Category: Faculty & Staff

A Stories Story

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Child's drawing for "Tacos for Dragons"“Tacos for Dragons” is just one of the many books featured in filmmaker Danny Kim’s new documentary “The Stories They Tell.”

The saga of the unlikely pairing of dragons and tacos is the labor of two seemingly unlikely co-authors, one a Kalamazoo College student and the other a third grader at Woodward Elementary in Kalamazoo.

And yet such collaborations are unlikely no more, thanks to the Co-authorship Project, the subject of Kim’s 80-minute film and the heart of Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan’s developmental psychology class for the last 15 years. The Co-authorship Project gives K students the opportunity to create an original storybook with an elementary student in order to gain a deeper insight into child development. Tan’s developmental psychology class is one of many academic service-learning courses that are designed in collaboration with the College’s Center for Civic Engagement.

The documentary showcases the project from beginning to end, starting with the picking of partners and culminating in the various unique completed works. The film spans almost a decade and a half of story making, to which Kim had unique access. He and Tan are husband and wife.

Teacher working with a young studentTrue to its etymology, animation infuses both the class and the film. “The co-authorship project has made the developmental psychology class come to life,” said Tan,” awakening ideas with real world experience. The collaborations give my students something more than what they could get in books alone.” Likewise, it is truly Kim’s animation of the creativity in each story that makes this film leap to life.

“The documentary is really about relationships, learning, connecting, and imagination,” said Tan.

All of these qualities get at the heart of what the co-authorship project is for both the K students and the children.

“Imagination and creativity is a core part of the project,” said Tan. “One skill that children naturally possess is imagination and creativity.”

Kim added that the contact with college students could help to inspire elementary school aged partners to pursue higher education.

The film highlights how much each interaction with a child can help augment what a college student knows about child development and affect a life path.

The life’s work of at least two of Tan’s former students offers proof. After viewing a sneak preview of the film on campus in April, both women confirmed that the project directly influenced their decisions to pursue education as a career.

Rachelle (Tomac) Busman ’05 is a school psychologist in the Byron Center (Michigan) School District and Sally (Warner) Read ’08 is the Head of the Kazoo School, an independent school in Kalamazoo.

“I remember everything about the little girl I worked with,” said Busman.

Kim’s film captures the value (and magic) of the project for both K students and Woodward students, as well as the idea’s birth and maturation in his wife’s developmental psychology class. Kim said he hopes the documentary inspires similar projects elsewhere.

“It would be wonderful if somebody saw it and said maybe we could start something like this,” said Kim.

Although the film is not yet released to the public, Kim does plan to have a formal showing once final edits have been made.

Text by Matt Munoz ’14; photo by Danny Kim; art by Pennilane Mara

Max Cherem ’04 appointed as Marlene Crandell Francis Assistant Professor of Philosophy

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Kalamazoo College alumnus Max Cherem
Max Cherem ’04

Max Cherem ’04, assistant professor of philosophy, has been appointed as the Marlene Crandell Francis Assistant Professor of Philosophy beginning July 1, 2015 and running through June 30, 2018. This endowed chair is designated for “an entry-level teacher-scholar with demonstrated achievement and exceptional promise.”

Max is a K graduate, class of 2004, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Nepal the following year. He began his tenure track appointment at K in 2011 and completed his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2012. His paper “Refugee Rights: Against an Expanded Refugee Definition and Unilateral Protection Elsewhere Policies,” was recently accepted for publication in the highly regarded Journal of Political Philosophy.

Max was one of four persons in the country honored with the prestigious Humanities Writ Large Visiting Faculty Fellowship for the 2015-16 academic year. He will spend the year at Duke University working in the philosophy department and in the Kenan Institute for Ethics. His work focuses on the ethical challenges created by “externalized” state border controls: policies that try to prevent migrant arrival by projecting or outsourcing a nation’s authority over migration beyond its regular territorial borders. While he is at Duke, Max will work on two research projects about the due process standards appropriate for refugee status adjudications and the ethical issues raised by partnerships that delegate or coordinate authority. He also plans on volunteering with the refugee community in Durham area so as to learn about resettlement from their perspective. At K, Max’s teaching and research focuses on social and political philosophy, ethics and biomedical ethics, critical social theory, and philosophy of law.

Kalamazoo College alumna Marlene Crandell Francis
Marlene Crandell Francis ’58

Marlene Crandell Francis graduated from K in 1958 with a B.A. in English. She earned an M.A. in that subject from the University of Akron and taught there for 20 years. Returning to Michigan, she earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration at the University of Michigan. Marlene joined the Kalamazoo College board of trustees in 1980 and served on its executive committee and as secretary of the board before being elected an emerita trustee in 1998. She is the author of “A Fellowship in Learning: Kalamazoo College, 1833 – 2008,” published on the 175th anniversary of the College’s founding. Marlene and her husband, Arthur, live in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Research Award Winner

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The Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA)has awarded Kalamazoo College’s Lindsay O’Donohue, director of prospect development and donor relations, with the 2015 Margaret Fuhry Grant. The award is given to a prospect development practitioner based on her leadership, mentorship, volunteerism, and dedication to the profession. At K, Lindsay leads a team responsible for implementing a robust prospect development program designed to inform and strengthen fundraising activity. She is a member of the Advancement office’s senior management team and has played a key support role in The Campaign for Kalamazoo College, which is closing in on its $125 million goal. Before she came to K, Lindsay spent six years in political fundraising, four of those years as the compliance director for former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm. Lindsay is an active member of APRA-Michigan and served on the chapter’s Board of Directors from 2012-2014. She is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a degree in political science. In July she will attend the APRA Annual International Conference in New Orleans to accept the award.

Viewbook Goes Virtual

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digital viewbook screenshotOne of Kalamazoo College’s most important tools for attracting prospective students and applications just got a lot more effective, according to Director of Admission David Anderson.

K’s award-winning print viewbook is now virtual and will soon go viral—at least that’s the hope. The new digital viewbook REPLACES its print predecessor.

It takes a lot of courage to walk away from that adjective “award-winning.” Why the change? “As excellent as it was, prospects weren’t reading our viewbook,” said Anderson. (It’s a brave new world out there.) “We wanted to share the ethos and the value of a K education where our prospects ’live,’ so to speak. And that place is the digital universe, where they engage with colleges and universities and with each other.”

Of course, K is one of countless denizens of the digital realm. So “we need to be at the forefront, at the cutting edge of this work,” added Anderson. K’s digital viewbook delivers edginess, in five ways: paralax animation; gamification; extensive use of Go-Pro video; Prezi-like mosaic technology; and responsive design.

K’s digital viewbook visitor’s perspective opens on outer space, zooms across the country, and alights at Kalamazoo College. “That staggered, three-dimensional movement is paralax animation,” explained Anderson. And it works.

digital viewbook character choice screen
K’s digital viewbook reader/explorers can take the journey as Buzz or as themselves—-an animated figure with a pasted “selfie.”

Once “landed” at K, the viewbook visitor experiences gamification, “a visual digital tool that makes progression through the viewbook (and its introduction to the K experience) active,” said Anderson.

That “physical” activity well aligns with the predominance of Go-Pro video sequences. ’Go-Pro is a fish-eye (wide angle), high definition approach to videography originally used by surfers and race car drivers,” said Anderson. “It captures active life as it happens,” a reality very fitting for a place like K, which is far less an adjective and far more a verb, a muscular one at that.

Not only muscular, but also wide-ranging. “We sent out Go-Pro cameras with students all over the place,” said Anderson. In K’s case, that means across the globe to capture study abroad experiences. One campus Go-Pro was even mounted on a Quadra-copter.

The visit to the digital viewbook ends with the “Prezi-like mosaic,” a collage of images that open to still photos and more videos that convey the life of a K education. Work continues on raising the mosaic’s ratio of videos to stills and to complete photo labeling where needed. But even now, all images are animate with K living. Action is paramount—throughout the viewbook visitors are called on to apply, and at the end of the journey, they can to that as well as ask for information and schedule a visit.

The fifth cutting-edge element, responsive design, often presented the most challenging technical difficulties. “Responsive design means the viewbook works on any time of device (phone, tablet, computer) in any browser,” said Anderson. “That wasn’t easy.”

The College conceived the digital viewbook’s creative concept and then partnered with higher ed marketing company TWG+ for the execution. The project took 12 months. Anderson worked closely with K’s Director of Publications Lisa Darling. His admission teammate Rudi Goddard ’13 served as the project’s unofficial chief cinematographer. Her fellow admission colleague Andrew Grayson ’10 piloted the Quadra-copter.

The department of admission launches the tool to prospective students this week, but it’s already done some testing with admitted students.

“During spring’s VISIT THE ZOO days we shared the viewbook with the visitors,” said Anderson. He admits the comparison isn’t exactly apples-to-apples; admitted students by virtue of that status likely have more interest in K than a “cold” prospect. Nevertheless, the 56 percent open rate was excellent, even with such a predisposed group.

“If we get a rate close to that with new (prospective students), we will be ecstatic,” said Anderson.

What about that walking away from an award-winning print publication? Well, it’s a lot less intimidating now that the digital viewbook can boast its own honors. In fact, the digital viewbook has won two gold-level awards sponsored by the Higher Education Marketing Report. Before it was launched, even. Before its technical de-bugging was complete! The awards are called the Educational Digital Marketing Awards, and we think a good nickname would be THE EDGIES. K has two (for best online publication, and for interactivity)!

The (Busy) Life of a Writer

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Kalamazoo College Writer-in-Residence Diane SeussThe New Yorker magazine has accepted for publication a poem by Kalamazoo College Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss ’78. The poem is expected to appear in the fall. Many other good things happening relative to Di’s writing.

Her third book of poems, Four-Legged Girl, comes out in early October from Graywolf Press, arguably the best poetry press in the country

She also recently finished a draft of her fourth collection, which will likely come out from Graywolf 2018. “It’s a departure for me–titled Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl–and all based on the aesthetics of early still life painting,” wrote Di. “I’ll be revising that manuscript this summer and working on some new stuff. Poems from Two Dead Peacocks are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and (yes) the New Yorker. I also have new poems coming out in Blackbird this spring and various other magazines.”

Di had a residency last summer at Hedgebrook, a retreat space for women writers on Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington State in Puget Sound. There she wrote a good portion of Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. This summer she will be in residency at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire this coming summer to continue working on the fourth collection and generate new material for what she hopes “will be something like a memoir,” she wrote. “I believe MacDowell is the oldest artists residency in the country. It has hosted James Baldwin, Thornton Wilder, Leonard Bernstein, Willa Cather, Audre Lorde, and many more contemporary artists. I’m excited to be in a space where there are visual artists, musicians, and writers all in our own studios making new work.”

Di writes brief nonfiction as well as poetry. She recently learned she won Quarter After Eight magazine’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, and she will have another piece of nonfiction published in Brevity in the fall.

Breathless yet? Not Di. This month she will moderate a panel at the Associated Writing Programs National Conference in Minneapolis. The panel includes Di, poet Adrian Blevins, fiction/nonfiction writer Claire Evans, and fiction writer Bonnie Jo Campbell. It’s called “Hick Lit: Women Writing from the Circumference.”

Di will read her work at Sarah Lawrence College in June, and at Colby College in the fall.

K’s 3 of 300

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Rina Fujiwara
Rina Fujiwara

Three Kalamazoo College chemistry majors presented at the 2015 Experimental Biology meeting, a joint meeting of six different societies including the American Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) as well as societies for physiology, nutrition, pharmacology, pathology, and anatomy. More than 15,000 scientists attended the meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

Rina Fujiwara ’15, Sarah Glass ’17, and Victoria Osorio ’16 shared results of the research they did in collaboration with Professor of Chemistry Laura Furge. Their presentations were part of both the Undergraduate Poster Competition and as part of the regular scientific session for ASBMB. Some 300 undergraduate posters composed the ASBMB competition from students across the country and from a variety of college and universities.

Fujiwara’s work, part of her Senior Individualized Project (SIP), showed how the work of two human liver enzymes vital to the body’s processing of medicines is halted by two small molecule inhibitors. The research took place in the Furge lab at Kalamazoo College and was published in Drug Metabolism and Disposition (Fall 2014). Other co-authors included Furge, Amanda Bolles ’14, and Erran Briggs ’14.

Victoria Osorio
Victoria Osorio

Glass and Osorio presented a poster that centered on recent work in the Furge lab with variants of an enzyme responsible for metabolism (or processing in the body) of about 15 percent of all medicines. The presence of these enzyme variants in different individuals can lead to vastly different responses to some pharmaceutical drugs, including cough syrup, the breast cancer drug tamoxifen, and many more. Though not present at the meeting, Mike Glista ’06) and Parker de Waal ’13) were co-authors on the posters.

This summer Fujiwara will enter the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Osorio and Glass will continue research with Furge this summer. Both plan to attend graduate school after graduating from Kalamazoo College.

Sarah Glass
Sarah Glass

At the Boston meeting Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss once again directed her highly acclaimed HOPES project, connecting science teachers with practicing scientists to enhance the quality and hands-on authenticity of primary and secondary classroom science instruction.

Professors Furge and Stevens-Truss are members of the ASBMB and attend the meeting every year. Travel to ASBMB for students Fujiwara, Glass, and Osorio was supported by grants from the Richard J. Cook Research Fellowship Fund (Fujiwara), an award from the ASBMB Student Affiliate (Fujiwara), the Provost Office (Glass, Osorio), and a grant to Furge through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Travel for Furge and Truss was supported by the Hutchcroft Endowment as well as NIH and grants from ASBMB.

Adding Voice to VISIONS

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Six faculty and staff members representing the VISIONS + Voices Planning Committee
The VISIONS + Voices Planning Committee includes (l-r)—Eric Wimbley, director of security; Mia Henry, executive director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership; Jacob Lemon, area coordinator for residence life; Kyle Schultz, circulation supervisor for Upjohn Library; Laura Wilson, associate director for the Kalamazoo College Fund; and Jane Hoinville, prospect research analyst for College advancement.

A committee of six faculty and staff members is offering a three-part multicultural training titled “VISIONS + Voices,” which is open to all Kalamazoo College employees.

The sessions build upon diversity training offered in previous years to faculty and staff through the “VISIONS” program. According to members of the planning committee, attendees felt that program provided helpful resources but lacked a platform for sharing personal experiences. “VISIONS + Voices” augments the original training.

“We felt we could extend some of the conversations we had. We wanted to explore these conversations in more depth,” said Jacob Lemon, residential life area coordinator and member of the “VISIONS + Voices” planning committee.

A Diversity and Inclusion Mini-Grant made the planning committee’s vision a reality.

“We felt it [the grant] was a good fit for the follow-up work we were doing,” said Mia Henry, committee member and executive director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

Three supplemental sessions are offered: “Microaggressions,” “Monoculture, Pluralism, and Multiculturalism,” and “Marginalization on Campus.”

The first session (microaggressions) took place on April 8. About 40 staff and faculty members attended, just short of the 50 person cap.

The major take-away from the first session was attendees’ openness and willing to develop support groups, according to committee member Kyle Schulz, circulation supervisor for Upjohn Library.

“It’s clear that there is a thirst for faculty and staff to connect with one another and learn,” said Henry.

Two more opportunities remain for interested community members to attend. The session on “Monoculture, Pluralism, and Multiculturalism” will be offered on Thursday, May 7, and the session regarding “Marginalization on Campus” will take place Friday, June 19. Both sessions occur from 8:15- a.m. to 10 a.m. at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

Interested faculty and staff may register online.

Text and photo by Matthew Muñoz ’14

Un-COMMONS Learning

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Six K colleagues work in the Learning Commons
The Learning Commons is all about collaboration. Among its champions are (l-r): Candace Bailey Combs, Hilary Wagner, Paul Sotherland, Robin Rank, Liz Smith, and Amy Newday.

Kalamazoo College’s ‘Learning Commons’ had its grand opening on Thursday, April 9. The Learning Commons is located on the first floor of Upjohn Library and is all about students helping other students raise their academic achievement.

Amy Newday, director of the Writing Center and one of several collaborators in the development of the Learning Commons said, “We are trying to move away from ‘cubicle’ style studying. Students actually learn and perform much better when they study in pairs or groups. With the Learning Commons, the end goal is to create a mobile physical space for intellectual collaboration.”

The Learning Commons offers peer assistance in math, physics, writing, science, and library research. Its five centers include the Writing Center, English as a Second Language, the Biology & Chemistry Center, the Math-Physics Center, and the Research Consultant Center. Learn more at the Learning Commons website.

Text by Mallory Zink ’15, Photo by Susan Andress

The R in K’s DNA

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Rob Townsend standing at recycling receptacles
The work of Rob Townsend has been key to the recycling culture on K’s campus.

RecycleMania 2015 is over, and if you didn’t know that (or if you weren’t aware the contest had even begun) that’s because for the second consecutive year the College has competed without promoting the contest–sort of a test to see the degree to which R (for recycling or Rob, as in Rob Townsend) has become part of K’s DNA. The results are good.

Kalamazoo College recycles far more than half of the solid waste it produces, according to Associate Vice President for Facilities Management Paul Manstrom. “We placed very high in many of the categories despite the fact we did not promote the contest at all on campus–unlike most other schools that competed,” said Manstrom. “Our performance is a testimony to the recycling culture that Rob Townsend has built at K over the years. While some schools need the publicity of a contest to up their recycling statistics, it just comes naturally at K.” This year the College had three top-ten finishes out of eight categories. K’s ranking (and number of participating institutions) by category follow: Grand Champion–32nd (233); Per Capita Classic–10th (334); Gorilla–201st (334); Waste Minimization–116th (148); Paper–20th (141); Corrugated Cardboard–4th (163); Bottles & Cans–3rd (142); and Food Service Organics–129th (175).

RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. During an eight-week period, colleges across the United States and Canada report the amount of recycling and trash collected each week and are in turn ranked in various categories based on who recycles the most on a per capita basis, as well as which schools have the best recycling rate as a percentage of total waste and which schools generate the least amount of combined trash and recycling.

Kalamazoo College earned silver-level recognition for its 11 years of RecycleMania participation, and it’s unlikely to rest on the excellence of its tradition. Said Townsend: “The data shows our numbers slipped a bit from the previous year. We won’t get complacent.”

The Iconography of Justice

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Arcus Center for Social Justice LeadershipDesigned by world renowned architect and MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang, the architecture that houses Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership has inspired rave reviews by many. Perhaps no work better explicates the iconography of the space than the video that was commissioned by Studio Gang Architects and produced by Dave Burk. The piece features many persons from Kalamazoo College, including President Eileen B. Wilson Oyelaran and Trustee Jon Stryker ’82, whose gift made the building possible. Convening on behalf of social justice often has taken place in small and out-of-the-way spaces designed for other purposes. The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College brings these discussions up from the basement, so to speak, and squarely into public consciousness.

The Arcus Center works to develop emerging leaders and sustain existing leaders in the fields of human rights and social justice. As a learning environment and meeting space, it brings together students, faculty, visiting scholars, social justice leaders, and members of the public for conversation and activities aimed at creating a more just world. We invite you to take the seven minutes to view this short film. Together, the space and the people who experience animate, and the film shows how.