Eastman Celebrates Named Professors For Women’s History Month

For Women’s History Month, Eastman celebrates the contributions of women who have played a crucial role in shaping the landscape of the field of music, be it in performance, composition, or scholarship and teaching. Music has historically been a male-dominated art and women have routinely been overlooked or marginalized. At Eastman, trailblazing women have made their mark, from historical figures like librarian Ruth Watanabe to the many extraordinary women currently on Eastman’s faculty and among our accomplished alumni.

This year, we highlight three current women faculty members who have received named professorships: Professor of Voice Katherine Ciesinski, the Martin E. and Corazon D. Sanders Professor of Voice; Professor of Violin Renée Jolles, the Wegman Family Professor of Violin; and Professor of Musicology Holly Watkins, the Minehan Family Professor. All three offer their thoughts on the importance of being a woman in music.

Named professorships, also known as endowed professorships, are significant gifts from major donors that honor the extraordinary work of our faculty members. Although we only highlight the current women faculty members with endowed positions this month, several prior women have been appointed the honor. The first endowed professorship to ever be given at Eastman was in 1998 to Donna Brink Fox, who served as Senior Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs until her retirement in 2022 and was a specialist in early-childhood music education. She was named the Eisenhart Professor of Music Education. Another recipient was former Professor of Music Theory Elizabeth Marvin, named Minehan Family Professor, who held a secondary appointment in the University of Rochester’s brain and cognitive sciences department and who made major contributions to the field of music cognition. Natalya Antonova, a professor emeritus of piano, was named the Wentworth Family Professor.

In addition to these women, Eastman’s faculty features women at the top of their disciplines across all departments.

To speak with Eastman’s Office of Advancement about making a gift to support our faculty, please contact advancement@esm.rochester.edu or visit their website for support opportunities. Read more about our donors, some of whom are also extraordinary women, below.

 

Katherine Ciesinski, Martin E. and Corazon D. Sanders Professor of Voice

“In my field of classical vocal performance, I have been most fortunate to have many opportunities to pursue my art and to perform with amazing fellow artists in venues large and small on three continents. Concurrently, my love of teaching voice took on full-time status in a higher education setting thirty years ago. My so-called ‘double life’ has had innumerable adventures and rewards, including tenure and promotion to full professor in the years before I joined the Eastman faculty in 2008. The number of women on most faculties in higher education find themselves in a distinct minority and some fields have been significantly unpopulated by senior women faculty. Luckily, voice teaching is not one of those disciplines! Yet, it was a great surprise and a singular honor to have been awarded Eastman’s first applied faculty endowed professorship. This recognition has given momentum to all I wish to accomplish for my students, for my department, Eastman, the University and beyond. It affirms the value of applied teaching of all instruments and, most hearteningly, the instrument we carry in us—the human voice. I view this endowed professorship as a signal that our applied teaching, a one-to-one technical and artistic nurturing of our students, is of the highest educational value. I am surrounded by exceptional women at Eastman engaged in applied teaching and continually excited to hear their students perform and collaborate. As performers, I listen to learn from them and I seek to support the leadership roles they play in service to our students, our school, and our profession.”

 

Renée Jolles, Professor of Violin and Wegman Family Professor of Violin

“I am truly honored to be named the Wegman Family Professor of Violin.  I am heartened by the significant number of women who have risen to the top of the music industry whether as performers, professors, or administrators.  It is a great privilege to be able to support current and future generations of students as they strive for excellence and recognition.  I hope I can serve in some small way as a role model for young women, and indeed all people, to realize that they can achieve great success as leaders in the field even while raising a family and holding true to their values.”

  

Holly Watkins, Professor of Musicology and Minehan Family Professor 

“For much of my life, I’ve rarely felt a strong sense of group identity when it comes to sex and gender, largely because my interests and ways of being in the world do not accord with those typically considered ‘feminine.’ When I was growing up, there was very little recognition of how such mismatches could help dismantle the assumption that sex and gender should mutually reinforce each other. While I’ve spent many years engaged in that dismantling, these days I’m more concerned with what comes after it, along with what comes after ‘representation’ as the current benchmark of inclusivity. To be sure, there are still male-dominated spaces in academia where my presence makes a difference (in fact, I found myself in one the very day I wrote these remarks—an important academic ritual in which I was the only woman in the room), but the mere presence of women or other underrepresented folks in those spaces is not enough. The next step is to transform the values and behaviors governing those spaces. For me, that transformation involves paying attention to not so much visibility as invisibility—to the psychological, somatic, and even ecological dimensions of human existence and how they might be brought into better balance with artistic and intellectual pursuits. Taking this path while embracing the subject position ‘woman’ involves a significant amount of risk, since the holistic perspectives of women have often been used to exclude them from strictly intellectual pursuits. But in a world where the costs of ignoring the many layers of human (and nonhuman) flourishing are daily becoming clearer, the risk is, for me, indisputably worth taking. I hope that what my students see—and cannot see—in me inspires them to do the same.”

 

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About the Donors

Corsee Sanders and Marty Sanders

Corsee is Executive Vice President of Product Development Operations at Juno Therapeutics. She was previously a Senior Vice President and the Global Head of Clinical Operations and Industry Collaborations for Roche Pharmaceuticals.

Corsee received a Bachelor of Science in Statistics and a Master of Science in Statistics from the University of the Philippines. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.

Marty has had a long career in clinical medicine, basic laboratory research in immunology, pharmaceutical product development, venture capital investment, and serial company formation in the life sciences. He is CEO of Io Therapeutics, Inc., a company developing new treatments for Parkinson’s disease, other neurodegenerative diseases, and various cancers. 

He received his B.A. in Microbiology from the University of Missouri in Columbia, and his M.D. from the University of Chicago School of Medicine. He completed post-graduate training in Internal Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, and subspecialty training at the National Institutes of Health and at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Rheumatology, and Allergy/Clinical Immunology. He occasionally performs in musical theater productions.

Marty and Corsee Sanders, are the parents of Laura Sanders ’16E, ’18E (MM), a graduate of Eastman’s Voice and Opera Program. They are George Eastman Circle sustaining members at the benefactor level and reside in The Woodlands, Texas. Marty is also a Trustee of the University.

 

Danny Wegman

Danny Wegman is chairman of Rochester-based Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. He joined Wegmans in 1969, became its president in 1976, and was named CEO in 2005. He is chairman emeritus of the University’s Board of Trustees after serving as a Board member for more than 17 years.

In 2010, Wegman received the University’s Eastman Medal, which recognizes outstanding professional achievement and dedicated service. In 2018, as chairman of the board of the Wegmans Family Foundation, Inc., he announced a gift of $5 million to the Eastman School of Music by the foundation. The gift supports faculty and students, including scholarships.

 

Cathy E. Minehan ’68

Cathy Minehan’s $5 million commitment has established two Minehan Family Professorships to support world-class Eastman faculty members, and the Minehan Family Scholarship. She studied clarinet at the Eastman Community Music School and took voice lessons at Eastman as a University of Rochester student.

She is a University of Rochester Trustee, a member of its Executive Committee, and currently is Chairperson of the Academic Affairs Committee. She is also a co-chair for the Eastman School of Music Centennial Campaign.

Formerly CEO and president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Minehan is managing director of Arlington Advisory Partners, the Boston-based accounting services firm, and a board member for several for-profit and non-profit educational, medical, cultural, and business organizations.

Cathy Minehan has also served as Dean of the School of Management at Simmons College and was the first woman to serve as chair of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Board of Trustees, in 2008.