I was born at Strong Hospital in June 1944, in the shadow of the River Campus, and I saw Jimmy Carter on campus in the 1970s. Can you tell me how many presidents of the United States have visited the University? Who were they? When did they come? Why did they come? —James Anderson, Rochester

Thirty-two US presidents have held office since the Ģ����ý’s founding in 1850. Although quite a number of them have passed through Rochester, as of the writing of this article, only seven future or former presidents actually visited the campuses. Presumptive President-Elect Biden would make eight.

The earliest appears to have been future president Theodore Roosevelt in 1900. He was serving as New York State governor, and the occasion was the celebration of the University’s semicentennial on June 13, 1900. With a speech entitled “Promise and Performance,” Roosevelt was the evening speaker at the Lyceum Theatre, where the event was held—the Eastman Theatre would not open until 1922. A little over a week after his Rochester appearance, Roosevelt would be nominated at the Republican National Convention as President William McKinley’s vice president.

Another 59 years would pass before another future president visited. On October 1, 1959, Senator John F. Kennedy spoke in Strong Auditorium to a standing-room-only crowd of students. While Kennedy was visiting, a future Rochester president, W. Allen Wallis, was working for President Dwight D. Eisenhower to formulate the report of the Cabinet on Price Stability for Economic Growth. When Wallis was inaugurated on May 17, 1963, Eisenhower was the keynote speaker for the ceremony in the Eastman Theatre.

Richard M. Nixon was next: he made several appearances on campus, but most memorably as the 1966 commencement speaker. Initial reports that the former vice president would receive an honorary degree as part of the ceremony caused public protests by students and faculty.

Professor of Philosophy Lewis White Beck stated: “We defend his right to express his opinions as he chooses, but maintain that by honoring him, this university will be grievously compromising one of its most basic ideals,” that of academic freedom. The degree controversy was ended when Nixon claimed that he did not accept honorary degrees. His commencement speech was entitled “Academic Freedom.”

On November 11, 1983, George Herbert Walker Bush was guest of honor—and honorary degree recipient—at the installation of Paul W. MacAvoy as dean of the Graduate School of Management (renamed the Simon School in 1986). The vice president, whose Secret Service detail caused considerable consternation on campus, expounded on the theme “The Prospects for the Manufacturing Industries.” A year later, the vice president was back, and took time out from campaigning to jog with students in Fauver Stadium.

 
Bill Clinton was the headliner for Meliora Weekend 2011, giving the keynote address and then sitting in conversation with President Joel Seligman.

Not unsurprisingly, many presidential candidates have come to campus as well, whether as part of campaigns or at other points in their careers. They include Thomas E. Dewey (1957); Robert F. Kennedy (1964); Al Gore (2000, and in a Democratic presidential nomination debate at the Eastman Theatre with Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson in 1988); Ralph Nader (1984), Gary Hart (1984); Joe Biden (1988); and Hillary Rodham Clinton (2000 and 2004).

Finally, Jimmy Carter made at least two visits to the University. As a former president he gave the second annual Cameros Family Lecture in the Palestra on October 17, 1983. His address, entitled “Striving for a Just Society,” advocated for human rights as an essential element of American foreign policy.

His first visit, when you likely saw him, was in 1975, when as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, he was invited by the Outside Speaker’s Committee to speak in Hubbell Auditorium. The Campus Times reported that Carter suggested there were “two basic questions asked by the American people. The first is can government be competent? . . . The second . . . [is] can government be decent?” Carter felt the answer to the first question was “yes.” For the second, he noted, “As decent as the American people.”

This installment of “Ask the Archivist” originally appeared in the fall 2020 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the Ģ����ý.

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to National Institutes of Health scientist Harvey Alter for work that has led to diagnostic tests and treatments for a life-threatening form of hepatitis. He shared the prize with British scientist Michael Houghton and Rockefeller University scientist Charles Rice.

The Nobel committee cited the scientists “for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus.” “Thanks to their discovery, highly sensitive blood tests for the virus are now available and these have essentially eliminated post-transfusion hepatitis in many parts of the world, greatly improving global health,” the committee noted.

Alter, who holds BA and MD degrees from Rochester, is the 13th Nobel laureate with ties to the University.

Here’s a look at all of Rochester’s Nobel Prize recipients:

2020 Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Harvey Alter ’56, ’60M (MD), discovery of Hepatitis C virus

2020 Nobel Prize laureate Harvey Alter ’56, ’60M (MD) received the University’s highest alumni award in 2015 (University photo / J. Adam Fenster)

2018 Prize in Physics

Donna Strickland ’89 (PhD) and Gérard Mourou, developers of “chirped-pulse amplification” in lasers

Gérard Mourou, left, photographed in Rochester in 1987, and Donna Strickland ’89 (PhD), seen aligning an optical fiber in her lab in Rochester in 1985. The pair shared half of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.” (University photos)

2018 Prize in Economic Sciences

Paul Romer, developer of the endogenous growth theory

Paul Romer, a former assistant professor of economics at Rochester, was recognized as a pioneer of the endogenous growth theory, which integrates technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis. (TT News Agency via AP photos)

2017 Prize in Economic Sciences

Richard Thaler ’74 (PhD), one of the founders of behavioral economics.

Richard Thaler ’74 (PhD), a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and one of the founders of the discipline of behavioral economics, receives an honorary doctor of science degree from the Ģ����ý in 2010. (University photo / J. Adam Fenster)

2002 Nobel Prize in Physics

Masatoshi Koshiba ’55 (PhD), a physicist who led work to detect the subatomic particles known as neutrinos.

Masatoshi Koshiba, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, attends a press conference at in Tokyo after receiving the news Tuesday that he and two American researchers won the Nobel Prize in Physics for “pioneering contributions to astrophysics.” (AP Photo)

1997 Nobel Prize in Physics

Physicist Steven Chu ’70, former Secretary of Energy who developed methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

Steven Chu, then at Stanford University, receives the Nobel Prize in Physics from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm in 1997. (AP Photo)

1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Robert Fogel, an economist who pioneered quantitative analyses of social history.

Robert Fogel, a member of the Rochester economics faculty in the 1960s and 1970s, speaks to reporters in his University of Chicago office in 1993, as wife, Enid, looks on after learning that he had shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. (Eugene Garcia/AFP/Getty Images)

1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Carleton Gajdusek ’43, who is credited with discovering the infectious disease mechanism of prions.

The Nobel Prize winners for 1976 gather at the United States ambassador’s residence in Stockholm in 1976. From left: Burton Richter, corecipient in physics; Carleton Gajdusek, corecipient in medicine; William Lipscomb, chemistry; Saul Bellow, literature; Samuel Ting, corecipient in physics; Milton Friedman, economics; and Baruch Blumberg, corecipient in medicine. (AP Photo)

1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Arthur Kornberg ’41M (MD), who first discovered a way to synthesize DNA.

Arthur Kornberg receives his Nobel Prize for medicine from King Gustav Adolf of Sweden in 1959 for his pioneering research of a basic mechanism of heredity. (AP Photo)

1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Vincent du Vigneaud ’27 (PhD), a biochemist, for research on sulfur-containing compounds

Vincent du Vigneaud, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, went on to a faculty position at Cornell University Medical School. (Getty Images)

1943 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Biochemist Henrik Dam for his discovery of vitamin K.

A member of the faculty in the 1940s, Henrik Dam was a corecipient of the 1944 Nobel Prize for work on vitamin K. (AP Photo)

1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

George Whipple, founding dean of School of Medicine and Dentistry for his work to develop a therapy for anemia.

In an April 1935 photo, George Whipple (far right) is joined by other 1934 laureates H.C. Urey (chemistry) and George Minot and William Murphy, who shared the prize in medicine or physiology with Whipple. (AP Photo)

Filling up a to-go bag in Douglass Dining Center in April, Shane Michtavy ’20 said he’s a regular at the River Campus dining hall.

Speaking through a mask and wearing eye protection, the chemical engineering major says that since the University went into lockdown in March, he’s walked over from the DKE house to pick up food twice a day at Douglass. He appreciates that the Ģ����ý’s�� has re-engineered much of its operation to accommodate state-mandated rules that allow only take-out dining.

“It’s a blessing compared to what everyone else is going through,” he says. “I’m really grateful. It’s one less worry.”

Michtavy is one of about 750 students in the College who have remained on the River Campus this spring, finishing out the semester while living in residence halls. Like their counterparts who have returned to their home residences or moved off campus, the on-campus students are completing their coursework remotely, connecting by teleconference with faculty, other students, and support staff.

And while most of the non-Medical Center parts of the University have moved to remote work, services for the on-campus population remain in operation, albeit on a reduced basis with new operating procedures.

Douglass, one of the main dining halls on the River Campus, along with the Pit and Starbucks in Wilson Commons, and Hillside Market in Susan B. Anthony Halls, remain open for business. But Douglass has gone from serving as many as 3,000 visitors a day to about 150. Service is available for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but hours have been cut back.

Dining Services has had to quickly recast much of its operation to abide by rapidly changing guidelines issued by the state and the county.

Sourcing paper products was an early hurdle, as was shifting the menu to work well in take-out formats. But there has also been time to explore ideas for the future.

“We were able to come together as a team and work side-by-side in a very challenging time,” says Bryan Carey, hospitality services director for Douglass. “We want things to look really good when we have the opportunity to reopen.”

Cameron Schauf, director of Campus Dining Services and Auxiliary Operations, says the staff has worked diligently to make sure students living on campus have options for how they manage their meals. In addition to making changes to how meals are served, Dining Services adjusted the College’s dining plans so that students have a bank of resources to use either to get food on campus or to order from the delivery service GrubHub.

“We often had to switch gears each day,” Schauf says. “I’m proud of the work that my team has done in making each of these steps. There’s never been a moment when I have said, ‘How are we going to do tomorrow?’ ”

For the dining staff, the changes have also disrupted their connections with students.

Tammy Connell, a cook’s helper who has worked for the University for more than 11 years, says the staff gets to know the students over the course of a year.

“It breaks my heart not seeing the students come in,” she says. But, she notes, for those who are still on campus, there’s more time to talk. “We let them know that it’s going to be all right. We’ll have normalcy again.”

Jayquan Coley, a cook’s helper who’s been with dining for 10 years, says “it’s been a bit lonesome” because he enjoys interacting with students.

“I miss my students,” he says. “I’m used to a big crowd. That’s what gets us going.”

At Starbucks, Lisa Heininger, hospitality services manager in Wilson Commons, says the store went from being one of the busiest in the Northeast to allowing just five customers in the store at a time.

At its peak each semester, the store handles about 2,000 orders a day. That’s down to about 175 to 200 this spring.

And at Hillside, a convenience-style market in Susan B. Anthony Halls, manager Dustin Peterson says the store, too, has implemented social distancing and traffic rules. He admits that it’s strange for the store to be so quiet as the end of the year approaches, normally a busy time at Hillside.

Claude Mulindi ’22, an engineering sciences major living in Crosby Hall, stops at Hillside a few times a week. He regularly eats at the Pit and Douglass but likes to make his own meals as well. Getting eggs at Douglass, he was prepared to live on his own. “I can make an omelet,” he says.

At Douglass, Annie Wang ’22, a brain and cognitive sciences and psychology major, says she’s impressed with what the dining hall has to offer. While she’s a regular user of GrubHub, a friend encouraged her to try Douglass.

“I think it’s pretty good,” she says. “It’s safe, there’s variety. It’s the best-case scenario, given the situation.”

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Researchers at the New York Influenza Center of Excellence are launching a new study to determine if and when a person could be re-infected with the novel coronavirus and whether some people have pre-existing immunity.

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President Sarah Mangelsdorf has been elected to the , one of the nation’s most highly regarded honors for artistic, academic, and scientific leaders who engage in advancing the public good.

Mangelsdorf, who also holds the title of G. Robert Witmer Jr. University Professor, is one of 276 artists, scholars, scientists, and executives in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors inducted into the 2020 class. Joining her as a member this year are songwriter and activist Joan Baez, Brandeis University law professor Anita Hill, former US attorney general Eric Holder Jr., author Ann Patchett, poets Joy Harjo and Claudia Rankine, NIH immunologist Yasmine Belkaid, University of Washington president Ana Mari Cauce, and Duke University president Vincent Price.

Also elected this year was Grammy Award–winning composer and Eastman School of Music graduate Maria Schneider ’85E (MM).

Since July 1, 2019, Mangelsdorf has served as the 11th president of the University, where she is also a professor of psychology. As a noted leader in higher education, she has earned recognition for her work on issues of academic quality, educational access, and diversity and inclusion at some of the nation’s leading public and private institutions. In her first year at Rochester, she has highlighted the strength of the institution’s multimillion-dollar research endeavor, the University’s ties to the Rochester community and region, and the importance of equity and inclusion as key attributes of Rochester’s values as a university.

In announcing the members of the class this month, David Oxtoby, the president of the academy, said the inductees are “united by a place in history and by an opportunity to shape the future through the academy’s work to advance the public good.”

Internationally known for her research on emotional and personality development, Mangelsdorf began her career on the faculty of the University of Michigan. She served as chair of the psychology department and dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was later named dean of the largest college at Northwestern University, and served as provost and chief academic officer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before being named Rochester’s president.

Mangelsdorf is a graduate of Oberlin College, and she received her PhD from the University of Minnesota.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and others, the academy was established to honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and to recognize excellence and expertise and the role they play in American public life.

As a member of the academy, Mangelsdorf joins several University community members who have been inducted. A sample list includes current faculty members Richard Eisenberg, the Tracy Harris Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry; Joanna Scott, the Roswell S. Burrows Professor of English; Stanley Engerman, the John H. Munro Professor of Economics and professor of history; Michael Tanenhaus, the Beverly Petterson Bishop and Charles W. Bishop Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics; John (Jack) Werren, the Nathaniel and Helen Wisch Professor of Biology; and Lynne Maquat, the J. Lowell Orbison Distinguished Service Alumni Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Former faculty members who were inducted include the late Richard Fenno Jr., Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science, the late Esther Conwell ’45 (MA), a research professor of chemistry and physics, and the late poet Anthony Hecht.

Alumni members include the late Nobel Prize laureate Arthur Kornberg ’41M (MD), operatic soprano and Grammy Award winner Renée Fleming ’83E (MM), Donald Henderson ’54M (MD), an epidemiologist who led the worldwide effort to eradicate smallpox, and John (Jack) Rowe ’70M (MD), the Julius B. Richmond Professor of Health Policy and Aging at the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Read more

‘To lead one of the world’s great research universities’
Sarah Mangelsdorf became Rochester’s 11th president in July 2019.

Sarah Mangelsdorf sets her own presidential tone
One of Sarah Mangelsdorf’s consistent themes is her intention to remain a curious, visible, and accessible leader.

As Rochester’s 11th president, Sarah Mangelsdorf promises to “keep my feet on the ground, my head in the clouds, and my focus on Meliora.”

If you’re looking for some good at-home entertainment that also keeps you connected to your Rochester community, here’s a roundup of “Rochester recommendations” for movies, television series, musicals-turned-movies, and movies-turned-musicals, all made with Rochester alumni as actors, producers, writers, or composers.

Most are available for streaming or rent on services such as YouTube, iTunes, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and more. To see where programs are available, check out websites like or . And for those who want more of a Broadway experience, there’s .

Musical movie night, Broadway style

While Broadway performances have been suspended for the time being, there are still ways to enjoy the notable roles that Rochester people have played in some of  Broadway’s iconic productions—either the original or major revivals. Many have film counterparts that can be streamed or rented through online services.

Our thanks to Stephen Carr, associate professor of opera and musical theater studies at Eastman and the associate artistic director of , who highlighted a few recommendations for those looking for a musical movie night, Rochester style.

Bye Bye Birdie

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Bye Bye Birdie, a musical whose story follows the PR machinations that take place after teen heartthrob Conrad Birdie is drafted into military service. With music by Tony Award-winning composer Charles Strouse ’47E, the musical launched Strouse’s decades-long career on Broadway and beyond.

After its Tony Award-winning turn on Broadway, the musical was adapted into a 1963 film starring Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh, and Ann Margaret.

Annie

Also with music by Strouse, the Broadway production brought to life the comics character Little Orphan Annie and made earworms out of the songs “Tomorrow” and “It’s the Hard Knock Life.” The 1982 movie adaptation stars Carol Burnett and Albert Finney.

Pajama Game

With a book by Broadway legend George Abbott, Class of 1911, the 1954 Broadway production won a Tony Award for best musical and the 2006 revival won a Tony for best revival. There’s trouble in a pajama factory when workers ask for a 7-and-a-half-cent raise. The 1957 movie, also produced by Abbott, stars Doris Day.

Damn Yankees

Also written by Abbott, the 1955 musical is a twist on the Faust legend of making a deal with you-know-who in order to make a wish come true. In this case, the wish is for the Washington Senators to beat the New York Yankees for the league pennant. The 1958 film version was directed by Abbott.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Directed by Abbott, the 1962 Broadway production—with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim—won several Tony Awards, including best direction for Abbott. The 1966 film features Buster Keaton in his last movie appearance.

Fiddler on the Roof

The 2015 revival of the 1964 Broadway production featured Kelly Tompkins-Hall ’93E as a violin soloist. Matt Moisey ’14E was a cast member. The original Broadway show won nine Tony Awards, and the 1971 film version earned three Academy Awards.

The King and I

Opening on Broadway in 1951, the Rogers and Hammerstein musical won Tony Awards for Gertrude Lawrence as Anna, a British schoolteacher in the court of King Mangkut, and for Yul Brynner as the king. Brynner reprised the role in the 1956 film. In the 2015 Broadway revival, Analisa Leaming ’07E took the role of Anna.

From screen to stage: More Broadway connections

In addition to musicals-turned-movies that found fame first on Broadway, several recent Broadway productions began life as theatrical films and TV shows. And Rochester alumni were there to help make them happen.

The Producers

The musical about two theatrical schemers began as a 1967 film, written and directed by Mel Brooks. The 2001 Broadway production, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, earned Doug Besterman ’85 a Tony Award for best orchestration. Lane and Broderick reprised their roles in a 2005 film version.

The Norman Conquests

The 2009 revival of a 1973 stage trilogy by Alan Ayckbourn earned a Tony Award for Jane Dubin ’78, ’79 (MS), the president of the theatrical production company Double Play Connections. Each of the three comedies in the series follows six characters over the course of a weekend day. A British TV production of the plays aired in 1977.

An American in Paris

Based on the 1951 film starring Gene Kelly as a post–World War II veteran who stays in Paris to try to establish himself as a painter, the Broadway production also earned Dubin a Tony Award. And, of course, there’s the music of George and Ira Gershwin.

School of Rock

Adapted from the 2003 movie starring Jack Black, the Broadway musical opened in 2015. With music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the production ran for four years, during which Leaming took a starring role as Principal Rosalie Mullins.

Also for your queue

On the screen…

With a storied career as a character actor in movies and TV productions, Robert Forster ’64 has a list of acting credits that could fill your streaming queue for a long time. From the late 1960s until his death in 2019, Forster took on roles big and small, eventually establishing himself as one of Hollywood’s go-to actors. Well known for his Oscar-nominated role in the Quentin Tarantino film Jackie Brown, he has 188 acting credits in his entry on the Internet Movie Database.

Debra Jo Rupp ’74 is probably best known for playing Kitty Forman, the mother in a Wisconsin family dealing with the social changes of the Me Decade, on the TV sitcom That ’70s Show. But she has been on your TV screen often enough that you may know her from other roles. She was Phoebe’s sister-in-law for three seasons on Friends and had guest and recurring appearances on hits ranging from Seinfeld to This Is Us to Grey’s Anatomy.

And, Maddy Wary ’22 made her movie debut������ Triple Frontier, a Netflix film starring Ben Affleck that had a limited theatrical release last year.

…and behind the scenes

. Among the films he shepherded are Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), The Big Chill (1983), and Fatal Attraction (1987)

An engineer turned writer, Mark Peter Hughes ’88 published Lemonade Mouth in 2007, the first of four young adult novels that he’s written. The story of five high schoolers who started a band while serving detention was adapted for a Disney Original Movie of the same name that’s now available on Disney Plus.

Known by the acronym CARES—Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security—the package is the largest of its kind in American history and third large-scale congressional effort in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

According to members of the University’s Office of Government and Community Relations, the package includes important relief for New York providers and higher education institutions, as the state deals with the country’s largest outbreak of coronavirus-related cases.

The federal package includes a $100 billion emergency fund for hospitals and health systems and provides relief from Medicare payments that affect the ability of health systems to manage their finances.

The legislation also includes nearly $31 billion in emergency education funding, of which almost $14 billion is provided to higher education, split evenly between students and institutions. In addition, the package suspends federal student loan payments, and interest collection is suspended for six months.

As Senate Minority Leader, Senator Charles Schumer was key in ensuring that funding and relief for New York’s health care providers, colleges and universities, researchers, and students were included.

“We are grateful to our Congressional delegation, particularly Senator Schumer for his leadership in the Senate, for their efforts to secure increased funding in the CARES Act for hospitals and higher education as we take the necessary actions to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, staff, patients, and community in this unprecedented time,” said Peter Robinson, Vice President of Government and Community Relations. “We also want to specially thank Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Congressman Joe Morelle, and Congressman Tom Reed for their support as we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the significant and potentially long-term ramifications of this disruption to University operations.”

Among other University priorities, the legislation includes:

• $945 million for the National Institutes of Health (NIH);
• $99.5 million to the Department of Energy Office of Science, including funding for National Nuclear Security Administration-sponsored user facilities;
• $80 million for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA);
• $60 million for NASA;
• $76 million for the National Science Foundation (NSF);
• $150 million split between the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support institutions and state arts and humanities councils; and

<li<$50 million for the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Robinson said the University, along with partners like the American Hospital Association (AHA), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), continue to evaluate the legislation and its impact on institutions like Rochester.

Congress is expected to consider additional stimulus packages to aid the nation’s recovery.

“While we appreciate the funding included in the CARES Act, more is needed for students, researchers, universities, laboratories, hospitals, and medical professionals. We look forward to continuing to work with our Congressional delegation to safeguard the health, safety, and economic vitality of our communities and ensure the University is able to continue the important work we do in support of education, research, and health care,” Robinson said.

Geopolitical tensions have increased the level of stress for many within our community, but we want to emphasize that the world of academic research and learning is enriched by multiple voices, perspectives, and nationalities. This form of engagement with the world is integral to who we are as an institution and is a core part of our long heritage. We want to emphasize that we value all those who make up our diverse university community, regardless of citizenship or nationality. To all who are feeling marginalized or targeted by current national discourse, we want to emphasize that .

As we explore the frontiers of innovation and knowledge, we are happy to welcome the world’s best and brightest to the Rochester community. We have done this since shortly after our founding in 1850, and we will continue to do so. It is our pleasure and honor to be the destination institution for nearly 5,000 students and scholars from 140 countries around the world. We continue to deepen our global engagement through the presence of such a diverse student body and research faculty. Indeed, it is how we “Learn, Discover, Heal, Create—and Make the World Ever Better.”

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More than 450 first-year students from 76 countries moved onto the River Campus in August, many beginning a new chapter in their lives thousands of miles from home.

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The University’s International Student Mentors Program is designed to foster meaningful interactions between current University students and incoming international first-year students.

Rochester’s global community continues to grow
According to Open Doors 2018, the comprehensive report on international education trends released each November by the Institute of International Education (IIE), the Ģ����ý is continuing its growth in international engagement.

Assistant vice provost for international advocacy and engagement named
Cary Jensen, senior counsel and director of the International Services Office (ISO), has been named assistant vice provost for international advocacy and engagement, a role designed to provide broader support to the University’s international populations.

Paul Burgett—musician, scholar, teacher, and University leader for over half a century— has died after a brief illness. He was 72.

Burgett, who arrived at the University’s Eastman School of Music in 1964 from St. Louis as a first-year student, became one of Rochester’s most prominent and beloved figures.

During a University career that spanned 54 years, he served in an extraordinary number of key roles: student body president at Eastman, faculty member in the Department of Music, dean of students at Eastman and for the University, advisor to four University presidents, a University vice president, and general secretary to the University’s Board of Trustees. Along the way, he steeped himself in the history of the University, becoming the leading storyteller of the institution.

To generations of students, alumni, parents, and friends, he was the face of Rochester. Known almost universally as Dean Burgett, he was widely admired for his rapport with students and community constituencies, his unabashed affection for the University and the influence the institution and its people had on his own life, and for his unflagging commitment to holding Rochester and the members of its community to the ideals of its motto, Meliora.

University President Richard Feldman, who worked often with Burgett on academic and administrative initiatives, said Burgett had been enormously influential in helping shape the University as an outward-looking, community-oriented, multicultural institution, where students and faculty were expected to learn from one another and to value the perspectives and experiences of others.

“Anyone who worked with Paul was deeply impressed by his commitment to each and every individual in our community,” said Feldman. “While he had a masterful grasp of the institution, its place in higher education, and its history, he remembered almost every student he ever met by name.

“And his genuine, heartfelt, and gracious interest in the success of every student, faculty and staff member, and administrator drove every decision he made as a University leader and every initiative he championed at the University. To say he will be missed doesn’t do justice to his lasting impact on the University community.”

The eldest of six children born to an African-American father and an Italian-American mother who had to cross the border into Illinois in order to be married, Burgett grew up in 1950s Missouri, knowing that he and his family were different. “We didn’t have the word ‘biracial’ back then,” he told Rochester Review in a 2015 profile, and he acknowledged that “the veil,” which W.E.B. Dubois described in The Souls of Black Folk, also described how he and his siblings would be looked at by many white Americans, and was never wholly lifted.

Supported by his musician parents (his mother an organist, his father a concert baritone), Burgett earned recognition as a young violinist, coming to the attention of family friend Edward Ormond, then a violist with the St. Louis Symphony. Burgett auditioned for Eastman while in St. Louis and began his studies in the fall of 1964 as a member of the Class of 1968.

In April 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, then senior Burgett was asked to address a convocation held in Kilbourn Hall to memorialize King.

“It is quite clear that Dr. King recognized the social ills of this nation—ills which were manifest through the convenient tools of racial injustice,” Burgett said in his remarks. “But ills which in fact lay much deeper than that.

“This cause is branded with the misnomer of the Negro problem,” Burgett said. “It is branded with the name of the white problem, it is branded with all sorts of names, trying to find and attach a label to what amounts to, basically and without question, a human problem.”

After graduating in 1968, Burgett was offered a fellowship to work on his doctorate but postponed his studies to join the US Army Reserves, where he played the tuba in a military band. He returned to his studies at Eastman after serving as executive director of the Hochstein School of Music and Drama. He taught music half-time in the Greece Central School District while he earned his Ph.D., and became an associate professor of music at Nazareth College of Rochester after graduation.

For his doctorate in 1976, Burgett explored the aesthetic theories developed by black scholars and the implications of their work on the development of educational curricula at all levels of education, a subject that until that point had not been much chronicled but one that his advisor, Paul Lehman, enthusiastically supported. His finished dissertation was titled “Aesthetics of the Music of Black Americans: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Selected Black Scholars with the Implications for Black Music Studies and for Music Education.”

Advocating for the history and creativity of black classical musicians and composers was never far from Burgett’s heart. He championed the Gateways Music Festival, a multiday series of concerts, performances, and other events designed to provide classical musicians of African descent a performance showcase of their own. The biennial festival was brought by an Eastman faculty member to Rochester in 1995. Burgett helped nurture and strengthen its ties to the Eastman School of Music; at the time of his death he was chair of the Gateways Board of Directors.

Burgett was named dean of students at Eastman in 1981 and drew on his own experience to improve student programs, including planning for Eastman’s Student Living Center.

At Eastman, he first began giving his signature presentation, now known as “The Fiery Furnace.” In the address, which he continued to present to first-year students and was scheduled to deliver again this fall, he describes a University education as a journey that students embark on, one in which they will have to confront ideas and perspectives, challenges and opportunities that will mold their character. Education is, he noted, much like a furnace, a prospect that can seem terrifying.

“But you will step out of that furnace strong, tempered like steel,” he told students, also promising “We will not abandon you. We will never abandon you.”

In the speech, he articulated what became something of a mantra as he helped students find their path in life. “Passion and ability drive ambition,” he often said, noting that picking a major is not nearly as important as caring deeply about a topic so much that you tap into and develop your abilities to find success.

After seven years at Eastman, he was named University dean of students, a move that established his home base at Wilson Commons on the River Campus but allowed him to keep a hand in the life of his beloved Eastman School.

“Paul is special in so many ways. As a proud alumnus, he was indefatigable in his support of Eastman, as well as the University as a whole,” said Jamal Rossi ’87E (DMA), the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean of the Eastman School of Music. “He was a larger than life figure with a gregarious and outgoing personality, who simultaneously was among the most thoughtful and sensitive individuals in any group when thinking about the needs of others. He will be deeply missed as a leader, a colleague, and especially, as a dear friend.”

As dean of students, Burgett often described his role as gaining access to the “backstage” of students’ lives, getting to know them in ways that allowed him, student services staff, and other faculty to offer better support and advice to orient cocurricular programs to better correspond to the needs of students. His gregarious personality and deft ability to read the emotions of others made him particularly successful at advising students.

In a nod to his own upbringing, in which his father and mother encouraged his ambitions as a musician and educator, Burgett often referred to the students he got to know as “Doctor” in reference to their aspirations as scholars and professionals.

As University dean of students, he’s credited by peers and students alike with improving programs at Wilson Commons, University Health Service, the University Counseling Center, Residential Life, Interfaith Chapel, Athletics and Recreation, and several other programs.

In 2001, Burgett became University vice president, general secretary to the Board of Trustees, and senior advisor to the president. In these roles, he worked closely with Presidents Thomas Jackson and Joel Seligman. He stepped down as general secretary in 2011, and continued to serve as vice president and presidential advisor.

“It was my privilege to have participated with Paul in his many interactions with the Board of Trustees and in many of his community activities over more than 30 years,” said G. Robert Witmer Jr. ’59,  Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees. “Paul was a positive and unforgettable influence on more people than anyone I have known.  He was, and remains, the epitome of what the URochester is, and works to become.”

Burgett took on a high-profile assignment in 2015, when he and Feldman, then the dean of the College, co-chaired the President’s Commission on Race and Diversity. The 20-member, University-wide committee recommended ways to improve Rochester’s programs for increasing diversity among students, faculty, and staff, and for creating a campus environment that values diversity in its many forms.

In 2015, Eastman awarded Burgett a Distinguished Alumni Award and asked him to address the graduating class.

Throughout his tenure, he regularly taught two popular undergraduate classes— Music of Black Americans and History of Jazz — as a faculty member in the Department of Music in the School of Arts & Sciences. In a 2010 Rochester Review article titled “101 Things to Do Before You Graduate,” writer Dana Hilfinger ’10 cited Burgett’s History of Jazz class as No. 12.

In 2016, the University named the Paul J. Burgett Intercultural Center in recognition of Burgett’s long service, a tenure in which—as a board resolution notes—he was a “tireless advocate for justice and equity for all.” Delighted with the honor, Burgett wrote a note of thanks in which he said he was “an intercultural product . . . from birth.”

Located in Douglass Commons as part of the building’s renovation into a student-focused campus hub, the center brings students together to work with and learn from those from other cultures, backgrounds, beliefs, socioeconomic statuses, sexual orientations, and perspectives.

“As our namesake, Dean Burgett embodied the sentiment of inclusion,” said Jessica Guzman-Rea ’10W (EdD), the inaugural director of the Burgett Center. “His warmth, his light, and his laughter made all who were graced with his presence feel like they were part of something better. Words cannot encompass what his loss means to the University and community at large. He will be forever loved and forever missed!”

As a resident of the Greater Rochester community, Burgett also threw himself into community service in the region. He served such groups as the Urban League, the Hochstein School, the Genesee Country Museum and Village, the Rochester Arts and Cultural Council, the United Way of Rochester, the George Eastman Museum, and many others.

He was also a leading force behind the University’s support for the Rochester Fringe Festival when the multiday performing arts festival was launched in 2012. Many of the performers for the festival have University connections and many of the events are staged at Eastman venues.

At the University, he co-chaired the faculty and staff component of the Meliora Challenge, Rochester’s historic $1 billion fundraising campaign.

As he stepped away from his role as an administrator—a label he often eschewed—he turned his attention to the history of the University. He took on the role of University storyteller, often traveling to alumni gatherings around the country to make presentations about the institution that meant so much to him: “Where we came from, who our predecessors were, on whose shoulders we stand, and our responsibilities as stewards of their legacy.”

In an afterword to a 2014 history of the University, Our Work Is But Begun: A History of the Ģ����ý 1850–2005, by Janice Bullard Pieterse (Ģ����ý Press), he wrote:

“Now in the twilight of my professional career, I have become fascinated by the story of the University that educated and trained me; sent me out into the world as a well-prepared and confident high school and college music teacher, performer, and music administrator; and then welcomed me back 34 years ago and turned me loose on its campuses and in its halls and classrooms to join the faculty, students, and staff in the work of its auspicious and noble mission.

“I have become a serious and passionate student of our history and believe that all of us who claim an association with the University, in any form or manner, will want to learn more about the institution that affected our lives deeply.”

“Paul read everything from the George Eastman-Rush Rhees correspondence to Annual Reports to the Campus Times,” remembers Melissa Mead, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian. “And in telling our story, he would highlight past examples of what he called ‘inspired, effective, and generous leadership,’ and his audiences always knew that he exemplified those qualities.”

In making his presentations, Burgett would often joke that he himself had witnessed much of that history, having been part of the University since “before the Earth’s crust began to cool.”

The transformations that took place during Burgett’s history at Rochester sometimes took even him by surprise.

In the 2015 profile for Rochester Review, he said that he found it hard to believe that he had been at Rochester for 50 years.

“That’s not been relevant to me,” he said. “Because I hang around students who never age, do they? They’re always 18 to their mid-20s or so, some a little older. And when they get to the end of their studies, they leave and are replaced by newcomers.

“So I forget how old I am, until I look in the mirror and see my father looking back at me—at which point it’s, well, startling, I suppose.”

There will be a private memorial service and a celebration of Paul’s life at a later date.

Messages of condolence to be shared with Paul Burgett’s family can be sent to his friend and longtime assistant at the University, Kim Truebger, by email to kim.truebger@rochester.edu or in hard copy to Box 270011, URochester, Rochester 14627-0011.

Remembrances can also be shared on a special memorial website: .

Meliora moments

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Professor Robert L. McCrory, a physicist and scientific leader who has shepherded the Ģ����ý’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics to international prominence during the past 35 years, will retire from the directorship on October 1, the beginning of the federal government’s fiscal year.

McCrory, who holds the title of University Professor—one of just eight current or former members of the faculty to receive that distinction—and vice president and vice provost, will step down from the University as of December 31. Michael Campbell, deputy director of LLE, will become director of the lab, pending approval of the University’s Board of Trustees.

President and CEO Joel Seligman said McCrory’s record of scientific achievement represents an entrepreneurial and interdisciplinary approach that are the hallmarks of Rochester’s approach to research and scholarship.

“Bob had a vision for LLE and he worked tirelessly to engage faculty and students in optics, physics, engineering, and other departments to explore some of the most important scientific issues of the 20^th and 21^st centuries,” Seligman says. “He’s been a leader in working with our congressional leaders and colleagues at other institutions to advocate for the unique strengths of LLE. He deserves our thanks and appreciation for his efforts to make LLE an internationally recognized research facility.”

University Provost and Senior Vice President for Research Rob Clark says McCrory’s leadership is synonymous with establishing Rochester as one of the preeminent sites for high-energy laser science.

“This is truly the end of an era,” Clark says. “Bob has been instrumental in the success of LLE from nearly the beginning of the facility. He set a standard for research excellence, fiscal management, and academic achievement that will be hard to replace.”

McCrory began his career at Rochester in 1976, arriving as a research scientist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He became director and CEO of LLE in 1983.

Under his leadership, the lab has grown to become the largest single research facility at the University. It has also established itself as an important partner to the national laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. He has promoted partnerships with other area colleges and universities such as SUNY Geneseo.

Since 1983, under McCrory, the lab has secured about $2.3 billion in support (in inflation-adjusted dollars). That includes federal appropriations through the Department of Energy, state funding through the governor’s budgeting process and agencies like NYSERDA and other sources, and private sponsored grants and contracts. The total represents the largest amount of sponsored research funding awarded to a single laboratory in the University’s history.

The lab has provided an academic home to more than 500 PhD candidates, including more than 200 from outside the University, as well as offered research opportunities to generations of undergraduates and many high school students.

“I’m most proud that this lab has grown from a small university research lab to a major research lab with an international reputation,” says McCrory. “It’s been my life’s work, and I take great pride in the number of students, the number of PhDs, and the original, groundbreaking, very cutting-edge research that the staff and scientists here have been able to undertake.

McCrory credits the dedication of the staff with the lab’s success.

“There are very few university laboratories in the country capable of doing what we have done—from building large facilities on time and on budget to establishing itself as an international leader in high-energy-density physics research,” McCrory says. “It’s a tribute to the very capable science and engineering team that we have amassed here.”

Created in 1970, the laboratory is home to the Omega laser facility, the most powerful laser facility housed at any university and one of the most powerful of its kind in the world.

The OMEGA system includes a 60-beam, high-peak-power laser that was proposed, funded, and completed under McCrory’s leadership in 1995. He also oversaw the construction of a second, four-beam system known as OMEGA EP, which became operational in 2008. The $100 million-plus facility can produce laser powers of over 1,000-billion watts, and has kept LLE’s facilities at the cutting edge of laser-science technology.

Under McCrory, the lab has established itself as a world leader in the study of internal confinement fusion, an effort to investigate whether powerful lasers can compress the atoms in fuels such as hydrogen to induce nuclear fusion.

More recently, LLE has undertaken a strategic effort to establish itself as a leading center for the study of high-energy-density physics, an exploration of matter under pressures that can only be found in stars and in large planets. Such “laboratory astrophysics” is expected to lead to the creation of new materials and provide insights into the make-up of the universe itself.

McCrory noted: “This laboratory is a unique University facility because it is closely coupled to the academic mission of the University. LLE research is open to students and professors across the University as well as around the world. This close coupling is unparalleled anywhere else.”

McCrory has served on several National Academy of Sciences committees on military space policy and plasma science. He has served on Director’s Review Boards of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory and is currently a member of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s External Review Committee of the Weapons and Complex Integration Directorate.

His honors include election as a fellow of the American Physical Society and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. He received the career award from the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences in 1995 and the Leadership Award from Fusion Power Associates.

In 1995 McCrory also was awarded the Edward Teller Medal given by the American Nuclear Society for his “pioneering research and leadership in the use of laser and ion-particle beams to produce unique high temperature and high-density matter for scientific research and for controlled thermonuclear fusion.”

McCrory holds faculty positions in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and of Physics and Astronomy. Since joining the University in 1976, he has served as a member of the Faculty Senate (1986–89, 1990–92, and 1994–96), and as the chair of the senate’s research policy committee (1997). He served as executive director of governmental relations under President Thomas Jackson for the University from 1997 to 2004.

He received his bachelor’s and doctorate degrees in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McCrory has authored or coauthored more than 250 scientific journal publications. Some of his key contributions to inertial fusion include his work on the wavelength dependence of hydrodynamic efficiency on laser-driven targets and the hydrodynamic stability of inertial fusion capsules.