David France ’81, co-writer and director of the Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague, will screen the film on campus Sunday, May 5, at 7 PM in Dalton Theatre (Light Fine Arts Building). France will participate in a discussion with the audience at the conclusion of the film. Everyone is invited, and the event is free. INDEX news editor Elaine Ezekiel posted an interview with France. ABC Studios has purchased the rights to France’s film with the idea of making it into a dramatic miniseries. France will prepare the adaptation, which will go broader and deeper into the subject of the documentary.
awards
Kalamazoo College Senior Faiza Fayyaz Is a YWCA Young Woman of Achievement
Kalamazoo College senior Faiza Fayyaz has received a 2013 YWCA Young Women of Achievement Award and will be honored at the 29th annual YWCA Women of Achievement Award Celebration, on Tuesday, May 21, 5:30 p.m. at the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites in Kalamazoo.
The YWCA Young Women of Achievement Awards are given to high school and college age women in the Kalamazoo community who have records of accomplishment in academic studies and extracurricular activities, have made significant contributions to their school and/or community, demonstrate leadership ability, and exemplify qualities of character and thought consistent with the mission and vision of the YWCA.
Faiza will soon earn her B.A. degree in biology with a minor in psychology and a concentration in health sciences. She has also been a biology research assistant at Western Michigan University. Outside the classroom, Faiza has been active in student organizations Active Minds (focusing on mental health issues among college students) and KDesi (working to preserve and promote South Asian cultures and religions on the K campus and in the surrounding community).
Through the College′s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service Learning, Faiza has also spent many hours engaged with students from the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency (KRESA) Young Adult Program at West Campus school, She has also been engaged in civic activities at Borgess Hospital and in a local physical therapy clinic.
Earlier this month, the YWCA announced that Kalamazoo College trustee Ronda Stryker is its recipient of the Lifetime Woman of Achievement Award.
Kalamazoo Senior Ashleigh Holden Earns a STAR
When K senior Ashleigh Holden isn′t studying chemistry or guiding prospective students around the campus for the K Admissions Office, she′s often at the Cheff Therapeutic Riding Center in Augusta, east of Kalamazoo. During the last year alone, Ashleigh has amassed more than 475 hours helping to deliver hippotherapy, a physical, occupational, and speech-language therapy that utilizes horses to provide aid to clients with a variety of special needs. For her efforts, Ashleigh has earned the 2013 College Volunteer STAR (Sharing Time and Resources) Award, a partnership between Volunteer Kalamazoo and MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette to honor outstanding volunteers in Southwest Michigan. Congrats, Ashleigh. You truly are one of K′s stars.
K Professor Takes Second Place in Fiction Contest
Professor of English Andy Mozina took second place in the fiction category of the Summer Literary Seminars Unified Literary Contest. There were some 1,200 entrants in the contest. The fiction category as judged by Mary Gaitskill. Mozina’s fine finish continues a K tradition: Last year Writer-in-Residence Di Seuss ’84 won first place in the contest’s poetry category. For Mozina, the prize includes publication and free tuition for a two-week conference in either Lithuania or Kenya.
Dean’s List Winter 2013
Congratulations to the following Kalamazoo College students, who achieved a grade point average of 3.5 or better for a full-time course load of at least three units, without failing or withdrawing from any course, during the Winter 2013 academic term. …
Winter 2013
| A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T V W Y Z | ||
| A Ayaka Abe Keaton Adams Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti Dana Allswede Rasseil Alzouhayli Brittany Amor Abby Anderson Katelyn Anderson Giancarlo Anemone Evan Angelos Esprit AutenreithB Gordon Backer Francisco Cabrera Susmitha Daggubati Erin Eagan Abram Farley Aileen Gallagher |
H Zari Haggenmiller Lynza Halberstadt Marie Hallinen Allison Hammerly Elizabeth Hanley Stephen Hanselman Nora Harris Emilie Harris-Makinen Hadley Harrison Shannon Haupt Sara Haverkamp Stephanie Heard Mariah Hennen Jordan Henning Michelle Hernandez Michael Hicks Robert Hilliard Frances Hoepfner Ashleigh Holden Jacob Holloway Jenna Holmes Jeffery Holton Daniel Holtzman Rachel Horness Pornkamol Huang Benjamin Hulbert Julia Hulbert Jenna Hunt Katherine Hunter Chaz HyattI Sierra Imanse Thomas Jackson Margaret Kane Rory Landis Lucy MacArthur Jr. Brendan Nagler Moses Odhiambo |
P Crestina Pacheco Jane Packer Fayang Pan Yunpeng Pang Jisung Park Emma Patrash Jamie Patton Michael Paule-Carres Bronte Payne Regina Pell Elizabeth Penix David Personke Laura Persons Adam Peters Alicia Pettys Thanh Thanh Phan Pavan Policherla Alejandra Portillo Taylor Beau Prey Jung Eun PyeonQ Jacob Ragen Kira Sandiford Tyler Tabenske Trevor Vader Chelsea Wallace Sina Yakhshi Tafti Jose Zacarias Jr. |
Kalamazoo College Announces Finalists for $25,000 Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice Leadership
Kalamazoo College is pleased to announce the finalists for its inaugural $25,000 Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice Leadership.
Fifteen finalist projects are collaboratively led by scholars and activists from eight U.S. cities (Columbus, Ohio; Detroit; Los Angeles; New York; Oakland, Cal.; Olympia, Wash.; South Bend, Ind.; and Urbana, Ill.; and ten nations including Germany, Honduras, Hungary, India, Malawi, Palestine, Rwanda, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. One of these projects will earn the $25,000 Global Prize.
Three finalists—two from Kalamazoo and one from Marshall—are eligible for a $5,000 Regional Prize for a project that originates in Southwest Michigan.
All finalists will present their work May 9-11 in Dalton Theatre on the K campus to jurors and attendees who will discuss and deliberate over the course of a three-day “Prize Weekend.” Global and Regional Prize winners will be announced by Kalamazoo College President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, on Saturday, May 11 at 7:15 in Dalton.
“The Kalamazoo College Global Prize creates an opportunity for our students, faculty, and the local community to interact with scholars and activists who are at the leading edge of collaborative social justice leadership practices around the country and around the world,” Wilson-Oyelaran said.
“The Global Prize also matches up with K’s mission to prepare its graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world,” she said.
Visit https://reason.kzoo.edu/csjl/clprize/finalists to see a brief description of each finalist and link to its video entry. Facebook users may also view each video and “Like” their favorites (https://www.facebook.com/GlobalPrizeFinalists).
Each Global Prize applicant submitted a video (8-10 minutes) describing a social justice project, its innovative approach, and its collaborative leadership structure. A total of 188 entries were received from 23 countries and 25 U.S. states (including 14 from Southwest Michigan) by the March 8 deadline.
“The Global Prize undertaking truly presents an excellent opportunity for K students and the entire community to see social justice theory in action and to reflect on what we see as promising practices in the pursuit of a more just world,” said Lisa Brock, academic director of Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, which is administering the Global Prize competition.
According to Brock, a wide variety of social justice issues are addressed among the finalists, including: education access and equity, environmental sustainability, food sovereignty, health inequities, human rights violations against prisoners and LGBTQI people, immigration, international development, racism, workers’ rights, and more.
“Several finalists involve projects and partners that cross state and international borders,” Brock said. “One project from India, for example, includes partners in Columbus, Ohio and South Bend, Indiana. And the project from South Africa includes collaborators in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.”
More than 50 people, including K students, faculty, and staff members, as well as social justice advocates in Kalamazoo and elsewhere, juried the semifinal round of the competition and selected the 18 finalists. Jurors included: author, political activist, and University of California-Santa Cruz scholar Angela Y. Davis; former Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission Cary Alan Johnson; and shea howell, Detroit-based author, educator, columnist, and board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership.
The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership was launched in 2009 with support from the Arcus Foundation (www.arcusfoundation.org), including a $23 million endowment grant in January 2012. Supporting Kalamazoo College’s mission to prepare its graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world, the ACSJL will develop new leaders and sustain existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice.
Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu), founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts 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.
K Trustee Ronda Stryker Receives YWCA Lifetime Award
Kalamazoo College Trustee and Kalamazoo-area philanthropist Ronda Stryker will receive the 2013 YWCA Lifetime Woman of Achievement Award at an award celebration May 21 at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in downtown Kalamazoo.
The YWCA Award is given to an area person who has demonstrated a lifetime of outstanding contributions to the well-being of the community, state or nation, and has a record of accomplishment, leadership and positive role modeling as a volunteer and/or in a career.
Stryker has volunteered in various capacities with numerous organizations including Kalamazoo Community Foundation, Women’s Education Coalition Fund, Pathfinder International, Girl Scouts, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, United Way, Communities in Schools, Spelman College, University of Northern Colorado, Western Michigan University, Lakeside for Children, Kalamazoo County Juvenile Home Foundation, and YWCA of Kalamazoo.
She has served as a Kalamazoo College trustee for more than 20 years. In 2001, she helped establish the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning, named for her grandmother. Through the Institute, K students contribute more than 30,000 hours of community service-learning and civic engagement each year.
Read more about Ronda Stryker and the YWCA award in a recent Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive article.
Kalamazoo Poets
If you like poetry and you like Michigan, check out a recent post (Awesome Mitten, Michigan Books Project) that includes a short review of four books of poetry, each with strong Michigan connections. The first of the four reviewed is Writer-in-Residence Di Seuss’s award-winning Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open. Other poets featured are John Rybicki, Laura Kasischke, and Jared Randall. Rybicki and Kasischke have done poetry readings on campus.
And in other news of Kalamazoo poets, Gail Griffin, the Ann V. and Donald R. Parfet Professor of English, won the annual poetry contest sponsored by FOLIO, a literary magazine published by American University (Washington, D.C.) Gail’s submission was her first ever “glosa,” a Spanish form of four 10-line stanzas based on a quatrain from another poem. Gail wrote, “I took some lines from a news story that particularly disturbed me and broke them into four lines of poetry. I’ve been working for a few years on poems and short prose inspired by weird, funny, or otherwise outrageous news stories.”
The contest judge was Martha Collins, a widely published poet who is affiliated with Oberlin College. Collins wrote, “I greatly admire the way [Griffin’s] ’Glosa: Man Held in Burning of Homeless Woman in Los Angeles’ moves through time, going back to Adam and forward to a ’millennium hence’ to elucidate a bit of news. The glosa form and a Genesis-inspired movement through the week are among the poetic strategies the author uses to create a richly-collaged reflection on the (gendered) need ’to love and loathe,’ as well as more generally disturbing aspects of our contemporary society.”
We look forward to sharing Gail’s poem when it is published in FOLIO later this year.
K alumnus and trustee Eugene Bissell ’76 is a Hall of Famer
Eugene Bissell ’76 didn’t know much about propane when he started in the industry in the 1980s. And yet, the Kalamazoo College and Wharton School of Business graduate listened and learned along the way, ultimately becoming president and CEO of AmeriGas, the country’s largest propane retailer, and one of the industry’s most influential people. Read about Eugene’s long and winding road to the top of his profession (including a stint as a truck driver) while maintaining a commitment to elder care, community service, and to K.
David France ’81 Talks about His Oscar-nominated Documentary on NPR
David France ’81 was interviewed on the National Public Radio program “Here and Now” on Friday March 8 talking about “How to Survive a Plague,” his Oscar-nominated documentary about the early days of the AIDS crisis and the response to that crisis by activists, health officials, politicians, and the public.
David will host a showing of his film on Sunday, May 5, at Kalamazoo College. More details will follow soon.
Meanwhile, click here to listen to David’s NPR interview.