Alexander A. Levitan ’63M (MD) and his wife, Lucy, have given nearly $10 million—more than any living donor—to support the medical experience of students from around the world

Lucy Levitan and Alexander A. Levitan ’63M (MD)

Inspired to make education and research experiences possible for students at the URochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry (SMD),��—a retired internist and oncologist—and his wife, Lucy, have given nearly $10 million to the school. Their philanthropy makes them the largest living donors in SMD’s history who have supported the medical experience of students from around the world through scholarships and fellowships.

But for the Levitans, supporting students goes far beyond financial assistance. They offer friendship, advice, and mentorship, long after the students have earned their degrees. They save every communication sent, attend their weddings and other major life events, and even travel abroad to meet the families of the international students whose lives they’ve changed.

Just ask Akosua Korboe ’16M (MD), the inaugural recipient of the . As a student from Ghana, Korboe was ineligible for federal loans without a US citizen co-signer. Thanks to the Levitan Scholarship, she was able to pursue her dream of attending medical school. Today, she is an accomplished internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“Without the Levitan’s support, I would not have been able to attend medical school,” says Korboe. “And although they aren’t my biological family, they feel like they are to me. “They have become family, pouring into me in countless ways, instilling values, believing in me, and always providing me with love and support. I’m forever grateful.”

Generosity brings generosity

Support from others has inspired Levitans to make education and research experiences possible for 19 students to date and many more to come. “Education has been the most valuable experience of my life,” says Al, who was a scholarship student at SMD and at Cornell University. “Without the generosity and the example of others, I never would have earned my degrees and I never would have had the life nor the career I’ve had.”

The couple started supporting SMD in 1976 with gifts to SMD’s annual fund and the Class of ’63’s reunion fund. Their specific support of students began in 2006, 43 years after Al’s graduation from medical school.That’s when they made a gift of $125,000 to establish the Levitan Scholarship. They have continued to contribute generously to that fund, growing its value and reach. In fiscal year 2023, they added an additional $5.2 million, ensuring that a Levitan Scholar graduates and joins the medical school each year, in perpetuity.

“The Levitan Family Endowed Scholarship stands out not only for its size but also for being the sole need-based full tuition and living expenses scholarship at the school, with a special focus on supporting international students,” says David Lambert, MD, senior associate dean of SMD. “These international students are not eligible for the kinds of support that US students can get and without the scholarship could not attend medical school.”

A legacy of giving and learning

The Levitans with Akosua Korboe ’16M (MD)

Al and Lucy also established the Alexander and Lucy Levitan Endowment for Medical Student Research Fellowships with a gift of $1.7 million. Because this fund exists, three medical students every year can take a year out of their four-year SMD curriculum to participate in a research program under the direction and mentorship of an established physician-scientist or basic scientist.

“Many of our alumni have shared that these experiences were career-transforming,” adds Lambert.

The family knows this from experience. Al’s father, Sacha, received financial support from the French government when he emigrated from Russia to France and attended college and medical school there. Later, Al’s family traveled the world due to his father’s work with the World Health Organization.

Al and Lucy named funds at both SMD and Cornell as ways to recognize the importance of scholarship support and international experiences and to honor Al’s father and the couple’s late daughter, Lara, who lost her battle with cancer in 2019.

“The story of Al and Lucy is one of inspiration and compassion, a testament to the power of giving and its potential to change lives,” adds Mark Taubman, MD, Ģ����ý Medical Center CEO and dean of SMD. “Their philanthropic legacy will forever resonate within the medical school, empowering future generations of students to realize their dreams and make a difference in the world of medicine and research.”

In turn, the couple gets to enrich their own lives with connections to people they view as members of their extended family.

“We are tremendously grateful for the support given to us,” says Lucy. “We have always wanted to give back in a similar way—to provide access and opportunities to talented, deserving medical students from around the world. As a result, we have met so many brilliant young people who will do great things in their lives and careers.”

Commencement Keynote Speaker Reflects on Challenges along the Way

Physician-scientist Michelle A. Albert ’94M (MD) is the first person in history to serve concurrently as president of the American Heart Association, the Association of University Cardiologists, and the Association of Black Cardiologists. She’s also the first woman of color and Black woman to be president of the AHA and AUC (where she is now past president).

To be the “first” is noteworthy, but as Albert has found, it can also mean you must find ways to thrive when you feel alone.

While humbled and grateful to be asked to deliver the commencement keynote at her alma mater, Albert’s time in medical school was no cakewalk. She recalls being one of only three Black students in her class of 90 students. Cardiology is also a field historically dominated by males, mostly white.

Luckily, she says that good mentors don’t need to be exactly like you. They just need to be able to help you visualize a future that you can’t see for yourself.

But at first, she had to visualize on her own. Albert was born and raised in Guyana, where she atnd her younger sister, Maxine, lived with their grandparents in a working-class community. Her father, Michael Albert, had received a government scholarship to study in England, where he and her mother, Carmen Albert, studied and worked to help support the family.

When Albert was 14, her grandfather collapsed from cardiac arrest. Where they lived, people didn’t know CPR or have access to a portable defibrillator. Her grandfather died that day. It was a painful way for Albert to experience the impact of socioeconomics on historically under-resourced communities. But it lit the spark that set her career into motion.

At the National Academy of Medicine, of which Albert is an elected member, with husband, Edward Brown.

Developing True Selves

Now, as a practicing clinician, researcher, and epidemiologist at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), she is in the position to mentor directly. She also serves as the dean of admissions for the UCSF School of Medicine and director of its NURTURE Center (CeNter for the StUdy of AdveRsiTy and CardiovascUlaR DiseasE).

Both roles have brought her full circle in many ways. She has chosen to recruit and retain a workforce that can address the unmet needs in health care. Part of her commitment is drawing more people of color into the field of cardiology. In 2022, Forbes magazine named her to its “50 Over 50” list for the impact she has made.

“Mentorship is a priority for me because I absolutely know that we all need mentors and sponsors to develop our true selves and have successful careers with authenticity,” said Albert. “I know the sense of isolation that I felt early on, and I don’t want to see the same thing perpetuated for others like me. Mentors allow us to stretch ourselves—because oftentimes we want to sit in the comfort zone. They help us see a different version of ourselves.”

“She Just Opens Doors”

Those who have had Albert as a mentor point to the example she sets and the remarkable level of care she offers people.

“The cardiovascular workforce lacks representation of Black physicians, especially Black women, and can be very isolating,” said Jonathan Butler, PhD, a social epidemiologist and minister at the NURTURE Center. He says watching Albert overcome many obstacles has inspired him. “I’ve never seen somebody so focused on work, no matter how many obstacles come her way.”

The School of Medicine and Dentistry class of 1994. Albert is pictured in the middle, toward the left.

Butler first met Albert when he was a postdoctoral fellow. He applied to the position after a mutual colleague suggested she would be a good fit with his research interests (social determinants of health and cardiovascular disease, to name just two). Albert, he said, embraced him with open arms.

She is more than a professional mentor; she is a trusted friend. Every major holiday or birthday, he receives a personalized gift from her, and he still has one of the first—a set of customized gold pencils.

“Frequently, we would celebrate a NURTURE team member’s birthday,” said Butler. “Michelle planned every detail, down to the seating chart; menu; and personalized, hand-wrapped gifts for each person who came.” As he put it, “That’s the caring and detail-oriented person Michelle is.”

Melissa Burroughs, MD, credits Albert with guiding her on a long and winding road. They met when Burroughs was a medical student at Harvard and on track to become a cardiologist. For big career decisions, from choosing a residency program to getting her first job at UCSF, Burroughs, who left academics five years ago to become a noninvasive cardiologist in private practice, says Albert has been a constant source of support.

Burroughs was a resident at UCSF and returned to join the cardiology faculty in 2015. At the time, she and Albert had been only the first and second Black cardiologists on faculty.

“She’s the only reason I took that job,” Burroughs said, noting that the diversity of faculty and fellows has improved since then. She credits this to Albert’s leadership and example. “She just opens doors. We all have obstacles we need to face, especially in medicine, but it’s so much better when you have a more senior person opening doors for you.”

Burroughs said she has learned from Albert how to combine rigor with creativity. The field of cardiology is based on exciting data, but the work doesn’t stop there. “I learned from her that it’s not always about the content; it’s the approach,” Burroughs said. “I think she brings all the best qualities we want in a physician and teaches them so well. All the skills she has, you can apply to whatever you do.”

One of these skills includes compassion—both for your patients and the people you work alongside. Most important, for yourself. Burroughs says the rigor of medical training has a way of beating the compassion out of you, making it easy to fall into a trap of abandoning self-care in the process. Albert provided a voice of clarity when it was needed most.

“I called her when my father died,” said Burroughs. Her advice was simple: Work is secondary. Send an email to work and book a flight home the next day. In those moments when you know what’s most important, Burroughs reflects, “Sometimes you just need someone to give you permission.”

Dr. Albert in 2022, when she was named to the Forbes “50 Over 50” list.

Why Rochester?

It’s no surprise that Albert, whose interest in social determinants of health inspired her to go into medicine, was drawn to the University’s School of Medicine and Dentistry and its biopsychosocial model, which takes a holistic approach to health and looks beyond scientific presentation. Today, her research as a physician-scientist-epidemiologist explores those very questions.

“The medical school that you attend does have a significant influence on where you go in the future— through its perspectives that help shape you as a person,” said Albert. “Rochester helped crystallize that for me over time. I’ve come to realize the impact that it has had on me. It’s a process of being divinely drawn to certain things over time, resulting in my building a career around those building blocks, and Rochester was the place where the chips started falling into place.”

Albert, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Edward Brown, hasn’t been back in more than two decades, despite spending years in the Northeast: She was chief medical resident at Columbia University and went on to complete a master’s degree in public health at Harvard School of Public Health as well as fellowships at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she became a rising star.

She has won numerous awards and serves on national boards and committees through her affiliation with the AHA and American College of Cardiology (ACC). Her research has been featured on international media outlets, and she is an often-quoted expert on cardiovascular health, maternal health, and health equity. She is also an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors in medicine.

But she never set out to land leadership positions in the nation’s most prestigious cardiology associations. Albert says she simply followed her interests and worked hard to seize opportunities that aligned with her desire to make a difference—on a large scale.

“I think, honestly, you’re defeating yourself to start with a goal of being the president of an organization,” she said. “Your goal should be about having an impact in things that are important to developing people, including the health of the population.”

Diane Hartmann ‘87M (MD) oversaw dramatic growth in School of Medicine and Dentistry residency programs

Diane Hartmann ‘87M (MD)

“Diane was never content just to meet the standard—she wanted to set the standard, and she did,” said SMD Dean Mark Taubman, MD. “She brought increasing structure and visibility to our programs. Her national profile and credibility was never more evident than when she led the effort that resulted in URMC being one of only a handful of institutions nationwide chosen to participate in the ACGME’s Pursuing Excellence initiative, which will help ensure the prestige of our programs for years to come.”

Under Hartmann, the number of accredited training positions for residents and fellows rose from 598 to 930. The number of ACGME-accredited residencies and fellowships rose from 49 to 93. Collaboration deepened between her office and our hospitals, as did an emphasis on wellness, quality, and safety.

“Our program has evolved with the times to remain a national leader,” Hartmann said. “We’ve worked quickly to adapt to changing technologies and incorporate them into our programs, to make wellness an essential part of our residency and fellowship experiences, and to remain on the cutting edge as education has shifted from time-based requirements to a greater—and very welcome—emphasis on competency and work quality.”

Hartmann considers the Pursuing Excellence grant, which was awarded in 2018, one of her biggest contributions to URMC. The resulting initiative, which operates under the aegis of the Quality Institute, focuses on building better teams, integrating residents and fellows directly into performance-improvement and quality improvement teams.

“Pursuing Excellence is transforming medical education through an increased emphasis on experiential, team-based learning and patient care—with an increased emphasis on quality, safety, and continuous improvement,” said CMO Michael Apostolakos ’90M (Res), ’93 MD (Flw), who, with Hartmann, serves on the Pursuing Excellence executive team.

“Diane has led the way on both fronts and has been a key part of our successes, which include both decreased length of stay and readmissions.”

“One day in GME is never like the next,” she said. Things are always changing, and they have to for medical education to grow and to allow the physicians of the future to gain the skills they will need in practice.”

The Martin E. and Corazon D. Sanders Professor of Voice at the Eastman School of Music says that teaching has been the fulfillment and greatest gift of her life

Katherine Ciesinski ’18M (MS), the Martin E. and Corazon D. Sanders Professor of Voice at the Eastman School of Music
Photo: Jim Caldwell

Since winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions at the age of 23, Katherine Ciesinski ’18M (MS) has achieved worldwide recognition as a performer and recording artist. The New York Times has called her a “singer of rare communicative presence, and a musician of discrimination and intelligence.”

In 2008, Ciesinski joined the faculty at the Eastman School of Music, where she is now the Martin E. and Corazon D. Sanders Professor of Voice. A decade later, she earned a master’s degree in medical humanities from the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

“Music has infused, inspired, and directed my life,” says Ciesinski. “I will sing and teach for as long as I can until it ceases to give me the great joy that it does.”

My family

My father, a Michigan native, was a World War II prisoner of war in Germany. He earned Purple Heart and Bronze Star medals for his service. My mother was in the USO. They met on a train on Long Island just after the war. They fell in love, married, and moved to Delaware where they raised me, my brother, Raymond, and my sister, Kristine, who also became an international opera singer. My parents were educators, and my father was also inducted into the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame for track and field coaching.

My childhood

My parents told me that I babbled musically to the radio when I was a baby. As a toddler, they couldn’t tear me away from the piano at my grandmother’s house (which soon made its way to our family’s living room). I sang in our church choir and throughout grade school, middle school, and high school. At an early age, my teachers recognized that I had perfect pitch.

My early training and career

I earned a bachelor’s and master’s in applied voice performance from Temple. After Temple, I went to Curtis Institute of Music for a three-year intensive opera certificate program. During that time, I went to a summer music academy in Salzburg, Austria—Mozart’s hometown. It was an eye-opening experience. International opera stars were treated like movie stars and every storefront featured life-sized portraits of them. After Curtis, I spent the summer in France and won major competitions in Geneva and Paris. Soon, I was performing at acclaimed opera houses and with leading orchestras around the globe.

My lucky breaks

When I was living in New York City in my early 30s, an opera company in Mexico called me, desperate. They were doing Samson and Delilah, and they needed a new lead, fast, to perform live and on TV with Plácido Domingo, the lead tenor who played Samson. I was given the score just a day or two before getting on a plane. I was awestruck by Plácido and all the talent there, and people were shocked I’d never performed this opera before.

My life as a teacher

In my heart and soul, I am a teacher. I enjoy the ardor, the problem-solving, and the experience of working with very talented students. Teaching allows for the full circle of what I’ve learned and practiced musically. It has been the fulfillment and greatest gift of my life to be a voice teacher, to be a conduit to advance the artistic abilities of others.

My interest in the medical humanities

To be a strong singer, I’ve always known that I must be a healthy person. At one point, I made a connection between why I sing and why others go into medicine. We share a desire and capacity to heal people. I started dreaming of a time when I could offer some understanding of the healing aspects of music to the medical community. I loved being in the inaugural class of the UR medical humanities program. I am currently interested in exploring long-haul COVID and how singing affects lung function.

My life today

My husband, Mark Powell ’19E (DMA), is a conductor who teaches at Queens College in New York City and commutes from Rochester. In the summers, I teach in Italy and Mexico. I also attend international music conferences throughout the year, where I sometimes present, and I chair Eastman’s voice, opera, and vocal coaching department. I serve my community in all these roles with great joy. Eastman is truly my home.

�ճ󾱲���story also appears in the spring 2023 issue of��Rochester Review.

Supported in part by the William and Judy Thorpe Endowment

P. Christopher Cook leads a training session in the DeHaven Lab with two orthopaedic residents, Michelle Smith and Adwin Denasty.

As a surgeon, P. Christopher Cook, MD, the Dr. C. McCollister Evarts Professor in Orthopaedics, chief of the pediatric orthopaedic division, and head of resident training for orthopaedic surgery, has dedicated his career to helping children with bone issues. These issues span infections, birth defects, spinal deformities, and trauma to bones and joints from all causes, including sports injuries. He knew this would be his life’s work after an orthopaedic rotation during medical school.

“That rotation set my career path,” says Cook. “Combining my interest in both pediatrics and orthopaedic surgery has allowed me to help children in a hands-on way, both of which were, and remain, important to me.” Cook knows the difference that excellent training can make. That’s why he not only works with children but also with surgical residents.

In his supervisory training role, Cook is responsible for overseeing resident education, curriculum, and well-being, as well as the application process. The resident training program offers learning opportunities across all orthopaedic specialties, too, and is very selective. Every year, up to 800 medical students apply for the eight available spots. Cook and department leadership interview about 120 applicants, then pare down to fill the coveted positions. His goal is to make sure that residents become competent, well-rounded surgeons who are well-versed in patient care and surgical skills.

“We offer our residents a variety of state-of-the-art training programs that helps them gain the essential surgical skills they need before entering the operating room to work on real patients,” he says. “It’s a distinguishing aspect of what the orthopaedic department offers, and it draws the most qualified residents.”

These labs, and the equipment in them, rely heavily on funding from generous donors such as William P. Thorpe ’81M (Res) and his wife, Judy. For instance, in the current Kenneth DeHaven Skills (KEDS) Laboratory at UR Medicine’s Sawgrass Surgical Center, the Thorpes’ funding has allowed residents to learn techniques such as drilling a pin into bone and practicing arthroscopy using simulation software. (Arthroscopy is a minimally invasive surgical procedure that DeHaven, the first chief of sports medicine in the orthopaedics department, helped pioneer. It is now practiced worldwide for joint repair and ACL reconstruction.)

The Thorpes’ gift will also make a significant impact on what will be offered in the new Orthopaedic & Physical Performance Center. The KEDS Lab will move to a space four times larger at the new location. “In the new KEDS Lab, our orthopaedicc residents will get to practice a variety of techniques including using equipment such as sawbones—these are composite bone models designed to simulate real bones,” says Cook. “Residents will also train using a variety of virtual reality programs, which will allow them to practice and observe what they are doing as they are doing it and make corrections along the way.”

The Thorpes’ support will facilitate innovative collaborative learning at the new center, too. Experts like Cook will be able to link various classrooms to the UR Medicine’s 150-person auditorium and to operating rooms so people can work and learn together no matter where they are.

Adds Cook, “As with computers, which tend to double in speed and power every 18 months or so, there’s a constant need for us to bring in new equipment and techniques. The Thorpes’ generosity helps us do that and keeps us on the cutting edge of surgical technology and training.”

This physician-turned-winemaker runs Bruliam, a boutique winery in Sonoma County.

Kerith Overstreet always knew that someday she’d go to medical school. She grew up loving science, writing, problem-solving, and paying attention to details—all skills that physicians need. After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in English, she pursued her dream and attended the Ģ����ý’s School of Medicine and Dentistry (SMD).

It was the perfect place for her. The school welcomed students who came from a wide variety of academic disciplines and had a sharp mind for medicine. While at SMD, Overstreet discovered something new: a passion for wine.

“My medical school friends and I would go in on cases of our favorites—and we enjoyed the 15 percent discount that came with buying in bulk,” says Overstreet, with a smile. “Together, we discovered the fun and fruitiness of Beaujolais, the elegance of pinot noir, and the crispness in a cold glass of chardonnay. It was such a great time of life—gathering with friends, talking about rotations, and making memories over a glass of wine.”

Coming home

After graduating from medical school in 1998, Overstreet returned home to California to complete a residency in surgical pathology, followed by two fellowships. In 2007, she had an opportunity to crush fruit at a cooperative urban winery in San Francisco. That experience confirmed what her gut was saying: to pursue a career in wine. Overstreet then enrolled in UC Davis, where she took what she learned in medical school and applied it to enology: the study of wines.

Then, in 2008, Overstreet opened Bruliam Wines, which has since become a boutique producer of single vineyard pinot noir, zinfandel, rosé, and chardonnay. Having started with a single barrel, Bruliam now produces about 1,200 cases per year.

Overstreet sources her grapes from vineyards in Sonoma County—including her own estate pinot noir vineyard, Torrey Hill—and from the Santa Lucia Highlands.

“Like all physicians, I invested a lot of time and heart in my medical training,” she says. “Leaving wasn’t easy, but after 15 years of winemaking, it’s clear that I draw on the same skill set every day, just differently. To me, winemaking is a magical elixir of science and art, just like the best physicians combine rigor and technique with a big dose of humanity.”

Making a great bottle of wine

Winemaking, Overstreet says, is not such a far cry from medicine. “I used to look at cross sections of tissue. Now I look at cross sections of grapes,” she says. Overstreet adds that in medical school, she was taught the biopsychosocial approach to patient care and learned how important it was to assess the whole patient to improve health outcomes.

“It’s similar in winemaking,” she says. “We have to integrate a variety of factors that affect the production of a great wine, including sweetness, acidity, tannin, alcohol, and body. There’s art involved in the process, too—intuition, writing skills, design savvy, and the ability to connect with people are vital. Every year offers a new vintage and a new challenge.”

As a winemaker, Overstreet still makes rounds. She wakes early, walks the vineyards, plans a grape-picking schedule, and does whatever the season requires. For instance, when producing red wines, her first job each morning is to check temperature and sugar levels in each tank. “If a tank overheats, the yeast in it can die and fermentation will stop,” she says. “That can’t happen—I have to make sure my grapes don’t get chilled or come down with something like a fever.”

The business of wine

Bruliam is housed within a shared production facility, which makes it possible for small, boutique brands like Overstreet’s to run a business without the capital investment in large equipment like crushers/destemmers and presses. The facility provides her access to state-of-the-art production equipment along with the physical space needed to focus on hospitality, offer private tastings, and provide guests with distinctive experiences.

Overstreet is also intimately involved in all aspects of the business—from farmer to winemaker to marketer to everything in between. “On any given day, I could be sampling grapes, writing tech sheets, jotting down tasting notes, packing boxes, or testing the sugar content in the grapes,” she adds. “I love the variety and wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Bringing people together

Overstreet especially enjoys the people part of the business. “Customers always remind me that I’m right where I need to be,” she says. “I love getting photos from them that showcase a bottle of Bruliam alongside a hike to a waterfall, at a grandchild’s wedding, or as a way to celebrate a new job, retirement, or neighborhood get-together.” She adds that now, during this nearly post-pandemic reality, people are excited about gathering in groups again, to share food and wine, and to lubricate their social machinery.

“Share a bottle of wine from California or New York or Italy or wherever and people inevitably talk about how that particular wine reminds them of a past vacation, a great meal, or some special moment in their lives,” she says. “Wine brings people together—it’s such a privilege to be a part of that.”

Discover fall recipes along with wine pairing suggestions by Overstreet.

Fund initially supports local and international outreach and advocacy efforts within URMC’s Division of Plastic Surgery

Joseph Serletti ’82M (MD), ’88M (Res) and Bonnie Serletti ’90M (MD), ’94M (Res)

Joseph Serletti ’82M (MD), ’88M (Res) and Bonnie Serletti ’90M (MD), ’94M (Res), recently made a $1.5 million gift to endow the Serletti Family Cleft and Craniofacial Humanitarian Outreach Initiative at the URochester Medical Center (URMC). The Serletti’s generosity will initially support local and international outreach and advocacy efforts of the ��within URMC’s Division of Plastic Surgery at Golisano Children’s Hospital. In the future, this endowment will fund the Serletti Family Professorship, which will help attract, retain, and honor exemplary faculty clinicians in the plastic surgery division.

Right now, the Serletti Initiative will help support the mission of the Pediatric Cleft and Craniofacial Center including international efforts in South and Central America aimed at sustainable care for children with craniofacial deformities. It will also help fund and expand a camp held every year that brings together local children and families affected by craniofacial conditions.

“Joe’s time at Rochester—as a student, resident, surgeon, and leader—was formative for him, and for us,” says Mark Taubman, CEO, Ģ����ý Medical Center and UR Medicine, and dean, School of Medicine and Dentistry. “As our chief of plastic surgery, he played a lead role in establishing the Pediatric Cleft and Craniofacial Center 25 years ago. Since then, the center has treated and helped thousands of children and families. We are grateful to him and Bonnie for choosing us as a beneficiary of their forward-thinking philanthropy.”

“The Ģ����ý Medical Center is my home,” says��, the Henry Royster-William Maul Measey Professor of Surgery, chief of the Division of Plastic Surgery, and vice chair for finance in the Department of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s where Bonnie and I were educated and trained and where I practiced for many years. It was important for me and Bonnie to give back to place that gave us both so much.”

He adds, “I’m proud of the plastic surgery division and the Pediatric Cleft and Craniofacial Center—the work there is being done with the competence, compassion, and deep personal commitment of its leaders and the world-class residents. Our wish is that this gift is a catalyst for continued excellence—the kind that truly helps improve the quality of life for people and recognizes exceptional scholarship and clinical practice in the plastic surgery field.”

“Joe played an instrumental role in setting the course for the plastic surgery division here,” says Howard Langstein, chief,��, and professor of surgery. “As a world leader in cleft and craniofacial surgery, our health care teams—experts in plastic surgery, dentistry, speech, and other areas—work collaboratively to ensure that a patient’s entire spectrum of needs are met. We’re grateful to Joe and Bonnie for their generosity.”

Adds Clinton Morrison, director, Pediatric Cleft and Craniofacial Center, and associate professor of surgery, “Joe is a visionary—he has always been guided by the biopsychosocial model, which has taught us as clinicians to treat the whole person. His and Bonnie’s generosity will help us continue treat the increasing number of patients we see locally along with those we work with internationally. Their partnership and leadership has and continues to a vital source of support.”

Morrison’s team coordinates a local craniofacial outreach camp program, which has grown exponentially in the past decade. In 2022, the camp welcomed 300 children and families, the largest crowd to date. Morrison also leads the URMC’s participation in international outreach, including an annual medical mission trip to Guatemala coordinated through the��, a Rochester, NY-based charity that coordinates craniofacial deformity surgeries on children around the world.

“Over many years, Joe has remained a friend and supporter of surgery department and the University,” says David Linehan, the Seymour I. Schwartz Professor of Surgery, and chair of the Department of Surgery. “He is an extraordinarily successful and nationally renowned academic surgeon and leader who never forgot his roots. The support of the Serletti family means the world to me and will help take our world-class Division of Plastic Surgery to new heights.”

Read more about the Pediatric Cleft and Craniofacial Center’s local and international outreach programs.

—Kristine Thompson, October 2022

The first ‘skip’ of a national mixed curling champion leads a team to this fall’s world curling championships.

NUANCED VIEW: “Balance and touch” are the keys to being a curler, says Pulli, who has played the sport most of her life, including as a student at Rochester. “A great curler develops patiently over time by learning all the nuances of the game.”
Featured image photo credit: J. Adam Fenster

After finishing second in a national curling competition in 2019, Caitlin Costello Pulli ’97 couldn’t wait for another shot at gold. Turns out, she had to wait three years, as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down competition.

This past April, Pulli and three teammates made up for lost time by capturing the 2022 US mixed fours curling championship, hosted by the Rochester Curling Club. The national title earned them a spot in the world championships, scheduled for October in Aberdeen, Scotland, and featuring about 40 teams from across the globe.

“Winning nationals was a dream come true, especially in front of a hometown crowd and friends and family,” Pulli says. “It was worth the wait.”

Team Pulli is headed by Caitlin—the first female captain (known as a “skip”) to win a national mixed fours championship. The quartet includes her husband, Jeff Pulli, and friends Rebecca Andrew and Jason Scott.

Invented in Scotland and extremely popular in Canada, the game wins new aficionados with each Winter Olympics, as TV viewers are introduced to curling’s strategic gamesmanship and learn its colorful terminology. Two teams of players compete by sliding 44-pound stones (known as “rocks”) across a sheet of ice toward a concentric target area (the “house”). Each team tries to get their stones as close to the center of the circle (the “button”) as they can, with points awarded for the number of stones that a team places closer to the button than their opponent’s nearest rocks.

Team members influence the path of each rock by using brooms to “sweep” the ice ahead of the rocks as the stones travel toward the house.

The skip is the strategist, dictating the placement of every shot to maximize scoring or prevent an opponent from scoring. Skips direct throwers where to aim each stone and how hard to throw it, and they tell sweepers when and where to sweep.

The skip also throws the last two shots of every “end” (similar to an “inning” in baseball) in a contest—often the most pressure-packed shots of the match.

“The most important skill a new curler needs to master is balance and touch,” Pulli says. “A great curler develops patiently over time by learning all the nuances of the game.”

Pulli grew up in Utica, New York, and was introduced to curling by her grandparents, who were members of a curling club. “I loved it right away,” she says.

A biology major at Rochester, she competed in junior nationals for three years while an undergraduate, finishing second in 1996. She met Jeff 10 years ago through curling. They were married five years ago and live in Rochester with their two daughters. Caitlin is a chemical and materials engineer for Xerox Corporation.

Mixed fours curling is not an Olympic sport, so there’s no ranking system. When Pulli was fully competing in women’s fours, her team was ranked second in the country. She was a silver medalist at the 2006 world championships and finished second in the 2010 Olympic Trials, just missing a chance to compete in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. “That was a heartbreaker,” she says.

She has competed in the US women’s championship 14 times and earned a gold medal in 2011. She also has four silver medals and one bronze.

She’s excited to train with her team for the world championships, where Canada, Sweden, Scotland, and Switzerland will be the favorites.

“Our goal will be to make the 16-team playoffs,” she says. “We won’t be a favorite, but there’s always a shot if you have a couple of great games in the playoffs.”

This article originally appeared in the spring 2022 issue of the Rochester Review magazine.

Historian Ellen Singer More ’79 (PhD) explores the complex legacy of pioneering sex educator Mary Calderone ’39M (MD)

UNIVERSALIST: “We are all sexual, all of our lives, each in our own unique way at any given moment,” said Calderone, a Quaker, who believed sexuality was a divinely bestowed gift to be celebrated. While she shocked some, she alienated others, particularly the young, beginning in the late 1960s, with her espousal of what she called “responsible sexuality.”

From the 1960s until well into the 1980s, Mary Calderone ’39M (MD) was a high-profile and a divisive figure in American culture.

That may have been inevitable, given the subject of her work and the social context in which she operated.

Calderone was the first medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation, holding that position during the approval and roll-out of the first oral contraceptive in the United States. In 1964, she left the federation to cofound the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS (since 2019 known as SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change). She was the author or coauthor of multiple books, including The Manual of Contraceptive Practices (1964), The Family Book about Sexuality (1980), and Talking with Your Child about Sex (1984).

The mission of SIECUS under Calderone’s leadership was not only to convey accurate information about sex, but also to change attitudes. At a time when parents, educators, and religious and civic leaders expressed great anxiety over the implications of “the pill” for the sexual lives of young people, Calderone and her colleagues advanced a positive view of sexuality as a natural and healthy part of life that emerges during childhood and can remain vibrant throughout life.

At the start of her career, in the 1940s, many of her contemporaries found her views shocking. By the late 1960s, however, she began to lose her radical edge. In The Transformation of American Sex Education: Mary Calderone and the Fight for Sexual Health (New York University Press, 2022), Ellen More ’79 (PhD) traces Calderone’s career and explores her profound and complicated legacy in the context of the larger history of sex education in the United States.

More was a postdoc at the Medical Center in 1984 when she first met Calderone. A historian by training—of Tudor-Stuart England, to be exact—More, much like Calderone, shaped her career in the context of her family circumstances. Now a medical historian and professor emeritus in psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, More had a husband with a job at Kodak and a young daughter when she was starting her career. She was nearing the completion of her dissertation, taking stock of the opportunities available to her locally, when she was offered the chance to develop and teach Rochester’s first undergraduate course on the history of the American medical profession. Questions raised by her students—many of them young women preparing for careers in medicine—and a tip from then professor of medicine Edward Atwater ’50 about a rich collection of materials related to early women physicians he had amassed and donated to the Miner Library (now part of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform) led her to research women physicians, and eventually, Calderone.

“Calderone herself was not someone you would get close and personal with,” More says, recalling that first meeting and several more with Calderone later in the 1980s. But she was deeply charismatic. The daughter of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, Edward Steichen, Calderone, who was born in 1904, spent her childhood jet-setting between Paris and New York and finished off her secondary education at New York’s elite Brearley School.

One of the challenges of telling Calderone’s story is contending with how much public discourse on sexuality has changed in the years since she was active, and since her death in 1998. It’s tempting to ask, what would Calderone have said?

We’ll never know. But Calderone was motivated throughout her life by “a deeply held belief in universalism,” More says. A Quaker throughout her life, “she was interested in universalizing. That was her orientation. She wanted to express that sexuality was a universal human need and a universal, underlying biological system.

“However it expressed itself, it was part of every human.”

Who Was Mary Calderone ’39M (MD)? A Brief Introduction in Five Scenes

The New York Times anointed Mary Calderone ’39M (MD) “the grand dame of sex education” when she died in 1998.

But she, like all great social pioneers, was a complicated, nuanced figure who devoted her considerable energy on projects that were not met with wholehearted enthusiasm by the society she was hoping to help. Here are five important ideas about her life and work, drawn from The Transformation of American Sex Education: Mary Calderone and the Fight for Sexual Health (New York University Press, 2022), by Ellen More ’79 (PhD).

1. As a child, Calderone received mixed messages at home about sexuality.

Calderone was born as Mary Steichen in 1904 to parents steeped in the transatlantic artistic avant-garde. Her father was the renowned photographer Edward Steichen, credited along with Alfred Stieglitz as a major figure in the transformation of photography into an art form. During Mary’s childhood and adolescence, Steichen became a pioneer in fashion photography, producing, More writes, “wide-ranging studies of the human form,” imbued with “the modernist view of the body as a subject of straightforwardly sensuous representation.”

Mary’s mother, Clara, by contrast, was “a perfect exemplar of Victorian sexual attitudes,” More says, and “clearly very uncomfortable with her husband’s sexual openness.”

Following a common Victorian practice, Clara put Mary to bed in aluminum mittens designed to prevent masturbation. But despite Steichen’s seemingly libertine attitudes, according to More there is no evidence that Steichen ever objected to Clara’s treatment of Mary—treatment that Calderone later characterized as sexual shaming that left a deep impact on her. More relates another incident from Calderone’s childhood that made a lasting impression: a teenaged gardener exposed himself to Calderone while the two were in a shed. “I think any parent would be horrified,” More says. But what remained with Calderone years later were Steichen’s words to her, after he fired the gardener: “Now you have lost your innocence.”

“Those words were burned into her memory and were in some ways, some of the most important ones ever said to her,” More says. “I really believe that her campaign to destigmatize sexuality—and particularly children’s sexuality, their sense of pleasure in their own sexual beings—is rooted in these experiences of her childhood.”

Decade-long donor Tortolani shows appreciation for the School of Medicine and Dentistry

Robert Tortolani ’67M (MD)

Robert Tortolani ’67M (MD), and his wife, Karen, joined the George Eastman Circle more than a decade ago. It was the best avenue to show their appreciation for the School of Medicine and Dentistry and the importance of medical education.

“I feel my classmates and I had a special education at Rochester,” Tortolani said. “From the approach of faculty to patient care, to the passion in their teaching, we had standout teachers and an excellent education.” He said the School taught students to treat the whole patient. “It was different than the education at other medical schools. I have been proud of the education I received at Rochester and it has served my patients well.”

Though retired after more than 40 years in family practice in Brattleboro, VT, the lifelong impact of Tortolani’s education shows in his volunteer work. He stays busy providing care at a local health clinic, driving for community food bank, and teaching medical students at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical.

He and Karen, a Rochester native, always enjoyed coming back to their reunions and attending the Dean’s Circle Dinners. When they were in a position to give more back, making the 5-year pledge for their first George Eastman Circle membership seemed perfect.

He directs his support to the School of Medicine and Dentistry Annual Fund to support faculty, student scholarship, and research.

George Eastman Circle funds for research helped the School achieve the honor of being one of the top medical schools in the nation according to U.S. News & World Report, ranking #26 in clinical primary care and #37 in research. More than a dozen alumni-sponsored George Eastman Circle Scholarships help the School continue to attract and successfully compete for the nation’s top medical and graduate students and keep their graduation debt far below the national average. The School is dedicated to training humanistic physicians who will be future leaders in clinical medicine, research, and administration.

“I feel very fortunate that Rochester chose me and I chose Rochester,” Tortolani said. He said he looks forward to returning for Reunion this fall. “I am so grateful for my classmates. It’s always been great to look back on our Rochester education and our time together. It’s a special place.”

Any gift made to any area of the University this year will be counted in your class gift. We will help you have the impact you want with the vehicle that is right for your situation. Please reach out to Kerrie Merz at Kerrie.Merz@rochester.edu or 585-260-4379.