We asked Assistant Professor of German Studies Michael Powers about his own academic journey, what interests him about German studies and culture, what makes his students special, and why he’s excited to be a part of the Kalamazoo College community. Here’s what he said.
Question: What sparked your interest in German studies and how has it evolved throughout your academic journey?
Answer: My path to becoming a professor of German studies began unexpectedly. I grew up in an English-Spanish bilingual household, and on a whim, I started taking German in school. I was surprised by how fun the language is, and I quickly developed a passion for it and at the same time a deep interest in German culture and history. The language became my gateway to a host of exciting new worlds and experiences. At first, my studies focused on German literature and film, then later increasingly on philosophy and the intersection of politics and aesthetics. Today my main research interests span critical theory, media studies, and the environmental humanities.
Q:As an assistant professor of German studies, what aspects of German culture or literature do you find most captivating and why?
A: German-speaking writers and thinkers have left an indelible mark on major cultural and intellectual traditions. One of the things I relish most as a professor of German studies is the opportunity to engage with great works of art and influential social movements from a variety of interlinked perspectives: language, art, philosophy and history. Learning to combine these approaches and discover the complex forms of interrelation between them is something that I value immensely.
There’s nothing quite like reading Freud’s cultural theory in the original German, and thus engaging simultaneously with questions of linguistic belonging, psychoanalysis and social theory; or with engaging with Marx’s ideas in the language in which he first expressed them, which affords one insights into the links between power, language and violence.
Q: How would you describe your students and what makes them special?
A: I tremendously enjoy working with the students at K. Their curiosity and interest to learn inspires me and I love sharing my passion for German art, literature and culture with them. In my classroom, students are constantly working actively with one another, engaging with one another in a shared learning community. Learning does not occur from reading or memorizing words or facts, but is actively generated through discussion, debate and deep engagement with texts, works and ideas.
We asked Assistant Professor of German Michael Powers about what sparked his interests in German studies, what he admires about K students and why he appreciates being a part of the College’s community.
Q: As a newcomer to Kalamazoo College, what excites you the most about joining our K community, and what unique perspectives do you hope to bring to your students?
A: I taught previously at K as a visiting professor for two years, and I am very excited to return this year as permanent faculty. My own undergraduate education was at a small liberal arts college, and my scholarly path has been shaped by the liberal arts mission and the dedicated professors I came to know as mentors. I cherish the opportunity to work closely with students both inside and outside the classroom, whether discussing Expressionist art in a film course, or taking students on a tour of the arboretum as part of a unit on environmentalism in Germany.
The tenure milestone recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship and service to the College, and signifies its confidence in the contributions these faculty will make throughout their careers. The Board of Trustees-approved tenure recipients are:
Assistant Professor of Spanish Ivett Lopez Malagamba
López Malagamba currently serves as a co-chair in the Department of Spanish Language and Literatures. In her time at K, she has taught beginning through intermediate language courses, and advanced courses on Latin American literature and visual culture topics including indigeneity, contemporary women writers, fiction and documentary film, visual culture practices, and representations of nature. In fall 2019, she took 27 students to the Dominican Republic as part of K’s first faculty-lead experiential study abroad program.
Lopez Malagamba’s research centers on 20th– and 21st-century Latin American literature and visual culture. Her publications explore questions around exclusionary social and political practices and discourses in contexts of armed conflict, migration, and forced displacement. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Peninsular and Latin American literatures and Latin American Studies, and her Ph.D. in Hispanic language and literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. López Malagamba’s experience extends to the non-profit sector. Before earning her Ph.D., she worked with Latinx youth in Southern California facilitating educational programs to prepare them for college. López Malagamba sees her work at K as a continuation of her commitment to help youth access and successfully navigate higher education.
Assistant Professor of Spanish Ivett Lopez Malagamba (middle) with Spanish 101 students.
Marlene Crandall Francis Assistant Professor of Religion Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada
Maldonado-Estrada serves as the editor of the journal Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, a co-chair of the men and masculinities unit at the American Academy of Religion, and an editorial board member of the journal American Religion.
At K, Maldonado-Estrada has taught courses on religion and masculinity, Catholics in the Americas, urban religion, and religions of Latin America. As an ethnographer, her research includes focuses on material culture, contemporary Catholicism, and gender and embodiment. In 2021, Sacred Writes—a network of religion scholars committed to helping a broad global audience understand the significance of their work—24 fellows from around the world to train in public scholarship on religion. She was also chosen as one of the Young Scholars in American Religion at IUPUI’s Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture.
Maldonado-Estrada is the author of Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an ethnography about masculinity and men’s devotional lives in a gentrified neighborhood in New York City. She also is working on projects about the technological and sensory history of prayer, and Latinx art and religion in New York City. She received a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Marlene Crandall Francis Assistant Professor of Religion Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada
Assistant Professor of Mathematics Stephen Oloo
Oloo served K as a visiting assistant professor from 2015-2017 before earning his current position in which he teaches a variety of pure math classes such as Calculus I, II and III, Number Theory, Real Analysis and Abstract Algebra.
Beyond teaching he has served in various roles by directing the Math and Physics Center, being in charge of the George Kitchen Memorial Lecture, and running the math club MathletiKs.
Oloo’s Ph.D. work was in topology of algebraic varieties and geometric representation theory. He is currently applying his knowledge of geometry and representation theory in a collaboration with physics professor Dave Wilson in which they are studying how viruses change shapes as they undergo maturation. He holds mathematics degrees including a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College, and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Assistant Professor of Mathematics Stephen Oloo
Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Perez
Before arriving at K, Vargas-Perez worked as an adjunct instructor at Western Michigan University, where he earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic.
Vargas-Perez has taught courses at K in data structures, algorithms, parallel computing, computing for environmental science, object-oriented programming, and programming in Java and web development. His research interests include high-performance computing, parallel and distributed algorithms, computational genomics, and data structures and compression.
Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Perez
Chinese Endowed Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Literature Leihua Weng
Weng has taught first-year Chinese, advanced Chinese, Women in China, 20th Century Urban China, and Chinese Films at K. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Pacific Lutheran University before joining the College.
Weng holds a bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University, a master’s degree from Peking University and a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. Her research interests have spanned the receptions of classical texts, modern and late imperial Chinese literature, and gender studies. She is currently engaged in research on late imperial Chinese literature and is working on a book about the reception of Plato in modern China.
Chinese Endowed Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Literature Leihua Weng
Fulbright is honoring a key individual at Kalamazoo College when it comes to referring students to the federal program’s international immersion opportunities.
Jessica Fowle ’00—K’s director of grants, fellowships and research—was selected to be part of the inaugural Fulbright Program Adviser (FPA) Mentors Cohort. As an FPA mentor, Fowle is one of 20 from around the country who will provide virtual training and information sessions, presentations at the Forum for Education Abroad, and personal advice to new Fulbright program advisers who are looking to structure applicant support and recruitment at their own institutions.
Fulbright is the federal government’s flagship for international exchange. It allows graduating seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to teach English, perform research or study abroad for one academic year.
“The mission of the Fulbright program makes it one of the competitive postgraduate fellowships that seeks a variety of people, without a minimum GPA for applicants, while laying some foundations to make access feasible,” Fowle said. “FPAs are the liaisons between the Fulbright program and the Fulbright student applicants.”
Fulbright grant recipients are chosen for their own merit and leadership potential, but there’s certainly data to back up the value of Fowle’s counsel to those who apply, making her insight and experiences valuable to professional counterparts who seek to do the same. For example, K has been a Fulbright U.S. Student Program Top Producer in six of the last seven years; the College had a total of 11 representatives abroad this year; 12 current applicants are semifinalists for awards that will be announced this spring and summer; and K has been the only college in Michigan to earn Top Producer distinction in the bachelor’s institution category in the past two years.
“I’m a lover of storytelling and I get to do that with students, alumni and faculty on their applications for grants and applications for fellowships like Fulbright,” she said. “They reflect on what they want from the opportunity, and I help foster some reflection that strategically highlights what pieces of their stories are the most compelling.
“I love the opportunity to transfer my experience working with students into a different format of the story of Fulbright. It’s really exciting to have a seat at the table and meet the folks at the Fulbright Program who are thinking about what they want to do on the national level. We’re asking, ‘What’s the story of Fulbright?’ and ‘How are we incorporating that story to keep federal funding and help FPAs understand their institution’s storytelling?’ It’s fun for me.”
Kalamazoo College Director of Grants, Fellowships and Research Jessica Fowle ’00 is one of 20 professionals from around the country who will provide virtual training and information sessions, presentations at the Forum for Education Abroad, and advice to new Fulbright program advisers at other institutions.
Fowle (front row, fourth from right) is grateful for an opportunity to network with her fellow Fulbright Program advisers.
The fact that Fowle is an office of one at K makes connecting with colleagues in addition to Fulbright officials appealing, and she appreciates the recognition this opportunity presents, as mentors have reputations for successful program growth.
“I like building things, so the opportunity to help other FPAs build a successful program is intriguing,” Fowle said. “I’m kind of the ‘small liberal arts college’ representative. There are folks from HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and community colleges. They want Fulbright grantees to represent all of America. Historically, as with many selective fellowships, selectees primarily are white students from the coasts, so they want to expand the applicant pool to include all of the country’s identity and geographic representation.”
Fowle has been part of K’s staff in various roles for more than 20 years—nearly five as director of grants, fellowships and research—and the advice she has to offer students is applicable to any post-college experience they wish to pursue.
“The universal quality of each Fulbright experience is this genuine desire and curiosity about a new culture and community, so it’s important to pursue opportunities in college that build those skills of getting to know a new community and understanding cultural dynamics,” Fowle said. “For our K students, that shows up by taking full advantage of things like the Center for Civic Engagement and the interdisciplinary components of K’s curriculum. My advice would be that they dig into how the topics that come up in language classes can intersect with issues that come up in other academic departments. They should see how their peers major in a million different things while taking advantage of study abroad, study away and Senior Integrated Projects. Build that curiosity, that critical thinking and the flexibility to be uncomfortable, because those are things that not only the Fulbright program looks for, but employers, as well.”
A longtime Kalamazoo College professor with connections around the world is being honored by five alumni from the Class of 2009 with a fund in his name that will help support a field of study for years to come.
Péter Erdi was hired as the Henry Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies in 2002 when the College received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. K’s efforts to attain the grant were driven by a small but vocal group of students who were mathematically skilled and interested in applying their skills to social problems through quantitative models. Ever since, Erdi has influenced many deeply curious alumni, including Brad Flaugher, Jerrod Howlett, Trevor Jones, Elliot Paquette and Griffin Drutchas, who are the five benefactors initiating the Interdisciplinary Fund for Complex Systems Studies in Erdi’s name.
Flaugher, who works in software development for startup companies, double majored in computer science and economics at K. He met Erdi in his first year on campus when he took Computational Neuroscience—a study of the mathematical models, computational algorithms and simulation methods that contribute to an understanding of neural mechanisms—before taking all the classes Erdi offered.
“There were so few of us in his classes—I think in my year we had only three or four computer science majors—that he took all of us under his wing,” Flaugher said. “He got us jobs in his lab with funding. All of us except Jerrod had gone to Hungary to work with him at his lab in Budapest. All of us were studying artificial intelligence back in 2006 and 2007, which was amazing. We were super close to him. He wrote all of us recommendation letters for graduate school. He did everything he could for us and taught us the hottest topic in the world 10 years before we needed it.”
Flaugher was attending an event in Philadelphia last March when President Jorge G. Gonzalez shared examples of how alumni were endowing funds in honor of their favorite or most influential professors. That led Flaugher to rally support from his classmates and recognize Erdi in complex systems studies.
“I talk to Dr. Erdi pretty regularly and I want to keep the interdisciplinary spirit of what he does alive,” Flaugher said. “I think it’s a great fit for a liberal arts institution, and when I was at K, I got not only job skills thanks to him, I got jobs-of-the-future skills.”
Henry Luce Professor of Complex Systems Péter Erdi presented at the Brain Bar, a technology and music conference in Budapest, while wearing a T-shirt that says “OK, Boomer” as a way to connect with a younger audience. He is being honored by five alumni from the Class of 2009 with a fund for Kalamazoo College in his name.
Erdi receives applause from Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez while presenting his lecture for receiving the 2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship.
Erdi received the 2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship, the highest award bestowed by K’s faculty, which honors the recipient’s contributions in creative work, research and publication. He has dozens of publications from his time at K, including two books since 2019, Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play and Repair: When and How to Improve Broken Objects, Ourselves and Our Society, which have received international acclaim. He also recently finished another book due out soon, Feedback Control: How to Destroy or Save the World and has served the University of Michigan as a visiting professor and scholar.
Complex systems studies can be described as an examination of how a system’s parts contribute to its collective behaviors, and how the system interacts and forms relationships with its environment. Erdi added that complex systems theory finds connections among seemingly very different phenomena. For example:
The onset of epilepsy, an earthquake eruption and a stock market crash are different occurrences, but all three are abrupt, extreme events. Complex systems theory looks at the predictability of these events, and interestingly, there are algorithms for predicting the probability of earthquakes that also can be adopted by brokers to estimate stock prices.
When we look at the spreading of viruses, ideas and opinions, we can examine all three through similar mathematical models.
Network theory offers methods that can help us understand the structure and dynamics of topics as varied as the human brain, interacting social groups, food chains in specific ecosystems, financial networks and more.
With a program such as complex systems studies being rare at a small college, it has been difficult to efficiently increase its offerings over the years; Erdi remains the program’s sole representative at K despite its interdisciplinary nature, with applications in fields such as physics, computer science and psychology. The fund in Erdi’s name, however—thanks to Flaugher, Drutchas, Jones, Howlett and Paquette getting it off the ground—will ensure the professor’s legacy lives on after his retirement.
Despite the deeply analytical nature of his field, Erdi is also known for his sense of humor. For example, in September 2022, when he spoke at the Brain Bar, a technology and music conference in Budapest, he donned a red T-shirt with the words “OK, Boomer” on it while presenting to and connecting with a young audience. Also, when he was recently asked how he would like to be remembered at K in years after his retirement, he said: “Péter was an interesting character on the campus with his terrible ‘Hunglish’ accent. It looks like he managed to motivate some students.”
In all sincerity, however, Erdi was grateful to hear from Flaugher and his fellow alumni regarding the Interdisciplinary Fund for Complex Systems Studies.
“I knew that I had influenced several students intellectually,” he said. “Maybe five per year is a good estimation, so about a hundred may positively remember my name when they reflect on their college education. Still, the mail from Brad, and then the correspondence with Elliot, Griffin, Jerrod and Trevor, and the establishment of the Fund were wonderful surprises, and I am humbled to have this Fund while I am still active.”
Kalamazoo College Associate Professor of English Ryan Fong recently appeared on a New Zealand reality TV show titled The Casketeers, which focuses on Māori funeral directors Francis and Kaiora Tipene, who combine good humor with care and respect as they help Māori and Pasifika families cope with loss.
That appearance might surprise some. But to know Fong’s scholarship is to know why it makes perfect sense. Over the past several years, he has been awarded a series of grants that have allowed him to thoughtfully and respectfully perform in-person research regarding Indigenous cultures, including the Māori, across the British empire and French Polynesia, for a book he expects to release in 2025.
The research developed out of a growing understanding of the limits of his primary educational training in 19th century British literature.
“The sparks for this project came during my time at K and with the relationships I’ve had with people like Reid Gomez, the founding director of our Critical Ethnic Studies program,” Fong said while also mentioning current colleagues such as Professor of English Amelia Katanski ’92. “In my conversations with them, I realized that in order to understand the British empire, I needed to understand more than the colonizer’s perspective. Colonialism wasn’t completely victorious in erasing Indigenous people and their culture, as evidenced by the fact that they still survive today, so in the last seven years, I’ve essentially done another Ph.D. worth of research about the sites and communities I am studying.”
New Zealand was one stop last year and the TV show was a small part of it. Fong binged the first two seasons of The Casketeers on Netflix before traveling to partially fulfill an Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership fellowship. He had also emailed the show’s producers in advance, asking for permission to respectfully visit the outside grounds, and to his surprise, he and his husband were invited inside after stopping by.
“In addition to reading books and visiting archives, part of my research is engaging with contemporary culture like The Casketeers,” Fong said. “The show graciously shares so much about Māori culture, and I learned a ton about their tikanga, or traditions, and their language while watching it. They were very impressed that I knew and used so many Māori words in our conversation, and it was a bridge for me to share some of my family’s Chinese traditions with them.”
Also in New Zealand, Fong visited many of the sites significant to Apirina Ngata, a prominent Māori statesman and cultural advocate who served in the country’s parliament. In 1892, Ngata became the first known Māori person to publish a poem in English while he was an undergrad at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, where he was among the first of its Māori graduates.
Ngata was a member of Ngāti Porou, an iwi—or Indigenous Māori tribe—from the Eastern Cape region, or Tairāwhiti, of New Zealand, or Aotearoa. While in the country, Fong visited Maunga Hikurangi, which is the sacred mountain of Ngāti Porou. As part of an iwi-led tour that takes visitors to the highest point of the mountain at sunrise, Fong was able see one of the first places where the sun touches land on each new day.
For the new millennium, the Ngāti Porou community commissioned carvings for a site on the mountain about Māui, a prominent demigod who appears across the Pacific. One of the iwi’s creation stories involves Māui fishing up the islands of Aotearoa with Maunga Hikurangi being the first bit of land that appeared above the ocean’s surface. Indeed, the North Island actually resembles the shape of a sting ray from an aerial view. The island begins with the mouth at the bottom, proceeding to wings and the tip of a tail going north. Many Māori people will commonly identify their iwi homelands based on where it is on the fish, such as on the tail, the mouth or the eye.
“Being able to physically be on Maunga Hikurangi was more important to me than going to find documents in an archive or see objects in a museum,” Fong said. “I organized my trip to better understand where Ngata is from, which includes everything about the land and the waters that have been so important to him and his people. I was privileged to hear stories directly from Ngata’s present-day kin and to directly witness their deep relationship with their Maunga. I wanted to connect with his community and place not just my mind but in my heart, in order to fully respect their stories and traditions in my own writing and research.”
New Zealand, however, was just one of Fong’s stops around the world for his book research, which started in 2016. His final stop was French Polynesia in January, which is considered by many Māori to be their ancient homeland. Previously, he visited places such as Ontario to research the Haudenosaunee people, southwest Australia to examine the Noongar people, and South Africa to learn about the Khoe-San culture.
“As any academic will tell you, what you quickly realize in any project is how much you don’t know,” Fong said. “There’s still a lot I don’t know, but being able to write responsibly about each of these cultures has been a long process of training myself in the scholarship, doing the reading, and building conversations with community members through the travel I’ve done. All of those things were very important to me.”
In 2021, Fong was one of four scholars from around the U.S. who founded Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom, a digital humanities project that began reimagining how to teach Victorian studies with a positive, race-conscious lens. And ultimately, he hopes his book project and research will hold similar potential for his classrooms and students.
“I was intensely moved by how graciously I was received when I traveled,” he said. “I knew I was going only for a short time as a tourist and that comes with lot of baggage and issues. I went in with humble expectations, recognizing that whatever people were willing to share with me would be a gift. But people opened their hearts after seeing the intellectual and, more importantly, heart work that I had done before arriving. My efforts said, ‘I respect your history and culture.’ That work is what informs my teaching and what I wanted to bring back home, not only for my research, but for my students.”
A Q-and-A with Ryan Fong
Interview conducted with Social Media Ambassador Blagoja Naskovski ’24.
Question: What is your favorite part of being a professor at K?
Answer: There are actually very few places in the world that we set aside for people to come together to explore questions in a sustained and deliberate way. Every day I go into a classroom, I have the privilege of doing just that with students. We get to be with one another, talk about readings and learn from one another. It’s an all-too-rare and precious experience.
Q: You teach courses that address 19th century British literature, literature by East Asian emigrants around the world, literary theory, and women, gender and sexuality. Do you have a specific course that you really enjoy teaching and why?
A: This past fall, I had the incredible experience of teaching a class on Indigenous water stories from the Great Lakes and the Pacific. I was able to draw a lot on my experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand and connect them with literature by Anishinaabe writers here in Michigan and the Great Lakes region. Since this class was paired with Bela Agosa’s sophomore seminar Becoming Kin, which was all about Indigenous diplomacy and poetry, we were able to share students and link conversations between our classes in powerful ways, which culminated in a visit to the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi tribal grounds with artist and community leader Jason Wesaw. It was a transformative experience for us all.
Q: How would you describe your students?
A: I really appreciate how passionate and curious K students can be, and how willing they are to connect their classroom experiences with their bigger questions about the world.
Q: Do you see interest among K students in learning more about Indigenous communities through literature?
A: Little by little, yes. And thankfully, it’s not just in my classes. Amelia Katanski has been teaching about these topics at K for many years, and Cyndy Weyandt-Garcia been offering some amazing new classes more recently as well. Learning more about Indigenous history, literature and activism connects with so many issues that are pressing and urgent today—including climate change, political sovereignty and addressing the violence of colonialism around the world.
Q: What would you suggest to students who would like to major in English?
Do it! My fellow professors in English and I all want to give you the tools to ask big questions about the world and to explore ways of making it better and more just. We do that by reading from an array of cultural and historical perspectives and by teaching you how to create and express yourself with your own words. We have alumni who have used this training to find meaningful work in many different arenas, from teaching to journalism to non-profit jobs to publishing to starting their own businesses.
Associate Professor of English Ryan Fong (second from right) and his husband, Eric (second from left), visit the cast and set of the reality TV show, “The Casketeers.”
Fong stands next to a bust of Apirina Ngata, a statesman and cultural advocate.
The Indigenous Ngāti Porou community commissioned carvings for a site at the sacred mountain of Maunga Hikurangi to mark the millennium.
This picture, taken at one of the highest points at the Maunga Hikurangi on the Eastern Cape of New Zealand, shows one of the first points where the sun rises on a new day.
This site shows where the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, or Treaty of Waitangi, was signed between the Indigenous iwi of the North and the British crown. Each February 6, waka—or canoes—like this one are sailed on the bay to mark the treaty’s anniversary.
Tāne Mahuta, or God of the Forest, is the tallest Kauri tree in the Waipoua Forest. It measures 148 feet tall and 50 feet around. It’s between 1,500 and 2,500 years old. Toward the top left, smaller fallen trees have grown into it.
Over the past 35 years, the business and economics department at K has grown from one part-time business professor to a popular business major with several full-time faculty.
One constant over that time has been Professor Timothy Moffit ’80. Moffit took on that part-time business professor role in 1989 as a one-year sabbatical replacement, and other than a couple short breaks in the first few years, he has been teaching students at K ever since.
As Moffit approaches retirement this spring, a group of alumni—both classmates and students of Moffit’s—have established a scholarship in his honor. Given to students for the first time in the 2023–24 academic year, the Dr. Timothy Moffit ’80 Endowed Scholarship in Business has already raised $175,000 from a small group of donors. The goal is to increase that total to at least $300,000, which will provide $15,000 to scholarship recipients majoring in economics and business every year, forever.
The honor speaks to Moffit’s commitment to the classroom and his students, to business within the framework of the liberal arts, and to his department and the College as a whole.
Love of learning has kept Moffit in the classroom for 35 years.
“That’s what brought me to K, and that’s what’s kept me at K,” Moffit said. “As a teacher, you never stop learning, and I tell my students that you never really learn a subject until you teach it. I find that enchanting because I love learning.”
Moffit’s belief—supported by what he hears from former students—is that his classroom has been rigorous, demanding, and full of experiences and applications that bring meaning to theory.
“Many students who go to grad school say, ‘Boy, your classes are tougher than my grad school classes.’ The rigor and the toughness are not for the sake of being tough. It’s out of excitement for the material. I want to learn—let’s learn!—so I’m fairly demanding in terms of what we learn and how we learn. I think for a lot of students, it’s incredibly rewarding. Once they’ve graduated from K, they’re like, ‘Wow, in the workplace, I really do know how to do these things. I can accept this challenge, because I was beat up by Moffit,’” Moffit said with a laugh.
As Professor Timothy Moffit approaches retirement this spring, some alumni have established a scholarship in his honor.
Donate to the Moffit Endowed Scholarship in Business
Moffit’s approach to teaching and continued influence inspired Gary Lewis ’00 to help fund the business scholarship. Lewis is founder and managing partner of Aquila Equity Partners, and Moffit serves as an advisor to the company.
“For so many of us, Dr. Moffit helped to foster an unmatched passion for business, accounting and finance,” Lewis said. “Not only did he provide us with a rigorous academic foundation, but he also taught us the tenacity, big-picture thinking and real-world pragmatism which is so critical for being successful.”
Aaron Ries ’06, another contributor to the scholarship fund, applied lessons learned from Moffit’s classes in his first post-K job with the investment banking company Jefferies. Today, as the company’s co-head of leveraged loan sales and trading, Ries credits Moffit for having played a significant role in his life.
“Tim had an outsized positive impact on my mindset, approach, education, and as a result, my career,” Ries said. “And he did it one lesson, one interaction, one test at a time. His energy and enthusiasm are infectious. That type of compounding at the individual level, at first daily, then over years, and now decades, is so valuable.”
Jeremy Ardshahi ’25, a business major with a political science minor, took two accounting classes with Moffit before becoming one of the first recipients of the scholarship.
“The classes were not easy, but I really liked Dr. Moffit as a teacher,” Ardshahi said. “When we would get stressed out about the work, he would take us off topic a bit, make us laugh, and then bring us back on topic, and that worked well to keep the class learning. The course work is definitely not easy, but it’s rewarding, and he makes it a lot more fun than it could be.”
As a student, Moffit loved the liberal arts experience, taking many English classes in addition to religion, philosophy and history. (He met his wife, Kimberley Yull Moffit ’82, when she tutored him in French.) As a professor, he appreciates how business pulls from many disciplines, including communication, psychology, mathematics, history and philosophy.
“I took a lot of different types of classes, and I have used them extensively, both in my business career and also in my teaching of business,” Moffit said. “I try to integrate all of these because they’re important in business. You need to bring all those skill sets into play to be effective.”
Moffit is proud of how the business department has grown and flourished during his tenure, and he is loyal to the school itself. When he first came to K as a transfer student, Moffit “fell in love with the school immediately, and I have been in love with it ever since. That’s why I came back, because I had such great memories of learning and the community.
“The campus is lovely, the study abroad makes this place special, and the students are unique. They have this entrepreneurial flair about them, whatever discipline they may be interested in. That is true throughout the ages.”
Moffit felt a calling to teach when he was young, and taught Sunday School classes in high school and piano lessons in college. After graduating from K, he taught English in Japan for two years, earned an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College, and worked in investment banking for about six years before taking on his first teaching position at K.
“Teaching is my passion, business is my profession, and I marry the two in the classroom,” Moffit said. Yet after 35 years, it’s “just time” to retire, Moffit said. “I have a lot going on and a lot of outside interests.”
He owns three local businesses with his son—Kalamazoo Kettle Corn, Heilman’s Nuts & Confections and a medical supply company. He also sits on the board of Delta Dental as well as other boards.
“I have a new grandson; I’m a granddad,” Moffit said. “There are just so many things I want to do. I want to go fishing and hunting and take my grandson fishing. I’ve done this for a long time, I think I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish, and I’m ready to move on.
“I’ll miss the classroom for sure, but this doesn’t mean I’ll stop teaching.”
Moffit also intends to do what he can to help make the scholarship in his name successful.
“I was just a poor dirt farmer kid,” he said. “The school really supported me and helped me get through. I didn’t have the money to go here, but they found a way for me, and I would like to help create that same opportunity for others. I have a soft spot in my heart for those first-generation students, or the kids from these little schools that don’t have educational opportunities, let alone life opportunities like traveling abroad and seeing the bigger world. If this scholarship in any way can help students who need help to have that experience, that would be phenomenal.”
“I would 100 percent need to have a job if I didn’t receive the scholarship,” Ardshahi said. “If I were working and playing sports and going to class, I would have a lot more stress in my life. Knowing that the fund is dedicated to someone who has taught me and is still teaching at the school makes it more personal, too.”
In this way, Moffit’s commitment to teaching, to business and the liberal arts, to K and its students, will continue long after his upcoming retirement.
“This scholarship is a well-deserved and fitting tribute for someone who has given so much to the K community and deeply impacted numerous K students’ lives over the last 30-plus years,” Lewis said. “I’m very grateful for his life-long mentorship and wish him and his family nothing but the best in their next chapter.”
Moffit is excited about what the scholarship could do for students at K.
“It’s a huge honor, of course, that students would establish this in my name,” Moffit said. “Usually, you do that when someone dies. I’m not there yet. I’m still teaching, even. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to make this a substantial scholarship for students who want to study business, and that would be great. I want it to be about students and outcomes. It’s not about me.”
Quantitative economics, which is now declarable, follows most of the curriculum for a standard economics major, but requires two additional math courses, Integral Calculus and Linear Algebra, and two new additional quantitative economics courses, Econometrics and Game Theory, without needing more time to graduate. Econometrics is a computer lab-based theory course that delves into economic questions and issues using statistical methods. Game Theory applies strategic decision making and microeconomics to solve real-world individual and business problems, using mathematical tools.
The adjustments for the new program might seem subtle to some. However, Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics Patrik Hultberg said quantitative economics will better prepare students who are interested in pursuing academic programs beyond K and more technical career paths, such as data analytics. Overall, it will examine economic issues, explore theories and predict future conditions using statistics and mathematical models while emphasizing analytical skills.
Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics Patrik Hultberg said that quantitative economics will be an excellent option for students who are interested in pursuing academic programs beyond K and technical career paths such as data analytics.
“What we have today is two groups of students,” Hultberg said. “Some are perfectly happy with an economics major as it is. Those are students who might be interested in going to law school, public policy fields or similar jobs. But we also have a subset of students—a greater number than in the past—who might double major in economics and mathematics or computer science. The new major will give students interested in quantitative economics—and not upper-level math courses, for example—a chance not to double major and thus open up their schedules so they can take other important courses, like courses that teach how to communicate effectively.”
Hultberg said that over the past few months, he has received emails from students who are thrilled about the new major option. The opportunity should be especially enticing for international students as the Department of Homeland Security defines quantitative economics as a STEM program. That means the major can help international students extend their Optional Practical Training (OPT) by up to three years and stay longer in the U.S. by pursuing practical training or temporary jobs while gaining valuable work experience through their F-1 student visas.
“I’m excited for it and we have some students who are super excited for it,” Hultberg said. “If economics is your true passion, you just want to have options that support that. And if prospective students are interested in quantitative fields and come to K, they will be well-prepared to go to graduate school, whether that’s a master’s in finance or a Ph.D. in economics, and they will be well prepared for jobs in quantitative fields.”
For more information about the quantitative economics major, contact Hultberg at Patrik.Hultberg@kzoo.edu.
A global nonprofit association of more than 10,000 members dedicated to international education and exchange recognized Kalamazoo College Center for International Programs (CIP) Executive Director Margaret Wiedenhoeft by naming her its 2023 conference chair.
Coinciding with the organization’s 75th anniversary, the NAFSA: Association of International Educators Conference and Expo—held May 30–June 2 in Washington, D.C.—united its community to reflect, celebrate, inspire and create through shared lessons, diverse perspectives and innovative approaches; explore trends in professional development and career advancement; and emphasize the need for inclusive global communities in higher education.
As the NAFSA conference chair, Wiedenhoeft worked with the annual conference committee to develop a call for proposals, recruit reviewers for those proposals, and decide who was invited to present, while crafting the conference theme, brainstorming the kinds of sessions they wanted, and reaching out to promote the gathering to prospective first-time attendees.
“I had never been a part of a conference that had 10,000 attendees,” Wiedenhoeft said. “It was exciting and an interesting behind-the-scenes look. One thing I was surprised about was that as the conference chair, I was asked to be in a lot of pictures with many delegations from outside the United States. It was a lot of fun and a great way to get to know people and hear about why they traveled. It was a great way to build relationships.”
Ultimately, much of the event focused on NAFSA’s milestone anniversary and how the world continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic through issues such as international student recruitment, VISA accessibility, and the funding available for first-generation students who want to study abroad.
“There was a lot of discussion about the kinds of advocacy work we can do at the national and state levels to help decision makers and institutions understand the impact that funding international education initiatives can have beyond our campuses,” Wiedenhoeft said. “We also discussed the political climate, especially with certain states censoring DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives and censuring students that come from certain countries, so we can be ready to respond and advocate.”
Kalamazoo College Center for International Programs Executive Director Margaret Wiedenhoeft (left) meets Indiana University’s Jenny Bowen at the NAFSA: Association of International Educators Conference and Expo in Washington, D.C. Wiedenhoeft served as the conference chair in 2023. Bowen will serve in the same role in 2024.
In a separate opportunity, Wiedenhoeft also presented at a Michigan Independent Colleges and Universities (MICU) conference in October to address how institutions think about security for students when they travel off campus, particularly to environments or places not geographically connected to it. The gathering wasn’t only for international educators, but for all educators to think about safety.
“It was a great conversation,” she said. “It reminded me that there are resources on our own campus and folks who think about student safety all the time with safety being a goal for all of us. I’m always happy to share what I’ve learned and to contextualize it for folks who may be thinking about starting programs or thinking about particular risks that they’re concerned about in certain places. I always say the riskiest place is ignorance, so it’s important to help folks know what they need to understand about where students go to live and study.”
Wiedenhoeft began working for K in 2000 and has served as the CIP’s executive director since 2017. In that department, she structures and oversees its operations, policies and practices including study abroad, domestic study away and international student support while collaborating with partners overseas, students, and faculty to ensure programs are financially accessible, sustainable, and connected to life and study at K.
She applauds K administrators, students, faculty and staff for making that work possible as the College has become a standard bearer for study abroad, international education and international programs. K offers 53 study abroad opportunities that vary from one to three terms in 33 countries.
“I could not do this work without the support of the Provost and President, and from my wonderful colleagues in the CIP—Sally, Asia, Alayna, Abosede, NaShera, Colin and Lizbeth,” Wiedenhoeft said. “I will show up anywhere and everywhere to promote Kalamazoo College.”
Kalamazoo College’s faculty and staff are dedicated to developing the strengths of every student, preparing them for lifelong learning, career readiness, intercultural understanding, social responsibility and leadership. Here are their top news stories of 2023 as determined by your clicks. If you missed it, you can find our top 10 stories of students at our website. Watch in the coming days for our top 10 alumni stories and stories from the College itself.
Associate Professor of Computer Science Pam Cutter will introduce the fundamental concepts and skills of accessible design and development to her Kalamazoo College courses thanks to the Teach Access Faculty Grants program.
Bringing together industry, education and disability advocacy organizations, the mission of Teach Access is to address the digital accessibility skills gap by equipping learners to build toward an inclusive world.
Associate Professor of Computer Science Pam Cutter will develop assignments, discussions and activities that promote accessibility skills for students in her first-year seminar, Exploring Technology for Accessibility.
As the College Singers director, Assistant Professor of Music Chris Ludwa has sought more performances in the community in recent years, and on March 2, the 30-student group had the opportunity to perform at the Ionia Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan.
College Singers Director and Assistant Professor of Music Chris Ludwa has made it a goal to perform at more sites in the community.
Professor of English Andy Mozina just couldn’t turn his attention away from a tragedy he first heard about seven years ago. Although the inescapable images were dreadful, they also seeded the plot that grew into Mozina’s latest work of fiction, Tandem.
The book centers on Mike Kovacs, an economics professor from Kalamazoo living in the West Main Hill neighborhood, who kills two college-age tandem bicyclists in an inebriated hit-and-run at the parking lot of Saugatuck Dunes State Park.
Kalamazoo College Professor of English Andy Mozina has authored a new book titled “Tandem,” which was released October 24.
Professor of English Amelia Katanski ’92 is working with faculty at the University of Wollongong to develop curriculum that will better prepare K students for study abroad there.
Professor of English Amelia Katanski ’92 has earned a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award sent her to Australia during the 2023–24 academic year.
One faculty member and one staff member earned two of the highest awards the College bestows on its employees in September. Rosemary K. Brown Professor of Computer Science Alyce Brady received the 2023–24 Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching, and Custodian Laura Weber was named the recipient of the W. Haydn Ambrose Prize for Extraordinary Service.
Laura Weber, a 10-year staff member in Facilities Management, received the Ambrose Prize, named after W. Haydn Ambrose from President Jorge G. Gonzalez.
K embarked on an exciting new partnership with Western Michigan University that allowed students from both institutions to gain powerful experiences in leadership and business strategy this year with Amy MacMillan, K’s L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business Management, playing a key role.
L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business Management Amy MacMillan helped manage a partnership allowing K and WMU students to collaborate through an immersive consulting experience at Sleeping Giant Capital’s downtown office.
Three faculty members from the music, German studies and French studies departments—Chris Ludwa, Kathryn Sederberg and Aurélie Chatton respectively—were awarded tenure along with a promotion to associate professor.
Then-Assistant Professor of French Aurélie Chatton was one of three K faculty members to earn tenure this year and a promotion to associate professor.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo used a K version of a Squishmallow she named Bippy as her lab’s mascot, and he helped her students gain opportunities in their field.
Arias-Rotondo’s reach on Twitter allowed chemists from all over the world to see Bippy’s pictures and learn about her and her students’ accomplishments.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo, known affectionately to her students as Dr. DAR with her lab students called DARlings, uses a K version of a Squishmallow named Bippy as her lab’s mascot.
Some students learned about religion through the ways of the Force this fall in a new Star Wars-themed class offered by Assistant Professor of Religion Sohini Pillai.
Paige Anderson ’25 wore Jedi robes and wielded a lightsaber for an Epic Epics presentation on “Revenge of the Sith.”
A National Science Foundation grant for almost $250,000 is boosting inclusivity and access to lab experiences in the Kalamazoo College Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo, known around campus as Dr. DAR, was awarded $249,972 under the foundation’s Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS). The LEAPS-MPS grant emphasizes helping pre-tenure faculty at institutions that do not traditionally receive significant amounts of NSF-MPS funding, including predominantly undergraduate institutions, as well as achieving excellence through diversity.
Arias-Rotondo will use the grant funding primarily to pay her student researchers—typically eight to 10 per term, known as DARlings—and to bring more research experiences into the classroom.
While the chemistry and biochemistry department is typically not able to pay students to work in the lab during the school year, “This grant lets me do that, so my students can work in the lab instead of having to take another job on or off campus,” Arias-Rotondo said. “That’s a great way to ensure that more people can have access to this experience, as opposed to only the people who have free time they can volunteer.”
The grant will also pay students who work in the lab over the summer (usually four or five), freeing up departmental and College funding that would normally pay those stipends.
“Not having to pay those four or five students through the provost’s office or the chemistry and biochemistry department means we will have money for other students to do research with us here in our department, or maybe in biology or physics, so that benefits not just my group, but the department and the College as a whole.”
The other primary focus of the grant is a re-design of the lab portion of the inorganic chemistry course CHEM 330.
“While we have some good lab courses here in our department where students get to learn a lot of techniques and a lot of concepts, many of those lab experiences are what we call canned experiments, meaning that they are not open ended,” Arias-Rotondo said. “You are making X compound, or you’re running Y experiment, and we know what you’re going to get in the end. We have some courses where we do more open-ended labs, which the students tend to enjoy more because there’s more of the unknown and problem solving. It’s very transformative because it shows you a different side of chemistry.”
Inspired by the work of colleagues in the department, particularly Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss, Arias-Rotondo has been able to use the grant to revamp the lab for CHEM 330, inorganic chemistry, to more closely resemble research.
“That’s really good for the students,” Arias-Rotondo said. “It’s more work, but it’s also more rewarding, because now they are doing things that are new, and they are making molecules that no one made before.”
Providing access to lab experiences for more students at K truly changes lives.
“It gives them the opportunity to see what research is really like,” Arias-Rotondo said. “It also gives them a challenge that is theirs. I’ve seen students who were very unsure of what to do—not because they are not good, but because they’ve never had the opportunity to prove themselves—and you give them this task. You support them, you tell them, ‘This is hard, but I trust that you can do it,’ and they rise to the challenge. It’s amazing to see the transformation in them. They learn a lot about chemistry. They learn a lot of techniques. They get a better idea of what a career in research could look like. And they learn a lot about themselves, about asking for help and working independently, but also working as part of a team, about troubleshooting, and they gain a lot of confidence.”
Working in a lab also increases students’ sense of belonging.
“They make friends,” Arias-Rotondo said. “They meet people within our department, further ahead or behind, depending on who they are. They meet more professors and students, and they feel more a part of the department, even before they declare their major. They’re like, ‘Oh, this is my place. These are my people.’ And it helps them see themselves as scientists.”
In addition to paying student researchers and improving lab coursework experiences, the grant is paying for supplies in Arias-Rotondo’s lab, where she and her DARlings work on making compounds that can absorb solar energy and turn it into electricity using manganese, a low-cost, low-toxicity alternative to the materials currently used in solar energy conversion, which tend to be rare, expensive and difficult to mine.
The grant will also provide a summer salary for Arias-Rotondo’s research, help fund travel for students to attend conferences and share their results, and potentially purchase or update small instruments for the lab.
Arias-Rotondo applied for the LEAPS-MPS grant in January 2023, with the help of Director of Grants, Fellowships and Research Jessica Fowle and colleagues in the chemistry department.
“Jess is amazing; I don’t think I could have done this without her,” Arias-Rotondo said. “I also had a lot of support from my department with writing, reading drafts, giving feedback.”
In August, she learned she had been awarded the grant, and it started Sept. 1. Arias-Rotondo has two years to spend the money, with an option to extend it to a third year if needed.
“It’s just under a quarter million,” Arias-Rotondo said. “Sometimes I can’t believe that anyone would trust me with that. I say this because a lot of times, I look around and think, ‘Who thought that I could do this?’ It’s a dream come true, and this grant is amazing, but it’s also like, ‘Wow, someone thought that I could do it.’
“A lot of times students don’t trust themselves. Imposter syndrome is a real thing, and students look at me and think, ‘Oh, she’s got it. Professors know what they’re doing.’ It’s important to me to let people know that’s not true. It’s not like one day your feelings of inadequacy just lift off, and now you feel so confident that everything is great. You keep having doubts. I care about letting them know that, so if they get to grad school, or they get their Ph.D., or whenever, and they still feel like they are faking it, they still feel like they are not good enough, they know that doesn’t mean that they are not good enough. That’s just the way our brains work. You can be great and still feel like you’re not. I keep talking about that because it’s important to normalize it.”
Experiences like those afforded by the LEAPS-MPS grant go a long way toward building students’ confidence in themselves.
“I’m really excited for all the things that this grant is doing for students,” Arias-Rotondo said. “It gives them a lot of opportunities. You can see how excited they are when they present posters, or when they talk about research with their friends, not just learning chemistry, but also self-confidence that they can do hard things. You can see the progression. It doesn’t matter how good they were when they started. At the end of it, they are so much tighter with each other, they have learned so much, and they are so much better.”
A grant from the National Science Foundation will help Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo pay students who work in her research lab, such as Maxwell Rhames ’25 (left) and Caelan Frazier ’23, pictured during the summer of 2022.
Arias-Rotondo took a holiday photo before the end of term with her fall 2023 student researchers, the first group to be paid for their school-year work in her lab.
Arias-Rotondo is pictured with her summer 2023 lab group, (from left) Maxwell Rhames ’25, Maddie Coffman ’24, Deepa Jha ’24, Arias-Rotondo, Sam Ewald ’24, Mirella Villani ’24 and Will Tocco ’26.
Arias-Rotondo is pictured with a 3D-printed version of one of the molecules her lab has made.
Arias-Rotondo is pictured at Commencement 2023 are graduating DARlings (from left) Shay Brown ’23, Chloe Lucci ’23, Arias-Rotondo, Mia Tucci ’23, Zekie Mulder ’23 and Caelan Frazier ’23.
