Talk:List of University of Rochester people

Thomas Thackeray Swinburne
I added Swinburne to the "alumni" section. Even though he never graduated (and I believe there are one or two others listed) I think his composition of The Genesee and lifelong connection with the University causes him to belong here. If someone objects I won't argue. Peter Flass (talk) 23:11, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

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External links modified
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Reorganization and tables
Just want to leave an explanation because I’ve made a lot of changes. When I first saw this list I thought it was in need of improvement, so I started squeezing in edits when I could. But then, after looking at the Wikipedia lists for other institutions (Pomona, Dartmouth, etc.), I decided to bring this one more into line with those in terms of the way info is presented. Hopefully it’s now more thorough and helpful to the average reader.

My approach was to exclude people who only received an honorary degree from Rochester, but to include, in a separate category, those who attended without earning a degree. As for the alumni, some could justifiably be included in multiple categories (for example, Steven Chu, who is both a Nobel laureate and a former Cabinet secretary), and there’s a good argument for duplication, since readers could be confused if they expect to find someone in one category and he or she is not there. But ultimately, I decided to avoid duplication wherever possible (in Chu’s case, I figured the global status of the Nobel outweighs the national status of the US Cabinet), with the exception of notable alumni who were also faculty.

In terms of deciding who to include, it became a question of how to weed out vanity pages and determine who is truly notable. I know a lot of lists like this separate out Nobel laureates (which I’ve also done), Pulitzer winners, MacArthur Fellows, etc., as a way to distinguish the most notable people, but I decided instead to separate out winners of the National Medals and members of national academies. The former are sort of like American Nobel Prizes, and election to a national academy signals that you’ve been judged by a body of experts to be of national or even global importance in your field. For that reason, I’ve placed these categories first, and then sorted the other categories alphabetically, adding a few new ones (military, religion, etc.) to make things more easily findable.

For each entry, I tried to find sources that gave the type of degree and class year (and, in the case of national academy members, their membership). Sometimes this wasn’t possible and I had to use multiple sources.

The faculty section needs more work, but this reorg took a lot longer than I anticipated and I don't know if I'll be able to get to it. Hopefully someone can figure out how to make it better!

Of course, I’ve probably missed some people, or possibly haven’t thought of something that makes this approach less than ideal. If so, please feel free to edit as you see fit. Thanks. IbIANTiA (talk) 00:31, 23 May 2022 (UTC)