Jaime Grant, executive director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, has coauthored an op/ed in the May 15 Huffington Post that describes “A Gender Not Listed Here: Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and OtherWise,” an article she and her coauthors recently published in the Harvard Kennedy School’s LGBTQ Policy Journal.
Grant and coauthors Jack Harrison and Jody L. Herman present new research focused specifically on genderqueer people and describes the risks and resiliencies of those who identify outside the male/female gender binary. Their Policy Journal article shows that genderqueer people have unique demographic characteristics and experiences of discrimination and violence when compared to transgender people who identify as “male” or “female.”
Professor Emeritus of Economics Phil Thomas enjoys his retirement in Northport, Michigan. He also keeps Kalamazoo College informed of events that may be of interest to K alumni in northern Michigan. One such event is Northport Trinity Church’s eighth annual Peace Lecture, which this year features former Kalamazoo College Professor of Religion Gary Dorrien (who currently teaches at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University).
Dorrien will speak on Saturday evening, June 2, at 7 PM, and on Sunday morning, June 3, at 11 AM. The theme of his talks will be “Economic Crisis, Social Ethics, and Economic Democracy.” Dorrien is the author of 14 books and some 250 articles that range across the fields of ethics, social theory, theology, philosophy, politics, and history.
Siu-Lan Tan, associate professor of psychology, has earned Kalamazoo College’s highest annual honor for classroom teaching, the Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching.
The “Lucasse,” was established in 1979 in honor of Florence J. Lucasse, Class of 1910, in response to the major unrestricted endowment gift she bequeathed to the College in her will. In addition to the Lectureship, a Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship is also awarded. Andrew Mozina, associate professor of English, holds the current Lucasse Fellowship.
Tan was taken aback by her award: “I think the world of my colleagues and students, and knowing that they nominated and supported me for this was overwhelming. I immediately teared up, as I felt it deeply.”
President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran expressed her admiration for Tan as she presented the award during the fall quarter all-campus gathering in Dalton Theatre on Sept. 20. “Professor Tan often extends students’ experiences beyond the classroom, and these service-learning experiences transform their learning, making concepts that may have once seemed dissonant in class become consonant in practice.”
Born in Indonesia, Tan grew up in Hong Kong where she taught music. After moving to California, she earned a B.A. degree in music at Pacific Union College and taught music for several years. Later, she became interested in psychology and earned both Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in psychology at Georgetown University.
Teaching at Kalamazoo College since 1998, Tan offers courses in developmental psychology, creativity, and the psychology of music. In 2010, she co-authored the textbook The Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance.
Per Lucasse tradition, Tan will speak to students, faculty, staff, and quests about her work at a spring 2012 lecture.
Professor Furchak in the Dow Science Building with Kalamazoo chemistry majors (l-r) Vinay Sharma ’12, Lydia Manger ’13, Eric Glanz ’13, and Amy Ong ’11
Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Chemistry Jennifer R. Furchak has received a 2011 Cottrell College Science Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. She will use the $35,000 award to further her work into the development of a multiplexed assay for the analysis of breast cancer metastasis.
“The potential impact of this work in detection and understanding of breast cancer metastasis lies in improvements in simplicity, accuracy, and speed over current methods, which could allow for improved patient treatment and prognoses,” she said. “Ultimately, additional sample throughput will result in better understanding of disease progression.”
According to Furchak, five student researchers at “K” have worked on this project thus far. It’s been the foundation for three completed Senior Independent Projects, and another is in progress this summer. Furchak’s grant is one of 48 Cottrell grants this year totaling $1.8 million and intended to support early career scientists at liberal arts colleges and primarily undergraduate universities.
Undergraduate students must be involved in the research in meaningful ways. Founded in 1912, Research Corporation for Science Advancement is the second-oldest foundation in the United States and the oldest foundation for science advancement.
Kalamazoo College’s Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss ’78 continues to receive accolades for her outstanding work in the world of poetry. A sample of a few recent honors follow–honors that help put Kalamazoo College, on Di’s coattails, on the literary map!
First, she will be teaching the “Advanced Seminar,” with poets Patrick Donnelly and Reginald Dwayne Betts, at the Frost Place this summer, located at Robert Frost’s homestead in Franconia, New Hampshire. In the fall, she has been invited to be the McLean Distinguished Visiting Writer at Colorado College. That position has been held by many distinguished writers, including Ghanaian poet and cultural activist Kofi Anyidoho, feminist film theorist Tania Modelski, Canadian novelist Nino Ricci, and Irish poet Eamon Grennan.
At Colorado College, Di will be teaching the Advanced Seminar in Poetry. In addition, Di was named the winner of the Summer Literary Seminars contest in poetry because of three of her poems, which will appear in Black Warrior Review later in the year. The contest winner also receives airfare, tuition, and housing for one of the Summer Literary Seminars in Lithuania or Kenya. Di will go to Kenya. And, most recently, Di learned that her poem “Either everything is sexual, or nothing is. Take this flock of poppies,” has been selected for reprint in Pushcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses. The Pushcart Prize honors the best poetry, short fiction, and short nonfiction published in literary magazines in the previous year.
Kate Yancho, Student Development, has been invited to join the marketing committee for Downtown Kalamazoo, Inc. She will provide DKI with a perspective on working with the college population of the City of Kalamazoo.
John Wickstrom, professor emeritus of history, will have an article published by Revue Bénédictine in 2013. It is titled “Claiming St. Maurus of Glanfeuil: an 11th-Century Sermon from Fossés.”
John is also the 2012 Moritz Lecturer at Kalamazoo College. His talk, “Picturing the Saints: What Medieval Illuminations Can Tell us About History,” will be delivered on Wednesday, April 4, at 7 P.M. in Dewing Hall Room 103. The event is free and open to the public.
David Barclay, the Margaret and Roger Scholten Professor of International Studies, delivered a lecture titled “Island City, Cold War City: West Berlin in the Context of Postwar History, 1948-1994” at his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Florida.
The presentation was based on his current book project: a general history of West Berlin from the time of the city’s division (1948) to the withdrawal of Russian and Allied troops (1994).
The history of West Berlin—a unique creation of the Cold War, like the two German states themselves—has largely been overlooked.
Barclay’s lecture drew on extensive interviews and years of archival research and argued that, in the wake of the well-known “spatial turn” of the 1990s and thereafter, West Berlin’s role in the history of the Cold War can be understood in terms of that truncated city’s function as political space, symbolic space, and cultural space. Moreover, its history can be divided into two parts: an “heroic” phase from 1948 to 1971-72 and a phase of “abnormal normality” from 1972 to 1989.
Ed Baker, former Kalamazoo College football coach and physical education professor, has been named to the Athletic Hall of Fame at Haverford High School in Havertown, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia.
He was athletic director at Haverford from 1959 to 1967 and head football coach from 1958 to 1966. He won three league titles as football coach, leading the 1961 and 1965 teams to undefeated Inter-Ac Championship seasons and an 18-game win streak from 1964 to 1966.
Ed was named Philadelphia Coach of the Year in 1961. During his coaching tenure, 21 players made First Team All Inter-Ac; four achieved All-City status. He is credited with starting the lacrosse program at Haverford School, and coached the team to an overall record of 39-21-1. During his tenure as athletic director, the “Fords” had 28 Inter-Ac championship teams.
Coach Baker was appointed head football coach and head track coach at Kalamazoo College in 1967. In his final football game in 1989, he led the Hornets to its first victory over Hope College in 20 years!
George Acker, longtime Kalamazoo College coach and physical education professor who died in July 2011, has been named to the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame. Coach Acker served at K for 35 years (1958-93), coaching men’s tennis teams to seven NCAA Division III championships while winning 35 consecutive MIAA championships. His tennis teams were 537-231 overall and an incredible 209-1 in the MIAA conference. He was inducted into the Kalamazoo College Athletic Hall of Fame in 1998.
