alumni Archives - Page 8 of 29

Showerdough and Sourdough

Posted on December 12, 2016March 22, 2022

Rob Dunn ’97 is at it again; it being another citizen-science project (or two). And it (or they) are the subject of a fun and wonderful piece by Nicola Twilley, “What’s Lurking in Your Showerhead,” that appears in the December 8 issue of the New Yorker magazine.

Rob is an evolutionary biologist and professor at North Carolina State University. Twilley is one of 500 participants in his lab’s Showerhead Microbiome Project. Those volunteers (in Europe and the United States) swab the gunk in their showerheads and send the samples Rob’s lab. Twilley found it a tad gross, but Rob wonders if it’s a good thing–those microorganisms in our showerheads. Turns out our bodies are full of other bodies–we depend on them. In fact, those other bodies’ cells (in or on us!) may outnumber our own, making me more other than myself. Wow! Whether or not what’s in our showerheads is good (or not so good) for us remains to be tested. First we have to see what’s in there in order to ask the right questions. Rob’s full of those; he’s a K grad. He’s also interested in the effect (for good or ill) on our “showerdough” of different water treatment processes.

Please forgive that “showerdough” malapropism; there’s a reason for it. Rob’s second current citizen-science project is all about the affect of microorganisms on sourdough and, ultimately on the taste of sourdough bread–across space and time. Some really interesting things may be going on there! Read Twilley’s article to find out. Citizen-science is nothing new to the Dunn lab. He’s done projects on belly button lint, human facial mites, insects in the kitchen, and household dust. Robs the author of three popular science books and was featured (“The Ant on Aldebaran”) in the Fall 2015 LuxEsto.

Van Gogh Mystery’s K Connection

Posted on December 12, 2016August 23, 2022

PBS will premiere Van Gogh’s Ear on Wednesday, December 14, (check local listings) and, if you watch, see if you can find David Kessler ’70. The documentary is based on a recent book by Bernadette Murphy, which reveals much that was unknown or contested about the life of the famous painter. Among those mysteries: the accurate story behind the self-mutilation of his ear. What did van Gogh really do on the fateful night of December 23, 1888, in the town of Arles in southern France?

Murphy, an independent researcher living in Provence, had long been intrigued by van Gogh’s story and spent seven years piecing together a meticulous picture of his life in Arles (1888-89); person by person, house by house, exploring closely his friends and his enemies. Her detective work uncovered definitive long-lost evidence, the key document of which she found with the help of David Kessler in the University of California-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, where David works.

The show, part of PBS’s Secrets of the Dead series, will reveal exactly what happened the night of December 23, who was involved and how it ultimately shaped van Gogh’s remarkable art. It provides answers to the mystery that has divided art historians for decades and reveals the artist’s roller coaster of emotions and his mental health, placing his actions in proper context for the first time. In the San Francisco Bay area, the show will be air on KQED at 10 p.m.. “I hope you get a chance to watch,” said David. “I’m hoping I manage to stay up that late myself!”

Thanksgiving Journey Home

Posted on December 7, 2016March 22, 2022

Jamie Schaub and Brenin Wert-Roth — Jamie Schaub and Brenin Wertz-Roth

Jamie Schaub ’12, a Montessori teacher who lives and works in Traverse City, Michigan, traveled to Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota during Thanksgiving. She shared her story of leaving home to go home.

A few days before Thanksgiving I decided to travel to Standing Rock, an impulse initiated by donations collected in Traverse City by Jenn Demoss, who knew Lee Sprague, an elected tribal leader in Michigan currently living at Oceti Sakowin camp, one of several that compose the Standing Rock community of Water Protectors. Jenn had more than she could fit in her car, a testament to the power of human connection, a power my partner, Brenin Wertz-Roth, and I experienced often during the journey. We felt love and support from our families and friends, as if all of the people we know were traveling with us, and in addition to warm clothes, gear, tools, and supplies, we also were carrying prayers, hope and love.

We wanted to support the protesters who have left their homes and created a new community at Standing Rock camp. I believe in protecting the water and the earth, and I wanted to support those who have been standing strong for such protection against the Dakota Access Pipeline, in spite of violence, harsh weather, and sleep deprivation.

Throughout our drive our friends from near and far sent donations which felt like little hugs along the way. Friends with whom we hadn’t been in touch reached out, and it initiated beautiful conversations as we caught up about our lives. We were welcomed to stay in many homes in Minneapolis (the journey’s halfway point). How lucky to have such kind friends in our lives.

We received around $3,000 in donations within hours of deciding to go, which meant we could purchase more supplies for the Standing Rock community along the way.

The most expensive of items needed were dry suits, (a new one starts around $1,000). We searched Craigslist and made a couple of detours in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

In Minnesota we decided to purchase more neoprene gear, binoculars, walkie talkies and space blankets. We needed to find an outdoor store; Cabela’s opened the earliest. I decided to ask for a discount at the checkout stating that we were buying supplies for Standing Rock protesters. The manager gave us employee pricing without hesitation. Beautiful human. With the $200 saved we purchased more building supplies.

Outside Minnesota we let Lee know we were on our way. He recounted the violence of the previous Sunday, the deployment against the protesters of concussion grenades, rubber bullets, water hoses, pepper spray and mace. He had a large deep purple bruise on his side despite having many layers of protection. Most people at the camp, including Lee, had suffered injuries. We made plans to arrive at Standing Rock following morning.

Next day, car stuffed, we drove north, anxious to arrive at camp. It was a cool, muted morning. The grassy landscape greeted us, and then the river–it was beautiful, worth protecting. This landscape was like the view of Lake Michigan, vast and seemingly unending, just more yellowy-beige than blue.

As we neared the camp its immensity (physical and symbolic) nearly overwhelmed us. It was so much larger than I thought—cars, teepees, yurts, tents, and buildings everywhere; all sorts of flags flying in the winds. The person at the gate embraced us saying, “Welcome home.” We found the flags Lee told us to seek atop a plywood building next to several tarpees (teepees constructed from donated heavy-duty,cold-resistant poly tarp material).

We unloaded the provisions we had brought, and I felt such a lightness. All of the hours in the car disappeared as everyone’s faces lit up with happiness and gratitude. The words “thank you” radiated around us with such deep feeling. Their hugs lasted and warmed us. We found ourselves at home at Pueblo Camp in Standing Rock.

Offerings to us were made throughout the day and evening as we prepared the plywood house for winter. I helped Brenin build storage shelves for food. We shingled, sealed holes, insulated walls. I kept thinking: “This is where I am supposed to be right now.” Actually, I NEEDED to be here. I needed something bigger, something important, something meaningful. At school my students are representing Venezuela for Montessori Model UN. Our months of discussion had opened my heart to the thoughtfulness of children. I had been feeling like I wanted to take action, my mind afire with ideas, some of them from my students.

My work at Standing Rock was concrete, worked in wood. While most folks went to protest at the front line on Thanksgiving day, Brenin and I stayed back to continue building and insulation projects, helping prepare the camp for a long winter.

When we left camp for the journey home the moment, and its magnitude, hit us. Gratitude for the ability to go and do something we believe in. Gratitude for those who love us. Gratitude for the strong people at Standing Rock. Gratitude for each other.

I remember the Pueblo people talking about how they are a family (and yet most of them didn’t know each other before they arrived in North Dakota from New Mexico and Arizona). I remember the idea of “family reunion” and a gathering of humans happening at camp. This way of interacting with each other I had felt once before, on study abroad in Thailand–the feeling that you are accepted, loved, and family.

I remember a tepee conversation around a fire late one night about the need to realize our shared humanity, that we are brothers and sisters. We talked about people losing their drums, and if we went back to our drum we would go back to acting with intention and care. We discussed prayer, meditation and mindfulness. What a gift to have been with such present and focused human beings.

I am feeling anxious for the friends I met at Standing Rock. I fear that more violence may be coming. The Water Protectors need our support and the action is about much more than an oil pipeline. Where do we stand on an action that gives hope to all?

The people we met at the Standing Rock community are peaceful, loving, kind and welcoming. I am in awe of their strength to maintain a peaceful protest in the face of incredible provocations. I stand with them.

by Jamie Schaub

Profile of Courage

Posted on November 22, 2016March 22, 2022

In May of 2013 alumnus David France ’81 returned to Kalamazoo College’s campus to present his Oscar-nominated documentary “How to Survive a Plague.” David has recently written and published a book of the same title, How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS. On November 21, the New York Times published a rave review of the work by writer and former editor of the New Republic Andrew Sullivan.

“A question has always hung over the reaction of gay men to the plague that terrorized and decimated them in the 1980s and 1990s: Why did they not surrender?,” writes Sullivan. “David France’s remarkable book tries to answer that question.”

The answer, David articulates in his history, is a courage that not only ended a plague but also revolutionized medicine, a kind of courage as remarkable as it is rare in human history.

After graduating from K with a degree in political science, David moved to New York City to study philosophy at the New school. A mysterious disease was killing many people around him, and no one was writing about it. So he began to investigate.

“I had only one science class at K, and I had to take it twice,” he told Elaine Ezekiel in May 2013. “Suddenly I’m interviewing bench researchers trying to see if their work offered any hope.” David trained himself about the virus and about the bench and clinical procedures as well as the federal bureaucracy involved in the development of medicines. He also relied on what he learned as a news editor for The Index.

David also had experience with the need to summon courage. He and his friends had established the College’s first gay and lesbian support group. “It was a dangerous time,” he said. “We had to meet off campus. There were constant threats of violence.” For an Index article that interviewed friends about what it was like to be gay at K David had to use pseudonyms to protect the sources.

Sullivan suggests the combination of David’s qualities, contacts, breadth of expertise and curiosity make him the indispensable author of this profile of extraordinarily persistent courage.

“It took years to gain traction, but the courage of the resistance turned out, over time, to be as persistent as the virus itself,” wrote Sullivan. “And the merit of this book is that it shows how none of this was inevitable, how it took specific, flawed individuals, of vastly different backgrounds, to help bring this plague to an end in a decade and a half.”

Sullivan lauds David’s passion and fairness.”You wonder, of course, how many of those deaths could have been avoided. France makes a strong case for the staggering insouciance of government at all levels, especially in the early years. He’s brutal about bureaucratic incompetence and political cowardice. And yet he is also fair enough to show that the science of disabling a dazzlingly resilient retrovirus was fiendishly difficult and that by 1982, 42.6 percent of gay men in San Francisco and 26.8 percent of gay men in New York had already been infected. The community’s own adoption of safer sex — and the vital gains activists made in pushing for cures and treatments for various opportunistic infections — made the most difference in preventing further catastrophe. But in the end, science takes time. Some made it over the line before the war ended. Many never made it. Some of us live lives still haunted by that distinction.”

Photo of David France by Ken Scheles

Providing Professional Experience and Networks

Posted on November 15, 2016March 22, 2022

Kalamazoo College’s Center for Career and Professional Development seeks alumni and friends interested in helping students to gain the experience and networks that will advance their career aspirations.

There are three ways to get involved, according to Joan Hawxhurst, director of the CCPD.

1. Hosting a student through the Discovery Externship Program enables alumni to share their professional and home lives with current K students interested in exploring a career. Externships allow first-year and sophomore students to live and work with a sponsor for one to four weeks in the summer. Students and hosts build relationships that have the potential to be meaningful and long lasting. Now through December, the CCPD is lining up extern hosts for summer 2017. Persons interested in learning more and perhaps hosting a student next summer, should take a moment to complete a brief survey.

2. Volunteers can source and share summer internship opportunities. In a competitive job market, said Hawxhurst, candidates need workplace experience, and summer internships are a great way for current K students to distinguish themselves. Does your workplace have a strong internship program? Do you have information about an internship that would be a great fit for a K student? The CCPD can help you share internship information with students.

3. You can join the Kalamazoo College Professional Networking Group (KPNG) on LinkedIn. This group of more than 2,700 members of the extended K community are networking and sharing career-related advice and connections. Some offer to review a student’s résumé; others accept an invitation for an informational interview; still others host short job-shadow visits to their workplaces. The KPNG allows you to engage from anywhere on the globe and to give the amount of time that works for you.

After viewing your LinkedIn profile, students might seek your contact information through the College’s online alumni directory.
Please be sure your contact information is up to date there. It’s easy with the steps below.

1. Go to the alumni directory page.
2. Log in with your username and password. If you don’t have one yet, click on register now.
3. Go to Update Profile. You will have the option to sync with your LinkedIn profile.
4. Check the boxes under Visibility to Students to select how a student can contact you.
5. Update your employment information under the heading Professional.
6. Click on Update to save your preferences.

A strong professional network is one of the distinctive and lifelong benefits of a Kalamazoo College education.

K Alumna Elected to ACS Director Post

Posted on November 8, 2016March 23, 2022

Christina C. Bodurow ’79, senior director of external sourcing in the medicines development unit at Eli Lilly & Co. (Indianapolis), has been elected the District II Director for the American Chemical Society for 2017-2019. District II includes counties in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. At K Christina majored in chemistry. She served in student government, participated on the Hornet tennis and swimming teams, and played in the Jazz Band. She studied abroad in Erlangen, Germany. Christina earned her Ph.D. in organic/organometallic chemistry at Princeton University (1984). After graduate school she began her career at Eli Lilly in the chemical process research division. She led the early phase development of a number of neuroscience medicines, including the global submissions of nine new chemical entities. Kalamazoo College congratulates Christina on her ACS election.

K Professor Receives Lucasse Fellowship

Posted on September 19, 2016March 23, 2022

Kalamazoo College announced today that Writer in Residence and Assistant Professor of English Diane Seuss ’78 will receive the 2017 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship. It is the highest award bestowed by the Kalamazoo College faculty, and it honors the recipient’s contributions in creative work, research and publication. Seuss is the 28th person in the College’s history to receive the award.

Seuss was named one of two finalists for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, a first in the history of Kalamazoo College. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, most recently Four Legged Girl, and she has a fourth book of poems forthcoming from Graywolf Press. She is every bit as remarkable a teacher as she is a writer. She is a previous recipient of the Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching, and many of her students have been accepted into the most prestigious M.F.A. programs in the country. Poetry, she says, holds space for everybody. A ceremony to confer the fellowship for excellence in scholarship and creative work will occur in spring term, and at that event Di will give a presentation, more than likely a delightful hybrid of poetry, story and lecture. The author of this article can hardly wait.

Alumna Prepared for Fulbright Teaching Assignment

Posted on August 24, 2016March 23, 2022

Next month it’s off to Spain for Ellie Cannon ’15, who feels thoroughly “K-Plan prepped.”

Ellie received an English Teaching Assistantship grant with the Fulbright Student Program. For nine months she will work at a school of commerce in Galicia, an autonomous community in northwestern Spain. She is excited, of course, and grateful, “Over the last five years I received invaluable academic and professional mentorship from college faculty, staff, and alumni,” she said. “Friends and classmates also educated and encouraged me.”

Galicia is one of Spain’s lesser known cultures. The population and local government are bilingual, operating in Spanish and the local language, Galego. Many Galicians identify with Celtic culture, which some attribute to pre-Roman era migration and to a more recent process of adopting Celtic-related tradition.

“I look forward to being a student and a teacher of culture,” said Ellie. “The K-Plan prepared me for both.”

She spent her early childhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, in a neighborhood blended with immigrant, refugee and working class families. When she was in middle school her family moved to a small rural town on the west shore of Lake Michigan, where “I learned about rural and maritime cultures, began to study Spanish, and tutored the bilingual children of dairy and migrant farm workers.”

When it came time to pick a college, K seemed a great option to more deeply develop intercultural competence. “As a first year student and later as a Teaching Assistant, [Professor of English] Bruce Mills’ seminar on autism acquainted me with the idea of neurodiversity,” said Ellie. “The Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement facilitated additional service-learning in Kalamazoo, partnerships that included a poetry club at Kalamazoo Central High School, a bilingual nutrition club at El Sol Elementary, and research for the Kalamazoo County Sobriety Court.” Ellie majored in biology and psychology and earned a minor in Spanish. She shaped her academics–as well as an externship and her Senior Individualized Project–mindful of her burgeoning interest in medicine and public health. “I interned with Dr. Andrew Terranella ’99 at the bilingual Navajo Area Indian Health Service in Arizona,” she said. “My SIP reflected my interest in ecological health, and I collaborated with Dr. Paige Copenhaver-Parry on an investigation that eventually was published in the journal Oecologia (Copenhaver-Parry and Cannon, 2016).” Since graduation she has worked with immigrant families in the Kalamazoo Public Schools Bilingual Program under the direction of K alumnus Scott Hunsinger ’94.

“I look forward to continued intercultural exchange,” said Ellie. “It’s vital. I’ve come to understand that a healthy community is educated, equitable, and medically fit. And each of those components is inextricably linked to diversity and culture.”

Hornet (and Bee) Artists Feted

Posted on July 13, 2016March 23, 2022

The Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo has awarded Kalamazoo College Professor of Music Jim Turner its 2016 Award for Arts Leadership-Educator, and the Arts Council awarded Kalamazoo College Alumnus Ladislav Hanka ’75 a Community Medal of Arts.

Turner, who directs the Bach Festival Choir, will be honored as “a recognized leader in arts and education community” whose work has a strong impact on the greater Kalamazoo community through art and creates positive and productive relationships in the community far beyond Kalamazoo College.

Hanka, whose etchings, prints, and drawings illustrate the intricacies and mystery of nature, is honored as a leading artist with a significant body of creative activity, who has received local and/or national acclaim, and has deeply affected the community through art. The CMA award encompasses all art forms–visual, musical, theatrical, literary, performing, multi-media, architecture or design. And, in Hanka’s case, collaborations between man and bee. His most recent ArtPrize entry, “Great Wall of Bees: Intelligence of the Beehive,” featured live bees that buzzed and danced and chewed over three rows of Hanka’s etchings—-detailed images of toads, salmon, trees, insects, birds. The bees built honeycomb along the curves of his lines in seeming collaboration that is at times startling.

Turner and Hanka are part of a group that will receive awards on Sunday, July 17, at the Sunday Concerts in the Park in Bronson Park. The event begins at 4 p.m. with the award presentation at 4:30 p.m. The concert and presentation ceremony are free and open to the public. A reception will follow at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. The reception is free but reservations would be appreciated. Reservations can be made by calling the Arts Council at 269.342.5059.

Woodworth Field Baseball Diamond Sparkles for Donor’s Children

Posted on July 8, 2016August 22, 2022

In 1955, Kalamazoo businessman and sports fan Thomas Woodworth purchased uniforms for the Kalamazoo College baseball team. That spring, the Hornets responded by finishing second in the MIAA conference. Woodworth then gave funds for a new baseball field at K, located near the College’s Angell Field football field. The City of Kalamazoo helped build the diamond, which was ready for the 1956 season.

Sixty years later, Woodworth’s four children returned to see their father’s newly polished ball diamond in a brand new, if familiar, setting.

In 2012, K completely renovated its aging outdoor athletics facility, replacing the old cement-block Calder Field House and rusty Angell Field press box with terrific new structures. Mackenzie Field (soccer), Woodworth Field, and the Hornet softball field were completely rebuilt on new locations within the site in order to maximize overall space and make way for a new parking lot and intramural field. Only Angell Field retained its original footprint (though it gained an artificial turf surface, new bleachers and the new Stadium Services Building compete with press box, concessions and restrooms).

The Woodworth Field reconstruction – with new dugouts, bleachers, fencing, scoreboard and other amenities – was accomplished, in part, through the renewed philanthropy of the Woodworth family.

Recently, Thomas Woodworth, Jr., and his three sisters – Nancy Tyler, Marilyn Moise, and MaryLou Milner (l-r in the photo) – returned to K and to the ball field that bears their family name for the first time in decades. They now all live out of state.

“They were absolutely delighted to see the new Woodworth Field and to reconnect with part of their family legacy,” said Al DeSimone, K’s vice president for advancement. “I had no trouble imagining them as kids running the base-paths and sliding into home plate.”

During their visit, the Woodworth “kids” helped to dedicate a new plaque at the diamond. It reads:

“Thomas B. Woodworth Sr. and his family have demonstrated remarkable support for baseball at Kalamazoo College and in the greater Kalamazoo area. In 2012 and 2013, the family reaffirmed its commitment to the athletes who play this sport. This field, originally dedicated in 1956, bears the Woodworth name and continues to symbolize the family’s generosity and the College’s gratitude.”