Rochester Review

July–August 2016, Volume 78, No. 6

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Valerie Alhart, Adam Fenster, Peter Iglinski, Jim Mandelaro, Bob Marcotte, Melissa Mead, Mark Michaud, Sara Miller, Dennis O’Donnell, Leslie Orr, Monique Patenaude, Scott Sabocheck, Leonor Sierra, and Brandon Vick

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

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

ISSN: 0035-7421

Copyright © 2016 University of Rochester

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Contents

Welcome, Danny

Optical Networks

Smiles and Shine

Evolutionary Art

Better Baja

Wendi Heinzelman Named Dean of the Hajim School

Tip of the Hat to Hajim

Danny Wegman Becomes Board Chair

The Future Is Calling

Changing the Culture of Career Development

When the Physical World Is Unreliable

Seligman Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Stumped by the Class of ’68?

Starting Out

Racing to the Finish for Late-Spring Sports

Fall Schedules Bring Challenges

Going the Distance

Home Team Advantage

Rochester’s Sports Medicine All-Stars

Soccer Doctor

May We Recommend . . .

‘So Others May Live’

Kitchen Confidantes

The Surgeon Is in the House. And He’s Laughing.

Army Captain, Team Captain, Gold Medalist

Alumni, Faculty, and Guests Honored at 2016 Commencement

Honoring Achievement and Service

Give and Thank

Record Turnout for ‘Dinner with the Coach’

Books & Recordings

Tuning in to Classical Radio

Tower Tassels

Welcome, Danny

By Joel Seligman

INSPIRING LEADERSHIP: As the new chair of the Board of Trustees, Danny Wegman, the CEO of Wegmans Food Markets, builds on a distinguished record of inspiring leadership says President and CEO Joel Seligman. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Our May board meeting marked a significant transition—the passing of the gavel from Ed Hajim ’58, after a remarkable eight years as chairman of the Board of Trustees—to Danny Wegman. I am delighted that Danny Wegman will now be taking the reins to lead us to the Next Level.

Danny Wegman has served as a University trustee for more than 15 years. For decades, he has helped lead one of the most extraordinary private businesses in the country, one regularly ranked as one of the best companies for which to work and regularly ranked as among the most admired in its industry. He and his company have been honored many times as a model employer and retailer, as well as for excellence in community service. Danny frequently has been recognized as the most respected business leader in the Greater Rochester community. But more than that, he is a special friend, and I look forward to continuing the partnership we developed as cochairs of the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council, where together we led an effort to galvanize more than $800 million of commitments and support for the region during the last five years.

Danny is a community builder who provides inspiring leadership. He has been passionate in his commitment to our University and to other key endeavors such as United Way. Increasingly he has focused on revitalizing and strengthening our K-12 education system—through the Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection—and health care systems. Although not a graduate, he is devoted to the University. He will be instrumental in helping us achieve the Next Level in our University’s progress.

Danny joined Wegmans Food Markets after he graduated from high school, and was named a store manager in 1969, the same year he graduated with honors from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He became president of Wegmans in 1976, and was named CEO in 2005. Today, Wegmans operates 88 stores in six states and is consistently recognized in Fortune magazine’s “100 Best companies to Work For,” earning the number four spot in 2016.

In April 2014, the University announced two major contributions from the Wegman Family Charitable Foundation—a $10 million lead gift to the new Goergen Institute for Data Science and a $7 million gift to support the Golisano Children’s Hospital. Together with previous gifts to several programs across the University campuses, the foundation has provided more than $20 million to The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester.

Danny has also served as honorary chair of the Medical Center’s campaign in support of The Meliora Challenge. A former member of the Medical Center Board, he and his wife, Stency, long supported the Toast to Your Health Wine Auction, which supports initiatives at the Medical Center. In 2010, Danny received the University’s Eastman Medal, which honors outstanding professional achievement and dedicated service.

Danny will build on Ed’s eight-year chairmanship. Ed was a driving force on the Board of Trustees for nearly three decades, and his leadership and commitment have been truly inspirational. In 2008, his $30 million commitment to the University was the largest single gift commitment in the institution’s history and catalyzed the $1.2 billion Meliora Challenge campaign. As a sign of our enduring gratitude, the board voted that the new Science and Engineering Quadrangle on the River Campus will be named for Ed. The Edmund A. Hajim Science and Engineering Quadrangle, currently being constructed in the area bounded by Robert B. Goergen Hall, Hylan Hall, Hutchison Hall, the Computer Studies Building, and the future Wegmans Hall, will be transformed for the fall with new walkways, trees, seating, and a botanical rain garden.

I am delighted to welcome Danny to the helm of our extraordinary Board of Trustees. Like Ed and also predecessors Bob Witmer ’59 and Bob Goergen ’60, Danny embodies the spirit of Meliora. I look forward to working with him to make the University ever better.

Optical Networks

SHINE ON: Students bask in the sunlight that streams into the new Wilson Commons at its grand opening in April 1976. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Kevin Wesley’s article “An Optical Family Tree” (May-June) is a real compliment to the University, the Institute of Optics, Robert Hopkins, and Duncan Moore.

I became a graduate student at Rochester in 1954 and received a PhD in 1960. My thesis was supervised by Professor Hopkins from 1957 to 1960. Tropel was just a few years old. The three founders were actively involved. Bob Hopkins would cut out some time from his role as director of the institute to attend to Tropel’s and his own projects. Bob Hopkins was an extraordinary person and a giant credit to the institute and to the University. I was privileged to be relatively close to him, his only graduate student who was not a lens designer. My thesis was the first on fiber optics.

The thrust of my letter is to strongly compliment the entrepreneurs whose companies grew out of the direct or indirect inspiration of Bob Hopkins and to recognize the strong relationship that many Institute of Optics graduates continue to have with the institute. Through my career, I have maintained a very strong relationship with the institute. I knew about the numerous companies that were conceived and built by other graduates. I agree with Duncan Moore’s assessment that Bob Hopkins did not explicitly teach entrepreneurship; he demonstrated it by example.

I suggest there is another optical family tree growing out of the Institute of Optics that consists of those of us, of which I am an example, who after graduation from the institute were employed as technical or management people in numerous corporations inside and outside of Rochester. We made a strong impact on the business world, albeit somewhat differently from the entrepreneurs. If you look at the “good old days” of Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, and Corning, you will find a lot of significant contributions by the graduates of the Institute of Optics. If you look outside of the optical industry, to IBM, TI, HP, and others, you will find another whole family tree whose roots came from the Institute of Optics, also motivated directly or indirectly by Bob Hopkins. In the last 50 years, some public companies have come and gone; but the current Digital Light Processing, or DLP, of TI, the optical systems of IBM, and the printers of Xerox and HP are also the results of an optical family tree stimulated by Bob Hopkins and others at the institute.

Other members of the faculty like Duncan Moore who came after Bob Hopkins continued this entrepreneurial inspiration. Bob Hopkins was unique and deserves special recognition. But many other professors and staff of the Institute of Optics launched numerous graduates who prospered as teachers and researchers in universities and companies, another set of family trees.

Robert J. Potter ’60 (PhD)

Irving, Texas

Potter is president and CEO of the technical and business consulting firm R. J. Potter Company.

Whose Language?

There is much to be learned from Karen McCally’s article “Searching For Words” (May-June) Rochester Review. As the article demonstrates, languages come in many versions with different histories and lifetimes (akin perhaps to the half-life of radioactive elements like uranium?).

In Paramount Pictures Corporation v. Axanar Productions, a California State Court is considering who has ownership of the Klingon language—as to which the plaintiff claims intellectual property rights. While Klingon was never spoken on the Star Trek TV series (itself a nice piece of trivia), its existence is well known from the Star Trek movies. Klingon was developed by Mark Okrand, a linguist specializing in Native American languages, who has published three books on the invented language. A Klingon Language Institute even exists to promote the language. A group called the Language Creation Society has filed a Friend of the Court brief to assist the defendant’s argument that copyright and intellectual property laws cannot be used to restrict the use of a spoken language—even if invented for a movie series. The brief cites a number of legal arguments and backs up those arguments with Klingon “proverbs.” You can’t make this stuff up. I wonder how to say “Meliora” in Klingon?

Paul Lester ’71

Coral Gables, Florida

I read the cover article of the May-June issue (“Searching for Words”) with interest. I work for SIL International, and one of my roles is as the registrar for newly identified languages around the world. Because of language identification issues, each language is issued a three-letter code to identify it. I process the requests for new codes for languages. Thank you for your interesting and informative article.

Melinda Lyons ’77

Dallas, Texas

Wilsonian Dreams and Nightmares

As a UR student from 1973 through 1977, I remember well the opening of Wilson Commons. To be frank, the construction period for Wilson Commons was not a great time to be at the University. In anticipation of being shut down when Wilson Commons opened, the old student union at Todd was clearly receiving no investment from the administration. Lower Todd was the only place on campus to get a drink or a snack, but the one time I opened the door to the place, I was almost sickened by the Stygian murkiness, noise, and smoke stench of the place.

Meanwhile, for several years there was a huge construction site virtually smack in the middle of campus. A popular graffiti on a wall next to the construction said (I may be paraphrasing): “The shortest distance between two points is the hole where Wilson Commons is.”

So I was looking forward to the opening of Wilson Commons near the end of my junior year. The festivities included a concert by the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Ellington had died a couple of years earlier, and his band had been taken over by his son, Mercer. The concert was held in a large, triangular-shaped room that was packed to the gills with students. Unfortunately, the acoustics in the room were so awful—the architects had obviously not consulted an acoustical engineer in designing it—that the music just reverberated from one wall to the next, and then back to the band, making it an unpleasant, echoing experience for everyone.

The acoustics of that room were just one of many kinks that needed to be worked out before Wilson Commons could really be the campus meeting place originally envisioned by the school (I assume after 40 years those kinks have been worked out). The innovative glass panes I. M. Pei was famous for (e.g., the West Wing of the National Gallery) had an unfortunate tendency to leak when it rained, and I don’t think anyone had really thought through how to wash them. The amount of glass in the atrium seemed to generate a tremendous amount of heat on sunny days (thankfully few in number, owing to Rochester’s wonderful climate) that made it seem like a sauna, and the ventilation system did not generate enough air circulation to ameliorate it. It was quite an experience to walk in from the frigid outside wearing a winter parka and immediately be thrust into a desert environment. The monumental dimensions of the atrium and the sparse, uncomfortable seating originally placed there made it seem forbidding and uninviting; I was there almost every day in my capacity as head of the UR Cinema Group and rarely saw any students seated there.

On the plus side, for the first time there was a real place to buy food during the day and evening, and a welcoming Rathskeller to replace the Dantean Circle of Hell that had been Lower Todd. Thanks for publishing the photo.

Brett Gold ’77

New York City

A Debate Over Debate

I wanted to send a comment about a letter by Sam Nelson about the Debate Union (Letters, May-June). The picture that is shown with the letter cannot be from the 1995–96 school year because I am in the picture. I graduated in 1991 and was well into grad school by the time the 1995 rolled around. I am on the bottom right-hand side of the image. Since the letter mentions that Sam was there from 1990 to 2005, I would guess that the picture is from the 1990–91 school year. I don’t think any of the people listed in the letter would be in that picture since their years of graduation are more than four years after the picture was taken.

Ken Wallace ’91

Potsdam, New York

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.

ORAL HEALTH

Smiles and Shine

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION: The Eastman Institute for Oral Health kicked off its centennial year this spring with an event—Shine a Light on Eastman Dental—that literally put a spotlight on it. Founded by George Eastman as the Rochester Dental Dispensary, the institute began offering much-needed dental care to Rochester schoolchildren. The institute has grown into an internationally recognized center of oral health research, education, and clinical care. It has also expanded its original mission of community service to include older adults and people with medically complex health issues and intellectual and developmental disabilities.

MEMORIAL ART GALLERY

Evolutionary Art

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

IMMERSED: Artist Nate Hodge created an “immersive painted environment” in the Hurlbut Gallery over four weeks this spring. Titled “Inhabited Space,” the painting suggests the continuous growth and evolution of a natural ecosystem. Hodge took an evolutionary approach himself, allowing the piece to unfold as he painted. He’s the recipient of the 2015 Lillian Fairchild Memorial Award, given annually by the Department of English to a local artist for commitment to arts in the community.

ENGINEERING

Better Baja

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

HANDS-ON LEARNING: Mike Meyers ’16 was at the wheel when the Baja team participated in the Baja SAE Endurance Race at Hogback Hill Motorcross in Palmyra, New York, in June. Baja competitions are the culmination of months of effort by students, who design and build a vehicle, and generate financial and in-kind support from outside sponsors. The Palmyra event—which attracted 100 teams, 28 of which were from other countries—involved acceleration, maneuverability, and other competitions, followed by a four-hour endurance race, in which Rochester finished in 27th place.

ENGINEERING

Wendi Heinzelman Named Dean of the Hajim School

Internationally regarded electrical and computer engineer takes the helm.

NEW DEAN: Heinzelman says she will emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

A noted researcher and academic leader is the new dean of the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences.

Wendi Heinzelman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer Science, begins her five-year term on July 1. She is the school’s first female dean.

Heinzelman takes over from Rob Clark, who on July 1 begins a five-year term as provost, succeeding Peter Lennie.

Since 2008, Heinzelman has served as dean of graduate studies in Arts, Sciences & Engineering. In the announcement of her appointment, which followed a nationwide search, President and CEO Joel Seligman praised Heinzelman’s cultivation of “top-notch and innovative graduate programs” as well as her own research and the collaborations surrounding it.

Heinzelman is a specialist in wireless communications and networking, mobile computing, and multimedia communication.

Her work has broad implications, including providing real-time communications tools for soldiers in the field, enabling conservation through the observation of remote rivers, and developing mobile applications that support personal health monitoring.

Heinzelman is a cofounder of Networking Networking Women, or N2Women, an international organization that fosters connections between women in computer networking and related research fields. Created a decade ago, the group now has more than 900 members worldwide.

She emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration as one of her goals for the school as dean. “I believe that engineering has relevance to the arts, medicine, social sciences, natural sciences, business, and education, and that these disciplines have relevance to engineering,” she says.

—Sara Miller

Tip of the Hat to Hajim

(Illustration: Michael Osadciw)

The Board of Trustees in May also recognized the contributions of Ed Hajim ’58, voting to name the new science and engineering quadrangle in honor of the outgoing chairman.

Hajim has served on the board for more than 28 years, and steps down as chair after eight. His involvement with the University spans almost 60 years. As chair of the board’s Investment Committee, he was instrumental in strengthening Rochester’s endowment, and he has been especially involved in strategic planning and advancement efforts.

The president of Diker Management, a business management consulting firm, Hajim received the Eastman Medal at commencement this spring, in recognition of his achievement and service.

The Edmund A. Hajim Science & Engineering Quadrangle is under construction in the area enclosed by Robert B. Goergen Hall, Hylan Hall, Hutchison Hall, the Computer Studies Building, and the future Wegmans Hall.

Plans for the quadrangle will bring greater functionality to the land, with steep inclines reduced to create large, flat green space for tents and other activities. The quad will also feature walkways, seating, new trees, and a botanical rain garden. —Sara Miller

TRUSTEES

Danny Wegman Becomes Board Chair

Two new trustees appointed during board’s May meeting.

Danny Wegman (left), Lizette Pérez-Deisboeck, Alan Zekelman, and Ed Hajim (Photo: University Communications)

Danny Wegman, CEO of Rochester-based Wegmans Food Markets, became chair of the Board of Trustees at the May meeting. Wegman, who was chair-elect for the past year, will serve a five-year term. He succeeds Ed Hajim ’58, who is now chair emeritus.

Wegman has been a trustee for more than 15 years. For five years, he and President and CEO Joel Seligman cochaired the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council, part of New York State’s community-based economic development program. Wegman became president of the 88-store grocery chain in 1976 and was named CEO in 2005.

In April 2014, as president and chairman of the board of the Wegman Family Charitable Foundation, he announced two major contributions to the University: a $10 million lead gift to the new Goergen Institute for Data Science and a $7 million gift to support the Golisano Children’s Hospital. Together with previous gifts to several programs across the University, the foundation has provided more than $20 million to The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester.

Wegman and his wife, Konstanze (Stency), are members of the George Eastman Circle, the University’s leadership annual giving society.

Newly Elected Trustees

Lizette Pérez-Deisboeck ’87 is a general counsel of Battery Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital and private equity firm focused on worldwide technology and innovation investment. Before joining Battery Ventures in 2009, Pérez-Deisboeck was a partner at Goodwin Procter, where she practiced in the area of technology and emerging companies, and was vice president for legal affairs and operations for Idealab, a creator and operator of pioneering technology companies.

A member of the George Eastman Circle, she serves on the Diversity Initiative Campaign Committee and was a member of her 25th Reunion Committee.

Alan Zekelman ’87S (MS) is a director of Zekelman Industries, the largest independent tubular products manufacturer in North America. A native of Windsor, Ontario, Zekelman received Rochester’s Richard L. Rosenthal Award for Innovation in Investment Management/Corporate Finance. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree at the Simon School commencement ceremony in June.

Zekelman, a George Eastman Circle member, has served on Simon’s Executive Advisory Committee, National Council, and Advisory Council. He and his wife, Lori Talsky-Zekelman, established the Lori and Alan S. Zekelman Distinguished Professorship of Business Administration at the Simon School.

The Future Is Calling

Anthropologist Robert Foster investigates the rise of the mobile phone in the South Pacific.

When Robert Foster, a professor of anthropology, went to Papua New Guinea in 2010, he found a familiar place transformed. Everywhere he turned, people had mobile phones.

He’d begun visiting the southern Pacific island country in the 1980s, when he was working on his doctorate at the University of Chicago. Then, telephones were scarce, with long lines at payphones and locks on the rotary phones in government offices.

“Something had happened—and it happened really quickly. It was just in your face, the change was so dramatic,” Foster, the Richard L. Turner Professor of Humanities, says. He wanted to know why, and how, and what it means for the culture of Papua New Guinea, or PNG.

He’s now in the second year of a three-year research project, funded by the Australian Research Council, on the moral and cultural economy of the mobile phone in PNG and Fiji. His research partner is Heather Horst, an anthropologist at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Australia.

The majority of the world’s mobile phones are owned by people in the developing world. That’s because it takes only a little bit of money to keep them working on a pay-as-you-go plan. It’s the same way electricity and water are typically purchased in developing countries. “People can pay tiny amounts, like 50 cents, to top up their phone credit,” Foster says.

He and Horst are gathering primary historical and ethnographic data on information and communication technologies in two Pacific countries where there has been little empirical research on the subject, especially where it concerns the Internet.

“Like most anthropologists, we’re concerned with what people do with new things and how they reconcile them to old ways of doing things and preexisting cultural values,” Foster says. “But unlike a lot of anthropologists, we’re very interested in the companies and how they operate.”

While Foster is an expert in questions of material culture, globalization, and corporations, he’s no technology maven—something proven when he pulls out his own battered flip phone. But mobile phones are Horst’s specialty. A decade ago, she cowrote the first book-length anthropological study of mobile phones in the Global South, based on fieldwork she’d done in Jamaica. That’s where Digicel, the dominant mobile phone service provider in PNG, is headquartered. Following the company’s success in the Caribbean, it began moving into the southern Pacific, carving out a new market in PNG and entering into competition with another company, Vodafone, in Fiji.

In PNG, Digicel has flourished. “They claim that up to 90 percent of the population is covered, which is extraordinary, if you know anything about PNG,” says Foster. “The terrain is very rough, and a lot of people live in remote areas.” The company built its own infrastructure, installing about 1,100 cell towers.

In investigating the moral economies of mobile phone use in PNG and Fiji, the team is investigating how consumers, companies, and the state discharge—or not—their obligations to each other.

Foster is intrigued by the degree to which phones in PNG are individualized. “One might expect that in these societies, people would share phones—they share lots of other things that we tend to privatize,” he says. “But the phones, not so much. The notion that every individual has his or her own phone is one that promotes certain ways of thinking about personhood and identity that aren’t always taken for granted in PNG.”

Take, for instance, mobile phone accounts. “Prepaid subscriptions force you to monitor your account very carefully,” Foster says. And the fact that people can send credit over the phone to someone else’s account opens them up to frequent entreaties. “People have to make decisions now about how they’re going to respond to a cousin’s request for $5 in air-time credit. What you’re seeing is a way of calculating social relations that’s not conventional in PNG, where people are almost starting to have to put prices on particular social relations, including kin relations.”

In some respects, the phones make people’s lives easier. Mobile banking has caught on in the cities, a response to the daily crowds at the country’s banks, the difficulties of travel, and the risk of moving physical money around. But phones are constantly lost or stolen. In interviewing hundreds of people, Foster has met only one who has never experienced the loss of a phone, and that’s an impediment, he says, to the possibilities mobile banking offers.

When he and Horst conceived their project, smartphones weren’t yet a factor. But their popularity now is forcing the researchers to reimagine their project. What had been a study of a communication device is now research into what happens when people suddenly have handheld computers at the ready.

Horst has prime responsibility for research in Fiji, where government regulations are more extensive than in PNG. For example, SIM cards—the “smart cards” inside a phone—must be registered. Digicel faces greater competition in Fiji, especially from the incumbent company Vodafone, which in 2014 became 100 percent locally owned. A larger middle class also means smartphones have made more inroads there.

Ultimately, Foster says, the team is working to create a history of the last 10 years. Part of the project involves creating an archive of the advertisements, corporate documents, policy papers, and other artifacts surrounding the advent of the mobile phone in both countries.

“A lot of the stuff is ephemeral. If you’re interested in the history of advertising, what are you going to do when newspapers are archived digitally? They take out the ads. So a lot of the material, especially around the moment when Digicel came into Fiji and PNG, has to be tracked down and scanned to be preserved.”

Much of the team’s time is spent talking with people, trailing company and government officials, and gathering materials for the archive. They’re also examining how the companies have adapted to business in the southern Pacific.

“Consumers look at a technology and say, how are we going to adapt it to our culture? But companies from foreign countries come in and say, all right, how are we going to adapt our marketing, our advertising, and our corporate outreach programs to what local sensibilities are? So they’re learning, as well.”

It’s the reason, says Foster, that anthropologists aren’t just in the field, but on the staffs of multinational corporations.

“Cultural sensitivity,” he says, “is important for the success of their business.”

—Kathleen McGarvey

Changing the Culture of Career Development

Alumni and others have new opportunities to be involved in students’ career preparation.

NETWORKED: Alaina Tosatti ’10, Zachary Gartenhaus ’17, Christopher Ostwald ’17, Jon Onyiriuka ’08, University Trustee Gwen Greene ’65, Eugene Heimann ’18, Lesley Mah ’17, and Sharon Gunther ’11 met at a finance networking event in Manhattan’s Theater District. (Photo: Adam Hunger/AP Images for Rochester Review)

For college career centers, the name of the game these days is making connections. This fall, Rochester’s Gwen M. Greene Career and Internship Center is launching new programs for alumni volunteers and others to do just that.

A fixture on college campuses since the postwar era, career centers have always changed shape with the times. They emerged at teacher-training colleges in the early 20th century as a way of helping teachers find posts. In the wake of the G.I. Bill, when they became more widespread and began working with a larger and more varied group of graduates, the emphasis moved to human development and the workplace as a psychological environment. In the booming U.S. economy of the 1980s, they became a convenient interviewing and hiring hub for employers.

“Now it’s about connectivity, about facilitating and brokering relationships, and teaching students about how to make connections online as well as in person,” says Joseph Testani, appointed last summer as executive director of the center.

As a result, he and his colleagues are introducing a range of programs that will bring students together with employers and alumni in venues such as industry- or location-based fairs, road trips that take students off campus to visit alumni in the workplace, and workshops.

Interacting with alumni will give students “more exposure to the possibilities of how they can apply their degrees in ways they probably haven’t thought about,” Testani says.

It’s just one facet of a larger effort to reconceive career preparation. Although currently it’s mostly juniors and seniors who use the center, Testani says he and his staff work with everyone from prospective students to graduate students, in every field connected to Arts, Sciences & Engineering.

And thinking about career possibilities and readiness is moving out of the center and into every facet of campus life. Building career skills is happening all the time, in classrooms, in student organizations, and in community experiences, says Testani.

Richard Feldman, dean of the College, calls the move a way of maximizing what the school provides students and says that “shifting the campus culture toward support of career development” is “exactly the right thing to do.”

—Kathleen McGarvey

For more information, visit Rochester.edu/alumni/stay-connected/volunteering/arts-sciences-and-engineering-career-center.

When the Physical World Is Unreliable

A dependable stream of sensory information is crucial to interpreting the world.

But a new study suggests that for people with schizophrenia, that stream can’t be relied on. By this account—published in the journal Translational Psychiatry—schizophrenia is a sensory disorder: people with the condition are impaired in their ability to process stimuli from the outside world.

As auditory hallucinations are a hallmark of schizophrenia, researchers have long suspected a link between auditory processing and the disease. The new study, led by John Foxe, the Kilian J. and Carolyn F. Schmitt Professor of Neuroscience, provides evidence that the filtering of incoming visual information, and of touch, is severely compromised in people with schizophrenia.

Scientists have long known that when the brain encounters sensory information, its initial response is large and strong. But as the stimulus is repeated, the reaction fades in intensity, allowing the brain to filter out repetitive and irrelevant information. Now researchers have found that mechanism to be substantially weaker in people with schizophrenia—and an inability to filter sensory information could lead them to experience the world as bizarre and unreliable.

The team hopes that the discovery might lead to simple measures of sensory adaptation that could be used to identify the disease before people are seriously affected by it.

—Mark Michaud

After a Concussion, Slow Down in the Classroom

Student-athletes who get a concussion often return to school within a week, but still have significant problems in the classroom and can’t perform at a normal academic level, according to a new study.

Published in the American Journal of Public Health, the first-of-its-kind research compared academic problems among 70 students following a diagnosed concussion with academic problems among 108 students who suffered other sports-related injuries to arms or legs, such as an ankle sprain.

One week after the injury, the concussed students experienced academic problems at a higher rate. One month later, there were no differences between male students in the two groups, except for those with a history of two or more prior concussions. Earlier Rochester research has shown that women recover more slowly from brain injuries, and that their menstrual cycles play an important role in brain recovery.

The study suggests the need for accommodations and guidelines on returning to school following a concussion.

“You wouldn’t ask students to run a mile or do the 100-yard dash the day they get their cast off,” says Jeffrey Bazarian, a professor of emergency medicine, neurology, neurosurgery, and public health sciences. He’s coauthor of the study, with Edwin van Wijngaarden, an associate professor of public health sciences.

Accommodating students with a brain injury requires a similar level of awareness, he says.

—Leslie Orr

Helpless Babies, Brainy Parents?

Human newborns are remarkably helpless compared to newborns of many other species. But when your baby is wailing at 3 a.m., you might rally yourself with the thought that your baby’s dependence has made you smarter—as little as it might feel like it at that moment.

Human intelligence, a new study suggests, may have evolved in response to the demands of caring for infants. Celeste Kidd and Steven Piantadosi, assistant professors of brain and cognitive sciences, developed a novel evolutionary model in which the progression of high levels of intelligence may be driven by the demands of raising children. The study is available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Early Edition).

Human babies have large brains relative to other species. That requires that humans be born early enough in development that their heads won’t be too large for a safe delivery.

But that immature debut means that human babies are helpless for a long time—and such vulnerable babies need intelligent parents.

Examining a range of primate species, the researchers found that weaning time—a measure of the prematurity of a species’s infants—was a much better predictor of a primate’s intelligence than any other measure, including brain size.

The theory may also explain the origin of cognitive abilities that make humans special. For example, social reasoning—the ability to anticipate the needs of others—may be especially helpful when caring for an infant.

—Monique Patenaude

ICY: Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, is cracked, and new research suggests an encounter with another body might be the cause. (Photo: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI (Charon))

A Crack in the Moon

A new computer model could offer an explanation for how cracks on icy moons, such as Pluto’s Charon, formed.

Until now, it was thought that the cracks were the result of geodynamic processes, such as plate tectonics. But research by Alice Quillen, a professor of physics and astronomy, and her collaborators suggests that a close encounter with another body might be the cause.

Astronomers have long known that the craters visible on moons were caused by the impact of other bodies, billions of years ago. But for every crash and graze, there would have been many more close encounters. By devising and running a new computer model, Quillen has shown that the tidal pull exerted by another, similar object could be strong enough to crack the surface of icy moons.

Such moons exhibit what’s known as “brittle elastic behavior.” Quillen likens it to Silly Putty, which bounces when thrown but breaks apart when stretched hard and fast.

Quillen’s computer model constructed the moons’ interiors as if they were made up of many bodies connected by springs—a method inspired by computer-graphics code. “The inside of the moons is similar to how blood splatter is modeled in games, and the outer icy crust is similar to modeling clothes and how they move,” she says.

In the paper, to be published in the journal Icarus, Quillen explains that the key factor for cracking is the strain rate—the rate of pull from another body that would have caused the moons to deform at a rate that their top, icy layer couldn’t sustain, leading to cracks.

—Leonor Sierra

Can’t Resist Temptation? That May Not Be Bad

Classic 1970s “marshmallow tests” assessed impulse control in preschoolers, offering one marshmallow immediately, or two if the kids waited several minutes. Children who displayed an apparent lack of control by taking the single treat were deemed “maladapted.” Follow-up studies identified children raised in poverty as far less likely to postpone temptation than their richer counterparts.

But a new study published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that the “maladapted” label needs revision. What looks like selfishness may actually be beneficial behavior for a child raised in an environment with scant resources.

“Kids who are brought up in homes with limited resources have learned it’s advantageous to seize the moment,” says Melissa Sturge-Apple, an associate professor of psychology and a clinical researcher at the Mt. Hope Family Center.

Sturge-Apple measured the “vagal tone” of preschoolers before they took part in reward-based experiments. The vagus nerve streams information from the heart, lungs, stomach, and other organs to the brain. It’s associated with the moderation of moods, including fear and anxiety. High vagal tone is a physiological indicator of “grace under fire”—the ability to slow down heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, which can allow for a thoughtful response.

Previous research had shown that for children in affluent households, high vagal tone predicts their ability to delay gratification: the higher their vagal tone, the longer they can wait.

But in the Rochester study, children from low-resource households with high vagal tone demonstrated the opposite behavior: the higher their vagal tone, the more quickly they opted for the single treat.

“When all is well and prosperous, kids who are highly attuned to what is going on around them can wait, but when things are scarce and unpredictable, then the question becomes ‘why wait?’ ” says Sturge-Apple.

—Monique Patenaude

Seligman Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Joel Seligman (Photo: Adam Fenster)

University President and CEO Joel Seligman has been elected to membership in one of the country’s oldest and most highly regarded honorary learned societies, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Seligman, a noted expert on U.S. securities law who also holds the title of G. Robert Witmer, Jr. University Professor, joins a roster that includes winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the Wolf Prize, MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, the Grammy Award, and the National Book Award. Members of the academy’s 236th class will be formally inducted at an October ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Seligman joins several University community members who are part of the academy, including the late Nobel Prize laureate Arthur Kornberg ’41M (MD), operatic soprano and Grammy Award winner Renée Fleming ’83E (MM), and Donald Henderson ’54M (MD), an epidemiologist who led the worldwide effort to eradicate smallpox.

Seligman is one of several Rochester faculty and students who received national honors this year. For a full list, visit Rochester.edu/news/honors.

Gateway to Diversity in Classical Music

The Eastman School of Music and the Gateways Music Festival, which have partnered since 1995, have announced a new alliance intended to strengthen their efforts in promoting and increasing diversity in classical music. The six-day biennial summer festival is now called the Gateways Music Festival in association with the Eastman School of Music. Lee Koonce ’96E (MM) has been appointed the inaugural president and artistic director of Gateways, which will remain an independent non-profit organization.

The festival attracts professional classical musicians of African descent from the nation’s top orchestras, chamber music ensembles, and educational institutions and has been awarded two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Through the new partnership, Eastman will help support the administrative and leadership growth of the festival, which will next be held in August 2017.

Best Translated Book Award Winners Announced

A Mexican novel and a Brazilian book of poetry took the honors at the ninth annual Best Translated Book Awards.

Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World (And Other Stories, 2015), a novel about the U.S.-Mexico border, was translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman. Herrera is the first Spanish-language author to win the prize for fiction.

Angélica Freitas’s Rilke Shake (Phoneme Media, 2015), a book of humorous and linguistically inventive poems, was translated from the Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan.

Three Percent, a website that is part of the literary translation program and Open Letter, the University’s translation press, launched the awards in 2007. Each winner and translator receives a $5,000 prize, thanks to funding from the Amazon Literary Partnership program.

TOP TEACHERS: Winners of this year’s Singer Family Prize, endowed by Paul Singer ’66, are (left to right) Mary Bohning, with Pablo Arroyo ’16; Chris Hartman ’09W (MS), with Ulrik Soderstrom ’16; Randall Harper, with Angela Remus ’16; and William Kibler, with Jessica He ’16. (Photo: Brandon Vick)

Singer Family Prizes Awarded to Teachers

Each year, seniors in the College are invited to nominate a high school teacher or staff member for consideration for the Singer Family Prize. Winners receive a plaque and $3,000, as well as $2,500 for their school. They’re also invited to attend commencement to watch their students graduate.

This year, four teachers were honored for the influence they had on four of Rochester’s most recent graduates. Mary Bohning, an AP environmental science and ecology teacher from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was nominated by Pablo Arroyo ’16, who graduated with a degree in environmental science. Chris Hartman ’09W (MS), who teaches sustainability at the Harley School in Rochester, was nominated by Ulrik Soderstrom ’16, who earned a dual bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and data science. Randall Harper, a history teacher from Des Plaines, Illinois, was nominated by Angela Remus ’16, who majored in international relations; and William Kibler, an Academic Decathalon teacher in Laveen Village, Arizona, was nominated by Jessica He, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering.

New Residence Hall Will Overlook Prince Athletic Complex

ONE-STOP LIVING: A new residence hall will bring academics, athletics, and student life in a building beside the athletic complex. (Photo: SWBR Architects)

Construction begins this summer on a new residence hall on the River Campus, overlooking the Brian F. Prince Athletic Complex. Planned to house 151 first-year students, its design integrates academics, athletics, and student life into the residential experience. It’s scheduled to open in fall 2017 and will target LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) designation for sustainable construction, operations, and landscaping.

The top four floors will feature residential space and lounges. The main level will be dedicated to academic and student life services, and the field-level of the building will contain new varsity athletics locker rooms for men’s and women’s teams, as well as sports medicine and team equipment rooms. The Prince Athletic Complex, named for University Trustee Brian Prince ’86, includes Fauver Stadium, North Field, Lyman Outdoor Tennis Center, and Towers Field.

Ayers Saint Gross, Architects and Planners—who designed O’Brien Hall, which opened in 2012—created the project concept. The Pike Company, in association with SWBR Architects, will handle design and construction.

ASK THE ARCHIVIST:

Stumped by the Class of ’68?

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

UPLIFTING GIFT: Rajnish Garg ’88, ’91S (MBA) and David Wang ’85, ’92 (PhD) show the Class of 1988 wheelchair lift in action. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation )

When I graduated in 1968, it was customary that each class would leave a gift to the University. Usually it was a bench, a piece of art, a specimen tree, or the like. I don’t know if the tradition continues. I have a question that might stump the archivist. What gift did the Class of ’68 give?—Jared Abrams ’68, Merrick, New York

As class sizes have grown and interests have diverged, choosing a gift has become more complex: it is now customary for each new graduate to choose how and where to give, and for the class to compete as a group for a participation level “ever better” than the previous year.

As a tradition, the class gift dates back to the first decade of the University. It was part of a varying set of Class Day rituals that included orations, poetry, singing, planting ivy, the reading (and burning) of class wills, and a celebratory dinner.

The Class of 1858 attended the University downtown in the United States Hotel, but as alumnus Lemuel Moss recalled on the occasion of the 1900 Semi-Centennial: “Now, as were to be baccalaureated and set free, the trustees came into possession of this fine campus out on the edge of the city. It was barren enough . . . so we, of the class of 1858, determined to plant the first class tree.”

Moss described the ceremony surrounding the “little English Elm” on the Prince Street Campus, and the Class of 1858’s reunion in 1883: “We gathered under our tree. How it had grown in a quarter of a century . . . did it not symbolize somewhat the class that assembled under its ample shade that day, modestly bearing as they did the burdens, the responsibilities, the honors of mature life?” He concluded: “Of every son of Rochester may it be said: ‘He shall be like a tree planted.’ ”

The gift was not always limited to a tree, and the “daughters” of Rochester also contributed generously. According to a newspaper account, Frances Ruliffson Tennent, president of the women’s Class of 1912, “explained the choice of a settee as a foresight of the needs of the girls when the anticipated women’s building is realized.” (The women’s building would be dedicated as Catharine Strong Hall when it opened in 1914.)

The men’s Class of 1912 fixed upon the gift of a drinking fountain for the library in Sibley Hall. In accepting the gift, President Rhees noted, “You are to be congratulated in thus promising to be a constant fountain of refreshment to those that follow.” That source of refreshment was permanently paused when Sibley Hall was razed in 1968; however, the settee is still in use in Rush Rhees Library, and was refurbished in 2000 through a gift from former Dean of Students Mary-Beth Cooper ’00S (MBA) in recognition of her Simon School MBA classmates.

Other notable class gifts have included an electric scoreboard in the Palestra (given jointly by the men and women of the Class of 1953); a sculpture by Arch Miller, professor emeritus of art and art history (Class of 1962); a wheelchair lift in Wilson Commons (Class of 1988); and a set of benches to commemorate the alumni lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (Class of 2002).

What is believed to be the last joint gift is a group of clocks on the wall of Hirst Lounge set to the current times of six major cities around the world. Chosen by the Class of 2007 in response to the demise of the standing clock in Wilson Commons, it aptly complements the display of international flags.

Many of the class trees planted long ago have been “stumped,” and now the archivist is as well: will a member of the Class of ’68 make a “gift” of the information?

COMMENCEMENT

Starting Out

CONFETTI CANNON: Students assembled for the Arts, Sciences & Engineering commencement ceremony on the Eastman Quadrangle celebrated with confetti, bubbles, and more as their degrees were conferred. (Photo: Keith Walters)

Graduates celebrated with friends and families during commencement at schools throughout the University in May. More than 3,000 students had their degrees conferred during the ceremonies. The 166th commencement season at Rochester ended with the Simon Business School’s ceremony in June.

Award-winning theater and festival producer Erica Fee ’99 spoke at the Arts, Sciences & Engineering ceremony, where she told graduates, “You have something very good going for you right now, and it’s that you don’t know everything. And that is a beautiful thing, because you can take risks, you can take chances, you can throw it all on the line now.”

For video and more photos, visit Rochester.edu/commencement/2016.

PARTING WORDS: Theater and festival producer Erica Fee ’99, founder of Rochester’s Fringe Festival, delivered the commencement address for Arts, Sciences & Engineering. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

AWARDS

Racing to the Finish for Late-Spring Sports

By Dennis O’Donnell

SPRING ATHLETES: Yvette Igbokwe ’15, ’16 (T5) (above) earned all-region honors in track and field, as did catcher Nolan Schultz ’16 (below), for baseball. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

Postseason accolades and accomplishments were plentiful for Rochester’s spring sports teams. Three sports were represented in NCAA championship competition: softball and men’s and women’s outdoor track and field. The baseball team competed in the Liberty League playoffs.

Four baseball players earned all-region honors from both the American Baseball Coaches Association and D3baseball.com. One softball player earned all-region honors from the National Fastpitch Coaches Association. Four men and four women were named to the all-region teams by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.

(Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

Baseball: Catcher Nolan Schultz ’16, infielder Steve Eychner ’16, pitchers John Ghyzel ’18 and Evan Janifer ’16 each earned all-region honors. Schultz and Eychner were named first team all-region by D3baseball.com. Ghyzel was named to the third team. For the ABCA/Rawlings all-region team, Schultz and Eychner were named to the first team, Ghyzel to the second, and Janifer to the third. Schultz hit .386 with 16 extra-base hits and 26 RBIs. Eychner hit .418 with 16 extra-base hits and 25 RBIs. Ghyzel was 7–1 with four complete games and an ERA of 2.97. Janifer, who started and relieved, was 4–5 overall with a 1.84 ERA and two saves. The Yellowjackets finished 22–19, 15–9 in the Liberty League.

Softball: Shortstop Kayla Kibling ’16 earned first team all-region honors from the NFCA after hitting .426 in 36 games. She scored a team-high 28 runs and was tied for fourth in RBIs with 17. Rochester won the Liberty League postseason tournament (Kibling was the MVP). Eleni Wechsler ’17 was 14–16 overall with a 2.28 ERA. She threw two no-hitters, one against RIT in the Liberty League playoffs and one against Penn State–Behrend in the NCAA playoffs at St. John Fisher. Rochester finished 27–23 overall (10–2 in the Liberty League).

Women’s outdoor track and field: Yvette Igbokwe ’15, ’16 (T5) and Cameron Edwards ’16 earned all-region honors from the USTFCCCA in two events. Emily VanDenbergh ’16 and Kylee Bartlett ’19 were honored for one event. Igbokwe was honored in the 100 meters (she was third at the ECAC championships) and the 200 meters (she won the New York state championship). She ran at the NCAA championships in the 100 and finished 16th. Edwards was honored in both the 100-meter hurdles and the 400-meter hurdles. She won the state crown in the 400 hurdles and competed at NCAAs for the fourth consecutive season (finishing 14th). VanDenbergh was honored in the triple jump. Later in the spring, she broke the school record in the long jump. Bartlett, who was an all-region honoree in the pentathlon indoors finished third at ECACs in the heptathlon to pick up the all-region honor. Rochester’s third NCAA competitor was Katie Knox ’16 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. She broke the existing Rochester record twice during the spring. She was 16th at the NCAA meet.

Men’s outdoor track and field: Patrick Rice ’16, Boubacar Diallo ’16, Jeff Hrebenach ’16, and Jon Kuberka ’16 all picked up all-region honors from the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Rice completed at the NCAA championships in the decathlon and finished ninth overall. He won the New York state championship in the decathlon. Diallo earned his recognition in the triple jump, the second time this year he accomplished the feat (he was honored indoors in early spring). Hrebenach, who owns four school records (100, 200, 4-by-100-meter outdoors; 4-by-200-meter indoors), was honored for his performance in the state’s 200-meter race when he set a Rochester record. Kuberka scored in three events (long jump, triple jump, and high jump) at the New York state meet. His long jump of just under 23 feet earned the all-region citation.

FALL SPORTS

Fall Schedules Bring Challenges

Rochester’s seven traditional fall sports teams—men’s and women’s cross country, field hockey, football, men’s and women’s soccer, and women’s volleyball—will face some of their most challenging schedules when the new athletic season begins.

The season launches September 1, when Ithaca field hockey plays at Rochester. Men’s and women’s soccer host the annual Flower City Soccer Tournaments that weekend, too.

The field hockey team will face three nationally ranked opponents and one just outside the top 20 through mid-October.

Men’s and women’s soccer will face many teams—five for the men and seven for the women—who made the NCAA play-offs last year.

Football begins its season, featuring four home games, with a September 10 opener against Catholic. Rochester cross country has its annual UR Invitational on September 17. And women’s volleyball gets under way on September 2 against Cortland, kicking off a season filled with nationally ranked opponents, including Emory, Washington, and Chicago.

—Dennis O’Donnell

ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICAN

Going the Distance

Middle-distance track events are the forte of Jeremy Hassett ’16. In June, capping his undergraduate track experience, he was named to the CoSIDA Academic All-American men’s cross country and track and field team by the College Sports Information Directors of America. Hassett is Rochester’s 96th Academic All-American, and the 16th men’s cross-country and track and field Yellowjacket to earn the recognition. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

Home Team Advantage

In the past four decades, a Rochester program and its graduates have been helping to shape the field of sports medicine.

By Jim Mandelaro

FIRST TEAM: Kenneth DeHaven was “a one-man band,” he says, when he started Rochester’s sports medicine program under new orthopaedics chair C. McCollister (Mac) Evarts ’57M (MD), ’64M (Res) in 1975. By embracing and working to perfect promising experimental techniques, DeHaven put the program on the path to becoming a regional destination for athletes. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The summer before her senior year of high school, Brynn Lauer ’17, her basketball team’s Most Valuable Player and a regional standout, endured one of the most dreaded injuries in sports: a tear in the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee. The ligament—known as the ACL—sits at the center of the knee, stabilizing the entire joint.

“It’s a feeling I’ll never forget,” says the chemical engineering major from Newark, New York, outside of Rochester. “I can play that moment over and over in my mind with such clarity, it sends chills down my spine.”

Lauer underwent surgery and endured six months of physical therapy before getting back to the court. But shortly after her return, she tore her right ACL again. Five weeks later, she tore her left ACL.

Three tears, and three surgeries, in 12 months.

Lauer missed her freshman season at Rochester, but this daughter of a high school coach, valedictorian of her class at Newark High School, refused to quit. And last season, her knees covered in braces and wraps, Lauer led the Yellowjacket women to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division III tournament, recording 105 assists and starting 26 games.

“Brynn has been our hardest worker since her arrival at UR,” women’s basketball coach Jim Scheible says. “She has worked her way back from three ACL tears to become our starting point guard and unquestioned leader. Her will to compete and her resiliency amazes the players and coaching staff on a daily basis.”

INSTANT RE-PLAY: The Yellowjackets’ Brynn Lauer ’17 (above) plays with a knee brace, but has largely recovered from multiple ACL tears. UR Medicine–Sports Medicine’s Mike Maloney ’97M (Res) (below) confers with his patient, former Cornell football offensive lineman Matt Simmonds. (Photo: Jessica Hill/AP Images for Rochester Review)

Lauer considers herself fortunate. Thirty years ago, an ACL tear could end a career. But medicine has come a long way since then. Reflecting on her treatment, Lauer says, “It has helped me get back on the court and feel as close as possible to my ‘normal’ self.”

At the heart of that medical progress is arthroscopic surgery: a minimally invasive procedure in which an endoscope is inserted into a damaged joint through a small incision. Hundreds of thousands of injured recreational and professional athletes have been able, like Lauer, to return to their “normal selves” because of what it’s been able to do for damaged knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists, ankles, feet, and hips.

Over 40 years, arthroscopy has transformed sports medicine from a minor branch of orthopaedics to a thriving field that has enhanced quality of life for patients and changed the way orthopaedists deliver care.

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

“From a patient’s perspective, sports medicine is one of the most sought-after types of orthopaedic care,” says Paul Rubery, chair of the orthopaedics department at the Medical Center. “From the surgeon’s perspective, it is probably the sub-specialty of our field which has had the greatest impact on changing what it means to be an orthopaedic surgeon in the past 40 years.”

The art of arthroscopy

Rochester was an early leader in the adoption of arthroscopy. One of the first physicians to recognize its potential was Kenneth DeHaven, professor emeritus of orthopaedics, who joined the Medical Center in 1975.

DeHaven had worked as an intern at the Cleveland Clinic with C. McCollister (Mac) Evarts ’57M (MD) ’64M (Res). Evarts left Cleveland in 1974 to return to Rochester and establish an orthopaedics department at the Medical Center. Eventually he would build the department into a nationally recognized center of orthopaedic treatment and research. One of his first steps in that transformation was to recruit DeHaven to become the University’s first director of athletic medicine.

“There weren’t many universities with a sports medicine department then,” DeHaven says. “Mac was ahead of the curve, and we had the blessing of the athletic director and coaches.”

When the two physicians were working together at the Cleveland Clinic, Evarts asked DeHaven what he wanted his career focus to be. “I said ‘arthroscopy,’ ’’ DeHaven recalls. The technique hadn’t been around for long. The first practical arthroscope—a thin, pencil-sized tube with a magnifying lens and light source—had been developed by Japanese orthopaedic surgeon Masaki Watanabe in the 1950s. A Canadian surgeon, Robert Jackson, visited Tokyo during the 1964 Summer Olympics, where he met Watanabe and brought the idea of modern arthroscopic techniques to North America.

Evarts supported DeHaven’s interest in the emerging technology. “He sent me to Toronto to learn under Dr. Jackson,” DeHaven says. “In Cleveland, we couldn’t see anything more inside the knee using an arthroscope than we could through an incision. But Jackson put the patient’s leg in a totally different position than we had been doing. He said, ‘Now look in there.’ And there it was. We could see so much more.”

When doctors had performed open knee surgery, it left patients with a six-inch scar, and often required a five-day hospital stay. Patients used crutches for three weeks and were fortunate to be running six months after surgery.

With arthroscopy, only two small incisions were made—one for the arthroscope and one for the surgical instruments used in the knee cavity. It was much less invasive, vastly reducing recovery time. It has improved greatly since. Surgeons now view the joint area on a video monitor and can diagnose and repair torn tissue in about one hour. A patient with a tear in the meniscus, the cartilage that cushions the knee joint, is often running within three weeks.

DeHaven couldn’t understand why there wasn’t more of an attempt to mend and salvage cartilage—and salvage an athlete’s career. He arrived in Rochester eager to spread the word about the groundbreaking technique. He appeared in hotel conference rooms from Rochester to San Francisco, representing the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and preaching the gospel about the advantages of arthroscopy versus traditional, more invasive open surgery.

But doctors weren’t buying what he was selling.

“They thought their way was best,” DeHaven says. “They thought arthroscopy was a fad.”

DeHaven persevered. At first “a one-man band,” with Evarts’s support, he made Rochester’s new sports medicine program a flourishing enterprise.

More than 40 years later, it’s grown into UR Medicine-Sports Medicine, a team of doctors, technicians, therapists, and trainers numbering in the hundreds. Part of the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, its lineup includes 10 physicians and 12 advanced practice providers who provide medical and surgical care, and 32 athletic trainers who deliver services such as classes in spine and knee injury prevention and nutrition consultations in four medical offices in Rochester and the surrounding area.

Rochester has made a powerful impact on sports medicine through its graduates. John Bergfeld, senior surgeon in the Cleveland Clinic’s orthopaedics department and former team physician for the National Football League’s Cleveland Browns and National Basketball Association’s Cleveland Cavaliers, praises the breadth of Rochester’s sports medicine program. “Rochester has produced a wealth of sports physicians, not only at the professional and college athlete level, but also for schoolboy, schoolgirl, and recreational athletes,” he says.

Alumni include team doctors at Major League Baseball, NCAA Division I, and Olympic ranks, while UR Medicine–Sports Medicine has become an invaluable resource in the region, handling more than 75,000 patient visits per year from high school and college athletes and recreational golfers, skiers, tennis players, and exercise enthusiasts.

“I’m proud of what we have built, and how we serve the community,” says Mike Maloney ’97M (Res), professor of orthopaedics, chief of UR Medicine–Sports Medicine, and team doctor for the Triple-A baseball Rochester Red Wings. “It’s a tribute to what Dr. DeHaven started and envisioned for care of the athlete.”

The “Tommy John miracle”

Maloney followed a similar path to Rochester as did DeHaven. DeHaven has been highly attuned to recruiting other physicians on the forefront of novel techniques. In the late 1990s, he and Richard Burton, then chair of the orthopaedics department, brought Maloney to Rochester from the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in Los Angeles, where Maloney had learned a groundbreaking surgical technique from the late Frank Jobe, a pioneer in sports medicine who was the longtime team doctor for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In 1974, Dodgers pitcher Tommy John sustained major damage to the ulnar collateral ligament in his left (throwing) elbow. Such an injury had ended pitchers’ careers in the past, but John pleaded with Jobe to fix it.

Jobe told John that he wasn’t sure he could, but he would try. Jobe had previously taken the palmaris longus, an “accessory” tendon in the forearm, to strengthen the joints of polio patients. He transferred the palmaris longus from John’s right forearm into his left elbow, weaving it through the tunnels drilled into the ulna and humerus bones.

Jobe gave John a 1 in 100 chance of recovery and warned that his elbow could snap at any time. It never did. John returned in 1976 and pitched 14 more seasons. Before the surgery, he had won 124 games. After it, he won 164. He never missed a start due to elbow pain and retired in 1989 at 46.

The experimental operation, formally called ulnar collateral ligament, or UCL, reconstruction, is known across baseball as “Tommy John surgery.” About 500 major league pitchers have undergone the surgery since 1974, and prospects of a complete recovery have risen to about 90 percent.

Having learned from the surgery’s inventor, Maloney quickly became a noted practitioner of UCL reconstruction. The number of cases can vary considerably, and Maloney estimates that he performs from 10 to 20 such surgeries in any given year. Outside of New York City, there are few physicians in the state, if any, who perform more.

Seeking the holy grail

Maloney marvels at the pace of change in sports medicine.

“I remember doctors saying ‘I did all this training, and there’s nothing I do now that I did when I trained,’’’ he says. “That speaks to our understanding of anatomy and the evolution of techniques in a minimally invasive way. It has changed the way we take care of patients.”

Although the strides made in sports medicine over the past half-century are staggering, there is more progress to be made. Maloney says Rochester doctors are investigating the use of platelet-rich plasma, or PRP, injections to promote the healing of injured tendons, ligaments, muscles, and joints.

Another strategy is harvesting stem cells from a person’s body, inserting them into the “defective” area, and sewing them in place with a piece of cartilage to see if a new layer of cartilage will develop.

“A lot of pro athletes are getting it done,” Maloney says. “We don’t have great prospective studies to say how well or how long it’s going to last, and for that reason a lot of insurance companies won’t cover it.”

Gene therapy, in which gene transfers are targeted to cartilage defects, is in the early stages.

“It’s had some complications,” Maloney says. “It’s just not there yet.”

A major area of research is on active citizens who are living much longer than in the past. “We’re talking about a population that once lived to 50 years old and now is living to 80, 90, and 100—but the joints aren’t lasting,” says Bojan Zoric ’98, physician for the United States women’s national soccer team (see story, above). “The holy grail is figuring out how to regenerate or restore cartilage in arthritic joints. And we’re still quite a ways from that.”

Maloney has treated hundreds of pro athletes whose livelihoods depend on their health. But perhaps his most challenging (and memorable) patient was a woman who insisted on knee surgery simply to continue her daily five-mile walks.

Never mind that she was in her early 90s.

“People told her to live with it, but she couldn’t,” he says. “So we did arthroscopic surgery and cleaned it up. She was so happy to get back to her walking.”

Maloney chuckles at the memory.

“You can help someone who is 9 or 90, and someone who makes millions playing sports, or one who just likes to work out,” he says. “That’s the beauty of sports medicine.”

Rochester’s Sports Medicine All-Stars

Only one University athlete has gone from the River Campus to a major sports team: Dave Deutsch ’66 played in just 19 games for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. But in the world of sports medicine, Rochester has fielded an all-star lineup.

Kevin Black ’81M (MD) ’86M (Res) was orthopaedic consultant to the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers from 1990 to 1992 and since 1993 has been team physician for the American Hockey League’s Hershey Bears.

Jan Fronek ’79M (MD) was head team physician for Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres (1991–2008), the U.S. Pro Ski Tour, and the World Baseball Classic, an event that brings together top players from 16 nations. Among his regular patients was Baseball Hall-of-Famer Tony Gwynn, who won eight National League batting championships despite eight knee surgeries.

Jim Malone ’89 has served as head strength and conditioning coach for Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres and New York Mets and is currently the athletic development coordinator for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Arthur Pappas ’57M (MD) was medical director of the Boston Red Sox from 1978 to 2002. He was instrumental in prolonging the careers of several players, including Roger Clemens, who overcame shoulder surgery in 1984 and pitched until 2007, winning 354 games. Hall-of-Fame outfielder Carl Yastrzemski, who played until age 44 despite chronic back ailments, described Pappas’s impact on the storied franchise.

“I lived my dream,” Yastrzemski said following Pappas’s death in March 2016. “Arthur Pappas was responsible for my dream. It if wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have had 3,000 hits and 400 home runs.”

In 2003, the Red Sox designated the Dr. Arthur M. Pappas Family Room in Fenway Park and adorned the room with a plaque honoring his “loyalty, care and concern for the organization, the team and their families.”

Wayne Sebastianelli ’79, ’83M (MD), ’88M (Res) was Penn State’s head physician from 1992 to 2013 and now serves as its director of athletic medicine. His quick work helped football player Adam Taliaferro recover from a spinal injury in 2000 after the freshman was given only a 3 percent chance of walking again. He walked eight months later.

Tommy Sheehan ’90 was Columbia University’s director of strength and conditioning from 2001 to 2014 and is now the director of sports performance at the Ivy League school. A two-time All-American wide receiver for the Rochester football team and a member of the University’s Athletic Hall of Fame, he has trained Cristina Teuscher, an Olympic gold medalist in swimming; Mahesh Bhupathi, a world champion in doubles tennis; and Alexei Kovalev, a National Hockey League All-Star for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens.

Bojan Zoric ’98 has helped some of the world’s greatest soccer players as a team doctor for the United States women’s national team during its gold medal–winning performance at the 2012 Olympics and championship win at the 2015 World Cup. (See story, page 33.)

In addition, a team of doctors at UR Medicine–Sports Medicine, led by division chief Mike Maloney ’97M (Res), helped pole vaulter Jenn Suhr recover from injuries and go on to win the gold medal in the 2012 Olympics. The Fredonia, New York, native finished second at the 2008 Olympic Games, but debilitating injuries to her hip, back, knee, and shoulder threatened to sideline her in 2012. Rochester doctors were able to relieve her pain and avoid surgery. She made it to the championships, finished fourth, and rose to No. 1 in the world rankings before capturing the gold in London.

“The URMC doctors got me back in action,” Suhr says. “I never could have done this without them.” —Jim Mandelaro

Soccer Doctor

SCARY MOMENT: U.S. women’s national soccer team physician Bojan Zoric (right) and athletic trainer Rick Guter attend to midfielder Morgan Brian after her head collided with that of an opposing team player in a 2015 World Cup semifinal game. (Photo: Jean-Yves Ahern/USA Today Sports)

Bojan Zoric ’98 knew early on he wanted soccer to be part of his life: he was playing almost from the time he was walking. But it wasn’t until he suffered knee and foot injuries as a Rochester soccer player that Zoric developed an interest in sports medicine.

“Dr. Bronstein took care of me,” he recalls, referring to Robert Bronstein, the professor of orthopaedics at Rochester who treated Zoric in his clinical practice. “Watching him get me back on the field made me want to do the same for others. My injuries pushed me toward sports medicine.”

Zoric now practices at Sports Medicine North in Peabody, Massachusetts, where he specializes in sports medicine and arthroscopic reconstructive surgery of the hip, knee, shoulder, and elbow. He is also a team physician for the United States women’s national soccer team, which will enter this summer’s Olympic Games in Brazil ranked number one in the world.

Zoric will miss the Olympics, opting to stay home “for family reasons.”

“They’ll have to win gold without me,” he says with a laugh.

Zoric completed a sports medicine fellowship at the Steadman-Hawkins Sports Medicine Clinic in Vail, Colorado, where he worked with professional athletes from Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and European soccer. He was also part of the team of physicians for the United States ski and snowboard teams.

Zoric was born at the University’s Strong Memorial Hospital while his father, Igor Zoric ’77 (PhD), was earning a doctoral degree in physics on the River Campus. He moved with his parents to their native Croatia when he was a year old, later lived in Sweden, and played for a youth club run by a professional soccer team until he was 18.

Igor wanted his son to have a college education and made contact with then Rochester soccer coach Mike Pilger, who recruited Bojan. Bojan majored in molecular biology and played four years of soccer. After overcoming a fifth metatarsal fracture and a meniscus tear, both requiring surgery, he was finally injury-free his senior year and tied for the team lead in scoring, with 18 points.

Zoric says that, among soccer players, injuries to the lower extremities are most common. He calls anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, tears “a huge epidemic in the U.S. and around the world,” one that is growing with the increase in sports participation among youth.

“Kids are getting into athletics at a younger age, and with greater intensity,” he says. “There’s an unbelievable spike in ACL injuries among middle-school students, primarily girls.”

Zoric has been a leading proponent of programs focusing on prevention of ACL injuries, widely considered the most serious type of knee injury because of the ligament’s role in stabilizing the entire knee joint. Female athletes sustain noncontact tears at a rate five times higher than their male counterparts, largely as a result of different biomechanics. Female knees tend to be more turned in toward the middle of the body, and less bent when jumping and landing.

“There are several studies showing an increased incidence of ACL tears in females,” Zoric says. “This is thought to be multifactorial—biomechanics, hormonal, ligamentous laxity, et cetera. There’s also good evidence that going through a preseason strengthening exercise program which emphasizes mechanically correct landing techniques helps reduce the incidence of ACL tears in both men and women.”

Rochester’s sports medicine department implemented a program called PEP (Prevent injury, Enhance Performance) in 2003 at area high schools that targeted the prevention of noncontact ACL tears. It was based on a two-year clinical prevention trial among 1,400 Division I female college athletes showing that increased flexibility, strength, proprioception, and agility can reduce the injuries by up to 88 percent.

—Jim Mandelaro

May We Recommend . . .

Looking for a little summer reading . . . or viewing, or listening? Rochester faculty have some suggestions.

Interviews by Rebecca Block ’18

People who teach and research live in a world of ideas. And while they all have their specialties, their curiosity takes them to unexpected places and unusual connections. A few members of the faculty share their recommendations for books, music, and videos not to be missed.

James VanDemark

Professor of double bass

Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles

One need not be a devotee of American history to be impressed. Stiles [the winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History] employs remarkable detail to give a compelling portrait of Custer, a man of wildly contradictory character and complexity: an intelligent, curious, and often brilliant Civil War commander, yet possessing a spectacularly inflated ego and a penchant for self-destruction, all vividly displayed before his demise at Little Big Horn. Avoiding caricature, Stiles provides a fascinating depiction of Custer’s convoluted relationships with his wife, Libbie, and with the African-American woman who ran the Custer household, Eliza Brown.

Jean Elisabeth Pedersen

Associate professor of history at the Eastman School of Music

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

I am reading and loving Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. When de Tocqueville sailed from France to the United States with his friend Gustave de Beaumont to visit the New World and report back about the latest trends in prison reform in 1831, France had just established a new constitutional monarchy and America was just entering the age of Jacksonian democracy. De Tocqueville’s travel stories are fascinating, and his comments on topics as various as liberty and equality, federal systems and states’ rights, the similarities and differences between the American and French Revolutions, and the historical reasons for which democracies are most likely to succeed or fail are all still as interesting, insightful, and important today as they were when the book first appeared in two volumes in 1835 and 1840—especially in the campaign year that we are all now observing, experiencing, and shaping on the way to the presidential elections of 2016.

Lynne Orr

C. E. Kenneth Mees Professor of Physics

Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum

This may be the most charming true-life adventure book ever written. From 1895 to 1898 Joshua Slocum sailed solo around the world—the first person ever to do so—in a 36-foot wooden sloop. Slocum’s account of his adventures along the way, sometimes harrowing, sometimes funny (and sometimes both, as in his struggles to sail through the Strait of Magellan—twice), is an engrossing read. His writing is understated and laced with a sly, subtle humor, and the book is refreshingly free of the breathless prose that often characterizes contemporary narrative nonfiction. I’ve read Sailing Alone Around the World over and over, and each time I’ve found new reasons to love it.

Brian Giordano

Assistant professor of orthopaedics

The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner

The author travels around the world to various regions—“blue zones”—where inhabitants have been found to live significantly longer than expected for general populations. He delves into factors in these populations that may positively influence lifespan and quality of life, namely, lifestyle, diet, and outlook, among others. Lessons learned from the world’s longest-living people showcase the notion that longevity is not found in a pill or surgery, but through interesting and unexpected influences.

Matthew BaileyShea

Associate professor of music theory

Jimi Plays Monterey

Whenever I encounter someone who hasn’t yet had the Jimi Hendrix experience, I advise them to get online and seek out every video they can find from the legendary 1967 concert at the Monterey Pop Festival. The performance culminates with Hendrix, dressed like a marigold, sacrificially dousing his Stratocaster with gasoline and setting it ablaze. He also plays astonishing guitar solos with his teeth. But listen for the subtleties, for the blues and the R&B, and especially for the warmth and compassion that he brings to Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” I first saw this footage as a teenager late one night on PBS. I’m not sure I’ve fully recovered.

Carmala Garzione

Professor of earth and environmental sciences

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

This novel is perhaps the most memorable book that I’ve read. It touches on all of the senses, leaving the reader with a rich sensory memory of the emotions elicited by the story. Parts of the book read like poetry that caresses both mind and spirit. The plot centers on a young boy’s survival in the face of trauma and the quest for personal and intellectual discovery. A geologist also figures prominently in the story, making the cast of characters complete.

Carol Anne St. George

Assistant professor and director of literacy education program

Still Moving by Danny Clinch

This suggestion comes not from my current work as director of reading and literacies at the Warner School, but from my appreciation for rock music and past experience as an independent record store owner. Danny Clinch, photographer and film director, has been the talent behind hundreds of record covers and magazine spreads covering a wide variety of artists and pop music genres. Along with Clinch’s narrative, the book holds beautiful and artistic backstage photos and private glimpses of many rock legends. His stories about his experiences over the years are fascinating and demonstrate his passion for what he does. Anyone who has been a music fan over the past 30 years should enjoy this visually exciting and historically relevant coffee table book. It’s great fun to pore over each photo while listening to classic rock.

Mark Bocko

Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, professor of physics and astronomy

The Man Who Flattened Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment by Mary Terrall

Maupertuis is responsible for the principle of least action in classical mechanics (one of the foundations of physics), but he was involved in all kinds of studies and enterprises, like an expedition to Lapland to carry out earth geodetic measurements. He was also an accomplished self-promoter—which sadly one sees to a large degree in academic science in the present day—but it’s interesting to read how this was practiced and brought to a high level in the 1700s.

As a music recommendation, I like all of the CDs from Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band (a 17-piece jazz big band). I love big band music, and play the bass myself in a big band, but the recording production values of his CDs are outstanding, and we use a lot of his music for demo purposes in our loudspeaker development research.

Eric Blackman

Professor of physics and astronomy

NOVA: Death Star

This documentary, produced in 2002, is one of the best one-hour documentaries on an astrophysics subject that I’ve ever seen. It captures both the excitement of science and the science itself extremely well, right from the opening scene. It shows how astrophysics proceeds from the discovery of a new source, to follow-up observations, to theoretical investigation of what the source could be, along with even the politics of big science—it follows a mystery unfolding, and shows the suspense involved.

I also recommend Street Corner Symphonies: The Complete Story of Doo-wop. I’ve been a fan of this style of music since I was a small child. This is the music of urban R&B vocal groups from the 1950s and 1960s. One of the characteristics of doo-wop is smooth, soulful harmonies—usually four- or five-part. It originated as a cappella singing on street corners. While the music on the page is very simple to play, it’s hard to make the harmony sound as good as the very best groups do, and doo-wop experts become picky (perhaps like wine experts). This recent CD set, which covers 1939 to 1963, is one of the best compilations of many superb recordings in the genre, remastered for clear sound and with good historical notes. It’s like a short course in the genre. A good doo-wop recording has something in common with a good astrophysics paper: sometimes the best research papers are actually artfully very simple, elegant, and harmonious. Only a small fraction of papers get this combination right because it requires having a sophisticated grasp of scientific concepts and being able to filter the important minimalist ingredients while eliminating the extraneous stuff to have the maximally efficient effect. A good doo-wop song is a metaphor for something that accomplishes this in music—at least for me.

Elizabeth Colantoni

Associate professor of classics

To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia

This book tells the story of a murder in a small town in Sicily. The only person who is interested in uncovering the truth is a teacher in the town who becomes obsessed with the case and works to unravel a mystery that no one really wants solved. What I love about this book is the way it bends genres and turns a story framed as a murder mystery into an investigation of the nature of evil and the complicity of the individual in societal corruption. The point of the book is not really the whodunit, but rather how society, or in this case more specifically, residents in a small town in Sicily, respond to murder and corruption. The book presents a story that is well grounded in its setting in Sicily in the 1960s, but, like any great piece of literature, it also raises human issues and moral questions that are important independent of time and place.

Dena Phillips Swanson

Associate professor of counseling and human development

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This nonfiction book is written as a letter by Coates for his son to understand the America he must navigate as an adolescent black male. My research examines identity development with a focus on racial and ethnic minority adolescents. Coates offers perspectives framed by his personal experiences to shape his son’s identity and values, particularly necessary when the rules that govern society are not applied as he would expect. The narrative is informative rather than prescriptive, intersecting historical and contemporary American events to connect issues across time. In writing to his son, Coates answers questions about injustices his son, and many like him, seek to understand. A national correspondent for The Atlantic, Coates offers messages to his son that transcend assumptions about race and economic status; throughout the book, he presents challenges encountered by many black families raising children who must navigate social and personal injustices. This book is simply a must read.

Henry Kautz

Robin and Tim Wentworth Director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science and professor of computer science

The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos

This is the book I recommend to all my friends and family who ask me what it is I actually do as a researcher in artificial intelligence. In clear and lively writing, completely free of equations and jargon, Domingos quite accurately describes how machine learning works, and the challenges that lie ahead.

And The Buried Giant: A Novel by Kazuo Ishiguro is a beautifully written fable about memory, forgiveness, war, and love, set in the mists of post-Arthurian Britain—but it speaks to every nation that has been torn by sectarian violence, and every person who has sought refuge from the cruelties of love in forgetfulness.

Gretchen Helmke

Professor of political science

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

I read this book for the first time maybe a decade ago and thought it was a brilliant political satire about what fascism would have looked like in the United States had Huey Long beaten FDR in 1936. The book opens with the election of President “Buzz” Windrip, a charismatic, but ultimately incompetent, authoritarian leader whose campaign prevails with a mixture of nativism, nationalism, antiestablishment bluster (including attacks on the media), and fantasy-based economic policies. During this election cycle, many pundits and others have rediscovered Lewis’s novel and its enduring message about the perils of populism.

Celeste Kidd

Assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences

The Baby Human

I would highly recommend this Discovery Health series to anyone interested in learning about experimental methods used in developmental psychology. The show includes experimental demos from some of the top developmental labs around the world. Topics range from motor development to memory to language acquisition, so the breadth is also impressive. Although the program is no longer on the air, there are episodes available on DVD and online.

John Lambropoulos

Professor of mechanical engineering

Climate Change 2013, The Physical Science Basis by the IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change

The book is huge—I have read portions of it, and I am not sure that my brain captures the full argument in all its details. The book describes in excruciating detail the documentation of how climate change is measured, and the science supporting the evidence that climate change is anthropogenic. It also contains different scenarios of climate change in response to different human responses to reducing the greenhouse gasses. Different mitigation approaches involve different political, economic, engineering decisions: we need to know, before we adopt them, what the consequences of our collective decisions will be. It’s not exactly bedtime reading. If anything, reading it before going to bed is guaranteed to keep you up all night. I have often told my students that, when I was in college, climate change was not an issue. But it is an issue for my students’ lifetimes, and we will all have to address, collectively, its resolution.

Cyril Meyerowitz

Professor of dentistry

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

It’s a first novel written by the author and was originally intended for young adults—however, it is definitely a book for all ages and a remarkable story of how hope triumphs over adversity. The story is about the experiences of a nine-year-old orphan girl during the Holocaust and is told by an unlikely narrator, death—an unusual literary device, but it works wonderfully as beauty and chaos and horror are contrasted. I have read a great deal about World War II, both fiction and nonfiction. This book stands out for me as it tells a rather simple story during a terrible time in a way that educates you while it tugs at your heart. One of the few books I have read that brought tears to my eyes.

I am a music lover, with a preference for classical music and particularly chamber music. Beethoven’s string quartets, particularly the late quartets, are my favorites. However, the piece of music that I would suggest as a “never miss” is Schubert’s String Quintet in C major. It’s his last chamber piece. He wrote it a few months before he died. It has an extra cello, in addition to the usual string quartet instruments. I am a cello lover, so the extra cello definitely works for me. And the second movement, an Adagio, often referred to as “sublime,” is just that. It is my recipe for friends who are swept up by the maddening pace of life: “a good Scotch, a quiet space, and the Schubert Quintet’s Adagio movement.” Just a wonderful piece of music.

IN MEMORY

‘So Others May Live’

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Zhe (Zack) Zeng ’95, ’98S (MBA) was at work at the Bank of New York in Lower Manhattan when two planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. As he and his colleagues evacuated their building, Zeng, formerly an emergency medical technician with Brighton Volunteer Ambulance, grabbed some supplies and headed three blocks to the towers to administer first-aid to the wounded. He died while trying to save others.

Earlier this year, Brighton Volunteer Ambulance, serving an area just outside the city of Rochester, voted to dedicate a new ambulance “in memory of Zhe ‘Zack’ Zeng and all the rescuers who died on September 11, 2001: ‘So Others May Live.’ ”

In May, a dedication ceremony took place on the Eastman Quadrangle. Paul Burgett, vice president, senior advisor to the president, and University dean, led the ceremony, while the University NROTC Honor Guard served colors. Joining Burgett were Rob Clark, then dean of the Hajim School, Andrew Ainslie, dean of the Simon School, and Daniel McCue, president of Brighton Volunteer Ambulance.

—Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kitchen Confidantes

Chicago chef Ben Lustbader ’01 and his partners offer great food and great atmosphere—in the kitchen as much as the dining room.

By Maya Dukmasova ’12

TEST KITCHEN: Chefs Lustbader (center) and Jason Vincent (left) and beverage director Josh Perlman aim to foster a new work culture in their Chicago restaurant, Giant, opening in July. (Photo: Anthony Tahlier)

Running a restaurant is usually unpredictable, grueling, stressful, and not a good way to get rich. That’s why chef Ben Lustbader ’01 and his friend and business partner Jason Vincent formed a pact long ago: no matter what, they would be honest with each other.

“If you’re pissed about something you’ve got to say it. No passive aggressiveness, no letting it build up, no trying to work around it,” Lustbader says.

They’re on the verge of opening a small, new restaurant (ironically named Giant) in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. Vincent made Food & Wine’s list of best new chefs in 2013, when he and Lustbader worked together as head chef and sous chef at the Chicago restaurant Nightwood. News about Giant, which opens in July, has dotted Chicago’s cultural rags for months now. “Rumors have swirled about Jason Vincent possibly opening his new restaurant. Today the announcement comes,” wrote a breathless critic in Chicago Eater last February.

With Giant, they’re aiming not only to create great food, but to build a supportive, healthy culture inside their kitchen. The size will help. “Forty seats is really small, which is really exciting because we don’t have to mass-produce stuff,” says Lustbader.

Lustbader’s journey into the food business began in the unlikeliest of places: the archives of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. As an intern there after graduating from Rochester, he was supplementing his income with a job at a Borders bookstore café, which turned into his first restaurant job, at chef Martin Saylor’s Butterfield 9, right next door.

Having no previous cooking experience besides a summer of deep frying at Rochester’s Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, he started with prep work: peeling butternut squash, picking herbs, and making infinite quantities of gnocchi.

“I didn’t know anything. They’d send me into the walk-in for rosemary and I’d come back with parsley,” Lustbader recalls with a chuckle. But Saylor’s leadership style and professional generosity were an inspiration. Eventually he stopped applying to museum and archiving jobs.

After three years at Butterfield 9 he moved on to Michel Richard’s Citronelle, what was once widely regarded as one of the capital’s best restaurants. It was a classic French kitchen, where Richard was pushing boundaries with whimsical recipes. Lustbader grew immensely as a professional. But, looking back, he says, “The whole place was way over my head. Their goal was to break you down so that they could build you back up.” He recalls “the yelling and screaming and throwing things.”

Lustbader stayed for a year—the norm for a young chef at any restaurant—then left D.C. for Raleigh, North Carolina, quickly finding a job in a much more casual restaurant. There, he learned for the first time about seasonal cooking, and that it was possible to have fun in the kitchen.

In 2007 Lustbader moved to Chicago, working in the heady environment of a Michelin-starred restaurant (North Pond) and eventually finding a home in a kitchen pioneering farm-to-table eating (Lula Café). There, he met Vincent and went on to work under his direction for five years at Nightwood. A regular in the Michelin Guide’s Bib Gourmand category (for restaurants offering exceptional food at a moderate price), Nightwood specialized in locally sourced products and conceptual recipes.

Lustbader and Vincent clicked. Their bond remains palpable. “I’ve always liked working with Ben,” says Vincent. On a May afternoon, the duo joked and teased one another through a round of recipe testing for Giant.

Experimenting with a microwave cake, they tried one batter mixture with eggs, piping it through an aerosol into different containers. The cake, baked in a plastic cup, had a Wonder Bread–like texture, but could only be torn, not cut. They tried an alternative, baked on a ceramic plate, which turned into a spongy crepe. Then they tried a batter with sour cream, which burned in a shallow dish, leaving a sweet flavor resembling marshmallows. In a ramekin, it became a rubbery rice cake.

The recipe testing process is part inspiration, part experimentation. Recently the partners spent about 20 hours working out the perfect onion ring; other dishes can come together in minutes. The cake idea needed time to rest.

Giant will have a menu of small and large plates, based as much as possible on locally sourced, Midwestern-style fare. While Nightwood had been a foodie destination, Lustbader, Vincent, and a third partner, beverage director Josh Perlman, hope the new restaurant will be much more of a neighborhood mainstay, affordable and unpretentious. They also want it to be a foundation for a good life outside the kitchen.

“Priorities are a big deal,” Lustbader says, “We were invested 24/7 at Nightwood, and at some point, no matter how good your intensions are, you’ve got nothing left. You’re burning the candle at both ends.”

Vincent says that the meat of animals slaughtered in distress tastes different from that which comes from animals who die peacefully. Similarly, he says, “if you’re stressed out and you don’t like you your job, are you really going to do the best job that you’re being asked to?”

Lustbader doesn’t quite agree. “There’s been tons of amazing food that’s been put out by completely stressed out, miserable cooks, at the highest levels,” he says. Vincent has second thoughts. “Most of it, actually,” he admits, laughing.

But that’s not the point. “Our goal,” says Lustbader, “is to show that you don’t have to have that kind of culture to create great food.”

The Surgeon Is in the House. And He’s Laughing.

(American College of Surgeons/Reprinted With Permission)

“You realize you’ve got to be a little nutty to do this, right?,” Walter Pories ’55M (MD), ’62M (Res) says into the telephone.

He’s just come from a presentation by a visiting scholar—“this really fancy professor”—on palliative care. “She was so serious,” he says, drawing out the word serious. “Seeee-rious.” He’s already sketched up a cartoon in which a patient arises from bed and removes the “Do Not Resuscitate” sign from his door.

Pories has gone to (and delivered) a long list of presentations, and sat through (and led) countless faculty meetings in his 50-plus-year career in academic medicine. He arrived at East Carolina University in 1977 to help establish the medical school. The founding chair of surgery, he’s now the director of East Carolina’s Metabolic Surgery Research Group.

He’s responded to life in academic medicine through humor since his time as a resident at Rochester. When it came time to choose who among his 12 cohorts in the general surgery residency program would remain to become chief residents, “I had some real concerns, like everybody else,” he says. “But my biggest concern was that fact that I made cartoons of a lot of these faculty members. I thought, ‘I’m really dead meat here.’ ”

It turns out Pories was wrong. “By God, I got picked to be a chief resident,” he says. “So I said, ‘What in the world happened?’ And they said, ‘Well, the only people upset were the ones you didn’t cartoon.’ ”

Pories’s cartoons are regular features of the journals Bariatric Times, which runs “Walter Pories’s Cartoon Corner, as well as Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, which features a cartoon by Pories on the back page of every issue. In 2015 the American College of Surgeons published a collection of Pories’s cartoons, Is There a Surgeon in the House?

“I was amazed that the American College of Surgeons would ask to publish” the collection, Pories says. He deals with controversial themes in the messy and uncertain world of fast-changing health care economics. “Patients have become commodities, and the rules are made to save money,” he says. He doesn’t spare the academic leaders caught in that bind. But so far, he’s kept many of them laughing.

—Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Army Captain, Team Captain, Gold Medalist

LEADER: Reynolds, leader of the team of 115 athletes at the 2016 Invictus Games, leads the 100 meters, in which he took gold. (Photo: Edward Joseph Hersom II/Department of Defense)

William (Will) Reynolds ’10S (MBA) led the U.S. military team of 115 athletes in the 2016 Invictus Games held in May at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida. The team captain also picked up four medals: two golds in the 100- and 1,500-meter track events, and two silvers in the 200- and 400-meters.

The Invictus Games were founded by Britain’s Prince Harry, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, in 2014. This year, close to 500 athletes, all wounded veterans or active duty servicemen and women in the militaries of 14 nations, competed in the games.

Reynolds was a captain in the Army serving in Baghdad when a remote-detonated explosive went off in his vicinity, shattering his left leg. The West Point graduate underwent 26 surgeries between 2004 and 2006. In 2013, he and his doctors decided to amputate his left leg at the knee.

It was a turning point in his recovery. Fitted with a prosthetic, he began training for the inaugural Invictus Games in London. He picked up four bronze medals in the competition.

Reynolds has lived in the Washington, D.C., area and worked for Deloitte since earning his MBA from the Simon Business School. In a statement to Army Public Affairs, Reynolds said: “When we all take the military oath, we prepare ourselves for the worst. As a result, some become wounded, ill, or injured. Having the opportunity to change the battlefield to a friendly competition field with international service members is a great honor. These athletes all have a common bond of striving to protect something larger than ourselves. Invictus Games provide the opportunity to show the world our resilience, our strength, and that we are not defined by our wounds.”

WEIGHTY: Aamodt researches metabolism and the brain. (Photo: James Duncan Davidson)

Stop Before You Diet Again

Neuroscientist and popular science writer Sandra Aamodt ’94M (PhD) penned a lead article in the New York Times Sunday Review section in May on research detailed in her new book, Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with Weight Loss (Penguin Random House).

Aamodt explains that the brain exerts a powerful influence over body weight, working to keep body weight within a given range. That range, called the set point, is determined by a combination of genetics and environment, and may, or may not, correspond to the dieter’s ideal. As body weight drops, the brain retaliates with tools such as metabolic suppression—slowing the rate at which the body burns calories—and production of more hunger-stimulating hormones.

Aamodt’s 2013 Global TED Talk, “Why Dieting Doesn’t Usually Work,” has received more than three million views. In addition, she has been interviewed on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Weekend Edition, and All Things Considered, and speaks around the nation on a variety of topics in neuroscience, including the adolescent brain, the aging brain, intelligence, and the effects of exercise on the brain. Her 2009 book, Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life (Bloomsbury), won the Young Adult Science Book of the Year award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Heroes in the Battle Against PTSD

Tara Rider Galovski ’94 and Terence (Terry) Keane ’73, leaders in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder treatment and research, helped Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald learn more about the condition when the secretary visited the VA Boston Healthcare System last winter. Galovski is director of the Women’s Health Sciences Division, and Keane is director of the Behavioral Science Division, both within the Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD. Both are also faculty members in the psychiatry department at Boston University’s medical school.

During his visit, McDonald also presented Keane with the VA’s highest honor for clinical research, the John Blair Barnwell Award. Director of the National Center for PTSD behavioral science division since 1989, Keane played a key role in identifying symptoms of wartime trauma before PTSD was recognized as a diagnosis. His research helped lay the foundation for identifying PTSD as a serious mental health problem that could arise in both military and civilian contexts, and he cochaired a National Institute of Mental Health initiative to establish standards for the diagnosis and assessment of PTSD.

HONORS & AWARDS

Alumni, Faculty, and Guests Honored at 2016 Commencement

The University recognized 11 alumni, faculty, and special guests at this spring’s commencement ceremonies. On behalf of the University, President Joel Seligman and Provost Peter Lennie bestowed awards on each member of the group for teaching, scholarship, achievements, and service.

Honorary Doctor of Laws

- Maggie Wilderotter, CEO of Frontier Communications, 2004–15.

- Alan Zekelman ’87S (MS), director of Zekelman Industries.

Eastman Medal

- Ed Hajim ’58, president of Diker Management and chair of the University Board of Trustees, 2008–2016.

- Joseph Morelle, majority leader, New York State Assembly.

Charles Force Hutchison and Marjorie Smith Hutchison Medal

- Larry Bloch ’75, former chair of TransWestern Publishing.

- Richard Hodes ’82M (MD), medical director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

William H. Ricker University Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching

- Richard Feldman, professor of philosophy and dean of the College.

Lifetime Achievement Award in Graduate Education

- Duncan Moore ’74 (PhD), Rudolf and Hilda Kingslake Professor in Optical Engineering Science and vice provost for entrepreneurship.

Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching

- Andrew Berger, associate professor of optics and of biomedical engineering.

G. Graydon Curtis ’58 and Jane W. Curtis Award for Nontenured Faculty Teaching Excellence

- Margarita Simon Guillory, assistant professor of religion.

- Vera Tilson, associate professor of operations management.

FAMILY & FRIENDS

Honoring Achievement and Service

The University celebrated the lives and careers of notable alumni and friends during ceremonies this spring.

EASTMAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Distinguished Alumni Award

Mary Jo Heath ’88E (PhD), the “Voice of the Met,” accepted the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Eastman School of Music as she took the stage to deliver the school’s commencement address in May.

Heath became the full-time radio host of the Metropolitan Opera in August 2015, having been the Met’s senior radio producer since 2006. She is the voice heard by listeners around the world during the Met’s Saturday matinee and Sirius XM channel broadcasts. Only three others have served in the host’s role since the Met began its broadcasts in 1931.

Heath has worked for more than 25 years in various facets of the classical music industry, from radio stations and record companies to research and writing. While working toward her doctorate in music theory at Eastman, Heath hosted the Saturday afternoon Met broadcasts on Rochester’s WXXI Classical 91.5 FM.

After receiving her doctorate, Heath oversaw recording and production of new releases for the Philips Classical record label. She later directed an online classical music site, served as a music critic, conducted research for Renee Fleming ’83E (MM) and Barbara Bonney, and worked at WQXR in New York City and WSHYU in Fairfield, Connecticut, before joining the Met.

SIMON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Distinguished Alumnus Award

Pramit Jhaveri ’87S (MBA), CEO of Citi India, delivered the commencement address at Simon’s June ceremony before accepting the school’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.

A native of Mumbai, Jhaveri began working at Citi India immediately following his graduation from Simon. Citi credits Jhaveri as the primary architect of its global banking business in India. In nearly three decades with the company, he led landmark global mergers and acquisitions, equity, and fixed income transactions. Since Jhaveri rose to CEO of Citi India in 2010, the company has won multiple awards from leading publications in global finance, including Best Bank Global, Best Loan House, and Best M&A House by The Asset; Best Investment Bank and Best M&A House from Euromoney; and Best Consumer Internet Bank from Global Finance.

A champion of Simon student recruitment in India, in 2015 Jhaveri established a scholarship to offer financial assistance for Indian students seeking a Simon degree.

GIFTS & GRATITUDE

Give and Thank

WE SAY THANKS: Luke Oluoch (left) ’19 and William Funkenbusch ’19 receive buttons from Carly Pavia ’18 (second from right) and Shanique Caddle ’18 during the second annual Thank a Giver day. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

In the spirit of Meliora—and thanks to many of you—the University’s second annual Day of Giving surpassed the first by more than $100,000. In addition, on the University’s second annual Thank a Giver Day, held in April, more than 500 yellow tags were hung across the River and Eastman campuses, as well as the Wilmot Cancer Center. TAG Day recognizes the generous support of alumni, parents, faculty, staff, friends, and students.

For more about the day’s events, including photos, social media, and other information, visit www.rochester.edu/giving/dayofgiving.

FOOTBALL ALUMNI

Record Turnout for ‘Dinner with the Coach’

(Photo: Ria Tafani for Rochester Review)

For alumni of Yellowjacket football, the annual spring dinner with Coach Pat Stark has become a treasured tradition since it began 10 years ago. In April, a record 56 alumni attended the gathering at Perlo’s Restaurant in East Rochester. Some came from significant distances, traveling from such places as New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia.

Coach Stark is an icon of Yellowjacket football. A Hall of Famer at both Rochester and Syracuse, he significantly elevated the stature of the program during his tenure as coach from 1969 to 1983. In 1970, he was named Section I Coach of the Year.

—Phil Chrys ’75

Pictured outside Perlo’s are:

Kneeling: Dave Cidale ’71, Mike Garritano ’76, Dave Skonieczki ’71, Mike Roulan ’71, Brian Heagney ’77, Roger Watts ’72, Bob Quirk ’72, Erv Chambliss ’76;

First row, standing: Jim Wesp ’74, ’76M (MS), ’78S (MBA), Sam Guerrieri ’87, Frank Perillo ’73, Phil Chrys ’75, Coach Stark, Rick Stark ’79, Tony Cipolla ’81, Mark McAnaney ’75, Kevin Callahan ’77, Bill Costello ’72;

Second row: John Cogar ’71, Jim Dunnigan ’73, Kevin Eldridge ’86, Erick Bond ’77, Andy Fornarola ’79, ’85S (MBA), Don Barber ’79, Ralph Gebhardt ’76, Brian Pasley ’76, Rene Piccarreto ’71;

Third row: Joe Novek ’73, Paul Caputo ’73, Denny Hennigan ’75, Mike Flanigan ’72, Herm Nied ’76, Steve Sloan ’78, Bob Ford ’84, Rick Milham ’85, Bill Hammond ’73, Len Champion ’73, Dave McNelis ’74;

Fourth row: Rick Basehore ’72, Greg Conrad ’72, Dick Rasmussen ’72, ’79W (MS), ’97W (EdD), Dave DeNero ’79, Jim Mazur ’78, Leo Fusilli ’80, John Loiacono ’84, Ray Kampff ’74, Bob Kulpinski ’71, ’73 (MS), ’86 (MS), Gary Miller ’84, Rich King ’78;

Fifth row: Kevin Maier ’78, Tony Daniele ’71, John Lawson ’69, Tony Hanley ’82, Ed Heffernan ’76, John Badowski ’77, Quentin Call ’76;

In attendance, but not pictured: Tyrone Southerland ’84.

Books & Recordings

Books

The Philosophy of Religion

By Edward Wierenga

Wiley-Blackwell, 2016

Wierenga, a professor of religion and philosophy at Rochester, offers a contemporary introduction to core questions in the study of philosophy and religious belief.

The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare

Edited by Bruce Smith ’73 (PhD)

Cambridge University Press, 2016

Smith presents a two-volume collection of commentaries from contributors around the world, published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Smith is the Dean’s Professor of English and Theater at the University of Southern California.

Contesting the Borderlands: Interviews on the Early Southwest

By Deborah Lawrence and Jon Lawrence ’76 (PhD)

University of Oklahoma Press, 2016

Through interviews with multiple experts in archaeology, anthropology, and history, the Lawrences explore the themes of conflict and cooperation among the diverse ethnic groups that shaped the early American Southwest.

Lela and Her Magic Bank of Dreams

By Nicole Smith ’12

CreateSpace, 2016

Smith presents a children’s story featuring Lela, an African-American girl who dreams big, saves diligently, and travels the world.

Filipino Studies: Palimpsests of Nation and Diaspora

Edited by Martin Manalansan IV ’97 (PhD) and Augusto Espiritu

New York University Press, 2016

Manalansan coedits a multidisciplinary series of essays serving as a framework for the developing field of Filipino studies. Manalansan is an associate professor of anthropology and Asian-American studies and Conrad Professorial Humanities Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Tuscany, Italy: Small-Town Itineraries for the Foodie Traveler

By Zeneba Bowers ’94E, ’96E (MM) and Matt Walker

Little Roads Europe, 2016

The married team of Bowers and Walker introduce “foodie travelers” to out-of-the-way highlights of Tuscan cuisine. The couple, founders of the travel consultancy Little Roads Europe, has also published Emilia-Romagna, Italy: A Personal Guide to Little-Known Places Foodies Will Love. Bowers is a violinist, and Walker, a cellist, in the Nashville Symphony Orchestra as well as the Alias Chamber Ensemble.

Sticking It Out: From Juilliard to the Orchestra Pit, a Percussionist’s Memoir

By Patti Niemi

ECW Press, 2016

Niemi, a female percussionist in an overwhelmingly male field, offers her perspective on the elite and cutthroat world of classical music performance. A percussionist with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Niemi grew up in Rochester and graduated from the Eastman School of Music Preparatory Department in 1983.

Is There a Surgeon in the House?

By Walter Pories ’55M (MD), ’62M (Res)

American College of Surgeons, 2016

Physician and cartoonist Pories offers a collection of his cartoons poking fun at multiple aspects of the modern practice of medicine. Pories is a specialist in nutrition and pediatric and bariatric surgery, and the director of the Metabolic Surgery Research Group at East Carolina University.

Dream Job: Wacky Adventures of an HR Manager

By Janet Garber ’72 (MA)

Lulu, 2016

Garber, a freelance journalist and longtime human resources professional, presents her debut novel, a comedic exploration of life as an HR manager.

Memorial Day

By Alan Hilfiker ’60

CreateSpace, 2015

Hilfiker, an attorney, University trustee, and published author of short stories and poetry, offers a story poem in which a widow and a caretaker keep a long Memorial Day vigil among graves of the fallen.

Built to Last

By Aurora Rey

Bold Strokes Books, 2016

Dawn Roy ’99, writing under her pen name, tells the story of two women, a debutante and the heiress of a construction business, who forge an unlikely romance while renovating a rundown farmhouse. Roy is also the author, as Aurora Rey, of Winter’s Harbor (Bold Strokes Books).

Stories, Images, and Magic from the Piano Literature

By Neil Rutman ’77E (MM)

Torchflame Books, 2015

In a collection of stories and other archival materials related to key works by more than 30 composers, Rutman aims “to stimulate the imagination of pianists as they study and perform the great works” of the classical piano literature. Rutman is the Klipsch Arist in Residence and head of the piano division at the University of Central Arkansas.

Find It Fast: Extracting Information from Social Networks, Big Data, Tweets, and More (Sixth Edition)

By Robert Berkman

CyberAge Publishing, 2016

Berkman, a business outreach librarian at Rush Rhees Library, surveys techniques for online research in an age of social media, real-time information, and big data.

Barrett’s Esophagus: Emerging Evidence for Improved Clinical Practice

Edited by Tolga Erim and Douglas Pleskow ’78

Elvesier, 2016

Pleskow coedits a comprehensive reference on the treatment of Barrett’s esophagus for researchers, clinicians, and scholars. Pleskow is chief of clinical gastroenterology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an associate clinical professor of medicine at Harvard.

Freak Show of the Gods and Other Tales of the Bizarre

By Bob Bly ’79

Quill Driver Books, 2016

In 33 short stories, Bly explores “encounters with the bizarre that uncover unsettling strangeness in the midst of everyday life.”

Recordings

Modernists

By Alarm Will Sound

Cantaloupe Music, 2016

The 20-piece contemporary chamber orchestra formed at the Eastman School in 2001 aims to “test the limits of the modern classical canon” in a collection of tracks bookended by new interpretations of the Beatles’ “Revolution 9” and Edgar Varèse’s Poème Électronique. The orchestra, conducted by Alan Pierson ’06E (DMA), includes Miles Brown ’00E, ’12E (DMA), Caleb Burhans ’03E, Gavin Chuck ’04E (PhD), Michael Clayville ’00E, Stefan Freund ’02E (DMA), Michael Harley ’11E (DMA), Bill Kalinkos ’03E, Matt Marks ’02E, John Orfe ’99, ’99E, Courtney Orlando ’03E (DMA), Jason Price ’05E (DMA), Christa Robinson ’00E, and Elisabeth Stimpert ’99E (MM), ’01E (MM).

Eye to Eye

By After Hours

University of Rochester After Hours, 2016

The University coed a cappella group performs on its seventh studio release, a five-track recording tracing a relationship through various stages of turmoil.

Solace

By Seunghee Lee ’90E

Musica Solis, 2016

Clarinetist Lee presents her fourth CD, a project in musical healing. Accompanied by pianist Evan Solomon, Lee performs 17 tracks “to bring comfort and healing to those silently suffering.”

Monuments: Music for Wind Symphony

By the Illinois State University Wind Symphony

Naxos, 2015

Martin Seggelke ’06E (DMA) conducts the Illinois State University Wind Symphony in the performance of premieres by composers including Sydney Hodkinson ’57E, ’58E (MM).

Amorisms: Music of Paul Moravec

By the Alias Chamber Ensemble

Delos Records, 2016

The Nashville-based ensemble led by violinist Zeneba Bowers ’94E, ’96E (MM) performs music of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Paul Moravec. The recording includes two works written for the ensemble.

Playback

By Matthew Wozniak ’94E, ’97E (MA), ’97E (MM) and Lois Hicks-Wozniak

Self-Published, 2015

The married duo of trombonist Wozniak and saxophonist Hicks-Wozniak presents a selection of chamber music featuring several original compositions as well as transcriptions. Nadine Shank accompanies on piano.

The Lost Lady

By Donna Coleman ’86E (DMA)

OutBach, 2015

In 21 solo tracks ranging from Bach and Chopin to Joplin and Bolcom, Coleman offers a “journey of exploration into the roots and branches of ragtime.”

Sunshine and Sorrow

By Chesley Kahmann ’52

Orbiting Clef Productions, 2016

Kahmann introduces 12 new compositions for piano, voice, and trumpet. The recording includes Kahmann on piano and vocals, the singing group the Interludes, and her son, Ames Parsons, on trumpet.

Books & Recordings is a compilation of recent work by University alumni, faculty, and staff. For inclusion in an upcoming issue, send the work’s title, publisher, author or performer, a brief description, and a high-resolution cover image, to Books & Recordings, Rochester Review, 22 Wallis Hall, P. O. Box 270044, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0044; or by e-mail to rochrev@rochester.edu.

Tuning in to Classical Radio

Wende Persons ’79W (MS), director of a new initiative to shape the future of classical radio, says the format is stronger than many people realize.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

(Photo: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

I have two degrees in education, and in my entire career, I have brought that focus into all the work I do. And my work has always been about bringing classical music into people’s lives, in one way or another. The educational aspect has been looking at the question from the listener’s point of view.

My career in the arts started when I was pursuing my master’s degree in English education at the Warner School. I worked at Eastman, typing for the humanities and composition departments for a year or so, and I fell into a job in the concert office. It was like a giant lightbulb went off. I thought, “You mean that I can organize and promote musicians?” All my life I thought if you were in music, you either taught music or were a performer. I loved teaching. I had taught elementary music, but thought maybe I’d prefer teaching kids English. I didn’t know there were these other options in the arts.

I think the power of classical music is timeless. Some people have said classical music is music that rewards the patient listener, that gets deeper, over time, with every listening. A station manager at Discover Classical in Dayton, Ohio, put it this way: “When you seem to be at a complete loss for words, this music can pick up right where you leave off.” It’s the power and the emotion of the music. I feel like I’m a deeper person because of classical music.

Classical music is hard to define in any precise way. There’s 500 years and growing of repertoire. The instrumentation and the orientations toward composition can change. I’ve sat through conferences for years listening to programmers debate whether film music is classical music, and if so, which film music, and so forth.

Every market is different. The station manager in Austin, Texas, said, “You know, Austin is kind of a quirky town. Our classical station probably isn’t a cookie cutter for other stations across the country. We might be doing things differently, but it works in our community.” The overall objective of our project is to say, how can classical radio be strong and thriving in each local market? How can it be a hub of the local arts community? And are there things we can do and explore together that will make everybody stronger in their individual choices for what they’re doing?

I came into Classical Music Rising thinking that the major focus was going to be on technology shift. What I was surprised to see, however, is that broadcast radio is still the bread and butter for every station in this project. A few years ago, the Knight Foundation did a classical music consumer segmentation study, and they found that radio is the portal. It’s the dominant avenue of public access to classical music in the United States. So we have a dual focus of figuring out how we can make sure we’re maximizing what we do right now, as well as moving forward and extending our brand onto other platforms.

We’ve been talking a lot about marketing. I’ve been asking people at stations across the country: what do you do to let people know you’re there? I talked to the station manager at All Classical Portland in Oregon, and he said, “We can’t afford billboards, but we did buy a vintage 1954 Chevy, and we drive it all over town. It’s got great speakers, it’s got our call letters on the side, and the 20-somethings love to take selfies of it.”

I do think classical music suffers from an image problem. We aren’t talking about an old, musty format, but a format that’s vibrant and moves people of all ages. KUSC in Los Angeles, in the first quarter of this year, had more listeners than any public radio station in the country. And that’s with a 24-hour classical format. Public radio news and information is a force in our culture, and in many markets, so is classical radio. It’s much more vibrant than many people realize.

Wende Persons ’79W (MS)

Home: New York City

Managing director of Classical Music Rising, a collaborative project of classical music radio stations nationwide to shape the future of classical radio; instructor of marketing the performing arts at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previous roles: senior consultant, 21C Media Group, with clients including Lincoln Center, New York Foundation for the Arts, and ArkivMusic.

First gig in arts management: Orchestra manager for the Eastman Philharmonia at the Heidelberg Castle Festival in Germany.

COMMENCEMENT

Tower Tassels

(Photo: Adam Fenster)

MORTARBOARD MOMENT: Tanveer Karim ’16, a physics and astronomy major from Queens, New York, poses on the tower of Rush Rhees Library as his friend Angelika Kropioski takes a photo. During the week before commencement, seniors and other students are invited to tour the iconic campus landmark.