Category: Faculty & Staff

Three Faculty Members Earn Tenure at K

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Three Kalamazoo College faculty members from the history, sociology and physics departments have been awarded tenure.

The tenure milestone recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship and service to the College, and signifies its confidence in the contributions these professors will make throughout their careers.

The following faculty members were approved this spring by the Board of Trustees for tenure and promotion to associate professor:

Christina Carroll Earns Tenure
Assistant Professor of History Christina Carroll has
earned tenure and will be promoted to associate professor.

Assistant Professor of History Christina Carroll

Carroll is a historian of modern France with research and teaching interests in empire, memory and nationalism; she teaches a variety of classes at K on modern Europe and its empires, along with a class on the modern Middle East.

In her new book, The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850–1900, Carroll examines how the memory of European imperial conquest under Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte shaped French debates over colonial expansion during the second half of the 19th century, and explains how and why French Republicans embraced colonial conquest as a central part of their political platform. She is now beginning a second book project, which focuses on historical figures who were transported from one colony to another, or from the French metropole to a colony, for political crimes.

Carroll holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina and a bachelor’s degree in history and English from Vassar College. She was a visiting assistant professor of history at Colgate University before arriving at K in 2016. She also served a three-year appointment at K from 2018–2021 as the Marlene Crandell Francis Assistant Professor of History.

Francisco Villegas Earns Tenure
Arcus Social Justice Leadership Assistant Professor of
Sociology Francisco Villegas has earned tenure and will
be promoted to associate professor.

Arcus Social Justice Leadership Assistant Professor of Sociology Francisco Villegas

Villegas specializes in the topics of immigration, citizenship, social movements, deportability and illegalization, and teaches courses in these areas along with qualitative research methods.

In the community, Villegas serves as advisory board chair with the Kalamazoo County community ID program, which began in 2018. The program allows residents to obtain an ID issued by local government regardless of their ability to obtain a state ID. He is also one of three K faculty members—joining Associate Professor of English Shanna Salinas and Professor of English Bruce Mills—behind a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant provides new learning opportunities for K students and faculty seeking solutions to societal problems and promotes the critical role of the humanities in understanding and responding to social problems. The $1.297 million three-year grant funds the College’s Humanities Integrated Locational Learning (HILL) project, which is building student coursework rooted in K’s commitment to experiential learning and social justice to address issues such as racism, border policing, economic inequities, homelessness and global warming, while examining history, how humans share land, and the dislocations that bring people to a communal space.

Before joining K, Villegas was a sociology lecturer at the University of Toronto Scarborough from 2014– 2016. He has a doctorate in sociology in education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, a master’s degree in Mexican American studies from San Jose University, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and social behavior from the University of California Irvine.

David Wilson for tenure
Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of
Physics David Wilson has earned tenure and will
be promoted to associate professor.

Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Physics David Wilson

As a biophysicist who studies virology, Wilson first arrived at K as a visiting assistant professor in 2014. During his time at K, he discovered that all spherical viruses place their protruding spike proteins in a common set of locations. That work later continued in three publications, including one with Danielle Roof ’22, titled Viral Phrenology.

Wilson was a visiting assistant professor at Albion College in 2015–2016 and Grand Valley State University in 2016–2017 before he returned to K in the same role in 2017. He became an assistant professor of physics at K in 2018. He has taught courses including quantum mechanics, applications of physics in the biosciences and introductory physics, and often generates 3D printing in his research.

Wilson has been invited to share his work at Calvin University, Northwestern University, Denison University and soon at the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) Virus Structure and Assembly Conference in Southbridge, Massachusetts. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan, where he also was a postdoctoral research scientist in chemistry from 2010­ –2013. He spent two years at the University of Washington doing master’s work before transferring to the University of Michigan. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Michigan Technological University.

To date, Wilson has worked closely on research projects with more than 34 students at K from biology, chemistry, physics, computer science and mathematics.

Alumni Reflect on the Advice They Would’ve Given Themselves

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Students, faculty and staff practice the procession for Commencement on the Quad
Graduates-to-be on Thursday rehearsed the processional they will execute during
Commencement on the Quad at Kalamazoo College.

Spring term finals are over. Kalamazoo College’s faculty and staff are preparing for Commencement. And seniors, through a traditional rehearsal, have received their last instructions for Sunday’s ceremony. To help smooth the students’ transitions away from undergraduate life, we asked some faculty and staff who are K alumni themselves to share what advice they would go back and give themselves as they graduated.

Here’s what they had to say of that advice. We hope it will be valuable for the class of 2022.

Professor of History Charlene Boyer Lewis ’87

“Remember that no matter how carefully you plan for the future, something is going to come along to change your plans—and sometimes that change will be amazing!”

Enrollment Systems Manager Dan Kibby ’91

“Looking back, I cannot remember a single instance where I later wished I’d been less kind.”

Kalamazoo College Chaplain Liz Candido ’00

Two male faculty and a female grad-to-be on Commencement stage during rehearsal advice
Graduates-to-be Thursday were advised they will
shake hands with President Jorge G. Gonzalez, receive
their diploma, move their tassel and have their picture
taken while crossing the stage.

“Be imperfect. Some of the best things in my life have come as the result of some screw-up or mistake. Lose your fear of doing it wrong or incorrectly, and let yourself blunder into something unexpected and wonderful!”

Web Content Specialist Martin Hansknecht ’20

“Know that the skills you developed while at K are deeply transferable across industries, and be open to the curve balls life throws at you. But before that, take time to celebrate all you have accomplished during your four years at K—even though it may feel self-indulgent to celebrate anything positive during the dawn of a pandemic.” 

Admission Counselor Lezlie Lull ’20

“Say yes. Visit your friends. Enjoy your weekends. As you transition into a new life stage, take your time and enjoy the small moments, and don’t forget to visit your parents!”

We’re excited for the class of 2022 to join the ranks of our alumni!

Book Examines France’s Historic Thirst for Conquest, Empire

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Christina Carroll New Book Defines Empire
Assistant Professor of History Christina Carroll has a
new book titled “The Politics of Imperial Memory
in France, 1850–1900.”

Historians and advanced college classes soon will be reading a new book by Christina Carroll, an assistant professor of history at Kalamazoo College.

The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850–1900 examines how the memory of European imperial conquest under Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte shaped French debates over colonial expansion during the second half of the 19th century, and explains how and why French Republicans embraced colonial conquest as a central part of their political platform.

The book, released last week by Cornell University Press, explores the meaning and value of “empire” in 19th-century France. For much of the period examined, French writers and politicians didn’t differentiate between continental and colonial empire. However, by employing a range of sources, from newspapers and pamphlets to textbooks and novels, Carroll demonstrates that the memory of older continental imperial models shaped French understandings of and justifications for a newer colonial empire. She shows that the slow differentiation between the two types of empire emerged because of a politicized campaign led by colonial advocates who sought to defend overseas expansion against their opponents. This new model of colonial empire was shaped by influences such as political conflict, international competition, racial science, and French experiences in the colonies.

Christina Carroll Book Cover
“The Politics of Imperial Memory in France,
1850–1900″ examines how the memory of European
imperial conquest under Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte
shaped French debates over colonial expansion during
the second half of the 19th century, and explains how
and why French Republicans embraced colonial
conquest as a central part of their political platform.

“I’ve always been interested in this question of how different people define empire, which is one of the questions that’s really at the center of the book,” Carroll said. “For me, that interest dates back to some of the arguments circulating in the early 2000s about whether the U.S. war in Iraq should be seen through an imperial framework, and about how we think about empire in the context of the present day. Like their 21st century American counterparts, 19th-century French republicans were reluctant to describe France as an empire—a term that they negatively associated with both Napoleon and his nephew Napoleon III—but at the same time, they were deeply committed to colonial expansion. So they were trying to differentiate between different imperial structures to argue that even though Napoleonic empire was autocratic and violent and problematic, republican colonial empire was not. They used this rhetoric to try to efface the inherent violence of the colonial project.”

Carroll, who holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina and a bachelor’s degree with honors in history and English from Vassar College, is beginning a second book project, which focuses on historical figures who were transported from one colony to another, or from the French metropole to a colony, for political crimes. It will examine deportation and carceral institutions and how they intersected with imperial structures. In the meantime, she will be a guest on literature and history-focused podcasts while copies of her first book reach reviewers across the country.

“My hope would be that this book would speak to my students and that it would resonate with themes we’ve discussed in class, especially for upper-level students who’ve taken some of my courses on imperialism,” Carroll said. “I hope that they would find it interesting and accessible. We spend so long as historians in the archives working through things by ourselves. For me, the book will be a success if readers engage with it and build on its ideas in their own work.”

Student’s Research Leads Faculty Member to Fulbright Program Nod

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Santiago-Salinas-Earns-Fulbright-Program-Nod
Associate Professor of Biology Santiago Salinas

The Senior Integrated Project (SIP) of Grace Hancock ’22 has encouraged Associate Professor of Biology Santiago Salinas to extend Hancock’s inquiries overseas.

Salinas has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award, allowing him to go to his native Argentina this fall. There, he will study whether global warming could threaten fish with temperature-dependent sex-determination. In these species, cold waters tend to produce more females, and warm waters tend to produce more males.

Hancock, in Salinas’ fish ecology lab, studied temperature-dependent sex-determination in the Atlantic silverside, which are saltwater foragers that grow to be no longer than 6 inches in length. Salinas, in a similar way, will research Argentine fish such as pejerrey, which are freshwater residents.

“I’m excited to go and expand my professional network, and without Grace, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity,” Salinas said. “I was not really working on temperature sex determination until she wanted to.”

In addition to Hancock, Salinas credited K faculty members such as Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Enid Valle, Professor of Biology Ann Fraser, William Weber Chair of Social Science Amy Elman, Wen Chao Chen Professor of East Asian Social Sciences Dennis Frost, Margaret and Roger Scholten Associate Professor of Political Science John Dugas, and Jo-Ann and Robert Stewart Professor of Art Tom Rice for offering their application assistance and sharing their previous experiences in successfully seeking Fulbright honors.

“I’ll be interacting closely with Latinx biologists, and one of my hopes is to set up a network whereby scholars there who struggle with English can connect with classes here at K,” Salinas said. “My students would help with the scientific writing and offer advice to the biologists in a real-world way.”

The opportunity also is expected to begin a long-term collaboration with a faculty member at the Instituto Tecnológico de Chascomús, create a course on evolutionary ecology for that institution’s undergraduate and graduate students, and establish connections that would allow Argentine biologists to serve as potential research mentors for K students.

Salinas is one of about 800 U.S. citizens who will teach, conduct research or provide expertise abroad for the 2022-23 academic year through Fulbright. Those citizens are selected based on their academic and professional achievement, as well as their record of service and demonstrated leadership. The awards are funded through the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s international education-exchange program designed to build connections between U.S. citizens and people from other countries. The program is funded through an annual Congressional appropriation made to the Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations around the world also support the program, which operates in more than 160 countries.

Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has given more than 390,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and professionals in a variety of backgrounds and fields opportunities to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute solutions to international problems.

Thousands of Fulbright alumni have achieved distinction in many fields, including 61 who have been awarded the Nobel Prize, 89 who have received Pulitzer Prizes and 76 MacArthur Fellows. For more information about the Fulbright program, visit its website.

Houseless to Benefit from K Team’s Work

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A Kalamazoo College faculty member and three of her students are among the people looking to help local houseless women and their young children achieve housing and health equity.

Visiting-Assistant-Professor-Jennifer-Mills-Helps-Houseless-Moms
Visiting Assistant Professor of
Psychology Jennifer Mills is the grant
writer for the Home Start Initiative, a
local project that aims to help
houseless women and their children.
Playgrown CEO Michelle Johnson
Playgrown CEO Michelle Johnson

Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Jennifer Mills—with visionary assistance from Playgrown CEO Michelle Johnson—is the grant writer for the Home Start Initiative, a Kalamazoo County-backed project that will build a development of 10 homes with a park, parking area, community courtyard and more near a former makeshift houseless encampment next to the Kalamazoo River at Ampersee Avenue.

The Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners awarded the Home Start Initiative, a collaboration between Playgrown and the Institute of Public Scholarship, more than $318,000 in April for the sake of addressing a local shortage of affordable housing. Specifically, it will help people living at or below 30% of the Area Median Income (AMI) eventually achieve ownership of the homes in the project.

Mills, an expert in the social determinants of health, said the most exciting part of the project for her is that the initiative is partnering with Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine as well as the health department and Healthy Babies Healthy Starts in Kalamazoo County to ensure that women and their children will obtain at least five of those homes. Her students then will build a research agenda around the partnership and track health outcomes.

“We know in public health that a relationship exists between housing equity and health outcomes,” Mills said. “We’re trying to intervene early to give children some of the stability that can impact those social determinants of health. We’ll be working closely with the medical school and the public health department to identify all the measures we want to track.”

A groundbreaking is expected this fall. In the meantime, students such as Janet Fernandez ’25 and Natalie Pineda ’25 will interview the houseless community from the same area at Ampersee and Hotop avenues, where they conducted interviews in a previous first-year seminar.

Natalie-Pineda-Helps-Houseless-Women-and-Their-Children
Natalie Pineda ’25

The day they first showed up for those first-year seminar interviews, Fernandez and Pineda saw community members hurrying to pick up their belongings and worrying about where they could go next with the encampment being shut down.

“I think their stories are really important because they’re often just seen as being ‘the homeless,’” Pineda said. “If we’re acting as a community of Kalamazoo, and if we’re trying to provide better housing for people who live here, the most important place to start is with their stories and asking what their needs are because they’re the ones who are living that situation.”

Taking those stories and providing equity is an important part of sustaining the community, Fernandez said. Both Fernandez and Pineda are from communities, Chicago and Los Angeles respectively, where significant numbers of people are houseless. It’s nothing new to either of them. Yet the Home Start Initiative represents the first time Fernandez has seen a project of its kind.

“We have institutions and places in our cities where houseless people can go and sleep overnight,” she said. “But you’ll never see a program like the one we’re working on, where people get to live in a house and eventually own it. Trying to build that generational wealth is incredibly important.”

One of the first measures of success for the Home Start Initiative would be improved reading scores for the children involved over the next few years.

Skyler Rogers ’23

“Within the first few years of life, a lot of the social determinants of health begin to play a role in how a child’s brain develops and how different processes in the body take place,” said Skyler Rogers ’23, a third K student participating in the project.

“Having a stable, foundational childhood can change things drastically. It can impact a child’s cognitive abilities from a young age, and that’s where third-grade reading levels come into play. By the time a child reaches third grade, you can estimate their likelihood of graduating from high school and moving forward in life.”

As their work progresses, all of K’s representatives contributing to the Home Start Initiative are taking pride in their work. It’s a big investment that might not always represent what some in Kalamazoo believe is a top priority in addressing the issue of houselessness, but Mills and her students aren’t just assuming what the houseless community needs to provide a bare minimum of support. Instead, they’re talking to people to determine their exact needs.

“It feels amazing to see this,” Pineda said. “The amenities provide lifestyle help and can really ground a person to help them get back on their feet. Any other homeless shelter can provide you with a roof over your head for one night. But this project is helping people stay stable for a long period of time. It can help you get a job. If you have children, they provide daycare. All those aspects are important and add to these stories. It’s easy to think the homeless just need somewhere to sleep. But these are people, too, who will get a chance to start their lives again with this project.”

Alumna, Professor Emerita Earns Pulitzer Prize

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Pulitzer Prize recipient Diane Seuss
Kalamazoo College alumna and
Professor Emerita Diane Seuss has received
the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for “frank:
sonnets.” Photo by Gabrielle Montesanti
Book Cover for Frank:Sonnets by Diane Seuss
Diane Seuss ’78 published her fifth collection of
poetry, “frank: sonnets,” in 2021.

Kalamazoo College alumna, Professor Emerita and former writer-in-residence Diane Seuss ’78 is celebrating more recognition for her latest poetry collection, and this honor is the most prestigious yet. 

Seuss was granted a 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry on Monday for frank: sonnets, a collection of poems that discuss topics including addiction, disease, poverty and death. The collection previously received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the LA Times Book Prize for poetry. 

The Pulitzer Prize committee described frank: sonnets as “a virtuosic collection that inventively expands the sonnet form to confront the messy contradictions of contemporary America, including the beauty and the difficulty of working-class life in the Rust Belt.” 

“This is nothing that I would ever, ever, ever have expected of life,” Seuss said of the honor in an MLive interview. “It’s hard to feel these things beyond kind of shock and awe.” 

In previous honors, Seuss received the John Updike Award in 2021 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The biennial award recognizes a mid-career writer who demonstrates consistent excellence. Seuss also joined a prestigious group of scholars and artists who have received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation as a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. The fellowship helps honorees slate blocks of time during which they explore their creative freedom. The Foundation receives about 3,000 applications each year and awards about 175 fellowships.  

Seuss retired from K in 2016, the year she was a Pulitzer finalist for Four-Legged Girl (Greywolf Press, 2015), a poetry collection the Pulitzer committee described as “a richly improvisational poetry collection that leads readers through a gallery of incisive and beguiling portraits and landscapes.” Her other collections include Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press, 2018), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the LA Times Poetry Prize; Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), which received the Juniper Prize; and It Blows You Hollow (New Issues Press, 1999). 

“For me and others like me, people in the margins for whatever reason, such recognition is an encouragement,” Seuss said of her recent success in a Kalamazoo College news story last month. “It’s saying, your work has worth. It makes all the difference to be seen and heard and acknowledged.” 

Chemistry Conference, Connections Create Confidence

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Four Students and a Professor at the ACS Chemistry Conference
Annie Tyler ’22 (from left), Faith Flinkingshelt ’22, Lindsey Baker ’24,
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo and Barney
Walsh ’22 represented Kalamazoo College at the American Chemical
Society (ACS) chemistry conference in San Diego. Jacob Callaghan ’22
attended virtually.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo traveled with several students to attend the American Chemical Society Conference in San Diego over spring break, where they presented posters of their research and connected with chemistry professionals in a distinct experience that built their confidence and their communication skills.

“I’m not sure they realized in advance how overwhelming the conference could be because it’s thousands of chemists, all in the same place,” Arias-Rotondo said. “They were nervous, but also excited when they were presenting. Just to see them in their element, no pun intended, is really cool because it’s a great opportunity and they seemed to enjoy it.”

Five chemistry students attended including four in person. Three of them told us about their research, their experiences and why attending the conference was so valuable. Barney Walsh ’22 also attended in person and Jacob Callaghan ’22 attended virtually.

Annie Tyler ’22

Annie Tyler, a Heyl scholar at K, introduced her work—performed in the lab of Associate Professor of Chemistry Dwight Williams—synthesizing molecular hybrids or, in simpler terms, combining two molecules into one that hopefully has antibacterial properties.

She was originally not going to attend the conference, but she received an ACS Student Exchange Award with the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChe), which provided her with a stipend.

“I really enjoyed being able to meet other Black chemists,” Tyler said. “There is a nonprofit group named BlackInChem that organized a meet up one evening. I was able to meet so many people and make connections I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet otherwise. I received lots of tweaks and ideas for my experiments in the future. Going to a conference was meaningful as I got to immerse myself in the chemistry community and go to talks about topics I’m interested in. As I’m headed to graduate school in the fall, it felt like a nice introduction into what the world after undergraduate life has in store.”

Faith Flinkingshelt ’22

Faith Flinkingshelt’s research has focused on making molecules that could attach to transition metals that can capture light and transform it into chemical energy. In other words, her work—in Arias-Rotondo’s own lab at K—examined how light-capturing molecules could lower the costs of and increase the efficiency of solar panels.

“I asked to join Professor Arias-Rotondo’s lab after loving one of her inorganic chemistry classes in the winter of my junior year, and I started working in the lab in the spring,” Flinkingshelt said. “I enjoyed working with everyone in the lab, so I decided to continue my research over the summer and into my senior year. It’s been an amazing experience and introduction to research.”

Flinkingshelt admitted she was nervous, not only to present her research, but to travel to California. Yet she was happy to embrace the opportunity.

“I had many questions about attending a conference out of state, especially in a big city like San Diego,” she said. “Ultimately, I’m grateful I had financial support from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation so it didn’t cost me anything in terms of travel and hotel costs, which helped me feel more confident. The nice part about conferences is that everyone has a different background than you, so they bring different perspectives and can ask questions that will help guide you in the future. It introduced me to conferences in a low-stress way, especially since we are still in a pandemic. By experiencing this now, I was able to go to the conference with my friends and have a great support system behind me while I navigated networking and attended conference events.”

Lindsey Baker ’24

Lindsey Baker’s poster reflected her work in producing polyolefins, which are common polymers used in household items such as textile fibers, phones, computers, food packaging, car parts and toys.

“Our work may provide an avenue for a more diverse family of polymers with new or improved properties,” Baker said. “​I worked this past summer in my hometown of Memphis under Dr. Brewster, a professor at the University of Memphis. I was also mentored by a second-year graduate student, Natalie Taylor. Dr. Brewster asked me to present at a conference, and provided a few good options, with ACS being among them. I was a bit intimidated by the idea of going to such a large meeting, but also was excited for the opportunity to explore the many different areas of chemistry that are represented at the conference.”

The conference gave Baker opportunities to explore presentations other than her own, opening her eyes to other subject matter within chemistry.

​“This just made me appreciate, all over again, the diversity of pursuits within the chemistry field,” she said. “​I have a list of things written down that I have curiosity about now, and I look forward to expanding that list as I keep seeing more.”

‘I felt very proud of them’

In the future, Arias-Rotondo hopes to encourage students to offer talks in addition to their posters, offering students even more professional challenges and opportunities. But for now, she’s happy to enjoy this experience.

“I don’t know if I would describe it as emotional, but it was significant for me because it was my first conference as a professor,” she said. “I organized a couple of symposia within the conference, but I didn’t present my own research, so I could step back and see how I helped the students get that far. I just felt very proud of them. More than anything it was the joy of seeing their science move forward and seeing them grow into awesome scientists.”

Global Study with K Ties: Humans Alter Evolution

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Binney-Girdler-with-Clover
Professor of Biology Binney Girdler and Otto Kailing,
an Oberlin College student from Kalamazoo, were
among the volunteers who collected white clover for
the Global Urban Evolution Project (GLUE).

Read the Science cover story

Two Kalamazoo College biology faculty members, a K student and an Oberlin College student from Kalamazoo were among the volunteers who participated in a global research project that proves humans are affecting evolution through urbanization and climate change.  

Professor of Biology Binney Girdler, Associate Professor of Biology Santiago Salinas, Ben Rivera ’18 and Otto Kailing contributed to the Global Urban Evolution Project (GLUE), published Thursday in the journal Science. The investigation shows that white clover plants found in Kalamazoo, for example, will have more in common with others in similar cities around the world than those in rural regions, even local ones. That’s evident because the study shows that clover in many cities produce less hydrogen cyanide as a defense mechanism against herbivores with herbivores being less abundant in cities. Other cities showed no gradient, perhaps because hydrogen cyanide increases clovers’ tolerance to water stress, signaling an environmental driver of evolution prompted by humans with increasing temperatures, additional pollutants and less water.

“We’ve known about these differences for at least a decade now, but it’s always been researched in small or very localized studies, comparing rural versus urban environments,” Salinas said. “The novelty of this work is that it’s being replicated across lots of cities and gradients, most with similar results.”

Binney Girdler with Evolution Project Data
Professor of Biology Binney Girdler was among 287
scientists who collected data for the Global Urban
Evolution Project.

White clover was chosen for GLUE’s research because it’s one of the few organisms present in almost every city. Girdler collected the clover locally along Westnedge Avenue near the Kalamazoo River to do her part alongside 286 other scientists in 26 countries who gathered more than 110,000 clover samples. 

Those samples—after being frozen, ground up and analyzed through sample paper and reactive compounds—helped researchers sequence more than 2,500 clover genomes to reveal the genetic basis for their changes in urban areas. The massive dataset produced from the project will be analyzed for years to come, making Thursday’s publication just the beginning of GLUE’s research. With scientists knowing that humans drive evolution in cities across the planet, they can start developing strategies to better conserve rare species, allowing the species to better adapt to urban environments, while scientists also prevent unwanted pests and diseases from doing the same. 

“I think the local interest is that this shows we’re not isolated,” Girdler said. “This shows that climate change is real and urbanization is real. This is a good study to show humans have had a huge impact, not just locally, but globally. There’s nothing unique about the Kalamazoo case. We only understand the impact of it when it’s embedded within this giant global study of 160 other cities.” 

Marc Johnson and Rob Ness, both biology faculty members at the University of Toronto Mississauga, spearheaded the global project along with James Santangelo, a Ph.D. student. Salinas and Girdler both expressed admiration for that group for organizing the work and maintaining communication throughout the project. 

“It’s fun to be a part of it,” Girdler said. “It represents what I think science has to give to the world. It’s connective and it helps us figure out what we should be doing through a global effort. It made me an optimist in the middle of the pandemic.” 

“We did it because this was a cool idea and it was nice to be able to help,” Salinas said. “It made me feel like a citizen scientist who added to the body of science without having to worry about prestige.” 

Climate Change Exhibit Spotlights K Artists

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Climate Change exhibit for Points of Return
Jo-Ann and Robert Stewart Professor of Art Tom Rice is among 25 artists featured
in “Points of Return,” an online exhibit dedicated to climate change.

An online art exhibit dedicated to pushing for action against climate change while there’s still hope for the planet features two artists with Kalamazoo College connections.

Jo-Ann and Robert Stewart Professor of Art Tom Rice and alumna Bethany Johnson ’07 were among the 25 international artists chosen from more than 300 entrants for “Points of Return.” The exhibit focuses on the harm humans have caused to the Earth, particularly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, while emphasizing there are still multiple paths and approaches that can be taken to restore an environmental balance.

“Points of Return” is presented by A La Luz, which translates from Spanish as “spotlight” or “to shed light on.” The group was founded in 2015 by environmental artists David Cass and Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero to be a wide-ranging platform for sustainable and environmentally focused creative work. The exhibit unfolds across six sections, defined as viewing rooms, that describe a movement that comes full circle through planetary ecosystems, art disciplines and mediums.

'Safe Keeping' art for Climate Change Exhibit 'Points of Return'
Bethany Johnson ’07, who is featured in “Points of Return,” uses materials
such as chipboard, foam, hardboard, paper, plastic, plexiglass, particleboard,
plywood and wood in “Safe Keeping,” which deals with material consumption
and the resulting pollution, climate change and landfill waste.

Rice’s part of the exhibit shows one of his projects, “Precarious Living,” within the work he pursued for four months as a Fulbright Canada research chair in arts and humanities at the University of Alberta. There, he exhibited a climate-themed installation titled “Shifting Uncertainties: The Land We Live On.”

“‘Points of Return’ represents artists from many different parts of the world, which is important because climate change is a global issue,” Rice said while calling his selection to the global exhibit an honor. “What we do locally or nationally impacts areas of the world that contribute much less to the climate crisis. The online format of the exhibition ensures that many more people will have the opportunity to spend time with the artwork than if it had been a physical exhibition. Accessibility to information is critical to changing people’s minds and behaviors related to climate-change issues.”

Rice used an Alberta-area oil refinery as the main visual resource for “Precarious Living.”

“I hope that my work will help people be self-reflective and ask questions about the climate crisis,” Rice said. “‘Precarious Living’ is a large-scale drawing installation that poses more questions than it answers. The subject matter is focused on an oil refinery made up of a mass of pipes, upgraders, holding tanks, chimineas and flares that amount to an absurd maze of fragile connections. What is really going on here? How can we comprehend the impact of an industry that is the very foundation of our economy, but threatens our very existence? The drawings have large sections of redacted information. For me, these redacted or negated elements represent both subterfuge by the fossil fuel industries, and our own self-imposed delusion that we can continue burning fossil fuels and that technology will save us. ‘Precarious Living’ is about being at the tipping point of global warming.”

Johnson’s artwork is represented by Moody Gallery in Houston, Texas, and she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. Her work in “Points of Return,” titled “Safe Keeping,” deals with material consumption and the resulting pollution, climate change and landfill waste. She feels those are important issues for artists to face given the work they pursue and how they pursue it.

“I think there can be an attitude in the art world that one’s conceptual ideas must be realized by any means possible; that essentially, the scale, media and production methods must inherently follow from the artist’s greater conceptual idea,” Johnson said. “This can lead to an incredible amount of material consumption, energy use, and the utilization of toxic, unsustainable materials within the art world. Under the current conditions of our climate crisis, I feel that the art world is in desperate need of material and energy ethics; that we think seriously about the impacts of our work on the environment, and strive toward artmaking practices that are renewable, environmentally sensitive and even climate positive in their impacts.”

In line with the overall exhibition, Johnson’s display embodies anxiety and hope along with grief and joy as she uses layered materials that are reminiscent of geological core samples, land formations and geological processes. Her materials include paper, plastic, foil food wrappers, aluminum and foam that bring new life to discarded waste.

“I hope to offer an opportunity for discussion and reflection on the issues of human consumption and material waste, while also generating works that are entrancing and poetic, independently from their environmental themes,” Johnson said. “In this way, my goal is for them to contain ‘layers’ of meaning, which hopefully allows them to reach a wide audience in different ways.”

Johnson said she doesn’t blame artists—or any individuals for that matter—for the climate emergency as the problems that contribute to it are systemic, and intrinsic to capitalism, energy systems and powerful corporations. However, individuals must grapple with the results of it.

“This is where I think we can all recapture some power from that system by mindfully adopting ethical, responsible and sustainable models of living and working,” she said. “It can be, at its best, a hopeful, even joyful, act of resistance and psychic repair.”

Johnson feels that individuals who stay politically active can have great power against climate change and environmental problems by acting locally when they act together.

“Much environmental policy and action happens at levels beyond the individual, so voting and getting involved with local and regional politics can be hugely impactful,” she said. “For example, I live in a neighborhood in Austin, Texas, that used to house several environmentally toxic commercial facilities where oil had been leaching into the ground for years. A small group of concerned neighbors spent many years advocating for the cleanup and environmental remediation of these sites, and were eventually successful. The fact that I can live here with a sense of safety for my own health is thanks to a dedicated group of people working on a specific, concrete goal. Both in terms of the actual environmental impact as well as the sense of personal agency that it can create, I think finding a specific, actionable and realistic goal on a local level can have a great impact.”

Rice agrees that the collective actions of individuals are likely to be beneficial.

“Timothy Morton asks in his book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, ‘does my driving a Prius or recycling my plastic bottles really help,’” Rice said. “I think the answer is no, of course not, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important to do those things. I think it was Elizabeth Kolbert in The Sixth Extinction who points out it will take mass social movements to create real change related to the climate crisis. Social change happens a person at a time. Individually, we can’t initiate real change, but we are part of a larger network. What we do individually matters.”