alumni Archives - Page 15 of 29

How Detroit Was Reborn—With the Help of Jerry Rosen ’73

Posted on November 10, 2014March 23, 2022

Kalamazoo College alumnus Gerald Rosen — Gerald Rosen ’73 (photo by Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press)

U.S. District Chief Judge Gerald “Jerry” Rosen ’73 is being credited with playing a key role in Detroit’s historic bankruptcy case, settled Nov. 7, when U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes approved the city’s restructuring plan. Rosen was appointed in 2013 as the federal mediator in the case and helped broker an “$816 million deal that has come to be known as ‘the grand bargain,’ an improbable arrangement hashed out in many months of behind-the-scenes negotiations with foundations, the State of Michigan and the Detroit Institute of Arts,” according to one Detroit Free Press article.

Challenge and Imagination: Working Science at K

Posted on November 7, 2014March 23, 2022

Kalamazoo College alumnus Parker de Waal — Parker de Waal ’13

Parker de Waal ’13 had a wish: he wanted to work on a computational chemistry project.

Laura Furge, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Professor of Chemistry, had a challenge: she needed models of the variants of an important human enzyme. (Some background: The aforementioned enzyme, found in the liver, helps the body process medicines, but it’s not exactly the same–hence, variants–in all individuals. Such variability means some people react differently (including adversely) to important medicines. That’s a serious health problem, and part of Furge’s current grant from the National Institutes of Health calls for the study of these variants. And for such study a model of the variants’ structures would certainly be useful!)

In spring 2013, wish met challenge, and, one year later, the two researchers (along with co-author Kyle Sunden ’16) have published a paper in PLoS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science.

That culminating publication traces back to a laboratory question: Could de Waal (a student in Furge’s “Advanced Biochemistry” class) make computational models of the variants? “I suggested some different ways to approach the problem,” says Furge, “and those approaches took Parker all of about two days!” It was at that point that de Waal suggested to Furge some different, more powerful computational approaches–specifically, molecular dynamics using more sophisticated software. “I said, ’Let’s go for it!’” says Furge. “And we both started on the journey to learn more about Molecular Dynamics approaches.”

The journey included consulting with other scientists around the country and the world (Germany, the Czech Republic) both by email and in person at various scientific conferences. Furge and de Waal used a supercomputer at the University of Texas for the computational work. Analysis of the resulting structures was completed by Furge and Sunden during the winter and spring terms of 2014. “The project is a beautiful example of how research and teaching go together at K,” says Furge. The work has been presented at two major medical meetings.

The paper includes 21 figures and tables. Parker de Waal performed all the experiments that led to the figures; Sunden did the experiments and analyses for two of the figures. Furge did the majority of the analysis. In true liberal arts fashion, the cross-disciplinary work combines computer science and biochemistry. Furge taught Sunden, a chemistry and computer science double major, the relevant biochemistry as they progressed with the project. Sunden hopes to continue the work for his Senior Individualized Project after he returns from study abroad in Australia. The work may one day contribute to personalized solutions for people who have adverse drug reactions to important medicines. The paper has had more than 300 views in the six weeks since it’s been published.

Great academics, cross-disciplinary collaboration, research at the edge, and science that matters! Science education at Kalamazoo College: a double helix of challenge and imagination.

Advancing Civic Engagement

Posted on November 7, 2014March 23, 2022

Like many Kalamazoo College alumni, Jillian McLaughlin ’10 is as creative as she is passionate (in her case, about important public policy issues). This fall the public policy graduate student (she attends the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University) collaborated with photographer Peter Rausse to create the “Unsexy Policy Project.”

The project’s goal is to get people, especially people aged 18 to 29, to think about, and act on, policy issues that, stuffy as they may seem, affect millions of people. McLaughlin’s tactic: bring back the “unsexy!” or, put another way, articulate a matter’s gravitas and hitch it to a metaphor generally recognized as “sexy.” In application, this meant combining cheese- or beef-cake photos of some dozen current or former students of the Kennedy School with short, lay-language summaries of a particular issue, such as voter ID laws, tax reform, telecommunication competition, among others. The project took three days to complete and rolled out before the November mid-term elections. McLaughlin and Rausse made a calendar out of the photos and will donate proceeds from sales to an organization selected by the project’s Facebook fans.

Before she started her graduate program, McLaughlin worked as a researcher for the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy organization dedicated to improving the economic security of low-income individuals and families. At K she majored in political science and was an outstanding cross-country runner. We love her title at the Unsexy Policy Project: “Co-Founder and Chief Mischief Maker.” Very K-like.

A “Big World” K Story

Posted on October 16, 2014March 23, 2022

K graduates Idah Chungu and Charles Holmes — Fellow K graduates Idah Chungu (left) and Charles Holmes, M.D., M.P.H., in Lusaka, Zambia

Conventional wisdom holds that it’s a small world, but really it’s a big world with a lot of K in it. “A young woman came by my office to introduce herself,” wrote Charles Holmes ’93, M.D., M.P.H., the director and chief executive officer of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research (CIDRZ) in Zambia (Lusaka).

Charles was writing to his old biology professor, Paul Sotherland, the former professor of biology who now serves as the College’s coordinator of educational effectiveness. CIDRZ is a non-governmental organization that improves access to quality healthcare in Zambia through capacity development and implementation of sustainable public health programs. And the young woman who stopped by Charles’s office was Idah Chungu ’13, who earned her degree at K (economics) as an international student. She matriculated to K from Zambia.

Charles told Paul the rest of the story. “In a funny coincidence, my parents were biking through Kalamazoo a few months ago and my dad was wearing the Zambian soccer jersey that I gave him. Idah noticed the jersey and ran over to them to introduce herself and find out what he was doing wearing a Zambian soccer jersey in the middle of Michigan. He recommended that she stop by our offices once she was back in Lusaka, which led to yesterday’s meeting.”

Charles majored in biology at K (hence his strong connection to Paul). He completed medical school at Wayne State University, and internal medicine and infectious disease training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Prior to his position in Lusaka, he was deeply involved in the global response against HIV disease and AIDS. He loves Zambia and its people. “I highly recommend a trip,” he wrote to Paul, ever the naturalist. “We saw African wild dogs and a pennant winged nightjar in Kafue National Park last weekend!”

Zambia is located in south eastern Africa, bordered by Angola on its west, and Zimbabwe and Mozambique on its east. Both far from and near to the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa (Sierra Leone and Liberia). “We’re integrating some Ebola sensitization into our community work,” Charles wrote. “And we’re trying to put a team together to go west to help. It’s challenging because we’re always stretched thin simply running our own projects.”

After graduating from K, Idah worked for the College’s advancement division and for the Center for International Programs. She is currently looking for a job in Lusaka. Who knows, perhaps she and Charles will one day become colleagues. It is, after all, a big world with a lot of K in it.

Rolling Through…Time?

Posted on October 7, 2014March 23, 2022

Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan’s latest blog–“Rolling Through Time“–reunites her with former K student John Baxa in a conversation about an animated short feature John helped create. That short is titled “Ball” and is about time. Or is it memory (its power and limitations)? Or aging? Play or death? All this in a three-minute animated short? Of course, suggests Siu-Lan and John. It’s a matter of layers (certainly a part of What Shapes Film) as well as all that a viewer brings to the experience (the story is in the eye of the beholder). Enjoy your own encounter, to which you bring…what?

Three or four viewings evoked for me two poems, one by Wislawa Szymborska and the other by K’s own Con Hilberry. The poems are related to each other and to the animated short, though the three differ, especially in the feeling of their endings. The poems are shared below.

John graduated from K in 2009. He majored in psychology and earned a concentration in media studies. He recently completed a Master’s degree in entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon. His short has no speech or text. Layers of image and music are everything. The music, somewhat ironically, is titled “Words.”

Still Life With a Balloon
(by Wislawa Szymborska, from Poems New and Collected 1957-1997, Harcourt, Inc., 1998)

Returning memories?
No, at the time of death
I’d like to see lost objects
return instead.

Avalanches of gloves,
coats, suitcases, umbrellas—
come, and I’ll say at last:
What good’s all this?

Safety pins, two odd combs,
a paper rose, a knife,
some string—come, and I’ll say
at last: I haven’t missed you.

Please turn up, key, come out,
wherever you’ve been hiding,
in time for me to say:
You’ve gotten rusty friend!

Downpours of affidavits,
permits and questionnaires,
rain down and I will say:
I see the sun behind you.

My watch, dropped in a river,
bob up and let me seize you—
then, face to face, I’ll say:
Your so-called time is up.

And lastly, toy balloon
once kidnapped by the wind—
come home, and I will say:
There are no children here.

Fly out the open window
and into the wide world;
let someone else should “Look!”
and I will cry.

Memory
(by Conrad Hilberry, from Until the Full Moon Has Its Say, Wayne State University Press, 2014)

Everything that was—touch
football in the street, Peggy

McKay in the hay wagon,
Miss LaBatt’s geometry, the second

floor in Madison, where
one daughter slept in a closet.

Is any of this true? Nightgowns,
glances, griefs existing nowhere

but in this sieve of memory.
Newspaper files, bank accounts,

court records—nothing there.
It’s gone, except for these scratchy

words—blackbird on a branch,
long story caught in his throat.

Vitamin K Part of Liberal Arts Power

Posted on October 7, 2014March 23, 2022

The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) recently launched its public website, Power of Liberal Arts. It is the most recent initiative of CIC’s public information campaign, Securing America’s Future: The Power of Liberal Arts Education. It complements the @SmartColleges Twitter Feed (which has more than 2,600 followers) as well as the SmartColleges Facebook page and LiberalArtsPower YouTube channel.

The new website, which includes the list of CIC member institutions, is aimed at high school students, their parents, and high school guidance counselors. The content corrects myths and misconceptions about the liberal arts and private colleges and universities and will help high school students and those who influence them to make more informed decisions about where they should apply and ultimately decide to attend college.

And the new website as a K presence. Two distinguished K grads — Steven Yeun and Julie Mehretu — describe in their own works the power of the liberal arts experience at K.

Ebola Responders

Posted on October 1, 2014August 22, 2022

Greg Raczniak at the Sierra Leone Kailahun District Medical Clinic

Greg Raczniak ’96 is working in Sierra Leone as part of the Ebola response team of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The U.S. Navy veteran serves as a preventive medicine resident at CDC. His work in Sierra Leone involves contact tracing (finding and monitoring people who have come in contact with persons displaying symptoms) a key tactic in controlling infectious disease epidemics. An article on Greg appeared in Task & Purpose, a news site for veterans, by veterans. Greg majored in biology at K and studied abroad in Muenster, Germany. He was a standout swimmer on the Hornet Men’s swim team. After graduation her earned his medical degree at Eastern Virginia Medical School and a doctorate in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. He entered an internship program at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, followed by a tour at the Navy’s research station in Ghana. During his service with the Navy, Greg obtained certification in tropical disease and traveler’s health, and decided to complete training in undersea and submarine medicine. Greg is completing a master’s in public health at Tulane University as part of his medical residency in preventive medicine. Nor is he the only K graduate working in Africa to help contain the Ebola epidemic. Paloma Clohossey ’11 is in Monrovia, Liberia, part of the U.S. government’s Ebola Disaster Response Team in that country. Paloma works for the United States Agency for International Development and has lived and worked in Africa often, beginning with her study abroad experience in Nairobi, Kenya. Liberia and Sierra Leone are the two countries where the outbreak of the virus has hit the hardest.

Arcus Center Building Dedication is Open to the Public, Friday Sept. 19, 4:00 p.m.

Posted on September 18, 2014March 23, 2022

Kalamazoo College hosts a dedication and ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4 P.M., Friday Sept. 19, for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership building at 205 Monroe St., at the corner of Academy St. in Kalamazoo, Mich. The 10,000 sq. ft. structure—the newest on the K campus—was constructed by Miller-Davis Company of Kalamazoo and designed by Studio Gang Architects of Chicago.

The dedication event is free and open to the public. Guests are encouraged to park in the K Athletics Fields parking lot, 1600 W. Michigan Ave., and take continuously operating shuttle vans to the ceremony.

Speakers will include Charlotte Hall ’66, chair, K board of trustees; Jon Stryker ’82, K trustee; Jeanne Gang, founder of Studio Gang Architects; Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, K president; and Cameron Goodall ’15, K student commission president.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony will include Carol Anderson, K professor of religion and chair of the Department of Religion; Lisa Brock, academic director of K’s Arcus Center; and Mia Henry, executive director of K’s Arcus Center.

Refreshments and an open house in the new building follow.

The Arcus Center building features offices, work areas, and classroom/seminar spaces situated around a central hearth and kitchen area. Wooden benches around the central fireplace preserve and repurpose wood from the site’s trees. The building’s structural frame includes 680 pieces of steel—many curved, some in two planes, and no two alike.

The building’s three-sided form emphasizes academic learning, relationships with the natural world, and interdependency of communities. A predominance of curvature represents arms open to all to join in social justice work.

The exterior cordwood masonry construction—northern Michigan white cedar logs of varying diameter in 11- to 36-inch lengths—symbolizes the diversity of humanity. While cordwood construction is traditional to the upper Midwest, this is believed to be the first commercial or institutional structure in North America to employ this technique.

The College will seek Gold LEED certification for the new building. Its geothermal heating and cooling system (12 wells drilled to a depth of 400 feet) meets the College’s stringent energy efficiency standard. A radiant and forced convection heating system transforms the Center’s entire floor into a heat duct, with air movement undetectable to the senses. Onsite drainage and retention reduces storm water runoff.

K gratefully acknowledges Steelcase Inc. and Custer Workplace Interiors for their generosity in helping supply office furnishings for the new Arcus Center building.

The Arcus Center building and its $5 million construction cost is a gift to the College from Jon Stryker, a member of the K board of trustees and of the K class of 1982. Jon is founder and president of the Arcus Foundation (www.arcusfoundation.org), a private, global grant-making organization with offices in New York City, Kalamazoo, and Cambridge, U.K., that supports the advancement of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights, and conservation of the world’s great apes. Jon is a founding board member of the Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy in Northern Kenya, Save the Chimps in Ft. Pierce, Fla., and Greenleaf Trust, a trust bank in Kalamazoo. He also serves on the board of the Friends of the Highline in New York City. Jon is a registered architect in the State of Michigan. He earned a B.A. degree in biology from K and a M.A. degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang is the founder of Studio Gang Architects, a Chicago-based collective of architects, designers, and thinkers practicing internationally. Jeanne uses architecture as a medium of active response to contemporary issues and their impact on human experience. Each of her projects resonates with its specific site and culture while addressing larger global themes such as urbanization, climate, and sustainability. With this approach, Studio Gang has produced some of today’s most innovative and visually compelling architecture. The firm’s projects range from tall buildings like the Aqua Tower, whose façade encourages building community in the vertical dimension, to the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo, where 14 acres of biodiverse habitat are designed to double as storm water infrastructure and engaging public space.

Founded in 1909, Miller-Davis Company is headquartered in Kalamazoo, Mich., with an additional office in South Bend, Ind. It is a full-service construction company providing general contracting, construction management, design-build, and construction consulting services. Miller-Davis has served as the construction manager on numerous Kalamazoo College projects for more than 80 years. In addition to the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, these projects include Upjohn Library Commons, Hicks Student Center, the K Natatorium, Stetson Chapel, Mandelle Administration Building, Hoben Residence Hall, and Trowbridge Residence Hall.

The mission of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (www.kzoo.edu/socialjustice) is to support the pursuit of human rights and social justice by developing emerging leaders and sustaining existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice, creating a pivotal role for liberal arts education in engendering amore just world. The Arcus Center was established at Kalamazoo College in 2009 through generous funding from the Arcus Foundation. In 2012, the College received a $23 million grant from the Foundation to endow the Center’s activities.

Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu), 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.

Wild Ride

Posted on September 18, 2014March 23, 2022

If you reach Information Services Help Desk Administrator Russell Cooper ’89, you can expect a calm, soothing, and professional presence to assist you with your computer needs. But don’t let his grey-suit-and-conservative-sounding voice fool you, there’s some wild rides in that personality. Rides as in roller coasters! And that’s only one of Russell’s passions. Another is photography, and he’s combined the two in his 2014 ArtPrize submission, For Your Amusement. “I love photography, and I love roller coasters (riding and photographing),” said Russell. “And I’ve been looking for a way to put them together.” The “marriage” is a collage of photos seamlessly melded together to create the ultimate roller coaster experience. Russell is a pretty good writer as well. Here’s a sample from his artist statement: “Arms down, head back, and hold on. Slowly climbing your way to the top of the never-ending lift hill. Click. Click. Click. Click. Excitement and fear awaits. Heart in your throat, stomach-churning, cannot breathe. Prepare for the thrill ride of your life. Cresting the peak, you suddenly drop down the hill, wind in your hair, hands in the air, screams of pure joy, air-time lifting you out of your seat. The 3 minutes feel like an eternity, yet over in a flash. Let’s go again!” You gotta love that liberal arts versatility. Russell majored in music and studied abroad in Muenster, Germany.

ArtPrize opens to the public on Sept 24th and runs until the 12th of October. It’s a democratic art exhibition involving several hundred thousand visitors and over 1500 artists and everyone gets to vote for their favorites…like Russell. We’d love to know about other alumni who have submitted entries for ArtPrize 2014. Let us know, and we’ll let our readers know.

Small School; Big Experiments

Posted on September 16, 2014March 23, 2022

This past spring Professor of Chemistry Jeff Bartz (pictured at left with two students in his laser laboratory) received word that the National Science Foundation would provide a three-year grant to Kalamazoo College so that Bartz’ lab could conduct new experiments to evaluate how the shape of a molecule influences the mechanics of its dissociation into smaller fragments. The work began this summer and involved four students: Mara Birndorf ’16, Jeremy Lantis ’16, Braeden Rodriguez ’16, and Marlon Gonzalez ’17. And there’s nothing quite as effective as complementing classroom work with hands-on real-world experience. “My chemistry classes taught me the fundamentals, but the research is giving me an idea of what a physical chemist does,” said Birndorf. Bartz agrees: one of the great benefits of the NSF grant is its effect on students, who “move from seeing themselves as students to seeing themselves as scientists.” On a typical weekday morning these young chemists are using lasers in the type of experiments that Bartz long ago thought were unlikely to ever be performed here. After all, smaller schools do face the challenges of getting their research swallowed up by larger institutions with more resources (not to mention graduate students) to conduct a project. Despite those challenges, Bartz finds an angle for K to contribute to new scientific work. “We have to evolve if we want to continue to work at the forefront.” Like most new science, what’s going on in Bartz’ lab derives from previous work. Niclas West ’12 presented a talk, “Velocity-mapped ion imaging of methyl nitrite photodissociation,” in 2010 at the 65th International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy. Researchers from Texas A&M found the abstract online and approached the K team about the similarities between the two teams’ experimental techniques. The two groups decided to collaborate on the publication of a paper, “A method for the determination of speed-dependent semi-classical vector correlations from sliced image anisotropies,” which included K student co-authors West and Kelly Usakoski ’14. After this paper came out in The Journal of Chemical Physics, Bartz began work on the proposal the NSF funded last spring. “We are looking at information gaps in previous work that our current experimental techniques can help fill,” Bartz said, “sort of testing old experiments in new ways. It’s kind of a K niche we’ve carved out.” (text by Colin Smith ’15)