Kalamazoo College alumna Morowa Yejidé ’92 is a nominee for a 2015 NAACP Image Award to be awarded Friday, February 6, in Los Angeles. She is nominated in the category of Outstanding Literary Debut Work for her first novel Time of the Locust, described as a deeply imaginative journey into the heart and mind of an extraordinary boy that explores the themes of a mother’s devotion, a father’s punishment, and the power of love.
Time of the Locust (hardcover, 256 pages, Atria Books) is also included in Simon & Schuster’s Freshman Year Reading Catalog for 2014-2015, and was a finalist for the 2012 PEN/Bellwether Prize for socially engaged fiction.
The story revolves around Sephiri, a 7-year-old autistic boy who can draw scientifically accurate renderings of prehistoric locusts but never speaks, smiles, or makes eye contact.
Dara Morowa Yejide Madzimoyo is an accomplished writer whose short stories have appeared in the Istanbul Review, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Underground Voices, Adirondack Review, and other publications. Her story “Tokyo Chocolate” was nominated in 2009 for a Pushcart Prize and was anthologized in the Best of the Willesden Herald Stories.
Morowa earned her B.A. degree from K in international area studies and her M.F.A. degree in creative writing from Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where she received the Norris Church Mailer Scholarship.
She is a research faculty member at Georgia Institute of Technology and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland. Now based in Washington, D.C., Morowa and her husband have three sons.
Recently, she was selected as “Independent Alum of the Day” by the Michigan College’s Alliance, a collective of 15 independent colleges and universities located throughout Michigan.
The Honorable Gerald Rosen ’73, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, will deliver the 2015 William Weber Lecture in Social Science at 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 5. The lecture is free and open to the public and will take place in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room on Kalamazoo College’s campus. The lecture is titled “Detroit Bankruptcy: Lessons Learned” and will draw from Rosen’s experience as chief judicial administrator for the Detroit bankruptcy case, the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history.
At K, Rosen earned his bachelor’s degree in political science. He was the first K student to study abroad in Sweden (Stockholm), to which he returned in his senior year to complete his Senior Individualized Project, which focused on Swedish press coverage of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. He began his professional career as a legislative assistant to United States Senator Robert P. Griffin (R-Michigan), serving on Senator Griffin’s staff in Washington, D.C., from 1974 to 1979. During this time Rosen was involved in some of the most significant and challenging issues of the period. He also was attending the George Washington University Law School at night, and he obtained his J.D. degree in May 1979. (Today he is a member of the law school’s board of advisors).
For 20 years, Rosen has served as an adjunct professor of law for University of Michigan Law School, Wayne State University Law School, University of Detroit Law School, and Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Throughout the years he has presided over a number of high-profile, ground-breaking cases, including the first post-9/11 terrorism trial, an early partial-birth abortion case, and one of the first physician-assisted suicide cases. Nevertheless, he describes his work on the Detroit bankruptcy case as “the most challenging and rewarding experience of my professional career.”
Rosen is involved with several charitable and community organizations, including serving on the board of directors of Focus: HOPE and the Michigan Chapter of the Federalist Society. He has written and published articles for professional journals and the popular press on a wide range of issues, including civil procedure, evidence, due process, criminal law, labor law, and legal advertising, as well as numerous other topics. He is also a co-author of Federal Civil Trials and Evidence, Federal Employment Litigation, and Michigan Civil Trials and Evidence.
The William Weber Lecture in Government and Society was founded by Bill Weber, a 1939 graduate of Kalamazoo College. In addition to this lectureship, he established the William Weber Chair in Political Science at the College. Past lecturers in this series have included David Broder, Frances Moore Lappé, E. J. Dionne, Jeane Bethke Elshtain, William Greider, Ernesto Cortes, Jr., John Esposito, Benjamin Ginsberg, Frances Fox Piven, Spencer Overton, Tamara Draut, Van Jones, and Dr. Joan Mandelle.
Mary Corcoran and Martha Parfet hold the latter’s new book KEEP THE QUALITY UP.
Opening a door can change a life. In the life of Kalamazoo College graduate Mary Corcoran ’11, the door opened a closet. But the closet belonged to 89-year-old Martha Parfet, whose ancestors come from two of the most prominent families in Kalamazoo history: the Upjohns and the Gilmores. The collaboration between these two women (Parfet as writer; Corcoran as research and writing assistant) has resulted in the recent publication of a two-volume book about prominent local families and the story of the Kalamazoo community. The book is titled “Keep the Quality Up” (based on an Upjohn Company motto; Parfet’s grandfather, W.E. Upjohn, founded the pharmaceutical giant in 1886). The book went on sale this week at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, the Gilmore Car Museum, and Irving’s Marketplace (the former site of Gilmore Brothers Department Store). Sale proceeds will support the nature center, car museum, and KIA.
Parfet and Corcoran met when the later answered a K job posting. Over the years Parfet had become for her extended family the unofficial caretaker and curator of diaries, scrapbooks, photos, newspaper clippings, and business documents of two pioneer families that had settled in the area in the 1830s (Upjohns) and 1880s (Gilmores). The enterprises and achievements of these families helped shape much of the history of the city of Kalamazoo. Parfet wanted to make sure the story of these persons and their achievements lived on, so she decided to write a family and community history based on the information included in these family archives. She placed the ad–“Job helping older woman in Kalamazoo research husband’s family for two weeks.” Corcoran answered.
“When she opened her closet door for me the first day,” Corcoran said, “I became sold on becoming an archivist. The stories are in the documents. There was always something new.”
Corcoran is a researcher and project manager at Upjohn Ancestry. She earned her bachelor’s degree at K in English and studied abroad in Dublin, Ireland. Her study abroad program is kind of fitting; the Gilmore family originally immigrated from Ireland, the Upjohn family from England. Corcoran is working on a master’s degree in archives and archival information from the University of Michigan.
An interesting scenario played out several weeks ago in the president’s office at Kyorin University in Mitaka, Tokyo. Robin Sakamoto, the recently appointed dean of the Faculty of Foreign Studies, was sitting with the president and a few members of staff. Enter the secretary to serve tea.
“Of course she served the president first,” Sakamoto recalls, “and then she turned to serve another man in the room. Yet she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, returned to the tray for a different tea cup, and then served me second instead.”
There can be a lot going on in Japan with one cup of tea. Despite being the second-highest in seniority in the room, Sakamoto is also a foreigner — an American — and a woman, so she understands fully the dilemma, undercurrents and significance of the secretary’s quiet decision.
“Of course I wondered what was going on in her head, but just by being in my position now, I can see ripples like this that are starting to happen, assumptions that are being questioned. For a student to see me — for example, when someone announces, ‘Now the dean will speak’ — the young women in the audience can think, ‘Yes, I can do that too someday.’ ”
With her appointment last April at Kyorin University — the second foreign woman ever to be awarded a deanship in Japan — Sakamoto hopes to help improve both attitudes towards and regulations regarding gender equality and work/life balance throughout Japan, starting at Kyorin. As a dean of faculty, her time, she says, is now devoted to “a lot of learning by doing, a lot of networking at embassies or with the companies that employ our alumnae, a lot of meetings in Japanese at a level I have never heard before.”
Her favorite part of the day is when she teaches classes in intercultural communication.
“It is really important to keep a connection with the students,” she says, “because if they weren’t there, none of us would be there.”
Despite all the challenges, Sakamoto admits to feeling “hopeful” — maybe that tea cup really does signify a sea change. She enthusiastically explains the story behind Kyorin’s recently opened Women’s Research Center, which aims to support female researchers and their families. Judging by the fact that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, Sport and Technology (MEXT) has approved the university’s past five grant requests for new projects, the government seems to share Sakamoto’s feeling that Kyorin is on the right track.
“MEXT has given us the opportunity to establish a place where researchers, male or female, can bring their children while they are working,” Sakamoto explains. “If we can do this at the university level and then spread it out to other universities, this is how you can make change. Jan. 24th is the kick-off, so we are still in the early stages, but we are already canvassing the entire faculty: Do you have a newborn? Are you taking care of any elderly relatives? Do you need support as the man or as a working woman? We are really trying to look at this from the total perspective to make a difference in the researching community.”
Sakamoto’s story sounds like a shining example of feminine success in Japan, but it hasn’t been without its dark patches. The brush with gender inequality that left the deepest impression came 20 years ago, when Sakamoto already had five years of teaching under her belt. Sakamoto was a few months pregnant with her first child when she went to her principal at a local high school in Iwate Prefecture to share the good news and discuss her employment options. Turns out, there were none.
“I told my principal in February that I was pregnant, but that I would like to continue working and he simply said, ‘No. You’ll have to choose.’ ”
At the time, Sakamoto accepted his reason that as a foreign hire she would not qualify for a maternity replacement. She dutifully quit a month later, but, she says, “I was really disappointed afterwards — at myself for not being more assertive, and at the system because women just have to accept this.”
Sakamoto had envisioned a long career in teaching. Having majored in education at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, she had planned to teach in the U.S. after graduation. However, she says, “I had a less than spectacular student teaching experience and thought that if I taught a year or two overseas, that would give me confidence to return to a U.S. classroom setting.
“At that time, the U.S. was really looking to Japan for ideas to implement in education, and so I thought it would be a good match. I came on a special GLCA (Great Lakes College Association) program that was run through Earlham College and was a prelude to the JET Programme. It was based in Iwate due to a professor who had spent time there. I heard about it at my college career center since my college was also in the GLCA association.
“I had only planned on being here two years, but as I arrived in the end of July, that meant I would miss graduation. I had really gotten attached to my students by that second year and wanted to stay until March to see them graduate and was given special permission to do so. After that, I was asked if I wanted to teach at the municipal high school in nearby Morioka for another two-year contract. I jumped at the chance because by then I was really enjoying Japan. It was while I was teaching at the high school that I met my husband and we married.”
Sakamoto admits it was that rude awakening in the principal’s office when she was expecting her first child that fueled her drive to become a successful working mother in Japan. She switched to teaching part-time at the university level, and earned her master’s in intercultural relations — and later a doctorate in comparative and international development education — by finding low-residency programs, which meant she could complete most of the coursework at home in Iwate. She taught her father-in-law to change diapers while her husband took over the family business.
Of course it was difficult, she says. “Originally we had decided my husband would take care of the business and I would take care of the children in our three-generation household; we were going to do a really Japanese-style family,” Sakamoto says. “But as we both matured, it just didn’t fit in with our lifestyle anymore. Luckily we’ve been able to adapt, so it works now for both of us. I tried to be home as much as possible when the children were young, and luckily my father-in-law would be there when I was at the university. But it really wasn’t easy.”
The hardest part came once two of Sakamoto’s three children were in junior high school and, with her master’s degree complete, she felt ready for a more full-time position. This type of position proved hard to come by in Iwate, however. Instead, Sakamoto eventually worked at four of the “Tokyo Six” universities on weekdays, only coming home on the weekends.
“I would get up Monday morning and cook breakfast, lunch and dinner, and then get on the shinkansen, go to Tokyo, work for the week, get back in time to pick up dinner at the station and get home in time for Friday night dinner.”
Sakamoto believes “no one should have to live away from their family for work,” yet it is an all-too-common practice in Japan, for both men and women.
Sakamoto’s family encouraged her in other ways, moving for one year to Minnesota while she completed her Ph.D. coursework and supporting her when she traveled to Uganda in 2006 as part of a joint program developing training programs for head teachers run by the University of Minnesota, Naruto University of Education in Tokushima Prefecture and Kampala’s Makerere University. She had earlier traveled to the Ukraine to help train young teachers.
It was during her time overseas that Sakamoto learned how powerful her influence could be. She recalls one example: “My kids were like, we don’t know what our mom does, but she is in Africa. Yet, a few years later, my eldest did her study-abroad in France and then she went to Morocco. And my second did her study abroad in Madagascar. So I think to myself, of the three kids, two of them have gone to Africa, and I think a large part of that is because when they were kids, that’s what mom did.
“Being a mother makes me a better educator,” Sakamoto continues. “Even with my relative success, I know I only see a certain level of sexism in Japan since I am a foreigner and already treated differently. Yes, there are opportunities for equality to happen in Japan but is it really happening consistently?
“And yes, we are seeing more fathers at the park with their children, but why aren’t we seeing more families? Parents are still trading off because the entire system in Japan does not support both partners working. If we are going to make this better we’ve got to do it together. We can’t just make it better for women and ignore the men, because they don’t like their lives either.”
Looking toward Kyorin’s 50th anniversary and the opening of its new Inokashira Campus in 2016, Sakamoto believes Japan can narrow the gender gap and achieve a better work/life balance for all.
“The president of our university’s wife is a researcher, and she was our first speaker when we opened our Women’s Research Center,” Sakamoto explains. “When she talked about how she could be successful as a researcher, he was right there, supporting her. That’s what you need — you really need the authentic buy-in. It’s not just someone’s picture in a pamphlet; I am not just a figurehead to these men — I am a colleague and they want to help me.”
Teach For America corps members, alumni, staff, and supporters gathered for a summit meeting in Washington, D.C.
Ten recent Kalamazoo College alumni joined the Teach For America (TFA) corps in 2014. That’s enough to again place the College on the top-20 list of small colleges and universities that supply the greatest number of alumni (on a per capita basis) to TFA. It’s the seventh year TFA has released its top-20 list and the third time K has been included.
The ten K alumni joined 10,600 other TFA corps members now teaching in 50 urban and rural regions across the country.
A member of the AmeriCorps national service network, Teach For America works in partnership with communities to expand educational opportunity for children facing the challenges of poverty. Founded in 1990, it recruits and develops outstanding individuals to commit to teach in high-need schools for two years and to become lifelong leaders in the movement to end educational inequity.
TFA admission is highly selective, with an acceptance rate of only 15 percent in 2014. Corps members have 3.4 GPA average.
“We are pleased but not surprised at the high ranking of Kalamazoo College among contributors of graduates to TFA,” said Joan Hawxhurst, director of K’s Center for Career and Professional Development.
“Given the many opportunities K students have for meaningful experiences in local public school classrooms, and the theoretical rigor with which they learn to approach social issues, it’s gratifying but not surprising that so many would gravitate toward TFA after graduation.”
The ten K alumni joined what TFA called the most diverse teaching corps in its 25-year history. Fully one-third of TFA’s new corps members are the first in their families to attend college, nearly half were Pell Grant recipients (a marker for students who come from families of limited financial means), and half identify as people of color.
Here are the ten K alumni who joined TFA in 2014 and the regions in which they teach: Darrin Camilleri ’14 (Detroit), Michael Francisco ’14 (Delaware), John Hogue ’03 (Cleveland), Matthew Munoz ’14 (New Jersey), Gisella Newbery ’14 (Chicago), Ayesha Popper ’14 (Las Vegas), Alexander Rigney ’13 (Detroit), Kaitlyn Steffenhagen ’14 (Milwaukee), Samantha Voss ’14 (Detroit), and Dayon Woodford ’14 (Milwaukee).
Nicolette Hahn Niman ’89 has written a second book: Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production. Her first book was Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms.
Kalamazoo College alumna Nicolette Hahn Niman ’89 is an environmental lawyer, rancher, food activist, author, and vegetarian who has published Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production, published by Chelsea Green. It’s her second book.
Wait…a vegetarian who has written a book in defense of beef? Oh, yes!
Hahn Niman’s first book, Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms (William Morrow, 2009), took on big factory farms, charging them as major polluters and a detriment to global climate. That book also described how she met, married, and went into business with California cattle rancher Bill Niman.
In Beef, which she subtitles “The Manifesto of an Environmental Lawyer and Vegetarian Turned Cattle Rancher,” she addresses health issues, climate change, water supply, biodiversity, overgrazing, world hunger, the morality of eating meat, and more, the result of meticulous research and day-to-day life on an active livestock ranch.
Beef, Hahn Niman believes, can play an important role in ending world hunger and help restore a balanced climate.
Nicolette Hahn Niman earned B.A. degrees in biology and French at K before earning a aw degree (cum laude) from the University of Michigan.
She served two terms on the Kalamazoo City Commission, worked as an attorney for the National Wildlife Federation, and was senior attorney for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental organization where she was in charge of the organization’s campaign to reform the concentrated livestock and poultry industry.
Recently, Nicolette Hahn Niman was interviewed by Kalamazoo-based WMUK (FM 102.1) writer and book reviewer Zinta Aistars (a former K staffer!) on her program Between the Lines that airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. Listen to the interview and read more about Hahn Niman here: http://wmuk.org/post/between-lines-defending-beef.
Charles Tucker ’56 has been responsible for handing out a lot of athletic awards through the years. Now, one of those awards bears his name. Charles, known professionally as “Mickey Charles,” is founder, CEO, and president of The Sports Network, a Hatboro, Pa.-based wire-service providing sports information in real time.
Nearly 30 years ago, Tucker and The Sports Network (TSN) established the FCS awards by presenting the Walter Payton Award, given to the most outstanding player in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), known formerly as Division I-A and I-AA. The “Payton” is generally acknowledged to be the second most prestigious award in college football, following only The Heisman Trophy which is given to the most outstanding player in all of college football.
Through the years, TSN added the Eddie Robinson Award, given annually for FCS coach of the year, the Buck Buchanan Award for FCS defensive player of the year, and the Jerry Rice Award for FSC freshman of the year. All afforded smaller colleges and universities opportunities to expose their talented football players and coaches to a larger network. Past winners of these awards include National Football League standouts such as Tony Romo, Brian Westbrook, Jared Allen, Dexter Coakley, and many others.
On Dec. 15 in a nationally televised awards banquet in Philadelphia, South Dakota State University football running back Zach Zenner received the inaugural Mickey Charles Award for the most outstanding FCS student/athlete.
K Professor of Physical Education, Emeritus, Rolla Anderson, Charles “Mickey Charles” Tucker ’56, the late Kalamazoo Gazette Sports Editor Bob Wagner and Herb Lipschultz ’56 during a 2010 gathering on the K campus.
Created in secret by Tucker’s TSN colleagues, the award created a stir when they announced it several weeks prior to the awards ceremony, resulting in a “deluge of congratulatory and complimentary messages from New York to London, Philadelphia to Paris, Detroit to Macau, Las Vegas to Rome,” said TSN Director of Operations Phil Sokol.
“All were indicative and reflective of Mickey’s standing in so many areas, not just sports.”
Kalamazoo College Provost Michael A. McDonald said “the FCS Mickey Charles Award for outstanding academic achievement is aptly named for a great student athlete—Kalamazoo College’s Charles Tucker (a.k.a. Mickey Charles), class of 1956. On the basketball court and in the classroom, his hard work and achievements did credit to higher education, the liberal arts, and Kalamazoo College. We at K are rightly proud of one of our ‘favorite sons.’”
K Professor of Physical Education, Emeritus, and retired Athletic Director Rolla Anderson said “My sincerest congratulations go out to “Charlie,” as he was affectionately called by his basketball coach and mentor (and my former colleague), the late Ray Steffen. I have so many fond memories of Charlie’s time at Kalamazoo College and his visits over the years. Congratulations, my friend.”
Born and reared in Bronx, N.Y., Tucker, a.k.a. Mickey Charles, launched The Sports Network from his kitchen table nearly 30 years ago. Since then, TSN has become the world’s largest independently owned supplier of sports scores and information, with more than 2,000 outlets globally. Today TSN is expanding geographically (into China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Algeria, among others) and technologically (complementing its saturation of websites by expanding to mobile devices). It provides news, weather, injury reports, instant scores, Gamecasts, photography, fantasy coverage data, and much more.
Charles “Mickey Charles” Tucker ’56 at The Sports Network’s 26th Annual FCS Awards Presentation on Dec. 15, 2014. (Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)
Tucker transferred to Kalamazoo College from Columbia University and played for two seasons on the Hornet basketball team. He was named team captain his senior season of 1956, leading that squad to a 14-9 record and a second-place finish in the MIAA conference. He earned his law degree (Brooklyn Law School) and began a career as a sports columnist for several newspapers and magazines (including the Philadelphia Inquirer), as a television sports talk-show host (for CBS and later ESPN), as a college English professor (St. Joseph College in Philadelphia) and then, in 1983, as the founder of a sports scores telephone service that evolved into TSN. He is a popular public speaker who was once offered a contract as an opening-act stand-up comedian.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said “Mickey Charles is one of our sports-crazed nation’s most astute experts. But he is much, much more than that. He is an incredibly caring person who has done so much to help so many.”
National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman congratulated Mickey on the creation of the award that will bear his name “and will honor an FCS student’s successful combination of athletic achievement and academic excellence. A disruptor long before that term became trendy, Mickey is a scholar when it comes to sports business and a life-long friend of innovation. Mickey has a personality as big as the sports world and a heart that’s even bigger; it is a delight to see him recognized for decades of entrepreneurship, his devotion to education and his relentlessly positive approach to life.”
Happy holidays and warm wishes for 2015. This is a very exciting time at K. We welcomed an outstanding class of 2018: 362 students from 30 states and 17 countries. The class is one of the most diverse in the College’s history. Thirty-two percent of its members identify themselves as domestic students of color. Ten percent are four-year degree-seeking international students. Many are the first in their families to attend college.
In September we dedicated the beautiful piece of architecture that houses our Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, and one week later the center convened its first biennial conference, gathering our learning community with social justice scholars and activists from across the globe. The purpose of the center folds beautifully into the goals of a liberal arts education at Kalamazoo College, one of which-as articulated by President Allan Hoben in the 1920s-is for each of us to identify a “charter of service” for humankind. To engage in that important pursuit, we study widely and with rigor. We cultivate the courage it requires to ask big questions and act upon the answers even if they differ from conventional wisdom. What a vibrant environment in which to live and work!
Kalamazoo College is in the final seven months of the most ambitious fund-raising campaign in its long and storied history. We are seeking to raise $125 million to support the priorities that will help ensure that the Kalamazoo College of tomorrow is every bit as strong, every bit as vibrant, and every bit as willing to grapple with the big questions, as we are today. This holiday season is a perfect time to give thanks for the incredible support we have received from alumni and friends.
I am grateful to all of you for what you do on behalf of K. You are making a difference in the lives of our students; helping them to learn and to act on their inclination to make the world a better place.
I hope you enjoy this holiday greeting. Its original music was composed by alumnus Robert Severinac ’85 as part of his Senior Individualized Project. Today, he is a renowned plastic surgeon and entrepreneur who does pro bono work with families of children with cleft palates. And he continues to enjoy and make music! The roots of such breadth and service lie in the power of the liberal arts at K.
No way Olivia Gaines ’18 will be bored this break!
She’s created an innovative and fun project to connect with alumni during the next six weeks called #Winter120. She’s reaching out (first come, first served!) for book recommendations—specifically books that have been influential to alumni and perhaps have been on their shelves since their very own K years.
She will be reading passages from the submitted books over the break and plans on reading all 120 during the school year. Gaines will collect 120 ‘thoughts’ from the books, 120 answers to questions she will pose (one to each person who makes a recommendation), and a black-and-white head shot of all (hopefully) 120 participants. She plans on making an e-book of the final product and would love to make a printed version if her project proves successful.
The idea came to her during a visit to the Center for career and Professional Development. Gaines does not have an internship for the winter break, but still wanted to connect with alumni. Gaines said, “One thing I learned during my gap year was that you can connect with people you wouldn’t have thought you could connect with. How could I connect with alumni? Books. Everyone has books!”
For her the project represents a different way to connect with alumni, more personal than business. Gaines hopes to feel “the pulse” of who these 120 alumni really are.
And she’s gearing up for the challenge: a reading pace of 20 books a week over six consecutive weeks. Wow!) Gaines says that her project is “big enough to matter, small enough to win”.
If you are a K grad and you would like to participate in #Winter120, you can register here.
Text by Mallory Zink ’15; photo by Olivia Gaines ’18
Not long ago the editor of Pink Pangea called our attention to an article the blog published by alumna Britta Seifert ’12 when she was a K student. Pink Pangea is designed for and dedicated to women who love to travel. Britta’s piece is titled “My Experience as a Woman in Varanasi, India,” and it’s quite timeless. In it she describes a 12-week period of adjustment during which a sense of being overwhelmed often had her questioning the wisdom of her study abroad program choice. But that period didn’t last, and she was soon convinced that Varanasi was the best of all her options–“I can say without a doubt that I’m glad to be here and wouldn’t have picked anywhere else to spend my college study abroad,” she wrote. What accounts for the change? According to Britta, growth in understanding and perception: “I’ve come to understand the order in the disorder, and see a beauty in the chaos.” Hard to put a value on that kind of outcome.
Britta’s article also chronicles a growing awareness of gender that is both difficult and empowering. The awareness derives from daily living where “the men I encounter don’t really respect me – don’t necessarily consider my opinion valid or my requests legitimate.” Britta responds with a self-assuredness and confidence, evident in actions, that becomes “one of the greatest things I gain from my time here.” Though four years old, the piece is good reading, especially as many sophomores use the current winter break to prepare their study abroad applications. Britta earned her Bachelor’s degree in anthropology and sociology and current serves as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kyrgyzstan.
Kalamazoo College alumna Morowa Yejidé ’92 is a nominee for a 2015 NAACP Image Award to be awarded Friday, February 6, in Los Angeles. She is nominated in the category of Outstanding Literary Debut Work for her first novel Time of the Locust, described as a deeply imaginative journey into the heart and mind of an extraordinary boy that explores the themes of a mother’s devotion, a father’s punishment, and the power of love.
Morowa earned her B.A. degree from K in international area studies and her M.F.A. degree in creative writing from Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where she received the Norris Church Mailer Scholarship.
