Péter Érdi, the Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies at Kalamazoo College, recently spoke at two conferences in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Péter Érdi, the Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies at Kalamazoo College, recently visited Johannesburg, South Africa, where he served as the keynote speaker at the sixth International Conference on Soft Computing and Machine Intelligence (ISCMI) and spoke at the Biomath Forum at the University of Pretoria.
The annual ISCMI conference Nov. 19 and 20, organized by the India International Congress on Computational Intelligence (IICCI), presented soft computing and machine intelligence research, and allowed delegates to exchange ideas while finding global partners for collaborations. Soft computing, inspired by the human mind, is an area of computer science that targets possible solutions to complex problems. Machine learning, related to yet different from artificial intelligence, enables a computer system to learn from inputs, rather than only by linear programming. Érdi’s keynote was titled The Reality, Illusion and Manipulation of Objectivity.
The Biomath Forum aids mathematical modeling and qualitative analysis to enable scientific understanding of biological processes. Érdi’s lecture, titled Dynamical Systems and Perspective in Neuroscience–Historical and Current Approaches, addressed systems of learning that use the human brain as a prototype. These systems are possibly uncovering some hidden links between epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease.
Érdi has been a prolific researcher with more than 40 publications and three books published in addition to editing two books since joining K. In that time, he has given more than 60 invited lectures across the world and earned the 2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship, honoring his contributions in creative work, research and publication. Visit our website for more information on his career and achievements.
When an award-winning poet speaks on campus, you can bet Kalamazoo College students are eagerly listening and learning.
Poet Marcelo Hernandez Castillo reads to Kalamazoo College students from his book, Cenzontle, at the Intercultural Center.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, a celebrated writer known for his early life experiences as an undocumented immigrant, was warmly welcomed last week to K. He conversed with students in classes taught by Assistant English Professor Shanna Salinas (Reading the World: Identities) and Assistant Sociology Professor Francisco Villegas (Race and Racism). He also provided a poetry reading in front of about 80 students in the Intercultural Center at Hicks Student Center.
“Intersections of language and home are on the hearts and minds of so many of our students,” said Assistant English Professor Oliver Baez Bendorf, who helped facilitate Castillo’s visit. “It’s important for them to know that they can do anything, and to see different models for that. Their stories matter and they can survive the telling of them and even make it beautiful. Reading is always a portal through which they can transport and grow. I know that Marcelo was likewise touched by the energy of our community and our students, their readiness to engage with his writing, their intellectual and creative curiosity, and all that they so impressively juggle.”
Castillo’s poetry collection, titled Cenzontle, addresses the fears he once faced of being deported. Castillo came to the United States with his family from Zacatecas, Mexico, at age 5 and was an early beneficiary of President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan.
For Cenzontle, the poet received the New Writers Award this year from the Great Lakes Colleges Association — a 13-member consortium of higher-education institutions in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania — which includes K. The award, founded in 1970, honors writers who are in the early stages of their literary career. Along with Cenzontle, Castillo has a 2018 chapbook titled Dulce. His memoir, Children of the Land, is scheduled for release next year.
Beyond poetry, Castillo is an essayist, translator and immigration advocate and a founding member of the Undocupoets campaign, which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first-poetry-book prizes in the country. His work has been featured in The New York Times, People Magazine, Buzzfeed and New England Review, and he teaches in the Low-Res MFA program at Ashland University.
With focused eyes and open minds, Salinas’ students listened intently to Castillo and asked a range of questions: poem- and content-specific, craft and poetic technique, themes and broader open-ended considerations. “I appreciated how generous Marcelo was in sharing his personal experiences and talking about his writing process,” Salinas said. “He was invested in their questions and insights, and I could tell the students felt that they were being seen, heard and respected.”
Opportunities to hear from renowned, in-the-field experts are celebrated occasions at K regardless of their field of expertise, although hearing from Castillo was a notable treat for students, faculty and staff, especially the aspiring writers among them.
“So many things about reading and writing happen in solitude,” Baez Bendorf said. “When you’ve read words on a page and then the human behind them arrives in your midst, it can be almost magical. I saw that happen with Marcelo’s visit. It’s thrilling to have a visitor, and even better when they’ve come with stories and generosity. Our students extended great hospitality to Marcelo and welcomed him into their spaces.”
Thanks to generous donations from more than 100 households including K alumni, staff, faculty, family and friends, the new volleyball locker room at Anderson Athletic Center will be named the Jeanne Hess Legacy Locker Room.
The Kalamazoo College community has stepped up to honor retired volleyball coach and professor Jeanne Hess, who influenced hundreds of lives over 35 years at K.
Thanks to generous donations from more than 100 households including K alumni, staff, faculty, family and friends, the new volleyball locker room at Anderson Athletic Center will be named the Jeanne Hess Legacy Locker Room.
The announcement was made Friday, Oct. 18, when Hess and K’s 1990 volleyball team were inducted into the College’s Athletic Hall of Fame during Homecoming’s annual Alumni Awards ceremony at Dalton Theater.
“During the course of 35 years at Kalamazoo College, Jeanne Hess served many roles within the K community: coach, mentor, colleague, friend, author and inspiration source, just to name a few,” Athletic Director Becky Hall said. “The locker room will be a tribute to the many lives Jeanne positively impacted and will celebrate K volleyball’s past, present and future. Every contributor to the project will be recognized on a donor wall, serving as a wonderful example to every Hornet volleyball player about the power of giving back, a concept central to Jeanne’s life philosophy.”
In the 1990s, K’s volleyball team qualified for the NCAA Division III tournament seven times under Hess. The coach also created volleyball summer camps and programs for children in the Kalamazoo area, taking her program into the community and bringing the community into the College.
Hess took her K team abroad for cultural exchange and international competition every three years for about a decade. In 2009, the team took a trip to China. In 2012, the Hornets visited Costa Rica. In 2015, they traveled Trinidad and Tobago. Last December, the team returned from two weeks in South Africa. Yet Hess’s day-to-day mentoring on campus and the spirit of her teams meant the most to her players, who hope her deeds will resound for years to come at K.
“The new Jeanne Hess Legacy Locker Room is such a special place for our team,” said Gayle Nugent ‘98. “For current players, it is a place to prepare and commune after games. For all of us—past, present and future—it holds the spirit of team.”
An official dedication for the locker room will be scheduled during the 2019-20 academic year and gifts for the project are still being made. To make a gift in Jeanne’s honor, please do so at our website.
“I was overwhelmed by the level of support for the Jeanne Hess Legacy Locker Room,” Hess said. “I have spent both playing and coaching careers working to advance the equality of women in sport, and this is yet another step by Kalamazoo College toward justice. The locker room, to me, is a sacred space of preparation for participation in this game; this game that means so much to those who love it and work so hard to participate in it. I feel so much gratitude for all who donated, planned and did the actual construction. My heart is full. Thank you so much.”
Joe Soss, the University of Minnesota’s Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service, will deliver the annual William Weber Lecture in Government and Society at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 29, in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall.
A professor and author known for exploring the interplay of democratic politics, societal inequalities and public policy will visit Kalamazoo College on Tuesday. Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service Joe Soss will deliver the annual William Weber Lecture in Government and Society at 8 p.m. in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall.
Soss holds faculty positions in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the political science department and sociology department at the University of Minnesota. His open-to-the-public lecture, “Preying on the Poor: Criminal Justice as Revenue Racket,” shares a title with his current book project.
In the upcoming book, Soss and coauthor Josh Page will argue that police officers, acting as street-level enforcers for a program promoted by city officials in Ferguson, Missouri, used fines and fees to extract resources from poor communities of color and deliver them to municipal coffers.
The authors will further argue that what happened in Ferguson is not an anomaly in U.S. history or of contemporary American governance while offering a political analysis of the origins, operations and consequences of revenue-centered criminal justice practices that have grown in the U.S. since the 1990s.
Soss also co-authored a 2011 book, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race, with Richard C. Fording and Sanford Schram. That book explained the transformation of poverty governance over 40 years and received the 2012 Michael Harrington Award, the 2012 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award, the 2012 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award and the 2015 Herbert Simon Award.
The Weber Lecture was founded by Bill Weber, a 1939 graduate of Kalamazoo College. Weber also founded the William Weber Chair in Political Science at the College before passing in 2012. Past lecturers in this series have included David Broder, Van Jones and DeRay Mckesson. For more information on Soss and his work, visit his website.
Karen Sisson, Kalamazoo College’s new CFO, is coming from Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she served for 11 years as a vice president and treasurer.
Kalamazoo College has named a new vice president to lead the business and finance areas for the liberal arts institution. Karen Sisson, former vice president and treasurer of Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. will begin her new role on March 1, 2020.
“Karen’s extensive experience in higher education, finance and operations are a great fit for K,” said Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez. “Her open style of communication, calm demeanor and commitment to the liberal arts impressed the campus community.”
As Pomona’s chief financial officer, Sisson was responsible for financial management and capital planning, including financial reporting, budget administration, investments, real estate, and nonacademic business supervision for human resources. She was also responsible for the physical plant, including housekeeping, grounds, maintenance and food service. In addition, Karen oversaw Pomona’s significant efforts toward a more sustainable campus.
“I am thrilled to join K and to become part of such an academically distinctive and caring community! I look forward to working with and supporting students, faculty and staff in my new role,” said Sisson.
Prior to working in higher education, Sisson spent 17 years in California local government finance and administration, including nine years as chief financial officer and deputy executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, the department responsible for LAX, Van Nuys, and Palmdale airports. While serving as deputy mayor for finance and performance management in Los Angeles, she was appointed the city administrative officer, the first woman to hold that position. Sisson also has experience in commercial banking, mortgage banking and financial consulting.
An alumna of Pomona College, Karen earned her M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and her M.A. in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.
Kalamazoo College’s former vice president for business and finance left K to become the vice president for finance and business at The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.
Sisson was selected after a nationwide search conducted by an on-campus committee with the assistance of Storbeck/Pimentel & Associates, an executive search firm specializing in the education and non-profit sectors. Comprised of faculty, staff and trustees, the committee was co-chaired by Associate Provost Laura Lowe Furge and Vice President for Advancement Al De Simone.
“The committee worked diligently and recruited a robust pool of candidates, and I am delighted with the outcome.” said Gonzalez.
Kalamazoo College, founded in 1833, is a nationally recognized residential liberal arts and sciences college located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The creator of the K-Plan, Kalamazoo College provides an individualized education that integrates rigorous academics with life-changing experiential learning opportunities.
Theatre Arts Professor Lanny Potts was selected from a field of six nominees as the winner of a 2019 Wilde Award in the Best Lighting Design Category for his work in a 2018 Farmers Alley Theatre production of Bridges of Madison County in Kalamazoo.
EncoreMichigan.com, a web-based publication focusing on Michigan’s professional theater industry, highlights the top productions, actors, artists, designers, writers and technicians in the state through its annual Wilde Awards.
This year, the spotlight shone on Kalamazoo College Theatre Arts Professor Lanny Potts, who was selected from a field of six nominees as the winner of a 2019 Wilde Award in the Best Lighting Design Category.
Theatre Arts Professor Lanny Potts was selected from a field of six nominees as the winner of a 2019 Wilde Award in the Best Lighting Design Category.
The honor is a result of Potts’ work in a 2018 Farmers Alley Theatre production of Bridges of Madison County in Kalamazoo. The musical, a 2014 Tony Award winner for Best Score and Orchestrations, tells a story of a love affair between a lonely housewife and a rugged photographer, examining the roads people travel, the doors they open and the bridges they cross.
Potts has won the same award twice previously through Farmers Alley Theatre, once in 2013 for his lighting design work in The Light in the Piazza, and again in 2018 for Gypsy.
To be eligible in their categories, Wilde Award nominees need at least four performances conducted through a professional theater company with paid actors between June 1, 2018, and May 31, 2019.
Potts is a professional designer and consultant whose work has included international lighting and production design; national tour designs for opera and dance; and regional designs for opera, modern dance, ballet, drama and corporate events.
Potts has presented portfolios of his work at regional conferences, worked at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and received many professional awards including a Michigan Governor’s Commendation, a design commendation from the John F. Kennedy Center (Fun Home) and Atlanta Critic’s Choice awards for his design work for the Atlanta premier of A Few Good Men.
Jeff Bartz, K’s Kurt D. Kaufman professor of chemistry, will receive the 2020 Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching.
Kalamazoo College announced today that one faculty member and one staff member have earned two of the highest awards the College bestows on its employees.
Jeff Bartz, K’s Kurt D. Kaufman professor of chemistry, will receive the 2020 Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching, and Bruce Stack, an electrician in facilities management, will receive the inaugural W. Haydn Ambrose Prize for Extraordinary Service.
Bartz joined the K Chemistry Department as an assistant professor in 1997 and became a full professor in 2011. He teaches courses in physical and general chemistry, chemical composition and structure, and chemical reactivity. He also works with K students in the research laboratory in the area of chemical dynamics.
Bruce Stack, an electrician in facilities management, will receive the inaugural W. Haydn Ambrose Prize for Extraordinary Service.
Bartz earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in mathematics from Southwest Minnesota State University in 1985. He earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992.
The Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship (for outstanding classroom teaching) and Fellowship (for outstanding achievement in creative work, research or publication) at Kalamazoo College were established in 1979, and Bartz is the 31st recipient of the lectureship. The awards were created to honor Florence J. Lucasse, a 1910 alumna, in recognition of her long and distinguished career and in response to the major unrestricted endowment gift given to the College in her will.
The W. Haydn Ambrose Prize was established to recognize a K staff member for outstanding service to the Kalamazoo College community.
The award is named after W. Haydn Ambrose, who served K for more than 20 years in a variety of roles, including assistant to the president for church relations, dean of admission and financial aid, and vice president for development. Ambrose was thoughtful in the projects that he took on, committed to the jobs that he agreed to do, and he treated people with respect.
In addition to a financial award, Stack has earned:
An invitation to sit on the award’s selection committee for two years
Stack has worked at the College for more than 28 years. His colleagues note that his extensive experience, troubleshooting abilities, and proven analytical skills have made him invaluable in addressing physical plant needs in emergency and day-to-day maintenance.
Two Kalamazoo College faculty members are celebrating accomplishments outside the classroom including Assistant Professor of English Oliver Baez Bendorf who has released a new collection of poetry titled Advantages of Being Evergreen.
As the academic year begins, two Kalamazoo College faculty members are celebrating accomplishments outside the classroom: Assistant Professor of English Oliver Baez Bendorf released a new collection of poetry titled Advantages of Being Evergreen, and Documentary Film Instructor Danny Kim was nominated for Best Michigan Short Film for A Day in the Life of Kik Pool at the Royal Starr Film Festival in Royal Oak.
“I started this collection right after the 2016 election and it felt necessary to build a world in poems where all of my self and communities and dreams could be present,” Baez Bendorf said. “It’s such a privilege and pleasure to have the book published through Cleveland State University Poetry Center. I often tell my students to write the poems they need to read, and to trust that in doing so, there will be readers who need them also. I wrote this book because I needed to read it and it feels great to be hearing feedback from others that these poems are resonating with them.”
Advantages of Being Evergreen was the winner of Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s 2018 Open Book Poetry Competition. Baez Bendorf was previously published through a poetry collection titled The Spectral Wilderness. A chapbook, titled The Gospel According to X, is in the works. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere.
Two Kalamazoo College faculty members are celebrating accomplishments outside the classroom including Documentary Film Instructor Danny Kim, who was nominated for Best Michigan Short Film at the Royal Oak Film Festival for A Day in the Life of Kik Pool.
Kim’s film reflects how a public pool often provides a place for the community to gather, exercise, learn an important skill and simply have fun. As the film progresses, the pool evolves into more, taking on a life of its own as it shifts and changes with the people who use it.
Kim has been involved with Masters swimming, which involves a special class of competition for swimmers at least 18 years of age, offering him a chance to work on something personal through the film.
“From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to tell the story from the perspective of the pool,” Kim said. “The challenge was how to best illustrate the character of the pool for each of the groups who use it. Before dawn, when the Kalamazoo Masters practice, the pool is quiet and contemplative. When the age-group swimmers hit the water, the pool reflects their energy and youth. Swimming-lesson time is childlike and simple, while lap swim is ephemeral and other-worldly. So from the outset, each section was shot and edited in a way that would best convey these characteristics.”
Kim credited two of his former students for their assistance in making the film special to him.
“Ximena Davis ’19 filmed and assisted with production. One of my favorite shots in the film is hers,” Kim said. “Savannah Kinchen ’18 gave me some valuable notes in post-production. One of her comments in particular led me to change the opening of the film.”
Kim’s previous work includes the feature-length documentary The Stories They Tell, which was selected for the inaugural Royal Starr Film festival in 2016 and was screened at film festivals across the Midwest.
A Kalamazoo College art professor will receive international attention while combating fossil-fuel dependence and climate change as a recipient of a Fulbright award in the 2019-20 academic year.
On Thursday, Sept. 12, Art Professor Tom Rice will discuss his drawings and installations of the past five years, along with what inspires him to explore environmental issues such as fossil-fuel dependence through art, in a forum at the University of Alberta.
Tom Rice, K’s Robert and Jo-Ann Stewart professor of art in the Art and Art History Department, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in visual arts, allowing him to research the realities of fossil-fuel extraction and create mixed-media art at the University of Alberta in Canada.
His art installation, titled “Shifting Uncertainties: The Land We Live On,” is on display through Sept. 20 at the university’s Fine Arts Building. The display depicts Rice’s concern for the environment, fossil-fuel dependence and the growing global crisis related to climate change. On Sept. 12, Rice will discuss his drawings and installations of the past five years, along with what inspires him to explore environmental issues through art, in a forum at the university.
Rice notes the key question with his work is how we retreat from an industry that is enmeshed into our lives and comprises the foundation of our economy.
“The award is important to me because I will have the chance to exchange ideas with leading artists and scholars doing work on climate justice and petroculture,” Rice said. “K’s focus on social-justice leadership includes climate justice and the implications for humans and non-human species alike.”
Rice is one of more than 800 U.S. citizens who will teach, conduct research or provide expertise abroad for the 2019-20 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Fulbright recipients are selected based on their academic and professional achievement, as well as their record of service and demonstrated leadership. The awards are funded through the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s international education-exchange program designed to build connections between U.S. citizens and people from other countries. The program is funded through an annual Congressional appropriation made to the Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations around the world also support the program, which operates in more than 160 countries.
Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has given more than 390,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and professionals in a variety of backgrounds and fields opportunities to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute solutions to international problems.
Fulbright alumni have achieved distinction in many fields, including 59 who have been awarded the Nobel Prize, 84 who have received Pulitzer Prizes, and 37 who have served as a head of state or government.
Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez applauded International Joint Conference on Neural Networks Honorary Chairman Peter Erdi when Erdi presented his Lucasse Lecture this spring.
Peter Erdi, the Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies at Kalamazoo College, served as the honorary chairman of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in July. The conference, with 850 participants in Budapest, Hungary, aimed to build bridges between theories of biological and artificial neural networks, sometimes referred to as natural and computational intelligence respectively.
Artificial neural networks are a set of algorithms, inspired by functions found in the human brain, that recognize patterns. Such systems learn to perform tasks by considering examples, through processes such as image recognition, for example. The networks might learn about those images to identify similar images, then label them and organize them.
The conference featured plenary talks from world-renowned speakers in neural network theory and applications, computational neuroscience, and robotics and distributed intelligence. Along with poster presentations, the conference included special sessions, competitions, tutorials and workshops.
“The conference was a big success in many respects,” Erdi said, noting commendations he received from colleagues applauding the conference, the city of Budapest and the organizers.
Erdi received the 2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship. It is the highest award bestowed by the Kalamazoo College faculty, and it honors the recipient’s contributions in creative work, research and publication. His Lucasse Lecture was titled “Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play” after a nonfiction book he has in production. The book examines how and why humans rank certain aspects of our lives and how those rankings are viewed.
Erdi 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. He is also serving as the editor-in-chief of Cognitive Systems Research and as a vice president of the International Neural Network Society.
Support for Erdi’s research program has come from varied sources such as collaborative National Science Foundation awards, NASA, the Hungarian National Research Council, Pharmacia, Pfizer and the European Integrated Project grant program. He has also helped to establish a popular study abroad program in his native homeland of Budapest, Hungary, where he holds a research professor position at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
