Farrell Cooke ’14, ’19N, ’24S (MBA): Coming home to Rochester

“Rochester raised me,” says Farrell Cooke ’14, ’19N, ’24S (MBA), who is now a registered nurse and the assistant nurse manager in the surgical intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital.

She’s not exaggerating. In addition to her two bachelor’s degrees—in neuroscience and nursing—and an MBA, the University of Rochester provided Cooke with confidence, resilience, a sense of belonging, and even the love of her life.

“I have a dog named Eastman. I got engaged to my husband on the Eastman Quad, and my husband is a U of R graduate,” she says. “Some of my best friends that I met here are women who are going to be my lifelong friends.”

While she’s all grown up now, Cooke maintains deep ties to Rochester. In between caring for critically ill patients at the Medical Center, she finds time to volunteer with The Meliora Collective, the Rochester Network Leadership Council, and the Women’s Network. She has also served as chair of the Young Alumni Council and her fifth-year Reunion Committee and is an emeritus member of the Alumni Board.

Living now in the Rochester suburb of Fairport, Cooke and her husband, Tyler Viterise ’14, also made sure to include the University and the city in their September 2024 nuptials. Guests sported lilac stickers designed by friend Tiffany Nicholas ’19, and there were crystal yellowjackets pinned to the seating chart, table runners emblazoned with an image of Rush Rhees Library, and even a signature mocktail dubbed “The Eastman”.

The only way is upstate

Originally from Scarsdale, a small town just north of New York City, Cooke was a self-described “fairly average student” in high school. While her father was familiar with Rochester’s Medical Center, it wasn’t until the backstroke and freestyle specialist was recruited for the swim team that she asked, “What is this place?”

When she visited campus with her family on a “gorgeous fall day” in October of 2009, right during Meliora Weekend, she says it felt like the quintessential college campus experience. “Everyone was on the quad having fun. People were walking around and throwing a football. I think there was an engineering pumpkin launch happening on one of the quads, and I was like, ‘This is it.’  You kind of get that feeling where you’re home.”

Cooke applied Early Decision and then began waiting by the mailbox. “It was one of those surreal moments,” she says of finally receiving the news that she’d been accepted. “Someone believed in me. They saw my resume. They saw my grades. They saw what I did and said, ‘Let’s give her a shot.’ It was one of those opportunities where I knew I had to work hard.”

The transition from high school to college proved not without challenges, making for a difficult first semester. Cooke struggled initially to find where she fit in but eventually established a tight-knit network of friends through swimming and the Delta Gamma sorority.

The power of ‘no’

Cooke also felt intimidated at Rochester because—as she tells it—her peers were “extremely intelligent, extremely brilliant people” with whom she was trying to keep up. “I vividly remember one of my science classes. I didn’t get too hot of a grade, and one of my professors told me, ‘You know what? Maybe we need to rethink medicine. Maybe you’re not wired that way,’” she recalls.

Rather than giving up on her dreams, Cooke decided to work harder and change how she studied. “I wasn’t going to let one test score define who I was as a student here. Just like U of R took a chance on me, I needed to make sure I was showing up for them every day,” she says. “That’s probably the strongest ‘no’ I’ve ever gotten in my life. And it’s taken me the furthest.”

Now, as an active member of the Rochester community, she’s hoping to instill that same Meliora spirit in the current generation of students and beyond.