oncology. In 1974, a team led by Robert Cooper, a surgical pathologist, applied for an NCI grant to support a specialized center that would encompass clinical care, have the ability to conduct clinical trials, and have the capacity to do important basic research.

In 1975, the University became one of the first to receive such a core grant. Over the past 40 years, the University’s multipronged effort to understand the biology of cancer, as well as to offer state-of-the-art treatment and care, has grown into a nationally recognized program.

In 2014, those initiatives were brought together under the umbrella of the newly established Wilmot Cancer Institute, a multisite hub for research and treatment.

The institute oversees eight satellite treatment facilities, as well as cancer research and treatment activities at the Medical Center. The institute cares for about 10,000 people each year.

“The University of Rochester has made monumental strides in the past 20 years in improving their global and diverse attack on cancer and the biology of cancer,” says John DiPersio, chief of oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he also serves as deputy director of the Siteman Cancer Center.

“They are one of the unique centers in the country now that has an actual destination for their cancer patients; most others are integrated into the hospital setting.

“They’ve also allocated enough resources into that same site to have a critical mass of researchers and patients for both basic and translational care.”

Working on Vaccines

“Without question, one of the contributions that has had the most impact has been the cervical cancer vaccine,” says Jonathan Friedberg, director of the Wilmot Cancer Institute, the Samuel E. Durand Professor, and chief of hematology and oncology. “It has the capacity to prevent cancer in hundreds of thousands of people, and has become standard routine practice in the United States.”

In the 1990s, William Bonnez ’89M (Flw), associate professor of medicine, Richard Reichman, professor of medicine, and Robert Rose ’94M (PhD), associate professor of medicine, developed a technology to target human papillomavirus (HPV)—the virus that causes cervical cancer.

PRECISION CARE: By identifying a gene abnormality in the lung cancer of Sharon Billington (right) of Adams Basin, New York, Wilmot physicians matched her treatment to a therapy targeting the gene. Billington received weekly treatments from caregivers like registered nurse Corinne Porter. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The technology was instrumental in two vaccines—Gardasil and Cervarix. Before the vaccines, cervical cancer was estimated to kill 250,000 women each year, including 4,500 in the United States. The vaccines, the first designed to offer protection against an identified cancer-causing agent, are recommended for both girls and boys by the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Developing More Precise Treatments

Based in the idea that by analyzing the underlying genetic and biological underpinnings of each patient’s disease, precision medicine is a leading focus of research at Wilmot and other centers in the United States.

Examples include testing for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia to identify mutations to a particular gene that prevent standard chemotherapy from working and building molecular profiles of lung cancer tumors to see if patients can be better matched with targeted therapies through clinical trials.

And in treating breast cancer, accurate measurement of specific genes has become an important factor in new treatments for many patients

Such targeted strategies are also seen as key to treating pancreatic cancer, which can be one of the most deadly forms of the disease and resistant to many standard treatments.

This fall, noted cancer surgeon and pancreatic cancer specialist David Linehan joined the Medical Center as the Seymour I. Schwartz Professor and chair of the Department of Surgery.

With experience as a clinician, surgeon, and researcher, Linehan also serves as the institute’s director of clinical operations. Linehan specializes in treating cancers of the liver, pancreas, and gastric and biliary tract, and has earned recognition for bringing novel and innovative therapies to patients with hard-to-treat cancers.

He joins Wilmot investigators—including Wilmot’s director of research, Hartmut (Hucky) Land—already in the midst of a five-year, $2 million study investigating a gene network that controls the progression of pancreatic cancer.

Assessing the Needs of Seniors

Despite the fact that 70 percent of cancer survivors are over age 65, there is a widely acknowledged lack of safe and effective treatment approaches for older adults, whose health concerns are often accompanied by particular physical, psychological, and social issues. Wilmot’s Geriatric Oncology Clinic is one of fewer than 10 similar clinics nationwide offering multidisciplinary resources, grant support, and models of care designed around careful study of collected data.

To have such features located in a medium-sized institution is unusual, “and our program is one of the largest,” says clinic director Supriya Mohile, an associate professor of hematology and oncology who has earned a national reputation for her work with older cancer patients. “We’re one of maybe three that has two geriatric oncologists. Most centers only have one.”

The field of geriatric oncology is relatively new, formalized in 2000 with the creation of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology, and will be increasingly relevant given predictions that 20 percent of patients over age 65 will be diagnosed with cancer by 2030.

Despite that statistic, no consistent protocol exists among oncologists or geriatricians about the best ways to care for older people with cancer. At the same time, there’s a shortage of data on how new cancer therapies affect the population because clinical trials tend to enroll younger, physically fit patients who are better able to handle side effects and less likely to have other health conditions.

That has spurred Mohile to advocate for more clinical trials for the elderly, more collaboration among oncologists across the country, and more funding to disseminate and follow up on interventions used and recommended by the Wilmot clinic.

“Patients who fall or have a cognitive impairment are more likely to do poorly,” says Mohile, who is sponsoring a conference this spring on improving quality of life for older cancer survivors. “That’s not widely recognized, and we’ve added to the literature about that.”

The geriatric clinic has New York’s only outpatient geriatric assessment program for cancer patients. While physicians have long used a geriatric assessment survey to measure such things as function and mood, Wilmot adapted the survey for use with cancer patients, helping detect problems caused by the illness and tied more closely to survival rates.

Mohile hopes studying whether the model can reduce toxicity from chemotherapy in older adults, as well as whether it improves communication among patients, physicians, and caregivers, will lead to policy changes and lower health care costs.

Donald Walters, a retired engineer who was treated for stomach cancer in 2013, says Wilmot’s approach benefited him considerably. Hospitalized for nine days, and on a feeding tube for three weeks, Walters went through 26 weeks of radiation and 400 hours of chemotherapy.

As an octogenarian and because of the seriousness of his cancer, he was put on a five-year follow-up protocol involving medical tests every four months, physical therapy, and persistent reminders to keep active.

“I’m a person who doesn’t want to be pampered, but I had the greatest care all the time, every day,” Walters says. “It was like when you’re little and sick and home from school, and your mom keeps coming in to check on you. And that’s what gets you through it.”

“Targeted geriatric care” is critical given that between 60 and 70 percent of patients whom community oncologists are going to see will be older than 65, says William Dale, who established and helps direct the Specialized Oncology Care and Research in the Elderly Clinic at the University of Chicago.

His clinic is a site for both of Mohile’s grant-funded studies. Mohile “has the ability to go outside the standard networks to find the right people across the country and then coordinate with them to get data. She has put Rochester on the map when it comes to getting information about the patients we actually treat.”

Helping Survivors

Survivorship is a hot topic in the medical community, with conferences and research papers exploring innovative, evidence-based approaches for the physical and emotional care of cancer survivors.

Gary Morrow ’77 (Flw), ’88 (MS), the Benefactor Distinguished Professor, directs the Wilmot Cancer Institute’s Cancer Control and Survivorship research program.

As the principal investigator of an $18.6 million, five-year NCI grant, he’s leading a nationwide clinical research network in investigating cancer-related side effects.

The funding is the largest investigator-initiated grant at the University, and among the top five largest grants received by a Medical Center researcher in the past decade.

One of the first to treat nausea and vomiting as side effects of chemotherapy, Morrow and his team will design and manage clinical studies across the country that center on providing supportive, community-based care for patients coping with side effects both during and after cancer treatment.

Wilmot is one of only two cancer centers chosen by NCI as a research hub for its community-based cancer research program known as NCORP. In an effort to minimize or eliminate side effects from cancer treatment, the institute also leads hundreds of researchers in 22 affiliated research sites as part of NCI’s Community Clinical Oncology Program.

With a dual perspective as the top Wilmot administrator and a practicing physician, Friedberg says there is a solid link between his strategic planning goals and the insights he gains from the follow-up he provides beyond treatment.

“There’s no question my experience with patients has formed to some degree how we think about the institute moving forward,” he says. “I have had many patients who, fortunately, are cancer survivors, and I appreciate how many issues they still continue to have despite the fact that their cancer treatment is finished.”

To address such issues, Wilmot began the Judy DiMarzo Survivorship Program—the first in the region to assist patients as they cope with delayed or long-term physical and psychological effects after treatment. Nearly 300 patients have been enrolled in the program, and cancer programs nationwide call regularly for advice on beefing up their own approach to survivorship.

GRATEFUL PATIENT: Jason Buitrago ’07, ’14W (MS) says the Wilmot staff helped him navigate the mental and emotional—as well as the physical—aspects of his treatment. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

For Jason Buitrago ’07, ’14W (MS), who had 12 weeks of chemotherapy after a testicular cancer diagnosis last year, survival meant getting involved with support groups to help others the way Wilmot helped him.

“There’s so much out of your control as a patient, and I failed to realize initially that I was going to need resources to navigate the emotional and mental health challenges I encountered,” says Buitrago, who works as assistant director of IT and operations at the Simon Business School and is pursuing a doctorate at the Warner School of Education.

Leveraging Research through Collaboration

Last May, the University launched a four-year, $30 million fundraising campaign to recruit scientists and solidify a place among elite research centers in the country. As an integral part of the effort, Wilmot aligned itself with Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute to amplify faculty recruitment efforts, funding, and the development of larger research studies.

Collaboration takes place within the institute as well. Consider that patients who have bone marrow transplants often bleed and require platelet transfusions after they have high doses of chemotherapy or radiation.

With assistance from the Department of Radiation Oncology and the Blood and Marrow Transplantation team, professor of medicine Jane Liesveld tested whether administering a particular post- transplant compound sped up platelet recovery time.

With the initial testing phase complete and published results that show the process is safe, Liesveld says “it looks like this is something that has the potential to be carried forward.”

Wilmot’s Samuel E. Durand Blood and Marrow Transplant Program is the state’s second largest.

Fighting Blood Cancers

When it comes to the most prevalent form of blood cancer in the United States, Wilmot is one of the few cancer centers in the nation, and the only one in upstate New York, that has a clinic focused on chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

In addition, former Wilmot director Richard Fisher played a major role in creating guidelines for lymphoma diagnosis and management. And John Bennett, professor emeritus of medicine, pathology, and laboratory medicine, was instrumental in the development of a classification system for leukemia used globally for nearly two decades.

Conducting Clinical Trials

Friedberg, the director of Hematological Malignancies Clinical Research, keeps Wilmot active as an executive committee member of NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network, which works to streamline clinical trials and boost participation rates.

For several years, Wilmot has led the country in the number of cancer patients who sign up for key clinical trials through a national cancer research cooperative group.

In 2013, more than 500 patients enrolled in 160 local and national trials.

Such trials led recently to FDA approval of two drugs to treat leukemia and lymphoma. One drug went through an accelerated approval process after trial participants showed significant improvement early on.

“What this means is that patients in our region are able to get drugs sometimes years before the Food and Drug Administration approves them,” says Friedberg.

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

(Illustration: Steve Boerner)

The Launch of an Institute

As part of the recognition of the University’s 40 years of leadership in the research, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, the main institutional home for that battle was renamed the Wilmot Cancer Institute last summer.

The new name reflects a revamped organizational structure for all of the University’s clinical and research programs in cancer, including a growing presence throughout western and upstate New York.

With the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center as its hub, the institute encompasses a network of treatment facilities and all cancer research activities at the University. As part of an effort to expand and deepen the institute’s mission, UR Medicine also launched a $30 million comprehensive campaign with a focus on cancer research.

The institute is designed to provide the highest level of care by making the expertise and capabilities of clinicians, faculty, and health care professionals available to patients without traveling far from home.

FAMILY SUPPORT: Judy Wilmot Linehan (left), the late William Wilmot, and Thomas Wilmot Sr., a University trustee, helped kick off a $30 million campaign for the Wilmot Cancer Institute. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

A Family Tradition

Judy Wilmot Linehan has seen the toll that cancer can take on a family, but she’s also seen progress against the disease over the past decades, particularly by researchers and clinicians at the Medical Center.

Linehan is part of three generations of the Wilmot family who have provided leadership support to the cancer center that bears the name of her father, a former University trustee. This spring, she added to that legacy when she and her brothers, Tom and Bill, announced a $4 million gift from the family and from the James P. Wilmot Foundation to support research initiatives and to establish the Wilmot Distinguished Professorship in Cancer Genomics. Bill Wilmot died in fall 2014, not long after the announcement.

“It has been amazing watching the progress in cancer research and patient care at Wilmot since 1980,” Linehan said at the launch of a $30 million campaign to support the Wilmot Cancer Institute. “We are thrilled to participate in its continued progress. Our family has been so affected by this terrible disease. It has taken away some of the most important people in my life. It is truly our pleasure to support the Wilmot Cancer Institute. I can’t wait to see what it will accomplish.”

The Wilmot family’s philanthropic commitment to cancer research began in 1981 when the Wilmot Foundation funded the Wilmot Fellowship Program. The effort provides funding to train physicians, including such scientists as William Bonnez of the University’s HPV vaccine team, to pursue careers in cancer research around the world.

Since the program was established, the Wilmot Foundation and the Wilmot family have donated tens of millions of dollars to the University to support cancer research and treatment. Carrying on the Wilmots’ tradition, members of a third generation of the family serve in leadership positions on the institute’s board.

Chasing the Past

A novelist rewrites the history of a mysterious antiques collector.

By Joanna Scott

MYSTERY MAN: Armand de Potter (left), the author’s great-grandfather, was a collector and trader of Egyptian antiquities who disappeared during a transatlantic voyage in 1905, leaving his wife, Aimée, and son, Victor. On one of her husband’s last itineraries from Constantinople, Aimée wrote Pays de malheur! “City of doom!” (Photo: Courtesy of Joanna Scott)

Throughout my childhood, a portrait of my mother’s grandfather, Armand de Potter, hung on our living room wall. My mother always referred to him simply as “Granddaddy,” though she had never met him. He had died suddenly in the early years of the 20th century, disappearing from the deck of a passenger ship. What caused him to go overboard, no one could say. There were no witnesses. He had left his steamer trunk in his cabin, but his wallet was never found.

According to my mother, there was some suspicion in the family that he’d been murdered. He was a rich man. Maybe a thief robbed him and then pushed him overboard. More likely, though, it was a tragic accident. He may have gone out to the deck for a breath of the cool night air and lost his balance. The rails on ships were lower back then, my mother would point out.

It never occurred to me that there might be more that could be known beyond the speculations reported by my mother. Like her, I thought that the truth had disappeared into the sea with Granddaddy, and I was reminded of the mystery every time I looked at his portrait.

My mother and her sister had been raised by their grandmother—the widow of Armand de Potter—and they’d divided her possessions between them after her death. Mom had inherited enough antiques and paintings to clutter a small house. She had also kept her grandfather’s steamer trunk. It followed her from her house to her condominium to her apartment, where it was relegated to the basement storage unit and forgotten for half a century.

Then one day five years ago, my mother asked me to help her find her college diploma. She thought it might be in the steamer trunk, so we went down to the basement. We found the diploma right away, but also plastic bags full of papers and books. My mother left me in the basement while she went to make dinner, and I began sifting through the bags in the steamer trunk.

Among the papers I found legal documents:

There were dozens of itineraries, including one marked mysteriously by a handwritten exclamation in French.

There were albums full of photographs of travels from around the world.

There were journals with messages written on their inside covers.

There were postcards, letters, wills, and a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings dating back to the 1870s. There was an old belted leather wallet containing a card for a parfumerie in Nice, France. A pamphlet catalogued something called “The De Potter Collection,” listing over 300 pieces of ancient Egyptian art, including a decorated sarcophagus and mummy.

SURVIVING SECRETS? Meticulous record keepers, Armand and Aimée de Potter left their family a trove of catalogs from their antiquities business, photos, diaries, and other materials documenting their travels around the world and their lives together. But did they leave clues about Armand’s disappearance? (Photo: Courtesy of Joanna Scott)

The materials gave me a sense of the major events in the lives of my great-grandparents: I read about their wedding in the Hudson Valley in 1879, about Armand’s Belgian heritage, his success as a proprietor of a travel business, and his extensive dealings in the antiquities trade.

I felt like I was having a murky dream about the past. Why had everything been kept closed up in the trunk for so long? What were these ancestors trying to tell me? I wouldn’t have been able to guess if I hadn’t found a set of journals—“A Line a Day” books produced by the Samuel Ward Company, each with a prefatory advertisement that couldn’t have been more apt: “Such a book will be of the greatest value in after years. What a record of events, incidents, joys, sorrows, successes, failures, things accomplished, things attempted.” These were the diaries that Armand’s wife, Aimée, had kept over a period of 30 years.

I took all the materials home to my study. My great-grandparents left so many testimonies that I was convinced they had wanted their secrets to survive them. It seemed that I had come upon a history that was begging to be written. I started a family biography, intending to solve the mystery surrounding Armand de Potter. Yet the more I pored over it all, the more stymied I felt by the missing pieces. Aimée had indicated in her diary that she’d lost the packet of her husband’s letters. Where were those letters? What had Armand said in them? As I speculated, I couldn’t resist writing the possibilities as imagined scenes. My search kept pushing me away from history, and closer to fiction. The true story may have been more powerful, full of more beauty, love, whimsy, and heartbreak than anything I could have invented, but it was partial. After spending two years on the book I’d conceived of as nonfiction, I decided to recast it as a novel.

Still, I remained fixated on uncovering evidence. I spent hours in the Egyptian Galleries at the Brooklyn Museum, staring at an illustrated sarcophagus that had once been in the De Potter Collection. I went to the Hudson Valley and knocked on the door of the house where Aimée de Potter had lived out her life after her husband’s disappearance. The owner graciously invited me inside and showed me around. As I was leaving, he told me that he thought the house was haunted. I put my ear against the wall and heard a distant knocking—the sound made by mice, perhaps? Or ghosts?

But no matter how hard I peered into the past, I just could not imagine the central piece in the narrative—that point in Armand’s last days when he made the decision not to return home to his villa in Cannes. The book I was writing was like the steamer chest: full of pictures and snippets that didn’t cohere.

Then I went to Philadelphia, to the museum at the University of Pennsylvania, where Armand’s collection of Egyptian antiquities had once been on loan. I had a notion that a curator there at the turn of the century, Sara Yorke Stevenson, was important to the story. I visited the archives and wandered through the galleries, searching for clues.

I knew from Aimée’s diaries that Armand had written his last two letters to her in Constantinople. She’d scrawled a lamentation next to the name of the city on an itinerary: Pays de malheur, “city of doom.” What happened to Armand in Constantinople? I had to figure it out. By the end of the day, though, I hadn’t found any relevant information, and my imagination would go only so far before it dissolved in a fog of uncertainty.

It seemed I would never finish the book I’d begun. All I wanted was to get out of there. Where was the exit? I turned the wrong way, then the right way. Oh, there it was, and look, beside the door was the entrance to a small exhibition called Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands. Why not take a quick peak? Maybe I wasn’t in such a hurry after all.

How interesting to discover that it was an exhibition about the antiquities trade, featuring a professor from the University of Pennsylvania named Hermann V. Hilprecht. And in the display case, a letter sent from Constantinople, postmarked June 8, 1905, caught my eye. That was the same day Armand led his final tour through Constantinople!

I’d intended to spend five minutes in the exhibition. I stayed until closing, reading about false claims the arrogant Professor Hilprecht made regarding excavations in the ancient holy city of Nippur. I learned that he had been hired by the University of Pennsylvania as a lecturer in Egyptology before becoming a professor of Assyriology. He must have been familiar with Armand’s collection. And he had been in Constantinople when Armand was there.

While I didn’t find the absolute solution to the mystery of Armand’s disappearance, I found something else in that exhibition: stories that ignited my sputtering imagination and gave me the means and energy to continue the novel I’d begun.

I’d wondered throughout my life about the bearded man in the portrait in our living room. He was at the height of his career, in love with his wife, and devoted to his son when he set off on his last tour. A century later, I took off after him. De Potter’s Grand Tour is my pursuit of a man who had clearly wanted to be remembered and yet, as I discovered, was reluctant to be found.

The author of 11 books, Joanna Scott is the Roswell Smith Burroughs Professor of English. Her most recent novel, De Potter’s Grand Tour, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2014. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Award. This essay was adapted from one that originally appeared on the website Work in Progress (fsgworkinprogress.com) of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

EXCERPT

At Sea

Was the disappearance of Armand de Potter an accident?

By Joanna Scott

SETTING SAIL? Armand de Potter traveled to Constantinople (shown here in a family photograph) as part of his life as an antiquities collector before boarding the Regele Carol (shown below in a 1916 postcard), the ship from which he disappeared. (Photo: Courtesy of Joanna Scott)

It is close to midnight on the Regele Carol. The last of the passengers have finally returned to their rooms, the stewards have stacked the deck chairs, and Armand is alone at the rail, searching the darkness in an effort to make out the coast of the nearest island. By his calculations, Lemnos should be a half mile off their starboard side, close enough to swim to if the steamer foundered. But he isn’t worried that the steamer will founder, not tonight, not with the sea perfectly calm, the sky starlit, the breeze barely strong enough to disperse the smoke from his pipe.

He pictures his wife bundled in blankets in her hotel room in Lausanne, the window open a crack to let in the cool night air. In the morning she’ll ring for room service and enjoy her tea and brioche in bed. Later she will walk into town to shop with Victor, or maybe they’ll take a stroll along the Esplanade de Montbenon and have lunch on the terrace at La Grotte.

If he’d had the foresight to recognize in the midst of his foolishness that his actions would lead him here, to the rail of the Regele Carol, he would have attempted to design a different outcome, including joining his wife and son tomorrow for lunch at La Grotte before boarding the train to return to Cannes. Instead he is compelled to stick to the original plan, to keep on leaning against the rail, to lean a little more and a little more, not far enough to fall, but far enough for his pencil to slip from his breast pocket and plummet into the boiling foam below.

(Photo: Editura Librariei Fratii Saraga/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

He feels a momentary pang but then reminds himself that he won’t be needing his pencil anymore. He won’t be needing much of anything where he’s going. He won’t need his pipe. He won’t need his buttermilk dress coat trimmed with silk lapels. He won’t even need his hat.

He’s not sure which his wife will receive first: his last two letters or the official notice that he is missing at sea. He expects that she will weep for the appropriate period, perhaps even longer. But she is a resourceful woman, and sooner or later she will dry her eyes. After taking stock of her new circumstances, she will rebuild her life and watch over her son at Grand Bois.

In the shorter of his last two letters to her, he included instructions on how to handle the estate. He couldn’t bring himself to warn her, however, that when she attempts to withdraw money from the Crédit Lyonnais she will find the account has been closed, and then when she continues to the Société Générale, she will discover that their joint account contains far less than she thought and their fortune has shrunk to almost nothing. Divesting all their remaining assets won’t satisfy the creditors clamoring for payment. Only the sale of the De Potter Collection at its full value, along with the ample indemnity from his paid-up life insurance policy, will enable his wife and son to remain in their beloved home.

He’d tucked the photograph of them into his pocket, and he takes it out now to examine it. Aimée with her funny topknot the size of an acorn. Victor with his melancholy eyes. Is it possible that he would never see them again? Why, it’s very possible! See how possible it is?

He glances over his shoulder to check that the deck behind him is still empty. He looks toward the wall that hides the bridge from view to confirm once more that the quartermaster on watch can’t see him. Shadows moving below the light on the front deck catch his attention; he traces them up a pole to a pair of flags fluttering in the light wind. This, he tells himself, is as good a time as any to make his exit, and he would, he will . . . except that right then he hears a quick, muted thud that could have come from the interior of the ship or might signify that somewhere nearby a door has been opened and swung shut again.

He looks around to see if he has company. A moment later he thinks he hears the same thud again, but it is fainter this time, and he wonders if he’d been mistaken. No one is in sight. Still, he is flustered.

He takes a puff from his pipe to steady his nerves and looks down at the water. As he watches the white froth roll away from the hull into the night, breaking into patches and dissolving into the same wine-dark sea that the ancients sailed, the bitter thought comes to him that they might be passing over a sunken galley full of looted treasures.

He is sorry to have created such a mess for his dear wife to clean up. That it has come to this and he must cause his family such anguish in order to protect their happiness is a reality as absurd as it is unavoidable. He is teetering above the ocean, about to fly away from his life on the presumption that he must take responsibility, he must make sure his creditors are paid, he must remove himself as the target of his enemies and keep his family from being turned out of their home—he can accomplish all this with one simple action, shattering the surface that hides death from human consciousness, subjecting himself to the cruelest agony because he must, he must . . . good God, he must pull himself together!

He reaches for his pocket watch before remembering that he left it in the trunk in his room. He turns to see if the clock on the wooden pedestal inside the unlit dining room is visible through the window behind him. He can’t see the clock, but he does notice the steward and stewardess embracing near the funnel on the upper deck, locked in a kiss.

When did they arrive? Everybody is supposed to be in bed by now. It is essential that his last act go unwitnessed. If the couple looks up just as he is throwing himself overboard, they will alert the crew and try to save him. Imagine being reeled back onto the ship, flopping and sputtering while passengers and crew gather round! Even if they don’t succeed in saving him, they will be asked for a full report of the incident, and their testimony would be enough proof that Armand de Potter’s death at sea wasn’t accidental.

He wouldn’t have predicted that love would get in the way—love, with its impractical hope. Love is the reason he is standing here. How he loves his wife and son and wants only to protect them. How jealous he is of the young couple kissing on the upper deck.

He could go to the back of the boat, where the couple wouldn’t be able to see him. But in truth he is relieved that they have intruded into the scene he has so carefully arranged. He is reassured by the evidence that the two young people are persisting in their devotion, despite all the obstacles the world has thrown in their way, and he doesn’t mind if he has to wait for them to get their fill of each other before he proceeds with his plan. On this journey he won’t miss a connection just because he is a little late. Keep kissing, he would like to urge the couple, kiss for as long as it pleases you. Though it’s unusual for him, the gentleman leaning against the rail of the Regele Carol is not in any hurry.

© 2014, Joanna Scott. Excerpted from De Potter’s Grand Tour (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Tour the Tour

An exhibition based on Joanna Scott’s novel, De Potter’s Grand Tour, and the historical materials saved by her family that Scott used in her research for the book will be on display at Rush Rhees Library this spring. To Travel Is to Live: Joanna Scott’s De Potter’s Grand Tour will be on view in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections from January 10 through May 10. For hours and more information visit: http://www.library.rochester.edu/rbscp.

On Tour, with Robin Lynn ’70

WALKS ON THE WILD SIDE: New York City native Lynn has given hundreds of tours all across the city, exploring sites well off the beaten tourist paths. (Photo: Shannon Taggart for Rochester Review)

Robin Lynn ’70 sits with her back to a stack of pre-folded pizza boxes in the back of Luigi’s tiny pizza shop in South Slope, Brooklyn. Hot pies are coming out of the oven and regulars—loud, balding guys named Frankie and Johnny with their kids, and some neighborhood cops—stream in from the street. Gio, a big man in a white shirt throws up dough. Customers’ cash is shoved into a rickety, analog register that looks like it hasn’t given out a receipt in decades.

“This is real New York,” Robin says, satisfied. “This is a neighborhood, with neighborhood characters.” And she should know. She’s spent the last 45 years living, breathing and loving every inch of this city.

I met Robin in the spring of 2012 at an alumni event in Gotham Hall. She made me promise that I would call her and she would take me on a walking tour. On a sunny June morning, I met her in front of a Home Depot in the Flatiron District.

This was the unlikely place to see New York’s cast iron architecture in all its magnificence. We admired the gleaming, white façade, and Robin explained how the material revolutionized building in the last half of the 19th century. The wedding cake of a building was completed in 1892 for the expanding Stern’s department store.

“Just look at the magnetic cast iron columns inside. It was built so it could have large plate glass windows letting light in. It’s the pre-electric golden era!”

Instead of elegant doormen in top hats who once welcomed shoppers into Stern’s, we entered past men and women in orange aprons. Weaving by the columns and through rows of lumber, Robin led me to the center of the building. An airshaft capped with a sprawling skylight pierced its six floors. Here in the heart of a Home Depot we marveled at this feat of structural engineering, basking in the indoor light and air that once made the Stern brothers rich.

For Robin, who was born and raised here, New York City is an endless onion. “I wish residents could walk down the street and have, I don’t know, X-ray vision into the past, to peel back the layers,” she says.

Since she graduated from Rochester, Robin has held an array of jobs that allowed her to peel back layers and create context for the built environment of the city.

In the 1970s she worked for the New York State Council on the Arts, where she distributed grants to visual arts organizations and simultaneously worked on her master’s degree in art history at Columbia. Some years later she worked for a consortium of educational and cultural institutions under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to revive Brooklyn through history projects.

“When I worked [in Brooklyn] in the late 1970s people were running for their lives,” she recalls. “We did exhibitions and posters and lectures and now 35 years later, all I can say is I must have done a helluva good job! Look at this borough, it’s now the hippest!”

Robin had no intention of migrating to the suburbs when the first of her three children was born in 1979. She and her husband eventually settled on Roosevelt Island, a quiet residential area in the middle of the East River. As her kids grew up, Robin was organizing and giving tours of the city for the Municipal Art Society. She’s worked with groups ranging from 15,000 to two and covered every inch of the city. “I know Manhattan like a college campus,” she says, “I don’t know anywhere in Manhattan that I don’t feel at home.”

We came out of the Home Depot and walked south down Avenue of the Americas. Robin told me about all the buildings we passed. The stretch of street, called the Ladies’ Mile, was once home to the most glamorous department stores and boutiques in the country. We briefly stepped into the Church of the Holy Communion, an Episcopal Church complex built in the 1840s. The building has had many lives and Robin knows them all.

By the 1970s, the complex was sold, and the church became a cultural center for poetry readings and lectures on world religions. It was sold again and used for drug rehabilitation programs.

In the 1980s the church became a famously decadent night club. Between 1983 and 2007 the Limelight (and its successor, Avalon), renowned for drug busts, hosted dance parties and performers from Whitney Houston to Marilyn Manson. Robin explained all this as we wandered through racks of expensive knitwear. The church complex is called Limelight Marketplace today.

Even though she still gives tours on occasion, in recent years Robin has transitioned more to writing. She worked with New York’s “dean of walking tours” Frances Morrone on her first book, Ten Architectural Walks in Manhattan in 2009. Their second collaboration produced Guide to New York City Urban Landscapes in 2012, a book focused on parks and green spaces in the city.

Recently Robin made a gift to establish a lecture series at the University on architectural history. She hopes the series will bring a greater appreciation for the city of Rochester to the campus and create conversations between students and experts, and among departments about new ways to discover and appreciate built environments.

The most recent time I saw her, Robin invited me for a walk among the dead. We met at dusk at the ornate gate of the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn—home to a colony of South American monk parakeets, one of the many unique features of the gigantic cemetery.

As we meandered past sprawling weeping willows and pathways that erased into darkness I told Robin that I thought of her as a real New Yorker. She hesitated. She didn’t seem quite comfortable with the label. “A real New Yorker is someone who if they would like to smell the grass has Green-Wood Cemetery as their option,” she said after a pause. A real New Yorker is too busy living to pay close attention to this marvelous city.

—Maya Dukmasova ’12 (T5)

Alumna to Alumna

Journalist Maya Dukmasova ’12 (T5) meets up with Big Apple historian and tour guide Robin Lynn ’70.

At the Scene of Sound

SOUND ARTIST: Aresty’s sound installations in Seattle and Pittsburgh have garnered national attention. (Photo: Steve Pope/AP Images for Rochester Review)

For more than a century, the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh has served as a horticultural sanctuary for the city’s residents and visitors. In the 2000s, the conservatory embarked on a renovation and expansion, the centerpiece of which is the Center for Sustainable Landscapes. A building that generates more energy than it uses, it’s one of the greenest buildings in the world.

But in early 2013, when Phipps executive director Richard Piacentini walked through the completed building for the first time, his reaction wasn’t quite what he’d hoped or expected.

“This is a building that’s very well insulated,” he says. “It struck me as very eerie, walking up the stairs in this atrium, how quiet and still it was. It was very unnerving, especially since, as a botanical garden and conservatory, we’re all about showcasing beauty and stimulating people’s senses.”

Piacentini decided that what the building needed was “art,” and fortuitously, he sought advice from his friend Sarah Reichard, director of Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum.

Reichard recommended he contact artist Abby Aresty ’05E. Aresty is a composer of sorts—a musician who explores sound, but borrowing concepts usually associated with public art pieces such as sculptures or murals. Her work, which belongs to the relatively new genre of sound art, is site-specific, by which she means that the sounds from the surrounding environment—both natural and machine-derived—are incorporated into each piece.

Reichard met Aresty when, as a doctoral student in composition at the University of Washington, Aresty built a sound installation in the Seattle arboretum called Paths II: The Music of Trees. It consisted of seven compositions that she had created based on a year’s worth of recordings of sounds throughout the park.

“Sometimes I use sounds in their natural, unprocessed state,” says Aresty, describing her general approach. “Other times I process them to explore different timbral and textural possibilities or properties.”

Aresty says she first became interested in processing sound at the Eastman School of Music, in a class in computer music taught by Alan Schindler, professor of composition. “That’s where I first learned there was a possibility of composing with recorded sounds outside of instruments—just everyday sounds,” she says.

At the University of Washington, she worked closely with faculty in the program in digital arts and experimental media. She took a course in mechatronics, in which she learned how to use sensors to gather information about her physical surroundings and translate that information into sound. “It’s where I learned basic skills in electronics like soldering,” she adds. It’s also where she learned to build the solar-powered sound distribution systems that played her compositions at each of the seven sites.

After talking to Reichard, Piacentini promptly contacted Aresty. Working with Carnegie Mellon University’s Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry, he was able to invite her to spend a year in Pittsburgh, where she would teach in the studio and create a sound installation to adorn the Center for Sustainable Landscapes. Her piece, Of Earth and Sun, debuted last summer.

Conceptually similar to Paths II: The Music of Trees, the basic elements of the piece are sounds Aresty recorded throughout the city of Pittsburgh, over the course of the year. The piece is dynamic, guided by a computer program that will alter it according to the season, the weather, and the time of day. As it plays daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., it’s in constant dialogue with the environment. And there are no speakers to transmit the sound. Sound is transmitted by the building itself, through transducers, cylinder-shaped objects attached to windows, that transmit vibrations to the glass, making the windows function as speakers.

Piacentini has brightened the center with visual art. The pieces, and Aresty’s sound art installation, have brought to fruition one of the original goals the conservatory had for the center: “to blur the lines between the outside and inside,” he says. “It’s really interesting to have a walk through the space. If it’s very quiet inside, you hear everything, but if there are people talking or if the windows are open, it blends in with the ambient sounds.”

Within the atrium, visitors can find information about what they’re hearing, and pose questions to docents. The commentary is helpful to the many people who are new to sound art.

“I think a lot of times people think of art as things that you look at,” Piacentini says. “But art can appeal to other senses as well. So sound art, I think, is really unique.”

In September, Aresty began a postdoctoral fellowship at Grinnell College in Iowa. Grinnell features a different soundscape, to be sure, from Pittsburgh’s. And that’s part of what she’ll explore this coming year, in a project she describes as a community sound mural. It’s in its conceptual stage, and will develop in dialogue with the town’s residents.

“Ultimately the vision is to create a piece on the theme of diversity through sonic perspective,” she says. “We all listen, we all have different backgrounds that shape how we listen, and what we experience.”

—Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Mortal Words

POETIC BREAK: Kinnell and dog, Willie, share a moment in Kinnell’s Vermont home office. (Photo: Richard W. Brown)

Galway Kinnell ’49 (MA) was a towering figure, both literally and as a poet. Part of a postwar turn away from the modernism of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, Kinnell strove to craft accessible poems from the material of everyday life. The centerpiece of his first published collection, a 14-part poem about Manhattan’s Avenue C called “The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ Into the New World,” made his reputation, and inspired frequent comparisons to the lyrical style of Walt Whitman.

Kinnell, who died in October, wrote 10 collections of poetry. His 1982 book, Selected Poems, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2000, he returned to Rochester for a reading and lecture as part of the Hyam Plutzik Memorial Poetry Series. The University awarded him its highest honor for alumni, the Hutchison Medal, in 2001. In 1982, Jeffrey Mehr ’78 interviewed Kinnell for Rochester Review.

Here are excerpts from that interview, “Writing Poems: The Thrill of Discovery.”

The entire interview is online at http://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V77N3/ 0603_kinnell.html.

On Words

“One thing that leads one into poetry is an interest in words. Not words as written things with a referent, but words as sound that the body produces, that fill the mouth and that are therefore in some way psychically identified with the thing they’re talking about. And that have a content which can’t be reduced to a definition. Like ‘spartled.’ ”

On Music

“For me, music is quite important. It seems the soul of poetry. Poetry has a body as well—the things of the world—so I find it more interesting than music. But often poetry seems to lack a soul. By listening to music, you recover the sense of what poetry must be.”

On Writing Well

“When you write well, there is a kind of special mood that comes upon you, different, I suppose, for every person, but for everyone different from just the normal, day-to-day way they feel. And words seem to come on their own. You’re understanding them and shaping them, and yet they come out saying things that you didn’t know you could say.”

On the Importance of Context

“Those people who say, ‘Homer was writing about exactly the same thing as a writer today,’ are, I think, completely wrong. It seems quite clear that our consciousness evolves, and that we know things differently. . . . For example, Homer didn’t really know that it was intolerable to die. We do.”

On Critical Reception

“I’ve had lots of nice reviews, and I’ve had lots of attacks on my poetry. . . . The only reviews that really can strike dread into your heart are those that actually see what you feel is weakest and then drive the nail right in there.”

On What Makes a Good Poem

“Most good poems address themselves to things that we all know about, and the only preparation we need, as readers, is a kind of paying of respect to our inner life, to the feelings we have that are of no practical importance: the sense of strangeness and the hauntedness of existence; the fragility of our position on the globe, and the fragility of the globe itself; this very peculiar situation we’re in, self-conscious creatures who know that we’re lost in some kind of existence that we don’t understand at all.”

KUDOS

Alumni Honors

John Levi (left), Martin (Marty) Messinger, and C. McCollister (Mac) Evarts (Photo: University Advancement)

The University celebrated the achievements and service of notable graduates during ceremonies this fall.

School of Arts & Sciences

Distinguished Alumnus Award

John Levi ’69, a partner in the Chicago office of the law firm Sidley Austin, received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the School of Arts & Sciences at a ceremony in November.

A nationally recognized specialist in employment law, Levi is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2010, he has served as chairman of the board of the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit corporation that provides civil legal assistance to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it. President Barack Obama nominated him to serve on the board in 2009.

Levi has served on Rochester’s Chicago-Midwest Regional Cabinet since 2009 and is a charter member of the George Eastman Circle, the University’s leadership annual giving society.

Eastman School of Music

Luminary Award

Martin (Marty) Messinger ’49, managing director of Neuberger Berman, an independent management investment firm, and longtime supporter of the University, received the Luminary Award during a ceremony this fall to mark the appointment of Jamal Rossi ’87E (DMA) as the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean of the Eastman School of Music.

A life trustee of the University, Messinger has been an important advisor and supporter for several University initiatives. Since being named a member of the Board of Trustees in 1989, he has served on the Trustees Visiting Committee for the Eastman School, the Eastman Board of Managers, and the Eastman National Council.

He and his late wife, Joan, helped provide a new home for the Eastman Community Music School and established an endowed fund at Eastman to provide support for programming and other areas. The Periodical Reading Room and the Graduate Study Rooms in Rush Rhees Library are named in recognition of their support. The Messingers also established endowed funds supporting the Judaic Studies Program, the Debate Union, and the Messinger Library Recognition Award.

Messinger is a member of the George Eastman Circle.

School of Medicine and Dentistry

Hutchison Medal

C. McCollister (Mac) Evarts ’57M (MD), ’64M (Res), a nationally recognized orthopaedist, received the Charles Force Hutchison and Marjorie Smith Hutchison Medal, an award given in recognition of achievement and service by an alumnus. An elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Evarts

was appointed chief executive officer, senior vice president, and dean of the College of Medicine at Pennsylvania State University in 1987. From 2003 to 2006, he served as senior vice president and vice provost for health affairs and CEO of Rochester’s Medical Center. A member of the George Eastman Circle, he has

served on the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Alumni Council and the school’s National Council. He also established an endowed professorship in orthopaedics. Evarts Lounge, the main gathering space in the School of Nursing’s home in Helen Wood Hall, is named in recognition of Evarts and his late wife, Nancy Lyons Evarts ’54N.

TRIBUTE

Rita Shane: ‘A Unique Star Among Us’

COLORATURA: Shane’s signature role was the notoriously difficult Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. (Photo: Tomas Flint)

A little bit of sunshine left Rochester when my dear friend and colleague Rita Shane, professor of voice at Eastman since 1989, died in October after a brief and courageous battle with cancer at the age of 78. Rita was a world-renowned opera singer of a rare vocal category (dramatic coloratura soprano) and equally rare as an artistic colleague. A native of New York City, she didn’t attend a music school but studied at Barnard College under Beverly Peck Johnson, a brilliant vocal technician whom I knew later in my own studies in piano accompanying at the Juilliard School. Rita became a leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera for 10 seasons after her 1973 debut in what became her signature role, the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. She also sang at the Chicago Lyric, San Francisco, New York City, and many other American opera companies, as well as in Milan, Vienna, Munich, and a dozen other houses in Europe and South America. She performed roles in Manon, Lucia di Lammermoor, L’elisir d’amore, Carmen, and La bohème, as well as creating the title role of Miss Havisham’s Fire by Eastman alumnus Dominick Argento ’58E (PhD) for New York City Opera.

Rita taught her students with a sunny disposition and an ebullient smile that was not only figurative, but a vital element of the vocal technique that she cultivated with her devoted and successful Eastman students. Many of them would move to New York City after completing their degrees, where she generously helped them with their careers whenever she could. One of the earliest of these alums was tenor John McVeigh ’93E, who when not at Rita’s bedside during her illness this fall, was rehearsing himself at the Met for seven productions this season.

Every week for 25 school years, this commanding but eminently practical diva found it worth her while to rise at 5 a.m. on Tuesday mornings at her home on the Upper West Side, deal with the vagaries of the airlines and whatever the weather threw her way, and teach a nearly full load of voice majors before heading back to New York on Thursday afternoons to coach professional singers on the weekend. I’ve known this about Rita since I joined Eastman’s Department of Voice and Opera in 1995; another soulmate of even longer standing, Eisenhart Professor of Voice Carol Webber, said that “Rita’s extraordinary voice, truly one of a kind, was matched by her warmth, generosity, and fierce loyalty.” Rita loved quality in all things—good singing, good scotch, late night meals at Max or the Inn on Broadway, which was her home away from home, and mostly, the well-deserved admiration of her students and colleagues. She was a unique star among us, dauntless, ageless, and unforgettable.

—Russell Miller

Miller is the chair of the Department of Voice and Opera at Eastman. A memorial concert for Rita Shane will take place in Eastman’s Kilbourn Hall at 2 p. m. Sunday, April 19.

TRIBUTE

Esther Conwell ’44 (MS): ‘Lived and Breathed Science’

PRESIDENTIAL HONORS: President Barack Obama named Conwell a National Medal of Science winner in 2010. (Photo: Courtesy Of Ryan K. Morris Photography/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation)

Esther Conwell ’44 (MS) first came to the University in 1942 to pursue a PhD in physics, immediately after graduating from Brooklyn College that same year. It was at Rochester that Esther, working with Professor Victor Weisskopf, made one of her most important scientific contributions, one that helped her to earn the National Medal of Science in 2010.

It was the development of a theory that describes the scattering of electrons by impurities in a semiconductor. Ultimately, this work would lead to an understanding of how transistors operate, which are the building blocks of integrated circuits. But at that time, physicists were just beginning to study silicon and germanium materials; and the Conwell-Weisskopf theory helped to explain how impurity atoms would affect the transport of electrons through the semiconductor.

Remarkably, Esther completed this signature work in effectively a few months, as Weisskopf was being sent to Los Alamos to aid in the war effort there. She would receive a master’s degree in physics from Rochester in 1944, and move on to the University of Chicago for her doctorate, which she earned four years later.

The seminal paper describing the Conwell-Weisskopf theory did not appear in print until 1950, as it was deemed classified material. Meanwhile, Esther went on to a career largely in industry, working first at Bell Laboratories (1951 to 1952), and then at GTE laboratories until 1972. It was at GTE that she studied the effect of high electric fields on the transport of “hot” (or highly energetic) electrons in semiconductors. In fact, for one of my own research projects we were interested in understanding the transport of “hot” electrons in nanometer scale semiconductors, and we discovered that Esther had literally written the defining book on this topic some 30 years earlier!

In 1972, Esther returned to Rochester to work at Xerox, where she investigated the conduction of electrons in organic molecules, which had direct relevance to the xerographic process. After “retirement” from Xerox in 1998, Esther joined the chemistry department at Rochester, with an appointment in physics coming several years later. At Rochester, she was interested in understanding the conduction of electrons through DNA molecules, and especially how the electrons would interact with the DNA molecular vibrations to create “polarons.”

Esther lived and breathed science. Her accomplishments earned her many accolades even before President Barack Obama honored her with the National Medal of Science. She was the only Rochester faculty member to be a member of the National Academies of Science and Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1997, she received the Edison Medal. In 2011, the University awarded her an honorary doctorate.

When Esther died last November at the age of 92, she was still actively working, coming to her office almost daily. It is important to note that besides her scientific contributions, Esther’s lasting legacy will be her inspiration to women around the globe to enter the physical sciences. Often the only woman, at times unwelcomed, in a field ruled by males, Esther had to overcome countless barriers to achieve the success and recognition that she deserved.

—Todd Krauss

Krauss is chair of the Department of Chemistry at Rochester.

Books & Recordings

Books

On War and Morality

By Robert Holmes

Princeton University Press, 2014

Princeton University Press has republished Holmes’s work as part of the Princeton Legacy Library, a project to expand access to scholarly works no longer in print. Writing in the late 1980s, Holmes, professor emeritus of philosophy at Rochester, argued that the threat of nuclear war resulted in the respectability of conventional war, and that all war is morally impermissible in the modern military context.

A Scholar’s Guide to Getting Published in English: Critical Choices and Practical Strategies

By Mary Jane Curry and Theresa Lillis

Multilingual Matters, 2013

Curry, associate professor and director of language education at the Warner School, and Lillis, professor of English language and applied linguistics at the Open University in the United Kingdom, respond to a growing reliance on English in academic publishing with a guide for scholars in countries in which English is not a primary language.

Applied Meta-Analysis with R

By Ding-Geng (Din) Chen and Karl Peace

Chapman & Hall/ CRC Biostatistics Series, 2013

Chen, professor of biostatistics at the Schools of Medicine and Dentistry and of Nursing, and Peace, professor of biostatistics at Georgia Southern University’s Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, provide an overview for practitioners on the application of statistical methods to synthesize biomedical and clinical trial data using the programming language R.

Forensic Reports and Testimony: A Guide to Effective Communication for Psychologists and Psychiatrists

By Randy Otto ’81 et al

Wiley, 2014

Otto and his coauthors, experts in the field of forensic psychology and psychiatry, offer a guide for mental health professionals who wish “to provide consistently accurate, defensible, and useful reports and testimony” in legal cases. Otto is an associate professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy at the University of South Florida.

War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement They Built

By Nan Levinson ’71

Rutgers University Press, 2014

Levinson, who teaches journalism and fiction writing at Tufts University, explores the contemporary soldiers’ antiwar movement, as carried out by the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. Through portraits of the mostly working-class veterans who lead the group, Levinson offers a look at the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the evolution of the thinking of soldiers “demanding to be seen neither simply as tragic victims nor as battlefront heroes.”

Mercury Control for Coal-Derived Gas Streams

Edited by Evan Granite ’94 (PhD) et al

Wiley, 2014

Granite coedits a handbook of the technologies currently available to capture and measure mercury in coal-derived gas streams, in accordance with standards set by environmental protection agencies in the United States, the European Union, and the Asia-Pacific region. Granite is a research group leader at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant

By Robert Doran

Cambridge University Press, 2015

Doran explores the concept of the sublime, from its first articulation in ancient Greece to its place in the aesthetic philosophy of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Doran is an associate professor of French and comparative literature at Rochester.

The Anxiety Code: Deciphering the Purposes of Neurotic Anxiety

By Roger Di Pietro ’04M (Pdc)

Lulu, 2014

A Rochesterarea psycho- therapist, Di Pietro explores the ways in which anxiety symptoms may be less the result of a particular cause than an adaptive means to achieve certain goals.

Let the People Have Him— Chiam See Tong: The Early Years

By Loke Hoe Yeong ’06E

Epigram Books, 2014

Loke presents a biography of Chiam See Tong, Singapore’s longest serving opposition MP, and a figure offering a window into the history of post-independence Singapore. The first of a two-volume series, the volume explores Chiam’s early political struggles. Loke is the assistant secretary-general of Chiam’s Singapore People’s Party and an associate fellow at Singapore’s European Union Centre.

Pioneering History on Two Continents: An Autobiography

By Bruce Pauley ’67 (PhD)

University of Nebraska Press, 2014

In an autobiography, Pauley, professor emeritus of history at the University of Central Florida, considers the changing nature of the historian’s craft, with an emphasis on the history of 20th-century Central Europe. Pauley also explores his family history, from their German roots to their migration into the Great Plains of the United States.

Now’s the Time: A Story of Music, Education, and Advocacy

By Ned Corman ’59E and Rob Enslin

Epigraph, 2013

With writer Enslin, Corman—a music education advocate, founder of the Penfield (N.Y.) Music Commission Project, and organizer of the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival—offers a memoir of his childhood on a Pennsylvania farm, coming of age at the Eastman School and Penn State, life on the road in the last days of the Big Band Era, and teaching music in public schools. The book includes forewords by Chuck Mangione ’63E, Ron Carter ’59E, Fred Wesley, and the late D. Stanley Hasty ’41E.

Fault Lines: The Layman’s Guide to Understanding America’s Role in the Ever-Changing Middle East

By Don Liebich ’64

Elevate, 2014

Liebich describes his own journey to understanding American involvement in the Middle East and its consequences for the region. Liebich spent his career in the Navy and in the private sector, and has been part of economic development, citizen diplomacy, and human rights projects in the Middle East.

Before India: Exploring Your Ancestry with DNA

By David Mahal ’71 (MS)

CreateSpace, 2014

Mahal explores the ways in which DNA analysis can be used to trace deep ancestry, with specific reference to people from the Indian subcontinent. The book includes a study of the ancestral origins of several ethnic communities in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, as well as some communities of Indian and Pakistani origin in Singapore, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom.

Exam Room Confidential: The Wellborne Files

By Louis Siegel ’76M (MD), ’79M (Res)

Louis Siegel, 2014

Siegel presents his first work of fiction, a story of the physician Charles Harper White, whose ideals “are quickly fractured by the pettiness, politics, and moral failings of his colleagues,” and by the realities of the 21stcentury American health care system.

eQuality: The Struggle for Web Accessibility by Persons with Cognitive Disabilities

By Peter Blanck ’79

Cambridge University Press, 2014

Blanck examines the rights of people with cognitive disabilities to equal access to Internet content, and the ways in which the right to Web equality must be further refined. Blanck holds the title of University Professor at Syracuse and is chairman of Syracuse’s Burton Blatt Institute, an organization to advance the civil rights and participation of people with disabilities.

The It Girl Rules: Get Hired and Stay Hired—Tips on Navigating Your Corporate Career

By Tamika Nurse ’02S (MBA)

It Girl Industries, 2014

Nurse, a career consultant, offers a guide for young women professionals on navigating corporate America. Topics include networking, positioning yourself for promotion, dealing with bad managers, and transitioning to a new job. Career in Optics: A Memoir that Spans 36 Years of Optics History at Eastman Kodak By Pierce Day ’48, ’53 (MS) Self-published, 2014 Day, an optical engineer at Eastman Kodak from 1950 to 1986, tells the story of his work on programs from Sputnik and the Lunar Orbiter to the KH-7/8 programs, the Hubble Telescope, and Kodak’s color copier products.

Recordings

Perpetuity

By Phil Markowitz ’74E and Zach Brock

Dot Time Records, 2014

Jazz pianist Markowitz and violinist Brock collaborate on 10 original tracks. Joining them on the recording are bassists Jay Anderson and Lincoln Goines, drummer Obed Calvaire, and percussionist Edson (Café) Da Silva.

Alabama Moon: A Salute to George Hamilton Green

By Bob Becker ’69E, ’71E (MM) and Yurika Kimura

Xylomusic, 2014

Percussionist Becker joins with Japanese marimbist Kimura to present a tribute to xylophone pioneer George Hamilton Green. Becker performs the lead xylophone solos.

Tossing and Turning

By Talking Under Water

Talking Under Water, 2014

Pianist and singer Dave Chisholm ’13E, cellist Elise Hughey ’09E, ’11E (MM), guitarist Alex Patrick ’14E, and drummer Stephen Roessner ’14 (MS) present their first EP as the group Talking Under Water.

Time Goes Dancing

By Chesley Kahmann ’52

Orbiting Clef Productions, 2014

Kahmann offers the 10th volume in her Kahmann Touch series. The recording includes 12 original songs, with Kahmann on the piano and her son, Ames Parsons, on trumpet.

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.

User-Centered

As the software industry develops, user-centered designers like Brad Orego ’10, ’11 (T5) are putting clunky products to the test.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

(Photo: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

User-centered design, or UCD, is essentially about building products from the end-user perspective, instead of focusing on your own goals as a company. It’s thinking about who is using this product and what they’re trying to accomplish. And then asking, how do you build a solution to that problem?

Fifteen years ago, you would win as a business by getting your software to work. If it worked, that was good enough. You can make an analogy to cars. If you think about the original Model T, there was no design there. They built a car, and it ran, and that’s all that mattered.

What’s started to differentiate one product from the next is having that design, having that aesthetic, and really solving a problem. Nowadays, I can throw an app together in a weekend that will work for the most part, but it’s really going to be a terrible experience.

I started out in a job in health care information technology. Health care IT is still very much in the “make it work” phase. They don’t spend a lot of time and effort on designing good experiences. I think there’s a huge opportunity in health care IT to provide a much better experience to patients, doctors, and nurses.

Selling user-centered design can be hard at some companies because of a combination of priorities and market forces. If people are buying your product instead of the competitors’—if there are any—then there’s no incentive to make your product any better. Companies will say, what’s our return on investment if we spend an extra week to make this thing nicer? But finally people are starting to quantify that. I work predominantly with tech start-ups building Web or smartphone apps. Their needs are certainly different from those of a large corporation. The larger a company gets, the less they tend to pay attention to user-centered design. They can afford to provide a subpar experience. Also, if you have one designer and three developers working on a project, it’s really easy to get everyone on the same page. If you have 300 designers and 1,000 engineers and you’re working on 20 different products, that’s a bit more difficult.

When you’re assessing a design, there are a few factors to consider, such as learnability, efficiency, and flexibility. For a brand new user, is it easy to pick it up and figure it out? How quickly can someone who’s an expert on this system do what they need to do? And are there multiple ways to do the same task, based on users’ preferences or their contexts?

Everyone says simplicity is great. And then they strip out visual elements to make the product as minimal as possible. But you have to have enough there so that people still understand how to use it. I do think a lot of products today go too far toward minimalism. People will pick up a device or launch a program and think, “What is this? How do I use it? There’s nothing about this that tells me what to do.”

Things are going to be a lot different in the future. We’re headed toward more wearable devices. If you have a Fitbit on that’s monitoring your pulse and neuromuscular activity, it can detect when you’re falling asleep and tell your car to blare your music to wake you up. That’s a much more immersive experience than software as we know it.

Brad Orego ’10, ’11 (T5)

Home: Madison, Wisconsin

Majors and degrees: BS, computer science; BA, psychology

Occupation: User-centered design (UCD) consultant

On user-centeredness at Rochester: “I’m really interested in the design of physical spaces. When I was a freshman, I lived in Sue B. You have your sense of identity on your hall, and on your floor. But there’s also that hub in the middle where everyone has to cross paths. We set up a foursquare court in that hub, and people would come by and join in. There was shared space there. Everyone interacted in one way or another.”

STUDENT LIFE

Leave It to Us

(Photo: Brandon Vick)

CAMPUS CAMOUFLAGE: Claire Kaiser ’17, a biomedical engineering major from Lake Forest Park, Washington, Ibrahim Akbar ’17, an electrical and computer engineering major from San Diego, and Marina May ’17, a biomedical engineering major from Mount Sinai, New York, peek from a pile of leaves on the Eastman Quadrangle this fall.