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.
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.”
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 Spring 2016 academic term. Students who elect to take a letter-graded course on a credit/no credit basis (CR/NC) are not eligible for Dean’s List consideration during that term. Nor are students who receive an F, NC or W grade for that particular term. Students with incomplete (I) or in-progress (IP) grades will be considered for Dean’s List upon receipt of the final grades. Dean’s List recognition is posted on students’ transcripts. Kudos to the entire group of more than 500 students, and good luck in Fall Term, 2016.
Nana-Yaw Aikins
Michelle Alba
Luis Alves-Diniz
Michael Anderson
Lauren Arquette
Meredith Ashton
Max Aulbach
Esprit Autenreith
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Dalbyeol Bae
Julia Bartlett
Jade Beauregard
Grace Beck
Victoria Beehler
Andrea Beitel
Hayley Beltz
Katherine Bennett
Erin Bensinger
Hannah Berger
Madelyn Betts
Kevin Bhimani
Allison Bloomfield
Jacob Bonifacio
Maria Bonvicini
Kennedy Boulton
Zoe Bowman
Riley Boyd
Emily Boyle
Emerson Brown
Erin Brown
Maxine Brown
Sarena Brown
Molly Brueger
Thomas Bryant
Hayley Buckhout
Ian Bunker
Matthew Burczyk
Janice Burnett
Erin Butler
Thaddeus Buttrey
Shanice Buys
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Alexander Cadigan
Robert Calco
Abigail Calef
Kathryn Callaghan
Mackenzie Callahan
Kalyn Campbell
Paloma Campillo
Angel Caranna
Olivia Cares
Raymond Carpenter
Lee Carter
Kebra Cassells
Coral Cervantes
Rachel Chang
Jasmine Charter-Harris
Haroon Chaudhry
Sirui Chen
Yu-Chyn Chiang
Tapiwa Chikungwa
Madeleine Chilcote
Emiline Chipman
Heeseong Cho
Elina Choi
Jennifer Cho
Jennifer Cho
Kanwal Chowdhury
Amelia Chronis
Isabelle Ciaramitaro
Joseph Cleary
Christopher Coburn
Kate Colebrook
Annaliese Collier
Cody Colvin
Quinton Colwell
Anthony Convertino
Hannah Cooperrider
Dejah Crystal
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Susmitha Daggubati
Elan Dantus
Justin Danzy
Natalie Davenport
Corrin Davis
Robert Davis
Ximena Davis
Cecilia DeBoeck
Timothy DeCoursey
Ricardo DelOlmo-Parrado
Clare DeLong
David Demarest
Dana DeVito
Eric De Witt
Melany Diaz
Green Dickenson
Anthony Diep
Cecilia DiFranco
Margaret Doele
Guillermo Dominguez Garcia
Rachel Dranoff
Elizabeth Dulski
Thao Duong
Alivia DuQuet
John Dynes
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Daniel Eberhart
Adam Edery
Emma Eisenbeis
Andres ElAmin-Martinez
Tiffany Ellis
Anna Emenheiser
Rachel Epstein
McKinzie Ervin
Michelle Escobar
Lucas Eshuis
Amanda Esler
Andriana Evangelista
Angelia Evangelista
Fiona Evans
Serita Evelyn
Kevin Ewing
Ihechiluru Ezuruonye
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Rachel Fadler
Alex Fairhall
Brian Farrell
Andrew Feeley
Maria Feijoo
Mario Ferrini
Elizabeth Fiator
Marie Fiori
George Fishback
Emily Fletcher
Joshua Foley
Angela Fong
Delaney Fordell
Monet Foster
Steven Fotieo
Hannah Frame
Christopher Francis
Maria Franco
Rachel Frank
Jakob Frederick
Ian Freshwater
Maria Fujii
Lydia Fyie
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Delfino Gaspar
Charlotte Gavin
Kathleen George
Sarah George
Carina Ghafari
Mousa Ghannam
Malak Ghazal
Sarah Glass
Samantha Gleason
Daniella Glymin
Abhay Goel
Shelby Golden
Emily Good
Adam Gothard
Emma Gougeon
Connor Grant
Madalyn Grau
Andre Grayson
Claire Greening
Jackson Greenstone
James Grenda
Jena Groshek
Alyse Guenther
Yicong Guo
Sapana Gupta
David Gurrola
Garrett Guthrie
Xueyun Gu
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Kyle Hahn
Torey Halsey
Robert Hammond
Sara Hanna
Jessica Hansen
Hadley Harrison
Eric Hart
Sarah Hassle
Kelly Haugland
Shannon Haupt
Mara Hazen
Stephanie Heard
Frances Heldt
Ashley Henne
Kaiya Herman-Hilker
Kyle Hernandez
Moises Hernandez
Lucia Herrera
Sophie Higdon
Adelaide Hilarides
Louis Hochster
Gabrielle Holme-Miller
Roger Hood
Shelby Hopper
Meghan Horal
Andrew Horton
Daniel Horwitz
Elise Houcek
Allia Howard
Pornkamol Huang
Audra Hudson
Robert Hudson
Nicole Huff
Briana Huisken
Julia Hulbert
Siwook Hwang
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Jordan Jabara
Sadie Jackson
Jaehoon Jang
Eric Janowiak
Alejandro Jaramillo
Clare Jensen
Jon Jerow
YanYan Jiang
Katherine Johnson
Emily Johnston
Brittany Jones
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Francis Kaguku
Kamalaldin Kamalaldin
Emily Katz
Andrew Kaylor
Jessica Kehoe
Agnes Kemboi
Christina Keramidas
Kelsey Kerbawy
Anthony Ketner
Graham Key
Khin Oo Khin
Benjamin Kileen
Dahwi Kim
David Kim
Hannah Kim
Min Soo Kim
YoungHoon Kim
Savannah Kinchen
William Kirchen
Sai Klein
Hannah Kline
Benjamin Kochanowski
Julia Koreman
Bharath Kotha
Emily Kozal
Katherine Kreiss
Hannah Kruger
Marc Kuniansky
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Kyle Lampar
Lauren Landman
Mackenzie Landman
Robyn Lane
Jeremy Lantis
Bryan Lara
Madeline Lauver
Andrew Laverenz
Stefan Leclerc
Annelise Lee
Joo Young Lee
Brett Lehman
Omar Leon
Phuong Le
Arianna Letherer
Sarah Levett
Emily Levy
Rachel Lifton
Hyunyn Lim
Jacob Lindquist
Xiang Lin
Kate Liska
Gordon Liu
Yishi Li
Giovanni LoGrasso
Molly Logsdon
Sara Lonsberry
Jordan Loredo
Chloe Love
Chenxi Lu
Nicholas Ludka
Samantha Luna
Liam Lundy
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Andrea MacMichael
Madeleine MacWilliams
Alicia Madgwick
Sarah Manski
Kayla Marciniak
Guadalupe Marin
Nicholas Marsh
Cydney Martell
Natalie Martell
Alexis Martin-Browne
Elizabeth Martin
Kelsey Matthews
Rose Maylen
Karly McCall
Mallory McClure
Alexander McDonell
Abigail McDonough
Miles McDowall
Aaron McKay
Ivy McKee
Sara McKinney
Ian McKnight
Jordan Meiller
Molly Merkel
Lesley Merrill
Vanessa Merritt
Franklin Meyer
Samuel Meyers
Daniel Michelin
Chelsea Miller
Sangtawun Miller
Zach Miller
Jamie Misevich
Diana Morales-Perez
Zachary Morales
Aliera Morasch
Blanca Moreno
Aidan Morley
Cody Mosblech
Amanda Moss
Chloe Mpinga
Emma Mullenax
Stuart Murch
Justin Murshak
Hannah Muscara
Nkatha Mwenda
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Victoria Najacht
Jacob Naranjo
Laetitia Ndiaye
Audrey Negro
Annie Nelson
Annie Nelson
Hung Nguyen
Nuong Nguyen
Phuong Nguyen
Mark Niehaus
Anne Nielsen
Naori Nishimura
Lionel Niyongabire
Nicholas Nizzardini
Jonathan Nord
Skyler Norgaard
Mackenzie Norman
Fernando Nunez
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Kelly Ohlrich
Josiah Olah
Michael Oravetz
Eli Orenstein
Victoria Osorio
Connor Otto
Ty Owens
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Dylan Padget
Dana Page
Nirmita Palakodaty
Anthony Palleschi
Kayla Park
Andrew Parsons
Khusbu Patel
Ryan Paul
Kaeli Peach
Darren Peel
Elizabeth Penix
Victoria Penman-Lomeli
Jessica Penny
Madison Perian
Kaitlyn Perkins
Lauren Perlaki
Emma Peters
Matthew Peters
Caroline Peterson
Katherine Pielemeier
Emily Pizza
Sarah Pobuda
Bradley Popiel
Maylis Pourtau
Emily Powers
Nicole Prentice
Erika Pueblo
Danielle Purkey
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Yilan Qiu
Zichen Qi
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Sagar Rafai
Andrea Ramirez
Shivani Rana
Malavika Rao
Megan Riley
Skylar Rizzolo
Madeleine Roberts
William Roberts
Marion Robin
Annalise Robinson
Jakob Rodseth
Rebecca Rogers
Anna Roodbergen
Justin Roop
Peter Rossi
Stefanie Roudebush
Wendy Rubio
Brock Rucinski
Timothy Rutledge
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Amber Salome
Tanush Samson
Christa Scheck
Katharine Scheck
Austen Scheer
Claire Schertzing
Maison Scheuer
Ashley Schiffer
Ashley Schmidt
Natalie Schmitt
Sarah Schmitt
Grady Schneider
Nicholas Schneider
Eleanor Schodowski
Cameron Schwartz
Jacob Scott
Rachel Selina
Sivhaun Sera
Lauren Seroka
Sharif Shaker
Yu Shang
Ke Sheng
Tianqi Shen
Kai Lin Shi
Geon-Ah Shin
Brandon Siedlaczek
Kaylah Simmons
Kriti Singh
Sharon Situ
Claire Slaughter
Griffin Smalley
Austin Smith
Bailey Smith
Benjamin Smith
Erin Smith
Grace Smith
Logan Smith
Margaret Smith
Sarah Smith
Meagan Soffin
Cassandra Solis
Mariam Souweidane
Federico Spalletti
Sophia Spencer
Austin Sroczynski
Honora Stagner
Vethania Stavropoulos
Collin Steen
Ellen Stormont
Marian Strauss
Matera Stuart
Caroline Sulich
Kyle Sunden
Mira Swearer
Collin Sweet
Maya Sykes
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Kiyoto Tanemura
Hanna Teasley
Diana Temple
Kathryn Thamann
Derek Thomas
Natalie Thompson
Eric Thornburg
Charles Timmons
Mateo Tobar
Paige Tobin
Carolyn Topper
Zachary Tornow
Carmen Torrado-Gonzalez
Brooke Travis
Kelly Treharne
Dakota Trinka
Brittany Trombino
Sydney Troost
Minhkhang Truong
Elyse Tuennerman
Lydia Turke
Shelby Tuthill
Elizabeth Tyburski
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Eva Ugelow
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Asha Vadlamudi
David Vanderkloot
Erica Vanneste
Kaela Van Til
Natalie Vazquez
Julia Villarreal
Cory Vincent
John Vinson
Anh-Tu Vu
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Erika Waalkes
Raoul Wadhwa
Evelyn Wagner
Brigid Walkowski
Emily Walsh
Sean Walsh
Mary Warner
Samantha Weaver
Connor Webb
Ailih Weeldreyer
John Wehr
Natalie Weingartz
Paris Weisman
Kenneth Weiss
Haley Wentz
Alex White
Zachary White
Joshua Whitney
Elijah Wickline
Hans Wieland
Jordan Wiley
Brooklyn Willett
Carolyn Williams
Kiavanne Williams
Rachel Williams
Abigail Wilson
Natalia Wohletz
Camille Wood
Lindsay Worthington
Katherine Wynne
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Anja Xheka
Jie Xu
Mingyue Xu
Zeyu Xu
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Michael Yeomans
Esther Yi
Samantha Young
Adre Yusi
Zixiao Yu
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Rachel Zemmol
Dylan Zerki
Matthew Zhiss
Jingcan Zhu
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.
K student Andrew Parsons ’19 helps Goodwill student Estefani Rosales with her GED studies. Photo by Tony Dugal
Kalamazoo College has received the Community Partner of the Year Award for 2016 from Goodwill Industries of Southwest Michigan.
In announcing the award, Goodwill officials noted that “Kalamazoo College has been an invaluable partner to Goodwill Industries of Southwest Michigan and its Adult Education programming for more than a decade.”
K students, working through the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement provide tutoring support in Goodwill classrooms for adults studying to pass a General Educational Development (GED) test, a credential that’s commonly considered equivalent to a high school diploma.
“K students also offer encouragement to our students and demonstrate that K cares about the well-being of the community at large,” said Scott Goodwin, coordinator of education services for Goodwill Industries of Southwest Michigan. “Over the years, the faces of the K students have changed, but the results remain constant. K students are committed to the students at Goodwill.”
According to Goodwin, one Goodwill student who recently passed her GED exam commented that the biggest reason she was successful was because of her K tutor’s commitment to help her and encouragement that she could finish.
“And she did,” Goodwin said.
“Kalamazoo College’s service-learning programming puts an emphasis on helping educational programming throughout Kalamazoo and the results have been wonderful. We are pleased to honor Kalamazoo College with our Community Partner of the Year Award.”
Olivia Cares ’16 and Christopher Monsour ’16 Photo by Anthony Dugal Photography
Congratulations to the inaugural winners of prizes awarded to two graduating Kalamazoo College seniors majoring in business based on achievement of select criteria established by the Rhoa family and administered by the faculty of K’s Department of Economics and Business.
The winner of The Robert and Karen Rhoa Prize in Business for 2016 is Olivia Cares ’16, a Dexter, Mich., native who majored in business and minored in French. Her Senior Individualized Project, or SIP, evaluated the contribution to the legal concept of crimes against humanity by the 1990s trials of René Bousquet, Paul Touvier and Maurice Papon, three French officials tried retroactively for their involvement with the Final Solution in Vichy France during World War II. Olivia will attend law school at the University of Michigan this fall.
The winner of The Robert and Karen Rhoa Prize for Outstanding Senior Individualized Project in Business for 2016 is Christopher Monsour ’16, a St. Clair Shores, Mich., native who majored in business at K. His SIP, titled “Measuring Value: Underwriting Distressed Real Estate,” is a direct reflection of his experience working at a real estate private equity firm during his junior year at K. His work there included an in-depth analysis of the traditional valuation theories and methodologies used in the real estate asset class that he then applied to the valuations of two differing properties located in Colorado and Michigan. Christopher has taken a job as an analyst for Bloomfield Capital, a real estate private equity firm located in Birmingham, Mich.
The Rhoa family are founders, owners and operators of Lake Michigan Mailers, Inc., a Kalamazoo-based company offering a complete menu of document creation, mail assembly, mail processing, presorting, data management, digital marketing, and distribution solutions to companies, schools, colleges and universities, health care providers, governmental entities and organizations throughout the world since 1977. David Rhoa ’90, president, is a K alumnus and a visiting instructor in K’s Department of Economics and Business.
Congrats, Olivia and Christopher! Thank you, Rhoa family!
Philip Bystrom ’13 is one of only 18 students to receive the Doris Duke International Clinical Research Fellowship, a very competitive and prestigious award usually given to medical students who have completed their third or fourth years. Phillip is in his third year at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine (WMed) in Kalamazoo. He will forego his studies there for the 12 months of his fellowship, which he will spend in Kampala, Uganda, conducting clinical research centered around early detection of cryptococcal meningitis in HIV-positive patients in resource-limited areas.
The fellowship well aligns with his intent to become an infectious diseases specialist who helps people in underdeveloped regions. Bystrom was born in Sweden and lived most of his youth in Bangkok, Thailand. He matriculated to K from Bangkok and earned his degree in chemistry with minors in physics and mathematics. His K experiential education included study abroad in Quito, Ecuador, shadowing a surgeon at the Pramangkut Military Hospital in Bangkok, serving as a chemistry lab teaching assistant at K, and working as a research assistant at University of Michigan. At medical school Bystom has been a trauma care unit volunteer and an ER scribe at Bronson Methodist Hospital. Bystrom recently left for Uganda and will return to Kalamazoo in July of 2017 to resume his third year of study at WMed.
Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine is a collaborative effort between Western Michigan University, Borgess Hospital and Bronson hospital, all located in Kalamazoo.
Justin Danzy ’16 always believed in himself and his writing; he just wasn’t sure others would feel the same way. When he began to work on his Senior Individualized Project (SIP) at Kalamazoo College, he had one thing in mind: authenticity.
His senior project seeks to understand authenticity in various forms of expression, and he decided to focus on works by James Baldwin and Rapper J. Cole.
The music of the latter nudged him to incorporate Baldwin into the SIP, which he titled “On the Question of Authenticity: Rethinking Black Male Identity through James Baldwin and Contemporary Hip Hop.”
“It was striking to me listening to J. Cole’s ‘Forrest Hills’ album and how similar it was to Baldwin’s story ‘Sonny’s Blues,’” said Justin. “Baldwin and Cole faced questions of their authenticity throughout their careers,” he added. “For Cole, being a rapper from the suburbs speaking on his struggles, and for Baldwin being an educated black author writing about race. Both men used speech to show how artists are more than their labels and both believed authenticity is not measured by those labels.”
As Justin explored the work of the two artists and concentrated on the meaning of authenticity, he often found himself questioning how authentic would people perceive his work. He wondered as well whether others had an interest into understanding authenticity and its nuances.
Turns out he needn’t have worried. His SIP supervisor, Associate Professor of English and Writer in Residence Diane Seuss encouraged him to enter his SIP into an open research paper contest.
And he won, which meant presenting his work during the three-day International James Baldwin Conference at the American University of Paris (France). He was the only undergraduate presenter. The trip to Paris was his first time out of the country. Having the opportunity to attend the conference, he said, awakened a new confidence in himself and his scholarly work—the sense that his own ideas can be useful and significant.
“If I put in the time and effort and have a team to push me in the right direction, my ideas can add to the world,” said Justin.
Justin graduated in June and is spending two months in Uganda conducting research (the English major also earned a concentration in African studies). “I know I am capable of bridging the gap between where I am and where I want to be,” he said. “That knowledge gives meaning to the hard work of the process.”
Kalamazoo College’s highest teaching honor is the Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship, awarded to a K faculty member in recognition of outstanding classroom teaching. The 2015-16 Lucasse Lectureship recipient is Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss. And for this honor, she gets to deliver a lecture! Hear this outstanding teacher talk about her love of teaching – and celebrate her award – Thursday May 19, 4:00-5:30 p.m., in the Olmsted Room of Mandelle Hall.
“I love what I do every day, and I wake up every day looking forward to it,” says Professor Stevens-Truss. “I get to learn with young people and share my love of learning with them. For now, life doesn’t get better than this.”
Professor Stevens-Truss is a medicinal biochemist who has taught at K since 2000. She previously taught at the College of Pharmacy, University of Michigan. Her teaching responsibilities at K include Antibiotics: Global Health and Social Justice, Introductory Chemistry II, Biochemistry, and Principles of Medicinal Chemistry. Her research focuses on understanding the enzyme nitric oxide synthase and its involvement in Alzheimers’ disease, research she enjoys carrying out with her students.
She has also been involved in numerous outreach programs that have taken her and her students into the Greater Kalamazoo community and bringing the community to the K campus. These have included Art & Science of Medicine, a summer workshop for high school students intending to pursue a career in medicine, and Sisters in Science, a K student group supporting young girls who demonstrate an aptitude for math and science.
She currently helps lead the Science and Social Justice Project, an initiative of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL) at Kalamazoo College and the Division of Medical Sciences at Harvard Medical School. The Project aims to study and promote the value of social justice in scientific education and research, and to identify, connect, and coordinate scholars doing science and social justice teaching and research.
Professor Stevens-Truss recently helped coordinate a three-day “Science and Social Justice Think Tank” at the ACSJL attended by professors, scholars, scientists, public health and environmental leaders from across the country working at the intersection of science and social justice, as well as stakeholders in academic institutions and scientific organizations who can speak to diversity in the STEM fields and to the changing landscape of science and society.
Professor Stevens-Truss earned a B.A. degree at Rutgers University and a Ph.D. degree at University of Toledo. She is a married mother of two children who enjoys photography, bowling, watching sports (“especially those involving my kids”), and watching CSI.
The Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship (for outstanding classroom teaching) and Fellowship (for outstanding achievement in creative work, research or publication) at Kalamazoo College were established in 1979. The awards were created to honor Florence J. Lucasse, alumna of Kalamazoo College Class of 1910, in recognition of her long and distinguished career and in response to the major unrestricted endowment gift given to the college in her will.
2016 Heyl Scholars who will attend Kalamazoo College or WMU School of Nursing. Front row, from left: Shukrani Nsenga, Loy Norrix HS; Anna Roodbergen, Vicksburg HS; Brianna Harrison, Kalamazoo Central HS; and Hannah Laurin, Kalamazoo Central HS. Second row, from left: Taylor Ashby, Kalamazoo Central HS; Kento Hirakawa, Portage Central; and Kelsi Conroy, Kalamazoo Central HS. Back row, from left: Michael Orwin, Portage Northern HS; Matthew Krinock, Portage Northern HS; and Samuel Maddox, Gull Lake HS. NOTE: Two Heyl Scholars were not pictured.
At a dinner last evening Kalamazoo College feted the dozen 2016 Kalamazoo county high school graduates who earned Heyl Scholarships for Kalamazoo College (science and math) or Western Michigan University (nursing). The scholarship covers tuition, book costs and room charges. The winners are (l-r): front row — Shukrani Nsenga, Loy Norrix; Anna Roodbergen, Vicksburg; Brianna Harrison, Kalamazoo Central; Hannah Laurin, Kalamazoo Central; second row — Taylor Ashby, Kalamazoo Central; Kento Hirakawa, Portage Central; Kelsi Conroy, Kalamazoo Central; back row — Michael Orwin, Portage Northern; Matthew Krinock, Portage Northern; and Samuel Maddox, Gull Lake. Not pictured are Julie Zabik and Marjorie Wolfe, both from Loy Norrix. Harrison, Conroy and Laurin will attend WMU. Nsenga, Roodbergen, Ashby, Hirakawa, Orwin, Krinock, Maddox, Zabik and Wolfe are on their way to K! (Photo by Tony Dugal)
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.
