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)
Andrew Bremer at US Soccer Paralympic Training. Photo by Hana Asano.
Like many Kalamazoo College student athletes over the years, junior Andrew Bremer will enjoy a spring term international experience. His travel will take him to Spain, the Netherlands and (possibly) to Brazil, not as a currently enrolled K student but instead as a member of the United States Paralympics soccer team.
“Before all this happened,” says Andrew, “I’d only been on a plane once, and never out of the country.”
“All this” started with a June 2015 invitation to attend training camp for the U.S. team. That first camp for Andrew (requiring his second plane trip) took place at the National Training Center for Soccer in Los Angeles last October. Andrew had to miss a week of fall term classes as well as two soccer matches (he plays defense for the Hornet team). The second training camp occurred in November (after Thanksgiving and therefore the end of fall term, “thankfully,” smiles Andrew) at the Olympic Training Center in San Diego. For training camp number three Andrew flew to Florida in early January.
“Missing week one of winter term was tough,” says Andrew, who is as hard working and disciplined in his studies as he is on the pitch. The economics and business major (and mathematics minor) enjoyed the full support of his K professors and soccer coach, as well as that of Associate Dean of Students Dana Jansma, who notified the College’s communication office about Andrew’s story and his plans for junior spring term.
He will take a leave of absence that term because he learned in late January that he is invited to join the U.S. Paralympics soccer team. The team will train for most of the month of April in Atlanta. At the end of that month the team will depart for Barcelona, Spain, for a pre-Paralympics tournament to include seven of the eight teams that will compete at the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In addition to the U.S. squad, the eight teams include Russia, Ireland, Brazil, Ukraine, Argentina, Great Britain and the Netherlands.
“The pool play format guarantees us at least three games in Spain,” says Andrew. After the tournament the team will return to Atlanta in mid-May for more training. Then it’s off to a four-team June tournament in the Netherlands, organized by the International Federation of Cerebral Palsy Football. After that tournament Andrew will wait to see if he’s made the roster for Paralympic Games in Rio.
He feels his chances are pretty good, and the prospect of playing there (September 7-18) he considers the most exciting aspect of his soccer study abroad adventure.
“The team will stay in the Olympic Village,” says Andrew, “and the atmosphere will be electric.” He says that the Paralympics soccer matches that followed the London Olympics drew crowds of some 13,000 spectators on average. And the stadium in Rio can hold 15,000 people.
His participation in the Paralympic Games will mean Andrew misses the first few days of fall term, but he’s proven he can handle that challenge. He plans to do preliminary research for his Senior Individualized Project while in Atlanta, where training occurs nearby the liberal arts school Oglethorpe University and its library. During previous trips to Los Angeles, San Diego and Bradenton (Fla.) Andrew grew accustomed to finding a quiet place between practices to knock off some study. And, as good fortune would have it, he completed most of his requirements for his major in his first two years at K. All that remains for economics and business will be the SIP and senior seminar.
True to his liberal arts nature, Andrew intends to snag that math minor as well. And speaking of liberal arts, it’s evident in his soccer too: though he plays defense for K, for Team U.S.A. he prowls the pitch as a forward. He’ll resume the former when he steps foot again on MacKenzie Field fall term. And academically, “I’ll complete all my degree requirements in time for June commencement.
A challenge? Yes. But in some ways enrolling at K at all may been his toughest initial test, what with the familial tug of Calvin College (both his parents are graduates, and the family lives about two blocks away from the campus) and Hope College (his older brother is a graduate and his younger sister a current student). How did Andrew navigate these cross currents?
“I love the Quad,” he says, “and K’s academic rigor. In fact, I love it here so much that it’s painful to take the leave from spring term.” Now that’s a student athlete! With quite a family sports pedigree. His older sister swam the Rice University (Houston, Texas) team. His older brother played hockey for the Flying Dutch, and his younger sister is a member of Hope’s soccer team.
Will they or his parents attend any of his matches overseas? “Probably not in Spain or the Netherlands,” says Andrew. “But if I’m on the roster for Rio, well, they’ve already inquired about plane tickets.”
Toward that end, K shouts out a huge “Good luck, Andrew!”
Raoul Wadhwa ’17 has won the very competitive and nationally prestigious Goldwater Scholarship. The Goldwater Scholarship Program was created to encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, or engineering and to foster excellence in those fields.
Raoul will graduate in June 2017 with majors in chemistry and mathematics. At K he currently serves as the Civic Engagement Scholar for the Center for Civic Engagement’s Spanish Medical Interpreting group. He coordinates students from K to serve as medical translators for Spanish-speaking patients and English-speaking staff, nurses, and doctors at a local medical clinic. “I first participated in this program as a first-year,” says Raoul, “and I enjoy working with a group of fellow students to improve the health of our community.” He has yet to decide where he will attend graduate school, but he has no uncertainty over his decision regarding his undergraduate education. “I am really glad that I was able to attend K,” says the Heyl scholar. “The relatively small community size fosters the building of close relationship with classmates and colleagues, and I value that about K.” According to Diane Kiino, the College’s director of health sciences and community and global health, K’s last Goldwater Scholar (Tibin John ’15) also was a Heyl Scholar.
Two Kalamazoo College chemistry majors, Victoria Osorio ’16 and Sarah Glass ’17, attended the annual Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego, Calif. Experimental Biology is a joint meeting of six different societies including the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) as well as societies for physiology, nutrition, pharmacology, pathology, and anatomy. “The meeting is a great opportunity for students to present their work and attend a variety of engaging scientific talks,” says Laura Furge, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Professor of Chemistry. “There were more than 15,000 scientists in attendance.”
Osorio and Glass presented results of their research as part of the Undergraduate Poster Competition and as part of the regular scientific session for ASBMB. Their presentations centered on recent work in the Furge lab with protein variants of an important human liver enzyme called CYP2D6. CYP2D6 helps the human body process drugs. The titles of the Osorio and Glass posters were, respectively, “Susceptibility of Four Human CYP2D6 Variants and One Active Site Mutant to Inhibition by the Mechanism-based Inactivator SCH 66712” and “Activity and Kinetic Characterization of Human CYP2D6 Polymorphisms with Bufuralol and Dextromethorphan.”
There were more than 225 undergraduate posters in the ASBMB competition from students across the country and from a variety of college and universities. One Grand Prize and four Honorable Mention awards were presented to students in each of the four research topic categories (proteins and enzymes / metabolism, bioenergetics, lipids and signal transduction / DNA, chromosomes, and gene regulation / cellular and developmental biology). Glass won an Honorable Mention for the “Proteins and Enzymes” category and was recognized the next day in front of an audience of hundreds of scientists, educators and students at the award lecture for outstanding contributions to education. Glass’s presentation was based on the culmination of nearly three years of research in the Furge lab; Glass will complete her SIP with Furge this summer and the lab hopes to publish the results later in 2016 along with co-author Osorio and other recent Furge lab research assistants.
After graduation, Osorio will enter the Post-baccalaureate Research Education Program at Case Western Reserve University. Glass will complete her degree in Fall 2016 (two terms early), and she plans to start graduate school in biochemistry or pharmacology in 2017.
Travel to ASBMB for Osorio and Glass was supported by a grant to Furge from the National Institutes of Health. Glass also received an ASBMB Travel Award of $500.
Next year’s Experimental Biology meeting will be in nearby Chicago, Illinois, says Furge, “and we hope to take a large group of students from the Departments of Chemistry and Biology.”
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.
