Rochester Review

September–October 2016, Volume 79, No. 1

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, Monique Patenaude, Scott Sabocheck, Helene Snihur, Sofia Tokar, Dawn Wendt, and Brandon Vick

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

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

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

ISSN: 0035-7421

Copyright © 2016 University of Rochester

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

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Rochester Review:

Fantastic Finish

By Joel Seligman

We did it. By its end on June 30, 2016, The Meliora Challenge capital campaign had raised more than $1.373 billion, some 14 percent above its $1.2 billion stretch goal.

Not since 1924 has this University completed a comprehensive capital campaign, and the mobilization of outstanding volunteer and academic leadership made this one an unparalleled success. We achieved success across each of our objectives: We added 103 professorships; provided $225 million in student support; galvanized $857 million in construction, thanks to $129 million in lead gifts; tripled annual giving with more than $15.6 million in this past year; and created the remarkable George Eastman Circle, now with 3,351 members.

The Campaign’s success will have a lasting impact on our University.

During the Campaign, we installed outstanding faculty in endowed professorships in virtually every discipline. Patricia Sime, for example, was appointed the C. Jane Davis and C. Robert Davis Distinguished Professor in Pulmonary Medicine, and is an authority in the field of pulmonology best known for her basic and translational research of lung inflammation and scarring.

Ray Dorsey, the David M. Levy Professor in Neurology, is building a medical network for the 21st century for the millions of people who suffer from Parkinson’s disease. Narayana Kocherlakota, the Lionel W. McKenzie Professor of Economics, joined us in January 2016 after a distinguished academic career at Stanford and the University of Minnesota and recent service as president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank. Joanna Wu, the first Susanna and Evans Y. Lam Professor at the Simon Business School, focuses on international and United States financial reporting and accounting. Vera Gorbunova, the Doris Johns Cherry Professor, has done critical work in DNA repair, the aging process, and cancer resistance, using animal subjects as variegated as the naked mole rat and the sperm whale. Jamal Rossi is the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean of the Eastman School of Music. As of this writing faculty members are yet to be appointed to several endowed positions, including the Carol Anne Brink Professorship, which will support a faculty member in geriatric nursing and education, and the Ani and Mark Gabrellian Humanities Center Directorship. Endowed positions provide particularly consequential support to faculty research, scholarship, and teaching.

During our Meliora Challenge campaign we created 406 new endowed scholarships. These will be pivotal in helping us attract students who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Raymond Lopez-Rios ’17, recipient of the Peter Austin Bleyler and Marion Scott Richardson Bleyler Endowed Scholarship, came to Rochester to study optics. He served as Optical Society president and outreach coordinator for the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and has mentored high school students through the Minority Male Leadership Association.

When Patrick Towey ’14E, a pianist and recipient of the Louis P. Ciminelli Endowed Scholarship, was accepted at Eastman, he was thrilled but concerned about his financial realities. Being given a scholarship helped make his dreams of being a music teacher come true. Today, he is the band director at Plattsburgh High School in New York.

Akosua Korboe ’16M (MD) is the first recipient of the Levitan Family Endowed Scholarship. As an international student, she was not eligible to receive the same loans as others. This scholarship helped her overcome her financial obstacles and attend the School of Medicine and Dentistry. Her goal is to advance health care around the world, particularly in her native Ghana. Our campus has been transformed by capital projects made possible by the Campaign. During Meliora Weekend in October, we will dedicate the new Wegmans Hall, home to the Goergen Institute for Data Science, situated in the newly developed Hajim Science and Engineering Quadrangle.

The Humanities Center, whose creation was announced a year ago, will soon have a new renovated space in Rush Rhees Library. The center will further enrich the student experience of humanistic inquiry in an interdisciplinary setting. Technologies and collaborative modes of scholarship in this new space will deepen knowledge of the human experience.

Our Warner School has undertaken the creation of the Center for Urban Education Success. Coordinate with our partnership with East High School which began last year, the center will bring together Warner’s educational programs, community outreach, research about urban schools, and the University’s work at East to aid in the revitalization of K-12 urban education regionally, nationally, and globally. We aim to create replicable models of success.

The Campaign has enabled us to envision our Next Level of progress. We can build on the momentum and enthusiasm of The Meliora Challenge campaign. By 2020, we envision a University of Rochester that is one of the most outstanding research institutions in the United States, with pathbreaking initiatives in data science, neuromedicine and neuroscience, the humanities and the performing arts, and the University’s role in the community.

We look forward to engaging every constituency of our community in the next bold phase of our progress. Universities are permanently works in progress. We can all take enormous pride in the progress we recently have made. But in the spirit of Meliora, our challenge remains to be ever better.

Praise for Sports Medicine

Jim Mandelaro rightfully focuses on the college and professional affiliations of past and present Rochester sports medicine faculty (“Home Team Advantage,” July-August). But the impact of Rochester’s innovative sports medicine program extends much further.

In 1991, several orthopaedists told me that a failed repair of a severely torn Achilles tendon ended my involvement in sports. Disbelief led me to contact the Baltimore Orioles (then the parent club of our own Rochester Red Wings) and I asked their assistant general manager where they sent their ballplayers with a similar injury. Imagine my surprise when they told me the U of R, right in my own backyard.

Wayne Sebastianelli ’79, ’83M (MD), ’88M (Res) performed a then new procedure using a strip of calf muscle to create a “new” tendon. Several racquetball and squash championships later (including a trip to Harvard for the Squash Team Nationals), plus 25 years, the repair still holds up.

Neil Scheier ’88M (Res)

Clifton Springs, New York

Quiz Bowl Call Out

Review does such a nice job with recapping U of R sports teams. It would be nice to see annual inclusion of the Rochester Quiz Bowl team. In April, the team participated in the 2016 Interscholastic Championship Tournament, held in Rosemont, Illinois, and sponsored by the National Academic Quiz Tournaments, or NAQT. The team, featuring George Bastedo ’16, Henry Hawthorn ’19, Daniel Siever ’16, and Jack Zhang ’17, went 11–2 and finished ninth in a field of 31 in Division II. Hawthorn was named as a Division II all-star.

The team qualified for the championship tournament by winning the New York sectional championship tournament, held last February at the U of R. Finishing with a 12–0 record, the team posted wins over three separate squads from Cornell, as well as over teams from RPI, Hamilton, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, the University at Buffalo, and RIT. I directed the New York sectional championships, the first sectional championship held in upstate New York in several years. More information about NAQT and this year’s Interscholastic Championship Tournament can be found online at NAQT.com.

Scott Kroner ’89, ’91W (MS)

Rochester

lettersTHANK YOU, PROFESSOR MILLON: August Schau ’81, inspired by Millon, visited Teotíhuacan. (Photo: Courtesy of August Schau ’81)

Farewell to an Inspiring Professor

Thank you for printing the wonderful tribute to René Millon (“Pathbreaking Anthropologist,” May-June). Professor Millon captured the attention of this undergraduate engineering student so much that I talked my way into his seminar the following year. Thirty-eight years after he introduced me to Teotíhuacan, I was finally able to visit the pre-Columbian city in person.

August Schau ’81

Chicopee, Massachusetts

Men’s Dining Memories

In response to your call for anecdotes about the old Men’s Dining Center (“If These Walls Could Talk,” Class Notes, July- August), I have two.

When I was attending the U of R, I was president of Alpha Phi Omega and also the College Coordinating Council. The council provided student volunteers to local charities and transported them to the charities using Red Cross vehicles. Each year we ran a campus-wide wine and cheese party in the Men’s Dining Center to support these efforts. Since the drinking age was 18, we imported from the Finger Lakes wineries dozens of cases to serve the expected crowd of 1,500 thirsty students. We also purchased 100-pound wheels of New York state cheddar. We usually had entertainment, and the act I remember the most was Wilson Pickett.

Another anecdote was in my freshman year, when I was enlisted as a waiter for the Parents’ Weekend dinner. My parents were not attending, and I had never been a waiter before. After dropping an entire tray of tomato juice glasses on the floor, I started serving my tables their meals. The kitchen ran short of food and I had served only one side of the long tables. So I had one side of the table eating, with the other side of the table watching them until the kitchen found additional food to prepare!

Henry Fader ’68

Philadelphia

lettersA MEMORABLE TIME: Alumni identified themselves and friends in a photo from the Wilson Commons dedication, and shared memories about the building’s construction. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Wilson Commons Reflections

What a surprise to see my 40-years-younger self in the photo at the dedication of Wilson Commons (“Balcony View,” Class Notes, May-June). I am the one on the far right with his hands clasped and clearly happy to be finally in the building that was under construction virtually the entire time I was a student. As I was looking down from the balcony at I. M. Pei speaking at the dedication, how could I have known that just eight years later, I would be a staff architect at I. M. Pei and Partners in their New York office!

Richard Kadin ’76

New York City

The one thing I remember about the Wilson Commons dedication was the moment I. M. Pei, giving his speech, looked around the open area with what seemed to be both pride and wonder. That was a moving moment for me, and has stuck with me for 40 years.

Samuel Ofsevit ’77

Hartsdale, New York

lettersAT LONG LAST: A poster celebrating Wilson Commons referenced its lengthy gestation. (Photo: Courtesy of IRa Emanuel ’77)

After almost 40 years, although it seems like yesterday, I can finally spot a few people in a mystery picture (“Balcony View,” Class Notes, May-June). Second from left is Joan Perl Gray ’76, and next to her is Amy Zaiff Laek ’78N. Two down from Amy is Cindy Rizzo ’77. The brochure that Joan and Amy are holding was about all the features/layout of the new building.

This was a much-anticipated event, as this was the middle of our junior year and there had been construction on Wilson Commons since we started our freshman year. There was a covered, protected area (a “cattle chute”) next to the library and Wilson Commons that you needed to walk through. Among the many things written on its walls was someone’s graffiti, which ultimately became a poster that everyone who was there during this period will remember.

Richard Shorin ’77, ’78S (MBA)

Ambler, Pennsylvania

Brett Gold’s letter (July-August) reminded me of my own experiences with the construction of Wilson Commons.

I was the first chairman of the Wilson Commons program board, which brought programs to the new facility. In that capacity, I brought the idea of a Winter Carnival back to U of R. I was also the manager of the game room, which included the pinball machines in which so much money was spent and so much time wasted.

More germane to Brett’s letter, the graffiti he referenced—“The shortest distance between two points is the hole where Wilson Commons is”—was real. It was intended to be in the middle of student life, even if its construction got in the way. The graffiti was the basis for a poster celebrating the opening of the Commons, a copy of which was given to me by the student life office. I still have it. Thanks for the reminders.

Ira Emanuel ’77

Suffern, New York

Reconnecting with Track & Field

I’m writing to encourage members of the track and field teams from the 1960s to come to Meliora Weekend, October 6–9. It’s a chance to see each other and to celebrate the induction of our coach, Ev Phillips, into the U of R Athletic Hall of Fame on October 8. For details or just to reconnect with your old teammates, please contact me at drhandelsman@gmail.com.

Larry Handelsman ’66

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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.

Campaign Tops Fundraising Goal

Historic Meliora Challenge campaign raises more than $1.37 billion, exceeding initial goal.

campaignmainTHANK YOU! President and CEO Joel Seligman is joined by students in spelling out thanks to the more than 200,000 alumni, friends, faculty, staff, parents, and students who made gifts to The Meliora Challenge. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

The University is celebrating a milestone achievement this fall—the success of The Meliora Challenge, a $1.2 billion fundraising initiative.

The largest fundraising initiative in the University’s history, the effort serves as a platform for the University to achieve future goals, said Joel Seligman, president, CEO, and the G. Robert Witmer, Jr. University Professor.

“These accomplishments will help us ascend to the Next Level as one of the nation’s top research universities,” Seligman said. “We look forward to strengthening our national leadership in data science, neuromedicine, and clinical and translational research, and continuing to achieve excellence across the University—in undergraduate education, professional training, our health system, and the creative arts.”

As the Campaign came to a formal close on June 30, Advancement leaders announced a preliminary total of more than $1.37 billion, exceeding the goal set when the Campaign was publicly launched in 2011.

During this fall’s Meliora Weekend, October 6–9, the success of the Campaign, and what the effort means for the University community and Rochester’s future, will be highlighted. Additional celebratory events will occur throughout the coming year in select cities across the country.

Cochaired by University Trustees Cathy Minehan ’68 and Rich Handler ’83, the Campaign encompassed all aspects of the University, its schools, and programs. More than 200,000 alumni, friends, faculty, staff, parents, and students around the world made gifts to the University during the Campaign. Nearly every goal established for the Campaign was achieved. That includes support for student scholarships and faculty (see pages 10–11); facilities and infrastructure (pages 12–13); and new academic initiatives (pages 14–15).

As a major component of the Campaign, the Medical Center raised nearly $700 million for medical, nursing, and dental education, research, and patient care—almost $50 million more than its original goal.

Danny Wegman, chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, said the Campaign’s success has galvanized the University of Rochester family. “Together, we are transforming lives in Rochester and throughout the world.”

Larry Bloch ’75, a trustee who chairs the Advancement Committee, praised the combined efforts of donors and contributors as well as faculty and administrative leaders. “Our success is emblematic of a large and dedicated community of leaders and volunteers,” he said. “Their passion and enthusiasm for the University of Rochester is without bounds.”

Thomas Farrell ’88, ’90W (MS), senior vice president for Advancement, said the success of the Campaign is a milestone for Rochester. He thanked cochairs Minehan and Handler, as well as “the generosity of all our trustees, volunteers, and University leaders whose efforts inspired and engaged so many others.”

“This moment marks the start of a new phase in the University of Rochester’s evolution, one that will be driven by the remarkable philanthropy and ongoing engagement, advocacy, and giving that has become an integral part of the culture of this institution,” he said.

For Seligman the Campaign’s success represents a new era for Rochester: “This is a historic moment for everyone who cares so deeply about this University and our future.”

campaignmainSCHOLARSHIPS: Altogether, the Campaign raised more than $225 million in student support, including the establishment of 406 new endowed scholarships and fellowships. During commencement ceremonies in 2014, Shay Behrens ’14 graduated as a Handler Scholar, a scholarship program established through a gift of $25 million from University Trustee Rich Handler ’83, and his wife, Martha. The gift is the largest contribution for student scholarships in University history. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

campaignmainGOLISANO CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL: The new eight-story Golisano Children’s Hospital opened its doors in July 2015 to families like Danielle Scarborough, of Elba, New York, and her son, Hudson (above). A key part of the Medical Center’s component of The Meliora Challenge, the hospital is named for Paychex founder and philanthropist B. Thomas Golisano, who provided the lead gift of $20 million. The new hospital includes 52 private patient rooms and family-friendly spaces and designs (right) to welcome parents and their children. The hospital is also the first children’s hospital in the country to house an integrated PET-MRI scanning system, a medical imaging system that reduces radiation exposure while allowing for two different types of measurement to be taken at the same time. A second phase of the hospital project, which includes a new pediatric intensive care unit and a suite of specialized operating rooms (far right), is slated for completion in 2017. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

campaignmainNew Initiatives The Campaign raised more than $430 million to support programmatic and academic initiatives in areas such as data science, the humanities, and the performing arts. In early 2017, a new building, Wegmans Hall, will open as the home of the Goergen Institute for Data Science, a growing field in which students like Ling (Kelly) He ’17 (top left) and Ian Manzi ’18 (top right) are already pursuing degrees. The University also established a new Institute for Performing Arts and a new Humanities Center, where cultural historian Gerald Early (bottom photo) was the first guest lecturer. A professor of English and of African and Afro-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Early (center) spoke with Joan Shelley Rubin, the Dexter Perkins Professor in History and the acting director of the center, and President and CEO Joel Seligman before his presentation. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

campaignmainCAMPAIGN KICKOFF: At a 2011 Meliora Weekend celebration to formally launch The Meliora Challenge, guest speakers made presentations that drew on components of the University’s mission statement, Learn, Discover, Heal, Create—and Make the World Ever Better. Then a student, Emily Hart ’12 (above) focused her remarks on “Learn.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Meliora Milestones

2005 Joel Seligman is named 10th president of the University. In his first public address after taking office in July, he announces, “The campaign for the University of Rochester has begun.”

2008 Ed Hajim ’58, a longtime trustee who had been elected chair of the Board of Trustees a few months earlier, announces a $30 million commitment in October. In 2009, the Edmund A. Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences is named in his honor.

2011 A $20 million gift from Rochester entrepreneur and philanthropist B. Thomas Golisano kicks off plans for a new, $145 million Golisano Children’s Hospital, the largest single capital project in University history. Also in 2011: University Trustee Rich Handler ’83 and his wife, Martha, announce their intention to make a gift of $20 million that will raise their total giving to $25 million—the largest contribution to student scholarship in University history; and University Trustee E. Philip Saunders makes a $10 million gift to support research programs in muscular dystrophy, cancer, and translational medicine. The Saunders Research Building is named in recognition of the gift.

2014 Trustee Danny Wegman, CEO of Wegmans Food Markets, announces a $17 million gift from the Wegman Family Charitable Foundation: $10 million for a new data science building, named Wegmans Hall, and $7 million for Golisano Children’s Hospital.

2015 An $11 million commitment from Board Chair Emeritus Robert Goergen ’60 and his wife, Pamela, to support the Goergen Institute for Data Science, puts The Meliora Challenge over its $1.2 billion goal—15 months ahead of schedule.

2016 The Meliora Challenge raises more than $1.37 billion when the campaign officially concludes on June 30. The total exceeds the initial $1.2 billion goal by more than $170 million.

ORIENTATION

Shining Bright

candles (Photo: Adam Fenster)

CANDLELIT CLASS: New students gathered on the Eastman Quadrangle for the annual candlelight ceremony, one of several orientation events welcoming the Class of 2020 in August. The 1,368 students come from 49 states—all but Alaska—and 90 nations. At the Eastman School of Music, 140 new undergraduates arrived this fall.

LIVING HERE

Take a Bite Out of Rochester

Let a student foodie be your guide to eating well—but on the cheap—in Rochester.

By Rebecca Block ’18

rochestereatsORDER UP: (Clockwise from top) Among Block’s picks are a turkey panini from Muller’s Cider House; a flight from Muller’s; a make-your-own burger from Bar 145; and a grain bowl from Core Life Eatery. (Photo: Rebecca Block ’18)

Whether you’re an incoming freshman, a current student who hasn’t explored much of Rochester lately, or a graduate coming back for a visit, here are 10 places that should be on your dining to-do list:

1. Bar 145 in College Town

71 Celebration Drive Rochester, NY 14642

(585) 360-2468

Bar145rochester.com

Go on Wednesdays for their $6 burgers and martini specials. You can create your own burger or order from their array of signature burgers, such as the balsamic bleu on a pretzel roll, or the Monte Cristo burger with ham, brie, fruit preserve, and red pepper garlic spread. Enjoy it with a refreshing “flirtini,” made with Smirnoff vodka, triple sec, pineapple juice, and sparkling wine.

2. Swiftwater Brewing Co.

378 Mt. Hope Avenue Rochester, NY 14620

(585) 530-3471

Swiftwaterbrewing.com

Located just off campus, near the Ford Street Bridge, Swiftwater is a perfect short walk away on a nice fall day. Not only for beer lovers, the place also caters to those who enjoy cider, wine, and good food. The menu features their popular cheese board, stromboli, creamy brie and cheddar grilled cheese, and strawberry, blueberry, and rhubarb crumble with vanilla ice cream.

The Oldies Are Still Goodies

If you’re feeling nostalgic for the oldies but goodies, don’t worry—you can still get them. Whether you’re a graduate or a student looking to experience the foodie scene that alumni had back in the day, here are some dishes you won’t want to miss:

A. Garbage plates from Nick Tahou’s

320 West Main Street Rochester, NY 14608

(585) 436-0184

Garbageplate.com

B. Genesee cream ale from Genesee Brew House

25 Cataract Street Rochester, NY 14605

(585) 263-9200

Geneseebeer.com

C. Ribs, wings, or a chicken and biscuit dinner at Country Sweet

1691 Mt. Hope Avenue Rochester, NY

(585) 244-3200

Countrysweet.com

D. All-day breakfast (especially after midnight) at Jay’s Diner

2612 West Henrietta Road Rochester, NY 14623

(585) 424-3710

Jaysdiner.com﻿﻿

3. Jim’s on Main

785 E. Main Street Rochester, NY 14605

(585) 442-4271

Jimsonmain.com

We all love a good brunch. Jim’s offers a satisfying one that won’t do a number on your suffering college-student bank account. Known for their 2-2-2: two eggs any style, two pancakes or French toast, and bacon, sausage, or ham for only $5.25. (Might as well buy another one for later!) They are also open for lunch, with options such as club, deli, and hot sandwiches, wraps, melts, super salads, charbroiled delights, and homemade specialties, all below $9.

4. Crepe N’Go

651 Monroe Avenue Rochester, NY 14607

(585) 417-5543

Yelp.com/biz/crepe-ngo-rochester

Looking for some more good grub that won’t hurt your wallet? Try out this new northern Chinese street-style creperie, serving crepes with your choice of savory fillings, including fried tofu, spicy chicken, bulgogi beef, cumin lamb, coconut shrimp, pork belly, and more. Crepes range from $4 to $9.

5. Brown Hound Downtown

500 University Avenue Rochester, NY 14607

(585) 506-9725

Brownhoundbistro.com

Serving lunch and dinner during the week at the Memorial Art Gallery, Brown Hound is known for a weekend brunch that includes ricotta pancakes, a country bistro eggs Benedict, strawberry cheesecake French toast, New Orleans–inspired Cajun shrimp, and a croque-madame.

6. California Rollin’ II

695 Park Avenue Rochester, NY 14607

(585) 355-4066

Californiarollin.com

Get the freshest, most delicious sushi to go. You can customize a traditional sushi roll, or spice things up with a bowl or even a burrito. Yes—a sushi burrito. Go for lunch before 3 p.m. and get the special deal of three rolls for $15.

7. Pizzeria Favo

3400 Monroe Avenue Rochester, NY 14618

(585) 310-7383

Pizzeriafavo.com

Customize your pizza, starting with the choice of traditional, ancient grain, or gluten-free crust, and unlimited fresh toppings. Don’t stop there—get some gelato to finish off the meal. Go for Monday Pazzia (Madness), for specials such as $4 beer and wine, and BYO wine with no corkage fee.

8. Muller’s Cider House

1344 University Avenue #180 Rochester, NY 14607

(585) 287-5875

Mullersciderhouse.com

With more than 100 different types of ciders from Scotland, Spain, Germany, Canada, England, France, Ireland, and the United States, you’ll find a cider that speaks to your taste buds. Enjoy your cider with a side of homemade sweet and salty kettle corn, or if you’re more hungry, choose from an array of soups, salads, small plates, and sandwiches. Try the Elvis: creamy peanut butter, fresh sliced banana, crispy bacon, and a touch of honey between sourdough bread, and served with a lemon and dill cucumber salad or a side of—there it is again—kettle corn.

9. I-Square Market

400 Bakers Park Irondequoit, NY, 14617

(585) 266-1001

https://i-square.us/

The new “food hall” includes the Market Grill, Pasta Cucina, Stir Coffee, the Reserve Wine Bar, I-Scream Ice Cream, and Hong Kong One Chinese. This is a place that will literally please anyone.

10. Core Life Eatery

2373 W. Ridge Road Rochester, NY 14626

(585) 484-8558

Eatatcore.com

Stop at Core Life to get a nutritious meal without skimping on taste. Their menu offers green bowls, grain bowls, and bone broth bowls, all customizable. Try the Thai chicken and rice noodle bowl with Napa cabbage, almonds, broccoli, cucumbers, cilantro, and Thai cashew dressing. Or, if you’re a Caesar salad fan, get their kale Caesar chicken salad for a healthy comfort-food alternative.

A Rochester native, Rebecca Block ’18, is pursuing a degree in public health with concentrations in studio art and environmental science. She is a writer for the University of Rochester section of Spoon University, UR.spoonuniversity.com/chapter/ur/, where her posts can be found at UR.spoonuniversity.com/author/rblock/.

MUSIC

Eastman on Tour

When classes end, Eastman School of Music students don’t put their instruments away, of course. Instead, they take to the highways and the skies, headed to musical venues around the country and the globe. This summer, groups found themselves teaching and playing for ardent young saxophonists in China; performing in castles, churches, courtyards, and parks in some of Europe’s most musical cities; and sending music reverberating through caves and soaring over mountaintops with original pieces composed in tribute to the U.S. National Park Service’s centennial, in a tour spanning from the Great Smoky Mountains to Mt. Rainier.

eastmanOPEN AIR: Eastman musicians played atop Hawksbill Peak in Shenandoah National Park during the “Music in the American Wild” tour. (Photo: Geoff Sheil)

UNITED STATES

Music in the American Wild

How do you say happy birthday to the country’s national parks? For Eastman students, alumni, and faculty, the answer was “Music in the American Wild,” a special 12-venue concert tour of new music inspired by the parks. Eleven composers and seven performers took their art onto mountaintops, through forests, and into caves, in celebration of the U.S. National Park Service’s centennial. The tour took the musicians to seven national parks—including Mammoth Cave, the Great Smoky Mountains, and the North Cascades.

eastmanHOMETOWN TRIBUTE: Wind ensemble Harmonie visited Salzburg, Mozart’s birthplace. The group recreates the kind of mobile, flexible ensemble that was popular in his day. (Photo: Kevin Holzman)

EUROPE

Eastman Wind Ensemble Harmonie

A subset of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, Harmonie is a wind octet: two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, and two horns. The undergraduates and graduate students who make up the group this summer toured Austria, the Czech Republic, and Germany, topping off their trip with a performance at the Mozartfest in Würtzburg. Among many memorable moments in their travels to historic concert venues was a humble one: when their bus to Salzburg had engine trouble on the German Autobahn, they broke out their instruments as they waited for help, treating passing drivers to an impromptu concert.

eastmanON TOP: Members of the innovative, conductorless Eastman Saxophone Project climbed the Great Wall during their summer tour of China. (Photo: Courtesy of Eastman Saxophone Project)

CHINA

Eastman Saxophone Project

The renowned all-saxophone group toured China in July. They taught aspiring saxophonists at the Shanghai Summer Youth Saxophone Camp and gave a concert, played from memory, of nearly their entire repertory. In Beijing, they performed with the Shandong University of the Arts Saxophone Ensemble and traveled with that group to play in the city of Jinan, and then went on to the seaside town of Ningbo. Myles Boothroyd ’15E (MM), who is pursuing his doctorate, called the trip “an invigorating experience to perform with other artists when the only language we share is music.”

Love Is All You Need

A new book argues that Goethe was a startlingly modern thinker about what makes a family.

gustafsonFAMILY AFFAIR: Gustafson chose a family portrait by American colonial artist Charles Wilson Peale (above) for the cover of her book because it was contemporaneous with Goethe; depicts a child at the center of a family, as occurs in Goethe’s works; and shows combinations of adult males and females bonding in a family context. (Photo: The Peale Family (1773–1809), Charles Wilson Peale/Collection of the New York Historical Society)

On the face of it, Johann Goethe—the German novelist, poet, and playwright who lived from the second half of the 18th century through the first 32 years of the 19th—was a man of his times, a leading figure in European classicism and romanticism.

And yet he also speaks with striking immediacy to contemporary questions about what constitutes a family, says Susan Gustafson, the Karl F. and Bertha A. Fuchs Professor of German Studies and author of a new book, Goethe’s Families of the Heart (Bloomsbury Academia, 2016).

gustafsonFAMILY TIES: Johann Goethe (above) was intrigued by different family configurations and suggested throughout his works that “the fundamental essence of family is love,” says Susan Gustafson, author of Goethe’s Families of the Heart. (Photo: GL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Goethe’s texts are filled with fractured relationships—parents who try to force their children into advantageous marriages, children who must choose between their own desires and familial acceptance, and lives twisted by shame and secrecy.

But while scholarship has focused on Goethe’s broken families, Gustafson’s attention was caught by something else: the alternative families that his characters construct for themselves.

“The main thing he’s claiming is that the fundamental essence of family is love,” she says.

In the 1796 coming-of-age novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, or Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Goethe’s protagonist tries to exchange his future as a businessman for a life in the theater. He wanders the countryside, sometimes connecting with women, and sometimes with men, in a series of fluid, nonexclusive relationships. And he encounters many children, one of whom, named Felix, he suspects may be his biological son.

He “immediately connects to the children through his feelings of love, adopting them into his family,” Gustafson says.

The stories embedded within the novel are about people learning what family is and how to build relationships with others. “He describes it in terms of love—he’s in love with these people,” she says. “At one point, he’s with another man, and he has three children. Felix is one, and two others he has brought in as he’s traveling. And he says, ‘Das ist meine wunderbare Familie’— ‘This is my wonderful family.’”

In the 1821 sequel, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, or Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, the character concludes that his purpose in life is to understand what holds people apart and remove those obstacles.

Goethe’s project, Gustafson suggests, was similar. She cites French theorist Michel Foucault’s argument that medical, legal, religious, and other forms of social discourse together created a definition of homosexuality. But as dominant discourses emerge, defining reality in certain ways, so, too, do alternatives. “It’s going to open the door for someone to say, ‘Wait a minute—there’s another way to think about this.’ And that’s what I’m claiming Goethe is actually doing,” she says.

A man of science as well as letters, Goethe brought to bear on his writing one of the main scientific interests of his day, the interaction of chemicals. His 1809 novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, or Elective Affinities—the term at the time for chemicals’ tendencies to combine with some substances but not others—explores the idea in reference to human relationships.

He’s considering questions that are in the foreground today, Gustafson says: “He brings up issues such as, can two men or two women be couples and bring up children? Are biological families always good? Can adoptive families be as good as biological families?” And he’s showing that the configurations of families aren’t what matters, she says. “What matters is the love.”

In Elective Affinities, two couples rearrange themselves so that, in the end, the two women are together, as are the two men. Scholars have tried to create a taxonomy of friendship and love in his work. “But Goethe doesn’t say anything like that,” says Gustafson. He describes how the couples move into different configurations. “But he doesn’t say one arrangement is better than the other, more likely than the other. He just says, this happens.”

Goethe’s writings found opposition in their day. His play Stella: A Play for Lovers (1776) originally ended with a man and two women in a ménage a trois. Audiences were outraged, and the play was removed from the stage. In 1806, Goethe rewrote it as Stella: A Tragedy. In that version, the man shoots himself and one of the women poisons herself.

“And that was OK,” says Gustafson. “That one, he could show.”

But as he revised the ending, Goethe also reworked the rest of the play, strengthening the women’s expressions of love for each other. Scholars have been thrown off the scent of his project, Gustafson says, by a 1983 translation into English of what ostensibly was the 1806 text—but actually was the 1776 text with the 1806 ending tacked on.

“Goethe made 190 changes [to the 1776 text when he republished it 30 years later], but the only change they put in there was the ending, and so scholars have focused on that,” she says. Gustafson now has a translation of both texts under contract for publication.

Critics have read Goethe with an eye to relationships between men. In fact, Gustafson’s own previous book—Men Desiring Men: The Poetry of Same-Sex Identity and Desire in German Classicism (Wayne State University Press, 2002)—was in that vein. She says her new book extends that analysis, drawing in issues of women and families.

Gustafson’s reading of the author is influenced by her own life. She adopted two children and says her experiences heightened her awareness of representations of adoption in his writing.

“Throughout his literary work, Goethe brings up issues that people still struggle with,” she says. “And he’s basically saying all kinds of families are equal.”

—Kathleen McGarvey, with Bob Marcotte

Who Am I? Where Am I Going? And How Am I Going to Get There?

The professional advisors in the College Center for Advising Services are there to help.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

obrienKEY ADVISORS: O’Brien (left) and Kraus have shaped the College’s approach to academic advising during years of growth and change in higher education and in the students it serves. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Students who once saved existential questions for philosophy class are increasingly asking them in places such as the College Center for Advising Services.

The paths leading to the center’s home at 312 Lattimore Hall are among the most well trod on the River Campus. In its labyrinth of rooms, as well as in nearby corridors, a team of more than 20 professional academic advisors help students on matters from the mundane—should I take this class on the S/F option?—to the fundamental—is this major, these plans, these ideas I’ve adopted, really who I am?

The center, known by its acronym CCAS, sits at the hub of a network of offices staffed with professionals who work collaboratively to help college students take advantage of opportunities they might not know about, and to get assistance when they need it. (You can find a list of them on the Web at Rochester.edu/studentlife/services.html.) During the 2015–16 academic year, CCAS advisors held more than 5,000 face-to-face meetings with students, and responded to thousands more e–mail and telephone queries from students, faculty, and other University staff.

Marcy Kraus is the director of the center as well as the dean of freshmen. The parent of an alumnus herself (her daughter, Leah, graduated in 2009), Kraus has worked in CCAS advising students since 1999. Her training includes a doctorate in psychology, which is fitting, considering that students will often approach academic advisors with complex personal problems.

“The range of concerns that students bring to us are much greater,” she says, than in previous generations. “Students have health issues, mental health issues, family and personal concerns, and a lot of financial concerns.”

In some ways, the skills of a good advisor are similar to those of a good clinician. In addition to knowing the academic rules of the College and the resources available to students, a good advisor, according to Kraus, “is able to listen without judgment, demonstrate empathy, and recognize how to effectively help students who are struggling with difficult situations.”

Kraus took over leadership of CCAS in 2009, after founding director Suzanne O’Brien took on other roles as associate dean of the College. O’Brien retired from the University this summer (see “Farewell, and Meliora,” facing page), leaving her position as associate dean to Alan Czaplicki, and endowing her former position at CCAS. Later this fall, Kraus will assume the title of Suzanne Jagel O’Brien Director of the College Center for Advising Services.

O’Brien began advising students in the early 1970s, working with Miriam (Mim) Rock ’42, then an assistant to the dean. When O’Brien was named the first director of a newly formed academic advising office, among her early actions was successfully petitioning to change the classification of the academic advisor position from secretarial to professional. Professional academic advising was relatively new at the time, though, and not everyone was sold on the idea.

Suzanne Jagel O’Brien ’59

Career Highlights

BA, English, Phi Beta Kappa

Secretary, Center for Brain Research, 1961–70

Director, College Center for Advising Services, 1973–2009

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, 1986–2009

Associate Dean of the College, 2009–16

Major Awards

Goergen Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Learning, 2003

Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award, 2007

Witmer Award for Distinguished Service, 2014

College Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Learning, 2016

“Faculty in general were very skeptical of staff people—humph!—doing advising,” says O’Brien. “We worked very hard to establish the advising office as a place where students and faculty alike could get reliable, accurate, and useful information, always based on the rules set by the faculty.”

Attitudes have changed starkly since then. “The expectation now is that professional advisors know how to do the job, and the faculty contact the advisors to find out what the rules are,” she says.

There have been additional changes, both in the student population and in students’ approach to their education. While the center’s advisors have long made meeting the needs of underrepresented minority students a priority—working with staff in the Office of Minority Student Affairs to do so—diversity has increased more recently in other categories, such as international students, to name just one.

“The advising staff has grown because we’ve been asked to take on a greater level of responsibility for individual populations of students,” Kraus says. In working with an increasingly multicultural student body, advisors need what she calls “cultural competence,” while also guarding against assumptions about individual students that are based on broad demographic data.

Undergraduates also worry about their career prospects. That’s not necessarily new, but Kraus notes that students are taking on more significant levels of debt than in the past. Understandably, she says, they want to choose majors they’re confident will pay off. Widely held assumptions about particular majors, however, often are not supported by data or by the experiences of many alumni. But merely repeating data and anecdotes doesn’t effectively address students’ concerns either.

“The 21st-century academic advisor needs to be able to talk to students realistically, but confidently” about career prospects, says Kraus. This year, she’s working with Joe Testani, the director of the Gwen M. Greene Career and Internship Center, to expand collaborations between the two offices. Career and academic advisors have traditionally held separate conversations with students. Academic advisors have tended to see part of their role as encouraging students to view their liberal education as something valuable and important apart from their career goals.

Kraus offers a hint of how such coordination might go, through a story about a student who came to see her last year. The student badly wanted to study Japanese, but was afraid of what her parents might say. Kraus and a counterpart in the Greene Center worked together to help her see “that if you want to major in Japanese, there’s a place for you in the job market.

“We want to do a better job of helping students connect the dots,” Kraus says.

Vice President, Senior Advisor to the President, and University Dean Paul Burgett interviewed O’Brien for the University’s Living History Project in 2014. The videotaped interview, along with a transcription, can be found at http://livinghistory.lib.rochester.edu/obrien.

Farewell, and Meliora

obriensideCOLLEGE LEADER: O’Brien served students for more than 40 years. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

It was elbow-to-elbow in the Meliora Grand Ballroom last April as President and CEO Joel Seligman remarked, “This is an amazing turnout for the right reasons.”

The occasion was the retirement of Suzanne Jagel O’Brien ’59 after 55 years at the University—and nearly 60 years since she first arrived on campus as a freshman from Queens, New York. Rising to speak, O’Brien responded, “I hope I don’t disappear in a puddle of tears.”

From her first job at the University, as a secretary, O’Brien advanced to become founding director of the College Center for Advising Services and associate dean of the College, where she played pivotal roles in two of the institution’s most distinctive features: the Rochester Curriculum and the Take Five Scholars Program.

Her career path was not as easy as it may have looked, according to Beth Jörgensen, a professor of Spanish, who worked closely with O’Brien as chair of the College’s Board on Academic Honesty. “Suzanne came up through this university as a non-faculty member, as a non-PhD, as a woman, when that was not an easy way to make your gifts, your contributions, really valued,” Jörgensen told the gathering.

O’Brien served alongside faculty members on the College curriculum committee for nearly her entire tenure as CCAS director. “I’ve had a front seat from which to view the academic changes that have taken place,” she said. She called the Rochester Curriculum “the most revolutionary” change she’d participated in, and added, wryly, that it positions the College “still ahead of most everyone else, trapped as they are in their narrow, prescriptive curricula.” She noted that she was especially proud of having served on the committee that recommended the establishment of the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies.

O’Brien’s hands-on role in building and mentoring a staff of professional advisors, as well as her practically Talmudic mastery of the complex rules of the College, made her something of a legend on the River Campus. Summing up that legacy was Richard Feldman, professor of philosophy and dean of the College.

“I’m pretty much of a soft touch, willing to bend almost any rule as a result of a passionate appeal from a student,” Feldman admitted. “Suzanne repeatedly reminds me to think of all the other students who might have made similar requests if they had only thought to appeal. She is unwavering in her commitment to fairness and equity, adamant that we stick to our principles.

“But at the same time, she’s routinely able to find some hitherto-unknown—to me, at least—rule to invoke in order to deal in a fair and principled way with students who have genuine needs. She has an unmatched combination of integrity and compassion.

“To a rare leader who embodies the spirit of Meliora in the most profound way,” he concluded in a final toast, “thank you for your extraordinary service.” —Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)﻿﻿

Little Vessels Shoulder a Big Responsibility

discoverBRAIN-WIDE WEB: New research shows that a web of capillaries permeating the brain makes sure blood goes where it’s needed for brain activity. (Photo: Photo Researchers Inc.)

The human brain is an energy hog—making up just 2 percent of the body, it nevertheless consumes 20 percent of the body’s oxygen supply.

New research in the journal Neuron reveals how the brain is able to meet such massive energy demands: with a “just in time” system that fuels nerve cells.

Scientists have long understood that there’s a direct correlation between brain activity and blood flow. Imaging technologies have shown that when neurons start to fire, there’s an accompanying increase in blood flow to the active area of the brain.

But how does the blood circulation system “know” when it needs to ramp up blood flow to meet the increased demand?

While some scientists had theorized that arteries—the main blood supply route into the brain—were responsible, it’s actually a vast web of small capillaries permeating the brain tissue that play a central role, according to study author Maiken Nedergaard, the Frank P. Smith Professor of Neurosurgery and codirector of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine.

She and her team demonstrated that blood cells can sense when the environment outside the capillaries is low in oxygen and respond by rushing to deliver more. It’s a phenomenon that’s made possible by the capillaries’ small size. Their thin walls mean that oxygen levels in adjacent brain tissue are mirrored within the capillaries, which can then signal to red blood cells to spring into action.

The findings could have implications for a number of neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease. Blood flow in the brains of people with the disorder is impaired when compared to healthy brains, researchers have observed—and difficulty delivering the oxygen necessary for brain activity may help explain cognitive difficulties that are the hallmark of the disease.

—Mark Michaud

Hearing Test May Identify Autism Risk

Researchers have identified an inner-ear deficiency in children with autism that may affect their ability to recognize speech. Published in the journal Autism Research, the findings could ultimately be used to identify children at risk for the disorder at an early age.

While many signs of autism spectrum disorder are present before age two, most children with the condition aren’t diagnosed until after age four, which means that corrective therapies are started later, potentially reducing their impact.

Most tests for autism rely on speech and are often ineffective in children who are very young or who have communication delays.

The study—coauthored by Loisa Bennetto, associate professor of psychology, and Anne Luebke, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience—used a test similar to the screening that many newborns undergo to check for hearing problems. A highly sensitive microphone can detect tiny sounds that are created by the inner ear in response to certain noises, allowing researchers to measure hearing deficiencies in an inexpensive, noninvasive way that doesn’t rely on verbal responses.

Although there is no association between hearing problems and autism, difficulty in processing speech may contribute to primary symptoms of the disease.

—Mark Michaud﻿﻿

Terahertz Waves May Allow a Window from Afar

Here’s the scene: a suspicious package is found in a public place. Police are called in, and they clear the area. Forced to work out of range of possible danger, and unable to peer inside the parcel, they fear the worst—and detonate the package.

But new research may, in the not-too-distant future, make possible the sensing of chemical, biological, and explosive materials from a safe distance.

Electromagnetic waves called terahertz waves—which fall between the infrared and microwave bands on the electromagnetic spectrum—can penetrate certain solid objects that are opaque to visible light, creating images of what’s hidden from view. And unlike traditional x-rays, the waves don’t harm human tissue.

But water molecules in the air absorb terahertz waves, weakening them as they travel. For the waves to be more useful, scientists have to find a way to make them more effective over greater distances.

And that’s what Rochester researchers have begun to do. Using an exotic laser beam called a ring-Airy beam, the team created a terahertz wave more than five times stronger than waves generated by conventional means.

The scientists were then able to detect a terahertz wave of that power at distances up to 100 feet.

Kang Liu, a PhD student in optics, led the project with Xi-Cheng Zhang, the M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics and the director of the Institute of Optics, in collaboration with a research group from Greece. The journal Optica has published their results.

The next step, says Liu, is to manipulate the laser beams to create even stronger terahertz beams over even greater distances. —Peter Iglinski

What Does Meaning Look Like in the Brain?

Think of the word “coffee.” For most people, it evokes a network of associations—color, taste, smell, and more. One small word is rich with “sensory, emotional, and social aspects,” says Rajeev Raizada, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences.

And now scientists can see—and even predict—the patterns of brain activity elicited by words within the context of sentences.

Raizada is the senior author of a new study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, that used functional magnetic resonance imaging to decode and forecast the areas of the brain that are activated in response to particular sentences.

The team’s predictions are correct on average 70 percent of the time, says Andrew Anderson, a research fellow in Raizada’s lab. He led the study, which may contribute key advances to scientists’ understanding of how information is represented throughout the brain.

Previous research had focused almost exclusively on single words. Anderson and his collaborators moved the focus to predicting neural patterns for words within sentences. And they invented a new way to map the associations of words with patterns of brain activity.

Researchers say the results of the study may eventually lead to help for people with problems producing language, such as those who have experienced traumatic brain injuries or stroke.

—Monique Patenaude

Come on, Baby, (Re)Light My Fire

How can longtime couples keep the spark alive? Researchers say something called “responsiveness” may be key—and it comes into play through seemingly mundane interactions.

“Our research shows that partners who are responsive to each other outside the bedroom are able to maintain their sexual desire,” says Gurit Birnbaum, who completed postdoctoral work at Rochester and is now a psychology professor at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. The study, coauthored by Harry Reis, professor of psychology, was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The research began as an inquiry into what psychologists call the “intimacy-desire paradox.”

People tend to strive for intimacy and familiarity in their relationships, researchers note, but such close bonds don’t seem to foster desire. Previous studies hadn’t established whether emotional intimacy promotes or undermines sexual desire—and now Reis and Birnbaum’s research suggests that, at least in certain circumstances, there may not be a paradox at all.

Intimacy alone doesn’t fuel or hamper desire, they found. Instead, what matters is intimacy’s meaning in the larger context of a partnership.

Responsive couples are willing to invest resources in their relationships and show understanding at a deep level. Responsiveness, itself a kind of intimacy, is most likely to encourage desire because it conveys the impression that a partner is worth pursuing—an effect particularly reflected in women’s perceptions of themselves and others.

“Sexual desire thrives on increasing intimacy, and being responsive is one of the best ways to instill this elusive sensation over time,” Birnbaum says.

—Monique Patenaude

Mental Health and Substance Treatment Services Expanded

The University has implemented several changes and enhancements to its services for students needing mental health support. The changes are designed to ensure that students can access services easily, effectively, and promptly.

The revisions follow a two-year review of policies and procedures for counseling and mental health care, drug and alcohol abuse prevention, and addiction treatment.

Among the changes are expanded case management at the University Counseling Center, expanded coverage and staffing for alcohol and drug treatment, and more educational resources dedicated to prevention. Counseling center hours for the Eastman School and the Medical Center have been extended, and additional counseling staff are now available in the evenings on the River Campus.

For more information on the services available through the University Counseling Center, visit Rochester.edu/ucc.

New Dean Named for Graduate Studies in AS&E

Melissa Sturge-Apple ’92, an associate professor of psychology, has been named dean of graduate studies in Arts, Sciences & Engineering, subject to confirmation by the Board of Trustees.

Sturge-Apple succeeds Wendi Heinzelman, who recently became dean of the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences.

She joined the psychology department as an assistant professor in 2009, after her appointment in 2006 as a research associate at the Mt. Hope Family Center, which provides evidence-based intervention and prevention services to at-risk children and families in the Rochester community. Her research examines how family relationships affect child development. She also codirects the Rochester Center for Research on Children and Families. Her work has resulted in more than 50 publications coauthored with students and collaborators.

inbriefHONORED: Highland Hospital has been recognized as a top regional hospital in a national ranking. (Photo: Medical Center )

Highland Hospital Earns ‘Best Regional Hospital’ Ranking

U.S. News & World Report has recognized Highland Hospital, a part of UR Medicine, as a “best regional hospital” in its 2016–17 rankings of U.S. hospitals. Of nearly 5,000 hospitals evaluated, only about 10 percent earned the designation. In addition, Highland received “high performing” rankings for five types of adult care, including heart failure, colon cancer surgery, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hip replacement, and knee replacement.﻿﻿

Rochester Tapped for National Initiative to Improve Residency Training

The Medical Center is one of just eight physician-training grounds chosen to lead a four-year, nationwide effort to improve residency training for doctors.

Called “Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments,” the initiative is led by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Diane Hartman, the senior associate dean for Graduate Medical Education, leads Rochester’s effort.

The council chose the Medical Center for its proposal to integrate its residents—of whom there are more than 750 in 80 programs—into an existing quality-and-safety-improvement model that has been shown to be highly successful at improving patient outcomes.

Other medical school and teaching hospitals selected to take part include the University of Chicago, the Cleveland Clinic, and the National Children’s Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

ASK THE ARCHIVIST

Are D’Lions Still Rampant?

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

ataSUITED UP: Wearing their signature white blazers, D’Lions are ready to greet freshmen in a 1969 Interpres photo. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

I was in D’Lions, a women’s service club made up of sophomores who provided all sorts of assistance to freshmen. It was an honor society for which you were chosen. I’m wondering how long it continued, and if it is still around. I’d be surprised if it were, but that would be nice.—Diane Tolomeo ’70, Victoria, British Columbia

Like their namesake, D’Lions can still be found on the River Campus: 2016 marks the group’s 60th anniversary, and a remarkable 1,625 alumni list it among their undergraduate activities in the online alumni directory, the Rochester Alumni Exchange (rax.rochester.edu).

As you note, D’Lions got their start as a sophomore women’s honorary service group in the spring of 1956. The timing is significant—in the fall of 1955, the women joined the men on the River Campus, where there was already a well-established cadre of “honoraries,” including Mendicants (juniors), and Keidaeans (seniors). Up until the time of the merger, the College for Women had had only one honor society for seniors, called the Marsiens (and it really is pronounced like the name for the inhabitants of the red planet).

Need History?

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

For sophomore men, there was Yellow Key (not to be confused with Golden Key International Honor Society). D’Lions and Yellow Key members had similar responsibilities relating to hospitality: to welcome freshmen and help them move in, to usher at special events like commencement ceremonies and the Christmas concert, and to conduct campus tours for prospective students.

Wearing white or navy blue blazers with the University shield on the pocket—jackets that were popular with many students—these select sophomores were the student organizers of University Day, an opportunity for high school seniors to visit the campus and see what life as a student would be like. The very first University Day—later called “Open Campus”—was held in 1931 on both the River and Prince Street campuses, with the Keidaeans and Marsiens as student organizers.

In the 1970s, the number of campus tours given as part of the admissions process increased, but the number of available guides decreased. The Yellow Key Society made its last appearance in the 1973 Interpres and may have ended in 1976. To meet demand and also to provide more consistency in the content of the tours, the Admissions office established a dedicated group of volunteer tour guides. In 1978, the group renamed itself the Meridian Society, after the marker on the Eastman Quadrangle. The meridian marker is engraved with the campus’s longitude and latitude. In a 1982 Campus-Times piece, Rose Antos ’84 wrote, “The marker tells people where the UR is in relation to the world, but the tour guide . . . can lead people . . . in a way the marker never can.” During 2015–16, 96 Meridians were on call to give over 4,000 scheduled tours.

D’Lions remained predominantly a women’s group into the 1980s. A 1985 Campus-Times article written by Duncan Fuller ’87 reported that 14 of the 66 D’Lions that year were male. When he and his roommate went to apply, “we got a rather funny look from the girl at the info desk. She’d probably never seen a couple of guys pick up a D’Lion application before, for it has always been left to sophomore women.”

According to its current Students’ Association page, the purpose of D’Lions is to “promote community spirit within the residence halls and the University as a whole, and help incoming students with their transition to campus.” They also “plan programs that the entire campus can take part in,” including blood drives and Wilson Day, the College’s annual day of community service.

In “The Perks of Being a D’Lion” (http://enrollment.rochester.edu/blog/the-perks-of-being-a-dlion/), a post for an Admissions blog maintained by students, Sophie Zhang ’17 notes that being in D’Lions is “a stepping stone toward being an RA” and that the experience is no longer reserved only for sophomores. At this year’s College orientation, the Class of 2020 was greeted by D’Lions, with 39 students on its current roster.

SEASON PREVIEW

What’s in Store for the Yellowjackets?

Rochester’s athletic teams gear up for 2016–17.

By Dennis O’Donnell

sports (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

The 2015–16 athletic season was a banner year for Rochester. Nine sports were represented at the NCAA championships, and squash finished second nationally. The Yellowjackets hope to do just as well—if not better—this year.

Fall Sports

Men’s cross country: Rochester has six of its top seven runners back this year, and three men who finished in the top half of the field at the UAA championships will lead the way: Dan Nolte ’17, Eric Franklin ’17, and Forest Hangen ’19. Rochester will challenge for a top-five finish at UAAs and at the regional meet.

Women’s cross country: Rochester finished 14th at the national meet last year, second at the UAAs—the best finish in 25 years—and fifth at the NCAA Atlantic regionals. Look for Anne Peterson ’17, Samantha Kitchen ’17, Rachel Bargabos ’19, and Audrey McCarthy ’17 to be among the leaders weekly.

Field hockey: For the second time in school history, Rochester reached the NCAA Elite 8 last year, finishing 18–6. There are 19 veterans on this year’s team, 10 of whom played in 20 or more matches. Kiran Sundaram ’18 and Gabrielle Cantley ’18 will wear the goaltenders’ gear. The defense is mostly intact, led by Tiffany White ’17 and Lexie Wood ’17 as backfielders. The midfield will be led by Sayaka Abe ’17, an all-region honoree. Attackers Callie Fisher ’17, Claire Dickerson ’18, Olivia Denny ’18, and Samantha Dow ’18 combined for 19 goals and 10 assists last year.

Football: Rochester wants to capitalize on the dual skills of quarterback Dan Bronson ’18, who passed for nine touchdowns last year and ran for three more. He’ll be throwing to a big cast, including Kyle Allegrini ’18, Nick Perpignan ’17, David Angie ’18, and Dan DiLoreto ’19. Shane Saucier ’17 will head up the backfield. Trevor Robinson-Grey ’17 and David Berry ’17 lead the blockers, while Matt Pisano ’17 and Ricky Sparks ’18 top the secondary. Among the linebackers and defensive linemen, look for David Wolff ’17, Peter Crossett ’18, and Colin Woods ’17.

sportsANCHORS AWAY: Ben Swanger ’17 will anchor the midfield for the men’s soccer team in its 30th UAA season this year. (Photo: Athletics and Recreation)

Men’s soccer: Returning to the team is a strong and seasoned nucleus from 2015, including all–UAA honoree Ben Swanger ’17, who will anchor the midfield. Tanner Chester ’17, Zach Kanaley ’17, and Mike Cross ’17 form a tough back line, while Jeff Greblick ’17 and Alessandro Incerto ’17 are seasoned forwards. Rochester leads all UAA schools with 10 men’s soccer titles.

Women’s soccer: Three all–UAA honorees return in Kim Stagg ’17 plus Megan Runyan ’19 and McKenzie Runyan ’19. The defense will be led by veterans, including Alyssa Raskind ’17, Hannah Geitner ’17, Sydney Melton ’18, and Jenny Sitrin ’18. Lee Stagg ’17 and Paige Gloster ’18 head up the attack. Rochester has 12 UAA titles, ranking first among UAA teams.

Women’s volleyball: Rochester returns an all–UAA defensive specialist in Meghan Connor ’17, who finished sixth in the league in digs and fifth in aces. Alexandra Goldman ’17 led the UAA in solo blocks and was eighth in total blocks. Setter Aimee Kohler ’17 was fifth in assists in the UAA.

Winter Sports

Men’s basketball: Three starters are back for the Yellowjackets, who last season reeled off a nine-game UAA winning streak that pushed them to a second-place ranking in the region. The backcourt could be one of the best in the East, led by Sam Borst-Smith ’17, Mack Montague ’17, Jacob Wittig ’19, and Michael Mangan ’19. Forwards Tucker Knox ’18 and Zack Ayers ’17 combined for eight points, seven rebounds, and 30 blocked shots last year.

Women’s basketball: Rochester was 23–6 and reached the Elite 8 of the NCAA playoffs in 2015–16. All four teams in the Chuck Resler Tournament this year made the NCAAs. Four starters return, led by multi–All-American Al Leslie ’18. She’s joined by Lauren Deming ’18, Sarah Kaminsky ’17, and Brynn Lauer ’17.

Squash: Three All-Americans will lead the way as Rochester hosts its most ambitious home schedule: seven home matches, plus the Liberty League championships. Visitors include Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton, Cornell, Drexel, Trinity, and Harvard. Rochester finished second in the nation last year to Yale. The returning All-Americans are Mario Yanez Tapia ’17, Ryosei Kobayashi ’17, and Tomotaka Endo ’18.

Men’s swimming and diving: Gunnar Zemering ’18 was the Liberty League Rookie of the Year two seasons ago and the Swimmer of the Year last season. He’ll be one of the top sprinters in both the Liberty League and the UAA. Distance swimmer Elliot Schwinn ’19 reaped Liberty League Rookie of the Year honors last year and set three league records. Max Adler ’18 finished in the top eight on both boards at the UAA and Liberty League championships. He was fourth in the UAA on the one-meter, qualifying for the NCAA zone finals.

Women’s swimming and diving: Veterans abound for the women, who have won six straight Liberty League titles. Jennifer Enos ’17 is a top distance swimmer. Emily Simon ’17, Alex Veech ’17, and Khamai Simpson ’17 are All-American sprinters. Veech competed at NCAAs after a second-place finish in the 100-yard breaststroke at the UAA meet. Danielle Neu ’17 won the UAA three-meter board and qualified for the zone diving finals.

Men’s track and field: Rochester will be paced by four highly accomplished performers. Brant Crouse ’17 won the New York state and ECAC indoor championship in the 500 meters, breaking a school record in the process. Forrest Hangen ’19 was a scorer in the 5,000 meters in both the state and ECAC meets. Thomas Chant ’19 broke the school mark in the indoor 60-meter race. Ryan Rosen ’18 was ranked 40th in Division III in the javelin throw.

Women’s track and field: Three NCAA championship participants are back. Katie Knox ’16 competed in the steeplechase outdoors last spring. She won the state indoor title in the 3,000-meter event. Samantha Kitchen ’17 won the indoor state title and qualified for NCAAs in the 800-meter race, while Kylee Bartlett ’19 qualified for the indoor NCAA pentathlon. Audrey McCarthy ’17 won two state titles, for the indoor 5,000-meter race and the outdoor 10,000-meter.

Spring Sports

Baseball: John Ghyzel ’18 will be a mainstay of the team after a 7–1 season that reaped first-team all–Liberty League and second-team all-region honors. Luke Meyerson ’18 was 4–1, with a Liberty League–leading four saves. Aiden Finch ’19 supplied power (four home runs and 11 doubles), scored 26 runs, and drove in 31 while hitting .326. Catcher Nolan Schultz ’16, who earned first-team all–Liberty accolades in all four years, graduated in May.

Golf: Three of the low scorers from last year are back. Jona Scott ’17 fired a 76.7 for 17 rounds, Daniel Luftspring ’17 had a 77.7 for 15 rounds, and Jason Paek ’18 shot a 77.9 for 17 rounds. Rochester tied for the Liberty League title last year, finished third of 15 at the Hershey Cup, and sixth out of 18 at the Flower City NCAA Preview. In 2016–17, the Yellowjackets will point to the Liberty League championships in late April, in hopes of securing an NCAA bid.

Lacrosse: The Yellowjackets have a nice scoring combination in Jamie Wallisch ’17 and Madeline Levy ’18. Wallisch is seventh in career scoring, second in career assists, and eighth in goals scored. Mara Karpp ’17 is fifth in career assists. Elizabeth Botto ’18 had 20 caused turnovers and 28 ground balls last year. Danielle Diacovo ’17 won 11 draw controls and caused 13 turnovers.

Rowing: The women’s team returns a strong base of three seniors, nine juniors, and 12 sophomores. Crystal Hoffman ’17, Alice Bandeian ’17, and Morgan Miller ’17 will lead the team. The Yellowjackets will point to the Head of the Schuylkill in Philadelphia in late October as their benchmark heading into the spring season. They’ll face some of the nation’s best in New England in early April, then defend their Kerr Cup title in Philadelphia in mid-month.

Softball: With three straight Liberty League softball titles under their belt, the team has a veteran cast to challenge for a fourth crown. The pitchers include Eleni Wechsler ’17, Elizabeth Bourne ’19, Sam Malecki ’17, and Gabi Alatorre ’18. Top hitters among the field players include catcher Harleigh Kaczegowicz ’19, infielder Rachael Pletz ’19, and outfielders Jocelynn Blackshear ’18 and Shelby Corning ’17.

Men’s tennis: Rochester will rely on returning singles players Masaru Fujimaki ’19, Aaron Mevorach ’18, Andy Nunno ’18, and Sam Leeman ’19. The team’s schedule includes two tournaments, the St. Lawrence Invitational and the ITA Northeast Regional Championships at Hobart. The Yellowjackets were 16th regionally at the end of 2015–16.

Women’s tennis: Four starters return for the women: Camila Garcia ’19, Alex Wolkoff ’18, Lauren Zickar ’17, and Darby McCall ’17. They combined for 39 singles wins last season. The women open the new year at the Mary Hosking Invitational at William Smith College in early September, then return to Geneva for the ITA Northeast Regional Championships. Rochester was ranked 19th regionally last year.

At the Intersection of Optics and Art

An interview with Silicon Valley pioneer, distinguished art collector, and author Jay Last ’51.

Interview by Peter Lennie Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences & Engineering and professor of brain and cognitive sciences

Edited and condensed by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

jaylastTHE GEOMETRY OF ART: Last, who has long favored art based on simple geometric forms, poses before a banner by Robert Indiana. The banner, displayed in Last’s Beverly Hills home, is based on a 1928 painting by American modernist Charles Demuth. (Photo: Max Gerber for Rochester Review)

Jay Last ’51 has had an extraordinary career in science and art.

As an early leader in the development of semiconductors, he helped usher in the computer revolution. His keen interest in design and form led him to collect African art, becoming part of the first generation of Westerners to devote serious attention to the continent’s visual art traditions.

In academic settings, science and art tend to dwell in separate departments, and often in different schools. But, says Last, “I don’t separate the two in my mind.” He reflected on their convergence in a memoir, African Art and Silicon Chips: A Life in Science and Art (Sierra Vista Books), published in 2015.

In June, Peter Lennie, the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty in Arts, Sciences & Engineering, visited Last at his home in Beverly Hills, California. Over the course of an afternoon, Last spoke with Lennie about his education at Rochester, the connections between optics and art, and science’s relationship to the humanities.

Growing Up

What kind of an education did you receive growing up?

I lived in a relatively small town in western Pennsylvania. The teachers were very conscientious, and they did their jobs well. The only problem was that they weren’t teaching me fast enough. There was a very good public library, and I read huge amounts of stuff in that library. By the time I left for college, I bet I’d read most of the stuff there. I certainly developed quite an interest in what the world was like by all of this reading I was doing.

jaylastPATHBREAKER: Last, in 1960, led the R&D team at Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. that produced the first integrated circuit chips, a milestone in modern computing. (Photo: Wayne Miller/Magnum Photos)

What was it like coming to Rochester?

When I was in high school, I didn’t know if I was going to have the chance to go to college. So I learned to weld and I learned to type. And I thought, at least I’ve got a couple of skills that can keep me going. I applied to Rochester and the Bausch & Lomb scholarship. I didn’t apply any place else or for anything else. I don’t know what my backup would’ve been if I hadn’t gotten that.

Physicist

Last began his career at Shockley Semiconductor in 1956, and left with seven other colleagues to form Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. the following year. Fairchild became the leader of the new semiconductor industry and an incubator of the high-tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area that gave the region the designation Silicon Valley.

Last moved to Teledyne Inc. in the 1960s, from which he retired as vice president of technology to devote more time to art collecting and philanthropic projects.

I was never challenged in high school, and then I came to Rochester, and it was just the exact opposite. I realized I was just an average student there instead of being one of the brighter ones in my high school class. And I was in optics, which requires a very large amount of laboratory work, which is very time consuming. I always felt overworked, with not enough time, and not enough time to sleep, and that continued pretty much the whole way through Rochester.

Art through the Lens of a Scientist

How did you develop your interest in art?

Optics, to me, is a beautiful thing. I can see art in so many optical phenomena that you see every day. In solid-state physics, I think you’re looking at interesting designs the whole way through—the mathematical designs of inverse space and things like that. I did my doctoral thesis at MIT on ferroelectricity involving perovskite structures, and having a feel for crystal structures helped me to work my way through a lot of problems.

As a young physicist, I’d go to Physical Society meetings in New York, and for the first time I had a chance to go to museums and see art of the sort that I grew to really appreciate, abstract art. In the early days of my collecting, I and many of my friends were becoming interested in art because it was interesting geometry to us. And the way I’ve collected art, the pieces I really appreciate the most are usually the simplest design forms, or the most imaginative design forms.

Are there other ways in which your training as a scientist has helped you appreciate art?

Collector and Philanthropist

A collector of African art for nearly 50 years, Last has donated more than 600 objects to UCLA’s Fowler Museum since the 1970s.

Also a collector of commercial prints, Last has donated thousands of printed artifacts to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where they’re held as the Jay T. Last Collection of Lithographic and Social History.

Last is also founder of the Archaeological Conservancy, which has saved hundreds of archaeological sites by purchasing them from private owners and developing plans for conservation.

He has contributed to several University initiatives, including the College Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program, the Humanities Center, and the Language Center.

Yes, understanding materials allows me to appreciate what the artist went through to create it. For example, Africans developed metallurgy at a very early time. Some of the best African pieces are from Benin and Nigeria, made in the 1500s and 1600s with extremely sophisticated metallurgic technology. There have been great efforts to discover how this technology managed to migrate into Africa at this time, and of course it didn’t. It was created there. It’s beautiful work, but understanding metallurgy certainly adds to my experience of the art.

The appreciation for color that I developed in my work in optics was what really got me interested in lithography. When I came to Southern California and went to flea markets, I saw that there were small labels on the ends of boxes of oranges, and the labels were no longer used, but every packing house in Southern California had stacks of these things. They were gathered up by dealers and they started selling them. I built a big collection of these, which I donated to the Huntington Library.

Gordon McCelland and I ended up writing a book, California Orange Box Labels, and we included a chapter on the lithographic process used to make the labels. I set out to learn more about color lithography. How did it work from a scientific point of view? It produces remarkable work with a relatively simple technique, but there’s an awful lot of tough scientific stuff involved in doing this properly. And I looked, and there really wasn’t a good book that had been written on this from a standpoint of the history of American color lithography. So I set out to write it, and it took me a decade. The book, The Color Explosion, is now the standard book on American color lithography.

jaylastCROSSING DISCIPLINES: Lennie and Last discuss the interrelationship of science, art, and the humanities at Last’s home. (Photo: Max Gerber for Rochester Review)

What drew you from science to artistic pursuits?

I’ve spent the second half of my life essentially in nonscientific work, but I just don’t separate the two in my mind.

I had a very interesting career at Teledyne, which had been started by Henry Singleton, who was just a remarkable individual for his ability to build and run a company. Teledyne was growing rapidly. When I joined, we had just one company, and by the time I left, we had 150 companies. I was vice president of technology, and my job was to try to make sense of where our divisions were overlapping and how they could cooperate. And having a broad technical background, I didn’t need depth in every area, but I needed quite a breadth, going to some electronics division one day, or to somebody building oil well measuring equipment the next day—it was just a fascinating job.

And I continued that until Teledyne started changing from a growth mode to consolidation. My interest decreased, and I left and started working more and more in various art projects. That was a turning point in my life. I left what was essentially a day-to-day science job and turned to art and other humanistic things.

Life as a Collector

How did you begin to develop your African art collection?

When I started collecting it, it wasn’t very actively collected, and it wasn’t very appreciated. Nelson Rockefeller took quite an interest in it in the late ’50s, and that made quite an interest develop in New York. The art was very low priced, and it was flowing in from Africa, with the jet plane and the ease in transportation. I started collecting at the time when it really started coming in in large quantities. For the next 20 years, it was a golden time for collecting.

Your collection is particularly strong in Lega art, that is, the art of the Lega people of present-day Congo. What drew you to this particular tradition?

Originally I got interested in it because it was very simple. Then I met Daniel Biebuyck, who was a great scholar of Lega art and lived among the Lega for many years. In extensive conversations with him, I became very appreciative of what the Lega were doing with their art. They would have great ceremonies where they would take out this art, which was usually concealed, and use it to illustrate various aphorisms. They had thousands of aphorisms, and the art was used to remind people of them. One example is a very simple figure that I have, with two eyes, and a little dot above one of the eyes. That dot reminds the Lega of the saying, “I thought my father was asleep, but he had his third eye open to watch after me.” And these are just beautiful, and the whole society is structured around using this art as an educational device.

I’d been interested in art as objects rather than the way the objects were used, but Lega art got me interested in the social uses of the art.

Scholars have consulted your lithography collection based on a similar interest—that is, the social significance of the pieces—haven’t they?

Author

Last is the author of African Art and Silicon Chips: A Life in Science and Art (2015) and The Color Explosion: Nineteenth-Century American Lithography (2006); and, with Gordon McLelland, five books on California art, including topics such as fruit box labels and watercolors.

My collection, which now resides at the Huntington Library, has been used far beyond looking at the technical aspects of lithography. It’s turned into a very widely used collection for the discussion of social history. I’m amazed at the breadth of the sort of things people are interested in. There’s a fellow doing work on the dozens and dozens of small bits of land, islands, that the United States owns all over the world. The United States wanted them because birds rested there, and they were going to mine guano [manure from seabirds, used as fertilizer]. This fellow came to my collection at the Huntington and said, “What do you have on guano?” I had beautiful pictures of birds, guano, and guano mines. You can never tell what people might be interested in when you have a broad collection.

Thoughts on Liberal Education

Would you say you received a liberal education at Rochester?

I didn’t think in those terms then. I was really interested in optics, and this was the part of my life when I was learning optics. I took essentially all of the optics courses that were offered.

I enjoyed courses in other disciplines. A course on contemporary European governments, for example, at a time when the governments in Europe were in great flux. I found that an extremely valuable course for me. It really opened my eyes to what was going on in Europe at the end of the Second World War. I took a very valuable course in literature, a survey from the pre-Biblical days to the present, which opened my eyes to many things. I read Moby-Dick, and I had to read it in two evenings. Three or four years ago I went back and read it more leisurely and realized what a wonderful book it was. I’d still kept all of those books.

My advice to somebody going into a scientific trade today would be, don’t underestimate how the humanities can make your life a lot richer.

Do you think a humanistic education makes one a better scientist?

At the very least I think that the understanding of the world you gain through the humanities enables you to put science into a broader context. Looking at the history of science, which was never taught to me in science courses, would have been very valuable. Thermodynamics, for example, would have been a lot more interesting to me if I saw it in the context of the industrial revolution. Sometimes things have to all be in place for the science to be a meaningful advance.

Humanities are also important in learning to write well. A good writer has a real edge in being able to express his thoughts well. The fact that I read so much helps me appreciate the skill it takes to write well. I think a lot of good writers started by being avid readers. The two best writers I know, two of my dear friends, a lawyer and a venture capitalist, both got their undergraduate degrees in history, where they read steadily.

Do you think scientific education makes one a better humanist?

Yes. I’m appalled at the scientific ignorance, as well as the ignorance about statistics, among the people who are making decisions about science. If there were some way to have our political leaders learn more about science and statistics, or get more people with that knowledge interested in politics, it would help.

Given the breadth of your interests, how do you think we might encourage more people in the humanities to explore science, and vice versa?

I’d favor an approach where science or humanities education is tied in with the experience the students already have—as an addition to their present knowledge and experience—rather than as some foreign intrusion that doesn’t relate to anything else in their lives. Both science and humanities can be very dull and tedious if one is in over one’s head, or if the material is presented in an uninspiring way. But both disciplines are full of interest if they are presented in a manner where they complement each other and make each a rich addition to one’s life.

Star Trek’s Half-Century Voyage

Rochester faculty and alumni have composed its theme, written episodes, and reflected deeply on why Star Trek resonates.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

With additional reporting by Sofia Tokar and Dawn Wendt

startrek‘WAGON TRAIN TO THE STARS’: The Starship Enterprise soars across space. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry envisioned the show as a modern day western—in his words, “a wagon train to the stars.” (Photo: ScreenProd/Photononstop/Alamy)

It’s a voyage that began 50 years ago, on Thursday evening, September 8, 1966. The television series Star Trek, a western for Cold War America, introduced us to Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and the starship Enterprise, inviting us “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

The show attracted a small but passionate following in its three-season run. That fan base would grow exponentially in size and influence in the 1970s, as a generation of latchkey kids tuned in to Star Trek reruns, a staple of after-school broadcast lineups. From that decade forward, Star Trek grew as a franchise. Including the television series Star Trek: Discovery, slated for a January 2017 release, the franchise consists of six television series and 13 films, as well as books, magazines, comic books, action figures, games, and other memorabilia.

Rochester faculty and alumni have made important contributions to the show, starting with its iconic theme, the work of composer Alexander Courage ’41E.

Reginald Barclay, the awkward, brilliant Next Generation lieutenant whom cohorts derisively nickname “Broccoli”—before he ends up saving the Enterprise—is the creation of Rochester English professor Sarah Higley.

From the beginning, Star Trek has attracted a cerebral sort. It had geek appeal long before geekdom became the badge of honor it is today. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to find an abundance of steadfast fans among Rochester faculty and alumni.

Many work in science and technology. The series and films may not always depict scientific principles accurately (see “A Physicist’s Take,” p. 45), but they invite us to imagine what a high-tech future might look like.

Humanists who love Star Trek say it stimulates the social imagination, inspiring us to think about a society liberated from constraints we often don’t question.

Perhaps one reason for this crossdisciplinary appeal can be found in creator Gene Roddenberry’s account of his own inspiration for the show. Looking to explore the changes and conflicts of the 1960s, Roddenberry found television executives wary.

“You really couldn’t talk about anything you cared to talk about,” he said in an oral history conducted by Edward Gross and Mark Altman, and published earlier this year. “It seemed to me that perhaps if I wanted to talk about sex, religion, politics, make some comments against Vietnam, and so on, that if I had similar situations involving these subjects happening on other planets to little green people, indeed it might get by, and it did.”

A Memorable Score

A reproduction of the original Alexander Courage ’41E score of the Star Trek theme is part of the Alexander Courage Collection at Eastman’s Sibley Music Library. The collection includes many of Courage’s original scores, scripts, sketches, notes, and recordings for films and television productions; arranged scores for pops orchestras and awards broadcasts; and sheet music, personal papers, and professional as well as personal photographs.

What’s that Sound?

During the opening of Star Trek, the Enterprise races across the screen. What’s the sound that accompanies it? It’s Alexander Courage breathing into a microphone.

Producers tried a variety of electronics to try to get just the right sound, but with no success. “I said, ‘Look, it won’t cost you anything,’” Courage told music journalist John Burlingame in 2000. Watching the screen as the Enterprise flew by, Courage delivered a breathy roar into the mic. “And that’s what they used,” he said.

The Story of a Theme

Alexander Courage ’41E Composer

“I have to confess to the world,” said the late Alexander Courage ’41E in 2000, “that I am not a science fiction fan.”

Oh, the irony.

From its eerie first notes, to its arresting fanfare, to its soaring climax, the theme that Courage composed for Star Trek in 1966 is among the most iconic in all of film or television.

Over his career, Courage was a prominent film and television composer with credits on films such as Funny Face, Guys and Dolls, Showboat, and Doctor Dolittle; and television series Wagon Train, Peyton Place, Daniel Boone, and The Waltons.

But it was his work on Star Trek that led to greatest acclaim.

In a tribute to Courage that appeared in Rochester Review following Courage’s death in 2008, television and film composer Jeff Beal ’85E wrote that theme music is “often at its most resonant when the use of an unforgettable melody somehow captures the feeling and essence of a dramatic world.”

Courage “understood this well,” wrote Beal, whose credits include the theme for the Netflix series House of Cards. “How could we ever separate the strains of his Star Trek theme from the triumphant French horns and the theremin-like female vocal?”

When he was hired to compose for Star Trek, he saw it as just another job for “just another show,” Courage recalled in that same 2000 interview, conducted by film and music journalist John Burlingame for Emmytvlegends.org.

“Little did I know when I wrote that first A flat for the flute that it was going to go down in history somehow,” he said. “It was a very strange feeling.”

My father watched Star Trek. He was a big fan. When I was a kid, the show was in reruns, and I watched those with him. I don’t know that I really got the concepts. I think I watched it because it was colorful, and it was a bonding experience with Dad, who read a lot of science fiction. And that’s sort of where my interest in the genre came from.

What Gender Is that Alien?

Tucker notes that The Next Generation explored gender identity long before the idea of fluid gender identity or the word transgender moved beyond relatively small communities and into the American popular discourse.

In the episode “The Host,” the starship doctor discovers that members of an alien race are actually human hosts with a symbiotic creature (Tucker describes it as a worm) living within them. They share a consciousness, but the worm’s lifespan exceeds that of humans. When the human host dies, the worm enters another host.

“The worm and the human host share a consciousness,” he says. “But the worm can live for centuries. When its host dies, the worm leaves and goes to another human host. What happens if it goes from a female host to a male host? All of that female host’s memories and identities go along with the worm into its new host. So is that human male, female, both, or something else?”

Hope in a Fractious Age

Jeffrey Tucker Associate Professor of English

“There was a kind of utopian vision that the show offered,” says Jeffrey Tucker, a science fiction expert who teaches a course on utopian literature.

“A key aspect of utopian philosophy is the notion of hope. Hope is a forward-looking psychological process, and just the notion that the status quo can be revised and improved— and even, I think my father said, that the species will survive and exist into the 22nd or 23rd century—in the mid-to-late 1960s that idea probably had a lot of weight. It was during the Cold War. It was the Vietnam era.” And the species does more than survive in Star Trek, Tucker adds. It “expands its scope and explores the final frontier, and engages with other civilizations in a mostly constructive way, as opposed to destructive. Certainly there are conflicts, and wars and battles represented, but the whole idea is about exploration and sharing, cultural and economic exchange as opposed to domination.”

Tucker notes there are opposing interpretations, namely one that sees the starship’s exploration as a form of colonialism. “To what extent are the Enterprise and the Federation of Planets instruments of economic and military dominance, and to what extent are they vehicles for cultural and economic exchange? I think the creators intended the latter,” he says, “but if we’re to be responsible audiences, we have to be open to that other way of responding to the story, or at least be aware of how the history of colonialism and expansionism at least shadow, if not shape, the stories in the classic series.” As for the later series, “I think Next Generation and the subsequent series worked harder to get out of that mind-set,” he adds.

I started watching the show as a teenager, and was drawn to Mr. Spock. I thought he was one of those uncrack-able, admirable, intellectual individuals that I hadn’t seen before. I was also in competition with my best friend, Phyllis, who loved the swagger of Captain Kirk, and I didn’t go for it. I wanted a nut to crack.

startrekMARKUP: Showrunners were keen on the basic elements of Higley’s script, but wanted substantial changes to highlighted sections. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Introducing Holodiction

Sarah Higley Professor of English

Sarah Higley was in her third year of teaching medieval English literature at Rochester when she drafted a script for Star Trek: Next Generation. Having grown up on The Original Series, she started watching The Next Generation and quickly found herself both intrigued and skeptical.

Higley was fascinated by the holodeck, which had become a major feature of the Enterprise starting early in the first season. The holodeck was an enclosed room programmed to simulate any environment and create any holographic characters its users chose. “It was a rich source of role play for those who entered it,” Higley says. But she found its portrayal “too wholesome. Crew members engaged in all sorts of adventures in the holodeck without psychological repercussions. Here we were, addicted to television. Where was the addiction to something like the holodeck?”

“I started writing this story about Reginald Endicott Barclay III,” she says, “who was not well-adjusted, but who was a genius, and was admitted into the academy, and got on the Enterprise, but gradually started slipping, because of his unhappiness and his cynicism, into the holodeck.” Her intention was to introduce a more three-dimensional character, and one more flawed and less heroic than characters such as Picard, La Forge, or Riker. And Barclay modified them in the holodeck, creating caricatures of them. She submitted her script, which she titled “Hollow Pursuits,” and it was accepted—provided she rewrite it. The show’s coproducer Michael Piller “wanted all of the episodes to have a certain quality to them. He wanted them to be upbeat,” she says. The producers loved the concept that Higley coined as holodiction, but were lukewarm about Barclay.

“They told me, ‘we like the premise, we like the whole idea of holodiction, but you have to have something that this character, Reginald Barclay, will solve, so that he stops being a Walter Mitty character and becomes the hero of the day.’ ”

She responded to the producers’ wishes, and when she viewed the finished episode, discovered something startling.

“When I saw the episode, I realized how much of it was an analogy of me writing an episode for Star Trek,” she says. Barclay was “an alien element” who repurposes the holodeck, refashioning his crew members to serve his psychological needs. But he’s forced, in the end, to abandon the holodeck. He saves the starship from a technical malfunction that threatened to destroy it. At the end of the episode, he bids goodbye to his simulated versions of the crew members to take his place among the real ones. “And I thought, ‘My god, that is me!’ ” Higley says. “I was told umpteen times how I could and couldn’t portray the characters. I was projecting that onto Reginald Barclay.”

Higley has mixed feelings about her experience working with The Next Generation’s showrunners. As a scholar, she retains control over her published work to an extent not possible in the world of television and film. But even with the compromises she had to make, the episode crystallized a basic truth about virtual reality. It’s a wondrous technology, with the capacity to enhance our lives in this world—or, very often, and at least for some of us, to lead us away from it.

William T. Riker and William H. Riker

Fans may have noticed that The Next Generation’s Commander William T. Riker bears the same first and last name as the late William H. Riker, the influential founding chair of Rochester’s political science department. Is there any connection? In fact, no. Putting the rumor to rest are professors Gerald Gamm and Richard Niemi, both of whom declare there is “absolutely no connection” between the two Rikers.

Detail and Heart

Thomas Perry ’74 (PhD) Novelist and screenwriter

Thomas Perry and his wife, Jo Perry, are both trained as scholars of literature, and both turned to novel and screenwriting as their profession. They’d been writing steadily for the CBS prime-time television series Simon & Simon in 1990 when they cowrote “Reunion,” episode 80 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

“Jo and I liked Star Trek, and Mike Piller, who had been a producer and head writer for a couple of seasons when we were coproducers of Simon & Simon, was working as a writer and coproducer on Star Trek,” Thomas Perry says. “Mike called us and asked if we wanted to write an episode. Because we liked and respected Mike, we were happy to do it.”

“Reunion” tells the story of an ambassador who makes a visit to the Enterprise to alert Captain Picard that the leader of the Klingon Empire has been poisoned. Picard is to choose the successor, a competition between two rivals.

“One reason for the show’s success,” Perry says, “is that the stories were all about human emotions, and not about futuristic hardware. We were already used to Mike Piller asking for stories with heart, and on that show, his bosses seemed to support that policy. This gave the show a timelessness, which contributed to its longevity. Human nature doesn’t go out of date.”

That’s not to say that the show’s creators didn’t put great effort into the depiction of “futuristic hardware.” Says Perry:

“The first thing a freelance writer doing an episode noticed was how meticulously the show was run. Every television show had what was called a bible. It contained a description of every previous episode, so the staff didn’t have to listen to pitches for episodes they’d already done, or turn out an episode that contradicted an earlier one. At Star Trek, the bible was seven booklets, if I recall correctly. There was one about the physics of the fictional universe, another about the starship Enterprise and its gadgets, another about the anthropology of Star Trek. Everything on that show seemed to be run with similar precision and attention to detail.”

What’s Your Server?

In the earliest days of email, as we collectively marveled at our newly expanded capacity for instantaneous communication, the staff of Academic Technology Services was inspired to name the University’s servers after Star Trek characters. Which email server were you on?

uhura (Lieutenant Nyota Uhura)

troi (Deanna Troi)

riker (William Riker)

laforge (Geordi LaForge)

picard (Jean-Luc Picard)

guinan (Guinan)

ro (Ensign Ro)

When I was a kid, maybe seven or eight, I started watching The Next Generation with my mom. I got really into it. And when Voyager came on, that was the first series I watched from beginning to end, again, with my mom. My dad watched too, but he wasn’t as into Star Trek as my mom and me.

The Next Generation . . . Voyage to Heterotopia

Aviva Dove-Viebahn ’10 (PhD) Honors Faculty Fellow, Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University

Science fiction has often been perceived as the province, primarily, of men—fantasy worlds chock full of gadgets and ultrapowerful humanoids. The irony, says Aviva Dove-Viebahn, is that science fiction “allows you to really play with social norms and to buck social norms”—including gender roles and stereotypes.

As a teenager, Dove-Viebahn was captivated by Voyager in large part because of the show’s female lead, Captain Janeway. Janeway “was a scientist and an explorer,” she says, “and fully invested in this role without being super girly, and without being masculine either.”

She was also drawn to the character B’Elanna Torres. “I’m biracial,” Dove-Viebahn says. “And B’Elanna Torres is half Klingon and half human. She struggles with this idea of being a hybrid. And as a biracial teenager, coming to terms with the two sides of my identity, I was really drawn to her storyline, too.”

As a graduate student in visual and cultural studies at Rochester, Dove-Viebahn published an article in Women’s Studies, a major interdisciplinary journal, entitled “Embodying Hybridity, (En)gendering Community: Captain Janeway and the Enactment of a Feminist Heterotopia on Star Trek: Voyager.” A heterotopia “emphasizes diversity rather than consensus,” she says. “Heterotopias offer a place for people to be different, but to still be able to collaborate.

“A collaborative space in which everyone’s voice is given equal merit—that functions to me as a kind of ideal feminist space. And of course Captain Janeway as leader of that space adds an extra feminist layer to that.”

Inspired by Star Trek

As graduate students in computer science at Rochester, Rick Rashid ’80 (PhD) and Gene Ball ’82 (PhD) codeveloped the Star Trek–inspired Alto Trek, one of the earliest networked computer games. Designed for play on the Xerox Alto computer, the game involved play in a universe of 16 star systems and included spaceships (named Klingon, Romulan, and Terran) and weaponry from the show.

Rashid and Ball went on to long and extraordinarily successful careers at Microsoft—Rashid founded Microsoft Research and is a chief technology officer at the company, and Ball retired from Microsoft as a senior scientist.

Since 1980, Rashid has regularly treated those who work for him to viewings of the Star Trek franchise’s movies. At the start of his career, he only had a few fellow computer scientists to pay for. But as his success grew, so did the tradition. “After I founded Microsoft Research in 1991 and built out the organization, I eventually had hundreds of employees and their families at my Star Trek events,” he says.

A Physicist’s Take

Dan Watson Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Among people in science and technology, Star Trek fans abound. Dan Watson, chair of the physics and astronomy department, is among them.

But that’s not because the series or films illuminate much about science. Watson shows Star Trek films to his introductory astronomy students to show what’s wrong with their depiction of physical science. “Astronomy 102 students learn enough about strong gravity, black holes, and time machines to detect the mistakes, and doing so is a good exercise for them,” he says.

Watson regrets that the franchise’s film creators in particular didn’t place greater importance on scientific accuracy. They “had many more resources to use to get it right,” he says, compared to the creators of The Original Series, for example.

As for Star Trek’s technological gadgetry, he says, “We joke about holodecks, food replicators, and warp drives, but I suspect most of us are attracted to the same sorts of things that draw the humanities folks in.” To the extent that there are films or television shows that inspire the imaginations of budding scientists, Watson says 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably the best example.

“At least in part, this is due to Kubrick’s and Clarke’s attention to scientific accuracy in matters that are currently within our grasp,” he says, referring to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke, who wrote the screenplay.

Star Trek was the first television show I remember watching. I was about seven when it was first in reruns, and it was my first exposure not only to science fiction but also to serious moral reflection. It posed intriguing and dramatic moral dilemmas that fueled my later interest in moral philosophy. It was much more intellectually challenging than what I was getting in Sunday school.

Star Trek’s Moral Universe

William FitzPatrick Gideon Webster Burbank Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy

“From its very beginning,” says William FitzPatrick, Star Trek “explored themes of good and evil, power and moral corruption, peace and inescapable violence, and racism and equality; and in particular, took up issues concerning the moral standing of wildly diverse kinds of beings, from humanoids to intelligent energy clouds to sentient androids.”

Many episodes inspired deep reflection. But one of FitzPatrick’s favorites is “City on the Edge of Forever,” which originally aired in spring 1967, during the first season.

Here’s his take:

“Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are transported back in time, to 1930s Earth, and Kirk and Spock realize that Edith Keeler, with whom Kirk has fallen madly in love (what else is new?), must be allowed to die in a street accident. If she doesn’t, the course of history will be radically changed, with the Germans winning World War II and everything the Enterprise crew know of their world vanishing in an instant, having never come to be.

“The situation raises basic moral questions about how to weigh one person’s welfare against the larger good, how to balance special duties to those we love against impartial duties of beneficence, and the potential moral distinctions between letting someone die, preventing someone from being saved, and killing directly (for example, by shooting someone), for the sake of a greater good.

“One philosophical view, utilitarianism, tends to downplay such distinctions concerning means, holding that all that really matters is acting in whatever way will maximize the overall, impartially conceived good—the good as conceived ‘from the point of view of the universe,’ as Sidgwick famously put it. Often people hear a utilitarian message in Spock’s famous quote from The Wrath of Khan: ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one,’ and they might read it into the Keeler case as well. But that is a mistake, I think, and an oversimplification . . . The heavy focus throughout the series on the importance of individual dignity, freedom, and rights precludes any simple utilitarian interpretation of its moral sensibility. There are also plenty of opposing pulls from impartial rationality, personal emotion, and intuition that cannot be codified by any appeal simply to logic.”

startrekWilliam Shatner and Barbara Bouchet in “By Any Other Name” (1968). (Photo: AF Archive/Alamy)

Captain Kirk: He’s No Kantian

“Spock relies always on logic, by which he means, roughly, strict rationality; McCoy is the voice of emotionally laden human experience and response; and Kirk is often the one putting both elements together,” says FitzPatrick.

“Kirk also embodies an intuitive sense of when to follow rules and when to break them. The Prime Directive—the rule not to interfere with the natural development of alien civilizations—seems to exist primarily to be violated by Kirk whenever he judges that more important values are at stake, much to the displeasure of the Starfleet higher-ups. There’s a certain practical wisdom, in Aristotle’s sense, in knowing when to depart from fixed rules or algorithms. Kirk is much more of an Aristotelian than a Kantian in this sense, relying on virtues and practical wisdom for situational appraisals rather than simply applying rules.

“His wisdom is limited, of course, by his excessive fondness for aliens wearing miniskirts and sporting ’60s hairdos.”

Star Trek: A Brief Overview

startreksideFrom left: William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, and Kate Mulgrew. (Photo: AF Archive/Alamy)

Star Trek began as a television series created by Gene Roddenberry. It’s since grown into a multibillion-dollar media franchise consisting of several additional series, all distinct iterations derived from the original, as well as 13 films. Here’s a timeline of the major Star Trek television series, as well as a brief synopsis of each:

Star Trek: The Original Series 1966–69

Set in the 23rd century, introduces the spaceship known as the starship Enterprise and its crew. Leading the mission—to seek new civilizations within the galaxy, “to boldy go where no man has gone before”—is Captain James Kirk (William Shatner), an Earthling with a wild streak, and first officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Spock is half-Vulcan, an alien being dominated by reason over emotion. Although cancelled after three seasons, Star Trek gained a small, cult-like following that greatly expanded during the 1970s, when the show was in reruns.

The Next Generation 1987–94

Set in the 24th century, introduces a new starship with a new crew, led by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). The mission remains the same, albeit updated with the gender-neutral call “to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Deep Space Nine 1993–99

Set in the 24th century, introduces the space station Deep Space 9, led by Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), and situated in the most distant regions of explored space. The discovery of a wormhole sends the crew into vast uncharted territory.

Voyager 1995–2001

Set in the 24th century, introduces Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) of the U.S.S. Voyager. Janeway and her crew are trapped by alien technology 70,000 light-years from Earth. The mission is to return home.

Enterprise 2001–05

Prequel to The Original Series, Enterprise takes place in the 22nd century, before the founding of the United Federation of Planets.

Discovery To be released in 2017

Also a prequel, Discovery will cover the period between the end of Enterprise and the beginning of The Original Series.

A Class on the Cusp

From ‘professionalism to protest,’ members of the Class of 1966 ushered in ‘the ’60s.’

By Robin L. Flanigan

CHANGING TIMES: While the 1960s ushered in dramatic social transformations, “everything still felt gradual” when the Class of 1966 was on campus, says Betsey Weingart Cullen ’66, cochair of the class’s 50th reunion in October. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

As a senior, Cecily Drucker ’66, two months before graduation, padded down the hall of her residence hall to the pay phone. Her father had called.

“He was furious at me,” she recalls. “I don’t know how he found out about what I was doing, but he said, ‘You’re going to get kicked out of school, and I spent all this money on your education.’ I pushed back. I said, ‘I’m doing this. Sorry.’ ”

Drucker had become a de facto leader in a plan gaining momentum with students on campus. They wanted to stop then President W. Allen Wallis from presenting Richard Nixon, at the time in private practice, with an honorary degree. Comments Nixon had made at Rutgers University warning against the perils of academic freedom prompted their protest, in which members of the faculty became involved, as well. Wallis had worked with then Vice President Nixon as an economic advisor to President Eisenhower, and the degree was to be conferred at commencement, where Nixon was to be the guest speaker.

Soon after that phone call, several of the plan’s student leaders were called into the president’s office.

“The image I have in my mind is that we were sitting like these little church mice on a sofa, and he was sitting, larger than life, behind a desk at the end of this really long room,” says Drucker, of Mill Valley, California, a political science major who retired after 42 years of practicing real estate tax law and transactions. “He said that what we were doing was an embarrassment to the University and he wanted us to stop. We were meek, but we weren’t backing down.”

The Class of 1966, celebrating its 50th reunion at Meliora Weekend, October 6 to 9, was on the forefront of change in many ways—including being on the brink of the protest movement that helped define the ’60s— between freshman and senior years.

Students saw policies relax—from strict curfews to floating curfews to one of the first coed dorms in the country. The Towers, a pair of high-rise residence halls with floors for men and for women, opened in 1963.

They saw professional dynamics relax. History major Betsey Weingart Cullen ’66, cochair of the class reunion, remembers a professor telling students he wanted to be addressed by his first name. “He said, ‘Call me Bernie,’ and it was just such a shock to me,” she says. “I did it, but I always felt I had crossed over a formal barrier between student and teacher.”

CAMPUS POLITICS: New York Senate candidate Robert Kennedy (left) visited campus in 1964, while former Vice President Richard Nixon delivered the class’s commencement address in 1966. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

They received diplomas in the middle of a revolutionary decade that also saw the start of the women’s movement, the gay rights movement, and the environmental movement.

And they found themselves regularly in the midst of events that would make history. In anger, they hung Fidel Castro in effigy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In tears, they mourned President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, yet race-related violence, including in Rochester, carried on. The United States swiftly increased military forces in South Vietnam in 1965. The Cold War continued through it all.

“There was a strong feeling that the world was very turbulent, and it was hard to understand everything that was going on,” says Marc Holzer ’66, a political science major who served as both student body president and class president. He remembers successfully advocating for funding, as chair of the finance board, to support Student Peace Union members traveling south for civil rights demonstrations, despite opposition from more conservative members.

Now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Holzer is founding dean emeritus of the School of Public Affairs Administration and holds the title of University Professor at Rutgers. “To some extent, my class was a transition point from professionalism to protest,” he says. “There was more of a political awakening by the time we left campus.”

The class had started its Rochester years in a quieter fashion. Days after arriving as freshmen, the men and women of the class left for Frosh Camp, where they sang, hiked, played games, and met new classmates, in some cases establishing lifelong friendships. Cullen reminisces about being in the outdoors at Frosh Camp, charged with writing a class song and cheer—and learning the schoolwide clap—before reciting the cheer from memory:

We’re the class forever strong,

Can’t be beat—

Can’t go wrong,

We’re the class with all the zest,

We can take it—

We’re the best,

We are smart—

Know all the tricks

U of R, U of R—’66

“It speaks of common identity,” she says. “Shared activities build loyalty and a greater sense of community.”

And they learned “The Genesee,” Rochester’s alma mater, set to music by Herve Dwight Wilkins, from the Class of 1866 and great-grandfather of Jocelyn Trueblood ’66 (see sidebar). But while such songs lend continuity to the Rochester experience over generations, music also reflected the changing times.

For Richard (Richie) Woodrow ’66, the musical theater shows that he composed while on campus in the 1960s inadvertently reflected a cultural awakening. The former English major interrupts himself to analyze the evolution of his theatrical work during his years at the University, acknowledging that he had never before noticed the subject matter moving over time toward more pressing concerns.

“They were all in the format of the old American musical, quite formulaic and upbeat and fun, and yet they started to get more serious,” he says. “They were becoming more centered on politics, ideology, breaking boundaries, and a changing world. I think what we were striving for was this notion that things aren’t quite what they seem. We recognized that everything wasn’t all fluff.”

Camp Sites

1924: The first Frosh Camp is held at the YMCA’s Camp Cory on Keuka Lake. Twenty-nine freshman men, 11 upperclassmen, and one faculty member attend. Women students go to a three-day “house party,” hosted by members of the junior class, at Camp Wacona at Sea Breeze amusement park.

1938: Camp activities for men move to the new facilities of the River Campus, with two exceptions: before classes begin in 1961 and 1962, the men return to Camp Cory.

1967: Women attend Frosh Camp for the last time.

2005: The orientation program launches a modern counterpart to Frosh Camp: Freshman Orientation Outing Treks (FOOT). At the start of every year, about 100 freshmen are chosen to take part in the three-day pre-orientation program, hiking, biking, camping, and exploring New York parks.

2016: Orientation for new students in Arts, Sciences & Engineering is a weeklong experience that aims to introduce incoming students to each other, the campus, and the local community, with a parallel two-day program for parents.

—Robin L. Flanigan

During their years on campus, the antiwar movement began to stir. In the spring of 1966, the newly formed Student Peace Union organized a “Vigil for Peace in Vietnam,” held from noon to midnight on the Eastman Quadrangle, timed to coincide with Parents’ Weekend and the ROTC Sunset Parade. According to the first issue of the group’s newsletter that April, the vigil was quiet, though not without opposition. They were counterpicketed twice, and endured some hurled iceballs and eggs. Eighteen months later, protesters had propelled the University into national headlines as they staged a sit-in against Dow Chemical, maker of napalm, recruiting on campus.

Cullen laughs as she recounts her first foray into protesting.

“We led a campaign to preserve the tradition of the freshman beanies,” she says, referring to the blue and yellow hats that had the wearer’s graduation year embroidered on the front. “They were going to eliminate them our sophomore year, so we started a letter-writing campaign, but we were on a sinking ship by that point. We lost.”

Drucker and the other students opposing Nixon’s honorary degree did not. Though Nixon spoke—on academic freedom—at graduation, Wallis’s office circulated a press release beforehand, saying that Nixon’s acceptance of the invitation to speak was not contingent on receiving an honorary degree, and that, in fact, it was his policy not to accept them.

As for Nixon’s speech, “everybody was really respectful of him,” Drucker says.

But most student demonstrators were respectful while still making their case, notes reunion cochair Larry Cohen ’66, who majored in general science and took part “in a fair number of protests.”

“There were hundreds of us,” says Cohen, a Los Angeles resident and a radiology professor at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. “We didn’t storm the dean’s office or do anything crazy like that, but there were all kinds of sit-ins where we blocked traffic on River Boulevard—what is now Wilson Boulevard—to protest the Vietnam War. We wanted to be heard and seen and to show that we knew things were going on in the world and we didn’t like it.

“We’d shut down the campus, and if there was traffic, that was just too bad. You had to find another way out of there.”

For all the turmoil of the times, there were a lot of changes to celebrate as well. For Cohen, who married Jane Zimelis Cohen ’67, one of them was the chance to live in the Towers. “You were on somewhat better behavior, and you cleaned up a lot more because you never knew when someone was going to pop into your suite,” he says. “It just changed our whole lifestyle. That’s one of my favorite memories.”

Hundreds of members of the Class of 1966 will exchange memories at their reunion during Meliora Weekend.

“What we’ll do is stop time, turn back the clock for a few days,” says Cullen.

Back to a time when freshmen, still largely anchored in the more staid 1950s, emerged in 1966 as seniors living on the cusp of great social change.

“It was a very challenging time to be alive, especially as we moved farther on into the ’60s,” adds Cullen. “But everything still felt gradual.

“When you’re in college, a year is a long time. When you’re in your 70s, like I am, a year goes very quickly.”

Recalling a ‘Golden Past’

reunion1966_geneseeFAMILY HISTORY: Jocelyn Trueblood ’66 shares the musical bent of her great-grandfather, Herve Dwight Wilkins, Class of 1866 (below). He arranged the tune for “The Genesee,” Rochester’s alma mater. (Photo: Courtesy of Jocelyn Trueblood)

Since the late 19th century, Rochester students have sung about “many fair and famous streams” as they give voice to “The Genesee,” Rochester’s alma mater. Most know it by heart.

But Jocelyn Trueblood ’66 keeps a copy tucked away in her genealogy papers. That’s because she is the great-granddaughter of its musical arranger, Herve Dwight Wilkins, who graduated from Rochester a century before her, in 1866, and became a church organist and music teacher in Rochester. He based the tune on an old English melody, and it has ever since accompanied the words of poet Thomas Swinburne, a member of the Class of 1892 who spent five years at Rochester but didn’t complete his degree.

reunion1966_genesee (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

Trueblood’s mother told her about the family’s musical history shortly before Trueblood left for college. Since then, she has read an account of Wilkins—written by his daughter, and her great-aunt, in November 1913, the year Wilkins died—from which she learned of his belief in the “expressive power of music as a vehicle and aid to worship.”

You could say it struck a chord. “I see music as an aid to meditation, to peacefulness within me, and in that way, I feel very connected to him, this creative force,” says Trueblood, who majored in English and minored in psychology. “I feel very grateful to him for passing that on.”

In 2009, she retired from a 30-year career in mental health in New York City. And now, as it has for years, music suffuses her life. For all four years on campus, she sang in the Women’s Glee Club, and she took piano lessons at the Eastman School of Music for credit. Now living in Tappan, New York, she continues to sing in a local choral group, although she says other members don’t necessarily share her reverence for timing, dynamics, and diction—a rigor honed at the University by Ward Woodbury Jr., the first director of music on the River Campus. She also once was directed in one of his own works by the legendary Howard Hanson—famed as a composer, conductor, and music educator, he led the Eastman School for 40 years.

“It’s a joyful seriousness,” Trueblood says. “I love to be in the zone and not thinking about anything but the music that’s in front of me.”

Her great-grandfather likely knew that feeling well, too.

—Robin L. Flanigan

THREE QUESTIONS

An Artist’s Homecoming

Sculptor Judith Modrak ’85 explores the nature of memory.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

modrakNEW ANGLE ON NEUROLOGY: Modrak’s works explore “the hidden physiological topographies” of memory and emotion. (Photo: Metin Oner)

Sculptor Judith Modrak ’85 lives in Manhattan and keeps a studio on Union Square. But she remains pretty rooted in Rochester. Her mother, Deborah Modrak, a professor of philosophy, has been teaching Rochester students the ancient Greeks since 1982. Her brother, physician Joseph Modrak, treats patients at the Strong Sleep Disorders Center, and her husband, Mark Lobene, is a native. She visits often.

Still, her solo exhibition, opening in the River Campus’s Hartnett Gallery during Meliora Weekend, is a special kind of homecoming.

“Your time at a university is a milestone in your life. A solo exhibition is a milestone in an artist’s life. The two converge in a really wonderful way,” she says.

Titled Fundamental Filaments, Modrak’s exhibit will consist of about a dozen pieces that reflect her full range. Her aim, she says, is “to shed light in sculptural form on the complex neural and psychological circuitry involved in bringing life to our memories and experiences.”

The Hartnett Gallery, on the second floor of Wilson Commons, is a student-run professional gallery. Part of Wilson Commons from the student center’s inception, the gallery is celebrating its 40th year. For more information about the gallery, the exhibition, and the complete 2016–17 exhibition schedule, visit blogs.rochester.edu/hartnett/.

What got you thinking about memory?

I was always drawn to art and expressive media as a child, and as an adult, to psychology and biology as well. What intrigues me so much about memories are questions like, Why are some so poignant, joyful, or unnerving, and others ephemeral? Where are they? What regions of our minds do they inhabit? They’re elusive and incredible.

Judith Modrak ’85

Judithmodrak.com

Home: New York City

Exhibition: Fundamental Filaments

Hartnett Gallery, Wilson Commons

Opens October 7, Meliora Weekend, and runs through October 30.

Modrak has exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries and museums across the country in cities such as Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Trenton, and New York. Her work is also held in many private collections.

What are dendrites, and why depict them?

Dendrites are the branches, similar to arms and legs, of a nerve cell. Scientists once thought they were passive transmitters of information, and then they recently discovered that dendrites aid in etching and storing memories.

The essence of sculpture is that it occupies physical space. And in a way, the physicality of sculpture mirrors the physicality of actual memories as they’re imprinted in our brains. As I investigated and sculpted neurons and dendrites more, they came alive to me in a very anthropomorphic way.

What can an artist’s rendering offer that scientific investigation can’t?

For me, art has always been a tangible expression of one’s experience. In one series of figures, I explore feelings of vulnerability, uncertainty, and anxiety to provide a lens for other people to explore their own feelings, which can be unsettling, though equally cathartic.

My sculptures provides a three-dimensional emotional interpretation of phenomena and experience. From earliest times, humans have sought ways to record their experience in material form and leave testimony that their lives mattered. I really do view the artist as a visual anthropologist of sorts. In my case, I’m rendering a very small sliver in the overarching timeline of human evolution. And at this particular time, I’m struck by the amazing advances in neuroscience. Collectively we understand what’s happening in our brains in a way that we never have before. It’s really quite astounding.

A Musical Dream Team

newsDUO: Fleming (left) and Puts premiere his song cycle this fall. (Photo: Timothy White/Decca (Fleming); David White (Puts))

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Kevin Puts ’94E, ’99E (DMA), Grammy Award–winning soprano Renée Fleming ’83E (MM), and the Eastman Philharmonia are teaming up for a performance of Puts’s song cycle Letters from Georgia.

Fleming and the Philharmonia will premiere the song cycle on Saturday, November 12, at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre as part of the Eastman Presents series of performances. They will perform the piece again the following Monday at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Letters from Georgia, which Puts composed specifically for the Philharmonia and for Fleming, is inspired by letters written by artist Georgia O’Keeffe to her eventual husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, as well as to suffragist Anita Pollitzer.

The commissioning of Puts was cosponsored by Joseph and Bette Hirsch ’64 and the Eastman-affiliated Howard Hanson Institute for American Music. Hanson, director of the Eastman School from 1924 to 1964, founded the Eastman Philharmonia in 1958.

A Partner in Health

Kesha Calicutt ’01 was a panelist at the 2016 Partnership for a Healthier America summit held last May in Washington, D.C. As part of a panel titled “Living with Obesity,” she spoke about maintaining health and fitness following her 2010 bariatric surgery. A teacher in the Dallas, Texas, school district, Calicutt maintains a separate career as coleader of a patient support group and as a blogger on weight loss, health, and fitness at Waningwoman.com.

Calicutt was also an invited guest at a White House briefing and reception held in conjunction with the summit.

Partnership for a Healthier America is an independent nonprofit organization formed in 2010 as a counterpart to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign, and designed to bring leaders in the public, private, and nonprofit sector together to help reduce childhood obesity.

Moving On Up

John Palattella ’92 (PhD), longtime literary editor of the Nation magazine, will begin a new role as editor-at-large of the magazine this September. Palattella has previously been an editor at Lingua Franca and the Columbia Journalism Review, and written for a variety of publications, including the London Review of Books, Book Forum, the Boston Review, and the Guardian. In 2010, Palattella delivered a talk on literary culture in the digital age at Rochester as part of the Neilly Series Lectures.

From ‘Terra Incognita’ to Terra Firma

Attorney Brett Stark ’07 helps immigrant children seeking asylum to get both legal and medical help.

By Sofia Tokar

starkCOORDINATED CARING: It’s not just for medical specialists. Attorney Stark is a leader in helping undocumented children get both legal and medical aid. (Photo: Shannon Taggart for Rochester Review)

A teenager from Guatemala experiences a schizophrenic break upon arriving in the United States. He finds his way to a shelter for homeless youth, hoping to get help identifying and replenishing his medication. The medical professional available that day is physician Alan Shapiro, who recognizes that this young person—like many unaccompanied immigrant youths—needs both medical and legal help.

When it comes to the latter, he turns to Brett Stark ’07, who (along with Shapiro and Cristina Muñiz de la Peña) cofounded Terra Firma, a nationally recognized medical-legal partnership, in fall 2013. Based in New York City, the program’s guiding principle is that all children deserve health care and justice.

Stark’s interest in social justice entrepreneurship began taking shape during his time at Harvard Law School. He spent a summer working with refugees in Nairobi, Kenya, and also worked with families and children as part of Harvard’s Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative and the Immigration and Refugee Clinic. After graduation, his Equal Justice Works fellowship provided the initial funding for Terra Firma.

Now, as the program’s legal director, Stark represents unaccompanied immigrant children in federal and state litigation, specializing in asylum and special immigrant juvenile cases.

Over the past few years, there has been a surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the border into the U.S. from Central American countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which have some of the world’s highest homicide and child-homicide rates. Recent analysis from the Pew Research Center, based on data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, puts the number of apprehensions at nearly 28,000 unaccompanied children in just the first six months of the 2016 fiscal year.

Fleeing unstable and unsafe homelands, many unaccompanied minors have experienced physical, emotional, or psychological trauma as part of their journey. But there are many barriers to getting help.

“They have no government status,” Stark says. “They are alone, without documents, and not entitled to a government-funded lawyer.”

Unaccompanied immigrant children are usually apprehended at the border. If not, their first impulse might be to seek out border control or immigration authorities in order to apply for asylum or refuge.

At that point, they are detained and placed in deportation (also known as “removal”) proceedings. Children and families—many of whom do not speak English—are often removed without ever having had a lawyer represent them in court. Meanwhile, immigrant children must begin the resettlement process, and those still fighting their case are eventually placed with relatives or acquaintances, or in shelters in the U.S.

The Terra Firma team connects with unaccompanied immigrant children who require medical, mental health, or legal aid via a programmatic partnership primarily between Catholic Charities New York, the Children’s Health Fund, and the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore.

But word of mouth has also proved useful. For example, a case manager at Catholic Charities who runs a soccer program in the South Bronx puts Stark in touch with clients who need his team’s expertise.

Meanwhile, Terra Firma continues to talk with other people and organizations—in Long Island, Brooklyn, and Texas—to help create a broader network of holistic services for unaccompanied immigrant children.

As a founder of one of the nation’s first medical-legal partnerships dedicated to serving unaccompanied immigrant children in the community, Stark hopes others will look to Terra Firma as a model.

In some ways, Stark himself is a model for others, especially for those interested in social justice entrepreneurship. That’s why Gretchen Helmke, a professor of political science and Stark’s undergraduate thesis supervisor, invited the political science major to speak at the department’s undergraduate diploma ceremony this year.

“It was important to invite someone in the beginning or middle of their career,” says Helmke. “For students majoring in political science or international relations, we wanted to present diverse career paths or ways for them to become social entrepreneurs.” Stark’s “heroic legal work and dedication to education and advocacy,” she says, made him the ideal choice.

For his part, Stark gratefully accepted the invitation.

“I reflect on what I’ve done with the skills and tools that Professor Helmke, the department, and the University gave me,” he says. “These are skills and tools I still use today in my work and that enable me to give back.”

Russ McDonald: Left Lasting Legacies at Rochester

mcdonaldSHAKESPEAREAN: A renowned scholar who began his career at Rochester, McDonald established the Theater in London seminar for undergraduates.Tribute (Photo: Chris English/University of North Carolina at Greensboro)

Russ McDonald, a preeminent Shakespeare scholar, teacher, and opera critic at University of London Goldsmiths College, suffered a fatal stroke on his 67th birthday last June. If we think within the medieval and Renaissance paradigm of the three stages of life, Russ excelled in the youthful years of his academic career at Rochester, then exceeded beyond measure in his “middle elde” years at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Goldsmiths in London, but was denied the joys of “elde” by his early death in the dazzling prime of his career.

Russ first came to Rochester in 1978 to attend an NEH Summer Fellowship for College Teachers taught by Joseph Summers. He loved the music scene and the temperate climate (he and his wife, Gail, had grown up in Texas); both had a deep interest in theater; and, in addition to Renaissance literature, Russ found soulmates in opera among others in our department.

Russ joined our faculty in the fall of 1979. During his years here he established several lasting legacies: the annual trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario; close ties to Shakespeare studies at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C.; and the Theater in London seminar for undergraduates, which was taken over by others in the English department when Russ left in the fall of 1992 for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, an institution that offered teaching positions for him and for Gail, who had just finished her PhD. Russ also set up summer seminar work at the Shakespeare Association in Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom, which several graduate students attended over the years.

I’ve never known a teacher as delightfully engaged in his work. He loved the subtle ways in which language worked, especially in Shakespeare, and wrote brilliantly on that topic. His Shakespeare and the Arts of Language (2001) and Shakespeare’s Late Style (2006) open new doors of appreciation. His most recent Shakespeare Up Close (2012), an anthology of essays on reading moments in the plays, will appear in its third edition in 2016. He was a shrewd close reader of the music of Shakespeare’s lines, and their perpetually new life in the unique play of every performance. His book Look to the Lady (2006), a study of three great actresses of different centuries—Sarah Siddons (18th century), Ellen Terry (19th century), and Judy Dench (20th century)—brings to life the intimate day-to-day relationships between the bard, the actors, and their audiences.

Perhaps Russ’s greatest literary contribution is his Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, which Ralph Alan Cohen (founder of the American Shakespeare Center and creator of the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia) cites as “the most lucid introduction to the writer and his works.” Russ’s The Bedford Shakespeare (an edition of Shakespeare’s 25 most read and performed plays), coedited with Lena Orlin, is a landmark in editing, accompanied by shrewd insights into what’s worth looking into, whether you are a new reader of Shakespeare or the most experienced scholar critic.

In 2003, Russ was named North Carolina Professor of the Year (the prestigious CASE award) and received the Board of Governor’s annual Excellence in Teaching award. He took those strengths that he himself was only beginning to realize with him to London, where he continued to flourish as a truly influential teacher and scholar. He served as president of the Shakespeare Association and wrote regularly for Opera News and Opera Review. He laughed heartily at the idea he would actually be paid and sent pairs of tickets and travel expenses to the Bayreuth Festival for doing what he most enjoyed. His vibrant personality pulsed through thousands of his friends and students. We are all diminished by his passing. —Russell Peck

Peck is the John Hall Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Literature at Rochester.

Books & Recordings

Books

Concrete Steps: Coming of Age in a Once-Big City

By Larry Kerpelman ’63 (PhD)

Pratt Brook Communications, 2016

Writer and editor Kerpelman presents a memoir of his life growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s as a first- generation Jewish immigrant.

Maggie Dove

By Susan Breen ’77

Penguin Random House/Alibi Digital, 2016

Breen introduces a “cozy mystery with bite”—the first e-book in a series featuring Hudson Valley Sunday School teacher-turned-detective Maggie Dove. A second e-book, Maggie Dove’s Detective Agency, will be released by the same publisher in November.

News Now: Being a TV Journalist

By Sudesna Ghosh ’07

Harper Collins, 2016

In a career guide for aspiring television journalists, Ghosh offers a tour of the newsroom, including the perspectives of writers, editors, anchors, field reporters, and cameramen. The book includes interviews with several prominent Indian television journalists.

Voice Secrets: 100 Performance Strategies for the Advanced Singer

By Matthew Hoch and Linda Lister ’93E (MM)

Rowman & Littlefield, 2016

The soprano Lister and Auburn University voice professor Hoch examine multiple nontechnical aspects of vocal performance. They include auditioning, performance anxiety, score preparation, practice performance tips, and business etiquette.

Before Pictures

By Douglas Crimp

University of Chicago Press, 2016

Crimp presents a memoir of “life as a young gay man and art critic in New York City during the late 1960s through the turbulent 1970s.” An influential critic who helped redefine the relationship between pop culture and high art, Crimp is the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History and professor of visual and cultural studies at Rochester.

Sea Spell

By Jennifer Donnelly ’85

Disney Hyperion, 2016

Author Donnelly presents the final book in her four-book fantasy series, Waterfire Saga.

Fortunes Neck

By Kevin McDermott ’76

ThickWinter Press, 2016

In his first mystery novel, McDermott tells the story of the Weir family and the puzzling disappearance of their rebellious daughter. A journalist and writer of short stories and poems, McDermott’s work has appeared in the Best American Short Stories anthology, the Atlantic Monthly, and other major literary outlets.

Hair: A Human History

By Kurt Stenn ’65M (MD)

Pegasus Books, 2016

Stenn, a former professor of pathology and dermatology at Yale School of Medicine and former director of skin biology at Johnson & Johnson, explores human hair from the perspectives of “barbers, wig makers, furriers, trappers, weavers, shepherds, forensic pathologists, antique jewelry collectors, sculptors who use hair as their medium, and scientists who study hair biology, tissue regeneration, and stem cells.”

The Substance of Shadow: A Darkening Trope in Poetic History

By John Hollander; edited by Kenneth Gross

University of Chicago Press, 2016

Gross, the Alan F. Hilfiker Distinguished Professor of English at Rochester, edits lectures of the late poet and literary critic Hollander, exploring the use of metaphors of shade and shadow from ancient to modern times. Hollander delivered the lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge University, in 1999 as part of the long-standing Clark Lectures in English Literature.

Madness and Leadership: From Antiquity to the New Common Era

By Savvas Papacostas ’91M (Res)

Edward Elgar, 2015

Neurologist Papacostas argues that successful leaders often display mild paranoia, “an evolutionary adaptation which developed in order to enhance group cohesion.” Papacostas is senior consultant neurologist and head of the Epilepsy and Behavioral Neurology Clinic at the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Palaces of Memory: American Composer Diane Thome on her Life and Music

By Diane Thome ’63E

FriesenPress, 2016

Thome, one of the first women composers to create computer-synthesized music, offers a memoir. Former chair of the composition program at the University of Washington, Thome reflects on her studies with teachers such as Dorothy Taubman, Robert Strassburg, Milton Babbitt, Roy Harris, and Darius Milhaud.

I Am Compassionate Creativity: 111 Stories from Preschool to Providence

By Kāli Quinn ’03

Compassionate Creativity, 2016

Quinn explores “the integral relationship between compassion and creativity, especially within moments of uncertainty, and when moving through deep grief.” An artist, performer, and lecturer based in Providence, Rhode Island, Quinn blogs at CompassionateCreativity.com.

Film Music: A Journey of Felt Meaning

By Thomas Hohstadt ’55E, ’62E (DMA)

Damah Media, 2016

Hohstadt reimagines the possibilities of film music as an immersive art form in an age of virtual reality. Hohstadt is a conductor, composer, senior lecturer, and director of the philharmonic orchestra at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

An Unexpected Journey: A Physician’s Life in the Shadow of Polio

By Lauro Halstead ’63M (MD)

Self-Published, 2016

Halstead tells the story of living with the aftereffects of polio. Stricken by the disease at age 18, Halstead, now retired, became a sought-after expert on post-polio care during his long career in rehabilitative medicine.

Guidelines for Soldering Practices

By Paul Vianco ’86 (PhD)

American Welding Society, 2016

Vianco presents a textbook on manual soldering practices to make everything from jewelry to sensors for space and satellite applications. The book complements his 2000 text, Soldering Handbook (Third Edition), which applies materials science and engineering toward an understanding of the soldering that has shaped the electronics marketplace. Vianco holds the title of Distinguished Member, Technical Staff, at Sandia National Laboratories.

Cocytus: Planet of the Damned

By John Caligiuri ’79S (MBA)

Insomnia Publishing, 2016

Caligiuri presents a science fiction horror novel set in northern New York.

Coldwater: An Eclectic History of the Hamlet

By Donald Ioannone and John Robortella

Finger Lakes Historical Press, 2016

Robortella coauthors a history of Coldwater, a hamlet near Rochester and within the Town of Gates, settled by German immigrants and home to Harris Seeds. Robortella is retired as the associate director of marketing and communications at the Simon Business School.

Survival in the Shadows: Seven Jews Hidden in Berlin

By Barbara Lovenheim ’70 (PhD)

Open Road, 2015

Lovenheim’s story of the German Jewish Arndt family, published in England and Germany in 2002, is reissued as an e-book by the New York City e-book publishing company Open Road Integrated Media. Lovenheim is a newspaper and magazine journalist and founding editor of the online magazine NYCitywoman.com.

Recordings

Soaring Solo: Unaccompanied Works II for Violin and Viola

By Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio ’85E (MM)

MSR Classics, 2016

In a follow-up to her 2011 recording, Going Solo (MSR Classics), Sant’Ambrogio performs virtuoso works that span 300 years of repertoire, including those by composers living and writing into the 21st century. Sant’Ambrogio is an associate professor of violin and viola at the University of Nevada, Reno.

French Connections

By Linda Chatterton ’90E and Matthew McCright

Proper Canary, 2016

Flutist Chatterton and pianist McCright, performing as the Chatterton-McCright duo, present sonatas by Sergei Prokofiev and Yuko Uebayashi, as well as Chatterton’s transcription of Camille Saint-Saens’s Violin Sonata No. 1, in a CD recorded at Ordway Concert Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The Far West

By Zachary Wadsworth ’05E

Bridge Records, 2016

The first CD devoted entirely to works by composer Wadsworth, The Far West features a cantata, sung by tenor Lawrence Wiliford and the Calgary-based choir Luminous Voices, set to the poetry of Tim Dlugos. A prominent poet in New York City in the 1980s, Dlugos died of AIDS in 1990 while studying to become an Episcopal priest. Wadsworth is an assistant professor of music at Williams College.

The City Wears a Slouch Hat: Nexus Plays John Cage

By Nexus

Nexus, 2016

The percussion quartet Nexus, which includes Bill Cahn ’68E and Bob Becker ’69E, ’71E (MM), performs three works by Cage: Dance Music for Elfrid Ide, Credo in US, and the title track.

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.

(Re)Reading the Romance

Just ‘trashy novels’? Novelist Dawn Roy ’99 says it’s time to reconsider romance.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

masterclass (Photo: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

It’s pretty common to hear romance fiction dismissed as trashy novels. Honestly, I believe that reputation stems from the fact that romance is primarily a genre for and by women. Like all genre fiction, romance is, to a degree, formulaic. But you don’t see the same kind of blanket criticism of other genres such as mysteries or thrillers, for example. There are really good books out there, as well as really bad ones. Annual sales of romance fiction total more than a billion dollars a year, a 13 percent share of the adult fiction market. I don’t think that’s something you can write off.

I think you can go as far back as Jane Austen, or even further, to find great examples of romance. At the time, these were referred to as domestic novels, but they were written—usually—by women, for women, and about women. And although Austen is beloved now, her work was not taken seriously by the literary establishment at the time. I know it’s a complete cliché, but Pride and Prejudice remains one of my all-time favorites.

After college, I finished a master’s program in English at SUNY–Buffalo. Writing for class, both in college and in graduate school, I definitely felt pressure to do something legitimate, and traditional romance wasn’t it. I wrote on and off in graduate school, then got a grown-up job and set it on the back burner. When I finally returned to writing in earnest, I gave myself permission to write what I most loved to read—romance.

Dawn Roy ’99

Home: Ithaca, New York

Author, under the pen name Aurora Rey, of Winter’s Harbor (2015), Built to Last (2016), and Crescent City Confidential (forthcoming), all published by Bold Strokes Books; assistant dean, Ithaca College School of Business; former director of undergraduate academic advising and counseling at Syracuse’s Whitman School of Management; and academic counselor and assistant director at Rochester’s College Center for Advising Services.

On writing at Rochester:“I think I was one of the first students who did a work of fiction as both a Senior Scholars project and an honors thesis for English. Although my proposal strived to be a literary take on romance, the actual project morphed into more of a young adult, queer coming-of-age novel.”

On the relationship between Dawn and Aurora: “I joke sometimes that Aurora gets away with all sorts of fun things Dawn would never try. The longer I’m at it, though, the more I embrace the idea that they inform each other, and both are better for it.”

I read Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance in graduate school. Radway was a literature professor at Duke when she wrote the book in 1984, and it was one of the first times a scholar had given serious attention to romance. I remember being both exhilarated that romance was even being discussed, and deeply disappointed that it was such a monotone conversation. A delightful counter to Radway’s book is the 2015 documentary Love Between the Covers, which highlights just how diverse the genre has become. In fact, one of the featured authors is Radclyffe, a powerhouse of lesbian romance and the founder and president of Bold Strokes Books, which—full disclosure—is my publisher.

The last 10 years has seen an explosion of diversity in the romance genre. Lesbian romance, which I write, is just one example. Whether you’re talking about lesbians, people of color, gay men, straight beta males, alpha women, or BDSM [bondage, discipline, dominance, and submission], it’s about readers and writers wanting to see their lives, their identities and desires, mirrored in stories.

What’s also been interesting is the explosion of M/M fiction, about romance between men, which is written and read predominantly by women. While it seems a little strange on the surface, I think it taps into a growing desire for a much more diverse slate of protagonists—men who are not the stereotypical alpha male you still see portrayed in so many romance novels, for example.

At the end of the day, romance is the genre of hope. Romance novels succeed not when they merely give the happy ending, but when they uplift the reader. I think this happens when the author crafts characters who overcome challenges not unlike what real people face—characters who find love, but also themselves. In a world where cynicism seems to be the force majeure, a genre whose core tenet is hope can be quite radical.

backcover (Photo: Adam Fenster)

BEGINNINGS

White Coat Kick Off

DRESSED & READY: First-year medical student Susan Greenman takes a selfie with fellow students on the Eastman Quadrangle after the Dr. Robert L. and Lillian H. Brent White Coat Ceremony, an event to mark the beginning of each class’s medical education.