Class Memories

At the conclusion of my sophomore year, I was told that I could qualify for the U of R Honors program. In Honors, we took two courses a semester or eight in the junior and senior years. Classes were small-never more than eight students. We wrote at least one research paper a week. This was a wonderfully immense production of intensely criticized writing. Standards were high and learning curves for writing style and literary content were exponential. There were no exams until the end of the senior year when we took written and oral tests with examiners from other colleges.

Those two years allowed me to attain knowledge and skills I could have acquired in no other way.

This lasted two richly rewarding years.

At 86, I am still using my Meliora writing skills every day.

I had little money but lots of enthusiasm. A co-op dorm with Gram as housemother was perfect for me. I not only dealt with academics but with cooking and housekeeping. My professors were the best -- always providing extra help when needed. There were trips to the River Campus for courses not offered at the Prince Street women's campus. What a thrill to become a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a designation that opened many doors for me.

My biggest Meliora Moment was graduating as a chemical engineer in four years which was quite a feat and was a must do for me since I had an NROTC scholarship. I had to get through to get my commission and start my service requirement!!

An important learning experience occurred when Dick Wedemeyer, Jesse James and I entered the AIChE National science project contest, working day and night (running over to the lab to check samples at midnight after taking dates home after a party or dance) for many months. We presented our paper/experiments and finished second nationally. This project taught us how to find, design, develop, organize, and implement a project that was both interesting and useful. It taught teamwork and division of labor and showed us we could compete with anyone.

Probably the most memorable moment was when the first issue of our newly-created UR humor magazine went on sale and was sold out in 45 minutes! A group of us in our junior year thought the school was a little too serious (the administrators did not think so) and what it needed was a humor magazine. Harvard and others had them why shouldn't Rochester. Starting from scratch we got a grant from the Finance Committee after many presentations (I happened to be the Chair of the committee) and a little tiny office, and started working. It took over a year and we probably employed 20 or so people. Soon UGH (UnderGraduate Humor) was born complete with an UGHable doll and all. We more than covered our budget and we paid back the grant, too. The administration came asking us for a copy for the archives even though they were never really enthusiastic about the project. The following spring I went home with the next editor and at his home, while transferring the tools of the job, I met his younger sister who is now my wife of 45 years. Now that is a Meliora Moment!

There can be no better training for anything you might do than to start something with a group of people and eventually sell it successfully to your peer group.

As a sophomore student at the UR, I was inspired by my faculty mentor Professor Sanford Siegel to pursue my career in cell and molecular biology. Sandy challenged me to work in his laboratory as a research assistant to learn the fundamentals and discipline of scientific investigation as related to his research. Later on, this experience helped me decide on my early career in medical research and clinical investigation.

I was not one of those kids who knew early on that she wanted to be a nurse; I never put band-aids on my dollies or took care of a sick puppy. However, I did know that I wanted to go to college. In the 1950's and '60's becoming a nurse was among the more obvious choices for women, so that would be my major. Among several fine nursing programs I chose the University of Rochester and arrived there in 1959 to start the first two years of my education on the River Campus.

By junior year it was time for the real challenge, confronting the reality of beginning to care for patients and to take on the responsibilities for which we were being prepared. Part way into that year I became very discouraged. Wanting to be a perfect student and being nowhere near that, I decided to give up and go home. I thought long and hard about it and had already packed my bags when I called home tearfully to announce my decision to my parents. My father told me to "sit tight" and he came from Pennsylvania to Rochester, took me out to dinner and said to me, "It's your decision, Linda, but you know you have to have a way to make a living." I heard and understood his words of advice. As a result I stayed, graduated, and went on to "make a living" as a professional nurse for 35 years. My profession sustained me through good times as well as bad.

Because of this I have given support to the School of Nursing, so that current and future students can benefit not only from the education that sustained me, but also, in a round-about way, from my father's advice

I have many memories of my years at U of R. Pledging and joining Phi Epsilon Pi Fraternity; playing on the hockey team; participating in the creation and screening (on the side of Gilbert Hall) of the "indie" sci-fi movie "Flesh Gordon;" creating a jazz show on WRUR and acting as on-air dj and programmer for the show for 2 years; waiting on tables at the Boars Head Dinner; classes with Hayden White (intellectual history) and Michael Cherniovsky (Russian Intellectual History); Casino Nights at the Towers. Mostly, friendships made and still kept during my time at U of R.

I am very grateful for some awesome and unique opportunities that came my way via my association with UR as an undergraduate. Due to the variety and excellent quality of courses offered, I not only have a basic science background, but was able to branch out into language, the arts and music, international travel and some valuable esoteric/spiritual connections as well.

My personal Meliora Moment came during my senior year in my History of Photography class, taught by Bill Giles, during a series of special exercises pertaining to "awareness" that he would assign to us. I honestly believe that this particular set of special circumstances and study offerings could not have been even remotely or closely duplicated anywhere else. I seem to have made use of just about everything, either putting it into practice myself, or tutoring/teaching others. Passing these insights and blessings forward has been a rich blessing to me

I first became interested in the U of R because my sister Jenni attended there, graduating the year before I arrived. Interestingly, she began as a physics major, but ended up in East Asian Studies, going into the Peace Corps. I chose the U of R because it had both the biology and music that fascinated and attracted me. Although I enrolled as a biology major, the experience of being immersed in music inspired me to change my major and follow my dream! I was fortunate to have Ray Ricker as my teacher during my junior and senior years, and he took me seriously, even as a liberal arts major. He told me I could work toward a performer's certificate, and I eventually received the required grade of 8 on my last jury! Though I did not become a performer, I earned a Masters degree in music theory at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Musicwhere I also met my husband of 35+ years. I have had some of my informal psalm settings performed locally, and have also had the opportunity at St. Lawrence University where I work, to explore religious studies, counseling psychology, and graph theory. I've even given two undergraduate papers at national Mathfests (joint meetings of the MAA and the AMS), and created a quilt to demonstrate a solution set! Two years ago, following one such meeting, I had a short paper published in the UK journal Caerdroia: Journal of Mazes and Labyrinths. Life is rich! My goal now is to continue to creatively combine my interests in math, with music composition, while working at staying healthy, despite having a chronic health condition.

At U of R, I had the opportunity to explore my many and varied interests, ranging from a freshman seminar in "The Mind and the Brain" to anthropology courses (Ancient Civilizations I & II), to Russian Literature (a Dostoyevsky course) to forming my own woodwind quartet my senior year. I studied composition as a non-composition major under Samuel Adler; took conducting team-taught by Donald Hunsberger and a visiting choral conductor, learning about how orchestra and choral conductors differ; participated in a performance of the Beethoven Ninth with the combined forces of the River Campus chorus, Eastman Chorale and Eastman Philharmonia; and took a graduate course in 20th century music literature with Jerald Grauewhere I learned NOT to take "no" for an answer when a book necessary for a research paper was not easily available. In short, there were many Meliora moments!

All of these varied experiences taught me that it's possible to do more, see more, and learn more. I continue to try to live, integrating my ongoing interests in math and music, with new concerns such as maintaining health through practices as varied as meditation, Tai Chi, and balancing medicine with exercise and diet. To me, living at its best is a kind of 'musical composition' as we seek to mix up all the ingredients, balance and harmonize the components, and come up with something unique and interesting, challenging ourselves to both take in (inspire) and offer out (express), ourselves, and the world we live in.

Back when I started my sophomore year I was majoring in chemistry but I didn't know what I wanted to do with the degree. What sort of chemist did I want to be: inorganic, organic, analytical? Would I work as a chemist or go on to a graduate chemistry program or medical school?

Everything fell into place for me during my sophomore organic chemistry course taught by Prof. Jack Kampmeier. I fell in love with organic synthesis and followed up his course with a NSFURPG gran the next summer under the guidance of Prof. Dick Schlessinger.

I went on to get my Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry and spent my entire career inventing and making new compounds as potential drugs and it has been a wonderful experience.

When I got off the airplane after visiting the University of Rochester for the first time, my mother could tell by the huge smile on my face that I had found my dream school. She also knew that if I chose UR, it would be a tremendous financial burden for our family. We were so happy that I was awarded a UR scholarship and a Regents scholarship which, in addition to my student loans, made the school more affordable. As part of my financial aid package, I was required to work a certain number of hours a week on campus. I was assigned to be the Saturday lunch lady serving burning hot pizzas at MDC (Frederick Douglas dining hall) which smelled heavily of Genesee beer from the parties that were held there the previous evenings.

I was thrilled when Mara Zuckerman, who was a year ahead of me, told me there was a job opening in the lab where she was doing research. I promptly changed jobs and started taking care of 36 research mice in the Behavioral Toxicology Laboratory of Professor Bernard Weiss, the father of behavioral toxicology. I learned a tremendous amount about research and computers from the graduate students and staff at the lab. More than that, I became part of a research community which was completely separate from my classes on campus. I got to hang out with foreign students and townies who showed me what life was like outside the River Campus.

In my junior year, my friends and I found out about a biomedical research grant we could apply for from the NIH. It would give us a stipend of $750 for the summer which would pay for our room and board. It also gave the laboratory we worked at some money too. I approached Dr. Weiss with the possibility of doing a project in his lab. He generously helped me write a fantastic research proposal to study the behavioral effects of methyl mercury on mice. Methyl mercury poisoning was also known as Minimatta disease. It was caused by the release of methyl mercury in the industrial waste-water from a Japanese chemical factory. This highly toxic chemical accumulated in shellfish and fish in the waters around Minimatta, which, when eaten by the local populace, resulted in mercury poisoning. While cat, dog, pig, and human deaths occurred for more than 30 years, the government and company did little to prevent the pollution. I studied how adding methyl mercury to the diet of lab mice changed their behavior.

My close friends were also awarded NIH grants for summer internships. We all lived together in a huge old house across the river near the famous Smitty's Restaurant. We all had an amazing summer that solidified our friendships and made us feel closer to the greater Rochester community. The research opportunities that we received from the University provided us with skills that helped us with our coursework and our post graduate experiences.

In addition to the terrific educational facilities, I found the Univ. of Rochester campus to be physically beautiful with its stately buildings, the elegant beauty of the Rush Rhees Library and reading rooms that were right out of an English novel. I watched as the new student union was erectedwonderful addition to the campus, replacing the small but charming old student union with its small post office and bank. I loved the student union building so much I was even married there!

One of my favorite haunts was the indoor track (I even had a blue and yellow running outfitMeliora!) wonderful to run at during some cold Rochester weather. I remember an indoor tennis class being taught there toolots of fun. Other memories: the wandering campus dog, a husky owned by a Psych professor, greeting students as they walked; and the underground tunnelsterrific to get to a class when it was stormy out.

Great place, great memories!

It was April of my senior year in high school, and I'd been rejected from the four Ivy League schools I applied to. We were living in Houston and I'd been accepted to Baylor, but really didn't want to go to school in Waco, Texas. My parents announced we'd probably be moving back up north, so I started a giant second round of college applications. My mother found the U of R and suggested I apply there because of the med school. (I was premed at the time.) I was accepted and entered that fall, living in temporary housing in Susan B. Anthony Hall.

For the first two months, I was convinced I'd still apply to Harvard as a transfer student, thinking I'd have a better chance of acceptance. But after visiting a friend at another upstate New York private university over October break, which in my opinion had very limited resources, I realized just how much Rochester had to offer. The library was enormous, the dining halls served a wide variety of palatable foods, and I enjoyed my classes and my professors. But most of all, when I returned to Rochester from that trip, I felt like I was coming home. I knew then that the University of Rochester was where I was supposed to land all along, and from that moment on, I knew that's where I'd stay.

For me the most vivid experiences happened outside the classroom on UR sports teams or clubs. Swinging on the flagpole or getting off-campus with friends are events that I easily recall. The transformative power of UR, however, was clearly the quality of faculty and curriculum and the simple message, deeply instilled, that if I could dream it I could do it. That empowerment was profound then, and it still operates daily in my career and in my community service. As I get older I have to be more selective about what good needs doing in the world that I can achieve and what is best left to others. But the enlightening message that vocation is the coming together of passion, talent, and need is something I would never have achieved except for the gift of a UR education.

I initially came to UR expecting to major in Physics however like many other incoming freshmen, my ultimate passion would be uncovered through a series of intentional discoveries and coincidental happenstances. In my case, it was the S-Men, the rock band I sang with in my sophomore year at college. Although we never became famous, we did create a following amongst the graduate students in Computer Science and through my interactions with these folks, I learned about the burgeoning field of Artificial Intelligence. I was so intrigued that I became one of the first UR students to graduate with a degree in Cognitive Science and a minor in Artificial Intelligence. It prepared me for an exciting career and that is my Meliora Moment.

Over the course of my five years and two degrees at the University, I was fortunate to have many moments which can be categorized as "Meliora." However, as I reflect back on my time at the University, I cannot help but remember my last night as an undergraduate in May of 2008.

The night before graduation, about a dozen of my friends and I were unsure about how to spend our last night as college students. While we mulled the decision of what to do, we all decided to take a walk around campus. What was intended to be a brief stroll through campus ended up being an all-night festivity as we all took turns sharing stories and reminiscing about various events all over campus at different points in our undergraduate experience. We ended up, all 12-or-so of us, in the Genesee Valley Park's Tree of Life at 3am just reflecting about our amazing 4 years together at the U of R. It was truly an ever better way to cap off 4 years of Meliora.