Rochester Review

November-December 2015, Volume 78, No. 2

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Valerie Alhart, Emily Boynton, Sean Dobbin, Adam Fenster, Peter Iglinski, Jim Mandelaro, Bob Marcotte, Melissa Mead, Mark Michaud, Sara Miller, Dennis O’Donnell, Susanne Pallo, Monique Patenaude, Scott Sabocheck, Leonor Sierra, and Brandon Vick Business Manager Maureen Baisch

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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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Unless otherwise noted, photographs are courtesy of the subjects.﻿﻿﻿

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Rochester Review:

The New Team

By Joel Seligman

presidentKEY PLAYERS: Hajim School Dean Rob Clark (left), who will become provost, and Senior Associate Vice President Holly Crawford, who will become senior vice president, CFO, and treasurer, have played key roles in the University’s success, says President and CEO Joel Seligman. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

I was delighted to make important announcements in October about two of the University’s most consequential senior leaders.

With the unanimous support of the Board of Trustees at the October board meeting, I am appointing Rob Clark to succeed Peter Lennie as provost of our University effective July 1, 2016. Rob will continue as senior vice president for research. On June 30, 2016, Rob will complete his service as dean of the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. We will soon begin a national search for a successor as dean of the Hajim School.

Both as senior vice president for research and dean of the Hajim School, Rob’s service has been exemplary. During the past seven years under Rob’s leadership, the Hajim School has more than doubled undergraduate enrollment while increasing the size of the faculty and significantly increasing the number of students enrolled in master’s programs. At the start of Rob’s time as dean, the Hajim School assumed responsibility for computer science. In 2014, Rettner Hall became operational, including a new fabrication facility, computer labs, and audio and video recording studios. Wegmans Hall, which will house the Goergen Institute for Data Science, is now under construction and will be dedicated in October 2016.

As senior vice president for research, Rob developed and is now implementing our first University-wide Research Strategic Plan. He has expanded the role of UR Ventures to better manage our intellectual property portfolio and supervised our online learning initiatives. Notably, he led our successful effort to be a founding member of AIM Photonics, which has helped secure more than $600 million in support from the federal and state governments as well as private industry to support a national consortium to accelerate development of United States advanced photonics manufacturing.

Also with the unanimous support of the trustees at our board meeting earlier this month, I appointed Holly Crawford to succeed Ron Paprocki as senior vice president for administration and finance and chief financial officer of our University. Holly today serves as senior associate vice president for budgets and planning and deputy to the senior vice president and CFO. She is Ron’s top associate. Holly’s appointment will begin January 15, 2016, the day Ron Paprocki retires.

The search committees and I were convinced that Holly Crawford was the best candidate for the job. Since beginning at the University in 1998 as director of University Audit, Holly has held ever increasing responsibilities for management of University finances, including serving as University budget director, playing lead roles in several University debt offerings since 2007, leading efforts to secure New Market Tax Credits which were decisive in allowing us to proceed with Eastman Theatre expansion and renovation. In each recent year she has had responsibility for working with the schools in developing and refining their annual budgets. She has been deeply involved in the development of business plans for new projects and in University risk management.

As deputy to Ron since 2007, Holly’s scope was significantly expanded. Since 2009, Holly has worked hand in glove with Ron on every aspect of the College Town project. She coordinated University efforts with respect to the Brooks Crossing residence hall that opened in 2014. When Ron has not been available, Holly has been the University point person for the full gamut of University operational and financial matters.

In working with Holly during the past 10 years, I have been consistently impressed by her intelligence, integrity, and work ethic. She gets things done. She always does them fairly and by listening to all relevant parties.

We have in recent years achieved notable progress in strengthening our finances by increasing our endowment, lowering our tuition increases, achieving an effective balance between our objectives of being an ever better academic university and ensuring that we have sustainable financial resources.

I have no question that under Holly’s leadership this progress will continue. She has helped to develop and implement the systems of administration and finance that have been so consequential in our recent momentum.

It is a testament to the strength of this institution that we were able to find on our own campus two exceptional individuals to fill positions long held by two equally exceptional individuals. I want to express my thanks to Ron Paprocki and to Peter Lennie, and my enthusiasm for working with Holly and Rob in the future.

The Powers of the Towers

The coed Towers were important not only for the Class of 1965 (“A Towering Reunion,” September-October). I and male friends from the Class of 1966 occupied suites in the Towers in the fall of 1964, its second year of existence. Our experience there transformed what had been a distant and formal relationship with women on the “Hill” into one which was, because of its spontaneity and informality, vastly superior.

It can therefore be no accident that many of us married women we first met in the Towers, in my case Sally Nusbaum Sorrell ’67.

Richard Sorrell ’66, ’68W (MA)

Red Bank, New Jersey

A Through-Hiker’s Primer

Readers who enjoyed your article about the hikes and climbs of Tyler Socash ’09, ’15W (MS) (“The Adventures of Tyler Socash,” September-October) might be interested in the writings of the late John Illig ’86, also a Rochester graduate and the former coach of the Middlebury squash team. He hiked our three great trails, Appalachian, Continental, and Pacific Crest, and wrote books—Trail Ways, Path Wise: An Appalachian Trail Through-Hike; Man In the Middle: Journey on the 3,100-Mile Continental Divide Trail; Pacific Dream: A 2,657-Mile Through-Hike up the Pacific Crest Trail—each of which is readily available to interested readers.

David Tinling ’63M (Res)

Rochester, Vermont

The author is a former faculty member at the medical school.

Let’s Hear Your Cheer

I was delighted to read about Melissa Mead’s interest in class yells but amused and slightly perturbed to see the mistranscription of ours from the Class of 1964 on the library’s website. The second line should be “bow to the floor,” not “batter the floor”! My two classmates correctly said “bow to the floor” in the recording, so I bow to them in gratitude . . . but the word was misheard.

I did not know that the tradition dates back to 1885. No doubt my students at Duke today would find that tradition, well, dated. But I loved it then and still do. The process of creating it was fun, and the class cheer instantly unites alumni when they meet and greet after years of separation.

“Ready to fight, ready to shout.”

Judith Lehman Ruderman ’64, ’66W (MA)

Durham, North Carolina

Currently a visiting professor of English at Duke University, the author is a former vice provost for academic and administrative services at Duke. The class yell website, rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/yells, has been updated.

Hurray for History

Thank you so much for recognizing history professor Richard Kaeuper (“Under the Armor,” September-October) on his new book, Medieval Chivalry. The University is so fortunate to have such a top-notch history department and continues to support it, making it “ever better.”

Nancy Bender

Macedonia, Ohio

The author is the parent of a member of the Class of 2017.

An Insult to Romanian Alumni

I read with consternation the article “Trafficked in Bucharest” (September-October). The message that the article conveys to a casual reader is that Bucharest is a city where it is common that girls “13 years of age” are “lured into brothels” and “maintain childlike appearance that might help win the sympathy of Western aid workers”—in other words, a city of underage prostitutes and beggars. I just did not know how to classify this article; definitely the most negative and insulting article I have ever read in Rochester Review.

In the early ’90s I was actually a resident in Bucharest, and I remember clearly the exaggerations that were being published in a certain part of the press, portraying Romania of the early ’90s as full of Gypsies, abandoned children, and, here you are, underage prostitutes and beggars. Now, I am not disputing that the author wrote a book on such stories from Romania after her Peace Corps experience in the early ’90s (that is anybody’s right to write whatever as long as there is a publisher and an audience willing to pay to read), but I was wondering why, after more than 20 years, those senseless articles were being republished in a University magazine that has as a primary goal to maintain a positive link with alumni, and to inform alumni about the vibrant city and University life.

Trying to clarify this aspect, I did contact with a complaint the editorial staff of Rochester Review. To my surprise, the reply has been that it “stands by the article” because “it promotes intellectual vibrancy, scholarly achievement, and creative energy.” Wow . . . ?!?!? In a University that created and creates world-renowned professionals and leaders, there was a lack of “intellectual vibrancy, scholarly achievement, and creative energy” people and articles, so that the editor had to publish excerpts from articles portraying tabloid-quality events from 20 years ago, affecting the image of Romanian students and alumni, promoting hatred and even racism, in my opinion.

Radu Secareanu ’00 (PhD)

Phoenix

Editor Scott Hauser replies: The story to which Professor Secareanu refers was a work of fiction, excerpted from the debut collection of short stories by Lenore Myka ’94. The excerpt accompanied a short profile of Ms. Myka that recounted her career as a writer and Peace Corps volunteer.

What about Australia?

In the September-October issue, the article “A Vaccine Was Born” (September-October) presents some maps showing Hib vaccine global coverage. As I read the map, Australia is shown with a vaccination rate of only 1 to 20 percent. But this is not correct. Since 1993, Hib vaccines have been provided without cost through the national Medicare scheme and the World Health Organization data shows Australian vaccination rates higher than 90 percent.

Sadly, the rates have declined slightly since 2002, probably because of apathy and confusion. But the rate is still above 90 percent.

Harry Melkonian ’71

Sydney, Australia

Regarding ‘Political Bias’

I have been watching the tone of your magazine for the last few years, and I believe Harvey Jacobson ’82S (MBA) (Letters, September-October) has unfortunately captured the truth about the current tone.

Our great American universities used to be places where all truths could be spoken, but not anymore, and I am now concerned that Rochester has finally crossed the line and favors political correctness over truth.

If you wanted to show something that is really a significant problem in the U.S., why not do a story on Chicago and the murder rate of blacks on blacks? Maybe your efforts in this regard could stir our president and attorney general to take some action. But wait, they only act when one person may have been wronged.

Jack Harshbarger ’76S (MBA)

Etowah, North Carolina

Mr. Jacobson’s argument is suffering from his own bias to which he is willfully blind.

Because citizens in America have vastly different experiences throughout their lives, there are different perspectives of “the” truth. “Real” justice is vastly different for entire populations of citizens of this country. Historically “accurate” is no longer restricted to what one population decides it is for us all.

When we honor this diversity of perspective, can dialogue be accurate? In my view, Mr. Jacobson is expecting an adversarial debate, not a collaborative dialogue. And he is criticizing Review for not taking his side. But I am proud of Review for even touching the topic. Our culture needs to become more diverse without devolving.

Keep trying to open minds and facilitate dialogue.

W. Joe Hicks ’89M (Res)

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Celebrating Lauren’s Garden

In a story on the new Golisano Children’s Hospital (“A Space to Heal,” September-October), we misspelled the name of a namesake for one of the gardens in the new building.

The correct name is Lauren’s Garden, named in memory of Lauren Olander, the five-year-old daughter of Eleanor and Andrew Olander ’06S (MBA) who died in 2011 from a rare form of leukemia.

The Olanders have established a fund to support cancer research and care.

—Scott Hauser

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.

UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP

Hajim School Dean Rob Clark Named Provost

Noted engineer and educational leader succeeds Peter Lennie as the University’s chief academic officer.

By Sara Miller

provostACADEMIC OFFICERS: President and CEO Joel Seligman introduced Hajim School Dean Rob Clark (center) as the University’s 10th provost at a ceremony this fall. Clark succeeds Provost Peter Lennie (left) in July. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

An academic leader who has guided the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences to record growth and served as a key figure in Rochester’s new initiative in integrated photonics will be the University’s new provost.

Rob Clark, who as dean of the Hajim School also serves as senior vice president for research, succeeds Peter Lennie beginning July 1, 2016. Clark’s five-year term was approved by the University’s Board of Trustees at the board’s October meeting.

“Both as senior vice president for research and dean of the Hajim School, Rob’s service has been exemplary,” President and CEO Joel Seligman said in making the announcement.

Seligman cited Clark’s leadership in engineering, where enrollment has doubled over the past seven years and the Department of Computer Science has been successfully incorporated into the Hajim School.

Seligman also praised Clark’s leadership role in the development of Ronald Rettner Hall for Media Arts and Innovation, which opened in 2014, and the new Wegmans Hall, home to the Goergen Institute for Data Science, set to be dedicated in 2016, as well as his work to develop a new strategic plan for research.

When Clark becomes provost, he will step down as dean of the Hajim School, and a national search will be undertaken to name a new dean.

Clark succeeds Peter Lennie, the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences & Engineering, who has served as provost since 2012. Lennie will continue to serve as dean of Rochester’s main undergraduate and graduate academic division until June 2017.

As the University’s chief academic officer, the provost works with the president and the senior vice president for administration and finance, to review divisional budgets, strategic plans, and facilities projects.

Since Lennie began his deanship in 2006, he has been what Seligman calls “my closest academic advisor.” As the University’s ninth provost, Lennie has led efforts to promote global engagement and a more robust institutional research program, among other achievements.

Clark joined the University as Hajim dean in 2008 from Duke University, where he served as senior associate dean and dean of the Pratt School of Engineering. In addition to growth in undergraduate enrollment at Hajim, he has overseen increases in the number of faculty and a significant rise in master’s program enrollments.

He has also expanded the role of UR Ventures, the University’s intellectual property portfolio, and supervised Rochester’s online learning initiatives.

ADMINISTRATION & FINANCE

Holly Crawford Is New Financial Chief

Longtime leader is named senior vice president, CFO, and treasurer.

cfoFINANCIAL COLLEAGUES: Holly Crawford (right) and Ronald Paprocki have worked together for nearly two decades, overseeing the University’s finances, budgets, and other operations. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

Holly Crawford ’11S (MBA), a pivotal financial administrator at the University for nearly two decades, has been named Rochester’s senior vice president for administration and finance, chief financial officer, and treasurer.

She succeeds Ronald Paprocki ’69, ’86S (MBA), who announced his intent to retire on January 15, 2016, after more than 45 years at the University and eight years as senior vice president and CFO.

Crawford, who as senior associate vice president for budgets and planning has served as deputy to Paprocki, will lead the Administration and Finance team. That group includes finance, budget, audit, campus planning and design, facilities, purchasing, auxiliary services, human resources, public safety, and environmental health and safety.

She begins her new role in January.

University President and CEO Joel Seligman made the announcement in October, after approval of Crawford’s appointments by the University’s Board of Trustees.

“Holly was the stand-out candidate in terms of already having had experience at both the technical and strategic levels in all administration and finance areas and having a proven track record of success in implementing University initiatives,” Seligman said.

“She has strong relationships with administrative and financial colleagues across the institution, with divisional leaders, and with outside partners, including investment bankers and rating agencies. She will hit the ground running. She starts with a nuanced and complete understanding of our University.”

As senior associate vice president for budgets and planning, Crawford is responsible for the stewardship and management of the University’s multibillion dollar operating budget, capital budgets, and five-year financial plans.

As deputy to the senior vice president and CFO, she is the principal advisor on financial, planning, facilities, and administrative matters and often serves as a representative for campus emergencies and on key initiatives.

Crawford joined the University in 1998 as director of University Audit and conducted the first University-wide risk assessment, as well as developed a construction auditing program, an effort that reduces costs for facilities projects.

In 2000, Paprocki asked her to assume responsibility for working with department managers, deans, and financial officers throughout the University to establish annual operating and capital budgets. She has facilitated strategic planning among key administrative functions with an emphasis on improving human resource policies and practices, communications, IT, risk assessment and business case development.

A certified public accountant and certified internal auditor, Crawford held accounting and audit positions at organizations including Bausch & Lomb, ACC Corporation, and Arthur Andersen before joining the University.

Warner Leader’s Appointment Extended

warnerEDUCATIONAL APPOINTMENT: Borasi will lead the Warner School through 2017. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Raffaella Borasi, dean of the Warner School of Education for 15 years, will carry on for the next two years, to continue to oversee initiatives in which the school is engaged.

Most notable among them is the University’s assumption—as the Educational Partnership Organization—of full management responsibilities for Rochester’s East High School.

In making the announcement, President and CEO Joel Seligman called Borasi “instrumental in forging the partnership to improve the struggling city school.”

Borasi has led Warner through a period of substantial growth, with student enrollment and research funding both more than doubling. She led the launch of online courses at Warner, has taken leadership roles in four National Science Foundation–funded grants from the Robert Noyce Scholarship program, and drove the opening two years ago of Raymond F. LeChase Hall, the new building that houses the school.﻿﻿

EASTMAN SCHOOL

Delightful Diva

fleming (Photo: Adam Fenster)

SCENE STEALERS: Internationally acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming ’83E (MM) (right) works with Eastman graduate student and soprano Evelyn Saavedra on the aria “Steal Me, Sweet Thief” from Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera The Old Maid and the Thief at Kilbourn Hall in September. The session was one of the first master classes led by Fleming under her new title of Distinguished Visiting Artist. In that role, she will visit the school on a recurring basis for master classes, coaching sessions, lessons, and talks and presentations for students.

WARNER SCHOOL

Welcome Back to East!

easthigh (Photo: Adam Fenster)

SCHOOL SPIRIT: Teachers, staff, and fellow students welcome students as they arrive at East Upper and Lower Schools, part of the Rochester City School District, on the first day of school in September. The New York State Education Department approved the University to serve as the Educational Partnership Organization for the school starting in this academic year, after the department in 2014 designated the school—one of Rochester’s most historic—as “persistently struggling.” With the guidance of faculty and staff from the Warner School of Education, the new East was designed with input from students, families, teachers, school leaders, and the community. Changes include a longer school day, new and enhanced curricula, and a support model that allows East teachers to spend part of each day working with students one-on-one or in small groups in areas where support is needed.

INTERFAITH CHAPEL

Place of Many Faiths

chapel (Photo: Adam Fenster)

HOUSE UNITED: The Interfaith Chapel reopened this fall after renovations to its sanctuary to accommodate an increasingly diverse religious and spiritual campus community. Wooden pews were removed and the stone, raised dais at the west end of the room has been replaced by one that is wooden, moveable, and handicapped-accessible. A hearing loop was also installed to improve sound quality for the hearing impaired.

NATIONAL RECOGNITION

A Hall of Fame Scientist and Mentor

Microbiologist Barbara Iglewski is the third Rochester faculty member inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

By Emily Boynton

iglewskiHALL OF FAME: Internationally regarded for her work as a microbiologist, Iglewski was the first woman to chair the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. (Photo: Medical Center)

An internationally regarded microbiologist who made history at the Medical Center joined a history-making group of American women this fall.

Barbara Iglewski, a professor emeritus in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, considered the birthplace of the American women’s rights movement.

The nation’s oldest organization dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the achievements of great American women, the hall was created in 1969. Every two years, the hall honors a group of women nominated by the public and chosen by a national panel of experts.

One of 10 inductees in 2015, Iglewski was selected for her research on how bacteria cause infections. Her laboratory was the first to discover that bacteria use a communication system—a type of chemical language—to coordinate attacks on human cells and initiate disease.

Her work launched an entire field of study into how the system works in many types of bacteria. Several drugs designed to interrupt the communication process and prevent infection are being developed.

“I think the Hall of Fame is amazing and I am overwhelmed by this huge honor,” says Iglewski. “When you look at all of the members, women who have had such a profound influence on me and so many others in our society, it puts you in awe of what they have accomplished.”

The first woman from the medical school, Iglewski is the third from the University to be inducted. She joins Judith Pipher, a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy, who was inducted in 2007, and Loretta Ford, the founding dean of the School of Nursing, who was inducted in 2011.

Iglewski pursued a career in science after accompanying her father, a country physician, on house calls and spending hours answering the phone and playing with microscopes in his office.

She received her PhD in microbiology from Penn State University, held her first position as an instructor at the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine, and was recruited to Rochester in 1986 to serve as chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. She was the first female department chair at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, a position she held until 2009.

The author of more than 150 research papers and book chapters, Iglewski is recognized by the Institute of Scientific Information as a highly cited scientist, a group that makes up less than 0.5 percent of all publishing researchers.

She served as president of the American Society for Microbiology from 1987 to 1988 and chaired the organization’s publications board from 1990 to 1999—a time when very few women served on editorial boards.

Iglewski is credited with leading efforts to increase the number of women holding editorial positions among the society’s scientific journals.

Also inducted this fall was Philippa Marrack ’91 (Honorary), a former member of the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s faculty who now holds positions at National Jewish Health and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.

Others with Rochester connections include the late Mary Steichen Calderone ’39M (MD), who established the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States.

An author and coauthor of several books, professional journals, and magazine articles, Calderone was inducted in 1998. And Rochester-based women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony was inducted in 1972.

CAMPUS UPDATES

Work Aims to Reshape Campus Spots

Wegmans Hall, a student center, and library renovations will bring a new look to prominent parts of the River Campus.

quad-campus (Map: Michael Osadciw)

Some prominent spots on the River Campus are expected to soon have a more vibrant and engaging feel to them. Several construction and renovation projects got under way this fall, including construction of Wegmans Hall, a new academic building that will be home to the Goergen Institute for Data Science, and a major overhaul of the Frederick Douglass Building to transform the 60-year-old facility into a new student center.

Work began this year on Wegmans Hall, named in recognition of leadership support for the project from the Wegman Family Foundation. The 58,000-square-foot, four-story building is expected to be dedicated in late 2016 and fully occupied early in 2017.

In 2014 Danny Wegman, chair-elect of the University’s Board of Trustees and the president of his family’s foundation and chairman of its board, announced a $10 million commitment for the building. In 2015, Robert Goergen ’60, chair emeritus, and his wife, Pamela, the namesakes for the Goergen Institute, committed $11 million for the project.

The new building is part of a new four-acre Science and Engineering Quadrangle formed with Goergen Hall, Hylan Hall, Hutchison Hall, and the Computer Studies Building. A landscaping plan by the Boston-based firm Carol R. Johnson Associates Landscape Architects is intended to make the quadrangle a more community- friendly area, including the creation of more green space and allowing the quadrangle to house tents and seating for University events such as Meliora Weekend, Commencement Weekend, student club activities, concerts, and food trucks.

The final design is scheduled to be in place by December, with landscape construction set to begin in April 2016. The new quadrangle is expected to be ready by next fall.

Renovations are also under way to make Douglass a new student center, housing a newly updated dining facility, the Paul J. Burgett Intercultural Center, and a new Language Center. The building will also feature redesigned student gathering spaces and links to other student areas on the River Campus.

Opened in the 1950s, the building originally served as the men’s dining center when the colleges for men and women were merged. Most recently, it was home to the University bookstore, which moved to College Town last spring.

Plans for the bookstore’s move prompted discussion among students, student life administrators in the College, and others on the River Campus about how the building could be transformed. Renovations are expected to be completed in time for the building to reopen in fall 2016.

Plans to renovate several areas of the River Campus Libraries have also begun. At Rush Rhees Library, plans are under way for the Barbara J. Burger iZone at the River Campus Libraries, a new space where students can gather to explore social, cultural, community, and economic ideas. The space is named in recognition of support from University Trustee Barbara Burger ’83.

At Carlson Library, plans call for a new collaborative area that supports and showcases work in all phases of research.

Mars, Martians, Metaphors, and Mirrors

Why does the red planet fascinate storytellers?

Interview by Scott Hauser

marsMARS ATTACKS! With Martians who invade Earth from militaristic spacecraft (like those illustrated in a 1906 edition), H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds set the stage for later stories about Mars. (Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)

From a brief appearance in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in 1726 to this fall’s big screen blockbuster, The Martian, Earth’s nearest neighbor in the solar system has a storied history in popular culture and the literary life of science fiction. Even as advances in interplanetary science bring Mars into ever sharper focus, the planet has remained a compelling source for creative artists to explore ideas about what it means to be human, says Jeffrey Tucker, associate professor of English.

“Science fiction is always a way of commenting on what’s happening in the here and now,” says Tucker, who studies and teaches literature, particularly in the context of technology, science, culture, and identity. A leading scholar of author Samuel R. Delany, whose science fiction and critical analysis have made him an influential figure in the genre, Tucker says he often reminds his students that seemingly speculative or imaginative stories are usually grounded in a larger context. “When I teach science fiction, I quote Delany, who says, ‘Science fiction is not about the future; it uses the future as a narrative convention to present significant distortions of the present. . . . Science fiction is about the current world—the given world shared by writer and reader.’ ”

Why does Mars seem to loom so large in popular culture?

One of the best answers I’ve read is from Isaac Asimov’s introduction to an edition of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. He basically suggests that much of our fascination with Mars and the notion of life on Mars has to do with a matter of translation—or a mistranslation—of the Italian word “canali.” In 1877, when the Italian astronomer Schiaparelli noted markings on Mars’s surface, dark lines that seemed to crisscross each other, he called them channels. The Italian word for channels is “canali,” and this somehow became “canals” in English rather than channels. There’s a big difference between the two. A channel can be a naturally occurring geographic phenomenon, whereas a canal suggests an artificial creation, which further suggests some intelligence created it. That prompted a lot of people, including the American astronomer Percival Lowell, to speculate about intelligent life on Mars. There are, of course, the other facts about Mars: it’s the closest planet to Earth and it’s similar to Earth in terms of its physical makeup. And it has moons. The similarities have invited reflection and comparison.

Have the stories evolved over time?

There are a couple main trajectories to the stories. In The War of the Worlds, Earth is invaded by Martians. The Martians are intelligent, but they certainly are not humanoid. They’re more like octopi, and they arrive in these gigantic military spaceships. In the opposite trajectory, human beings go to Mars. One of the earliest and best known is Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom series. The first book is A Princess of Mars, which was published in 1917. Burroughs is best known for Tarzan of the Apes, and the Mars books are very similar except that instead of Africa, the protagonist, John Carter, goes to Mars.

What do those stories tell us about humans?

Science fiction is always a way of commenting on what’s happening in the here and now. In The War of the Worlds, the only country we see invaded is England. Why is that? Wells is commenting on British imperialism—on the English and their history of invading and colonizing other parts of the world. And it’s violent and troubling and disturbing. What’s also interesting is that the Martians are defeated not by humanity, but by bacteria, the lowliest life form on the planet.

The classic science fiction story about humans going to Mars would be Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, published in 1950. In those stories, there’s an implicit criticism of human beings who dismiss or who are disrespectful of an ancient Martian culture that existed there. What’s also interesting is the shift in perspective. In the Martian Chronicles, you can see Earth from Mars. And Earth is this greenish star-like thing. But the inhabitants of Mars can also see the destruction of Earth, because there’s war happening on Earth. And that green star is on fire in the night sky.

Mars provides a perspective, both literally and figuratively, on the planet Earth.

Do you think the average reader who enjoys science fiction thinks about the stories on that level?

I can’t speak to what the average reader gets from the stories, but I challenge my students to be very thoughtful about what we read and why. What I find most interesting about science fiction is its allegorical ability to comment on what’s happening at the time described by the text—on a social, or political, or ideological level.

I’m also interested in other themes, including alien encounters, which are about the ways in which people who are different encounter one another. There are lots of ways in which humanity’s encounters with aliens from other planets are metaphors or allegories for humanity’s encounters with itself. That encounter can be friendly and productive, or it can be violent and exploitative.

It’s intriguing that as scientists announce more details about Mars, the imaginative pull remains strong.

What do they say? Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. I don’t think what we have learned about Mars and what it’s really like has gotten in the way of our ability to tell good stories, or had an effect on the kind of stories that have been told about Martians.

Tensions on the Frontier

Historian Thomas Devaney examines the rise of religious intolerance in medieval Spain.

devaneySPECTACLE: Staged events—similar to this “Game of Stickes” played in Valladolid in honor of Philip the Fair—helped harden Christian attitudes toward Muslims in medieval Spain, argues historian Thomas Devaney. It’s a story of “how one society moved from greater to lesser tolerance,” he says. (Photo: Album/Art Resource, NY)

The Christian civic and religious leaders of 15th-century Castile didn’t have televised news conferences or government websites to help them shape or respond to public opinion.

Instead, they staged public spectacles that served much the same purpose—including festivals, religious processions, and knightly tournaments that often included a theatrical narrative framework.

In his new book, Enemies in the Plaza: Urban Spectacle and the End of Spanish Frontier Culture, 1460–1492 (University of Pennsylvania Press), Thomas Devaney, assistant professor of history, shows how such staged events eventually helped harden Christian attitudes toward Muslims in neighboring Granada and toward the religious minorities in Castile, eventually leading to religious conflict and repression.

Modern Spanish anxieties and ambivalences about Islam may descend from those of Spaniards’ “medieval forebears,” Devaney says. His book traces the arc of those reactions in the late 15th century.

For Americans today, the term “frontier” implies action, says Devaney—a place “to be crossed, conquered, pushed back, and made civilized.” But for medieval Castilians it denoted a “borderland region,” an area for interactions between cultures. Christians living closest to the frontier between Castile and Granada had developed—despite their religious differences—lucrative trading partnerships with Muslims on the other side, partnerships that were disrupted with great loss to both sides whenever conflicts flared. So they tended to be the least enthused about going to war with Muslims.

With the spectacles, rulers were trying to provide the people with what they guessed the populace wanted, says Devaney. The people, in turn, took the spectacles as evidence that they had license to lash out against religious minorities.

“The city council members and nobles thus see more and more public activity against religious minorities; the level of the rhetoric gets ratcheted up a notch; and we have this ongoing back and forth,” he says.

“In other words, there’s really no bad guy, no person planning this. To a large degree it just happens, and it’s not under any individual or group’s control.”

Often, spectacles staged by figures of authority had extensive subtexts that reflected a complicated balancing of competing interests. For instance, Don Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, the ruler of the frontier town of Jaén, was eager to resume military campaigns against Muslims across the border. But to do so, he had to “inspire a local population that was just as happy to trade with the Muslims as fight them,” Devaney writes.

Nothing would be the same, however, after spectacles later in the time period turned violent. In the 1470s in Córdoba, for instance, a religious procession ended in a riot. As the violence spiraled out of control, many of the town’s converts were killed, while others fled for their lives.

Devaney says that in the 32 years the book covers, people in the region moved from a kind of acceptance of difference to fear to, finally, dismissal, as the majority asserted that theirs was a Christian society. He calls the time frame of his book a period of “growing intolerance and a renewed push for holy war.”

The questions his book addresses, he writes, “have emerged anew in the last couple of decades, fueled by increased immigration and by fears of terrorism.”

“In a small sense, this is a book about particular group interactions in a few cities on the Spanish-Granadan border in the late 15th century,” he says. “In a larger sense, it is a story about how one society moved from greater to lesser tolerance.”

—Bob Marcotte﻿﻿

Diet Interventions for Autism Found Ineffective

discoverSCRUTINIZING DIET: A new study finds that a gluten-free, casein-free diet does not benefit children with autism spectrum disorder. (Photo: iStock)

Gluten-free, casein-free diets have become popular complementary treatments for children with autism spectrum disorder, but a rigorous Rochester study has found that following the diets had no effect on the behavior, sleep, or bowel patterns of children. Results of the study—the most tightly controlled research on dietary intervention and autism to date—were published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Following a group of children between ages two-and-a-half and five-and-a-half years old for 30 weeks, the researchers—led by Susan Hyman, chief of the Division of Neurodevelopmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at the Medical Center—strictly implemented the gluten-free, casein-free diet with each child.

No significant changes were found when the children were given snack foods with gluten—a compound found in wheat, rye, and barley—or casein—found in milk—a combination of both, or a placebo. Researchers also ensured that the children received the same level of other behavioral interventions and other treatments so that any observed changes could be safely attributed to diet. Such controls were not in place in previous diet studies.

—Sean Dobbin

Choosing Relief for an Aching Back

A new study in the journal Neurology found that people with a common form of lower back pain called lumbar spinal stenosis overwhelmingly choose pain relief treatments over those that would help them stand or walk.

“There has long been a debate in the medical community over striking the right balance between pain relief and physical function,” says the lead author of the study, John Markman, professor of neurosurgery and director of the Translational Pain Research Program. And while physicians have favored increasing mobility, patients see things differently.

“Even the patients who could not stand long enough to pick up a letter from their mailbox or wash the dishes after dinner chose pain relief,” he says.

Lumbar spinal stenosis is brought about by a narrowing of the spinal canal caused by the degeneration of the vertebrae, discs, joints, and ligaments that make up the spinal column, resulting in a compression of nerve roots. This narrowing of the spinal canal triggers pain, tingling, and numbness in the lower back, buttocks, and legs that is most commonly experienced when a person is upright or walking.

New standards for pain relief—which historically have been left to pharmaceutical company scientists and government officials to decide—are increasingly being created based on input from patients. Many experts argue that new pain relievers, especially those with greater risks like opioids, should relieve pain and improve function.

“This study convincingly demonstrates the need to prioritize pain relief because that is what patients want,” Markman says.

—Mark Michaud

Parents’ Confidence Could Help Break Abuse Cycle

Women who were abused as children are more critical of their ability to parent successfully, Rochester researchers have found. Therefore, intervention programs for mothers at risk of maltreating their children should focus on bolstering self-confidence, not just on teaching parenting skills, they say.

Conducted at the Mt. Hope Family Center and published online in the journal Child Maltreatment, the study found that mothers who had experienced more types of abuse as children—sexual abuse, physical or emotional abuse, and physical or emotional neglect—have higher levels of self-criticism and, as a result, greater doubt about their own ability to be effective parents.

That was true in both women with and without depression, says Louisa Michl, a doctoral student in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology and the lead researcher for the study.

Self-doubt is related to “yelling, hitting, and other kinds of negative parenting behaviors,” she says.

Teaching parenting skills doesn’t necessarily help a mother in a stressful situation.

Mothers who don’t believe that they can be a good parent and act on the things they’ve learned may treat their children the way they themselves were treated.

Previous research has shown such self-perceptions are changeable, though.

“If a mom who was maltreated as a child can sustain some strong beliefs in her competency as a mom, then it may help break the cycle of abuse and buffer her children against that kind of experience she had,” Michl says.

—Monique Patenaude

Prospects Are Better for Extreme Preemies Today

Extremely premature babies considered to be on the cusp of viability are much more likely to survive and evade illness today than they were 20 years ago, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and cowritten by Carl D’Angio, professor of pediatrics and medical humanities and bioethics.

Carried out between 1993 and 2012, the study found increases in survival rates of infants born 23 or 24 weeks into a pregnancy. While babies born at such an early stage of pregnancy still have many health problems after birth, babies born as little as one week later—between 25 and 28 weeks—experienced a decrease in several illnesses that typically occur in extremely premature infants.

The continuing improvement may be due to the significant increase in the use of corticosteroids to speed up lung development in the fetuses of mothers at risk of delivering early. In 1993, less than a quarter of mothers who delivered extremely premature infants received the steroids; the number had jumped to 87 percent by 2012.

Mothers at risk of delivery by 22 to 24 weeks were also much more likely to have a cesarean delivery and to be treated with antibiotics during pregnancy in recent years than they were at the beginning of the study. Cesarean deliveries may minimize the trauma of birth, boosting a baby’s chance of survival, while prenatal antibiotics are meant to prevent transmission of infections between mother and baby. No changes in infection rates were found over the course of the study, however.

The findings suggest a progressive increase in physicians’ ability to treat extremely premature infants. The decline of health problems in slightly more mature preemies may also be attributed to improved medical care after birth.

—Susanne Pallo

Under the Sea

snyderIN CONTROL: Snyder took several turns helping to pilot two remotely operated vehicles that were tethered to the Nautilus and controlled from the main ship. The ROVs, as they’re known, can be maneuvered to collect samples and artifacts. (Photo: Ocean Exploration Trust/Nautilus Exploration Program)

Here’s a short list of things Wendy Snyder ’17 saw last summer: the marine ecosystem that develops around the carcass of a whale on the ocean floor; the wreckage site of the USS Macon, a 1933 Naval airship designed to be a flying aircraft carrier; and plumes of naturally occurring methane seeping from vents in the seafloor.

In short, she spent four weeks living the life of an oceanographic explorer aboard the E/V Nautilus, one of the few ships in the world designed to explore the world’s oceans. One of three college interns selected to join an expedition along the coast of California, Snyder describes the experience as “very hands-on.” Among her duties, she helped pilot and maintain the ship’s remotely controlled exploratory vehicles. Through the cameras of those vehicles she had a close-up view of an underwater world that’s invisible to most. ”We came across things all the time,” she says. “It was hard for people not to get excited about what we saw.”

Calling ‘Action!’ for a New Film Music and Contemporary Media Institute

inbriefTHEME MUSIC: Jeff ’85E and Joan Beal ’84E aim to make the Eastman School a destination for film industry music experts and for students interested in writing, producing, and performing music for film and media. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

A new institute to provide students with instruction and experiences that prepare them for writing, producing, and performing music for film and contemporary media is the vision of Emmy-winning composer Jeff Beal ’85E and vocalist Joan Beal ’84E.

The Eastman School will launch the Beal Institute for Film Music and Contemporary Media, thanks to a $2 million commitment from the couple. Jeff Beal—who wrote the theme music for the Netflix series House of Cards, among many other film and television productions—will serve as artistic director. Joan Beal has sung on more than 100 film scores and provided the operatic vocals on House of Cards.

The institute will provide support for student internships, scholarships, and projects; instruction; visiting artist residencies; and technology and infrastructure. Students will have opportunities to work with professionals writing for film and other contemporary media and will be encouraged to collaborate on cross-disciplinary and multimedia projects.

Physician Leads CDC Committee

Nancy Bennett, director of the Center for Community Health, has been appointed chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The advisory group’s medical and public health experts provide advice and guidance to the director of the CDC and develop recommendations for the use of vaccines to control diseases in the U.S. civilian population.

Once approved by the CDC director, the committee’s recommendations are published as official public health policy in an effort to reduce the incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases and increase the safe use of vaccines.

Bennett served for four years as a voting member of the group. Such members are selected by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Vision Expert Recognized

David Williams, an expert on human vision, has been named the 2015 recipient of the Beckman-Argyros Award in Vision Research.

Williams, who pioneered the use of adaptive optics technologies for vision applications, is the William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics, director of the Center for Visual Science, and dean for research in Arts, Sciences & Engineering.

The award, given by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, recognizes a person who has made transformative breakthroughs in vision research. Williams will receive a total of $500,000, plus a commemorative gold medal.

This year, Williams was also selected to receive the Sigma Xi Procter Prize and a $100,000 Alcon Research Institute Award for his research in vision science.

Astronomers developed adaptive optics so that telescopes could see more clearly through the Earth’s atmosphere.

In his research Williams has applied the techniques of adaptive optics to the human eye, modifying light leaving the eye to obtain better pictures of the retina, and modifying light entering the eye to produce better vision.

inbrief(Photo: Adam Fenster)

Goergen Awards Recognize Teachers

TOP TEACHERS: The College presented three faculty members with Goergen Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in recognition of their contributions to undergraduate education.

An annual award established by University Trustee Robert Goergen ’60 and his wife, Pamela, the awards recognize, reward, and encourage exceptional and innovative undergraduate teaching. This year’s recipients are John Kessler, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, Deborah Rossen-Knill, associate professor from the Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program, and Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology. During a ceremony this fall, a former or current student recognized each recipient for the influence the teachers had on their academic careers. Kessler was recognized by Eleanor Arrington ’14 (above, left to right), Rossen-Knill by Allison Goldstein ’08, and Elliot by Jeffry Magloire ’16.

What Does Sue B Say?

Much is known about Susan B. Anthony’s stance on social equality and slavery, but she had a lot to say on a variety of issues that also still resonate. That’s why the Susan B. Anthony Center has launched a Twitter campaign to connect social media users with the famed suffragist’s stance on an array of topics, under the hashtag #SueBSays. The 10-month Twitter campaign coincides with the 95th anniversary of the signing of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Twice-weekly tweets will share excerpts from her correspondence with family, friends, and other suffrage leaders. The Center’s Twitter handle is @UofR_SBAC. The posts will also appear on the center’s Facebook page. ﻿﻿

ARTS & SCIENCES

Lecture Series Opens Humanities Center

Cultural historian Gerald Early delivers first of four talks by noted scholars.

By Kathleen McGarvey

humanitiesCENTER SPEAKER: Cultural historian Gerald Early (center), a professor of English and of African and Afro-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, was the first guest lecturer in a series of four talks planned this year to mark the opening of the University’s new Humanities Center. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The University celebrated the opening of its Humanities Center this fall with a standing-room-only inaugural talk by Gerald Early, a leading authority on race and American culture.

Directorship Endowed and Lectureship Established

University Trustee Ani Gabrellian ’84 and her husband, Mark Gabrellian ’79, have committed $2 million to establish a directorship for the University’s newly created Humanities Center. The Gabrellians also have pledged additional funds to support an annual lecture series through the center in honor of Ani’s parents and their belief in the benefits of a humanistic education.

Both commitments support The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester, which ends June 30, 2016, as well as one of the four initiatives of University leadership’s “Next Level” plan: Humanities and the Performing Arts.

The lecture series is named in honor of Ani’s parents, Hagop and Artemis Nazerian, immigrants from Middle Eastern and Armenian societies who developed interests in history, literature, philosophy, art, and music and developed proficiency in many languages. Rotating at least once every four years between Rochester and New York City, the series will kick off in Rochester on March 2, 2016, with a presentation by Joan Saab, chair of the Department of Art and Art History.

The Gabrellians previously endowed a professorship, and they endowed the Mesrob Mashtots Research Grants for outstanding incoming undergraduates. They are charter members of the George Eastman Circle, the University’s leadership annual giving society.﻿﻿

The lecture was the first of four this academic year, all sponsored by the Humanities Center and featuring distinguished scholars who have directed a humanities center at their own institutions. The other speakers are historian Caroline Winterer from Stanford, romance studies and global health specialist Deborah Jenson from Duke, and literary critic David Shumway from Carnegie Mellon.

“During this first year, we are looking to our peers for guidance as we develop plans for what our center will be,” says Joan Shelley Rubin, the center’s interim director and Dexter Perkins Professor in History.

Each speaker will present a public lecture on his or her work, lead a faculty workshop on building a humanities center, and meet with faculty, students, and, eventually, the center’s fellows.

Early is a noted critic and professor of English and of African and Afro-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was the founding director of its humanities center. His writings on American popular culture involve such topics as music, sports, and black America in the 1960s, and he has appeared in Ken Burns’s documentaries on baseball, jazz, and prizefighting.

His talk in September centered on his research on the African-American community in Philadelphia. He began by reading a chapter from his forthcoming book about the city, his home for the first 25 years of his life.

The chapter spotlights the city’s annual, one-day Odunde Festival, the largest African-American street festival in the country. Founded in 1975, the festival draws hundreds of thousands of attendees and spans 12 blocks in one of Philadelphia’s oldest historically African-American neighborhoods. In the second part of his lecture, he outlined challenges and opportunities facing cities like Philadelphia, where the majority of residents belong to a minority population.

Gloria Culver, dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, last spring announced the creation of the Humanities Center as a way to support scholarly research, student engagement, and the creation of new knowledge.

Plans for a physical home for the center in Rush Rhees Library are currently under way.

ASK THE ARCHIVIST

How Wide Was the Horizon?

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

ataFULL ENGAGEMENT: An early member of the former department of education, the multilingual Frances Horler helped establish ties between the College and Rochester schools as well as the Wide Horizons Program, which was designed to engage area young people with the University. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

As a high school student at Eastridge in Irondequoit in the early 1960s, I participated in a program called Wide Horizons at the U of R. In it, high school seniors from schools around Monroe County were selected to come to the University after school once a month during part of the school year to attend talks by professors describing their academic fields. I remember the names of only two: the talk on history was done by Dexter Perkins, and I believe science was done by a professor named Vishniac. There was also a talk on psychology, but I do not recall the professor. We met in the Cutler Union building, now part of the Memorial Art Gallery.

Although when I attended Wide Horizons I already knew that I wanted to attend college, this exposure to the University increased my motivation and made me all the more in love with learning. I eventually returned to the U of R campus for graduate school, having first attended MCC and then receiving my BA at Nazareth College of Rochester. Later, I went on to SUNY Geneseo for my master of library science degree and a career in librarianship.

Can you tell me more about Wide Horizons? Does it continue, perhaps in some other form? It was a memorable and valuable experience for me.—Nancy Salzer ’73 (MA), Rochester

Your experience in the Wide Horizons Program beautifully captures its stated goals: “To develop enthusiasm for intellectual pursuits; to provide opportunities for high school students to acquire new ideas through contacts with recognized scholars; to provide a setting in which exceptionally able high school students may think, question, discuss and exchange ideas with others.”

Thanks for the Answers

Many thanks to those who wrote in with the words (and corrections) to your class yells and songs in response to questions I posed in the September-October issue. They have been added to http://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/yells.

And an extra chorus of thanks to John Tobin ’64 who telephoned to sing me a bit of “Rex” and shared a source for the music: Songs for Swinging Housemothers will be added to the collection. John’s memories of swimming for “Speed” have been added to http://livinghistory.lib.rochester.edu.

The mystery of the mug remains, but thanks to Michael Garfield ’58 for some insight and the offer of his Kappa Nu mug—it seems as if ”Jane“ might be the name of a Theta Chi girlfriend.

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.﻿﻿

Although similar programs had been launched elsewhere, as far as was known at the time, ours was a unique initiative for involving a college or university.

Led by Byron Williams, then the Earl B. Taylor Professor of Education, Wide Horizons had its first “class” in 1957. The target audience was students in the local high schools, especially those in more rural areas. Planning for the program involved teachers and principals from the public schools in Rochester, and in Monroe and Wyoming counties along with faculty and staff from the University.

Wide Horizons students engaged with a veritable Who’s Who of University faculty, including professors of English Kathrine Koller and Hyam Plutzik, Glyndon Van Deusen (history), Vera Micheles Dean (political science), J. Edward Hoffmeister (geology), Glenn Wiltsey (political science), Frances Horler (education), and Colin Turbayne (philosophy).

According to a 1962 press release, you and 174 other students and teachers from 34 schools had a dinner event in September in Cutler Union, then were divided into five groups and met there for seven monthly sessions; faculty traveled to sessions with students in Wyoming County.

Professor Vishniac joined the University in 1961 and had yet to perfect his “Wolf Trap,” a device to obtain soil samples on the surface of Mars; the session you recall with him was entitled “Space Microbiology and Life on Other Planets.”

A pioneer in the study of moods, Professor Vincent Nowlis led “Common Sense Psychology vs. Scientific Psychology.”

Professor Perkins retired in 1954, but perhaps he filled in on “Leadership and Its Problems” for Van Deusen. You can test your memory for their voices—Perkins’s distinctive New England accent, especially—on the Living History website.

Professor Williams retired in 1967 and the Wide Horizons program ran through 1968; other programs were started at that time to engage high school students in the city especially, and continue today in the form of Upward Bound and other initiatives.

HIGHLIGHTS

Football Posts Record Start

Yellowjacket fall sports teams look to the postseason.

By Dennis O’Donnell

sports-mainATTABOY! Rochester teammates congratulate No. 87 Daniel DiLoreto ’19 after he caught his first career TD pass on a fake field goal attempt during a 24–17 homecoming victory against Merchant Marine on Meliora Weekend. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

sports-mainTOP TEAMS: Led by graduate student Victoria Stepanova and junior Annie Peterson (above, left to right) along with senior Catherine Knox, the Yellowjacket women’s cross country team has finished among the top at several competitions this fall. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

The Yellowjackets staged two dramatic rallies in consecutive home games in October, and the football team improved its record to 5–2 with two games left in November.

Rochester defeated the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, 24–17, during Meliora Weekend.

Two weeks later, the Yellowjackets produced three touchdowns in the last 7:37 for a 33–30 victory over Union College.

In just his third career start, quarterback Justin Redfern ’16 completed 21 of 35 passes for 384 yards and four touchdowns against Union. He was not sacked and did not throw an interception. Farid Adenuga ’16 caught three TD passes and Kyle Allegrini ’18 had the game winner—a 50-yard catch-and-run with 2:05 remaining. Redfern stepped into the starter’s role when Dan Bronson ’18 suffered a hand injury against St. Lawrence on October 3.

Redfern’s yardage total was the second highest in school history, behind Jeff Wittig ’86, who threw for 398 yards against Denison in 1984. Redfern and Bronson both put their names into the Rochester record book this year with four TD passes in a game. Bronson did it against Alfred State on November 19—with all four TD passes coming in the first quarter of a 61–0 victory.

The record was set in 1967 by Bob Young ’69 against RPI. It was equaled by five other players before Bronson and Redfern did it this year: Greg Conrad ’72 vs. Washington in 1971, Dave Boyce ’89 vs. Denison in 1988, Kapps Killingstad ’10 vs. Gettysburg in 2006, Patrick Keegan ’11 vs. St. Lawrence in 2008, and Braezen Subick ’12 vs. Union in 2011.

Some trickery helped the win over Merchant Marine. Placekicker Andrew Haber ’16 threw a TD pass to tight end Daniel DiLoreto ’19 on a fake field goal attempt, which tied the score. Myles Allen ’17 rushed for two second-half TDs to nail it down.

As November approached, the fall teams were having successful seasons:

Cross Country: The men and women were headed for Waltham, Massachusetts, for the UAA championships on Halloween and the NCAA Atlantic Regional championships in Mount Morris, New York, in mid-November. Dan Nolte was 20th of 231 individuals at the Rowan (University) Border Battle. The women’s team placed three runners in the top-10 finishers in the same race: Anne Peterson ’17, Catherine Knox ’16, and graduate student Victoria Stepanova. They helped Rochester to a third-place finish out of 24 teams.

Field Hockey: Rochester was preparing to host a semifinal game in the Liberty League championships after fashioning a 4–2 league record. The Yellowjackets were 13–4 overall with two games left in October. Goaltender Tara Lamberti ’16 had the third-best save percentage in Division III, while Michelle Relin ’16 was one of the top scorers.

Rowing: The Yellowjackets had the highest finish among Division III schools in the four-plus coxswain and eight-plus- coxswain at the Head of the Schuykill Regatta in Philadelphia in late October. A Halloween date in the Head of the Fish Regatta in Saratoga, New York, awaited to conclude the fall portion of the schedule.

Soccer: Jeff Greblick ’16 scored two historically important goals on October 24 as Rochester defeated Moravian College, 3–0. It was the team’s 600th all-time victory. Rochester is just the eighth Division III school to reach the 600-win level among men’s programs. The women, who have been ranked in the regional top 10 for much of the season, had a three-game road winning streak heading into three UAA games—two of them at home. The men were 5–3–5 (0–1–3 UAA) and the women were 8–5–1 (2–2–0 UAA).

Volleyball: Rochester stood at 13–13 overall and secured the No. 6 seed for the UAA championships in the first week of November at Rochester. The Yellowjackets were 7–0 on their home court through late October.

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

HONORS

Introducing the Garnish Award Winners

A total of 10 student-athletes have been selected to receive Garnish Scholar Awards, the highest honor presented by the Department of Athletics and Recreation to recognize the academic achievements and athletic skills of students.

An alumni committee organized by the Friends of Rochester Athletics reviews nominations of students from varsity teams and selects a handful each year as Garnish Scholars.

The 2015–16 academic year’s honorees are:

Neil Cordell ’16, a double-major in economics and political science from York, England; squash.

Boubacar Diallo ’16, a mechanical engineering major from Bignona, Senegal; outdoor track and field.

Jennifer Ford ’16, a chemical engineering major from Webster, New York; volleyball.

Megan Fujiyoshi ’16, a double-major in brain and cognitive sciences and psychology from Hopkinton, Massachusetts; lacrosse.

Evan Janifer ’16, a financial economics major from Montclair, New Jersey; baseball.

Catherine Knox ’16, a mechanical engineering major from Worcester, Massachusetts; cross country and track and field.

Tara Lamberti ’16, a psychology major from Penfield, New York; field hockey.

Victoria Luan ’16, a chemistry major from South Surrey, Canada; swimming.

Matthew Mender ’16, a biomedical engineering major from Glens Falls, New York; football.

Benjamin Shapiro ’16, an English major from Scarsdale, New York; tennis.

The Garnish program was created in honor of Lysle (Spike) Garnish, coach and mentor to Rochester student-athletes from 1930 to 1948. He became a trainer and assistant basketball coach in 1931. He was named an assistant baseball coach in 1932, and was an assistant football coach from 1945 to 1948.

—Dennis O’Donnell

YELLOWJACKETS

Alumni Inducted into Athletics Hall of Fame

hof (Photo: Susan Kost)

HONOREES: This year’s inductees into the University’s Athletics Hall of Fame include (back row, left to right): Geoff Long ’94 (football), Jim Ritzel ’93 (baseball), Seth Hauben ’05, ’11S (MBA) (basketball), John Biondolillo ’84 (golf), John Minora ’81 (football); (front row, left to right) Alan Smith ’90 (track and cross country), Anni McDonough Zukauskas ’98 (field hockey), Erika Smith ’04 (basketball), and Leslie Hartman ’94 (volleyball).﻿﻿﻿

Faces of the Nation

David Ward ’74 helps give the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery a modern face-lift.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

wardFACT AND FICTION: “Portraiture is often about disguise,” says Ward, who seeks to convey the richness of portraiture to a broad audience. (Photo: Paul Morigi/AP Images for Rochester Review)

For years, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., suffered from something of an identity crisis. It was conceived as a history museum, but its collections were artworks. In its early years, it pleased neither art critics nor historians. As for the lay public, the gallery was often overshadowed by the older and larger National Museum of American History and National Gallery of Art.

But in the eyes of some observers, the portrait gallery has aged well. According to Philip Kennicott, the Pulitzer Prize–winning art and architecture critic for the Washington Post who has been following the museum beat for several years, today it’s the portrait gallery whose star is shining most brightly.

He gives a lot of the credit to David Ward ’74.

“There is good news out of the National Portrait Gallery, which has proven itself an exception to the often dispiriting conformity and timorousness of other Smithsonian museums,” Kennicott wrote in the fall of 2013, upon the gallery’s announcement of Ward’s promotion to senior historian.

Ward came to the gallery in 1981 as a research assistant. Later, as historian, he played a lead role in several special exhibitions exploring the themes of identity and self-fashioning in the context of ethnicity, sexuality, and professional and artistic roles. The exhibitions—“Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction,” “Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets,” and “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” to name three—won positive attention in the art world, and in some cases coincided with noticeable upticks in a visitation rate that has averaged about one million visitors per year, according to Bethany Bentley, the gallery’s head of communications and public affairs.

Without concurring with Kennicott’s general assessment of the Smithsonian, Ward says the gallery has become, of late, used to surprising its critics. “We’ve gotten tired of being called the best secret in Washington,” he confides.

It’s no mystery what the surprise is about. “Initially we were conceived almost like a hall of fame. It was very much the political nation,” Ward says, noting that the gallery was envisioned in the mid-1960s as an American version of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery in London. “We’ve struggled against that. And I think we’ve successfully struggled against that.”

As a mode of artistic expression, portraiture fell almost entirely out of favor among artists by the mid-20th century. According to Jonathan Binstock, an art historian and the Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of the Memorial Art Gallery, portraiture often still gets a bad rap.

“If you were to walk around places like Chelsea in New York City, Hong Kong, Berlin, Los Angeles, wherever you might go where there’s a high density of contemporary art, you wouldn’t find much portraiture at all,” says Binstock.

But he says there are unique virtues to portraiture, and this past summer he transformed the museum’s opening gallery into a display of portraiture, a strength of the museum’s permanent collection.

“It’s a very welcoming way to invite people in. You come in and you’re engaged with other people, as it were. With faces, you look at them, and they look back at you. And you can start your conversation with art there.”

Viewers haven’t always been encouraged to “converse” with portraits. Says Ward, “Portraits have had a hierarchical, authoritative role, and that goes back to the Renaissance. They’re up on the wall. And you look up at them.” And then there’s the gaze, which Ward calls a “powerful laser beam of political and cultural control, this kind of magisterial, death-ray stare coming out of the subjects.”

Modern viewers have come to see that stare in a different light.

“As we’ve become less comfortable with hierarchy, even in official portraiture, the gaze has been altered,” Ward says. “For one thing, we’re interrogating the portrait as well.”

In the 2014 exhibit “Face Value,” Ward and his colleagues turned the marginalization of portraiture in the post–World War II era to their advantage, displaying a mix of familiar artists and works to advance an alternative view of the period: that abstract artists were not abandoning portraiture, but reinventing it; that a time long assumed to be the nadir of portraiture might instead be seen as a rich period in its evolution.

Ward often draws from both the permanent collections of the gallery and works on loan. He’s overseen exhibits that have been criticized for relying too much on familiar artists and works. But there’s a reason for working with familiar material, which Ward demonstrated most forcefully in “Hide/Seek.” He calls the exhibit, which he cocurated with Jonathan Katz, director of the visual studies doctoral program at the State University of New York at Buffalo, “my succès de scandale.” It brought into the limelight what the curators say had long been hidden in full view. As Ward told one critic at the time, it was an exploration of the ways in which gay, lesbian, and bisexual artists and subjects had resisted the “forbiddenness” of their sexuality in mainstream culture “by developing new visual ways to code, disguise, and express” their identities in portraiture. It was well attended and attracted positive attention from critics from Washington to New York to London, and condemnation from some religious groups and members of Congress. G. Wayne Clough, then secretary of the Smithsonian, ordered the removal of one of the exhibit’s works.

Ward says he’s tired of talking about the controversy, but not about the art. “It was an incredibly rich artistic show,” he says.

Ward arrived at the gallery in the early 1980s by what he calls “serendipity.” He studied history at Rochester at a time when, he boasts, “it was probably the best American history department in the country.” He took courses with several of the department’s stars, notably Eugene Genovese, Christopher Lasch, and Herbert Gutman. He decided to pursue graduate study in labor history, traveling to England to earn a master’s degree at the University of Warwick, and then to Yale for doctoral work. “This is where my life took a strange turn,” he says.

Today he jokes that his early pursuit of labor history was “my big Oedipal rebellion.” His father was John William Ward, who in the 1950s was among the founders of the emerging field of American studies. American studies was interdisciplinary, drawing heavily on literature and art, for example, to illuminate American culture and ideals as expressed in everyday life. The elder Ward’s 1953 book, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age, was a foundational text of the American studies movement. In the 1970s, labor history was a subdiscipline of social and economic history. “I didn’t like it,” Ward says. “I left Yale without finishing.”

Needing a job, he landed one at the gallery, working as a research assistant on the papers of the early-American portrait artist Charles Willson Peale. Ward says he started “to refocus on history instead of feeling sorry for myself, which is kind of what I was doing when I was at Yale.” Peale became the subject of Ward’s first book, Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic (University of California Press). Working on the book was a personal journey during which Ward found that a study of American culture steeped in the arts was where he, too, could make a mark, his father’s career notwithstanding.

“I’d become more and more interested in biography, and more interested in self-fashioning, and identity and individualism, within the context of American society,” he says.

Ward is drawn to what he calls “the elusive and elliptical, a way of getting at a kind of deeper truth.”

“When I was in my 20s, I was really certain about a lot of things. Now that I’m in my 60s, I’m completely uncertain about most things. There’s nothing wrong with the kind of archival history that I started out doing. There are just other ways of doing it,” he says. “It’s like, let’s think imaginatively about the past.”

A Tour of the Gallery

On the following pages, David Ward ’74, senior historian at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, shares his thoughts on five of his favorite portraits from among the more than 21,000 works in the gallery’s permanent collection.

ward_side (Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; partial gift with funding from the Smithsonian Collections Acquisitions Program and the Governor’s Mansion Foundation of Maryland; Frame conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee)

Anne Catharine Hoof Green

By Charles Willson Peale, 1769 Oil on canvas

In this Peale portrait, Green looks like the typical, upper-class Annapolis, Maryland, planter’s wife, mistress of her domain in the home. But you also notice that she’s holding a newspaper under the table. Green was one of the first women newspaper publishers in America. When her husband died, instead of selling the Maryland Gazette, she ran it.

There’s a dividedness in Peale. On the one hand, he bows to gender conventions. If he’d been painting her husband, he probably would have portrayed him next to a printing press. But being a man of his time, Peale couldn’t create an assertive, confident, public woman. That just violated too many conventions.

But if you decode the picture, you see the newspaper, literally under the table, as a marker for public status that can only be half acknowledged. It’s a very clever way for Peale to code in these divergent roles.

Green also looks slightly wistful, kind of downcast, a little bit shy, and a little bit unforthcoming. That’s how women were supposed to present themselves in a public portrait. But that’s contradicted by her life. There’s a masking going on, a depiction at war with the fact that she’s a newspaper editor.

ward_side (Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

W. E. B. Du Bois

By Addison Scurlock, C. 1911 Gelatin Silver Print

I think DuBois is probably one of the smartest people in American history. And what I love about this portrait is the way it emphasizes his head. There’s just a glow emanating from this massive brain, and it gives you a sense of the power of his intellect.

I don’t know if Scurlock intended the piece in this way, but profile portraits are a convention of Renaissance classicism. And if you look at this portrait, it could be subtitled The Thinker. You wouldn’t have to know it’s DuBois. It could be Rodin’s Thinker.

DuBois doesn’t look any more cheerful than Green. In fact, he looks a little bit downcast as well. But I think we see his expression as contemplative and brainy in a way that we might not see Green’s. And that raises an interesting question: are we bringing our gender presuppositions to each piece?

Nonetheless, they’re both pictures of interiority. What we’re really drawn to is, what’s going on inside their heads? What is Green thinking about in terms of getting the paper out, and what is DuBois thinking about in terms of founding the NAACP and his role as an activist intellectual?

ward_side (Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Frame conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee)

Self-Portrait

By Charles Willson Peale, C. 1791 Oil on canvas

Peale painted roughly 17 self-portraits. He was fixated on this notion of self-fashioning and self-creation. He came from a disadvantaged background. His father was a convict, and he was orphaned at any early age.

As he was making his way in the 18th-century world, how did he move up in terms of wealth and in terms of fame? How did he navigate the planter society of Maryland? I became tremendously interested in those questions when I was working on my biography of Peale.

Peale became a painter largely by accident, because he was handy. And he dedicated himself to the task of improving himself physically, culturally, and mentally, and then making himself visible through portraiture. It was like he had to convince himself that he was making it in the world, and so he would paint another portrait of himself. His most famous one, done in 1822, is this gigantic self-portrait called The Artist in His Museum. But in this much smaller portrait, I just see somebody who is really hard-bitten and determined. He paints his determination into that canvas in a way that I think is really interesting.

ward_side (Photo: Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery)

Abraham Lincoln

By Alexander Gardner, 1865 Albumen Silver Print

One of the reasons I’m interested in Lincoln is that he understood early on how powerful photography was. You didn’t just want to have one pose. You didn’t just want to have one likeness. You could change things. And when he started running for president, one of the first things Lincoln, being known only in very small political circles, did was to have Matthew Brady take his photograph. It was a way of making himself visible and showing that he wasn’t just a country bumpkin with bad clothing. He bought a Brooks Brothers suit.

I find this portrait of Lincoln uncanny because of its circumstances. First, it’s singular. The glass plate cracked at some point during the development process in February 1865. Gardner printed one image and threw the glass plate away. It’s slightly out of focus, but it’s an amazing picture of Lincoln.

As Lincoln was sitting for this photograph, he was looking toward his second term. But when we look at it, we know he’s going to die. He’s thinking about the second inaugural, and this and that politically, and we know that he’s going to go to Ford’s Theatre and be killed, and that will change everything. It changes the course of Reconstruction, it changes postbellum history. It’s this incredibly tragic moment, and that’s when Lincoln becomes a myth. You can read that into that portrait. It’s my favorite picture in the gallery.

ward_side (Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Art © Estate of Larry Rivers/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY)

O’Hara Reading

By Larry Rivers, after Frederick William McDarrah, 1967 Color lithograph with collage on paper

If I could have any one picture—if I could own any one picture in our gallery—it would be this one. The collage effect, O’Hara’s own poem in the middle, and the little portrait of O’Hara reading, all create a kind of flow, like O’Hara’s kind of poetry. There’s essentially this river running down the middle of the piece. You can’t necessarily see it in a reproduction, but the collage is layered. There’s a river of words running through it.

O’Hara had a regular job, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He went to the office, he filled in his time there, and also wrote poetry. He’d take a walk every lunch hour and he’d write a poem about it. In Lunch Poems, he creates an archive of pop culture, and because he’s preternaturally sensitive, he picks up on everything.

O’Hara was killed in an awful auto accident. His sister and John Ashbery went to his apartment and discovered this file cabinet full of poems. There were, maybe, a thousand poems. It’s a touching story. Everybody knew he was a poet, but it was, like, “wow.”

I do think this portrait is stupendous. I’d really like to own it, but that’s never going to happen. It’s a print, and there are about 45 of them. But I’ve never seen one on the market. And I never could afford it.

—David Ward ’74﻿﻿

Dancing with Computers

In the field of human-computer interaction, computer science meets human behavior.

By Kathleen McGarvey

hci (Photo: John W. Tomac)

Go into any public space and look at the people around you. Odds are, some if not most of them will have their neck craned downward, their eyes lowered, and one hand cradling their phone.

You’re looking at one of the primary relationships in the lives of many people today.

But let’s face it: it’s not quite rapport. Conversations with our computers are pretty one-sided. Even storied innovations in voice recognition—Hello, Siri?—are often frustrating and fruitless.

“Every other day, I feel like throwing my laptop out the window because it won’t do what I want it to do,” says Henry Kautz, the Robin and Tim Wentworth Director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science and professor of computer science. He’s an expert in artificial intelligence—so if throwing your laptop or smartphone out the window has crossed your mind on occasion, too, well, at least you’re in good company.

What if relating to computers were more like the way we communicate with other people?

That’s a vision that scientists in the field of human-computer interaction, or HCI, are working to realize. It’s an ambitious goal, but they’re making significant headway.

Philip Guo, assistant professor of computer science and codirector of the Rochester Human-Computer Interaction Lab, calls HCI a blend of science and engineering.

“It’s about attempting to understand how people interact with computers—that’s the science part—and creating better ways for them to do so. That’s where engineering comes in,” he says.

The field emerged around the 1980s, with the rise of personal computing and as the work of computer scientists began to be informed by cognitive science. Anyone who can recall the labor of entering DOS commands to complete even the simplest tasks knows well the trajectory computers have taken toward their more intuitive configurations today.

The issues that HCI experts at Rochester are investigating range widely: improving online education, helping people to communicate more effectively, monitoring mental health, and predicting election outcomes.

Personal Communication Assistance

“I like to build interfaces that allow people to interact with computers in a very natural way,” says Ehsan Hoque, assistant professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering.

And what would an “unnatural” way be? That’s the way we use computers now, he says.

When we talk with someone, we use not only words, but also facial expressions, patterns of stress and intonation, gestures, and other means to get our points across.

“It’s like a dance,” says Hoque, who codirects the HCI lab with Guo and Kautz. “I say something; you understand what I’m trying to say; you ask a follow-up question; I respond to that. But a lot of the things are implicit. And that entire richness of conversation is missing when you interact with a computer.”

Much of what we communicate, and what others communicate to us, isn’t registered by our conscious minds. Eye contact, smiles, pauses—all speak volumes. But most of us have little idea of what we actually look like when we’re speaking with someone. Our own social skills can be a bit of a mystery to us.

So Hoque has developed a computerized conversation assistant—called “LISSA” for “Live Interactive Social Skills Assistance”—that senses the speaker’s body language and emotions, helping to improve communication skills. The assistant, who looks like a college-age woman, evaluates the nuances of the speaker’s self-presentation, providing real-time feedback on gestures, voice modulation, and “weak” language—utterances such as “um” and “ah.” Intriguingly, the system allows people to practice social situations in private.

The first iteration of the project was Hoque’s doctoral thesis at MIT. There he tested the system—then called MACH, for My Automated Conversation CoacH—on MIT undergraduate job seekers. Career counselors found the students who had practiced with MACH to be better job candidates. He has since tested the technology with date-seekers for speed-dating, in a study designed with Ronald Rogge, associate professor of psychology, and Dev Crasta, a psychology graduate student. Their study showed that coaching by LISSA could help online daters subtly improve eye contact, head movement, and other communicative behaviors.

Hoque is also adapting it for use by people with developmental disorders, such as autism, to help them enhance their interactions with others.

People with autism often have an “unusual inflection or intonation in their voice—it’s one of the things that interfere with their social communication,” says Tristram Smith, a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and a consultant on the project.

Job interviews can be very difficult for people with autism. “We don’t have a lot of interventions to help with their conversational skills, and problems with conversational speech are really at the core of what autism is,” he says.

But computers are well suited to assisting. They’re better at analyzing speech patterns than people are, and they can show children what happened when they spoke, bringing together as a visual display the words they uttered and the gestures they made.

Helping people become better communicators is a project close to Hoque’s heart.

“I have a brother who has Down syndrome,” he says. “He’s 15, he’s nonverbal, and I’m his primary caregiver.” When he was doing his doctoral research at MIT, Hoque knew that he wanted to build technology that benefits people in need and their caregivers. He worked on assisted technology to aid people in learning to speak effectively, improve their social skills, and understand facial expressions in context.

From that work, he has created other tools, such as ROCSpeak, which aims to help people become better public speakers by analyzing the words they use, the loudness and pitch of their voice, their body language, and when and how often they smile. He’s even developed “smart glasses” that provide speakers with real-time, visual feedback on their performance. That system is called “Rhema,” after the Greek word for utterance.

The United States Army has funded Hoque’s work to use the technology to study deceptions. “We can say it’s out-of-sync behavior, so it could be deception, it could be stress, it could be nervousness,” says Hoque. “But when the behavior is getting out of sync—when your speech and your facial expression are not in sync—something is wrong, and we can predict that.”

Analyzing Social Networks

Predictions are the core of the work of Hoque’s colleague, Jiebo Luo. A professor of computer science, Luo has many projects afoot.

In one of them, he is working—with researchers at Adobe Research—to harness the power of data contained in the sea of online images by training computers to understand the feelings that the images convey. For example, the photos of political candidates that people choose to post or share online often express information about their feelings for the candidate.

By training computers to digest image data, the researchers can then use the posted images to make informed guesses about a candidate’s popularity.

A team led by Luo and Kautz is using computers to improve public health. Their “Snap” project uses social media analytics for a variety of health applications ranging from food safety to suicide prevention.

They’re also investigating how computers can help in diagnosing depression by turning any computer device with a camera into a tool for personal monitoring of mental health. The system observes the user’s behavior while using a computer or smartphone. It doesn’t require the person to submit any additional information.

“There’s proof that we can actually infer how people feel from outside, if we have enough observations,” says Luo.

Through their cameras, devices can look back at us as we view their screens—and extracting information from what the camera “sees” allows the device to “build a picture of the internal world of a person,” he says.

The camera can measure pupil dilation, how fast users blink, their head movement, and even their pulse. Imperceptibly to the casual observer, skin color on the forehead changes according to blood flow. By monitoring the whole forehead, the computer can track changes in several spots and take an average. “We can get a reliable estimate of heart rate within five beats,” he says.

Online Learning

While Luo’s work, like Hoque’s, turns the computer into an observer of human behavior, Guo’s research uses computers to bring people metaphorically closer together. His focus is online education.

“I’m trying to humanize online learning,” he says.

It’s easy to put videos, textbooks, problem sets, and class lecture notes online, he says, but the simple availability of materials doesn’t translate into people actually learning online. Education research has shown that motivation is a decisive factor—motivation that is effectively instilled through small classes and one-on-one tutoring.

“The challenge of my research is how do you bring that really intimate human interaction to a massive online audience,” Guo says. He’s working to build interfaces and tools that will bring human connection to large-scale online education platforms.

He has already made headway in a website for people learning the popular programming language called Python. His free online educational tool, Online Python Tutor, helps people to see what happens as a computer executes a program’s source code, line by line, so that they can write and visualize code. The site has more than a million users—enormous, for a research site—from 165 countries. Guo is working to connect people through the site, so that they can tutor each other, even though they may be continents apart.

A ‘Grand Challenge’

Hoque’s work with Smith on developing the communication assistant for use by children on the autism spectrum is part of a collaboration with colleague Lenhart Schubert, a professor of computer science, that has received funding from the National Science Foundation. They aim to improve the assistant so that it can understand—at least in some limited way—what a user is saying and respond appropriately.

They began testing the language comprehension part of the system in the speed-dating experiment. There they had a person helping the computer to provide appropriate responses, in what’s known as a “Wizard of Oz” study, in which an operator is controlling the avatar from behind the scenes. Now they’re in the process of automating the system.

But the problem of natural language processing for computers is a thorny one. Teaching computers to understand spoken language has preoccupied artificial intelligence researchers since at least the 1960s.

Computers now can recognize speech within a relatively limited domain. You can ask your smartphone for help in finding a Chinese restaurant or ask it to help you make an airline reservation to fly to Los Angeles. But when it comes to the kind of dialogue that people actually have—not narrowly focused but free-flowing and context-dependent—it’s much harder to predict what’s going to be said, and the computer is operating according to predictions. “Basically that’s been beyond the capacity of artificial intelligence for all these decades,” says Schubert.

Improvements in machines’ ability to parse the structure of language have moved the project forward—but not far enough. In a sentence that’s 20 words long, typically the machine will make a couple of mistakes.

Consider the sentences “John saw the bird with binoculars” and “John saw the bird with yellow feathers.” You know that it’s John, and not the bird, who has the binoculars—and that it’s the bird, not John, that sports the feathers. And the seemingly simple question “What about you?” calls for very different answers depending on whether the previous sentence was “I’m from New Jersey” or “I like pizza” or “I’m studying economics.” But such context-dependent information is much more elusive for computers than it is for people.

“The system has to have world knowledge, really, to get it right. And knowledge acquisition turns out to be the bottleneck,” Schubert says. “It has stymied researchers since the beginnings of artificial intelligence.” He calls it “the grand challenge.”

But a grand challenge is there even for the nonverbal part of the equation, says Hoque. “Even something simple like a smile: when you smile, it generally means you’re happy—but you could smile because you’re frustrated; you could smile because you’re agreeing with me; you could smile because you’re being polite. There are subtle differences. We don’t know how to deal with that just yet. So there’s still a long way to go on that, too.”

The HCI program graduated its first crop of doctoral students last spring. Erin Brady ’15 (PhD)—whose research is concerned with using technology and social media to support people with disabilities—is now an assistant professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Yu Zhong ’15 (PhD) works on mobile apps for accessibility and on ubiquitous computing—inserting microprocessors in everyday objects to transmit information. Google Research has hired him as a software engineer.

The third member of the class, Walter Lasecki ’15 (PhD), is now in his first year as an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan. He began his doctoral work at Rochester in artificial intelligence but moved to HCI to explore how crowds of people, “in tandem with machines, could provide the intelligence needed for applications we ‘wish’ we could build,” he says. “I realized that much of what we know how to do, what we think about how to do, is limited by what we can do using automation alone today,” he says. Combining computers with human effort—in what’s called “human computation”—is essentially letting researchers try out new system capabilities.

“It lets us see farther into the future. We can deploy something that works, something that helps people today. And as artificial intelligence gets better, it can take over more of that process.”

What initially drew Lasecki to HCI was his interest in “creating real systems—systems that have an impact on real people,” he says. Kautz cultivated this focus in the computer science department by hiring first Jeff Bigham—now at Carnegie Mellon—and then Hoque and Guo. As Bigham was, they’re concerned with practical applications. “That’s certainly a strength, this focus on applications and system building,” Lasecki says of Rochester’s program.

Those systems will become an ever-more pervasive part of our lives, Hoque predicts, and the field of HCI will gradually become an essential part of other disciplines. In fact, it’s already happening. More than half of the students in HCI courses at Rochester aren’t computer science majors. They’re from economics, religious studies, biology, business, music, studio arts, English, chemistry, and more.

Hoque quotes the founder of the field of ubiquitous computing, Mark Weiser, who once wrote, “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”

Computing, Hoque says, is on its way to becoming like electricity: it’s everywhere, but you don’t really see it.

“We won’t see it, we won’t think about it. It will just be part of our interaction—maybe part of our clothing, part of our furniture. We’ll just interact with it using natural language; it will be natural interaction.

“And we’re working toward that future.”

ROCSpeak is available for use at https://www.rocspeak.com.

To Lift All Boats, Row Together

weisbergUNITING THE COMMUNITY: Weisberg, named president and CEO of the United Way of Greater Rochester last spring, says the Rochester region is a caring place. But to make progress requires everyone “rowing in the same direction.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)

When Fran Weisberg ’75 stepped into the role of president and CEO of the United Way of Greater Rochester last March, the region was reeling from news that Rochester topped one of the last lists any community wants to lead.

Following up on a report it had completed in 2013, the Rochester Area Community Foundation looked more deeply into Rochester’s high poverty rate to discover that Rochester had the highest rate of extreme poverty of any comparably sized city in the nation. Nearly a third of Rochester residents lived in poverty, and half of those lived in extreme poverty, defined as less than half the poverty level.

The dismal statistics stood in contrast to the general economic health of the metropolitan area, all things considered, given years of massive layoffs from Rochester’s “Big 3” of yesteryear, Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and Xerox. In the past two decades, high-tech spin-offs, and universities such as Rochester and RIT, have helped maintain a critical mass of skilled and well-compensated workers who’ve fueled new developments, kept schools well-funded, and attracted high-end retail—but largely in the suburbs.

Weisberg finds the contrast troubling. “If we have a community in which we accept that we have the secondhighest child poverty rate in the U.S. and there are a bunch of high-tech folks who live in [the suburbs], I don’t think that’s a community we would want to be and have.”

A week after her appointment, she stood with New York State Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morelle, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, and Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks as the three political leaders announced the formation of the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative, a broad-based alliance under the umbrella of the United Way. The initiative brings together representatives from academia, private industry, and labor, and is seeking substantial input from people living in poverty in order to gauge how best to use community resources.

“I feel very honored to be here at the head of United Way, right now, to really figure this out,” Weisberg says. “We have a very committed community, but internally and externally, everybody’s all over the map. And what I’m going to try to do is truly get us rowing in the same direction.”

Weisberg has a long history in the area of bringing disparate groups together in the service of community-wide goals, as well as prioritizing the needs of marginalized populations. She’s the former CEO of Lifespan, a nonprofit organization that serves the aging, the frail elderly, people with disabilities, and their caregivers. Before she was selected for the top job at the United Way, she led the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency, one of more than 200 such agencies created after passage of a federal law in 1974 to encourage regional health planning, but one of only a few still in existence today.

Kathy Mulholland Parrinello ’75N, ’83N (MS), ’90W (PhD), chief operating officer of the University’s Strong Memorial Hospital, represented the Medical Center on the board of the agency during Weisberg’s tenure as executive director.

“They probably wanted to kill me sometimes,” Weisberg says of Parrinello and other Medical Center administrators. The Medical Center was among three health systems in the county at the time, and all three had plans for expansion. All three plans would be reviewed by the agency.

As Parrinello recalls, “The Medical Center at the time hadn’t historically had to go through a community-wide process quite like this.” But she says the process helped the Medical Center in the end, and offers insight into how Weisberg addresses challenges.

Nearly everyone agreed that there was a shortage of hospital beds in Rochester. “They were all, in themselves, appropriate requests,” Parrinello says of the plans of then Strong Health, Unity Health, and Rochester General. “But instead of trying to look at those applications one by one, [Weisberg] said, ‘Hey, they’re all similar, we have three of them from the three systems, let’s look at them collectively.’ ” Whereas the hospitals might have competed with one another for a new market, leading to higher costs and risking overcapacity, “we worked through a process to determine what was the right number of beds. And in fact, we walked away with a significant increase to our capacity that was endorsed by the region. So I think in many ways it gave a lot more credibility to us in the community.”

Parrinello and Weisberg were classmates at Rochester, though they did not know each other at the time. Parrinello says she was “one of those library rats.” Weisberg was deeply involved in a number of causes, including helping mobilize students to support union drives among campus workers. “I worked in Danforth Dining Hall,” Weisberg says. “I loved those women. I was close to them.” She helped found a group to connect students to community service. “We just started mobilizing people to become volunteers out in the community,” she says.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Weisberg elected to stay in Rochester following graduation. Her first job was at the Peace and Justice Education Center, which eventually folded into the organization Metro Justice. She worked with the federal program, Vista, as well as Action for a Better Community. She’s fond of saying “I came to Rochester for college and I never left.”

“I believed it was a small enough, and an open enough, community that you could really make a difference. And that’s what I’ve done my whole time here.”

—Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

In the News

in_the_newsLIVE FROM THE MET: Heath, a longtime producer at the Metropolitan Opera, has been named host of Met Radio. (Photo: Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan Opera)

The Met’s New Voice

The Metropolitan Opera began showcasing a new voice this fall. A radio voice, that is.

Mary Jo Heath ’88E (PhD), a Met senior producer for the past nine seasons, was named Metropolitan Opera radio host in September. Heath succeeds the late Margaret Juntwait.

Heath started at the Met just as it was launching Metropolitan Opera Radio on Sirius XM satellite radio. As senior producer, she put together the expanded coverage, including backstage interviews and commentary.

Now, as the Met’s radio host, her voice will be broadcast on public radio stations around the country each week from December through May during the Saturday matinee live broadcasts the Met has been doing since 1931.

In an interview with Rochester’s National Public Radio affiliate, WXXI, Heath recounted her first experience in radio, at that station. Responding to a call for Eastman School of Music students to become classical music announcers, she passed her audition and, because she listened to the Met broadcasts anyway, took Saturday afternoons.

In that same interview, she recalled taking voice lessons at Eastman. Because she wasn’t a voice major, she was assigned to a graduate student instructor. “I thought, OK, it will be some 22-year-old soprano who has never taught before, and I’ll be her guinea pig,” she said. “So I walked up to her studio, and I knocked on the door, and I opened the door and I said, ‘Hi. My name is Mary Jo Heath, and I am looking for my new voice teacher. Are you Renée Fleming?’ ”

Renée Fleming ’83E (MM), who this fall was appointed as a distinguished visiting artist at Eastman, is now an internationally renowned soprano and a regular performer at the Met.

White House Honors Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham ’84 (PhD)

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham ’84 (PhD), the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and African and African-American History at Harvard, received a National Humanities Medal in a White House ceremony in September. Managed by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the medal has been awarded to no more than 12 individuals or organizations annually since 1997.

Higginbotham is the author of Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920, which won multiple scholarly awards and was named a New York Times Notable Book in 1993 and 1994.

Jeff Beal ’85E Wins Emmy Award

Jeff Beal ’85E won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for his score for the Netflix series House of Cards. The award was Beal’s fourth Emmy. Previously, he won Emmys for his score on Nightmares and Dreamscapes, The Company, and the theme for the series Monk.

Pluto Fever

bushmanON COURSE: As lead propulsion engineer, Bushman offers a behind-the-scenes view of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and other high profile explorations. (Photo: John Spaulding/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Stewart Bushman ’95 nervously watched his computer screen one evening last July. An engineer at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, Bushman leads the propulsion system that has guided NASA’s New Horizons mission since its launch nine years ago.

Now, would the craft send data back from Pluto as it whizzed past the dwarf planet?

Just after 8 p.m., information began to stream across their consoles. The thousands of scientists huddled in a nearby auditorium gave Bushman and his team a standing ovation.

“At 41 years old, that’s the highlight of my career,” says Bushman, who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and two sons.

This came just months after Bushman and his team used leftover helium to propel NASA’s Messenger spacecraft for an extra month, gaining bonus photos and data from low orbit over Mercury.

Bushman had wanted to work in space since he was a child, and the telescope he received as a gift the year he turned 12—1986, when Halley’s comet was visible from Earth—cemented that interest.

Back then, the Voyager 2 mission was just cruising past Uranus and Neptune. “It didn’t seem fathomable that we’d have a mission to Pluto,” Bushman says.

A guidance counselor advised that he pursue mechanical engineering before specializing in aerospace engineering. So Bushman took advantage of a Bausch & Lomb scholarship and enrolled at Rochester.

After graduation, Bushman earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying electric propulsion. He worked at Lockheed Martin and with the U.S. Air Force as a research scientist. Then, the Applied Physics Laboratory, which tackles projects for the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, and other government agencies, recruited him to be the propulsion lead on a mission to Pluto.

New Horizons was launched in 2006, and the mission was billed as “the first mission to the last planet.” Shortly afterward, Pluto’s planetary status was downgraded to dwarf by the International Astronomical Union, and that took a little of the grandeur away, Bushman says.

But it didn’t decrease public interest in the underdog planetary system nearly a decade later. “This year rolls along and it’s like the entire world has Pluto fever,” he says. “I didn’t realize how much the world would really care.”

Where does Bushman stand on the issue of Pluto’s status? With the caveat that he is neither an astronomer nor a planetary geologist, “any definition that tries to include both Earth and Jupiter as the same class of object is going to have to stretch and contort itself,” he says. “Try to throw Pluto into that, it gets even worse.”

Thanks to New Horizons, scientists determined that Pluto is probably the largest of the ice dwarfs, and that it’s red—“all cool to know,” Bushman says. And because the launch and flyby went so well, requiring few “trajectory correction maneuvers,” the craft, the size of a baby grand piano, has plenty of fuel to explore other objects in the Kuiper Belt.

With Messenger, Bushman was able to help coax a little extra life out of the doomed spacecraft. The propellant used to guide the spacecraft into Mercury orbit had been pressurized by helium. After all its fuel had been exhausted, Bushman and his team theorized that the helium itself could be used as a propellant, too.

It was an approach that no one had ever tried before, because they hadn’t had a chance. Usually, something else on the spacecraft breaks down before running out of propellant, Bushman says. But thanks to such inventiveness, researchers gained even more information about Mercury before its planned crash on the surface.

The mission extension left the team far less time than usual to plan and execute maneuvers.

“We had to compress weeks’ worth of work into days and had to do it over and over again,” Bushman says. “We basically squeezed every last drop of utility out of that spacecraft.”

The Messenger team praises Bushman’s contribution to the mission.

“His in-depth understanding of spacecraft propulsion systems and operations in microgravity maximized our time in orbit and optimized our science return,” says Helene Winters, Messenger project manager. She also credits his “quick-witted humor.”

Bushman also is the propulsion lead on Stereo—two probes in orbit around the sun, taking 3-D images of solar flares—and held the job on the Van Allen probes, two Earth orbiters studying how the sun affects the planet’s magnetosphere, from inception through launch.

Now, most of his attention is on Solar Probe Plus, which is scheduled to be launched in 2018 for the first tour of the solar corona, a million miles from the sun. Mary-Kae Lockwood ’84, who also studied mechanical engineering at Rochester, is the spacecraft systems engineer for that project.

But it will be difficult to top 2015 for Bushman.

“New exploration does not come very often, especially transformative exploration,” he says.

—Liz F. Kay ’00

HONORS & AWARDS

Alumni and Friends Recognized

University awards celebrate service and achievement.

mw_honorsLEGACY: Jacqueline Spindler ’73W (MA) and her brother, Howard Spindler ’81E (MA), received the School of Nursing’s Legacy Award on behalf of the Spindler Family Foundation, a private foundation established by the late Howard Spindler ’35, ’38M (MD), ’43M (Res). (Photo: Provided)

University

Charles Force Hutchison and Marjorie Smith Hutchison Medal

Ronald Paprocki ’69, ’86S (MBA), senior vice president for administration and finance, chief financial officer, and treasurer, has served in several leadership positions during a career at the University that spans more than four decades. As senior vice president, he oversees key business and administrative functions, including finance, budget, audit, campus planning and design, facilities, purchasing, auxiliary services, human resources, public safety, and environmental health and safety.

Helping lead the development of College Town, Brooks Crossing, Riverview Apartments, and other projects, he also has been highly regarded for his work as a financial strategist. In recognition of his work to navigate the 2008 financial crisis, he was named the Financial Executive of the Year for large nonprofit organizations in the Rochester area by the Rochester Business Journal and the local chapter of Financial Executives International.

School of Medicine and Dentistry

Dean’s Medal

The former executive chairman and past chairman and CEO at Aetna, one of the nation’s leading health care and health-related benefits organizations, John (Jack) Rowe ’70M (MD), ’02M (Honorary) is the Julius B. Richmond Professor of Health Policy and Aging at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Considered one of the leading experts on geriatrics and the physiology of aging, Rowe is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Rowe and his wife, Valerie, founded the Rowe Family Foundation, which supports the fields of biology and life sciences, education, health care, and higher education. A major benefactor of the James P. Wilmot Cancer Institute, Rowe is an active member of the New York City Regional Cabinet.

Distinguished Alumnus Award

W. Archie Bleyer ’69M (MD) is a clinical research professor at the Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, where he also served as chair of pediatrics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. One of the nation’s prominent cancer researchers over the past four decades, he has received more than $75 million in research grants as a principal investigator for the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He is a past president of the Central Oregon Medical Society and the founder of DEFEATcancer, a survivorship program.

Humanitarian Award

Elinor (Ellie) Graham ’70M (MD) is an associate professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. In a career devoted to providing medical care and building community-based support for families living in poverty, she served as director of the Children and Youth Clinic at the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health. Graham also helped establish Seattle’s first high school clinic, the Rainier Beach Teen Health Center. She also helped create programs designed to teach disadvantaged parents how to be more effective advocates for their children’s education and that provide services and information to non-English-speaking ethnic groups and refugee groups in the Seattle area. Since retiring in 2009, she has done volunteer patient care and teaching in Liberia with the Academic Collaborative to Support Medical Education in Liberia coordinated by the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine.

John N. Wilder Award

Won Sam Yi ’99M (MD), ’04M (Res) is the CEO of Comprehensive Cancer Services Oncology, a multidisciplinary medical practice that provides comprehensive cancer services to patients in western New York. Under his leadership, the practice has expanded its community-based model to include five locations in Greater Buffalo and Niagara Falls, New York. A member of the George Eastman Circle, the University’s leadership annual giving society, Yi has established an endowed fund to provide scholarships for students at the School of Medicine and Dentistry and supports radiation oncology research at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center.

School of Nursing

Dean’s Medal

Karen Webb Sutherland ’61N and Robert Sutherland ’66M (PhD) are alumni advisors and longtime supporters of the School of Nursing. Karen is past president of the Association of Auxiliaries to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford and a former board member of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. Bob is a consultant at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, where he previously served as senior investment officer and vice president of commercialization. At Rochester, he was a founding faculty member and associate director for experimental therapeutics at the Wilmot Cancer Center. Charter members of the George Eastman Circle and founding members of the Wilson Society, the couple has endowed a student scholarship fund as well as established funds to support entrepreneurship and the development of medical technology.

Distinguished Alumna Award

Patricia Witzel ’75N, ’84S (MBA)is the chief nursing officer at Strong Memorial Hospital, assistant dean for clinical practice at the School of Nursing, and associate vice president of the Medical Center. Part of the University community for four decades, she has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the School of Nursing and continues to serve as a preceptor for students. A fellow of the National Academy of Practice and a member of the American Organization of Nurse Executives, she is codirector of quality and patient safety at Strong Hospital. She and her husband, James Witzel ’76S (MBA), are members of the George Eastman Circle, and together they have established an endowed fund at the School of Nursing as well as provided support for the Golisano Children’s Hospital and served as national campaign volunteers.

Legacy Award

The Spindler Family Foundation, a private foundation that supports charitable causes in the fields of environmentalism, family assistance and family planning, education, and social justice, has supported more than 30 School of Nursing students as Spindler Scholars. The late Howard Spindler ’35, ’38M (MD), ’43M (Res), a former clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Rochester, originally established the scholarship to recognize his wife, Barbara Smith Spindler ’42N. The foundation has since expanded its mission to support the Eastman School of Music, Golisano Children’s Hospital, Highland Hospital, the School of Medicine and Dentistry, and Visiting Nurse Service.

John N. Wilder Award

Lisa Norsen ’77N, ’83N (MS), ’92N (PMC), ’07N (PhD), a professor of clinical nursing, has held clinical and leadership positions at the Medical Center. During nearly 40 years at Rochester, she has served as associate dean of the Center for Nursing Entrepreneurship and director of the Sovie Institute for Advanced Practice, Scholarship, and Innovation. One of the first nurse practitioners in the nation to practice in an acute care setting, she is regarded as an early model of advanced practice in nursing. Norsen has served on the University’s OneRochester Leadership Council, is a former member of the school’s Dean’s Advisory Council, and is a member of the George Eastman Circle.

Eastman School of Music

Distinguished Alumni Award

A faculty member at the Juilliard School since 1980, Eric Ewazen ’76E is a composer whose music can be heard on close to 70 commercially released CDs by leading recording artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. He has been commissioned for major instrumental works by symphony orchestras and internationally recognized chamber music ensembles and other celebrated groups. He has served as vice president of the League of Composers–ISCM and as composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Lukes in New York City.

Simon Business School

Dean’s Medal

Edward Ackley ’53, ’64S (MS) is the founder and past president of The Filter Store, an online distribution firm specializing in replacement filters for residential and industrial applications. A former member of the Honorary Trustees Alumni Council of the College, he has served on the Simon Executive Advisory Committee, the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences Visiting Committee, and on several reunion committees for his class. Members of the George Eastman Circle, Ackley and his wife, Agnes Van Branteghem Ackley ’54, established the Edward J. and Agnes V. Ackley Executive Professorship in Entrepreneurship.﻿﻿

In Memoriam

Alumni

Frederick J. Peiffer ’37, September 2015

Denis A. Radefeld ’41, August 2015

T’Mahry Stolnitz Axelrod ’42, September 2015

Norma Meyer Reckhow ’43, July 2015

Marion Roziskey Platt ’44, September 2015

Elizabeth Zeder Barry ’45N, September 2015

Ruth Husak Chapin ’45, May 2015

Dorothy Corn Elder ’45, August 2015

Johanna Kalinowski Rooney ’45N, September 2015

Donald S. Cary ’46, September 2015

Janet Gruschow Reed ’46, August 2015

Charlotte Reed Smith ’46E, September 2015

Eleanor Atkinson Woodbury ’46M (MD), July 2015

Thomas E. Cardillo ’47, ’51M (MD), ’55M (Flw), September 2015

Margaret Heidner George ’47E, August 2015

Thelma Hunter ’47E (MA), August 2015

Gloria Odegard Garretson ’48E (MM), August 2015

Anna Stanick Stieve ’48E, September 2015

Anita Spaulding Swan ’48E, September 2015

Martha Hylander White ’48E (MA), July 2015

Jackson L. Fleckenstein ’49, August 2015

N. William Glaser ’49, August 2015

Jean A. Dimond ’50, August 2015

Everett B. Fitts ’50W (Mas), July 2015

Martin A. Foos ’50, August 2015

Patricia Monfredo Furey ’50, September 2015

Shirley Morrison Gray ’50, ’76 (MS), September 2015

W. Bromley Clarke ’51, ’68 (PhD), September 2015

Seymour Fogel ’51, August 2015

Michael J. Furey ’51 (MS), September 2014

Mildred Kantor Kaufman ’51, September 2015

John Lazor ’51, August 2015

Robert C. Saintey ’51, April 2014

Donald B. Devoe ’52 (PhD), July 2015

C. Curtis Higgins ’52, September 2015

Jacquelyn Haas Gibbs ’53, November 2014

Mark D. Hull ’53, July 2015

William F. Seeler ’53, September 2015

Donald R. Thompson ’53, August 2015

Reginald W. Havill ’54, September 2015

Marilyn Alderman Swafford ’54E, May 2015

Brien B. Rogers ’55, July 2015

Gordon C. Branche ’56 (MA), August 2015

Mary Ann Demo ’56, ’57N, July 2015

Maria Echaniz ’56, ’58 (MA), August 2015

Ralph E. Harper ’56, September 2015

Paul Ross ’56M (Res), August 2015

George K. Ungerer ’56, September 2015

Ernest E. Etzweiler ’57E (MM), August 2015

David L. VanDermeid ’57, September 2015

Mary Ann Sedore Campbell ’59, ’63N (MS), May 2014

Lawrence T. Rollins ’59M (Res), September 2015

Ruth Moore ’60E (MA), August 2015

Richard J. Ostrye ’60, August 2015

James Reed ’61, ’66 (PhD), August 2015

Raymond T. Ruff ’62S (MS), September 2015

Marcia Belding Watson ’62, August 2015

Walter D. Hedgepeth ’63 (MA), September 2015

Robert K. Strong ’63, September 2015

Sherrill Smith West ’66, July 2015

Lloyd J. Bach ’67, September 2015

Alexander T. Cathie ’67, May 2015

Rainer E. Hecker ’67, July 2015

Ronald M. Kern ’67S, June 2015

Everett L. Larrabee ’68W (Mas), July 2015

Sandra Herskowitz ’70, March 2015

Aspasia Christ Tahou ’70, September 2015

Norma Nicholson Zabel ’70W (MA), August 2015

Kristina Carlson ’71N, September 2015

Frances Pixley Cruikshank ’71W (Mas), August 2015

Hilda Frediani ’71N (MS), September 2015

Elizabeth Todd Dyring ’72W (Mas), August 2015

Raymond J. Bliss ’73, ’74W (MA), August 2015

Ruth Senseney Stratton ’77N, July 2015

Yadon Arad ’78, ’82M (MD), August 2015

James R. Newell ’78S (MBA), August 2015

F. Gregory Brusino ’79, August 2015

Sharon Stanfield Olnowich ’80, August 2015

Richard P. Ryskamp ’83M (MD), September 2015

Rita Petro ’87N, July 2015

Bryan A. Beaman ’90 (MS), September 2015

Harlan M. Budd ’92, September 2015

William H. Scott ’92S (MBA), August 2015

Joel M. Dopp ’93M (PhD), September 2015

Helen Dowdell ’95N (MS), July 2015

Claudine Joyner DeNava ’97, August 2015

Maria Hagan ’06, September 2015

Debra Hoffman ’06 (PhD), September 2015﻿﻿

TRIBUTE

Susumu Okubo ’58 (PhD): A Gentle and Humble Giant

okuboOKUBO’S EFFECT: Okubo made key contributions to theoretical particle physics. (Photo: Provided)

Susumu Okubo ’58 (PhD) was a towering figure in theoretical physics. But he was so gentle and humble that when you spoke with him, you would never realize just how much he knew.

I first met Susumu in 1982, when he came to pick me up at the airport when I arrived at Rochester just before accepting an appointment as assistant professor of physics. Susumu was hired at Rochester in 1962 as a research associate and became a full professor of physics in 1964. In the early 1960s, his research led to what became known as the Gell-Mann–Okubo mass formula, which provided exact predictions of known hadronic particles. This was based on mathematical symmetries which had a major impact on the development of elementary particle physics. He also made significant contributions to other areas of theoretical particle physics.

In the late 1960s, when Andrei Sakharov was formulating three fundamental requirements for understanding the baryon asymmetry of the universe, he relied on Susumu’s research, and credited Susumu in verse: From S. Okubo’s effect, at high temperature / A fur coat is tailored, to fit the skewed form of the universe.

This was the giant figure waiting for me at the airport to welcome me to Rochester, even though we had never met earlier.

As colleagues for more than 30 years, Susumu and I collaborated on two papers and a book. He was kind and generous even when we were not collaborating on a project. Once, as I was working on a difficult problem, I went to Susumu’s office to explain my dilemma on a certain point. He said, “Oh, Ashok, you always ask difficult questions.” But he said he would think about it. And that’s what he did, even though it was not his problem.

The next morning, he came to my office with an answer. When I suggested we should write the result together, he said, “Oh, no, it was just a small thing.”

Susumu was a quiet man, but we would have long conversations about life. He was interested in many things. He read literature, book reviews, magazines, and would share articles with me. He and his wife, Mary, loved scuba diving. He was very good at it and took up underwater photography.

Although he retired in 1995, he never stopped coming to work and publishing papers. A couple of days before he died last July at the age of 85, he had just completed his last paper.

Following a Japanese tradition, Susumu wrote a short death poem (jisei no ku). It reflected a lot of what we used to talk about.

To be or not to be? Quantum Dream of the Schrödinger Cat.

Farewell, Farewell Forever. Departure time now to the Black Hole.

Never to Return. Farewell.

—Ashok Das

Das is a professor of physics at Rochester.﻿﻿﻿﻿

TRIBUTE

Two Black Lines

Remembering Richard Leone ’62 and James Hadley ’62

We were classmates and brothers
pals and co-conspirators
wannabe renegades
and reasonably good students

We struggled through the snow
chased footballs on the Quad
drank beer, laughed together
and burned the midnight oil

Now two of us
are only remembered
by two lines of type
on a sheet of white

No recollection of
Dick’s serious nature
and his accomplishments
or Jim’s artistic talents
and his biting wit

Seems a shame
that two bright lights
are remembered
with just
two black lines

—Phil La Borie ’62

La Borie submitted the poem after reading about the deaths of his fellow classmates and fraternity brothers, Richard C. Leone ’62 and James W. Hadley ’62, in the September-October issue.

Books

Books

Medicare and Medicaid at 50: America’s Entitlement Programs in the Age of Affordable Care

Edited by Alan Cohen ’73 et al

Oxford University Press, 2015

Cohen coedits a collection of essays by scholars in politics, government, economics, history, and health policy reflecting on the evolution of Medicare and Medicaid and the impact of the two programs on American society.

German Visual Culture: Volume Two

Edited by Jennifer Creech and Thomas Haakenson

Peter Lang, 2015

Creech, associate professor of German at Rochester, coedits a volume of essays exploring the concept of spectacle, in the German context and among various forms of media.

Regional Cultures and Mortality in America

By Stephen Kunitz ’64M (MD)

Cambridge University Press, 2015

Kunitz, professor emeritus in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Rochester, explores the health care struggles of American Indians and Hispanics.

The Underground Reader: Sources in the Transatlantic Counterculture

Edited by Jeffrey Jackson ’99 (PhD) and Robert Francis Saxe

Berghahn, 2015

Jackson coedits a collection of primary historical documents by and about the “rebels, outlaws, troublemakers, and deviants” of 19th- and 20th-century Europe and the United States.

Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipina/o America

Edited by Roderick Labrador ’94 et al

Cognella Academic Publishing, 2013

Labrador coedits an anthology of essays by young artists, scholars, and activists in the Filipina/o-American community about the most popular art form practiced within the community. Labrador is an associate professor in the ethnic studies department of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.

The King Between Worlds

By Reeshi Ray ’03

Reeshi Ray, 2015

Ray presents his debut novel, a science fiction story set in a futuristic New York City.

What Can Animal Law Learn from Environmental Law?

Edited by Randall Abate ’86

ELI Press, 2015

Abate, professor of law and director of the Center for International Law and Justice at Florida A&M University, addresses the ways in which environmental law and the emerging field of animal law can work together to secure mutual gains.

Meditation in a Minor Key

By Mario Sparagana ’51, ’55M (MD)

Peppertree Press, 2015

Sparagana, a retired professor of medicine and former chief of endocrinology at the Hines VA Hospital in Chicago, offers a collection of haikus, conceptual poetry, and biographical poems.

A Jewish Baker’s Pastry Secrets: Recipe from a New York Baking Legend for Strudel, Stollen, Danishes, Puff Pastry, and More

By Julia Greenstein ’81M (PhD) et al

Ten Speed Press, 2015

Greenstein and family members publish pastry recipes of their late father and grandfather, George Greenstein, a Long Island neighborhood baker whose 1993 book, Secrets of a Jewish Baker: Recipes for 125 Breads from Around the World, won a James Beard Award.

Borrow-a-Bridesmaid

By Anne Wagener

Simon & Schuster/Pocket Star, 2015

Wagener, a staff member in the College’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, presents her debut e-novel, a romantic comedy about a young college graduate who rents herself out as a bridesmaid.

Super Performing at Work and at Home: The Athleticism of Surgery and Life

By Robert Cerfolio ’84, ’88M (MD)

River Grove Books, 2014

Cerfolio, chief of thoracic surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, demonstrates “how to think like a super performer in everything you do.”

Love in NYC: A Journey to a Better Me

By Nick Yu-Shan Hsu ’12S (MS)

Reading Times, 2015

In his native language, Mandarin Chinese, Hsu reflects on his experiences in New York City, from his job search to his observations of dating culture, and the remarkable diversity of the city. Hsu, born in Taiwan, is an external auditor at Ernst and Young.

Dodging the Death Rays: A Medical Look at Our Deep Space Policy

By Alvin Ureles ’45M (MD)

AuthorHouse, 2015

Ureles, professor emeritus of medicine at Rochester, calls into question the safety of NASA’s plans for deep space exploration.

The Shards of Heaven

By Michael Livingston ’06 (PhD)

Tor & Forge Books, 2015

Livingston mixes history and fantasy in his debut novel, set in ancient Rome, following the death of Julius Caesar. Livingston teaches at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.

Barry Baskerville Traps a Thief

By Richard Kellogg ’70W (EdD)

Airship 27, 2015

Kellogg, professor emeritus of psychology at Alfred State College, presents the fourth book in his Sherlock Holmes–inspired series for children.

Cord Color

By Victoria Korth ’84M (MD)

Finishing Line Press, 2015

Korth, a published poet and practicing psychiatrist, offers her first collection of poetry.

Rehearsal for Life: Singapore Youth Orchestra, 1980–1990

By Vivien Goh ’69E

Vivien Goh, 2015

Goh, former music director and conductor of the Singapore Youth Orchestra, reflects on her years with the orchestra, which celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2015.

Triumph Born of Ashes: Trooper Mike Buckingham’s Story

By Ward Buckingham ’71M (Res)

Deep River Books, 2015

Buckingham tells the story of his brother, a motivational speaker who, as a Washington State trooper, sustained disfiguring injuries in a crash following a high-speed chase with a drunk driver.

The Gates Police Department: Two Centuries of Public Safety

By John Robortella and William Gillette

Finger Lakes Historical Press, 2015

Robortella, retired associate director of marketing and communications at the Simon Business School, and Gillette, a retired member of the Gates police force, offer a history of the police force of Gates, a suburb of Rochester.

Obstetric Medicine: Management of Medical Disorders in Pregnancy (Sixth Edition)

Edited by Wayne Cohen ’67 and Phyllis August

PMPH-USA, 2013

Cohen coedits a revised and updated sixth edition of the textbook, introduced in 1960 as Medical, Surgical and Gynecologic Complications of Pregnancy, that was among the first medical textbooks devoted to complications in pregnancy. Cohen is a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Arizona.

Recordings

Colors of the Soul

By Dean Sorenson ’92E (MM)

Dean Sorenson Music, 2015

Sorenson performs 11 original compositions in a recording dedicated to his Eastman mentor, Fred Sturm ’84E (MM), a former chair of Eastman’s jazz studies and contemporary media department, who died in 2014. Sorenson is a jazz composer, trombonist, and director of jazz studies at the University of Minnesota.

Gabriel Fauré: Songs for Bass Voice and Piano

By Jared Schwartz ’06E (MM) and Roy Howat

Toccata Classics, 2015

￼Schwartz performs a mix of familiar and lesser known Fauré melodies conceived for the bass voice.

The Chase

By Nick Finzer ’09E

Origin Records, 2015

Jazz composer and trombonist Finzer presents 10 original compositions on his second recording as a bandleader.

Persian Songs

By Nexus

Nexus, 2015

The percussion ensemble Nexus, which includes Bill Cahn ’68E and Bob Becker ’69E, ’71E (MM), performs live with classical vocalist Sepideh Raissadat.

Adventures in Hawaiian Steel Guitar

By Joel Katz ’75

Seaside Recording, 2014

Katz, an instructor in Hawaiian steel guitar, guitar, ukulele, and audio technology at the University of Hawaii Maui College, presents a mixture of original songs and covers. The CD is a Hawaiian Nā Hōkū award finalist for Jazz Album of the Year as well as Audio Engineering Excellence.

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.

The Athleticism of Surgery and Life

Coaching and teamwork aren’t just for athletes, says a thoracic surgeon, athlete, father of three, and veteran coach of kids sports.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

cerfolio (Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

Athleticism means a lot of things, but first it means having confidence that you can perform under pressure, and that the skills that you’ve practiced can be manifested when the lights are the brightest. That’s the surgeon every day. Some surgeons are really good in the simulation lab, but when we take the knives out for real patients, they don’t do as well.

Athleticism is also teamwork, and as a surgeon, you’re only as good as your weakest teammate. Just as in team sports, you can’t get in the way of your teammates’ performance. You have to be confident, but if you’re making your teammates underperform, you’re not an athlete.

I coach other surgeons. I was early to adopt minimally invasive, or robotic, thoracic surgery, and I developed a training program. Mentoring is the key. That means if I’m going to train you to do robotic lung surgery, you have to watch me and my team operate, you have to go through a basic training and then advanced training, and then continue with mentorship. I talk to you before the surgery, and help you prepare. I help build confidence, and—I’m a certified personal trainer as well—I might even coach you on your health habits. I once had a mentee who was having problems in the morning. He wasn’t eating anything. He was grabbing a glass of orange juice, which is all sugar, and then having a glucose crash right around operating time.

Robert (Cerf) Cerfolio ’84, ’88M (MD)

Section chief of thoracic surgery and the James H. Estes Family Lung Cancer Research Endowed Chair, University of Alabama at Birmingham; former first team All-American, Yellowjackets baseball, and inductee to the Athletics Hall of Fame; Phi Beta Kappa graduate; and author of Super Performing at Work and at Home: The Athleticism of Surgery and Life (River Grove Books)

Home: Birmingham, Alabama

On super performing at Rochester: “I picked Rochester over some really good schools because it had an early selection process into the medical school called the Rochester early selection plan. And I remember my father and mother saying, pretty much, ‘Hey, jackass. They only pick five or six kids out of the whole class. Here you’ve got a chance to go to Columbia, you’ve got a chance to go to some other good schools.’ But I said, ‘I really love the campus, and I really think I can get into that program.’ And my dad said, ‘Well, the odds are against you.’ So that was a challenge. As it turned out, I got in.”

People who are top performers in their fields sometimes hesitate to take on new challenges. I talk about this problem all the time. When I went into robotics, I was one of the busiest thoracic surgeons in the United States. I was incredibly comfortable in my role. My chairman said to me, “You shouldn’t do this.” And I said, “We can get better. The next advance is the robot.”

As a beginner at something, you can still be a super performer in the sense of buying into the process. I’ll be honest. My first six months were agony. I wasn’t super performing in my first 20, 30, or 40 robotic surgeries, but I was striving to super perform. And that’s the key. It’s the buy-in from the athlete. If you’re in your 50s or 60s and successful, in surgery and in many other fields, you can keep doing what you’re doing and ride out your career. But you’re not evolving or getting better. And for me, it was, if I’m going to tell my kids, even if they’re the best player on the team, that they have to get better and better, then I’m going to apply that to myself.

Super performance is most difficult when things aren’t going well. Bad things happen. For me, the worst was losing my wife, Lorraine, to cancer. How do you super perform under those circumstances? This is such a complicated question. You know that people are relying on you and that you have a job to do.

Work-life balance is always a struggle. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. People are being pulled to do 25 different things. And you have to put a value on each one of those things. I think it’s a fallacy that there’s a work-life balance every day. There can be, say, every week. But you do have to be balanced, because the second you lose the balance, your performance falls. It falls because it holds no meaning.

backpage (Photo: Adam Fenster)

UNIVERSITY FAMILY

Meliora Monument

STATUESQUE: Two-year-old Jake Felver, the son of Josh ’05 and Sarah Felver, plays beside the statue of George Eastman on the Eastman Quadrangle during Meliora Weekend.