The University of Rochester Board of Trustees has approved the undergraduate tuition rates, housing and food fees, and financial aid for the 2026–27 academic year for the School of Arts & Sciences (SAS), Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Simon Business School, and Eastman School of Music. Tuition for undergraduates will increase by 3.9 percent to $71,750. Housing and food will increase 4.2 percent to $21,326.

URochester meets 100 percent of demonstrated financial need for all undergraduate students who earn admission into SAS, Simon, and Hajim, while at the same time awarding a robust merit scholarship program that recognizes academic achievement regardless of financial need —one of the very few US private institutions committed to this level of accessibility. This year, $150 million is dedicated to the University’s commitment to affordability through merit- and need-based programs.

At the Eastman School of Music, $23 million is made available for both merit and need-based grants and scholarships to support undergraduate students.

Each year, the Board of Trustees is presented with a proposal for determining the annual tuition rates based on a careful evaluation of available revenue sources, projected operating costs and efficiencies, and the expected number of enrolled students. Tuition supports URochester’s work to provide students with the best educational experiences with a wide range of programs, services, and facilities that benefit all students.

Rochester’s ongoing commitment to access and affordability

Launched this past fall, the UR Essentials program eliminates the added expense of textbooks and select course materials by incorporating the cost into the full-time undergraduate tuition rate. The program also streamlines the student experience by ensuring all required course materials are delivered to students before classes begin.

URochester is nationally recognized for delivering outstanding value, with robust financial aid programs that earned the University a No. 28 ranking among National Universities in US News & World Report Best Value Schools. Less than 40 percent of all undergraduates take out any form of federal loan by graduation. The average total federal loan debt among those in the Class of 2025 who did borrow was $17,677.

Approved tuition rates at the University’s schools

Undergraduate students and families can view the University’s costs, financial aid, and other institutional figures on the University’s Office of Financial Aid site. The Board-approved 2026–27 tuition rates for the University’s undergraduate and graduate programs will soon be available online at the Office of the Bursar’s website.

Edward Deci, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Rochester whose pioneering work transformed how human motivation is understood and shaped generations of scholars, practitioners, and students worldwide, died in February at the age of 83.

He was best known for his work on self-determination theory, which he cofounded with his University colleague Richard Ryan. The theory became one of the most influential frameworks on human motivation and wellness in contemporary psychology, with its reach extending far beyond academic journals.

At a time when behaviorist approaches dominated the field of psychology—emphasizing rewards and punishments as primary drivers of behavior—Deci helped advance a different view: Humans are naturally inclined toward curiosity, growth, and connection, and their progress in and mastery of their pursuits are necessary for them to flourish.

His 1971 seminal paper on extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation spawned decades of collaborative research with Ryan that evolved into self-determination theory. Today, the theory is among the most cited in the history of psychology. It is now widely applied in education, healthcare, psychotherapy, organizational life, and public policy, influencing how people are taught, treated, motivated, and supported across diverse settings worldwide.

“They identified three key human needs—our need for competence, our need for autonomy, and our need for relatedness, meaning personal connection—and they posited that intrinsic motivation can be sustained only when we feel those needs are being satisfied,” author Paul Tough once wrote in The Atlantic in explaining how the theory was being used to teach children resilience.

A global force in human motivation

Deci spent his entire academic career at the University of Rochester, joining the Department of Psychology in 1970 and later becoming the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences before retiring in 2017. Over more than four decades, he helped establish the University as a global center for the study of human motivation.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Deci and Ryan co-led the Human Motivation Program at the University, which became a formative intellectual home for many scholars who would go on to shape the field themselves. Central to the program was a weekly motivation research group, where rigorous thinking, open dialogue, and mentorship were defining features.

Over the course of his career, Deci authored and coauthored hundreds of publications and several influential books, including Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (Springer, 1985), Why We Do What We Do (Penguin Books, 1991), and Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness (Guilford Press, 2017).

Beyond his scholarship, Deci was widely known as a generous mentor, advisor, and friend. Former students and colleagues often described his patience, warmth, and gentle challenge—his ability to encourage others to seek clarity and truth while respecting their lived experience. His legacy lives on not only in the reach of his ideas, but also in the countless scholars, clinicians, educators, and practitioners whose work—and lives—were shaped by his guidance.

“Ed had a profound passion for understanding human motivation and for putting that knowledge into practice,” says Ryan, his longtime collaborator. “He was remarkably generative as a scholar, but what mattered just as much to him was supporting younger scholars—helping them think clearly, work honestly, and grow into themselves.”

In 2015, Deci and Ryan founded the Center for Self-Determination Theory, a nonprofit organization that advances the philosophy, research, and practices of self-determination theory.

Outside of academic life, Deci found joy and meaning on Monhegan Island, Maine, where he spent his summers and played a long-standing role in the Monhegan Museum of Art and History and its artistic community. For decades, he served as either director of the museum or president of the Monhegan Museum Association, or both, helping to steward the cultural life of the island alongside his work in psychology. His passion reflected the same values that guided his scientific work: curiosity, care, and a deep respect for human expression.

Deci is survived by his sister Shirley Jensen, brother Charles Deci Jr., their children and grandchildren, and by a global community of colleagues, students, and friends whose lives were shaped, directly or indirectly, by his ideas and character.

This tribute was written in part by Edward Deci’s longtime research partner and friend, Professor Emeritus of Psychology Richard Ryan.

The federal government is providing researchers at two Rochester-area universities funding to advance the future of sharing quantum information and further develop an experimental quantum network connecting their campuses. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is providing the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology $2 million to build new capabilities for the Rochester Quantum Network (RoQNET). This new funding is a direct result of Congressional support from Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Representative Morelle as part of the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill.

URochester and RIT installed RoQNET in 2024, and last year they demonstrated that they can securely transmit single photons from one campus to another over 11 miles of fiber-optic telecommunications lines. Sending communications using individual particles of light offers unprecedented levels of security, making them impregnable from being cloned or intercepted without detection and preventing bad actors from accessing sensitive data.

Now, the researchers are preparing for experiments to share entangled photons across the network, leveraging the strange and surprising principles of quantum mechanics that defy the laws of conventional physics.

“We want to exploit some of the more unique features of quantum mechanics and quantum optics, specifically the idea of quantum entanglement, where two particles of light can share properties no matter how far apart they are,” says Nickolas Vamivakas, the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Optical Physics, who leads URochester’s efforts. “One of these entangled photon pairs will live at RIT and one will live at URochester, and we aim to maintain that entanglement across RoQNET.”

Vamivakas says that harnessing quantum entanglement could eventually lead to sophisticated networks of quantum computers or advanced new methods to improve the resolution of space telescopes.

While there are other experimental quantum networks across the world, Vamivakas says RoQNET offers several distinct advantages, including the ability to transmit photons over normal fiber-optic lines like those that already exist across the globe. He says RoQNET is further distinguished from other quantum networks because of URochester’s expertise in quantum memory hardware and RIT’s ability to create quantum photonic integrated-circuit light sources.

“Our focus with RoQNET has been on the realization of heterogeneous entanglement between different types of qubits,” says Stefan Preble, RIT’s Bausch and Lomb Professor and PhD program director of microsystems engineering. “This funding supports further research to reach the next generation in quantum networking technologies.”

The funding will also enable hardware that will provide high school, undergraduate, and graduate students with some of their first opportunities to work with quantum optics and quantum networks.

“We are proud to be at the vanguard of the quantum revolution and thank Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Representative Morelle for their support securing crucial federal funding to make new advances in quantum communication,” says URochester President Sarah Mangelsdorf. “Our university is committing significant time, talent, and resources into advancing quantum technologies, as evidenced by our recent investment in the transdisciplinary Center for Coherence and Quantum Science. We are fortunate to have terrific local collaborators at RIT with whom we can combine our strengths to advance the Rochester region as a hub for advanced quantum research and innovation.”

A quantum network was also recently established on Long Island, New York, between Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University. Vamivakas, who has been partnering with the researchers downstate, likens it and RoQNET to local networks and hopes to eventually connect quantum research into a statewide network, adding other facilities in New York State, including the Air Force Research Laboratory and New York University. They will need to further advance quantum repeater technology to boost signals across such large distances, but the funding provides them with important resources to try to reach that goal. New York aims to establish quantum technology commercialization hubs across the state that will serve as incubators and foster the development and commercialization of quantum technologies.

Elected officials and leaders share support for RoQNET

US Senator Charles Schumer: “I was proud to secure this funding for URochester and RIT to help develop a cutting-edge Upstate quantum network. This win-win benefits national security and boosts economic development and innovation by enabling the Rochester region to connect into similar New York-based quantum communications networks positioning New York to be a global leader in quantum communication and networking. RoQNET will stimulate quantum workforce development for K–12 and college-age students and offer learning opportunities for students enrolled in the Monroe Community College Optical Technology program. Rochester is home to world-class research institutions, and this federal investment will help URochester and RIT continue advancing cutting-edge quantum networking work. I was proud to deliver this funding so Rochester’s innovators can keep pushing the boundaries of secure communications and strengthen the region’s role as a hub for advanced technology.”

US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: “I am proud to help deliver $2 million in funding for this quantum network expansion. Through the development of RoQNET, the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology are at the forefront of quantum research. Quantum has the ability to fundamentally change how we engage in secure communications. The Rochester region remains a preeminent leader in advanced technologies and high-impact research activities, and I look forward to seeing the results of this partnership.”

Congressman Joe Morelle: “Quantum technology is the next frontier of innovation, and thanks to world-class research universities like URochester and RIT, Rochester will continue to lead the way in these critical technologies. I was proud to secure funding in Washington to support RoQNET, and I cannot wait to see what they discover next.”

The University of Rochester-East Educational Partnership Organization (URochester-East EPO) has been awarded Campus Compact’s 2026 Excellence in Community-Engaged Partnerships Award, a national honor recognizing higher education programs and initiatives that make a meaningful impact by partnering with communities to address complex social issues.

The URochester-East EPO was selected as one of only five programs nationwide to receive this prestigious award, highlighting the University of Rochester’s decade-long collaborative partnership with East High School and the broader Rochester community to improve student outcomes and strengthen educational pathways.

Established in 2015 through a partnership between URochester, the Rochester City School District (RCSD), and the New York State Education Department, the EPO was created to prevent the closure of East High School, which at the time was the lowest-performing and most persistently struggling school in New York State.

Guided by principles of collaboration, sustainability, and shared leadership, the University’s Warner School of Education & Human Development worked alongside East educators, families, and community stakeholders to co-design a comprehensive school transformation strategy. The plan emphasized high-quality teaching, culturally responsive-sustaining curriculum, and social-emotional well-being, while leveraging a transdisciplinary approach that engaged more than 15 URochester schools and departments across education, health, and workforce development.

“This recognition is a testament to the power of collaboration and our shared commitment to creating opportunities for all students to thrive,” says Shaun Nelms ’04W (MS), ’13W (EdD), vice president for community partnerships at URochester, the William and Sheila Konar Director of the Center for Urban Education Success (CUES) at the Warner School, and former East EPO superintendent. “The URochester-East EPO has not only transformed East but also demonstrated what is possible when universities and communities come together to address systemic challenges. The impact of this partnership extends far beyond the walls of East, serving as a national model for advancing access and opportunity in education. I am deeply proud of the students, families, educators, and University partners who made this transformation possible.”

Through the EPO, East educators, students, families, and Warner faculty developed and implemented a comprehensive, embedded redesign of the school. By the conclusion of the formal EPO in June 2025, East achieved measurable and sustained progress. The school’s graduation rate rose dramatically—from 33 percent when the partnership began to more than 85 percent during the course of the EPO—alongside improved student academic outcomes, increased attendance, school culture transformation, and expanded university partnerships.

“I have witnessed firsthand the transformation this partnership made possible. It stands among the most consequential and ethical examples of university–public school collaboration in the nation,” wrote Marlene Blocker, chief of innovation and school reform for RCSD and former East EPO superintendent, in a letter supporting the partnership’s nomination for the Excellence in Community-Engaged Partnerships Award. “In deep partnership with families, educators, scholars, and community stakeholders, this initiative was guided by a simple but profound belief: with sustained, high-quality teaching, culturally responsive curricula, and robust social-emotional support, every scholar can succeed. This was not a short-term intervention but a fully embedded collaborative redesign effort.”

Building on this progress, the Warner School will continue to support students’ academic success and well-being through new and ongoing initiatives. The Center for Urban Education Success, housed at Warner, will remain a hub for research, resources, and tools designed to help urban schools thrive and scale effective, community-engaged educational practices.

The Excellence in Community-Engaged Partnerships Award is presented as part of Campus Compact’s Impact Awards, which recognize shining examples of meaningful, impactful civic and community engagement work. The recipients of these awards are recognized at Compact26, Campus Compact’s annual conference.

Scroll through social media long enough and a pattern emerges. Pause on a post questioning climate change or taking a hard line on a political issue, and the platform is quick to respond—serving up more of the same viewpoints, delivered with growing confidence and certainty.

That feedback loop is the architecture of an echo chamber: a space where familiar ideas are amplified, dissenting voices fade, and beliefs can harden rather than evolve.

But new research from the University of Rochester has found that echo chambers might not be a fact of online life. Published in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, the study argues that they are partly a design choice—one that could be softened with a surprisingly modest change: introducing more randomness into what people see.

The interdisciplinary team of researchers, led by Professor Ehsan Hoque from the Department of Computer Science, created experiments to identify belief rigidity and assess whether introducing more randomness into a social network could help reduce it. The researchers studied how 163 participants reacted to statements about topics like climate change after using simulated social media channels, some with feeds modeled on more traditional social media outlets and others with more randomness.

Importantly, “randomness” in this context doesn’t mean replacing relevant content with nonsense. Rather, it means loosening the usual “show me more of what I already agree with” logic that drives many algorithms today. In the researchers’ model, users were periodically exposed to opinions and connections they did not explicitly choose, alongside those they did.

A tweak to the algorithm, a crack in the echo chambers

“Across a series of experiments, we find that what people see online does influence their beliefs, often pulling them closer to the views they are repeatedly exposed to,” says Adiba Mahbub Proma, a computer science PhD student and first author of the paper. “But when algorithms incorporate more randomization, this feedback loop weakens. Users are exposed to a broader range of perspectives and become more open to differing views.”

The authors—who also include Professor Gourab Ghoshal from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, James Druckman, the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science, PhD student Neeley Pate, and Raiyan Abdul Baten ’16, ’22 (PhD)—say that the recommendation systems social media platforms use can drive people into echo chambers that make divisive content more attractive. As an antidote, the researchers recommend simple design changes that do not eliminate personalization but that do introduce more variety while still allowing users control over their feeds.

The findings arrive at a moment when governments and platforms alike are grappling with misinformation, declining institutional trust, and polarized responses to elections and public health guidance. Proma recommends social media users keep the results in mind when reflecting on their own social media consumer habits.

“If your feed feels too comfortable, that might be by design,” says Proma. “Seek out voices that challenge you. The most dangerous feeds are not the ones that upset us, but the ones that convince us we are always right.”

The research was partially funded through the Goergen Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Seed Funding Program.

When Kristina Brecko arrived at Stanford University in the fall of 2012 to start her PhD, she was already scanning the weather forecast—not for rainfall, but for snow. An avid snowboarder, she and her graduate study advisor, Wesley Hartmann, a skier, were eager to get into the mountains.

There would be no great skiing that winter. California was entering what would become one of the most severe droughts in its history.

“I liked to snowboard,” Brecko says. “And so it was very salient that there really wasn’t any good snow that year.”

The drought, which stretched from 2012 to 2017, transformed daily life across the state. Cities pleaded with residents to conserve water and let lawns go brown, rip out grass, stop watering altogether. Billboards and public campaigns urged restraint. Many complied. But some of the state’s heaviest water users, often homeowners with sprawling green lawns, did not.

For Brecko, now an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School, the disconnect raised a question that would shape years of research. California was awash in public opinion messaging. Was any of it effective?

“There was a lot of messaging happening, telling people to reduce their water usage,” she recalls. “And I had these question—it’s all marketing, but is it working? What exactly is working and for whom?”

Rather than focusing on the people who had already embraced conservation—those willing to let their lawns die or remove them entirely—Brecko and Hartmann became interested in the holdouts—that is, the households with the highest water consumption. Their findings, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, argue that those households should not be shamed or ignored. Instead, they should be targeted.

Harm reduction over abstinence

The study borrows a concept from public health: the idea of harm reduction. Instead of demanding abstinence—no drugs, no cigarettes, no lawns—the approach aims to reduce damage among people unlikely to completely quit a harmful action.

In California’s drought-stricken suburbs, the harm was outdoor irrigation. The tool was a smart irrigation controller, a device that automatically adjusts watering schedules based on weather, soil conditions, and plant needs. The question was whether such a device could significantly reduce water use without undermining more aggressive conservation efforts, like turf removal.

“There’re always going to be people who are just not going to do it,” Brecko says, referring to lawn removal. “Because it goes totally against their preferences.”

Working with Redwood City Public Works, the researchers tested whether offering irrigation controllers (at either steep discounts or for free) could change behavior among residents who wanted to keep their lawns green. Crucially, the study took place toward the end of the drought, after years of aggressive messaging and rebates for turf removal had already circulated.

“By the time we ran our study, people had had the chance to adopt the most effective solution—at least those people who would do it,” Brecko explains.

That timing mattered. Those most committed to conservation had already removed their turf. That meant the researchers could now focus on everyone else.

Field tests in thirsty times

The team ran two large-scale field experiments in Redwood City. In 2016, roughly 7,000 households were offered discounts on smart irrigation controllers, ranging from 10 percent to 80 percent. Some homeowners were also offered free professional installation.

Adoption was slower than expected.

“I think people just weren’t sure,” Brecko says. “The device was relatively new, and even the utility company wasn’t sure what effect it would have on water usage.”

The second experiment, in 2017, scaled up dramatically. About 19,000 households were randomly assigned to receive a free smart irrigation device, available in limited quantities. The process was designed to be as easy as possible: Residents received emails and accessed a dedicated online portal where discounts were applied instantly—no rebates, no paperwork.

The response was swift. Clearly, price and convenience mattered. Messaging alone did not. “Incremental discounts aren’t really going to do the trick,” Brecko notes. “We learned that we needed to overcome some barriers to adoption.”

Who adopted—and who saved

The devices appealed most to people who used the most water, with heavy irrigators adopting the device at the highest rates.

“It allows you to keep the green lawn that you care about.” Brecko says, “But it might allow you to also contribute to that social goal that we care about.”

Once installed, the controllers delivered substantial and lasting savings. Water use dropped by about 26 percent (from a regular irrigation baseline) during shoulder seasons—early spring and fall—when manual systems often overwater because homeowners forget to adjust them. The reductions persisted for nearly four years, the researchers found.

Among the heaviest irrigators, the water savings were large enough to offset the typical $250 cost of the device in roughly six months. The conserved water alone could cover a household’s annual indoor needs. But just as important, the study found no evidence that smart controllers undermined more aggressive conservation.

“We don’t see any difference in turf removal rates,” Brecko says. “And we see no increases in consumption among non-irrigator households.”

In other words, harm reduction did not “cannibalize abstinence,” the duo writes.

A middle road for climate behavior

For policymakers, the findings challenge the all-or-nothing approach that often dominates environmental messaging. The most effective solution—to simply rip out the lawn—will never appeal to everyone.

“My initial inclination is to say everyone should do the thing that’s most powerful,” Brecko says. “But the thing is, we all have really different preferences.”

While some people care deeply about conservation, others may have competing priorities and care more about their yard’s aesthetics, their kids’ being able to play on grass, or the curb appeal of their home. Stigmatizing the latter group or ignoring their strong preferences, can leave them unnecessarily out of conservation efforts.

“Not that those high users don’t care about conservation, it’s just that they might care about something else more,” says Brecko. “If you don’t engage them, they might do nothing.”

The lesson, she argues, is not to abandon high-impact solutions, but to sequence and supplement them. If you want people who use the most water to conserve, you may have to let them keep what they love, while reducing the shared costs of doing so.

“They get the thing that they care about,” Brecko says. “And you, as the conservation-oriented person, get the conservation, too.”

When you go for a walk, how does your brain know the difference between a parked car and a moving car? This seemingly simple distinction is challenging because eye movements, such as the ones we make when watching a car pass by, make even stationary objects move across the retina—motion that has long been thought of as visual “noise” the brain must subtract out.

Now, researchers at the University of Rochester have discovered that instead of being meaningless interference, the visual motion of an image caused by eye movements helps us understand the world. The specific patterns of visual motion created by eye movements are useful to the brain for figuring out how objects move and where they are located in 3D space.

“The conventional idea has been that the brain needs to somehow discount, or subtract off, the image motion that is produced by eye movements, as this motion has been thought to be a nuisance,” says Greg DeAngelis, George Eastman Professor; professor in the Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Neuroscience, and Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Visual Science; member of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience; and lead author of the new research, published in Nature Communications. “But we found that the visual motion produced by our eye movements is not just a nuisance variable to be subtracted off; rather, our brains analyze these global patterns of image motion and use this to infer how our eyes have moved relative to the world.”

The research team developed a new theoretical framework to predict how humans should perceive an object’s motion and depth during different types of eye movements. They tested these predictions by having participants view 3D virtual environments in which a target object moved through a scene while the participants kept their eyes focused on a single point. In one task, participants estimated the direction the target object was moving by using a dial to match its motion with a second object. In a second task that measured depth perception, participants reported whether the target object appeared nearer or farther than the fixation spot. Across both tasks, the researchers found consistent, predictable patterns of errors that closely matched the theoretical predictions.

“We show that the brain considers many pieces of information to understand the 3D structure of the world through vision, including the patterns of image motion caused by eye movements,” says DeAngelis. “Contrary to conventional ideas, the brain doesn’t ignore or suppress image motion produced by eye movement. Instead, it uses this image motion to understand a scene and accurately estimate an object’s motion and depth.”

This research has important implications for understanding visual perception, which informs how the brain interprets everyday activities like reading and recognizing faces. But it could also provide insight and new applications for visual technologies, such as virtual reality headsets.

“VR headsets don’t factor in how the eyes are moving relative to the scene when they compute the images to show to each eye. There may be a stark mismatch between the image motion that is shown to the observer in VR and what the brain is expecting to receive based on the eye movements that the observer is making,” says DeAngelis. This could be what causes some people to experience motion sickness while using a VR headset.

Additional authors include first author Zhe-Xin Xu ’25 (PhD), a former graduate student in the DeAngelis lab who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University; Jiayi Pang ’25 (BS), who is now a graduate student at Brown University; and Akiyuki Anzai, a research associate at the University of Rochester. The National Institutes of Health supported this research.