Lisa Genova – News

�ֲ��ý in the News: March 15, 2019

Emily McConville — Thu, 14 Mar 2019 19:47:35 +0000

Frank Perham ’56

Mainers are old, but still doing things ‘most people half their age don’t do’ — Bangor Daily News

The Bangor Daily News interviewed Jason Paris Smith, a photographer who took portraits of elderly Mainers to showcase the diversity and knowledge of people in the oldest U.S. state.

Included in the series was Frank Perham ’56, a third-generation miner and acclaimed mineral expert from West Paris, Maine.

Frank Perham ’56 was included in a photo series on elderly people in Maine, the state with the country’s highest average age. (Jason Paris Smith)

Perham grew up mining with his grandfather, who discovered feldspar on the family farm and started a feldspar mill, and his father, Stanley I. Perham ’31, who owned a mineral store. He studied geology at �ֲ��ý before serving in the Korean War. (His daughter is Trish Perham ’83.)

Frank Perham worked on road construction projects and mined on the weekends; some of his mineral discoveries are on display at The Smithsonian and the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum.

He’s something of a Maine icon (or a gem, as it were), . “People stop in to hear his many stories and learn about Maine’s minerals from someone with an unbridled passion for minerals and lifetime of experiences.”

Read the story: “,’” Bangor Daily News, March 9, 2019

Lisa Genova ’92

The intelligence that Alzheimer’s can’t steal — Being Patient

Deborah Kan of Being Patient, a news site focused on Alzheimer’s disease and brain health, spoke with about the emotional lives of people with Alzheimer’s, the future of research and clinical trials, and the power of storytelling.

Author Lisa Genova ’92 received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at Commencement in 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Genova, whose most recent novel is 2018’s , about a concert pianist who develops ALS, has crafted a literary career defined by empathetic insights into the workings of the brain. She told Kan she wrote Still Alice instead of a nonfiction book because storytelling could help others understand what it’s like to live with Alzheimer’s.

To research the book, Genova extensively interviewed more than two dozen people with the disease.

“Through story, we really can move from sympathy to empathy,” Genova said. “Empathy is feeling with someone. That’s the imaginative leap I make when I imagine and feel what it’s like to be you. In doing that, it makes a world of difference.”

Read the story: “,” Being Patient, March 6, 2019

Heidi Lachapelle ’10 and Katie Judkins ’09

Cut from the same cloth — Maine Home+Design

Maine Home+Design spoke with Heidi Lachapelle ’10 and Katie Judkins ’09, who realized their dream of working on artistic projects together by starting Heidi Lachapelle Interiors.

Lachapelle and Judkins met at �ֲ��ý and became better friends when Judkins began dating Lachapelle’s brother. They worked corporate jobs after graduation but “both knew how they wanted their lives to look,” wrote Katy Kelleher.

In 2017 they started an interior design company whose “hallmark of sorts” is bringing in “a lot of slate blues and dark teals, indigos and azures,” but whose projects draw inspiration from many sources.

“I think I benefited a lot from a liberal arts background, and from working at a few different places,” Lachapelle said. “I didn’t know where it would take me.”

“I have younger siblings, and I tell them that there doesn’t need to be a direct path to get where you want to go,” Judkins added.

“Sometimes the diagonal path is better.”

Read the story: “,” Maine Home+Design, February 2019.

Civil rights hero John Lewis to Class of ’16: ‘Get in trouble — good trouble’

Doug Hubley — Sun, 29 May 2016 20:22:04 +0000

When U.S. Rep. John R. Lewis was a child in Alabama, he was puzzled by the evidence that he saw around him of the South’s Jim Crow laws — segregated rest rooms, segregated movie theaters. He wanted to know why that should be.

His mother discouraged his curiosity, saying, “Don’t get in the way. Don’t get in trouble.” But, as Lewis told the audience at �ֲ��ý College’s 150th Commencement on May 29, he went in the other direction instead.

“I was inspired to get in trouble. I was inspired to get in the way.” It was that attitude — along with the example of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — that made Lewis a true hero of the civil rights movement, a man whose personal story is virtually a history of the movement.

Inspiriting, droll, and captivating, Lewis’ address to the Class of 2016 was the centerpiece of a �ֲ��ý Commencement that also included goodbyes to two members of the class who passed away too young.

Lewis was one of four recipients of honorary degrees during the ceremony, along with best-selling author Lisa Genova ’92 (Still Alice); psychologist and renowned happiness researcher Daniel Gilbert; and Robert Witt ’62, the highly successful chancellor of the University of Alabama System.

Commencement speaker John R. Lewis, the civil rights icon and congressman from Georgia, processes down Alumni Walk with Professor of Rhetoric Charles Nero and �ֲ��ý Trustee Geraldine FitzGerald ’75. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

President Clayton Spencer began her welcome with a memorial moment of silence for two members of the class, Troy Pappas and James Jhun. (Jhun, who died in January, had completed his graduation requirements and received a posthumous degree at Commencement.)

Spencer then looked back to July 1867 and �ֲ��ý’ first Commencement — whose eight graduates were all men from Maine. Thanks to a self-appointed class historian, Spencer said, there is much we know about the class, such as their height, weight, and the fact that “seven parted their hair on the right side, and one parted his on the wrong side.”

Macebearer Michael Murray, Charles Franklin Phillips Professor of Economics, walks onto the historic Quad, followed by President Clayton Spencer, commencement speaker and Congressman John Lewis, Professor of Rhetoric Charles Nero, honorary degree recipient Lisa Genova ’92 and Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience John Kelsey. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Spencer also offered information, less personal but more meaningful, of the class graduating Sunday. The 462 members of the Class of 2016 included three triple majors, 42 students who completed an honors thesis, and 18 who have won a combined 41 All-NESCAC honors while at �ֲ��ý.

She noted that the class included 11 recipients of Fulbright fellowships, two Watsons (both from Alaska), and two more of the Davis Project for Peace Award.

Pointing out that the Class of 2016 began at �ֲ��ý the same year she did, the president said, “What I am most proud of, beyond these impressive facts and figures, are the human qualities you embody — your creativity, your generosity, your drive for justice, your wacky humor, and your joy in, and caring for, one another.”

Shannon Griffin ’16 of Philadelphia leaves the Commencement stage after delivering the Senior Address at Commencement 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

A dynamic speaker, Lewis dedicated most of his time to autobiographical episodes intended as inspiration and exhortation for the �ֲ��ý students. But he began by recognizing the role of a founding father of the modern civil rights movement — the Rev. Benjamin E. Mays, Class of 1920 — and �ֲ��ý’ role in shaping that civil rights theorist and King mentor.

“I feel more than honored, I feel more than lucky, I feel blessed to be standing here on this campus to speak to you, the graduates, where a man by the name of Benjamin Mays once stood,” Lewis said. “Many, many years ago I got to know Dr. Mays. He was part of my inspiration, he was my friend, my leader.”

Lewis cited Mays’ statement that �ֲ��ý did not emancipate him, but instead enabled him to emancipate himself. “This is the great power of education, and Dr. Benjmain Mays is a shining example,” Lewis said. “I want to thank �ֲ��ý College for what you did, and continue to do, to free and liberate humankind.”

Norberto Diaz ’16 of Carson, Calif., receives a hug and a diploma from President Spencer. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

Typical of Lewis’ humor was the story he told about raising chickens on his parents’ farm in Alabama. Wanting to be a minister, he’d preach to the birds in the chicken yard while his siblings and cousins watched.

“Some of those chickens would bow their heads, some of those chickens would shake their heads, but they’d never quite say amen,” he said. “But I’m convinced that some of the chickens that I preached to in the ’40s and the ’50s tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues listen to me today in the Congress. Some of those chickens were a little more productive.”

Recounting his first meeting with King, Lewis said that the great civil rights leader “inspired me to stand up, to speak up, and speak out. And I got in the way, I got in trouble — good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John R. Lewis, D-Ga., delivers the Commencement address at �ֲ��ý College on May 29, 2016. (PLEASE CREDIT: Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

So, he told the graduates, “You must find a way to get in the way and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. … You have a moral obligation, a mission and a mandate, when you leave here, to go out and seek justice for all. You can do it. You must do it.”

Senior speaker Shannon L. Griffin of Philadelphia devoted her talk to the power of questions and the power of the �ֲ��ý community.

“�ֲ��ý has allowed me to develop the courage to ask questions,” Griffin said — “to continuously engage with the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, and to challenge my convictions.”

William Cleaves ’16 gathers with members of his family, including cousin John McDevitt ’04 (far right) and his daughter, Norah, 7 months, for a post-Commencement photograph on the steps of Hathorn Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

When she was younger, “I stopped asking questions out of fear of being perceived as incompetent. It had terrible consequences, such as me confusing Nair hair remover for body lotion, because I was too stubborn to ask. That day I lost every piece of hair on my body.

“You would think that not having eyebrows would have compelled me to start asking questions again. Only �ֲ��ý was transformative enough to restore my desire to question.”

“I have never met a community that is so loving and inspiring,” she said. “Curiosity is innate in all of us, but it is the support of the community that ignites the courage in us to believe in, feel, and see our potential and to dare to pursue it.”

“There is a common occurrence in our classes,” she said, “where professors pose questions that spur us to gaze into the deep crevices of our capabilities and fears. In a history seminar, professor Hilmar Jensen once asked, ‘Would you, as a Northern college student, travel to the south during the Freedom Summer of ’64?’

Yessenia Saucedo ’16 of Los Angelos holds her mortarboard after the ceremony. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“Our class left that evening, pondering what would we do for others. Would we be brave enough to speak up in the face of injustice? Congressman John Lewis, an American hero and civil rights leader, is here today as I continue to reflect on that question.

“That is the power and magnitude of a �ֲ��ý education.”

Prior to the closing benediction from Multifaith Chaplain Brittany Longsdorf, the ceremony featured a welcome to the �ֲ��ý Alumni Association from Michael Lieber ’92. “Visit often,” he told the graduates. “You’re always welcome home.”

The Commencement Choir, directed by Lecturer in Music John Corrie, sang Stephen Paulus’ “The Road Home”; and class gift co-chairs Rebecca C. Dobbin of New Canaan, Conn., and Katherine M. Kaplan of Boston, announced that the Class of 2016 had donated $8,456 to the college.

Three hundred and forty-nine students, or 76 percent of the class, contributed to the gift — beating the participation goal by six percentage points.

Civil Rights leader Rep. John Lewis to deliver 2016 Commencement address, joining honorands Lisa Genova ’92, Daniel Gilbert and Robert Witt ’62

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 15:24:10 +0000

Congressman John Lewis of Georgia will deliver the �ֲ��ý Commencement address and receive an honorary degree on Sunday, May 29.

Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, often called “one of the most courageous persons the civil rights movement ever produced,” will deliver the �ֲ��ý College Commencement address and receive an honorary degree on Sunday, May 29.

For its 150th commencement, �ֲ��ý will welcome Lewis and three fellow honorary degree recipients whose achievements in literature, psychology, and higher education have touched the lives of millions worldwide:

Lisa Genova ’92, neuroscientist and author of the bestselling novel Still Alice, whose empathetic insights into the workings of the brain have touched millions;
Daniel Gilbert, renowned psychologist and author of Stumbling on Happiness, whose work resulted in new understandings of human emotions;
Robert Witt ’62, higher education leader who transformed the University of Alabama into one of the country’s best public universities.

“We are profoundly honored to be joined for this historic Commencement by these distinguished leaders, two of whom we are proud to claim as our own graduates,” said President Clayton Spencer. “And we are thrilled that the Commencement address will be delivered by Congressman Lewis, whose life and work exemplify the animating values of this institution.”

�ֲ��ý, founded in 1855, was coeducational from its origin, and educated a number of important civil rights leaders, including Benjamin Elijah Mays, Class of 1920, who was president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967 and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.

Commencement concludes the undergraduate careers of the 461 members of the �ֲ��ý Class of 2016, representing more than 30 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and roughly 40 countries.

+John Lewis, Doctor of Humane Letters

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, of Georgia, has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building a society ruled by justice and compassion — the “Beloved Community” described by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The history of Lewis’ involvement in the civil rights movement is virtually a history of the movement itself. Born in 1940 to a sharecropping family in Alabama, Lewis was inspired early on by King’s words on the radio.

As a college student in Nashville, Lewis organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. In 1961, he became a Freedom Rider, one of the volunteers who risked their lives challenging segregation at interstate bus terminals across the South. Despite more than 40 arrests, assaults, and injuries, Lewis remained firmly devoted to nonviolence.

Lewis chaired the influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the height of the civil rights movement. In 1963 he was an architect of, and keynote speaker at, the historic March on Washington.

In 1965, Lewis helped spearhead a watershed moment: On March 7, with Hosea Williams, he led more than 600 peaceful protesters across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., a march to the state capitol in Montgomery to demonstrate for voting rights. The marchers were attacked by state troopers in a brutal confrontation now known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Media coverage of such senseless cruelty helped hasten the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — a pivotal achievement of the movement. “Of all the surviving leaders of the movement, Lewis is most responsible for its . . . overwhelming reauthorization four times by Congress,” voting rights historian Ari Berman wrote in The Nation in 2013. “He is the soul of the voting rights movement and its most eloquent advocate.” As leader of the Voter Education Project during the 1970s, Lewis helped add nearly four million minority voters to the rolls.

Elected to Congress in 1986, Lewis has served as U.S. representative of Georgia’s 5th Congressional District since. His dedication to the highest ethical standards and moral principles has won him the admiration of colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

Lewis’ books include the graphic novel memoir trilogy MARCH. The series is used in schools across the country to teach the civil rights movement to a new generation of young activists.

He has received numerous awards from eminent national and international institutions, as well as more than 50 honorary degrees from colleges and universities throughout the United States. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Lewis the highest U.S. civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Lewis holds a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University and is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary, both in Nashville.

+Lisa Genova '92, Doctor of Humane Letters

In crafting a literary career defined by compassionate insights into the human condition, best-selling author Lisa Genova has relied on uncommon empathy informed by years of neuroscience study and research that began at �ֲ��ý.

Genova, author of the novels Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, and Inside the O’Briens, has shown millions of readers, especially the afflicted and those who love and care for them, what it feels like to live with Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, autism, and Huntington’s disease. As Genova told �ֲ��ý Magazine in 2009, “what I can do is illuminate stories and show people a view of a certain kind of world that they normally don’t have access to.”

Her debut novel, Still Alice, was on The New York Times best-seller list for 59 weeks and has 2.6 million copies in print. It has been translated into 37 languages; adapted for stage and screen, the latter in 2014 with Julianne Moore in the Academy Award–winning title role; and selected as one of the 30 titles for World Book Night 2013.

First published in 2007, the novel owes its global reach to Genova’s personal resolve; she self-published the novel after being told that her story — about a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard University stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease at age 50 — would have no audience. It was later published by Simon and Schuster, in 2009.

Today, Still Alice is sui generis in the important genre of Alzheimer’s fiction, writes novelist Stefan Merrill Block in The New Yorker. Because fiction alone can hope to answer the question “What is it like to lose oneself and still live?,” he writes, Still Alice serves as both an “empathetic evocation of the internal experience of dementia” and a “guidebook for those confronting a similar diagnosis.”

A summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of �ֲ��ý, Genova designed her own interdisciplinary biopsychology major. She earned a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard University in 1998 and has coauthored scholarly research on cocaine addiction published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Described by her senior thesis adviser, Professor Emeritus of Psychology John Kelsey, as the “brightest student I have ever taught,” Genova “wanted to know how the world works” and went on to build a cross-disciplinary approach that has served her as both storyteller and scientist.

In 2015, she received �ֲ��ý’ highest alumni honor, the Sesquicentennial Award, for opening “hearts and minds about an urgent matter of public health and public policy.”

In creating her stories, “I always start with the science,” she told an audience at the University of Southern California in February. After getting the science right, “my job is to write a compelling, human story that…creates an awareness that has empathy, which is a motivation for action.”

+Daniel Gilbert, Doctor of Letters

As an internationally acclaimed social psychologist and Harvard professor, Daniel Gilbert has reached millions through a surprising variety of media — from academic journals and TED talks to NPR and The Late Show. But despite the varied platforms, a fundamental question underlies Gilbert’s work: Why are we so often wrong about what will make us happy?

“What we’ve been seeing in my lab, over and over again, is that people have an inability to predict what will make them happy — or unhappy,” Gilbert told The New York Times in 2008. “… The truth is, bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things, too. We adapt very quickly to either.”

Gilbert summed up his and others’ research on the topic in his 2006 book Stumbling on Happiness, which spent six months on The New York Times best-seller list and was awarded the Royal Society’s General Book Prize for best science book of the year. Leavened with humor and a welcoming style, Gilbert wove together findings from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics to explain what bedevils our attempts to predict our own emotional futures.

Gilbert’s research has created an area of study now known as “affective forecasting,” and in the last two decades, psychologists, neuroscientists, and economists have begun tackling these questions as well, especially in relation to decision making. The lessons learned from this growing field are impacting public policy, health care, economics, and the law.

Gilbert is the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He’s a past winner of the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Phi Beta Kappa teaching prize. Gilbert’s TED talks have been viewed by more than 20 million people, and in 2010 he hosted and co-wrote the 2010 NOVA television series This Emotional Life.

Gilbert’s route to prominence was not straightforward. As a 19-year-old high school dropout and budding science-fiction writer, he enrolled in a community college psychology course only because the writing course he wanted was full — and there he found his true calling. Gilbert earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Colorado at Denver and a doctorate in social psychology from Princeton.

+Robert Witt '62, Doctor of Humane Letters

A national leader in higher education, University of Alabama System Chancellor Robert Witt made a name for himself transforming good schools into great ones. He did it at the University of Texas, and he did it again when he was named president of The University of Alabama in 2003.

While Alabama’s fervid “Roll Tide!” fan base spanned the globe, its academic reputation was more circumscribed. Witt heard from parents of high-achieving prospective students that they didn’t see the university as a particularly rigorous institution. Under his leadership that changed, as Alabama opened its Honors College, giving the state’s best young scholars the opportunity to study alongside other top students. Witt then carried that message beyond Alabama by placing a new emphasis on enrolling students nationally, and he personally made recruiting trips to high schools around the country to pursue top scholars.

Today, more than half of the university’s students come from outside Alabama, and the school ranks among the country’s top public flagship universities in its enrollment of National Merit Scholars.

During Witt’s years at the helm, enrollment jumped 55 percent, to 31,000 students, making The University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa, one of the fastest-growing, as well as most forward-looking, U.S. universities. While raising the number and quality of students, Witt also spearheaded Alabama’s efforts to raise faculty salaries, increase financial aid, and enhance facilities — to the tune of $1.5 billion for campus construction, building renovations, and land purchases.

In 2012 — as Alabama state lawmakers praised his record of achievement as “truly unprecedented” — Witt was the unanimous pick to be chancellor of The University of Alabama System, which comprises three doctoral research universities in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Huntsville, as well as the acclaimed UAB Health System.

All told, Witt today leads an organization that educates some 63,000 students and employs 35,000 workers on a budget of more than $5.4 billion. In 2015, he announced his intent to retire from The University of Alabama System later this year.

In December, Witt stepped forward as the leader of Alabama Unites for Education, a broad coalition of K-12 schools, colleges, universities, and other advocates for increased funding and stability in the state’s public education system. The organization marks the first time in the state’s history that schools from all levels have joined to lobby legislators on a single issue.

Prior to his tenure in Alabama, Witt was for eight years the president of the University of Texas at Arlington. He began his higher education career in 1968 when he joined the business school faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he would eventually become an associate dean. In 1985 he became dean of the UT business school, recognized by The Wall Street Journal as one of the top seven public schools of business in the world.

In addition to his economics degree from �ֲ��ý, Witt has a master of business administration from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, and a doctorate from Penn State.

Genova ’92, best-selling author of ‘Still Alice,’ ‘Left Neglected,’ to speak

�ֲ��ý News — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:27:21 +0000

Lisa Genova ’92 is the author of “Still Alice” and “Left Neglected.”

Lisa Genova ’92, author of the popular novels Still Alice and Left Neglected, speaks at �ֲ��ý at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, in the Olin Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

This event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6487.

Genova, who has a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard, is recognized for creating compelling fiction about characters afflicted with cognitive disorders. Her talk is presented by the College Key Distinguished Alumni in Residence program, which brings �ֲ��ý graduates prominent in their fields to campus to visit classes and meet with students and faculty, in addition to the public lecture.

“Genova is a master of getting into the heads of her characters, relating from the inside out what it’s like to suffer from a debilitating disease,” wrote a USA Today reviewer in 2011. “How she does it we don’t know, but she does, and brilliantly.”

Genova’s fiction-writing debut was Still Alice, the story of Alice Howland, a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at age 50 and struggles with her loss of memory and independence. Genova self-published the novel in 2007, only to see it picked up a year later by Simon & Schuster, whose edition became a New York Times best-seller.

In 2009, the book was the No. 6 Book Group Favorite by Reading Group Choices, a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, a Borders Book Club Pick and a Target Book Club pick. There are more than a million copies in print, and it has been translated into 25 languages.

In 2011, Genova published her second New York Times best-seller, the critically acclaimed Left Neglected (Gallery Books). Here the protagonist is Sarah Nickerson, an intensely multi-tasking mother, wife and executive at the top of her game who suddenly suffers a traumatic brain injury. As she wills herself to regain her independence, Sarah learns that her real destiny may in fact lie far from the world she has built for herself.

Genova, who lives with her family on Cape Cod, is at work on a third novel, Love Anthony, about a boy with autism. Inspired by her grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s to write Still Alice, Genova has also become an advocate for sufferers of the disease, and travels the world to speak about it. She has appeared on the Diane Rehm Show, CNN, Fox News and Canada AM.

At �ֲ��ý, Genova graduated with a self-designed major in biopsychology. She never took a writing class, but was a gifted writer who knew the importance of telling stories, especially when it came to science.

“All good scientists, the ones who help the field think in an entirely new way, are storytellers,” Genova told a �ֲ��ý Magazine interviewer in 2009. (Read the article.)

The Distinguished Alumni in Residence program was established in 2003 by the College Key, a �ֲ��ý organization that recognizes and supports extraordinary achievement among current and past �ֲ��ý students.

John Kelsey's neuroscience lab brings in the brains

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:54:11 +0000

If you’re a student in Professor of Psychology John Kelsey’s neuroscience laboratory, you might get a chance to co-author a research article. And if you’re Kelsey, your students might inspire you to explore a new area of neuroscience. “My research is done with my students and through my students,” says Kelsey.

Over the years, around 50 of your students have published research with you. How do students get their names on a paper?

They have to contribute in some fundamental way to the ideas. If you hire undergraduates as techs, where they’re mostly doing the nuts and bolts, it’s tricky deciding if they’ve made a sufficient contribution to warrant authorship. But since most of my work is done around the senior thesis, ideas usually originate jointly. The students and I bounce ideas off each other and reformulate them. It’s a real give-and-take, so they have ownership of the ideas before they even start.

Using a rat model, much of your and your students’ research focuses on behavior around opiate addiction.

For a long time, the theory was that an addict was motivated by the aversive effects of withdrawal, what we call negative reinforcement: You take the drug to get rid of an aversive state. Later researchers, particularly Roy Wise, argued that positive reinforcement is critical: You take the drug because you like it. My and others’ work in the 1990s suggested that both reward and withdrawal are important.

Do the research topics change year to year in your lab?

In science, you usually make a find and then build on it. I tend to jump around. The first research we did on Parkinson’s disease was on NMDA receptors, special kinds of glutamate receptors that are heavily involved in learning. Then we switched to adenosine — completely unrelated, in some sense. This year we’ve switched to opiates and cannabinoids! I think a lot of it is me. I get bored; let’s jump around.

How do students react to this approach?

I think students like to delve into something new each year instead of feeling that they’re merely following up on Joe’s result on NMDA receptors.

What do you do to attract students to neuroscience or psychology?

One skill that I have, and I don’t have many, is recognizing good students early on and getting them interested. If I hear that so-and-so is good but hasn’t taken one of my classes, I’ll twist their arm a bit.

What if a student has divergent interests?

Katy Reedy ’06 was interested in psychology and creative writing. I encouraged her, and she majored in psych and after graduation did research with my former student, Bill Carlezon ’86, director of the Behavioral Genetics Laboratory at Harvard’s McLean Hospital. She’s now in graduate school…in English! I do feel a little guilt — maybe if I hadn’t been so pushy about neuroscience she would’ve stayed in English at �ֲ��ý.

On the other hand, my thesis student Lisa Genova ’92 got her Ph.D. in neuroscience and just wrote a novel, Still Alice, about a fictional Harvard professor who develops Alzheimer’s. It was recently bought by Simon & Schuster.

What’s it like having a cadre of alums out there who’ve been through your lab?

When I go to the Society for Neuroscience and see 12 or 15 alums there, it’s terrific. At a place like �ֲ��ý, you wonder, “What’s my legacy?” Research will be the legacy for some �ֲ��ý faculty, and I publish regularly but it’s not earth-shattering. Research won’t be my legacy, as much as I would like it to be. It will be the alumni I’ve taught.

What qualities do you seek when the psychology department hires a new member?

A lot has to do with work ethic. We take this job and the students seriously, and we like and respect each other. We don’t socialize as a department; we don’t often meet that way. We basically do our job and we know everyone else is doing their job. So we have absolutely implicit trust in each other.

When you arrived in 1979, who modeled that ethic for you?

Bob Moyer and Drake Bradley would get up at 4 a.m. to get in here. Bob would go home eventually but Drake would be here all night. It was pretty clear those two had nothing in their lives but �ֲ��ý! Dick Wagner was the chair. He hired well and was such a good mediator; he got people to work together. And, he did the administrative stuff so we didn’t have to futz with it. He protected us.

Were Drake and Bob here all hours for their students or their own research?

It was mostly student-driven, but that’s how we do our research. Research, teaching, and helping students are so commingled we can’t differentiate among them.

Still Lisa

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:13:28 +0000

By Maria Blackburn

Photography by Phyllis Graber Jensen

On a brisk autumn night in 1998, 85-year-old Angie Genova grabbed her bowling bag and purse and set out on foot for her bowling league.

Though the bowling alley was a half-mile from her home in suburban Waltham, Mass., the mother of nine and grandmother of more than 20 had little trouble navigating the way.

When Angie arrived at the Wal-Lex Recreation Center, she tried the doors and found they were locked. So she waited. And waited. And after a while, the tiny white-haired woman walked home and called her family to ask where everyone was.

It was 4 a.m. That’s when her family knew for sure: Angie had Alzheimer’s disease.

was fresh out of Harvard University with a Ph.D. in neuroscience when Angie, her grandmother, was diagnosed. She knew the science behind the disease, how neurons in her grandmother’s head, not far from her ears, were being strangled to death. But as she witnessed her Nana go from an active, vibrant woman to a person who couldn’t recognize her children and was unable to find the bathroom in her own home, she wondered: What does it feel like to have Alzheimer’s?

All good scientists, the ones who help the field think in an entirely new way, are storytellers.

Telling a story about Alzheimer’s from the perspective of a person with the disease sounded like a good idea for a novel, Genova thought. But she didn’t seem like a likely person to write it. She was a bench scientist turned healthcare consultant. Science was all about empirical evidence; fiction was all about creativity. What did she know about writing a novel? “Nothing,” she says, laughing.

Despite this, Genova went ahead and wrote Still Alice, the fictional story of Alice Howland, a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard University who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 50 and struggles with her loss of memory and independence. She self-published the book through iUniverse in 2007. A year later it caught the attention of Simon & Schuster, which published it in January. Since then Still Alice has been a fixture on The New York Times Best Seller List and transformed Genova into not just a best-selling author but an Alzheimer’s advocate who travels the country speaking about the disease.

Speaking by phone from her home in Chatham, Mass., as she chases her 18-month-old son, Ethan, around the backyard, Genova sounds somewhat amazed by her success as a novelist. “All I was trying to do was write a good story in honor of my grandmother that I hoped would get published,” says Genova. “I wasn’t trying to write a best-seller. I wasn’t looking to become an advocate. I did not dream of this success at all.”

At �ֲ��ý, she self-designed her major in biopsychology and considered a career as a college professor. Genova never took a writing class, but she was a gifted writer who could communicate clearly and effectively. She also knew the importance of telling stories, especially when it came to science.

“All good scientists, the ones who help the field think in an entirely new way, are storytellers,” Genova says. “Stories are what move us as human beings and connect us to each other, whether you’re talking about physics or biology or a woman who has early onset Alzheimer’s. We are just better listeners when someone is telling us a story.”

By high school, Genova knew that she wanted to be a scientist but wasn’t comfortable with her intelligence, so she tried to hide it. “Being smart wasn’t cool at Waltham High,” she explains. When she got to �ֲ��ý, she took a look at her bright, engaged classmates and realized she had nothing to hide. “For the first time I felt absolutely comfortable in my own skin,” says Genova, who graduated with Phi Beta Kappa membership and was ranked first in her class in 1992.

That sense of confidence made a lasting impression on Professor of Psychology John Kelsey, Genova’s adviser at �ֲ��ý.

“One of the reasons that Lisa was such a good scientist was because she was so curious and she wanted to know how the world worked,” Kelsey says. “Without being arrogant she was able to treat faculty as colleagues. When we would discuss research articles and ideas, it was often unclear who the teacher was and who was the pupil.”

Genova — who also has extensive acting experience — just signed a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster. She is currently at work on her second novel, Left Neglected, the story of a woman who suffers a traumatic brain injury, to be published in 2011.

Genova may have left the lab bench behind, but her storytelling will always have neuroscience at its core. At least for now.

“What I believe, without hesitation, is that I’m not the best writer in the world by any stretch of the imagination,” she says. “What I have is a background and a passion for neuroscience, so what I can do is illuminate stories and show people a view of a certain kind of world that they normally don’t have access to.

“I really wanted to be a professor because I really love to teach. Look what I get to do. I get to be a writer and do that.”

Freelance writer Maria Blackburn is a former writer for Johns Hopkins Magazine and reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

Genova '92, author of best-selling Still Alice, visits �ֲ��ý

�ֲ��ý News — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:35:59 +0000

Lisa Genova ’92, whose self-published novel about a professor succumbing to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease became a best-seller earlier this year, offers a talk and reading at �ֲ��ý on May 20.Sponsored by the �ֲ��ý psychology department, the event is open to the public at no cost.

Genova’s debut novel made news for both its literary quality and its unusual route to public attention. Unable to attract an agent, Genova published the book herself using an online service. Then word got around, enthusiasm snowballed and Genova signed a contract with Simon and Schuster — under whose imprint the book debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times bestseller list in January.

Still Alice is the story of 50-year-old Alice Howland, who is a celebrated Harvard professor, happily married and at the peak of her career, when she notices the first signs of a failing memory. As the disease progresses, she struggles to maintain her lifestyle and to live in the moment even as her sense of self is disappearing.

“As Alice laments, ‘I miss myself,'” wrote USA Today reviewer Craig Wilson. “A poignant portrait of Alzheimer’s, Still Alice is not a book you will forget.”

Genova graduated from �ֲ��ý summa cum laude with a self-designed major in biopsychology and has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard. She has researched the molecular origins of depression, Parkinson’s disease, drug addiction and memory loss following stroke.

She is also an actress working in Boston theaters and independent films. She is working on her next novel for Simon and Schuster, Left Neglected.

Wednesday, May 20, at 7:30 p.m.
Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Genova '92, author of best-selling Still Alice, to visit

�ֲ��ý News — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:47:00 +0000

Lisa Genova, a member of the �ֲ��ý College class of 1992 whose self-published novel about a professor succumbing to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease became a best-seller earlier this year, offers a talk and reading at �ֲ��ý at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 20, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Sponsored by the �ֲ��ý psychology department, the event is open to the public at no cost.

Genova’s debut novel made news for both its literary quality and its unusual route to public attention. Unable to attract an agent, published the book herself using an online service. Then word got around, enthusiasm snowballed and Genova signed a contract with Simon and Schuster — under whose imprint the book debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times bestseller list in January.

“As Alice laments, ‘I miss myself,'” wrote USA Today reviewer Craig Wilson. “A poignant portrait of Alzheimer’s, Still Alice is not a book you will forget.”