Two junior writers are getting their creative work published widely. Kate Belew ’15 published three poems (“Marrow,” “Leaning Tower of Lady Liberty,” and “God Tree”) in the Fall 2013 issue of Minetta Review. Journey was the theme of that issue. Jane Huffman ’15 is an English and theatre arts major who also is publishing in quite a few places–including a recent interview in NewerYork.
Category: Students
Senior Leaders Honored
Thirty-two students–all members of the Class of 2014–earned the prestigious Kalamazoo College Senior Leadership Award. Each student was nominated by at least one faculty or staff member. They include founders and leaders of student organizations and programs, athletic team captains, residence assistants, peer leaders, civic engagement scholars, student commissioners and officers, teaching and laboratory assistants, and service-learning and social justice leaders. In terms of leadership, they are the best-of-the-best at an institution whose mission is to develop enlightened leaders. Pictured are (l-r): first row–Roxann Lawrence, Ayoki Levy, Sarah Sullivan, Yesenia Aguilar, Lori-Ann Williams, Anna Asbury, Emma Dolce, Nathalie Botezatu; second row–Hsu Tun, Geneci Marroquin, Ramon Rochester, Claire DeWitt, Sherin John, Brenda Guzman; third row–Erran Briggs, Marc Zughaib, Amanda Mancini, Umang Varma; fourth row–Lucas Kushner, Amy Jimenez, Ismael Carrasco, Amanda Bolles, Nicholas Beam, back row–Tendai Mudyiwa, Ian Good, Colin Lauderdale, Edward Carey, and Mark Ghafari. Not pictured are Keaton Adams, Raven Fisher, Michael Korn, and Kari Paine.
Award for Japanese Speech a K First
Senior Megan Davis and first-year Katherine Ballew participated in the Michigan Japanese Speech Contest (held at Hinoki International School, Livonia, Mich.). The title of Megan’s speech was “A Moment in Which I Made a new Realization About the World.” Katherine’s speech, “Heading Toward a World Without Racism” was awarded an Honorary Mention. It was the first time a Kalamazoo College student has won award in the Japanese speech contest. The students attended the contest with Noriko Akimoto Sugimori, assistant professor of Japanese language. Pictured at left are (l-r): Megan, Katherine, and Professor Sugimori.
Extraordinary Women: Real and Imagined
Festival Playhouse invites you to meet some extraordinary women, real and imagined.
Senior and junior directors Arshia Will ’14 and Jane Huffman ’15 will share their work (Maria Irene Fornes’ Mud and a compilation of Shakespeare scenes titled What She Wills) at Festival Playhouse’s Senior Performance Series, presented in Kalamazoo College’s Dungeon theatre February 13-16. The works offer two highly contrasting portrayals of women—one places Shakespeare’s female characters in a new setting with fresh voices; the other portrays a woman’s uncompromising effort to carve out her own life amidst severe poverty and abusive relationships.
Huffman chose to direct Mud in part because she sees the character Mae as a later-day Antigone: “Cunningly and aggressively, she subverts the paradigms that oppress her. She is a mirror. She is a call to action. She is a singular voice that resounds with that of countless women who have been rendered voiceless.”
In What She Wills, Will has provided an opportunity for Shakespeare’s female characters to be heard from a woman’s perspective.
“Shakespeare may not have written roles for women actors since every role in Shakespeare’s time was played by men, but the women characters he created are complex and compelling,” says Will. “The characters are so rich they can be found throughout history and today. We have seen countless Juliets and Lady Macbeths, and they will continue to live on. What She Wills takes these famous Shakespearean women and puts them in new environments and under ’new lights.’ It illustrates how enduring and relevant Shakespeare is today.”
The Senior Performance Series also features the work of three senior designers: Kelly Eubank (costumes), David Landskroener (sound), and Mary Mathyer (set). Sophomore Katie Lee is the lighting designer.
The show will open on Thursday, February 13, at 7:30pm, and run Friday and Saturday, February 14 and 15, at 8pm. The show closes on Sunday, February 16, at 2pm. Tickets are $5 and may be purchased at the door. For more information about these and the remainder of Festival Playhouse’s golden anniversary season (including The Firebugs and Peer Gynt), call 269.337.7333 or visit www.kzoo.edu/theatre.
The Senior Performance Series continues the tradition of featuring the work of Kalamazoo College students creating their own theatre.
Raven Fisher ’14 is National Student Day Winner
Raven Fisher ’14 earned third-place honors and a $1,000 prize in the 2013 National Student Day Contest that celebrates and promotes social responsibility by college students. The math major from Detroit received her award based on votes from online supporters who read her testimonial, titled “Lifelong Commitment to the Community.”
Lifelong Commitment to the Community
by Raven Fisher
All my life, I have enjoyed assisting those around me, rather it be with homework or an errand that they needed me to run. I have never seen these things as burdens but as opportunities to give back to my community.
During my junior year of high school, I was working at a summer math camp which helped youth from ages 13-21. We worked on a variety of math concepts in order to bring these students up to speed for the upcoming school year. While working with the students, I realized that a lot of them had a hard time grasping concepts that should have been mastered in 6th grade. However, given one on one attention and different options to learn the concepts, the students started catching on immediately.
On the last day of the camp, we played a Jeopardy math game. The students answered every question correctly and even corrected me on a problem in which I had solved wrong. Seeing their faces and senses of accomplishment gave me the same feeling. This is when I committed myself to lifelong community service and aspirations to be a math teacher.
Since then, I have done KDO [Keeping the Doors Open], a math summer camp at Kalamazoo College which helps middle school students stay on track with their math classes. I am also the Civic Engagement Scholar for Community Advocates for Parents and Students, which attempts to eliminate the inequities in education by providing underprivileged students with resources such as tutoring. After college, I will continue my passion for service as a teacher!
Congratulations, Raven!
Student Commissioners become Student Painters on MLK Day
Martin Luther King Day 2014 activities on the K campus featured a heartfelt Community Reflections presentation by K students in Stetson Chapel; a rousing convocation talk, also in Stetson, by guest speaker and K board of trustee member Jevon Caldwell Gross ’04, pastor of Hamilton Memorial United Methodist Church in Atlantic City, New Jersey; a commemorative walk by students, faculty, and staff from K and WMU; and an inspiring lecture by American Indian activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer Winona LaDuke in Dalton Theatre.
Meanwhile, out of the public eye, 17 K Student Commission members volunteered five hours each (a total of 85 hours) during the annual MLK National Day of Service. They painted two commercial buildings owned by the Kalamazoo County Land Bank on Portage Street in Kalamazoo’s Edison Neighborhood.
According to StuComm President Darrin Camilleri ’14, the buildings were foreclosed properties that needed a cleanup so that a redevelopment process could begin on part of an important corridor that leads to the heart of downtown Kalamazoo.
“Our work as student commissioners is generally focused on the campus, but we wanted to take our service to the larger community,” said Darrin. “By giving back, we were able to honor Dr. King’s memory, make a connection to an organization in town, and do some good for a neighborhood in Kalamazoo.”
Research Published on Alzheimer’s Molecules
Biology professors Jim Langeland ’86 and Blaine Moore join one K student and three K alumni as authors of an important paper that will soon be published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. The co-authors are Nathalie Botezatu ’14, Maddie Gillentine ’13, Ashley (Boehmke) Benson ’08, and Kyle Wilson ’08. All were (or are) biology majors at K, and in the case of some, the scientific work—which describes the evolution of key molecules involved in Alzheimer’s disease—was part of a Senior Individualized Project (SIP). The work is groundbreaking in at least two ways. First, it approaches Alzheimer’s disease from an evolutionary perspective. And second, it illustrates a particular niche approach to research that the scientific environment at K is well positioned to pull off.
“The experiments that culminated in this paper began in 2007 with the SIP work of Benson and Wilson,” says Langeland. “The six-year duration shows that science can take a long time to come to fruition.” That duration derives, in part, from the complementary expertise of the two collaborating labs—Langeland’s expertise in gene evolution and Moore’s background in Alzheimer’s disease research and experience with cellular expression of proteins. According to Langeland, for most of the larger labs the exigency of understanding Alzheimer’s in order to development treatments for it may not favor such an extended timeline or evolutionary approach. Indeed, Moore says, “Most researchers in the Alzheimer’s field are exclusively focused on inhibiting the production of protein fragments that have been linked to the progression of the disease. One of the exciting aspects of this project was the chance to take a broader view of the proteins involved in the disease process.”
A broader view allows for unique approaches (suggesting that time and creativity are the two pillars of the particular niche approach to research for which K is so well-equipped). Six years ago Langeland decided to investigate the evolution of two molecules associated with Alzheimer’s—APP and BACE. BACE acts like a scissors to cut (or cleave) APP. The excess accumulation of one of the “cut pieces” (a.k.a. products or substrates, this particular one known as A-Beta) is linked to the development of the disease. Benson and Wilson sought answers to how far back on the evolutionary tree of life these molecules could be found. Turns out that APP is nearly a billion years old. BACE (and its cleavage effect) is much younger, about 500 million years old. Just down the hall, Moore’s lab had been studying the regulation of enzymes that produce A-Beta, and had well-developed systems for expressing Alzheimer’s proteins and analyzing cleavage products. Put the two together and you have a unique project that would have been unlikely at a larger institution or medical school.
The principle of natural selection suggests that BACE’s action on APP is vital to life in ways we don’t yet understand, according to Langeland. The A-Beta substrate may be some kind of mistake that natural selection is unable to “correct” because Alzheimer’s expresses so late in human lifetimes, usually long after reproductive success has been achieved. Moore says, “It’s essentially a wrong place, wrong time phenomenon. The APP substrate evolves the A-Beta motif, then comes in cellular contact with preexisting BACE. The result is a devastating disease process that is most likely an accidental by-product of some normal, as yet unknown, cellular process.”
Moore and his lab (including Gillentine and Botezatu) conducted an elegant experiment to confirm the importance of the BACE molecule. They expressed the BACE molecule from an organism—in this case a primitive marine dweller called amphioxus—that diverged from the human evolutionary branch some 750 million years ago. Amphioxus has no A-Beta. Then, Moore’s group discovered that amphioxus BACE nevertheless acts as a scissors to the human APP molecule. The result adds evidence to the biological importance (albeit unknown) of BACE’s cleaving action.
According to Langeland, an evolutionary approach to diseases may suggest molecular targets for treatment intervention, and, just as important, the limitation of a non-nuanced approach to potential targets.
The paper is titled “Asynchronous Evolutionary Origins of A-Beta and BACE-1.” The work was supported, in part, by a Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) New Directions Initiative Grant, a program that supports professional growth of mid-career liberal arts faculty, with particular emphasis on projects outside traditional boundaries.
“A Year of Food in Kalamazoo” for Only $12!
A group of K students has a last-minute gift idea for you that will keep on giving throughout 2014: “A Year of Food in Kalamazoo” wall calendar. This partner project between K’s First-Year Seminar “Cultivating Community” and the People’s Food Co-op in Kalamazoo is colorful, useful, and full of recipes, profiles of local food entrepreneurs, and great ideas that will feed your inner foodie’s soul for a whole year. It’s only $12 and will encourage the efforts of 17 K students and their professor, Amelia Katanski. Available from the People’s Food Coop, 507 Harrison St. in Kalamazoo. Happy New Year, indeed!
Dean’s List Fall 2013
Congratulations to the following Kalamazoo College students, who achieved a grade point average of 3.5 or better for a full-time course load of at least three units, without failing or withdrawing from any course, during the Fall 2013 academic term. Kudos to the entire group of some 300 students.
Fall 2013
| A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | ||
AAyaka Abe B Shreya Bahl CWillina Cain DAnna Dairaghi EJordan Earnest FRachel Fadler GBridget Gallagher |
HRobert Hammond I Pinar Inanli JNicolas Janssen KKamalaldin Kamalaldin LBryan Lara MLucy MacArthur Jr. NVictoria Najacht OColleen Orwin |
PYunpeng Pang Q
RBrian Raetz SSharayu Salvi TEmerson Talanda-Fisher UVKaela Van Til WRaoul Wadhwa XAnja Xheka YSina Yakhshi Tafti ZLauren Zehnder |
Hornet Teams Display Computing Power in ACM Competition
Two teams of Kalamazoo College students recently competed and computed in the annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Intercollegiate Regional Programming competition. When the dust settled, the Orange and Black left some big competitors feeling blue.
The Orange Hornets team of seniors Lucas Kushner, Fayang Pan, and Kyle Sunden solved two of nine problems and placed 34th out of about 126 teams from 61 colleges and universities throughout western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, eastern Ontario, and Indiana. The Black Hornets team of seniors Tibin John and Will Reichle and sophomore Sarah Manski also solved two of nine problems and finished 40th.
“It’s a combination of both time and correct submissions, with penalties for incorrect submissions,” explained K Associate Professor of Computer Science Pam Cutter who accompanied the teams to the competition held at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids.
She said the Orange Hornets solved the first problem in 50 minutes with three incorrect attempts and solved the second problem in 2:30 with one incorrect attempt. The Black Hornets solved the first problem in 1:41 with two incorrect attempts and solved the second problem in 3:39 with one incorrect attempt.
Last year, K teams placed 39th and 53rd out of 131 teams.
The 2013 competition included teams from big institutions such as Carnegie Mellon, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State, University of Toronto, and University of Michigan—some of which finished behind Cutter’s Hornet squads.
“I am quite proud of our teams,” she said. “If you see this gang, give them a “Good job!”
ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.