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:
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.”
Several Kalamazoo College alumni work at Amazon in roles such as marketing, human resources and business development. K students will have a chance to network with them Thursday, February 11.
K to the Pacific Northwest, a series of K-Treks helping students network virtually with alumni at global companies, is continuing from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday with K to Amazon.
Offered through the Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD), K-Treks are traditionally career-immersion experiences in which students travel to explore jobs of interest. With virtual experiences this term, all students are invited to participate regardless of their major.
Several K alumni work at Amazon in roles such as marketing, human resources and business development at facilities such as the Amazon Spheres. Some of those alumni were recently featured in LuxEsto, the College’s digital magazine.
“We tell students that the best path to landing a job or an internship is through one’s network,.” CCPD Assistant Director for External Relations Valerie Miller said. “Recruiters might sift through hundreds of resumes for a single job posting, but someone in your network can open doors to unknown companies and opportunities. Even virtually, you can’t beat an opportunity to meet K alumni and expand your network.”
Amazon focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming and artificial intelligence, and is one of the world’s most valuable global brands. Students may register for K to Amazon, co-sponsored by the Marketing and Investment Club, through Handshake at any time before the event. While at Handshake, students may also register for K to Starbucks, slated for March 4.
Learn more about this term’s K-Treks at the CCPD website.
Kalamazoo College Assistant Professor of English Oliver Baez Bendorf is one of 35 writers receiving a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.
The National Endowment for the Arts today announced that Oliver Baez Bendorf, a Kalamazoo College assistant professor in the Department of English, is one of 35 writers who will receive a 2021 Creative Writing Fellowship of $25,000.
Baez Bendorf was selected from about 1,600 eligible applicants. Fellows are selected through a highly-competitive, anonymous process and are judged on the artistic excellence of the work sample they provided. The fellowships provide funding for recipients to write, revise, research and travel.
“I am honored and still in shock to have received this prestigious grant,” Baez Bendorf said. The fellowship will help fund his work on a future collection of poems, including research travel when that becomes possible again after the pandemic. He hopes to go to Hessen, Germany, to visit the Ronneburg Castle, in which his father’s ancestors took refuge from religious persecution. The castle now houses festivals and a falconry center.
Baez Bendorf is the author of two poetry collections, most recently Advantages of Being Evergreen, published in 2019. Jennifer Natalya Fink, a professor of English at George Washington University, described that book as a “wild queer reimagining of the potential of language to redress our past oppression and imagine new possibilities for gender, nature, and ecstasy.”
In 2020, Baez Bendorf received the early career achievement award from The Publishing Triangle. His work has also garnered fellowships from CantoMundo, Vermont Studio Center and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His poems appear in recent or forthcoming issues of American Poetry Review, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, New England Review, Orion, Poetry, the anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and other publications.
Since joining the faculty in 2018, Baez Bendorf leads the poetry workshops at Kalamazoo College and teaches introductory creative writing classes. In fall 2020, he taught a first-year seminar he designed titled “Romance and Revolution: The Life and Times of Pablo Neruda.”
Outside the classroom, he has mentored K students in their pursuits of nature writing and literary editing. In 2019, he collaborated with colleagues across the college to host a celebrated writer on campus. A faculty research grant from the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership enabled him to participate in the New Orleans Poetry Festival, which featured his work in ecopoetics.
Baez Bendorf, who was born and raised in Iowa, holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of Iowa, and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry and Master of Arts in Library and Information Studies, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The late Conrad Hilberry, a poet and beloved Professor Emeritus of English who taught at K from 1962 until 1998, also received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the Arts Endowment in 1984.
Since 1967, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than 3,600 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $56 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships early in their careers. The full list of 2021 Creative Writing Fellows is available online.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these 35 talented poets through Creative Writing Fellowships,” said Amy Stolls, director of literary arts at the Arts Endowment. “These fellowships often provide writers with crucial support and encouragement, and in return our nation is enriched by their artistic contributions in the years to come.”
Visit arts.gov to browse bios, artist statements and writing excerpts from a sample of past Creative Writing Fellows.
K to the Pacific Northwest, a virtual series of K-Treks this term, will begin with K to Nike from 3 to 4:30 p.m. this Thursday. All students are welcome to register through Handshake to network with alumni and get to know what it takes to succeed at a global company.
More students than usual will have a chance to participate in three K-Treks this term that will help them network with Kalamazoo College alumni and get to know what it takes to work at global companies such as Nike, Amazon and Starbucks.
K-Treks, offered through the Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD), are traditionally career-immersion experiences in which students travel to explore jobs of interest. With virtual experiences this term, cost is not a factor in determining how many students can attend. A more expansive group can be included with all benefiting from enriching opportunities to make meaningful professional connections and get a feel for professional life at a specific business.
The events, collectively called K to the Pacific Northwest this term, begin with K to Nike from 3 to 4:30 p.m. this Thursday. K to Amazon, scheduled for 7:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday, February 11; and K to Starbucks, slated for Thursday, March 4, also are available.
“We tell students that the best path to landing a job or an internship is through one’s network.” CCPD Assistant Director for External Relations Valerie Miller said. “Recruiters might sift through hundreds of resumes for a single job posting, but someone in your network can open doors to unknown companies and opportunities. Even virtually, you can’t beat an opportunity to meet K alumni and expand your network.”
Students may sign up for any or all three of the experiences through Handshake at any time before that event begins. The Kalamazoo College Sport Business Club inspired K to Nike, although any student, regardless of their major, would benefit from attending. K to Nike, for example, will feature five alumni, none of whom majored in business. They are:
Christina Dennaoui ’06, a Service and Experience Design department employee, who majored in religion at K;
Peter Erdahl ’13, a political science major who works with apparel products;
Tobin Ernst ’02, a history major involved in risk management;
Karl Wasmuth ’09, a political science major, who works in government and public affairs.
“Students will learn about the career paths of these successful alumni, what they like about they do, and how they use what they learned at K in their work,” Miller said. “After a panel event with all alumni, students can drop into a breakout session with one of the alums to go deeper and learn about specific career paths.”
Many might think of shoes when they hear the name Nike because the company grew with its founders— including then-University of Oregon track and field coach Bill Bowerman and one of his former students, Phil Knight — when they signed Steve Prefontaine, a young Olympic distance runner, to a footwear-endorsement deal in 1972. Yet the company’s story is much more of a marathon than a sprint as today, nearly 50 years later, it seeks to bring innovation to every athlete through apparel, equipment, accessories and services available for any sport.
“Nike has a unique culture, and they have the most amazing campus,” Miller said. “It’s filled with every sport imaginable. I don’t know many employers that have a swimming pool, basketball courts, athletic fields, running trails and more. In fact, Nike was named one of the happiest companies to work for in 2018. K to Nike is a rare opportunity for a student to learn how to say, ‘hey, look at me,’ to a Nike recruiter.”
Learn more about this term’s K-Treks at the CCPD website.
Wen Chao Chen Associate Professor of East Asian Social Sciences Dennis Frost has released a new book More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan. He’s pictured here with his family and two Japanese Paralympians.
When most sports enthusiasts are thinking about the Super Bowl, a new book from a Kalamazoo College faculty member is focusing on a different kind of athletics competition and how it relates to creating a barrier-free society for those with disabilities.
Wen Chao Chen Associate Professor of East Asian Social Sciences Dennis Frost has unveiled More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan. The book addresses the histories of individuals, institutions and events that have played important roles in developing disability sports in Japan. Such events include the 1964 Paralympics in Tokyo, the Far East and South Pacific (FESPIC) Games for the Disabled, the Ōita International Wheelchair Marathon, the Nagano Winter Paralympics, and the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games.
Frost’s first book, Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity and Body Culture in Modern Japan, traced the emergence and evolution of sports celebrity in Japan from the 17th through the 21st centuries. The new book, he said, is an outgrowth of that project.
“Before I taught at K, I was a teaching fellow at my undergraduate alma mater, Wittenberg University, where I taught a class on sports in East Asia,” Frost said. “Students were working on presenting a project about the Nagano Winter Olympics, and one asked if she could do her part of the presentation on the Paralympics. The student found a few media reports, but neither one of us was pleased with the limited information available on the Paralympics. So that was my first inspiration for this project.”
Dennis Frost includes this photo of the Ōita International Wheelchair Marathon in his new book, More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan.
Frost’s interest piqued further when his youngest son, who was born with spina bifida, began taking an interest in sports.
“He’s played wheelchair tennis and sled hockey up in Grand Rapids, so I get to see some adaptive sports from his perspective, and then I’m doing my research more on the institutional side while talking about bigger scale events in Japan,” Frost said. “In some senses, it’s a project that has combined my personal and academic interests.”
For More Than Medals, Frost conducted interviews with athletes such as Suzaki Katsumi, who participated in the 1964 Tokyo Paralympic Games, the first event of its kind in Japan. Suzaki started training in disability sports just a few months before the Games using therapeutic hot springs baths at his rehabilitation facility in Ōita, Japan. As a result, he was surprised that the pool water at the Paralympics was so cold.
Dennis Frost has released his new book, More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan.
Such anecdotes show that in their early history events like the Paralympics were less about competition. Even today when the focus is more on elite-level competition, the significance of the Paralympics extends well beyond the playing field. Those were ideas echoed in recent years by Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko, who recognized Japan’s aging population when discussing her city’s preparations for the Olympic Games.
“The success of the Paralympics is really the key to the success of the overall Games here,” she said. “I believe putting weight on hosting a successful Paralympics is more important than a successful Olympics.”
“Part of what I was interested in with this project is understanding how you go from a situation in the 1960s, where very few people in Japan actually knew what the Paralympics were, to a point where they’re almost mainstream in Japan,” Frost said. “In preparing for 2020, the Olympics and Paralympics were treated as a perfect pair, and everybody talked about both at the same time. In 60 years, they’ve undergone a pretty dramatic shift.”
In general, Frost’s research focuses on modern Japanese history with emphases on sports, disability, militarization, and urban development. At K, he teaches courses on premodern, modern and contemporary East Asian history with a particular focus on China, Japan and Korea. He also teaches first-year and sophomore seminars in the College’s Shared Passages Program, as well as senior seminars for the History Department and the East Asian Studies Program. More Than Medals represents a Fulbright grant and a couple of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants that supported the project, several working trips to Japan, months spent in Tokyo with his family, and interviews with athletes, citizens and reporters, to compare a culture more adaptive to the needs of the disabled than what we traditionally might find in the United States.
“In Japan, in recent years there’s been a lot of attention more generally even beyond the Paralympics, to how we create a society that is barrier free,” Frost said. “That’s both in terms of the actual physical structures like having curb cuts and escalators and elevators instead of stairs, and also in attitudes toward people that are different in whatever way from others. There’s a lot of discussion about that in Japan. Some of those things are happening in some places in the United States, but in Japan, I think it’s become much more widespread in recent years.”
Stella Young ’22 was one of five juniors to earn internships this fall through the Center for Career and Professional Development as study abroad was put on hold.
Stella Young, a junior political science major, was just one of the Kalamazoo College students who had planned to study abroad during the 2020-21 academic year. When the pandemic threw a wrench into those plans, she was disappointed.
“Study abroad was one of my deciding factors in coming to K,” she said. “I was supposed to go to Madrid for six months.”
Regardless, K’s Center for Career and Professional Development, along with faculty and staff from around campus, provided a thoughtful alternative. Collectively, they developed a series of internships for 20 juniors, including five who worked through CCPD Assistant Director for External Relations Valerie Miller, giving them practical career experience in addition to a credit-granting class.
“I think the students had phenomenal experiences typical of internships,” Miller said. “They didn’t know what to expect and they had some doubts going in. Then they developed some skills and started to understand the work environment better. By the end, each one of them seemed to feel pretty confident about what they accomplished.”
Alumni Connections Critical
According to Miller, alumni were key in setting up the internships her cohort of students wanted. Young, for example, worked with Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization that encourages young adults to participate in the election process, which is led by Carolyn DeWitt ’04.
“I wanted to go on study abroad to meet new people and make new connections,” Young said. “I think I did that with this program.”
Young became a valuable asset to her 15 internship colleagues from across the country as she worked on several projects, including one that helped Iowa voters understand issues and where candidates stood on them in Senate races.
“I hopped on projects as staff members needed help,” she said. “I did a lot of research and data entry leading up to the election, and after, I worked with voters who had questions about results. I knew going into this I wanted to work with a nonprofit and this was an opportunity to put what I’ve been learning in the classroom into action. I hope to stay involved as a volunteer because they’re doing really important work.”
Navigating Health Care
Aramide Apo-Oyin ’22, however, independently found her internship serving heart-failure patients through Aurora Advocate Health in Chicago, via a nonprofit patient-support program offered through its hospital.
“The program is basically a volunteer initiative that helps patients and their families navigate the health care system,” she said, adding she commonly helped patients schedule follow-up care, understand their dietary needs and seek the exercise and activity they needed. “It provides them with the literacy they need, and helps navigate any barriers to their care.”
Apo-Oyin noted the program didn’t necessarily have a specific target audience, but it’s easy to spot trends in the health care system when working with people from many backgrounds.
“So even though we don’t say we’re only helping people who have the fewest resources, we often find they’re the people who need our help the most due to language barriers with their care team in the hospital, being uninsured and not knowing how to enroll into government assistance programs like Medicaid or Medicare, and not having a support system at home to help with transportation to appointments and overall support.”
As a result, the transition support program Apo-Oyin represented commonly assisted people without insurance or those who needed more support than just immediate care.
“We have connections and the relationships that can really help us to assist the communities that need our help. This program is about helping the patients heal and live with their diagnosis. I feel like that happens with more than just the medicine and the procedures doctors do. That’s our role and that’s why I chose to go into it.”
A Happy Ending
In moving forward, both students credited the campus partners for creating programs that tied well with their career goals while developing experiences that made their fall term valuable despite the absence of study abroad.
“I definitely want to use these services more in the future,” Young said of Miller and the CCPD. “She was great in finding a position that I really wanted. I would definitely recommend that people go to the CCPD when they want some off-campus experience—it helped broaden our horizons.”CCP
Natalie Barber ’22 was among the 20 juniors who missed out on study abroad this fall because of the pandemic. Instead, she worked in one of the environmental internships made available at the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council. In that position, she researched fresh water mussels like these.
An additional group of students, whose interests could be connected with environmental opportunities, worked with the Center for Environmental Stewardship and Director Sara Stockwood.
“I think it’s been a valuable experience for everyone, even if they didn’t go on study abroad,” Stockwood said of the students who worked for organizations such as the Kalamazoo Watershed Council, the Michigan Lakes and Streams Association and Sarett Nature Center.
The Michigan Lakes and Streams Association was one of three local organizations that helped four Kalamazoo College students earn environmental internships this fall.
“The students I’ve talked to said they’ve wanted to get an internship before, they just weren’t sure how to make it fit in their academic plan,” she said. “But when this class came up it fit well and it matched their class schedule. It was a challenge for them to figure out how to work virtually, and some of them felt a little lost at first, yet they gained the skills they needed to figure it out. I think that will help them in their classes and future jobs, especially if they have virtual components.”
Amanda Dow, a biology major, worked with Melissa DeSimone, the executive director of the Michigan Lakes and Streams Association (MLSA), which is a statewide nonprofit that unites individuals; lake, stream and watershed associations; organizations; and corporations that share an interest the preserving inland lakes and streams for generations to come. Her work experience included writing newsletter articles highlighting the organization’s virtual convention this year, contributing to its printed articles, and reformatting and updating several brochures.
“I have a background in writing so this was a good chance for me to practice in different mediums,” Dow said. “I wrote a review of the convention sessions along with a biography of myself for the newsletter. They also come out with a newspaper and the biggest chunk of my internship went to updating and reformatting their brochures. It helped a lot that when I first got there I could choose what I wanted to do.”
Asylum Lake served as a socially-distanced meeting point for Amanda Dow ’22 and Melissa DeSimone, the executive director of the Michigan Lakes and Streams Association, as Dow served in a virtual internship.
Andrew Wright, a German and biology major, said he felt a little directionless with where he wanted to apply his majors professionally after graduation, until he interned with the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council. The organization aims to protect, preserve and promote the Kalamazoo River and its tributaries for current area residents and future generations.
“Through developing a new interactive digital dashboard with the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council members, my work will help users see the different types of chemical contaminants in the Kalamazoo area and how they affect the types of fish here,” Wright said. “Following the motto of the Watershed, we want to make that information as accessible as possible so people can learn how their communities’ ecosystems have been impacted. The Kalamazoo River has unfortunately suffered its fair share of PCB runoff from paper mills and oil spills, and we want to create ways for people to be knowledgeable and be mindful of how we affect our surrounding environments.”
Natalie Barber, a biology major and psychology minor, joined Wright in working for the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council. She researched fresh water mussels, which filter small organic particles such as bacteria and algae out of lakes and streams, naturally purifying them. Part of that environmental research involved interviewing Daelyn Woolnough, a Central Michigan University biology faculty member and freshwater mussels expert, leading to website content and social media posts for the watershed council.
Asylum Lake in Kalamazoo served as a socially-distanced meeting point for Amanda Dow ’22 and her internship supervisor this fall.
With K’s academic schedule, it was important to Barber that she could undertake the internship as a part of her term and she hopes more students at the College will have the same opportunity.
“It’s important we know the effects of global warming and climate change and how they threaten mussels,” Barber said. “We especially have those threats in Kalamazoo because we had the paper mills that put all the PCBs in the water, plus we had the 2010 oil spill. Just knowing about those bigger issues, and also the lesser-known issues like invasive species, which is a big deal to freshwater mussels. Things the general public might not realize are such a big deal like moving boats from lake to lake without cleaning them, that’s important information we should share so we can protect the organisms within our areas. I felt like I was doing something positive toward my career goals. I think these internships should be offered every term because I thought mine was that useful.”
To conclude the class and their environmental internships, each student provided a final visual presentation with screenshots and pictures from their projects. Stockwood said students each had about three minutes to present what they did, what they learned and why it matters.
“They took it very seriously and it was fun because the students didn’t fully know what everybody else was doing,” she said. “They found a lot of similarities in their experiences over time with being lost in the beginning, independently working and having some ownership by the second half of their projects. I hope something like this will continue. It’s important to recognize that it’s not study abroad, but I think the experience was valuable, and I think the students feel it was valuable, too.”
Julia Bienstock (from left), Ella Knight and Addissyn House worked in international internships this term, writing articles for a university’s publication in Spain. One of the articles provided Spanish students with an American view of the Black Lives Matter movement.
When study abroad stayed on pause this fall, Kalamazoo College faculty and staff got creative. In a short period of time, they developed positive, educational experiences for many of the juniors who expected to spend time in another country, showing the strength of the College’s relationships with its external partners.
“Our challenge partly was to identify what students could do to engage with our international partners and folks off campus, but the question was what that would look like,” Center for International Programs Executive Director Margaret Wiedenhoeft said. “It took working with our partners to see what would be possible.”
Five of those juniors, in fact, still had a chance to learn about another culture in working at virtual international internships with K partners overseas. Addissyn House, Ella Knight and Julia Bienstock are working with the Universidad de Extremadura in Cáceres, Spain, writing articles on current events from a U.S. perspective; and Reyna Rodriguez and Maricruz Jimenez-Mora are teaching English as a second language to people in San Jose, Costa Rica.
‘The Perfect Internship’
For House, Knight and Bienstock, this meant working virtually on a weekly basis with Gemma Delicado, an associate dean and study abroad director, on producing articles for the December issue of Vice Versa, a publication from the Universidad de Extremadura Humanities College, similar to an academic journal.
“A lot of students come to K because of study abroad,” Bienstock said. “It’s a big part of the K-Plan. It was disappointing not to study abroad. However, getting this internship opportunity was a positive thing because we’re going to have to navigate this pandemic for a while, which made the experience really powerful.”
Wiedenhoeft compared their experience to a virtual version of the integrated cultural research project (ICRP) that students would normally write while reflecting on their study abroad experience. House described it as the perfect internship for her.
“My goal was to immerse myself in Spanish, which was what I intended to do on study abroad, and I think we’ve done that to the best of our abilities,” House said. “We’re learning to read and write Spanish at a different level than what we could in school. It’s especially different because we’re online and collaborating a lot more. We can see where Gemma’s making edits, and she can explain why she makes them. I didn’t know that would come out of this experience.”
The topics the students write about include current events such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the U.S. presidential election, and the virtual format helps them understand such events from a Spanish perspective. The takeaway remains a cultural immersion that most interns elsewhere will never receive.
“It was disappointing not to study abroad, but this has been enriching in other ways,” Knight said. “It shows that no matter what happens, there’s hope that another opportunity will come along. I hadn’t written articles like this before for a Spanish audience and I’m learning new ways to talk about and teach culture.”
‘I See Myself in These Students’
For Rodriguez and Jimenez-Mora, an international internship meant teaching English to Costa Rican high school students.
K’s study abroad program has connections to Skills for Life, a Costa Rican government initiative targeting bilingualism among citizens for the sake of higher education and better employment. Within that program, Project Boomerang—a reference to volunteers giving back—helps high school students expand their English skills.
Rodriguez was excited for her chance to volunteer through her internship because she struggled to learn English as a child after moving to the Chicago area from Mexico.
“I came home crying because I couldn’t understand my teacher because she seemed to be speaking English so fast,” she said. “I see myself in these students. I know if they’re passionate enough, they’ll be able to succeed. I love the concept of the program because it means I’m giving back.”
Rodriguez typically teaches virtual classes of one to six students three times a week. The students have studied English for at least four years and can read it and write it well. Some even study additional languages. The program, though, provides the students with a stipend as they build their conversation skills on topics such as ice breakers, feelings, cuisine, culture and traditions.
Her fellow volunteers are from countries such as Korea, Brazil and the Netherlands. They all know at least some Spanish, and she and Jimenez-Mora speak it fluently.
“I think students really appreciate that we can speak Spanish because they’re able to ask questions in Spanish if necessary,” she said. “English can be difficult. The context you use and the conjugation can sometimes trip them up.”
Rodriguez has prior experience with teaching as a third-grade language arts assistant at El Sol Elementary in Kalamazoo through CCE. She doesn’t expect to pursue teaching professionally, although the internship has helped her build other job-related skills and she’s grateful for them.
“When I was a little girl, I always wanted to be a teacher,” she said. “As I’ve seen it growing up, teaching has been a passion. I don’t think it will be a career path, but this helps me see it will be something I pursue in my own time. Professionally, I’ve been able to communicate better with people just by learning how to say things differently. My time management has improved, and I think my creativity has improved as I’ve made my lesson plans and shifted them from elementary to high school students.”
Setbacks Create Opportunities
Although less than ideal with the pandemic, these opportunities have shown that K can channel its relationships abroad to create further opportunities for these students and others.
“It was our relationships with our international partners that really factored into our ability to develop this programming for students,” Wiedenhoeft said. “We try very seriously to nurture these relationships and these internships are the fruit of that. I think these students have demonstrated an ability to adapt to ambiguity and manage understanding how expectations can change, and can change based on a cultural perspective.”
Andrew Koehler, the Music Department chair and director of the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, will receive the Community Medal of Arts from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo.
Two Kalamazoo College music faculty members are being honored with top awards for their contributions to the city’s arts scene.
Andrew Koehler, the Music Department chair and director of the Kalamazoo Philharmonia; and Tom Evans, a music professor and K’s director of bands, will receive the Community Medal of Arts from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo.
Tom Evans, a music professor and K’s director of bands, will receive the Community Medal of Arts from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo.
The organization promotes and supports the arts, arts organizations, and artists throughout greater Kalamazoo.
The Community Medal of Arts recognizes artists who are leaders in their field, have significant creative activity, have received local or national acclaim, and have impacted the community through art. It encompasses all art forms, including but not limited to visual, musical, theatrical, literary, performing, multimedia, architecture and design. The organization will present their awards to Koehler and Evans at 5:30 p.m. December 1 at the Wellspring Theater during the Arts Council’s annual meeting.
Both said the award is special for them for the honor it bestows.
“When I first arrived in Kalamazoo, I confess I had little inkling about the richness, the vibrancy of this arts community,” Koehler said. “In the years since, of course, I’ve come to fully appreciate just how special Kalamazoo is in this regard, and to be recognized as part of that artistic tapestry—to have my work validated by many wonderful collaborators, to be nominated by my generous predecessor at K, Barry Ross, himself a laureate of the award—is a profound honor, one that will stay with me for the rest of my career.”
“I am honored, humbled, and especially grateful to be a recipient of this year’s Community Medal of Arts Award,” Evans said. “It is an even greater honor to be included among the previous award winners, many of whom have been colleagues and collaborators at one time or another. I’ve long believed in the importance of giving back to the communities in which we live. If each us were to give back in whatever way we can, then each of those communities would be all the richer. I would like to believe that my musical contributions to the greater Kalamazoo area have, in some small way, fulfilled that promise.”
This distinction is also special because they’re earning it at the same time, yet through their own accords.
“What I have always loved about K is that we do not silo ourselves—neither from colleagues and students in other disciplines, nor from the wonderful city with which we share our name,” Koehler said. “Each of us in K’s Music Department is engaged in a meaningful way with other artistic organizations in town. And so to share this honor with my good friend and colleague only sweetens the experience, and confirms the multi-faceted richness of the larger arts community we both love so much.”
“I must say how incredibly pleased I am to receive this award alongside my colleague and friend, Andrew Koehler,” Evans said. “I hold him in the highest regard and have the utmost degree of respect for his consummate skills as a musician, conductor, lecturer and collaborator. Receiving this award alongside Andrew adds to my already overflowing joy and gratitude.”
Koehler and Evans are among nine individuals and two organizations receiving awards from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo this year. For a full list of the honorees and the awards, visit the council’s website.
