Category: Alumni

Super Bowl Halftime Show Was Planned Through K Alumna

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Super Bowl Halftime Planner Alix Reynolds in the empty seating bowl at Sofi Stadium
Alix Reynolds ’11, an account manager for Lititz, Pennsylvania-based ATOMIC,
had a hand in transforming the field at Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles into a
sparkling nightscape for the Super Bowl halftime show.

A Kalamazoo College alumna was among the most important people behind the planning of one of the most acclaimed Super Bowl halftime shows to date when the Los Angeles Rams met the Cincinnati Bengals in February.

Alix Reynolds ’11, an account manager for entertainment company ATOMIC, had a hand in transforming the field at Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles into a sparkling nightscape, duplicating a scene from Compton, California, as it set the stage for musicians Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent at the National Football League’s championship game.

The performers entertained millions of people between those watching at the game and those spread out at sites around the world, making Reynolds’ responsibilities significant.

Alix Reynolds and colleagues before the Super Bowl halftime show
Alix Reynolds ’11 poses with some of the nine-person ATOMIC on-site
team ahead of the Super Bowl halftime show. Pictured are Reynolds
(from left), Project Manager James Rogers, Road Carpenter Jeremy
Yunkin and LED Technician Alex Thomas.

“Something like the Super Bowl halftime show is a high-risk project, especially when it involves so much technology,” Reynolds said. “There’s going to be 100 million people watching regardless of whether it succeeds. There’s always a lot of stress and anxiety, but ultimately, a really good team with the resources and know-how can make it safer with smart decisions and a lot of redundancy built into the system, which is what we had.”

Since majoring in theatre arts at K and completing her master’s degree in technical design and production at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, formerly the Yale School of Drama, Reynolds has become one of the first people who organizations and their planners speak to when they contact ATOMIC. The company’s work includes set construction and project planning for displays ranging from simple trade show booths to glitzy affairs such as World Wrestling Entertainment’s signature event, WrestleMania.

“The first thing that usually happens for me is a client will call, whether it’s the Super Bowl or any other job, and sometimes they know exactly what they want,” Reynolds said. “Sometimes they just have an idea of what they want to do. I’ll ask some follow-up questions and work with a project manager to figure out how much it might cost us to build and how much we should sell it for. It’s a lot of translation of taking artistic intention, taking the client’s budget and expectations, and then figuring out how we can make the client’s dreams come true.”

For Super Bowl LVI, Reynolds’ first contact was Bruce Rodgers, a production designer through the NFL and a long-standing ATOMIC client. Rodgers has been in charge of more than a dozen Super Bowl halftime shows with celebrated performers such as Prince, Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Bruno Mars.

Despite the massive team effort that the scenery’s development required, some might be surprised to know that Rodgers didn’t need to reach out to Reynolds and ATOMIC, which served as the show’s custom fabrication shop, until September 2021. At that point, the direction from Es Devlin, a stage designer and one of Dr. Dre’s representatives, came through Rodgers. That direction was to show an aerial image of the Compton night sky with a plethora of little lights, or “nodes,” that could all be individually controlled.

Based on that, Reynolds and her teammates got to work while asking questions such as “How much will it cost to cover the entire football field with fabric?”, “When will it be necessary to buy the raw materials and receive the reference images for the final product?” and “How will all the little lights work together?” Guided by the answers to those questions and others, and while maintaining contact with Rodgers and Devlin, ATOMIC completed the set-building process at Rock Lititz, a campus that several companies in the live-event industry share in Lititz. With services ranging from design to engineering and manufacturing, professionals there collaborate across companies to plan a variety of events and experiences.

“Some locals get confused as to whether Rock Lititz is a company or a place,” Reynolds said. “I say it’s both. You’ve got ATOMIC, obviously, you’ve got Clair Global which does audio for big rock tours; TAIT, which does automation for those same tours among other things; and there are smaller companies. There’s a pyrotechnics company, there’s a video company and a virtual reality company. It’s all in this tiny town.”

When fabrication was finished, a group of semitrucks drove the stage’s parts and sections to Los Angeles, first to a practice site, and then to Sofi Stadium, where dozens assembled the pieces.

“For every performer you saw on the halftime show there were probably over 100 people working behind the scenes,” Reynolds said. “Each section of the stage buildings, which were built to look like known Compton hot spots by our fellow fabrication shop All Access, split into two parts, and every half-section was pushed onto the field by 12 to 15 people. We also had people with carts that carried our big and heavy field cover to say nothing of the people back at the shop who programmed the lighting and the video.”

All of their jobs had delicate timings to observe, not only at halftime, but throughout the Super Bowl.

“Right at kickoff is when everyone started coming down into the tunnels that run the full perimeter around the field, where all the scenery was stored with all the lighting and the huge speakers,” Reynolds said. “At the end of the first quarter, we started lining up. At halftime, we knew we had eight minutes to get on the field during the commercial break and set it up.”

As the performance began, organizers had one of their few hiccups because the first half ended about 20 minutes sooner than they had planned. With the sun higher in the sky and Sofi Stadium having a glass roof, the on-stage lights were difficult to see at first. Regardless, Reynolds and her ATOMIC colleagues were happy with the end results.

“We did that balancing act of asking, ‘What are the things that could go wrong,’ and we set ourselves up for success,” she said. “In the end, it all worked perfectly on game day and it looked awesome. By the end of the show, you could really start seeing the lights. It was really easy to forget that I was standing on a football field.”

Reynolds has about seven or eight smaller projects in the works for the rest of 2022 at sites from New York to Los Angeles including an awards ceremony for an undisclosed nonprofit organization. Yet despite not being a football fan, Reynolds hopes to attend the Super Bowl again.

“I couldn’t see the first half of the game because we were in the tunnels, and we were pulling everything off the field in the second half while trying to get away before the game ended,” she said. “We then got stuck in traffic for about four hours, but the experience was pretty incredible. The first time I walked on the field and through one of those tunnels, my mouth fell open. I consider myself to be level-headed and pretty unflappable, but when I heard the roar of the crowd, I got butterflies and chills. And that was just from the people who were at the stadium, to say nothing of the millions watching online or on TV. It was an amazing experience.”

Climate Change Exhibit Spotlights K Artists

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Climate Change exhibit for Points of Return
Jo-Ann and Robert Stewart Professor of Art Tom Rice is among 25 artists featured
in “Points of Return,” an online exhibit dedicated to climate change.

An online art exhibit dedicated to pushing for action against climate change while there’s still hope for the planet features two artists with Kalamazoo College connections.

Jo-Ann and Robert Stewart Professor of Art Tom Rice and alumna Bethany Johnson ’07 were among the 25 international artists chosen from more than 300 entrants for “Points of Return.” The exhibit focuses on the harm humans have caused to the Earth, particularly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, while emphasizing there are still multiple paths and approaches that can be taken to restore an environmental balance.

“Points of Return” is presented by A La Luz, which translates from Spanish as “spotlight” or “to shed light on.” The group was founded in 2015 by environmental artists David Cass and Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero to be a wide-ranging platform for sustainable and environmentally focused creative work. The exhibit unfolds across six sections, defined as viewing rooms, that describe a movement that comes full circle through planetary ecosystems, art disciplines and mediums.

'Safe Keeping' art for Climate Change Exhibit 'Points of Return'
Bethany Johnson ’07, who is featured in “Points of Return,” uses materials
such as chipboard, foam, hardboard, paper, plastic, plexiglass, particleboard,
plywood and wood in “Safe Keeping,” which deals with material consumption
and the resulting pollution, climate change and landfill waste.

Rice’s part of the exhibit shows one of his projects, “Precarious Living,” within the work he pursued for four months as a Fulbright Canada research chair in arts and humanities at the University of Alberta. There, he exhibited a climate-themed installation titled “Shifting Uncertainties: The Land We Live On.”

“‘Points of Return’ represents artists from many different parts of the world, which is important because climate change is a global issue,” Rice said while calling his selection to the global exhibit an honor. “What we do locally or nationally impacts areas of the world that contribute much less to the climate crisis. The online format of the exhibition ensures that many more people will have the opportunity to spend time with the artwork than if it had been a physical exhibition. Accessibility to information is critical to changing people’s minds and behaviors related to climate-change issues.”

Rice used an Alberta-area oil refinery as the main visual resource for “Precarious Living.”

“I hope that my work will help people be self-reflective and ask questions about the climate crisis,” Rice said. “‘Precarious Living’ is a large-scale drawing installation that poses more questions than it answers. The subject matter is focused on an oil refinery made up of a mass of pipes, upgraders, holding tanks, chimineas and flares that amount to an absurd maze of fragile connections. What is really going on here? How can we comprehend the impact of an industry that is the very foundation of our economy, but threatens our very existence? The drawings have large sections of redacted information. For me, these redacted or negated elements represent both subterfuge by the fossil fuel industries, and our own self-imposed delusion that we can continue burning fossil fuels and that technology will save us. ‘Precarious Living’ is about being at the tipping point of global warming.”

Johnson’s artwork is represented by Moody Gallery in Houston, Texas, and she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. Her work in “Points of Return,” titled “Safe Keeping,” deals with material consumption and the resulting pollution, climate change and landfill waste. She feels those are important issues for artists to face given the work they pursue and how they pursue it.

“I think there can be an attitude in the art world that one’s conceptual ideas must be realized by any means possible; that essentially, the scale, media and production methods must inherently follow from the artist’s greater conceptual idea,” Johnson said. “This can lead to an incredible amount of material consumption, energy use, and the utilization of toxic, unsustainable materials within the art world. Under the current conditions of our climate crisis, I feel that the art world is in desperate need of material and energy ethics; that we think seriously about the impacts of our work on the environment, and strive toward artmaking practices that are renewable, environmentally sensitive and even climate positive in their impacts.”

In line with the overall exhibition, Johnson’s display embodies anxiety and hope along with grief and joy as she uses layered materials that are reminiscent of geological core samples, land formations and geological processes. Her materials include paper, plastic, foil food wrappers, aluminum and foam that bring new life to discarded waste.

“I hope to offer an opportunity for discussion and reflection on the issues of human consumption and material waste, while also generating works that are entrancing and poetic, independently from their environmental themes,” Johnson said. “In this way, my goal is for them to contain ‘layers’ of meaning, which hopefully allows them to reach a wide audience in different ways.”

Johnson said she doesn’t blame artists—or any individuals for that matter—for the climate emergency as the problems that contribute to it are systemic, and intrinsic to capitalism, energy systems and powerful corporations. However, individuals must grapple with the results of it.

“This is where I think we can all recapture some power from that system by mindfully adopting ethical, responsible and sustainable models of living and working,” she said. “It can be, at its best, a hopeful, even joyful, act of resistance and psychic repair.”

Johnson feels that individuals who stay politically active can have great power against climate change and environmental problems by acting locally when they act together.

“Much environmental policy and action happens at levels beyond the individual, so voting and getting involved with local and regional politics can be hugely impactful,” she said. “For example, I live in a neighborhood in Austin, Texas, that used to house several environmentally toxic commercial facilities where oil had been leaching into the ground for years. A small group of concerned neighbors spent many years advocating for the cleanup and environmental remediation of these sites, and were eventually successful. The fact that I can live here with a sense of safety for my own health is thanks to a dedicated group of people working on a specific, concrete goal. Both in terms of the actual environmental impact as well as the sense of personal agency that it can create, I think finding a specific, actionable and realistic goal on a local level can have a great impact.”

Rice agrees that the collective actions of individuals are likely to be beneficial.

“Timothy Morton asks in his book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, ‘does my driving a Prius or recycling my plastic bottles really help,’” Rice said. “I think the answer is no, of course not, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important to do those things. I think it was Elizabeth Kolbert in The Sixth Extinction who points out it will take mass social movements to create real change related to the climate crisis. Social change happens a person at a time. Individually, we can’t initiate real change, but we are part of a larger network. What we do individually matters.”

National Wildlife Day: Alumna Nurtures Nature Hobbies

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National Wildlife Day Efforts at Patuxent Resesarch Refuge
Jennifer Greiner (left) ’90 was named refuge manager at Patuxent Research
Refuge in May 2020.

Kalamazoo College alumna Jennifer (Heck) Greiner ’90 has a key role to play February 22 as conservationists mark National Wildlife Day.

In May 2020, Greiner assumed the position of refuge manager at Patuxent Research Refuge, a unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Department of the Interior). There, much like those who organize National Wildlife Day, she and refuge staff encourage the public to develop a relationship with nature.

“With our location between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, we offer ‘nearby nature’ for 9 million people,” Greiner said. “This is everyone’s land and we’re working hard to help folks experience it.”

The refuge, established in 1936 by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is the nation’s only national wildlife refuge founded specifically to support wildlife research. Since that time, the refuge has grown from 2,670 acres to 12,841 acres, encompassing land formerly managed by the Departments of Agriculture and Defense.

National Wildlife Day
Jennifer Greiner ’90 is pictured in the forest along the banks of the
Patuxent River, which flows through Patuxent Research Refuge
and is named after the Pawtuxent tribe.

Patuxent offers hunting, fishing, horseback riding, wildlife observation, hiking and cycling trails, interpretive and youth programs at the National Wildlife Visitor Center, in addition to study sites for a variety of researchers. Greiner manages 12 environmental professionals whose collective goal is to make their urban community more aware of the benefits of spending time in nature while building their comfort and confidence levels through outdoor skill-building.

“We’ve realized that so much of the future of conservation relies on people feeling connected to nature,” Greiner said. “Now more than ever, people appreciate that there’s more to the world than just us. During stressful times, nature provides us with a variety of ways to relax, whether through active pursuits like hunting, fishing, birdwatching and wildlife photography, or simply walking and sharing a picnic. It helps people’s physical health and mental health to realize there’s so much beauty in the world around us and it’s important to slow down and enjoy it.”

National Wildlife Day brings to the public an awareness of endangered animals while acknowledging the zoos, animal sanctuaries and wildlife preserves that protect those animals and practice conservation. It was first celebrated on September 4, 2005, before conservationists decided they needed to double their awareness efforts. A second holiday, February 22, was selected because it was the birthday of wildlife expert and environmentalist Steve Irwin. Irwin was known as TV’s Crocodile Hunter before his death in 2006.

Kayaking for National Wildlife Day
Jennifer Greiner ’90 is the refuge manager at the Patuxent Research Refuge. To help urban
residents in that area enjoy nature, the refuge offers activities such as hunting, fishing and
horseback riding, and introductory classes in camping, fishing, kayaking and more.

Greiner’s own love of nature and wildlife developed growing up on the shore of Lake Huron, and evolved into a love of ecology during her years at K. In her sophomore year, Greiner completed her career development internship on Capitol Hill with the Congressional Research Service, where it was her job to research all angles of environmental issues and present them from an unbiased perspective.

In her senior year, Greiner’s senior independent project (SIP) took her to Texas A&M University, where she performed sea turtle research in a lab setting, yet she longed for her days of interacting with the public. As a result, after earning a graduate degree in natural resource policy administration from the University of Michigan, she returned to Washington, D.C.

Through her Capitol Hill work, Greiner authored briefing papers that covered issues such as the ivory trade and elephants, the reintroduction of wolves in natural areas out west and the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act. Such experience made Greiner an ideal candidate for a role involving endangered species with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where she has worked since 1994.

Now, as the Patuxent Research Refuge’s manager, she relishes the daily opportunity to connect people with nature. “Our focus is on making people feel welcomed and developing outdoor skills,” she said. “That could involve something as basic as providing a trail map or it could be more involved, like providing loaner fishing gear or binoculars and bird-spotting scopes for people who want to learn about birding. We also offer some introductory classes in things like camping, fishing and kayaking to give people the skills and the confidence they need to pursue those activities.”

Greiner hopes you’ll also pursue similar activities in your neck of the woods this National Wildlife Day to strengthen your ties to nature and your neighbors.

“Somehow, the great outdoors has become viewed as something of a luxury that is separate from, rather than an intrinsic part of, everyday life for many Americans,” Greiner wrote in a recent Friends of Patuxent Newsletter. “Experiencing nature, even ‘nearby’ nature, often relies on driving somewhere, often out of urban centers; knowing things like trail locations, wildlife names and outdoor skills; or possessing things such as gear, maps and entrance passes. At the same time, part of the beauty of natural systems is their interconnectedness, how the sum reflects the beauty of parts, each of which depends to some extent on another. Indigenous settlers along the Patuxent understood this. Communities thrived on familiarity with the river and landscape draining to it. Natural systems are inherently diverse. Can you imagine a forest with only one type of tree? A feeder that attracts only one type of bird? A garden with only one color? Lakes containing a single fish species? As a community, we can learn a lot from nature’s showcase, helping people feel less cut off and more connected to their outdoors and to each other.”

Former Afghanistan Communication Adviser to Speak at Convocation

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Former Afghanistan Communication Adviser Kim Osborne
Kim Osborne ’93 served as the chief communication
adviser at the end of Operation
Enduring Freedom.

A Kalamazoo College alumna, who served as the chief strategic communication adviser in Kabul, Afghanistan at the end of Operation Enduring Freedom, will deliver the keynote at K’s Convocation on Thursday, September 9.

Kim Osborne ’93 will help welcome 394 first-year students to the campus as the College opens the 2021-22 academic year at 3 p.m. on the Quad. The annual event serves as the first of two bookends to the K experience with the other being Commencement. President Jorge G. Gonzalez and Provost Danette Ifert Johnson also will address attendees. Chaplain Elizabeth Candido ’00 will provide an invocation.

Osborne was the highest-ranking civilian communication adviser to the Afghan National Security Forces. She is a trusted adviser to U.S. and foreign governments, multinational corporations, international nongovernmental organizations, top-tier universities and large nonprofits. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Myanmar at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement in 2018. In 2016, Osborne was an invited speaker at the NATO Strategic Communication Centre of Excellence in Riga, Latvia, where she addressed military and diplomatic leaders from NATO partner nations about how best practices from the commercial sector can be applied in military and diplomatic missions.

Osborne currently is a full professor and the director of the Center for Leadership Development at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California, the U.S. Defense Department’s premier school for culturally based foreign-language education. Elsewhere, she is on the faculty of the University of Georgia’s College of Education, where she teaches graduate-level courses in leadership and organizational development.

In further involvement, Osborne serves multiple professional and nonprofit organizations. She is a past board member to the National Association for Media Literacy Education, and serves as a founding strategic adviser to the Ethiopian Diaspora Fellowship. She also is a local board member and disaster services responder with the American Red Cross and has responded to several natural disasters including the recent California wildfires, Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Florence in North Carolina.

All students, families, faculty and staff are invited to attend Convocation.

School Psychologists Group Honors K Alumna

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School Psychologists Group Honors Zoe Barnes
Zoe Barnes ’18 is being honored by
the National Association for School Psychologists.

A Kalamazoo College alumna, inspired by her experiences in diversity at K, has earned a special honor from the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP).

Zoe Barnes ’18, now a graduate student at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (SIUE), has received the 2021 Student Leader Champion Award for her efforts in advancing social justice throughout her university, in the community and through her chosen profession.

“I’m very excited because it’s a wonderful honor,” Barnes said. “Social justice is a buzzword to some, but it’s a constant, ongoing process of challenging what we know and checking our own biases. In school psychology, social justice is important because if you look at a school and see who the teachers and staff are, you will often see groups dominated by white staff members. They don’t reflect the increasing diversity of students, especially in public schools. Social justice can help us challenge the status quo.”

Several students at SIUE, including Barnes, expressed their interest in social justice to faculty last summer. The professors sensed an opportunity to connect them all, leading to the formation of the Graduate Students for Social Justice, a group that talked about injustices on campus and developed ideas for addressing social justice within their respective programs.

Barnes is a member of that group and also recently served as the social justice chair of the Graduate Organization for Child and Adolescent Psychology Students (GOCAPS) at SIUE. Her service led a faculty member to nominate Barnes for the NASP honors.

Barnes said the K community helped her develop an interest in diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice after she arrived from a predominantly white community in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At that point, Barnes started seeing more peers who looked like her. Students of color provided an energizing space where she could discuss the discrimination and microaggressions she experienced on campus with others who could relate.

“Being at K, and just being surrounded by people who look like me and had similar experiences really helped me,” Barnes said. “Talking helped put a name to the discomfort.”

Barnes double majored in Spanish and psychology and minored in anthropology-sociology at K. After a gap year, Barnes looked for help in determining her career path. At that point, she talked with Suzie Gonzalez ’83, spouse of K President Jorge G. Gonzalez.

“I went down this route to school psychology because of Suzie Gonzalez,” Barnes said. “I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my life when I met up with her. She was a school psychologist and she definitely inspired me.”

Barnes earned her master’s degree through SIUE in December and now is seeking a clinical child and school psychology specialist degree with an expected graduation date of May 2022. She will be honored at NASP’s 2022 annual convention in February.

“I would love to make an impact however I can as a school psychologist,” Barnes said. “When I picture my career, I want to be firmly planted in a school district. I want to walk down the halls and recognize all the students and know their educational history. Early intervention is a huge part of school psychology and I would love to support them from the very beginning.”

Show Your College Colors for a Chance to Win Some K Swag

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Two football fans dressed for National College Colors Day
Use #ShowUsYourK on social media on Friday, September 3, for National College Colors Day.

Celebrate National College Colors Day on September 3 by wearing orange and black for your chance to win some K swag from the Kalamazoo College Bookstore.

We are joining colleges and universities across the country in the annual Friday-before-Labor-Day celebration that fuels school pride. Simply use #ShowUsYourK on social media on the day and you’ll automatically be entered for a chance to win a Kalamazoo College sweatshirt, hat or mug.

We are encouraging current students, admitted and prospective students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and the community to participate by posting photos of themselves, friends, family, colleagues and pets on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Alumni may also submit their pictures through email at info@kzoo.edu for us to post. Be sure to tell us in your posts why you love K!

Read the contest rules below and start considering how you will participate in National College Colors Day. By the way, if you need more orange and black, visit the new bookstore website. Thanks for letting your K spirit shine!

Contest rules

No purchase is necessary to participate in Kalamazoo College’s National College Colors Day contest and a purchase doesn’t increase a participant’s chance of winning.

The contest will run from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. EDT September 3. A College Marketing and Communication (CMAC) representative will choose the winners at random September 7 from entrants who participate September 3. Please avoid creating multiple accounts to submit additional entries. There will be one entry per participant regardless of the number of posts. The winners will be notified September 7.

K Alumna, Epidemiologist Addresses Delta Variant, COVID-19 Vaccines

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Natasha Bagdasarian Discusses the COVID-19 delta variant and vaccines
Natasha Bagdasarian ’99

Natasha Bagdasarian ’99 read a book while she was studying abroad as a Kalamazoo College student in Perth, Australia, that changed the trajectory of her career. The Hot Zone, a book about investigating Ebola outbreaks, captivated her and guided her all the way through medical school with a goal of one day working in outbreaks.

In December 2019, Bagdasarian was working as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at National University Hospital in Singapore when COVID-19 began spreading in Wuhan, China. The pandemic quickly reached Singapore, partly because of the number of direct flights that arrived daily from Wuhan.

If there was good news at that time, it was that Singapore had learned much of what it needed to do for an epidemic like COVID-19 during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in the early 2000s. Armed with that knowledge, Bagdasarian and her team successfully prevented all health care workers and non-COVID-19 patients at the hospital from contracting the virus despite managing more than 1,500 beds.

Bagdasarian later returned to Michigan with her husband, Vahan Bagdasarian ’99, and their child last summer. She now works for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services as a senior public health physician and consults for the World Health Organization. She also wrote an op-ed for the Huffington Post published August 14 that discussed her family’s own experiences with COVID-19. We caught up with Bagdasarian to discuss COVID-19’s delta variant, K’s plan for a full return to in-person instruction this fall, and why it’s necessary to mask up when students on campus must be vaccinated.

What is the COVID-19 delta variant?

“We know that anytime a virus spreads through a community, the more it’s transmitted, the more opportunities that virus has to mutate. The delta variant is one of those mutations. It’s been classified as a variant of concern, meaning it has some properties that make it more threatening to us. Specifically, we’ve found that the delta variant is more transmissible than the original strain that we saw back in the beginning of the pandemic. It’s also more transmissible than the alpha strain, which we had been so worried about a few months ago when it caused a huge wave of infections here in Michigan and around the country.”

What are the delta variant and COVID-19 trends that should concern us most in Michigan?

“We’re seeing an uptick in cases not just in Michigan, but really around the country. The other trend we look at is our percent positivity rate. Percent positivity measures how many tests are coming back positive out of all tests conducted in a certain area. Whenever we’re heading toward a surge of cases, we start seeing that number bump up. Of the people who are being tested, more of them are testing positive for COVID.”

Why is it important to continue masking indoors if so many students, faculty and staff have been vaccinated?

“We have a variety of ways to prevent transmission of COVID, and vaccines, I would say, are the single best tool that we have available. We know vaccines are highly efficacious, even in the face of new variants, especially when it comes to severe infections, hospitalizations and deaths. We know that the vaccines are going to save lives and have already saved lives. But what we’re seeing with delta is there can be breakthrough infections, meaning an infection after someone is fully vaccinated. A person with a breakthrough case can still potentially transmit that infection on, so relying on just one of our mitigation strategies is not a good idea.

“When we’re heading toward a potential surge of cases, it really makes sense to use as many strategies as we can. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve talked about a layering of precautions. We call it the Swiss cheese model of risk mitigation. Each single mitigation measure, each single strategy has holes. No strategy is going to be 100 percent effective at stopping transmission of the virus. But if you stack up enough slices of Swiss cheese, even though there are holes, you can plug those gaps, and it’s less likely to allow a transmission to occur. If we do things like vaccinate everyone who can be vaccinated, wear masks when we’re indoors, make sure our ventilation is good, and avoid very large gatherings, that’s our best bet at preventing outbreaks.”

Should students, faculty and staff on vaccinated college campuses feel safe attending in-person classes and events this fall?

“Generally, the classroom has been a relatively safe place for people to gather. That’s for a number of reasons. In a classroom setting, people are generally following the rules. They’re generally spaced apart. They’re generally wearing their masks. We know that schools and colleges around the country have made sure their air-handling systems are up to snuff. The places that tend to be riskier are those where people are gathering for social purposes where they are removing their masks, bringing lots of people close together, and especially when those people are unvaccinated. There’s no ‘this is low risk, this is high risk.’ It’s all a spectrum. But the more strategies we can stack on top of vaccines, the safer an environment becomes.”

If the vaccine is the best tool we have available, how do we convince everyone that it’s safe?

“We know that these vaccines are incredibly safe and effective because they’ve been studied extensively. We have an adverse-symptom reporting system where adverse events are monitored very closely, and this is incredible technology. In fact, when I talk about the pandemic and whether anything good has come from it, these vaccines are the silver lining. We now are able to make vaccines using mRNA technology, which makes vaccines very quickly and effectively.”

How can we encourage those concerned about their individual liberties to get vaccinated?

“I think that’s a difficult question. Many people have strong feelings about this. My area of expertise is not really in individual liberties, but I can tell you that if I were still a student at Kalamazoo College right now, it would make me feel safer if I knew that vaccines were being required of everyone. That would make me personally feel safer, and I can tell you these vaccines are incredibly safe and effective.”

Is there any other message you’d like to share with our students, faculty and staff?

“I hope everyone has a productive and safe return to college campuses. This requires a collective approach to keeping people safe. It requires communities coming together with vaccinations and wearing masks. Doing these things individually are less effective than doing them as a community.”

Alumnus Puts Streaming Center Stage for Theatre Industry

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Cody Colvin edits video for streaming
Cody Colvin ’18 (left) hopes to show the theatre industry how streaming can increase revenue.

A Kalamazoo College alumnus has a plan to ensure all the world’s a stage for the theatre industry now and in the future, despite the drama that COVID-19 has caused behind the scenes.

Cody Colvin '18
Cody Colvin ’18

Cody Colvin ’18 traveled the country in about 45 days this spring with the staff of his business, Colvin Theatrical, to film 11 of the 12 Outstanding Production nominees at this year’s American Association of Community Theatre (AACT) Festival. His travels to cities from Lexington, Massachusetts, to Spokane, Washington, helped Colvin show the industry how recorded or streaming broadcasts of theatre events have the potential to widen audiences from the few sitting in theaters to thousands more regardless of their location.

“There’s one element to the filming, which was protecting theaters during the pandemic and helping them get back some of the revenue they might have lost,” Colvin said. “But what we’re really excited about is the prospect of growing the industry. We’ve found that there are companies that are doing better with streaming than they were in person, and the reason for that is scale.”

Scale is the opportunity to increase revenue at a faster rate than costs, which is one of the ideas Colvin studied as a business major at K.

“Scale in the theatre industry is basically impossible when you have a limited number of seats that you can sell,” he added. “Theaters at every level, whether they be community colleges or Broadway companies, could only sell so many seats, and their costs continued to rise. Filming creates an interactive experience that allows companies to scale their audience and reach people all over the world.”

Colvin Theatrical Sets Up for Streaming a Play
Colvin Theatrical films an AACT Festival Outstanding Production nominee on the road.

Colvin’s filming opportunities developed when he first helped K’s Festival Playhouse rethink its plans for the 2020 productions of Kokoro and K. His streaming services gave a silver lining of optimism to what otherwise might’ve been a lost season and Colvin was grateful for the work experience.

That work was key for Colvin in attracting the attention of the AACT Festival, which affirms, supports and nurtures actors, directors and producers in community-theatre companies. The event, normally conducted every other year in person, needed to be virtual in 2021 because of the pandemic. That meant the Outstanding Festival Production nominees needed to be filmed with a presentational touch absent in the single-camera video submissions they initially provided festival judges. Colvin’s services provided the solution.

An actor participates in 'The Mountaintop'
Dominic Carter portrays Martin Luther King Jr. in the Lexington (Massachusetts) Players production of “The Mountaintop,” which earned Outstanding Festival Production honors at the AACT Festival.

“With our cameras, our broadcasting equipment and the way we shoot these productions, it’s very interactive and theatrical,” Colvin said. “You occasionally have moving shots, you have multiple cameras, and you have really good audio so you’re able to get an experience that is a mix of theatre and film to take a story to the rest of the world. Video has a place in every level of theater and there’s always going to be an expanded audience that any theater at any level can find.”

Colvin and his team used Blackmagic Design products, including video-editing tools and digital film cameras, to produce film with a cinematic quality that drew rave reviews from the theatre companies. Colvin Theatrical is also partnering with Blackmagic Design to create a website, FilmingTheatre.com, that will launch in September. The interactive site will help teach theaters around the world how to film and broadcast their shows. There also will be a documentary film of their work on the site to show the production process.

“When you have the trust of all those people, you want to do it as well as you possibly can and they were very happy with us,” he said. “When you’re able to look back and say, ‘Yes, we did that as well as we possibly could have and it was a success,’ that’s an amazing feeling. The reactions are just amazing.”

Colvin admitted some might still prefer an in-person theatre experience to streaming even if they have to pay a premium for tickets. However, filming and streaming can only widen opportunities for audiences and theatre companies alike.

“Anything that you once knew as live, whether it be a few years ago or a couple decades ago, is finding a home on television,” he said. “We think theatre’s going to be no different. When I watch a Lions game, I actually prefer watching on TV because I see the best angles that way. I can hear commentary, I can see pretty much every angle of the game, and I can do it from the comfort of my own home. It’s not a direct parallel, but I think it’s where the theatre industry is headed.”

Colvin often worked at the Festival Playhouse at K. That and his experiences as a business major are fueling what stands to be his success now and in the future with much of the credit going to faculty members such as Professor of Theatre Arts Lanny Potts, Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics Patrick Hultberg, L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business Management Amy MacMillan and Associate Professor of Economics and Business Timothy Moffit.

“The College gave me an education that allows me to be an entrepreneur at 25,” Colvin said. “I use what I learned in the business department and the theatre department every day. I use the negotiation skills I learned with Patrik Hultberg, accounting with Dr. Moffit, and marketing with Professor MacMillan. So much of how I think about business is structured based on how they taught me. I couldn’t be more thankful for my time at K.”

Seven from K Earn Fulbright Scholarships

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Seven Kalamazoo College representatives, including six from the Class of 2021, are receiving high honors from the federal government that will provide them with international learning opportunities in the upcoming academic year.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships to graduating seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists so they may teach English, perform research or study abroad for one academic year.

In some cases, program timing remains up in the air due to lingering issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. However, recipients of Fulbright grants are selected as a result of their academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields, making the recognition an honor. Here are this year’s K-connected recipients.

Helen Pelak ’21

Only one person is chosen each year to receive a Fulbright Western Sydney University Award in the Arts, Environment and Public Health. Helen Pelak is thrilled to be that person as it will help her work toward a master’s degree in public health and develop a deeper understanding of global health care systems.

2021 Fulbright Scholar Helen Pelak
Helen Pelak ’21

Pelak double majored in biology and women, gender and sexuality studies, minored in psychology, and studied abroad in Budapest, Hungary, as a part of the College’s program in cognitive science during her years at K.

During her study abroad experience, Pelak developed an infected blister after taking a ropes course and needed to be treated at a hospital, where she was fascinated with the Hungarian health care system.

Global health care systems inspired Pelak to look for opportunities to go abroad again. While she was writing her senior integrated project (SIP) on Cesarean section rates in the United States through a feminist and intersectional lens, Pelak learned about the research of Professor Hannah Dahlen, a midwifery scholar at Western Sydney.

“As part of the application process, Professor Dahlen wrote a letter of research invitation for me,” Pelak said. “I expect to further gain a global perspective on health care and health care systems. I also expect to become a more independent and well-rounded individual who is able to incorporate the lessons and experiences from the Australia system of care and way of life to my future work as an obstetrician-gynecologist in the United States.”

Katherine Miller-Purrenhage ’21

Katherine Miller-Purrenhage, a double major in music and German with a minor in philosophy at K, will serve as an English teaching assistant in Germany at E.T.A Hoffmann-Gymnasium Bamberg and Gymnasium Höchstadt a.d. Aisch, as she splits time between the cities of Bamberg and Höchstadt.

Fulbright Scholar Katherine Miller-Purrenhage
Katherine Miller-Purrenhage ’21

Miller-Purrenhage participated in ensembles such as the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, Academy Street Winds and College Singers. She also was a member of the Delta Phi Alpha National German Honor Society, and served the German department as a teaching assistant during her time at K. Off campus, she volunteered with El Concilio, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the Latinx community in greater Kalamazoo.

Her study abroad experiences in Erlangen, Germany, piqued her interest in the Fulbright program as she interned at a German middle school where she helped teach in the German as a Second Language and English classrooms.

“I loved teaching and learning about educational spaces that ought to be uplifting, and what I as an educator could do to make them that way so every student felt included and celebrated,” Miller-Purrenhage said. “I expect this experience will be very different than when I studied abroad because I’ll be able to focus more on bonding with my community. This will benefit me as I learn to grow and better participate in cultural exchange while immersing myself in the German language again.”

Sophia Goebel ’21

Fulbright Scholar Sophia Goebel
Sophia Goebel ’21

Sophia Goebel, a critical ethnic studies and political science double major at K, will be an English teaching assistant at the University of Malaga in Spain. There, she will continue building the teaching skills she established on study abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she developed and facilitated an expressive-arts workshop to explore the topic of communal territories with students from San Martín Huamelulpan, an indigenous community.

“I loved being able to connect with the participants in Oaxaca and learning alongside them,” Goebel said. “I spent some time assisting in their English lessons and it was so much fun to think about my language from the perspective of a language learner and brainstorm how best to teach them pronunciation or vocabulary. In turn, they helped teach me Spanish. That inspired me to try to spend more time in an intercultural, interlingual type of learning space through Fulbright, and I also wanted to spend more time exploring the role of teacher.

“I hope to build a lot of new relationships and figure out how to establish a life for myself without the crutch of my school community,” she added. “I’m excited to learn more about who I am outside of being a student. I aim to continue learning about pedagogy, something we explored a lot at the writing center, and developing as a teacher, facilitator and mentor. ​I’m also really trying to improve my Spanish. I’m very excited to learn more about the history and culture of Spain, especially after learning a little bit about the country’s politics this past year in a course at K. I hope to develop a more compassionate view of U.S. culture and identify elements that are meaningful and important to me, something which I anticipate will be somewhat of a challenge.”

Molly Roberts ’21

Fulbright Scholar Molly Roberts
Molly Roberts ’21

Molly Roberts, a French and psychology double major at K, had the misfortune of missing out on two opportunities to study abroad. First, she was the only applicant interested in a spring short-term experience in Strasbourg, France, during her sophomore year, forcing the trip’s cancellation. Then, COVID-19 spread across the world during her junior year.

“I still yearned to be immersed in the French language and culture,” Roberts said. “In addition, graduate school is something that I’ve been interested in pursuing for a while. When I found a master’s degree program with an adviser, Dr. Fabien D’Hondt, who shared similar passions to me and had a research project in the field of neuroscience focusing on PTSD, a Fulbright scholarship seemed like the next logical step in my career path.”

Roberts expects her education to benefit from her research opportunities in France, but she’ll also be working for the Centre Nationale de Ressources et de Résilience (CN2R), an organization that takes current PTSD-focused research and puts it into practice to hep trauma survivors.

“This groundbreaking, accessible research-to-practice approach is what I expect to bring back with me to the States,” she said.

Margaret Totten ’21

Fulbright Scholar Margaret Totten
Margaret Totten ’21

As a Fulbright honoree, Margaret Totten will serve as an English teaching assistant in Thailand, a place she knows well from her time on study abroad in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

“I had hoped to return to continue learning about Thai language, culture and the natural environment,” said Totten, who had a computer science major, a math minor and an environmental studies concentration at K. “One of my major goals is to improve my Thai speaking skills and form meaningful relationships with people in my host community.”

Nina Szalkiewicz ’21

Fulbright Scholar Nina Szalkiewicz
Nina Szalkiewicz ’21

Nina Szalkiewicz, a business major and German minor at K, will follow in the footsteps of Georgie Andrews ’20, who served this past academic year as an English teaching assistant in Austria through Fulbright.

Szalkiewicz first went abroad through K when she spent six months in Bonn, Germany, leading to what she called her wonderful and surprising experiences studying German, thereby creating her interest in Fulbright.

“By pushing my boundaries and opening myself up to new cultures and customs, I grew tremendously as an individual which has changed my perspective toward my life,” Szalkiewicz said. “I began considering Fulbright more intently after reflecting on my Intercultural Research Project (ICRP) at the Friedrich-Ebert-Gymnasium. Much to my surprise, teaching and mentoring at this German middle school was one of my most enjoyable endeavors and something I gained the most from.”

Evelyn Rosero ’13

Fulbright Scholar Evelyn Rosero
Evelyn Rosero ’13

Evelyn Rosero was a human development and social relations major at K, leading to two years of volunteer work in Detroit with Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that finds teachers for low-income schools. Now, she’s a teacher in East Los Angeles, California, who wants to gain a global perspective on education while serving Fulbright as an English teaching assistant in South Korea.

On a personal note, she’s happy South Korea is her assigned destination because she’s a big fan of the South Korean boy band BTS and hopes to see one of their concerts. However, her primary goals are professional and developed with a philanthropic heart. She wants to find connections between Korean students’ identities and English-language content; share her American identity to engage in dialogue; continue learning Korean to empathize better with her students; and grow beyond her personal comfort zones.

“I am really excited to partake in this experience, especially as an educator,” Rosero said. “Even though I have been teaching for eight years, there is still so much to learn. As a foreigner, I will educate myself on my students’ Korean background and the community in which they reside.”

About the Fulbright U.S. Student Program

Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 380,000 participants, chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential, with opportunities to exchange ideas and contribute to solutions to shared international concerns. More than 1,900 U.S. students, artists and young professionals in more than 100 fields of study are offered Fulbright Program grants to study, teach English and conduct research in more than 140 countries throughout the world each year. In addition, about 4,000 foreign Fulbright students and scholars come to the United States annually to study, lecture, conduct research and teach foreign languages.

For more information about the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, visit its website.

Scholarship Helps New K Alumnus Hone Chinese Skills

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Students Build Chinese Skills in Study Abroad
Daniel Mota-Villegas ’21 (back row left) was studying abroad in Beijing in January 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced students to return early. Now, though, Mota-Villegas is enhancing his language skills in Chinese through a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) through the U.S. Department of State.

A Kalamazoo College representative is enhancing his skills in Chinese this summer through a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS).

Daniel Mota-Villegas ’21 is among about 700 scholars currently in the CLS program, which actively recruits in regions that have been historically under-represented in international education. The opportunity enables those chosen to gain critical language and cultural skills in areas vital to U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.

Since 2006, CLS has awarded scholarships to more than 8,000 students while building respect and positive relations between Americans and citizens of other countries. CLS normally sends scholars to countries where they fully immerse themselves in the language of their choice, but the lingering effects of COVID-19 are requiring about 30 hours a week of virtual learning and cultural activities instead.

Nonetheless, “it’s been a very rewarding experience and it’s everything that I imagined it would be,” Mota-Villegas said. “It’s an intensive Chinese program that pushes me to expand on what I already know about Chinese language and culture. We learn upwards of 70 characters each day.”

Mota-Villegas spoke Spanish in his home life growing up and never considered learning another language—and taking those opportunities to see the world—until he attended K. At that time, he enrolled in his first Mandarin Chinese class and developed a fascination with China, its society and its values. In his sophomore year, he learned about China’s complex relationship with Taiwan, fueling his desire to study abroad and gain a deeper understanding of international relations.

In his study abroad experience, Mota-Villegas was among four K students in China in January 2020 when the pandemic began spreading, forcing students to return home early. However, he hopes to return to East Asia for an international master’s program in Asia Pacific studies at National ChengChi University in Taipei, Taiwan this fall while examining the complex relationships between China, Japan and Taiwan.

“The opportunities to continue practicing Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan will be abundant,” he said of his upcoming master’s experience. “I will not have to be sitting in a classroom to study because I’ll be outside, engaging with people in the community who have firsthand experience dealing with mainland China and Japan.”

Mota-Villegas wants his experiences at K, with CLS and in his master’s program to provide a springboard to a career in the foreign service, where he would promote peace, support prosperity, and protect American citizens while advancing the interests of the U.S. abroad.

“I’d be open to traveling anywhere,” he said. “I love learning about languages and culture. My dream job would be to work in mainland China, Taiwan or anywhere else in East Asia. I’m fascinated with East Asia, with all its history and culture, and CLS is giving me more experience with all of them.”