Whoo hoo! The long /oo/ sound came through when a Kalamazoo College team won first place in the Google Games. Two K teams participated–“The Metros” included Timothy Rutledge ’19, David Gurrola ’19, Fabien Debies ’20 and Daniel Michelin ’18; “Graph Isomorphism Problem” (which happened to win the friendly competition involving some 20 teams from K, the Illinois Institute of Technology, DePaul University, Western Michigan University, the University of Illinois-Chicago, the Milwaukee School of Engineering and the University of Notre Dame) featured the line-up of Jennifer Cho ’19, Abhay Goel ’18, Jacob Naranjo ’18 and Dahwi Kim ’19. The emphasis was definitely on fun, not finish, and all teams enjoyed in a day-long event of coding, puzzles and word association games with a theme of “Top Secret Mission.” Teams could solve puzzles by hand or by writing code. Congratulations to all!
Team “Graph Isomorphism Problem” included (l-r) Jennifer Cho ’19, Abhay Goel ’18, Jacob Naranjo ’18 and Dahwi Kim ’19.
Jeremy Sabella (middle), who was a visiting professor at K last fall, will participate in a public discussion about Reinhold Niebuhr on May 4 during the annual Thompson Lecture at Light Fine Arts. Sabella wrote the companion piece to the PBS documentary, “An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story.”
Niebuhr was the author of the “Serenity Prayer.” He rose from a small Midwest church pulpit to become the nation’s moral voice. Niebuhr’s writings provided guidance and inspiration for presidents, politicians, theologians and others. He first was a pacifist and socialist, but later served as a consultant to the State Department during the Cold War.
The documentary includes interviews with former President Jimmy Carter, Civil Rights leader Andrew Young, New York Times writer David Brooks, scholar Susannah Heschel, Union Theological Seminary Professor Emeritus Cornel West and many well-recognized historians and theologians.
Jeremy Sabella and Gary Dorrien will lead a discussion after the documentary screening. Sabella is the author of the companion book to the film. Dorrien was a film participant and is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University.
A gift from the sons and daughters-in-law of Paul Lamont and Ruth Peel Thompson established the Paul Lamont Thompson Memorial Lecture. A committee of alumni and friends of Kalamazoo College worked diligently to build the fund with gifts from the many students whose lives were enriched by Thompson’s leadership.
Thompson was president of Kalamazoo College from 1938 to 1949. He founded the Annual Fund at K, helping ensure the College’s financial integrity. The campus added several facilities during his tenure including Harmon Hall, Stowe Tennis Stadium, Angell Field and Welles Dining Hall. He also served as president of the Association of Church-Related Colleges. Thompson was known as an excellent speaker whose wit, wisdom and gentle, patient manner helped nurture generations of K students.
Kalamazoo College recently appointed four faculty as endowed professors. Endowed professorships are positions funded by the annual earnings from an endowed gift or gifts to the College; therefore they are a direct reflection of 1) the value donors attribute to the excellent teaching and mentorship that occurs at K, and 2) the desire of donors to ensure the continuation of that excellence. Currently at K there are 26 endowed faculty positions, including the four recently announced.
Hannah Apps is the Thomas K. Kreilick Professor of Economics;
John Dugas is the Margaret and Roger Scholten Associate Professor of International Studies;
Kyla Day Fletcher is the Lucinda H. Stone Assistant Professor of Psychology; and
Sarah Lindley is the Arcus Social Justice Leadership Professor of Art.
Hannah Apps
Hannah Apps earned a B.A. degree, cum laude, from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. She began her career at K in 1989, teaching a wide range of courses from principles of economics to public sector and urban economics to econometrics. She served one term as mayor of the city of Kalamazoo and seven terms as vice mayor (1997 through 2014), community service that well aligns with her scholarly focus on community and economic development. Her body of scholarship is impressive–two monographs; more than a dozen papers, articles and reports; numerous invited presentations; and a number of consultancies, typically with local governments and public agencies. Apps was selected as a Woman of Achievement by the Kalamazoo YWCA in 2004. At K she has been department chair, chair of the Faculty Hearing Committee, and (currently) member of the Faculty Personnel Committee.
John Dugas
John Dugas earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Louisiana State University. He completed his Ph.D. (political science) from Indiana University. He began his career at K in 1995 and teaches a range of courses in international politics and Latin American politics. His early research focused on issues of political reform in Colombia, including decentralization, constitutional reform, and political party reform. In more recent years, he has written about U.S. foreign policy toward Colombia as well as on human rights in the northern Andes. His current research explores the concept of “political genocide” in relation to the systematic killing of members of the Unión Patriótica, a Colombian political movement that was decimated in the 1980s and 1990s. He is the co-author of one book and the editor of another, both published in Spanish in Colombia. His scholarship also includes nine book chapters, three articles in refereed journals, and numerous book reviews and conference papers. Dugas is the recipient of two Fulbright Grants, one for teaching and research in Bogotá, Colombia (1999) and another for research in Quito, Ecuador (2010-2011). At K Dugas has served as chair of the political science department and is currently the director of International and Area Studies major. He is also the faculty advisor for the Model United Nations student organization.
Kyla Fletcher
Kyla Day Fletcher earned a B.S. degree, summa cum laude, from Howard University. She earned a Ph.D. (developmental psychology) from the University of Michigan. She has worked at K since 2012, teaching general psychology, adolescent development, psychology of the African-American experience, research methods, and psychology of sexuality. She has published five peer-reviewed journal articles since 2014 and is currently the principal investigator of a study titled “Substance Use and Partner Characteristics in Daily HIV Risk in African Americans.” That study is sponsored by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health). Fletcher has been an active contributor to the psychology department and the College, most recently serving as a representative on the presidential search committee.
Sarah Lindley
Sarah Lindley earned her Bachelor of Fine Art degree, magna cum laude, from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She earned a M.F.A. (ceramics) from the University of Washington. Since 2001 she has taught a wide range of ceramics and sculpture courses, and she has managed and maintained K’s ceramics, sculpture and woodshop studios and equipment. Lindley served as an Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Faculty Fellow in 2010-2011, and in that capacity she helped found the Community Studio in downtown Kalamazoo’s Park Trades Center. The Community Studio provides space for advanced art students to do and show work in close proximity to and collaboration with professional artists and community advocates for the arts and social justice. In 2014 Lindley won the Michigan Campus Compact Outstanding Faculty Award for her civic engagement pedagogy. She has had numerous solo, two-person and group exhibitions regionally, nationally, and internationally. In 2015 she won honorable mention in the 8th Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale in Korea.
“Professors Apps, Dugas, Fletcher and Lindley are extraordinary teachers,” said Provost Mickey McDonald. “And each has a deep commitment to scholarship and service, to the art and science of learning, and to the achievement of educational outcomes students can long apply to successful living.”
Travel + Leisure Magazine — a Time Inc. publication offering tips, news and information about destinations around the world — has named Kalamazoo College the most beautiful campus among colleges and universities in Michigan.
Travel + Leisure Magazine has named Kalamazoo College the most beautiful campus in Michigan thanks in part to its “understated but attractive red-brick buildings” such as Hodge House.
The article describes college campuses in each state as picturesque resources appreciated by nearly everyone in each college town, and not just residents, students, faculty, staff and alumni. They’re also worthwhile destinations for travelers.
“Kalamazoo College is probably best described as pleasant,” its article says of K. “Understated but attractive red-brick buildings make up the majority of campus structures: Hodge House, the president’s residence, is a good example.”
K is located about 140 miles from Chicago and Detroit. The Kalamazoo-Portage metropolitan area has 335,000 people, making Kalamazoo feel like a large city with the intimacy of a small town.
The Peace Corps announced today that Kalamazoo College ranks No. 13 among small schools on the agency’s 2017 Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities list. There are 10 Hornets currently volunteering worldwide. In 2016, Kalamazoo College ranked No. 14.
Britta Seifert ’12 (left) volunteered with the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan for 27 months.
“Peace Corps service is an unparalleled leadership opportunity that enables college and university alumni to use the creative-thinking skills they developed in school to make an impact in communities around the world,” Acting Peace Corps Director Sheila Crowley said. “Many college graduates view the Peace Corps as a launching pad for their careers because volunteers return home with the cultural competency and entrepreneurial spirit sought after in most fields.”
Since the Peace Corps’ founding in 1961, 247 Kalamazoo College alumni have traveled abroad to serve as volunteers. Three Michigan schools rank as Top Colleges this year, making Michigan among 11 states and the District of Columbia with at least three ranked schools.
Service in the Peace Corps is a life-defining, hands-on experience that offers volunteers the opportunity to travel to a community overseas and make a lasting difference in the lives of others.
Joy Campbell’s experience at Kalamazoo College motivated her to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco.
Volunteers develop sustainable solutions to address challenges in education, health, economic development, agriculture, environment and youth development. Through their experience, volunteers gain a cultural understanding and a lifelong commitment to service that positions them to succeed in today’s global economy.
The Peace Corps ranks its top volunteer-producing colleges and universities annually according to the size of the student body. View the complete 2017 rankings of the top 25 schools in each category and find an interactive map that shows where alumni from each college and university are serving.
Since President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961, more than 225,000 Americans of all ages have served in 141 countries worldwide. For more information, visit peacecorps.gov.
The Nelda K. Balch Festival Playhouse will present the Pulitzer Prize winning drama “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry from Feb. 23-26 at the Playhouse, 129 Thompson St., in Kalamazoo. Karen Berthel will direct the show in keeping with the season’s theme, “Broadway Firsts: Stories of ‘Outsider’ Cultural Landmarks in American Theatre.”
The play follows the Youngers, a poor African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. Lena, the family’s matriarch, receives an insurance check when her husband dies. Lena wants to use the money to buy a house. However, her son, Walter, would rather quit his job as a chauffeur and invest the money in a liquor store. The family’s tragedy is that everyone fails to see how achieving their individual dreams might cost others theirs.
Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” was the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, and was the first with a black director. The New York Drama Critics’ Circle named it the best play of 1959. Kalamazoo College students Quincy Crosby ’17, Tricia LaCaze ’18, Shown Powell ’18 and Donovan Williams ’20 are among the actors featured.
The shows start at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 23-25 and 2 p.m. Feb. 26. Kalamazoo College students, faculty and staff are admitted free with their school ID. The general public may call the Playhouse box office at 269-337-7333 for tickets. Reservations are encouraged.
Kalamazoo College President Jorge Gonzalez emphasized technological change, globalization, diversity and urbanization as important new drivers for a liberal arts education. Gonzalez was inaugurated Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, at Stetson Chapel.
Kalamazoo College inaugurated its 18th president, Jorge G. Gonzalez, in a celebration Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, at Stetson Chapel. Dozens of colleges and universities from across the country sent representatives to the ceremony to join college trustees, alumni, students, faculty, staff, family and friends in the festivities.
“My grandfather and father could never have imagined a Mexican would have a chance to be a president somewhere such as K,” Gonzalez said during his inaugural address. A native of Monterrey, Mexico, Gonzalez earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in economics at Michigan State. His wife, Suzie, is a 1983 Kalamazoo College alumna. “It is an honor and a privilege to lead an institution that has a 183-year history.”
Charlotte Hall, the chair of the college’s Board of Trustees, said one of the board’s most important roles is to select the right leader at the right time. “We looked at his long and distinguished career as an economics scholar, brilliant teacher and inspired leader,” she said. “I know his visionary leadership will make K stronger and better, more exciting, more humane, more true to our mission.”
Gonzalez said immersion in the liberal arts at a school like Kalamazoo College is the most powerful and life-enriching form of undergraduate education, especially when students have opportunities to apply their academic work. He emphasized technological change, globalization, diversity and urbanization as important new drivers for such an education.
“What you need to learn is not today’s reality; you need to learn how to learn, and this is exactly what a liberal arts education at K can provide,” Gonzalez said. “It will teach you to look at problems from a variety of perspectives, and deal with uncertainty and complexity.”
Gonzalez began his presidency at Kalamazoo College on July 1, 2016. He succeeded Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, who announced her retirement in April 2015. Gonzalez arrived from Occidental College, where he served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college, and created and supported experiential learning programs, allowing students to engage the world in ways that draw upon their liberal arts education. He also has worked at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where he served as a professor of economics and special assistant to the president.
Kalamazoo College, founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts and sciences college. It created the K-Plan, which emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, leadership development, and international and intercultural engagement. Kalamazoo College does more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.
The $8.7 million Fitness and Wellness Center at Kalamazoo College will include a weight and cardio fitness area to meet the needs of students, faculty and staff.
Kalamazoo College will dedicate a new 30,000-square-foot Fitness and Wellness Center at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 28, at Academy and Catherine streets in Kalamazoo.
The $8.7 million structure was funded entirely by donors including alumni, parents, friends of the college and several foundations, who contributed to the Campaign for Kalamazoo College, the most successful campaign in the college’s history. The facility will include:
a weight and cardio fitness area to meet the needs of students, faculty and staff
three flexible-use multi-purpose rooms
two racquetball courts and a squash court
a dance studio
expanded lockers for the Kalamazoo College tennis teams and for general use
an office and health assessment room for the campus fitness and wellness director
space for the George Acker Tennis Hall of Champions
“For years to come, this building will represent energy efficiency, sustainability, educational innovation and hands-on learning, as well as health and wellness,” Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez said.
In lieu of LEED certification, Kalamazoo College students Michelle Sugimoto ’17 and Ogden Wright ’16 provided LEED-like auditing in the design, energy and sustainability criteria that inform LEED certification. The students are members of the Kalamazoo College Climate Action Network, a student-organized group that advocates for sustainable and effective measures to address climate change.
Sugimoto and Wright were chosen from about a dozen student applicants to work on the project after the college’s Sustainability Committee recommended diverting the estimated $50,000 cost of formal LEED certification toward a student audit, training students in the project design, energy and sustainability criteria that inform LEED.
The students collaborated with the project’s design and construction teams — TMP Architecture and Owen, Ames, Kimball respectively — to assess factors such as water and energy efficiency, proximity to public transportation and air quality.
The actual cost of their training was a fraction of the cost of LEED certification, allowing K to invest in a 12 kilowatt solar panel array installation on campus and offset 5 percent of the new fitness center’s energy costs.
“It’s a case of the administration sharing a challenge with students and saying, ‘Join us,’ ” Associate Vice President for Facilities Paul Manstrom said. “Buildings constitute a large part of the amount of waste produced in the United States each year. Putting the money up front saves the college money in the long run, while at the same time giving these students an incredible learning experience.”
Gonzalez, Sugimoto, Wright, Manstrom, Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell, Kalamazoo College Trustee Amy Upjohn and Director of Fitness and Wellness Jen Bailey will participate in ribbon-cutting ceremonies.
Kalamazoo College officials announced today applications remain open to attend the 2016 With/Out ¿Borders? Conference hosted by the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL) on the K campus in Kalamazoo, Mich., Oct. 20-23.
With/Out ¿Borders? features a panel of distinguished participants, including actor and writer Daniel Beaty, American studies scholar and social movements historian Christina Heatherton, journalist and author Naomi Klein, and New Orleans poet and singer Sunni Patterson.
Naomi Klein [photo credit Kourosh Keshiri]“This conference brings together people whose work envisions an imaginative, robust and just future,” said ACSJL Academic Director Lisa Brock. “We invite conversations across disciplines from American and international academics, writers, artists and activists on the front lines of climate change, peace, food justice, human rights and more.”
According to Brock, Naomi Klein will deliver a conference keynote presentation and participate in panel discussions. Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Published worldwide in 2007, Shock has more than a million copies in print in 30 languages. Her critically acclaimed new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, was a 2014 instant bestseller now being translated into more than 20 languages. A documentary film based on the book will be shown during the conference.
Also during the Conference, Sunni Patterson will perform a spoken word/poetry piece, Christina Heatherton will discuss and sign copies of her new book, Policing the Planet, and Daniel Beaty will stage his play Emergency. In the play, Beaty performs 40 different characters who respond to the unexpected phenomenon of a slave ship emerging in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Through characters’ individual responses to the ship and their varied testimonies on identity and personal freedom, Emergency weaves a stirring commentary on what it is to be human and the longing to be free.
Community partners for the With/Out ¿Borders? Conference include Alamo Drafthouse Cinema; Case Western Reserve University Social Justice Institute; Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at University of Chicago; ERAACE; Hispanic American Council of Kalamazoo; Kalamazoo Public Library; People’s Food Co-op of Kalamazoo; University of Illinois-Chicago Social Justice Initiative; and YWCA of Kalamazoo.
According to Brock, other confirmed With/Out ¿Borders? Conference participants thus far include:
• Simon Akindess – UNESCO Coordinator of Pan-African Schools
• Jaafar Aksikas – President of the Cultural Studies Association
• Blair Anderson – Detroit-based activist and former Black Panther
• Peter Bratsis – Scholar of EU polices, Greece and Brexit
• Adrienne Brown – Detroit-based science fiction writer, social justice activist and performer
• Prudence Browne – Scholar of charter schools as colonial education
• Dara Cooper – Black farmers and food justice advocate
• Sean Estelle – National divestment campaigner for Energy Action Coalition
• Nicholas Estes – Scholar of indigenous intellectual history in the U.S.
• Bill Fletcher, Jr. – Author and racial justice and labor activist
• Shreena Gandhi – MSU scholar of religion in the Americas
• Lewis Gordon – Philosopher and expert on Frantz Fanon
• Alex Lubin – Scholar of African-American/Arab solidarities
• Shaya Plaut – Human rights journalist and educator
• Erin Polley – Peacebuilding program coordinator at American Friends Service Committee
• Shante Paradigm Smalls – Hip Hop scholar, artist and writer
• Valerie Thomas – Scholar of Afro-Futurisms
• Cynthia Young – Scholar of third-world solidarities
• Alice Kim – Coordinator of the Chicago Torture Survivors justice movement
The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (www.kzoo.edu/arcuscenter) is an initiative of Kalamazoo College. Its mission is to develop and sustain leaders in human rights and social justice through education and capacity-building. The ACSJL envisions a campus and world where every person’s life is equally valued, the inherent dignity of all people is recognized, the opportunity to develop one’s full potential is available to every person, and systematic discrimination and structural inequities have been eradicated.
Kalamazoo College, founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts and sciences college and the creator of the K-Plan that emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, leadership development, and international and intercultural engagement. Kalamazoo
College does more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.
A class reunion nametag shows Vivian’s K photo from 1931 above a more recent photo taken around the time of her 104th birthday.
In response to a prompt (called “Truths”) in an old class reunion questionnaire Vivian Mitchell Prindl ’35 wrote: “One is lucky if she learns to accept what comes. Life is much more pleasant if one has a contented frame of mind.”
More pleasant, indeed, and perhaps much longer. Vivian celebrated her 104th birthday this year and is quite likely K’s oldest living alumna. She matriculated to K from Detroit in 1931, two years into the Great Depression. She ended up earning her bachelor’s degree from New York State University College at Plattsburg, but she always considered herself a member of K’s class of 1935. “I enjoyed Kalamazoo College very much,” she said in a recent interview with archivist Lisa Murphy ’98. “Lemuel F. Smith taught chemistry. He was a very genial person. If anybody was late they had to bring him a candy bar, so once a semester the entire class would come late and bring him a candy bar.”
She shared many other memories, some somber. In the questionnaire Vivian wrote, “Allan Hoben was president when I first attended K. I remember the sadness we all felt when we learned of his terminal illness. The last time he spoke at Chapel, every student attended.”
There were lighter moments. Dancing to records in the sun room of Trowbridge Hall was one she confided to Lisa. Vivian also shared fondness Professors Mulder (English), Harper (sociology) and Dunbar (history). “Professor Praeger [biology] was from County Down in Ireland,” said Vivian. “He felt like he knew me because my father was from County Antrim.”
Vivian had been to business college for a year before she came to K, and that paid off, literally, because she knew how to type. Campus jobs in the dining room (a wellspring for many students) paid 25 cents an hour. But because Vivian could type she was hired by the business office at 30 cents an hour. Everyone who lived on campus, even students who had scholarships, had to work, according to Vivian. It was the Depression. “We didn’t think about not having money because no one had money.” She remembers companies shut down, men out of work, and soup kitchens.
Weekend fun usually meant hikes or walks–things you could do that didn’t cost money. Like those extemporaneous dances in the Trowbridge sun room. “I danced with a boy I dated a couple of years,” said Vivian. And there was the “beau parlor” in Trowbridge. “If you were entertaining you could go to a small room as long as you kept the door open,” Vivian added. “These were the years before blue jeans, so we dressed up. If we were leaving campus to go downtown we were told to wear hat and gloves.”
Vivian also had a key part in the annual Christmas Carol Service. That event called for someone to play the Spirit of Christmas, and the red dress for the part was pretty tiny. “I was small enough to fit into it so I was chosen as the Spirit.”
Vivian married Frank Prindl, and they had two children. Vivian also enjoyed a long teaching career in schools in Kentucky, Michigan, Florida and in Bonn, Germany. After retirement she continued to teach on a volunteer basis. And she traveled widely, especially to England and Mexico, but she also has visited South America, Indonesia, the Philippines and Africa.
K in the early 1930s sounds like a very different place, and yet, Vivian’s life (still going strong) suggests that K cultivated curiosity, independence and a yen for travel and adventure then as much as now.
![Naomi Klein [photo credit Kourosh Keshiri]](http://www.kzoo.edu/news/files/2016/04/aomi-Klein-by-kourosh-keshiri-300x250.jpg)
