Seniors Roxann Lawrence and Raven Fisher have integrated community service into their undergraduate academic learning in ways that are unmatched by most college students in the state of Michigan. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Roxann and Raven are co-recipients of the Outstanding Community Impact Award, given annually by the Michigan Campus Compact (MiCC). Only six such awards are given in the state (and some 600 students were nominated). In addition to honoring Roxann and Raven (both of whom will address the 18th Annual Outstanding Student Service Awards Celebration on April 12 in East Lansing, Michigan), MiCC will also bestow its Heart and Soul Award to 14 other Kalamazoo College students. They are Dana Allswede, Zoe Beaudry, Ebony Brown, Jordan Earnest, Amy Jimenez, Sherin John, Komal Khan, Colin Lauderdale, Katherine Mattison, Ayesha Popper, Chelsey Shannon, Eren Sipahi, Sarah Sullivan, and Madeline Vermeulen. The Heart and Soul Award recognizes students for their time, effort, and personal commitment to communities through service.
Roxann and Raven have been involved with Community Advocates for Parents and Students (CAPS), an advocacy and tutoring initiative founded in 2005 in response to the Kalamazoo Promise, which provides college tuition for Kalamazoo public schools graduates to any Michigan public university, college, or junior college. CAPS believes that all children, despite their economic circumstances, can learn and successfully take advantage of the Kalamazoo Promise College Scholarship Program. The program has made a difference for some 400 socioeconomically disadvantaged children.
Raven Fisher (left) and a CAPS student
Roxann and Raven were CAPS tutors during their first year at K. As sophomores they took a leadership role as Civic Engagement Scholars (CES) in the CAPS program. The CES program is part of the College’s Center for Civic Engagement. They are serving as co-directors of all K tutors in the program during their senior year. Both women are active in other campus organizations. Raven is president of K’s Black Student Organization; Roxann is president of the Caribbean Society. Roxann’s Senior Individualized Project focused on LGBT issues in her native Jamaica. Raven’s SIP involved working with Kalamazoo Public Schools on a program to introduce and measure the effect of a culturally relevant math curriculum for middle school students.
Michigan Campus Compact is a coalition of college and university presidents who are committed to fulfilling the public purpose of higher education. MiCC promotes the education and commitment of Michigan college students to be engaged citizens. Roxann and Raven were nominated for the Outstanding Community Impact Award by Teresa Denton, associate director of K’s Center for Civic Engagement.
This past autumn, in the living room of their Bloomfield Township home, on the couch where their daughter, Emily, had often stretched out to watch TV, Alicia and Michael Stillman sat beside a young man in his 30s, a father of two small children.
Even though these three people have only recently met, the man invites the Stillmans to lean in and lay an ear against his chest. The heart they hear is not the heart with which the man was born.
It is Emily’s heart.
Emily Stillman ’15, the second of Alicia and Michael’s three children, died in January of 2013 from bacterial meningitis, her life cut short at the age of 19.
Somehow, from the thick fog of grief the Stillman family has emerged. Though tough days still occur, they say. And “Why?” remains unanswered. Confusion, periodically, continues to persist.
But there also has grown a deep appreciation of living and an immense satisfaction of knowing that others live because of Emily.
“I can’t find a reason why this happened. Why Emily?” Alicia says. “But we are blessed and we need to bless others. We came to the realization that what happened is bigger than us, bigger than her. All of our family—Emily, too—are meant to do good.”
One night, a little more than a year ago, Emily called home to talk with Alicia. She told her mother she had a horrible headache, was exhausted, and planned to go to bed early. It would be the last time Alicia would hear her daughter’s voice.
The headache got worse, and later that night Emily was admitted to a local hospital, receiving care for a migraine headache. When the treatments didn’t work, doctors performed additional tests. A diagnosis of bacterial meningitis followed, and Emily’s situation deteriorated. Her brain continued to swell, and it became clear to medical staff that despite their best efforts her survival was unlikely.
Alicia rushed to Kalamazoo, and Michael, an attorney on a business trip out of the state, called the family’s rabbi, who drove from the Detroit area to be with Alicia. Michael flew to Kalamazoo immediately. His daughter was on a ventilator, unconscious and very near death. The Stillmans asked medical staff to keep Emily alive in order to give their oldest daughter, a student at the University of Michigan, time to return from her study abroad in Brazil. Emily also has a younger brother, then a junior in high school.
Together in the hospital, the family was in shock. So when members of Michigan Gift of Life, an organization that matches organ donors with patients in need of a transplant, approached Alicia and Michael, the couple recoiled.
They sat holding each other, distraught. Then Alicia remembers experiencing a shiver. It was Emily’s spirit, she says today, urging them to change their minds.
“We talked it over, and realized we’d made a terrible mistake,” Alicia says. “That brush against my neck was my daughter telling us to think twice.”
Emily died a few days later.
The Stillmans agreed to donate Emily’s organs, but Michael wasn’t sure if it was allowed under the Jewish faith. He talked to the family’s rabbi.
“I asked him if it was frowned upon. He told me, ‘Michael, it’s the ultimate “mitzvah.” It’s the ultimate expression of human kindness, to give the gift of life.’”
The Stillman family; Emily is at left.
Organs that made life possible for Emily do the same today for five people in Michigan and Ohio. The man with whom the Stillmans sat in their living room is a doctor in Cleveland. A man from Ubly, Michigan, received a kidney, and a man in Grand Rapids breathes because of the gift of one of Emily’s lungs.
The enormity of these life gifts is not lost on Emily’s family.
“This may sound strange coming from a grieving mother, but I feel blessed in the way that you feel when you give someone a gift. It’s an emotional, almost proud feeling,” says Alicia. “What we did with Emily saved the lives of five people and changed the lives of many others. That feeling is powerful.”
The Stillmans have met three recipients of Emily’s organs. Each occasion is a wrenching physical reminder that Emily is no longer with them, but it’s also a celebration of life.
“Those families are part of our family,” Alicia says. “They care for a part of our daughter. Something of us is living inside of them.”
Correspondence with the recipients has revealed emerging connections. The man living in Ubly noted that, for some reason, he’s shopping more than ever. Emily was a shop-a-holic. The man in Grand Rapids finds himself immersed in Sudoku puzzles, something he’d never done previously. Emily was enthralled with them.
“She loved puzzles,” Alicia says. “I buried her with a Sudoku book.”
Alicia and Michael think of the children of the parents who received Emily’s organs.
“This is important to us,” Michael says. “We lost our Emily. It sucks. But Emily’s gift means that 15 kids have a parent they might otherwise have lost.” Fifteen … and counting. One of those kids—a child of the doctor in Cleveland—was born after the transplant.
The Stillmans were not organ donors before Emily died. But they are now, and their involvement in educating the public about the importance of organ donation has helped them heal.
Alicia attends Michigan Gift of Life events where she shares her story, always with a large portrait of Emily. The couple was recognized recently at an awareness-raising rally arranged by MGL at the state capitol.
“Organ donation was never on our radar. Not for Emily either,” Alicia says. “You don’t tend to think about it if you don’t know someone who has received a gift like that.”
And so the family has been incredibly open with their experience, even inviting local media to their home on the occasions they have met the recipients of Emily’s organs. Donations to the organization, Alicia says, increased after the stories were published. She is also involved in the effort to raise awareness of the need for meningitis vaccinations and booster shots.
“Donor families like the Stillmans provide a very important and under-reported side of (organ) donations,” says Jennifer Tislerics, special events and partnerships coordinator for Michigan Gift of Life. “Everyone knows about the second chance of life. Fewer realize that many donor families benefit from seeing the positives that come out of their dark time and from the opportunity to tell a loved one’s story. It’s heroic in a way.”
There are more than 80 organ recovery organizations in the United States, and, by law, hospitals must report every death that occurs at their facility to the organization in their area. But in only about 2 percent of cases are the deceased person’s organs or tissues viable for transplantation, Tislerics says.
That’s what makes a vast organ donor network so important. Kalamazoo College recently took second place among 14 colleges and universities statewide in the 2014 Michigan Gift of Life Campus Challenge to register students to become organ donors. A total of 60 K students—a little more than 4 percent of the student population—registered during the six-week event.
“Organ donation procedures treat the deceased and the family with the utmost respect,” says Tislerics. “Prostheses are used to replace donated organs so that the appearance of the body is not affected,” she says. “There is no age limit for organ donation. We have had organ donations from a 93-year-old and tissue gifts from a 103-year-old. And most religions in the U.S. support organ donation as well.”
Emily had a second “family” that included friends and professors, staff and counselors at K. Members of this second “family” took her passing hard. At a memorial at Stetson Chapel, Emily’s friends recalled a classmate and confidant who will never be forgotten.
“Emily didn’t do things small. Everything about her was exciting,” says Skylar Young, a classmate and close friend of Emily’s. “Whether we were taking a trip to the vending machine or going on one of our secret excursions to Sweetwater’s Donut Mill for ’Donut Wednesday,’ she was laughing, singing, screaming out something ridiculous, living life to the fullest. She loved big–plain and simple.”
The Stillmans were impressed with K, especially in the last days of their daughter’s life.
Emily had looked at a few large, in-state public institutions for her college years, but Kalamazoo College kept on being suggested to her as a place to check out. The family did, and when they visited the College, Emily got excited.
“K sent the most amazing acceptance letter—bonded paper, hand signed, referencing her personal essay,” Alicia says. “We were, like—Wow! She fell in love. She found a place for herself.”
During Emily’s hospitalization, representatives from the College visited the Stillmans to lend comfort, attending to any needs and bringing them meals. Emily’s friends and professors visited to say goodbye. President Wilson-Oyelaran came as well, one night bringing the family dinner and sitting with them, just to be there.
“The College was phenomenal,” Alicia says.
After Emily died, the College arranged for a bus to transport professors, staff, and students to her funeral and shuttle the group to different venues that day, ending at the Stillman home.
“She had the warmest, most beautiful group of friends at K. We are still in contact with them,” Alicia says. “Her K friends are close with her friends from here. At the funeral, at the grave site, all the K kids held hands with kids from her high school. They all gave the eulogy together. I will never forget that.”
In the mail one day, Michael found a letter from the College. Enclosed was a refund check for the academic term interrupted by Emily’s sudden death. He put the money into The Emily Stillman Fund, created by the family to help pay for research on bacterial meningitis. He was taken aback by the gesture.
“I can’t imagine a university doing that,” he says. “We never even asked for it.”
Alicia and Michael have friends who have lost children, couples who do their best to lead normal lives, but simply cannot escape the grief. There is a high divorce rate among couples who lose a child, and that fact terrified Alicia and Mike.
“Their lives go on,” Alicia says. “But they’re…”
“… shells,” Michael adds.
The Stillmans are a close, loving couple, and have relied on each other many times over the past year to get through days when the sadness creeps in.
And yet, grief is an individual path, with no end.
“We can walk next to one another and be there for each other, but the journey is separate. It’s different for each of us.
Emily Stillman
“There is no closure in the death of a child. But there’s no closure in love, either.”
Alicia and Michael focus on each other’s needs, and on keeping Emily’s memory alive.
Michael believes that Emily would have made it on Saturday Night Live. She was that funny, that creative and talented. The captain of her high school forensics team, a young woman who took first place in a statewide competition her senior year, she loved the limelight. “She was the ham of the family,” he says.
“She relished being the center of attention. She made people laugh, she made me laugh,” Michael adds. “If someone came to you and said they had an incredible gift for you but you had to give it back after 19 years, would you take it? …
“… I’d take it. I would do it all over again.”
Emily had a voice, too, a voice that commanded attention when she spoke, and soothed when she sang. A voice that will never be heard again, but can still be sensed.
Sensed in the iambs of a beating heart, in the intake of breath into expanding lungs, in the love, laughter, and longing to live intensely that Emily inspired in everyone she considered friend and family.
For now, her mother speaks words for her. “I think Emily would urge her friends to go out and be light to the world. Make a difference. Change what shouldn’t be. Make your mark,” Alicia says. “Emily certainly left her mark. We find out more about that every day.” (Story by Chris Killian)
Kalamazoo College won the Outstanding Campus Collaboration Award and Program of the Year at the National Association of Campus Activities Mid America Region 2013 conference. It was the third year in a row that K was honored with either the Campus Collaboration Award or the Program of the Year in the region that includes colleges and universities throughout Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois.
K’s Student Activities Committee and the Office of Student Involvement claimed both awards on the basis of a single program—Zoo After Dark: Winter Quarter Quell (Hunger Games)—developed by the Childish Games Commission (CGC), a student run organization.
“CGC is a unique group on the K campus,” said Assistant Director of Student Involvement Kate Yancho. “They meet at midnight every Friday and play games. Tag, Dodgeball, Kick-the-Can, Capture-the-Flag, etc. When they approached us about cosponsoring a Zoo After Dark (our late night series) with a Hunger Games themed event, we were more than excited to accept the challenge. As we began to plan the event, the campus began to buzz with excitement. ‘What will this be like?’ ‘How will we play?’ The anticipation was palpable.”
Kate continues: “The CGC partnered with us on other events leading up to the event to help build more excitement. Our weekly craft series, Wind Down Wednesdays, most notably. Campus was blanketed with Mockingjays, and the leaders of the organization dressed as characters from the books throughout the week. We focused on the logistics and let the CGC focus on the rules and procedures for the game.
“On the night of the event, students excitedly entered our Hicks Student Center. The main gathering space was set up with food (Greasy Sae’s Chili Bar, District Cupcakes, and more), skill testing workshops and activities (knot tying lanyards, mini bow and arrow craft, Mockingjay button making, and others), and a large screen with images from the Hunger Games as well as the soundtrack playing through the sound system. Then, districts offered tributes, the rules were explained, and the games began.
“But, how could the 225 people who came possibly all play? Well, they didn’t. About 20 students acted as ‘tributes’ who were filmed via a live video feed that was broadcast into the main gathering space and the other participants became spectators in the ‘Capitol.’ They could send gifts, see the antics, get engaged and involved.
“The feedback we received from students who participated was spectacular. They loved this idea. CGC had offered Quidditch before, which was innovative and fun, but this really seemed to capture them. In fact, we are working on another Hunger Games themed event with this group currently. We love when students have these unique ideas. And, we love it even more when we can make them reality!”
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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.”
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.
