Dear members of the School of Arts & Sciences community,

I’m going to start by saying something potentially controversial: It’s good to be back. And I mean that with all sincerity. Being back—even in this modified capacity—allows us to work toward our goals of offering the educational experiences and opportunities our students, faculty, and staff expect and deserve, while offering a safe place for scholarly work and conversations that are difficult in the best of times. I hope that you and yours are well and healthy.

Now, you might be reading this with a mask on, sitting six feet from a friend or colleague, by yourself in your dorm room, or working from home with your family. In all these cases, we are sharing bandwidth (both literally and figuratively) so everyone can meet their educational, personal, and professional goals and responsibilities. The alternative is stark. Think about the students who are unable to return due to concerns outside their control or those who have chosen to attend classes remotely, who would love to be back on the River Campus. (We miss you, and hope to have you back soon.) The spring gave us a taste of what a fully remote semester looks and feels like. I, for one, am not eager to revisit that, which is why I want to express how grateful I am to everyone who put in countless hours to bring us to where we are now in a way that prioritizes our health and safety.

Leading up to the semester, there was a lot of talk about us “restarting.” The thing is, we never really stopped. We couldn’t be in our usual spaces, but we kept pushing forward, doing the work that makes us who we are. I’d like to highlight some examples.

In June, the Rochester Education Justice Initiative received a $1 million Mellon grant to expand its work providing higher education opportunities to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in the Rochester area. The grant will enable this initiative to provide more academic offerings, increase program engagement, and build a stronger network of advocates. Related to this, I want to highlight a grant won by Anusha Naganathan, who is a research associate in my lab. Her award will support a one-year pilot project to bring biology-focused curriculum to Groveland Correctional Facility.
Another June high point was Ellen Matson, the Wilmot Assistant Professor of Chemistry, being selected as one of the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars for 2020.
Some of our work was directly connected to COVID-19 and what we understand about the virus and how we interact and learn during a pandemic.

- July saw Dragony Fu, assistant professor of biology, and Jack Werren, the Nathaniel and Helen Wisch Professor of Biology receive expedited funding awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the biological processes involved in COVID-19. The work Fu and Werren are doing is helping us better understand the biological mechanisms and proteins in COVID-19, thus enabling the development of more effective treatments and ultimately, a vaccine.
- Harry Reis, professor of psychology and Dean’s Professor in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, recently received support from the Mental Research Institute for work in emotion regulation.
- Another NSF award went to Tolulope Olugboji, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Olugboji is developing research-based learning modules for upper level geophysics classes that can be used by geophysics programs across the country to help meet the pandemic-driven need for flexible learning.
Also in July, Thomas Hahn, professor of English, received a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the Middle English Text Series Project. The grant will support printing and digital publication of six volumes of medieval literary texts (13th to 15th centuries) and implementation of an updated digital interface to enhance and expand user access. Russell Peck, professor emeritus of English and John H. Deane Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric and Poetry, is the editor.
And just this month, a team of researchers in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, including Greg DeAngelis, the George Eastman Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Ralf Haefner, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, received a $12.2 million grant award from the National Institutes of Health for a project to better understand how the brain uses causal inference to distinguish self-motion from object motion. This is the largest grant in the department’s history and could lead to treatments and therapies for neural disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, as well as advances in AI.

In addition to all the work we’ve been doing, we’ve also welcomed new faculty. Recently, we named Jeffrey McCune, Jr. director of the Frederick Douglass Institute. McCune comes to us from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was associate professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies and of African and African American studies. Jeffrey will be joining us in June 2021.

I also want to welcome 10 new faculty members from biology, brain and cognitive sciences, chemistry, physics and astronomy, and religion and classics.

In closing, I want you to know that I realize how abnormal all of this is. The pandemic has truly sapped this time of year of its traditional excitement and enthusiasm. It’s certainly dampened the start of my second five-year term (which began July 1). However, it doesn’t change why we’re all here: to Learn, Discover, Heal, Create—and make the world ever better. That will always be the same.

I also realize the City of Rochester is hurting right now. It may be difficult or even feel wrong to be returning to our studies and work while the death of Daniel Prude hangs heavy over our community. I echo President Mangelsdorf’s sentiments on the current social climate, and encourage you to make use of the many support options she offers in her message.

This isn’t a typical start to an academic year, but we will continue to work toward our mission and be innovative where we can.

Best wishes,

Gloria Culver
Dean
School of Arts & Sciences