Professor of Physics Tom Askew had physics in mind this summer–the physics of force and trajectory of early 19th-century cannon fire. Askew as deckhand and gunner on the Friends Good Will during a reenactment of the Battle of Lake Erie. Small but well-armed, Friends Good Will led the British battle line into action against the American fleet. Askew’s is a replica tall ship from the Michigan Maritime Museum in South Haven, and Askew serves on board every summer. The original Friends Good Will was built in Michigan at River Rouge in 1810 as a merchant vessel. In the summer of 1812, she was chartered by the federal government to take military supplies to Fort Dearborn, a small military and trading post at what is now Chicago. She was returning with furs and skins when she was lured into the harbor of Mackinac Island. The British, having taken the island just days before, were flying false colors above the fort ramparts. The British confiscated the vessel, cargo, and crew, renaming her “Little Belt.” She was armed, taken into service, and fought with the Royal Navy until September of 1813, when she was recaptured by United States Commodore Oliver Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie. Within an hour after the great guns fell silent, Commodore Perry mentioned her in his now famous dispatch, “We have met the enemy and they are ours: Two Ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” That sloop was Friends Good Will. The ship then served in the United States Navy, transporting General William Henry Harrison’s troops across Lake Erie in the successful invasion of Southern Ontario. She was driven ashore in a storm south of Buffalo in December 1813. In early January 1814, during efforts to re-launch the ship, the British unceremoniously burned the once-proud vessel during a raid on Buffalo.
Category: Faculty & Staff
Psych of Music
A book co-edited and co-authored by Associate Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan was published this summer by Oxford University Press (United Kingdom). The Psychology of Music in Multimedia (edited by Siu-Lan Tan, Annabel J. Cohen, Scott D. Lipscomb, and Roger A. Kendall) is the first book to consolidate the scientific research on how we integrate sound and image when engaging with film, television, video, interactive games, and computer interfaces. Tan served as primary editor of this edited volume, which includes the work of 20 contributors representing seven countries and a wide range of disciplines including psychology, musicology, neuroscience, media studies, film, and communication. She also contributed three chapters, including one on the role of sound and music in video games. Research studies co-authored by Tan and Kalamazoo College alumni Matthew Bezdek ’07, John Baxa ’09, and Elizabeth Wakefield ’08 are also discussed in the book.
Prep and Patience
Myles Truss ’17 and Braeden Rodriguez ’16 are learning a great deal about chemistry during their summer internships in the laboratory of Associate Professor of Chemistry Jeffrey Bartz. Among the lessons is the extraordinary patience and preparation required to run an experiment that shoots lasers at chemical compounds in order to watch how they behave. According to Truss, it’s “a way of seeing” a chemical component “that combines chemistry and physics.” But things don’t always go as planned. Lasers need fixing, problems arise in the “beam machine,” sample preparation may go awry. According to Bartz, when a high tech piece of lab equipment breaks down his response often aligns with the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). And who would have thought chemistry taught that? Rodriguez and Truss are completing data from a Senior Individualized Project begun several years ago, which shows another key element of science–how it builds over time and through collaborations. Part of what they seek through laser “sight” is nitric oxide (NO) released from interesting compounds. Nitric oxide happens to be central to the chemistry research of someone quite close to Truss—his mother, Associate Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss, whose research has found nitric oxide to be of great interest in several cascades of chemical events associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Truss and Rodriguez are testing theory, says Bartz, more “pure” science than applied—with two key products nevertheless, Bartz adds: “the research itself, and aspiring scientists like these two young men.” Rodriguez intends to declare chemistry as his major winter quarter of his sophomore year. Truss begins his first year this fall and is leaning toward chemistry as a possible major.
Liver Chemists
Because its name sounds like a vintage fighter plane, one might think the “Heme Team” that works with this enzyme is a group of pilots or aviation mechanics. But P450 (short for Cytochrome P450) refers to a family of enzymes that do vital work in the human body such as clearance and transformation of pharmaceutical drugs in the liver. And the “Heme Team” (named for heme, an iron-containing chemical component in all members of the P450 family) are four student research assistants working this summer in the chemistry lab of Professor Laura Furge. The team includes Rina Fujiwara ’15 (pictured at left), Amanda Bolles ’14, Mara Livezey ’13, and Parker De Waal ’13.
According to Fujiwara, Cytochrome P450 2D6—one member of the enzyme family—is responsible for the metabolism (think: conversion into a useful form) of some 20 percent of the medicines we take. So it’s definitely a P450 worthy of study—which, of course, means nature made it difficult to grow in a laboratory setting (as sure as the vegetables your mother said were good for you always tasted terrible). In fact, a great many P450 enzymes are intriguing, and the chemical modification of them and their mutations could one day have significant application in making medicines more effective.
Enter the Heme Team. Part of its summer work, says Fujiwara, has been to use recombinant bacteria (bacteria modified to include the DNA of P450 2D6) to grow the enzyme. Then team members try to separate the purified enzyme from the bacterial culture. Last year, they came close to achieving the goal. This year they developed a new protocol in which the bacteria cells (think: P450 factories) grow more slowly. Fujiwara is also doing work to obtain an even more difficult to express mutant version of 2D6, and that work might become the basis of her Senior Individualized Project next year.
On the threshold of her third year at K, the international student from Japan (chemistry major and thinking about a second major in biology) has always loved science, particularly the area of nutrition. This is her first year in the Furge lab, and she loves working with Dr. Furge and her fellow research assistants. “They are great mentors,” says Fujiwara, “and always help me with my many questions, no matter how elementary those questions may seem.” One exciting side effect of her work this summer, she adds, is the enthusiasm it has sparked for cell biology and biochemistry, two courses she is eager to take during her junior year.
Another great side effect is Dr. Furge’s expertise in another kind of chemistry—baking! “She makes delicious carrot cake and blueberry pies and brings them in for her research students,” says Fujiwara. “I love this lab!”
Cool Frustration
During the second summer of research on her Senior Independent Project (SIP), chemistry major Virginia Greenberger (pictured at left) is spending more time in method development than data collection. Here’s the thing about that: “We’ve never done this work before,” says Greenberger. (The other member of “we” is her SIP supervisor, Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss; they are trying to develop a method to determine how certain protein pieces—called peptide sequences—kill bacteria.) That “never-having-done-this-work-before” means her SIP research is on the far edge of new discovery, which makes it very cool. But it can also be very frustrating—just one example: the peptide sequences are “sticky” and prone to clump, which makes methods to effectively study them more difficult to develop.
Some back story, which goes back further than last summer. About a decade and a half ago, Stevens-Truss noticed that bacteria she’d altered to produce a certain peptide were being killed by that peptide. Very interesting discovery, on hold for a dozen or so years. Then last summer Stevens-Truss and Greenberger began to study in earnest the protein components responsible for killing the bacteria. These peptide sequences are spiral in shape and carry a positive charge. Shape and charge are matters of chemistry and potential chemical alteration. Summer number one focused on which peptide sequences were the most effective killers of which kinds of bacteria–gram positive (Staph aureus, for example) and gram negative (E-coli, for example). The research team devised a method that uses light to determine the degree to which various peptide sequences inhibit various bacteria. Roughly speaking, “cloudy” or opaque solutions (that block light) mean the bacteria are not much affected by the peptide sequence, but a clear solution indicates significant antibacterial activity. The research could eventually prove very important. Ours is an age of antibiotic resistance. Certain bacteria cause serious infectious diseases, but their reproduction rate (combined with human misuse of antibiotics) selects for resistant strains.
Summer two’s work seeks to repeat (and confirm) the results of last summer and determine how the effective bacterial assassins do their work. How does one determine that? Greenberger is currently working on a method that infuses liposomes with dyes. Liposomes are bag-like structures whose membranes mimic the membranes of cells. A killing mechanism by which the spiral-shaped peptide sequences drill through bacterial cell membranes would be suggested if the liposome look-alikes suddenly release their dyes. That’s the method on which Greenberger was currently at work at the time of this interview. The working title of her SIP is “Studying Antibiotic Action of Peptide Sequences containing a Cationic Amphipathic Helix Structure.” But that could change, depending on that ever-changing ratio of “cool” to “frustrating.”
K alumni (and one long ago faculty member) in the news
Roy Yewah ’13 is among 33 young adults who recently learned they were selected from 700 applicants to spend the next two years of their life living and working in Detroit. Roy is among the “Year Two” class of Challenge Detroit, an organization dedicated to recruiting young talent to the Motor City to work for businesses and nonprofits. Read about the program in this MLive report. And listen to Roy talk about his commitment to Detroit in a Challenge Detroit video clip. Leigh Ann Ulrey ’11 and Sam Brennan ’11 are part of “Year One” Challenge Detroit. Read about them in this January 2013 issue of BeLight. Which young K alumni will we read about from “Year Three” of Challenge Detroit?!
Carolyn DeChants ’09 is very busy in Philadelphia. Not only is she creating a digital archive for the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center at the University of Pennsylvania, she’s pursuing a master’s degree in social policy at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice. She hopes to have the online archive set up and in a sustainable form by August, when she will also finish her degree—and join the work world. Carolyn, who says she’s passionate about using research to help illuminate and ameliorate the experiences of any marginalized populations, is currently looking for a position conducting policy research or program evaluation in the Philadelphia area.
Harvey Dickson ’80 is a copy editor of The New York Times Magazine and an occasional contributor to “The 6th Floor” blog where the Magazine’s staff members share ideas, arguments, curiosities and links. Read Harvey’s July 18, 2013 post “Where Have You Gone, Willie Horton?” about the Detroit Tigers slugger and 1968 World Series hero who—still wearing his Tiger uniform after a game against the Yankees—went into the streets of Detroit to help quell some of the violence taking place there during the riots of summer 1967.
Gerald Rosen ’73 is chief district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Will he be appointed as the mediator to rule on disagreements between Detroit and its creditors during the city’s Chapter 9 bankruptcy case? U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes signaled in a court filing that he plans to do just that. Read about Jerry Rosen and his possible appointment in this recent Detroit Free Press article.
Edward Olney was Professor of Mathematics at Kalamazoo College for ten years beginning in 1853. He established the first mathematics curriculum at K and had a reputation for being a stern disciplinarian and a stickler for correct details. Despite his nickname “Old Toughy,” Olney was said to take great pains to see that the poorer students obtained help in making up their deficiencies. Read more about Olney in the July 24, 2013 entry of “On This Day in Math,” a popular blog about, well, math.
K Civic Engagement Director Honored With Health Award
Alison Geist, director of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, received the 2013 Spirit of Health Equity Award from Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services. The award recognizes her “ongoing commitment and dedication to health equity in the Kalamazoo community.” In addition to her work with the CCE (formerly the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning), Geist teaches a course in public health at K and co-administers the College′s Community and Global Health concentration. She received the award at the First Annual Summit on Health Equity in Kalamazoo. Congrats, Alison!
Summer in the Zoo
What do students do at Kalamazoo College during the summer? They are certainly here—some 200 or so. Students from around the world enjoy these hot months on campus. They work as interns, they continue work-study jobs, they spruce up the infrastructure with Facilities Management (FacMan) colleagues, they conduct research in the Dow science building, they dive into the early phases of the Senior Individualized Projects. For fun, they run around, go on adventures, eat great food, and hang out with friends. Here’s what a few students are up to this summer.
Meet Jane Huffman ’15, administrative intern for the theatre arts department, splitting her time between Saugatuck (Mich., where she’s working on the plays Xanadu and Game Show) and the Kalamazoo College campus. She has been having some fun cooking home made meals with her housemates and going to see some shows at the local theatres. She will study this fall in Chicago and is sad to be missing the opening festivities of the 50thanniversary season of Festival Playhouse at Kalamazoo College.
Dorraine Duncan ’14 is the student intern at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. This summer she has been cooking up an international food storm. The best meal she has made was her own version of the Thai dish “Gra-Pow”. Her friend from Thailand gave her an eight out of 10! Dorraine will soon return to Kingston, Jamaica, for an environmental internship. It will be her first trip home in two years.
Utsav Adhikari ’14 is in his third year on the FacMan recycling crew this summer. On that experience rests his claim to be the “wisest of the FacMan recycling crew.” This summer he went to Irish Fest, one of many summer festivals in downtown Kalamazoo, and had a splendid time. He plays a lot of soccer with neighborhood acquaintances on the Davis Street soccer fields, and chills with friends at the beach in St. Joseph, Mich. At the end of June, he left for an internship at Pinnacle Solutions, a business intelligence company based in Indianapolis, Ind.
Samantha Jolly ’15 holds two positions this summer. She is one of three interns for the Lillian Anderson Arboretum. And she’s the College’s sole summer compost intern. Whatever you might imagine about that second post, Samantha likes both her jobs—minimal supervision! She is her own boss! At three o’clock everyday she heads home to start cooking something delectable; her best meal so far has been her black bean burgers. Every weekend Samantha heads downtown for brunch at her favorite local restaurant, Main Street Café.
Tyler Nichols ’15 has been a busy kid this summer. He works full time as a chef at Henderson Castle, (he prefers the dinner shift). He also has a research stipend from K for an interdisciplinary research project with a political science emphasis. In between work and research he often finds himself at Bell’s Brewing Company or at impromptu block parties in the Vine Street neighborhood.
Erika Robles ’14 hails from Costa Rica and just returned to K from study abroad in Japan. In addition to working for FacMan she also serves as Hoben Hall’s summer Resident Assistant. “It’s much more chill in the summer here, with fun small events like barbeques,” she said. She can’t believe how many times she and her friends have made the trek by bus to the movie theater this summer. She has also been enjoying the festivals in downtown Kalamazoo.
Brad Stech ’15 is a proud member of the custodial FacMan crew. He stayed over to earn some money before he heads out on his extended-term study abroad (nine months!) in Japan. He likes his job because of the funny and friendly people he gets to work with. In his free time he has been hanging out with friends, playing music, and enjoying sushi from downtown Kalamazoo.
Dakota Clement ’14 lives with his friends in the Vine Street neighborhood. He is working his third summer for the FacMan grounds crew, and he is also starting preliminary research for his Senior Individualized Project. He is writing a poetry SIP based on nine of his favorite movies from directors Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick. These films include Clock Work Orange and The Thin Red Line.
Hadley Harris ’16 lives only twenty minutes away from K but decided to stay on campus to continue her work-study job in media services. There are not too many media requests during the summer, so the crew has spent a lot of time cleaning the library’s DVD collection. When she can’t stand to be in the humid dorm rooms at night, she heads to the movies with her friends.
Sammy Li ’16, a native of China, stayed at K to work for FacMan’s renovation crew. She resides in the Vine Street neighborhood but often thinks about camping out in Hicks Center because of the summer heat! She has gone to the movies a lot, and not just because of the air conditioning. Her favorite films of the summer have been World War Z, The Lone Ranger, and Despicable Me 2.
Avon Helps K Promote Healthy Dating Relationships
The Avon Foundation for Women has awarded Kalamazoo College a $5,000 grant to promote healthy sexual relationships on campus. The grant will allow K to begin training in the Green Dot Campaign.
The Green Dot Campaign is a new way to help prevent sexual assault. The program is designed to teach bystanders and peers how to help intervene in an unsafe situation.
Deb Rose, one of K’s counseling psychologists, applied for the grant last summer. She will be attending a training course this summer, where she will learn how to use the Green Dot strategy and how to teach it to groups and student organizations on campus.
Dean Sarah Westfall said, “National data suggests that on college campuses sexual assault is widely under reported. I think it is true at K as well. No one wants that. The Green Dot Campaign looks at what tools are already available. It makes a lot of sense.”
Dean Westfall hopes to keep the campaign going year round with informative training sessions for everyone, not just student organizations. “The more people who know the program, the better for everyone,” said Westfall.
Last Look Back
Graduating seniors of the Class of 2013 completed an anonymous survey titled “First Destination.” As the name implies most of the questions look forward. But at least one looked back: “What was your most meaningful or transformative experience at K?”
The majority of the 2013 graduating students reported that study abroad was the most meaningful experience at K. One student responded, “My time abroad was transformative. It opened my eyes to the wider world around me and taught me that apart from our cultural differences, all people have the same general needs and wants. All people want to be respected, and all need health care, shelter, and food.”
That study aboard was valued so highly by seniors is no surprise. The College offers 41 programs in 21 countries on six continents, differing in length and academic emphasis. In the past four years K has had a student participation rate between 80 and 85. The Institute of International Education has ranked Kalamazoo College 10th among colleges and universities for study abroad participation.
Many students cited professors and classes as the most meaningful experience. Again, not surprising given that K has a 12-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio. In addition, academics is integrated with service-learning and social justice, and students mention the importance of both. One students response: “The personalized, experiential education I was able to pursue at K made my learning not some stilted academic experience, but rather four years of intense personal growth and developing relationships with others that helped me both better understand my future path and inspired me to continue on it.”
Students also lauded the importance of co-curricular activities, including sports teams and campus student organizations. K has more than 60 active student organizations that focus on various areas, such as culture, athletics, music, politics, publishing, and spirituality.
A few students said working on campus was meaningful to them. Their jobs here opened up new opportunities and allowed them to give back to the K community.
A small amount of students cited their Senior Individualized Project as the most transformative part of their time at K. “My SIP year gave me the tools and confidence that will carry on into my life after K,” said one student.