The Center for Career and Professional Development is helping seniors concerned about preparing for and facing the job market during a pandemic. Senior Week will offer one-on-one meetings between students and alumni, career coaching and more.
The CCPD staff proved that this spring when seniors spoke publicly about the worries they have for life after K in the pandemic’s wake, and in response, the CCPD unveiled plans for Senior Week, May 17-21.
The biggest highlight of the week will come from seniors meeting one-on-one in career-building sessions with K alumni. About 60 alumni already have agreed to participate in these Hornet Huddles from a variety of industries and fields, and more are expected.
Seniors can sign up now through Handshake with this how-to video as guidance. A list of the alumni volunteering is available with their companies and organizations, industries and job titles. The goal is to provide seniors new perspectives of how to reach success in the job market from alumni successful in similar fields. Some of the alumni are looking to specifically help students of color or first-generation students. Others are open to meeting with any senior. Registration will be available through May 14.
In addition, seniors also can expect guidance from career coaches, senior spotlights through social media and a push for students to respond to their first-destination surveys, which will help the CCPD guide seniors still looking for their first post-graduation jobs.
Guidance from career coaches
Career coaches are available to seniors year-round. During senior week, they’re available exclusively to seniors. Coaches can help students take career assessments, choose from employment or graduate school options and improve resumes, cover letters, and personal statements. Available appointments are plentiful and drop-in hours will be available from noon to 1 p.m. daily through Teams.
First-destination survey push
When seniors complete the survey in spring, it tells CCPD staff what those still looking for their first post-graduation jobs need and how the CCPD can help. Staff have committed to follow up with every senior still looking, and they’re offering a drawing for 10 $25 GrubHub gift cards for those who respond by May 21.
Senior spotlights
The CCPD’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube channels will feature content during Senior Week that is specifically geared toward seniors.
Kalamazoo College announced Friday during Founders Day events that Professor of Anthropology Kiran Cunningham is this year’s recipient of the Lux Esto Award of Excellence.
Professor of Anthropology Kiran Cunningham ’83 is this year’s recipient of the Lux Esto Award of Excellence. The award, announced Friday to celebrate Founders Day, marking the College’s 188th year, recognizes an employee who has served the institution for at least 26 years and has a record of stewardship and innovation.
The recipient—chosen by a committee with student, faculty and staff representatives—is an employee who exemplifies the spirit of Kalamazoo College through excellent leadership, selfless dedication and goodwill.
Cunningham has been a professor at K since 1992. She served as the chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology from 2008 to 2014 and was a faculty fellow at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership from 2010 to 2012.
Outside of K, Cunningham was a Teagle Pedagogy Fellow for the Great Lakes Colleges Association in 2012 and a research associate in 2014 for the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment in 2014.
Cunningham “has encouraged numerous students to study abroad, has traveled internationally with students, and recently, with staff and two other faculty colleagues, developed programming for a brand new study abroad program,” Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez said in video remarks. “Her leadership has helped interdisciplinary curriculum within her department and played a pivotal role in building it into one of the most diverse academic departments on campus.”
In accordance with Founders Day traditions, two other employees also received individual awards. Professor of Mathematics Eric Nordmoe was given the Outstanding Advisor Award, and Director of Outdoor Programs Jory Horner was named the Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate Award honoree.
Nordmoe, the math department chair, began working at K in 1996 as an assistant professor. He was named an associate professor in 2004 before earning his current position in 2016. He teaches courses in statistics and mathematics, supervises senior individualized projects, engages in scholarly research, serves on faculty committee and provides statistical consultation to students and faculty.
As an advisor, Nordmoe “has reached out to alumni to inquire about potential job opportunities for his advisees and connected advisors with professional colleagues outside K to begin mentoring relationships for students,” Gonzalez said. “He’s quick to respond, and truly gets to know advisees.”
Horner leads the College’s LandSea program, an 18-day outdoor experience at Adirondack State Park in New York State, where first-year students make some of their first contacts with their incoming class. Before coming to K, he taught rock climbing, mountaineering and outdoor education for various organizations in Oregon and California. He also has certifications and trainings in wilderness EMT, physical and mental health first aid, and leave-no-trace best practices.
“Students are always the number one focus of his work, and his devotion helps him provide an excellent first-year experience for so many of them,” Gonzalez said. “With LandSea, he helps students develop the grit, resilience and confidence that they use to thrive during their first-year and beyond at K. He has served as an academic advisor for many first-year students, and he has advised the Kalamazoo Outing Club. He’s well-deserving of this award.”
Sacred Writes, a network of religion scholars committed to helping a broad global audience understand the significance of their work, has selected Kalamazoo College Assistant Professor of Religion Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada to be one of 24 scholars from around the world receiving a Public Scholarship on Religion for 2021.
When religion scholars share information about their research outside their academies, they help the general public understand matters of the sacred and the importance of religion and religious diversity in contemporary life.
Enter Kalamazoo College Assistant Professor Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada. Sacred Writes, a network of religion scholars committed to helping a broad global audience understand the significance of their work, has selected Maldonado-Estrada to be one of 24 scholars from around the world receiving a Public Scholarship on Religion for 2021.
With the scholarship, Maldonado-Estrada will receive a $1,000 stipend to participate in real-time collaborative sessions and multimedia training with other scholars from May 1 to August 31. Since 2018, similar cooperative work has helped 41 scholars of religion place 140 print, audio and video pieces with 52 media outlets including the Washington Post, PRI’s The World and CBS Religion since 2018.
“I am deeply committed to making my scholarship accessible and interesting to a broad array of readers,” Maldonado-Estrada said. “From writing about religion and tattoos to gender and gentrification, it excites me to tell stories about the ways religion is embedded in the everyday lives of individuals, communities, and cities. I am excited to be a part of a vibrant group of scholars, where we can hype each other up, learn new genres of writing, and craft and celebrate good work about religion.”
Sacred Writes also has chosen Maldonado-Estrada to write articles about architecture and sacred space, subjects important in her classes at K. The articles will appear in DigBoston, an alternative weekly newspaper.
“At K, I teach a class called Urban Religion where we learn how to be ethnographers and observers of space and social life,” she said. “Together we explore how religious communities shape the urban environment and how the city shapes the feel, look and experience of religion right back. I am so excited to write about architecture, development, and sacred space in this collaboration with DigBoston. These are the topics that really brought me to the study of religion back when I was an undergrad at a liberal arts college.”
In addition to Urban Religion, Maldonado-Estrada teaches classes at K on religion and masculinity, Catholics in the Americas and the religions of Latin America. She is an ethnographer, and her research focuses on material culture, contemporary Catholicism, and gender and embodiment.
Elsewhere, Maldonado-Estrada is a co-chair of the Men and Masculinities Unit at the American Academy of Religion and is an editor of Material Religion: The Journal of Art, Objects, and Belief. She was chosen for the 2020-2022 cohort of Young Scholars in American Religion at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis’ Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. She received her doctorate in religion from Princeton University and her bachelor’s degree in sociology and religion from Vassar College.
“I look forward to finding exciting ways to meld my teaching and research and to bringing what I learn from this partnership back to the classroom at K,” she said.
Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez applauded Henry R. Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies Peter Erdi when Erdi presented his Lucasse Lecture in 2019, while giving a preview of his book, Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play.
If we compiled a list that ranks the coolest things Kalamazoo College faculty members have achieved as authors, Péter Érdi’s latest accomplishment would be on it.
Érdi, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies, wrote the 2019 book Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play. The book examines how and why humans rank certain aspects of our lives and how those rankings are viewed.
“We like to see who is stronger, richer, better and more clever,” Érdi said. “Since we humans love lists, are competitive and are jealous of other people, we like ranking. The book applies scientific theories to everyday experience by raising and answering such questions as ‘Are college ranking lists objective?’ ‘How do we rank and rate countries based on their fragility, level of corruption or even happiness?’ ‘How do we find the most relevant web pages?’ and ‘How are employees ranked?’”
The book has already been published in German and Chinese, both with simple and complex characters. Korean and Hungarian translations are in the pipeline. In Japan, however, Érdi’s book is creating the most buzz. Japanese officials have requested additional printings of the book and are negotiating the rights for an e-book.
Adding to that success is that Toyo Keizai, which is a weekly magazine about the Asian economy, and three large daily Japanese newspapers — Asahi, Nikkei and Youmiuri — have published reviews. Kalamazoo College Associate Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori notes that newspapers in Japan are extremely important to their society and it’s rare for all three papers to review the same book at the same time.
Youmiuri has a circulation just under 8 million, the largest in the world.
“Nowadays, accountability and transparency are emphasized, and society and companies tilt towards measurement and evaluation based on quantified index, including the use of ranking and pursuit of objectivity,” the Youmiuri review says, according to Sugimori’s translation. “This book touches on challenges of being objective consistently, but it does not deny the effectiveness of quantified index. The author advocates the rule of ‘trust, but carefully,’ and this is exactly the behavior pattern that is required in digital society.”
“Although it may contain something stupid, rankings are convenient in their own ways,” the Asahi review says. “Probably, we will cope with numerical estimations even more. Therefore, the author recommends that one should change the attitude of ‘not caring about evaluations.’ Whether you like it or not, evaluations are something one needs to self-manage. This book delineates such times and people who sustain the times.”
The Nikkei review states: “True rankings need to satisfy the following three requirements: Completeness, asymmetry and transitivity. Aside from a case such as the largest lake in the world, many actual rankings do not satisfy these requirements. Subjective standards intervene. There is a room to manipulate something to get the higher rankings. It is discernment that matters in handling with abundant rankings around them. Therefore, this book focuses on the rules of social games that are called rankings. This book showcases not only theories that are based on the rankings mentioned above, but also findings and discussions from human behaviors, cognition, social psychology, politics and computational neuroscience.”
Érdi has been a prolific researcher with more than 40 publications and two books published since joining Kalamazoo College. In that time, he has given more than 60 invited lectures across the world, and he received the 2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship, honoring his contributions in creative work, research and publication. He also has been the editor-in-chief of Cognitive Systems Research and served as a vice president of the International Neural Network Society.
“You can like it or not, but ranking is with us,” he said. “It is not a magic bullet that produces order out of chaos, but it is not the product of some random procedure. We are navigating between objectivity and subjectivity. It’s our very human nature to compare ourselves to others. The question is how to cope with the results of these comparisons. The reader will enjoy the intellectual adventure to understand our difficulties to navigate between objective and subjective and gets help to identify and modify her place in real and virtual communities by combining human and computational intelligence.”
Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play is available online through Oxford University Press.
Karen Isble came to Kalamazoo College from the University of California, Irvine, last fall as the institution’s vice president for advancement.
Last fall, Karen Isble joined Kalamazoo College as the institution’s vice president for advancement, bringing with her a broad background in development and extensive campaign experience. Isble came to K from the University of California, Irvine, where she served as associate vice chancellor and campaign director for university advancement, leading the planning and execution of the university’s $2 billion comprehensive campaign, “Brilliant Future.” Prior to joining UC Irvine, Isble served as assistant vice president for development at the University of Michigan. A Detroit native, Isble worked in arts administration and fundraising roles at the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Goodman Theatre prior to joining U of M. Isble earned her bachelor’s from Harvard University and her master’s from the University of Michigan. We sat down with Isble and asked her to reflect on her time so far at K and the opportunities and challenges facing the field of advancement.
What drew you to Kalamazoo College?
The reputation of both the College and Kalamazoo’s strong philanthropic community was a huge draw, as well as proximity to my family here in Michigan and Chicago. Honestly, though, the biggest draw was the strong leadership team and sense of community—and the opportunity to focus my advancement efforts on a smaller institution that was centered on students first. So far, my early observations have not disappointed—it’s all that I could have hoped for, even having made this transition amidst the pandemic.
What excites you most about your job?
Bringing people together—alumni, community leaders, donors, faculty, staff and students—for a united cause: access to and enrichment of higher education. I also love seeing those efforts come to life on campus—students taking advantage of all that K has to offer, faculty gaining new resources, and new and updated spaces where students live, learn and play.
What are some of the challenges for university and college advancement programs today?
Like any nonprofit institution, there’s ever-increasing competition for where donors can give their philanthropy. We’re continually working to stay ahead of the curve and to make sure our stories of why donors should support higher ed are compelling, transparent and exciting. Creating a clear path along the pipeline from marketing/communications to alumni/community engagement to fundraising/stewardship takes the work of many talented people with varying skill sets, all working in concert. There are a lot of opportunities to miss a step, and all of the steps are important.
How has COVID-19 changed the way we approach alumni engagement and fundraising?
The same way it’s changed everything, really. A year ago, we were all at a bit of a standstill across the industry, and we couldn’t have imagined that the work we do could be done any other way. Traveling with the college president to alumni events, individual in-person meetings with donors, large-scale gatherings like homecoming—they’re the key tools we use to stay in front of our constituents and keep them informed about what’s happening on campus. The pandemic swept all of that aside, and it took us some time to think about how we could (and when and whether we should) try to engage with alumni and donors virtually. We had to learn what that felt like, sounded like. Fortunately, we’ve done a good job here at K—and across the field—in embracing these new forms of outreach, and, even when we’re able to travel and gather again with ease, we will keep some of these new “tools” close at hand. They’ve helped us not only stay connected with those we were already close to, but make new connections with those who had never had the opportunity to engage with K in person.
On a personal note, what are three things people may be surprised to learn about you?
I’m only five feet tall—they tried to tell me 4’11”, but I’m not buying it.
I pivoted from pre-med student to aspiring opera singer during college. I still sing when I can, and I can’t wait until choirs can gather again!
I’m a sci-fi geek. Star Wars, Star Trek—I’ll take them all. I’m also a huge fan of the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Marvel franchises.
Professor Emeritus David Barclay, who served Kalamazoo College for 43 years, devoted his professional life to teaching, researching, and writing on European history. Alumni, current and retired faculty and staff, and friends of the College are honoring Barclay and his time at the College by establishing the David E. Barclay Endowed Scholarship in History.
Alumni, current and retired faculty and staff, and friends of the College have established the David E. Barclay Endowed Scholarship in History to honor Professor Barclay and his 43 years at the College. Professors Emeriti David Strauss and John Wickstrom were the driving forces behind the fundraising initiative to create this scholarship.
“News of the new scholarship has humbled me more than I can possibly express,” said Barclay, who retired from K as the Margaret and Roger Scholten Professor of International Studies. “I owe an incalculable debt of gratitude to so many of you who have contributed to it, and especially to my dear friends and colleagues, David Strauss and John Wickstrom. “They — along with the late Edward Moritz — played central roles in developing K’s history curriculum, and were a daily inspiration to me as teachers, scholars, and human beings.”
Strauss and Wickstrom described the purpose of the scholarship as supporting K students who demonstrate exemplary capacity for and commitment to scholarly work in the history department. Their motivation for creating the Barclay Endowed Scholarship was to both signal K’s tradition of excellence in history by undergraduates—past, present and future—and also honor Barclay’s extraordinary career in an appropriate fashion.
Barclay devoted his professional life to teaching, researching, and writing on European history. As a scholar, he achieved national and international distinction for his work in modern German history. He shared his achievements in those fields with several generations of students while working tirelessly to expand the influence of the discipline of History at K.
Collaborating with colleagues at the College, Barclay wrote a successful proposal for the Center for Western European Studies, a Title VI Undergraduate Resource Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The award establishing the program was the only one made to a liberal arts college and was competitively renewed every three years for 15 years. Barclay also joined students on study abroad and served as a mentor, adviser and friend to countless alumni.
Barclay received the Weimer K. Hicks Award in 2018, which honors a current or retired K employee who has provided long-term support to College programs or activities beyond the call of duty.
To celebrate the establishment of this endowed scholarship in his name, Professor Barclay will be giving a virtual K-Talk on Tuesday, April 20, at 5 p.m. The K-Talk, “Germany’s American Outpost,” will explore the relationship between Berlin and the United States during the Cold War.
If you would like to support K history students and give in honor of Professor Barclay, please make a gift online to the David E. Barclay Endowed Scholarship in History or contact Andy Miller, Executive Director of Development, at 269.337.7327 or Andy.Miller@kzoo.edu.
Kalamazoo College James A. B. Stone Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan explores the psychology of music advertising in a new book she co-edited titled The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, published by Oxford University Press. Photo credit: Madelijn Strick
If you know Wheaties as the breakfast of champions, that’s thanks in part to the first-ever commercial jingle, which aired through radio on Christmas Eve in 1926. Since then, advertisers have used the psychology of music, a subject appealing to Kalamazoo College’s James A. B. Stone Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan, to entice you to buy their products.
Tan is a co-editor of a new, nearly 1,000-page reference book published by Oxford University Press, titled The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, which explores the ties between music and advertising from their earliest connections to the present day. She said jingles grew from that first ad in 1926 beyond radio advertising to the in-person human voice and other songs that shoppers heard.
“Historically, some of the first ways people sold their wares was to use music, and people would listen out for that tune at a marketplace,” Tan said. “People would hear it and know the flowers they like are around the corner, or they might realize the pots and pans are coming up.”
That might sound like an old way of doing business until you think of all the places where you associate memorable tunes with your favorite products and technologies.
“Advertisers started off with the human voice, and just this chant or melody, and today you might listen for the familiar music of your favorite video game at the arcade,” Tan said. “The book explores fascinating research on topics like advertising jingles, music in radio and TV ads, sonic branding, sound design as part of product design, how in-store music affects shoppers, and a lot more. Even though the fads might change, there are some principles and basic foundational ideas that will continue to resonate in advertising for a long time.”
James A. B. Stone Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan has previously published more than 25 journal articles and chapters and two books. Her new book, however, was her first project related specifically to music advertising. Photo credit: Keith Mumma, Kalamazoo College.
Tan has published more than 25 journal articles and chapters, and two books including Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance and The Psychology of Music in Multimedia. Her expertise was also featured in SCORE: A Film Music Documentary, and later, an associated podcast. This book, however, was Tan’s first project related to music advertising.
“I just got even more fascinated in the psychology of music and music advertising from working with this book,” she said. “I’m really constantly surprised by how many connections there are and how wide this area is. I’m excited to think of how many more ways that the psychology of music can plug into another area.”
As an editor, Tan was one of three people who invited 44 authors to collaborate on this multidisciplinary book, and made sure the book’s chapters and stories meshed well with no overlap or gaps. She also ensured the book’s themes and centralized ideas were present throughout as she and her fellow editors wrote section introductions and guided authors’ contributions on content and style. Yet ultimately, she wants the book’s success to be measured in how well readers connect with it in an engaging way for years to come.
“One of the questions that the authors brought up at the Zoom book launch party was, ‘Where else can we take this book?’ because it’s not just your standard academic book,” Tan said. “It really has a lot of applications and a wide reach. With music, multimedia and advertising, all of these sectors have a connection. I would like to see us make the book something that lives beyond just the academic sphere. I would feel the book is successful if it’s useful to many different people and is relevant for a long time.”
Santiago Salinas, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Biology, has earned tenure at Kalamazoo College.
Kalamazoo College faculty members Santiago Salinas and Dwight Williams, from the biology and chemistry departments respectively, have been awarded tenure, recognizing their excellence in teaching, scholarship and service to the College.
The honor signifies the College’s confidence in the contributions the professors will make throughout their careers. Their titles have been approved by the Board of Trustees and include promotion to associate professor.
Salinas, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Biology, teaches classes such as vertebrate biology and human physiology. His research interests include his work in the K Fish Lab, where he and his student collaborators study the ways fish populations cope with changes in the environment. He was born in Argentina before attending the Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific, earning his bachelor’s degree from College of the Atlantic, and receiving a Ph.D. from the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.
Salinas then was a post-doc at the University of California-Santa Cruz and the Southwest Fisheries Science Center and was a visiting assistant professor at the University of the Pacific.
Dwight Williams, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has earned tenure at Kalamazoo College.
Williams, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry, teaches classes such as organic chemistry at K. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Coastal Carolina University in 2001 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007 while researching immunosensor design.
Williams spent a year as a lecturer at Longwood University before becoming an assistant professor at Lynchburg College. At Lynchburg, he found a passion for the synthesis and structural characterization of natural products as potential neuroprotectants.
Williams learned more about those subjects after accepting a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral research fellowship at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. During that fellowship, he worked in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology, where his work was published in six peer-reviewed journals.
Uyen Trinh ’21 finished third in February at the Japanese Speech Contest conducted by Detroit’s Consulate General.Grace Frazier ’23 watches Uyen Trinh participate in the Japanese Speech Contest.
For the third consecutive year, at least one Kalamazoo College student has placed among the top three finishers in a prestigious Japanese Speech Contest organized by Detroit’s Consulate General of Japan.
Uyen Trinh ’21 was K’s only contestant in the 25th annual event on February 20, finishing third overall, in an opportunity she’s sought for a few years, especially since returning from a study abroad experience at Waseda University in Tokyo.
“I’ve been taking Japanese courses since my first year in college, and I’ve been attending the contest in Novi since my sophomore year,” Trinh said. “I had planted in my mind the idea that I wanted to compete myself, and that desire had only gotten bigger.”
Contestants from Michigan colleges and universities drafted their own speeches in Japanese to present in front of the judges. Trinh’s speech, titled “Freedom in the Family,” discussed her family in Vietnam and her host family in Japan, while comparing the relationships between the parents and children.
Josseline Vazquez ’22 watches Uyen Trinh participate in the Japanese Speech Contest.Anexy Koizumi ’22 watches Uyen Trinh participate in the Japanese Speech Contest.
“I really wanted people to feel my experience because it included a lot of personal encounters, things I witnessed in Japan and situations I have back home,” she said. “I was thinking a lot about the best ways I could read the speech aloud for people to understand what I want to communicate. My goal wasn’t really to place. I was just really happy when I finished my speech because I felt like I delivered it how I wanted it to be.”
Despite a virtual format for the contest this year, many of Trinh’s K peers and professors helped her prepare before the event, which was streamed live through YouTube. Kanase Matsuzaki ’23 organized a special lab before the contest, inviting Trinh to attend as a guest speaker. Students from two Japanese classes attended, hearing the English translation of Trinh’s speech in advance, and then asking Trinh questions in Japanese. Several attended the contest remotely to cheer her on, including three peers who watched despite personally experiencing the ongoing winter weather emergencies happening in Texas and Mexico.
Visiting Student Beatriz Contreras watches Uyen Trinh participate in the Japanese Speech Contest.Angela Hernandez ’23 watches Uyen Trinh participate in the Japanese Speech Contest.
Faculty members, including Associate Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori, listened meticulously to Trinh recite her speech in advance and offered synonyms for the most difficult words if her pronunciation wasn’t perfect.
“I’m very grateful to Sugimori Sensei and all the Japanese faculty who helped me, along with the other Japanese students,” Trinh said. “Their support made the speech possible.”
Spinning her experience forward, Trinh said she hopes to return to Japan this summer to work at Summer Olympics events, especially after COVID-19 cut her study abroad plan short. She then will graduate from K in fall and plans to work in the finance field after graduation.
“There are so many things I still want to do in Japan,” she said. “The program cancellation was announced only about two days before my departure from Japan. I hope I can relive that memory and meet my host family again.”
Six alumni, representing a variety of Kalamazoo College majors and diverse professions, will represent Starbucks, Microsoft, HealthSparq, Payscale, Hulu and Intellectual Ventures, while networking with students to help them build their careers from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, March 4, during K to the Pacific Northwest.
A group of Kalamazoo College alumni is calling upon itself to help students overcome pandemic-prompted challenges so they can build their networks and launch their careers.
“One of the beautiful aspects of K is that we have such a rich cadre of alums who want to engage with students related to their career preparation,” Center for Career and Professional Development Director Tricia Zelaya-Leon said. “It’s a good challenge to have when there’s so much excitement and enthusiasm from alumni that they come to me and ask how they can help.”
For this particular group of alumni, the answer is coming through K-Treks, the career-immersion experiences that typically allow students to visit alumni and explore interesting professions around the country. With K-Treks temporarily being virtual, cost is not a factor in determining how many students can attend. It also allows more alumni representing a greater variety of majors and business fields to connect with students, revealing more pathways to finding their passions and their jobs.
The additional alumni are allowing the CCPD to expand Thursday’s virtual K-Treks, originally planned as K to Starbucks, to K to the Pacific Northwest (K2PNW). Six alumni, representing a variety of K majors and diverse professions, will represent not only Starbucks, but also Microsoft, HealthSparq, Payscale, Hulu and Intellectual Ventures, while networking with students on March 4 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
“I don’t want students to think that their major doesn’t matter. However, it is just one piece of the puzzle.” Zelaya-Leon said. “A major is really about helping students find a passion they’re interested in and not just a measure that will lead them to career success. The beauty of the alumni that we have attending this virtual K-Trek series is that many of them had more than one major or the work they do now is very different from what you might expect someone with that major to do.”
The alumni panelists and their majors and careers include:
James Burns ’05, an economics and business major, who serves as the director of in-game monetization in Microsoft Stores on Xbox with Microsoft.
Alison Greco ’95, a psychology major, who serves as the director of product and UX at HealthSparq.
Casey Herron ’07, a mathematics major, who is the senior data scientist at Payscale Inc.
Steve June ’03, an English and philosophy major, who is the principal of commerce solutions at Starbucks.
Rita Rogers ’06, an art and art history major, who serves as the director of corporate communications, Intellectual Ventures.
All students are welcome to participate by registering at any time before the event through Handshake. Students who attend will receive the contact information for the alumni participants.
“I keep thinking about the senior year for the classes of 2020 and 2021, and how unexpected their experiences have been for them,” Zelaya-Leon said. “This isn’t the way they thought it was going to go, and I feel for them. These K-Treks are open to all students, but they’re especially for the seniors. I hope they’ll continue to come see us for help after these events are over.”
