Dennis Frost, the Wen Chao Chen Associate Professor of East Asian Social Sciences, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to support his project titled “The Paralympic Movement, Sports, and Disability in Postwar Japan.” His was one 232 humanities projects in the country to receive NEH funding. Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Professor Frost earned his B.A. at Wittenberg University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He completed research programs at University of the Ryukyus (Okinawa, Japan) and Iwate University (Iwate, Japan). He is the author of Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan. In addition to his study of the Paralympic Movement, sports, and disability in postwar Japan, his current research interests include a comparative exploration of military “base towns’ in Okinawa and mainland Japan. Said NEH Chairman William Adams: “The grants announced continue the Endowment’s tradition of supporting excellence in the humanities by funding far-reaching research, preservation projects, and public programs.”Congratulations to Professor Frost!
awards
Dean’s List for Winter Term 2015
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 2015 academic term. Kudos to the entire group of some 300 students, and good luck in Spring Term, 2015.
Winter 2015
| A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | ||
AAyaka Abe B Sara Babcock CNicole Caddow DSusmitha Daggubati EDaniel Eberhart FRachel Fadler GBridget Gallagher |
HSimon Haile IPinar Inanli JJordan Jabara KKamalaldin Kamalaldin LAriah Lacey MSpencer MacDonald NVictoria Najacht OBryan Olert |
PNirmita Palakodaty QYilan Qiu RJustin Rabidoux SMinato Sakamoto TEmerson Talanda-Fisher UAmanda Ullrick VAsha Vadlamudi WRaoul Wadhwa XAnja Xheka YBrent Yelton ZJingcan Zhu |
Aced it With ACEit!
Senior computer science major Jae Hyun Choe presented a poster at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Student Research Competition. The title of his presentation was “ACEit!–Android app to Assist Children in Learning to Read English.” The work was based on his Senior Individualized Project, which was supported by the Hough Foundation Natural Science and Mathematics SIP grant last summer, according to Associate Professor of Computer Science Pam Cutter, who served as Choe’s SIP supervisor. “Jae Hyun competed with 16 others,” said Cutter, “and although he didn’t make it to the next round of the competition, he said that making and presenting the poster as well as explaining what he did and getting ideas and feedback from others were very valuable experiences. The competition was held in Kansas City, Missouri, during the ACM’s Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education technical symposium. The College’s computer science department has been busy with meetings preparations. Six women computer science students plan to participate in the upcoming Michigan Celebration of Women in Computing, which will be held in Ann Arbor. One of the students will present her SIP work there.
K Seniors Win Davis Project for Peace Grant
Kalamazoo College seniors Jasmine An and Allison Kennedy will receive a $10,000 Davis Project for Peace grant to implement a five-week creative writing and leadership workshop for previously incarcerated individuals in Kalamazoo. Both women are fellows at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL). The workshop aims to reduce the stigma of incarceration and promote peace and stability in the community. The two also serve as Civic Engagement Scholars for the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE). In fact, it was a CCE creative writing partnership with the Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative that formed the basis of the project that was awarded the Davis Project for Peace grant. (According to CCE Director Alison Geist, nearly every K recipient of a Davis Project for Peace grant has been a Civic Engagement Scholar, and all have been leaders in CCE programming).
An and Kennedy will partner with Michigan United, a local organization that addresses incarceration and re-entry challenges faced by individuals in Kalamazoo. The ACSJL will donate space and supplies. The work will culminate in an anthology of work that highlights how Kalamazoo is confronting incarceration. An article on the seniors’ workshops appeared in the February issue of BeLight.
Projects for Peace invites all undergraduates at the 91 American colleges and universities that are partners in the Davis United World College Scholars Program to compete for these grants. A total of 127 projects were awarded implementation in the summer of 2015.
K’s history with the program is a successful one. Kalamazoo College students have used these awards each of the past seven years to conduct projects in Thailand, Kenya, Pakistan, Jamaica, Haiti, and Kalamazoo. An’s and Kennedy’s project will be the second carried out in Kalamazoo.
In 2007, Projects for Peace was the vision of philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis on the occasion of her 100th birthday. Until her death at 106 in 2013, Mrs. Davis was intent on advancing the cause of peace and sought to motivate tomorrow’s promising leaders by challenging them to find ways to “prepare for peace”.
Hornets at National Championship Meet
Five Hornet members of the men’s and women’s swimming and diving team have qualified for the 2015 NCAA Division III Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships. Qualifiers are Tristyn Edsall ’17, Ellen Neveux ’17, Colleen Orwin ’17, Christina Park ’17, and Will Guedes ’15. The championships take place March 18 through March 21 at the Conroe Natatorium in Shenandoah, Texas. In addition to the national competition, there will be an opportunity to meet the K swimmers, divers, and coaches in an informal dinner setting on Saturday, March 21. The Office of Alumni Relations will host a complimentary dinner immediately following the competition at Guri Do Sul Brazilin Steakhouse (1400 Research Forest Drive, The Woodlands, Texas). Please confirm your attendance no later than Monday, March 16, by contacting Kerri Barker, assistant director of alumni relations (269.337.7289). Tickets for the championships are $80 for an all-session pass, which includes prelims and finals on all four days.
Jane and Grace
Seniors Jane Huffman and Grace Gilmore are collaborating on the Festival Playhouse at Kalamazoo College’s production of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet).
Jane is the assistant director of Good Night Desdemona…, a different–or, perhaps more accurately–an “expanded” directing experience than the one she enjoyed previously this term when her own play, Where the Bee Sucks, was performed at the New Play House Festival in downtown Kalamazoo. “To go from a one act play with three actors to a two act play with six actors has been illuminating,” says Jane. “I’ve learned a great deal from Karen Berthel [director of Good Night Desdemona… and an associate professor of theatre arts] about how to work in a bigger space, with a bigger company.”
Jane also finds this term’s work good preparation for the spring term, when she will direct the play, Nine Parts of Desire. Jane is earning majors in theatre arts and in English, and she has published quite a few of her poems. “I’ve learned that getting published is about 90 percent submitting and 10 percent writing.” Next year she plans to begin work on an MFA in poetry.
Grace Gilmore plays the lead role of Constance in Good Night Desdemona…. “At times I feel really connected with Constance but other times so far away from her. Her views and opinions come from second-wave feminism, which is difficult for me to relate to.” Fall term Grace performed her Senior Individualized Project, the one-woman show “2.5 Minute Ride” by Kalamazoo College alumna (and Tony Award nominee) Lisa Kron ’83. Grace also won the Irene Ryan Award for Performance for Region 3 of the American College Theatre Festival. Grace competed against 274 other contestants from Region 3, ACTF’s largest, which includes Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana. She and the seven winners from the other ACTF regions will take part in a national program at the John F. Kennedy Center this summer. Grace will work with national directors, perform at various venues in New York, and participate in a final showcase performance at the Kennedy Center. In the meantime, we can enjoy the work of these two talented seniors at Festival Playhouse this coming weekend. —Text and Photo by Mallory Zink ’15
Kalamazoo College Senior Leaders
This year’s senior leadership award winners are characterized by their service to communities and people and their ability to encourage the development of leadership in others. Thirty-five seniors were selected from more than 60 applicants, and both of those numbers set records in the 11 years of the Senior Leadership Recognition Award. Members of the 2015 class of extraordinary leaders include (l-r): front row–Jane Huffman, Jasmine An, Olivia Bouchard, Alexandra Gothard, Adriana Jarquin, Jenna Sexton; second row–Mary (Rosie) Tobin, Hannah Bogard, Natalie Melnick, Mele Makalo, Asia Morales, Bronte Payne, third row–Caroline Barnett, Haley Cartwright, Hannah Maness, Roxanna Menchaca, Elizabeth Cabrera, Shang Sun, David DeSimone; fourth row–Emily Lindsay, Scott Devine, Vageesha Liyana Gunawardana, Colin Smith, Philip Mulder; back row–Carl Ghafari, Samuel Rood, Adam Peters, Luke Winship, Stephen Oliphant, Mojtaba Akhavantafti, Ben Baker, and Scott Manski. Not pictured are Cheyenne Harvey, Allison Kennedy, and Hannah Olsen.
Alumna Novelist Nominated for Award
Kalamazoo College alumna Morowa Yejidé ’92 is a nominee for a 2015 NAACP Image Award to be awarded Friday, February 6, in Los Angeles. She is nominated in the category of Outstanding Literary Debut Work for her first novel Time of the Locust, described as a deeply imaginative journey into the heart and mind of an extraordinary boy that explores the themes of a mother’s devotion, a father’s punishment, and the power of love.
Time of the Locust (hardcover, 256 pages, Atria Books) is also included in Simon & Schuster’s Freshman Year Reading Catalog for 2014-2015, and was a finalist for the 2012 PEN/Bellwether Prize for socially engaged fiction.
The story revolves around Sephiri, a 7-year-old autistic boy who can draw scientifically accurate renderings of prehistoric locusts but never speaks, smiles, or makes eye contact.
Dara Morowa Yejide Madzimoyo is an accomplished writer whose short stories have appeared in the Istanbul Review, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Underground Voices, Adirondack Review, and other publications. Her story “Tokyo Chocolate” was nominated in 2009 for a Pushcart Prize and was anthologized in the Best of the Willesden Herald Stories.
Morowa earned her B.A. degree from K in international area studies and her M.F.A. degree in creative writing from Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where she received the Norris Church Mailer Scholarship.
She is a research faculty member at Georgia Institute of Technology and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland. Now based in Washington, D.C., Morowa and her husband have three sons.
Recently, she was selected as “Independent Alum of the Day” by the Michigan College’s Alliance, a collective of 15 independent colleges and universities located throughout Michigan.
Dean’s List for Fall Term 2014
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 Fall 2014 academic term. Kudos to the entire group of some 300 students, and good luck in Winter term, 2015.
Fall 2014
| A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | ||
AMelissa Acosta B Hannah Bacchus CRobert Calco DSusmitha Daggubati EDaniel Eberhart FRachel Fadler GOlivia Gaines |
HMarie Hallinen IPinar Inanli JJordan Jabara KKamalaldin Kamalaldin LAnh Lam MCorinne MacInnes NOlivia Nalugya OAnna Opshinsky |
PJane Packer Q
RJustin Rabidoux SRumsha Sajid TKathe Tallmadge UElizabeth Uribe VKaela Van Til WErika Waalkes XAnja Xheka YBrent Yelton ZMatthew Zhiss |
Ten alumni put K on Teach For America top list
Ten recent Kalamazoo College alumni joined the Teach For America (TFA) corps in 2014. That’s enough to again place the College on the top-20 list of small colleges and universities that supply the greatest number of alumni (on a per capita basis) to TFA. It’s the seventh year TFA has released its top-20 list and the third time K has been included.
The ten K alumni joined 10,600 other TFA corps members now teaching in 50 urban and rural regions across the country.
A member of the AmeriCorps national service network, Teach For America works in partnership with communities to expand educational opportunity for children facing the challenges of poverty. Founded in 1990, it recruits and develops outstanding individuals to commit to teach in high-need schools for two years and to become lifelong leaders in the movement to end educational inequity.
TFA admission is highly selective, with an acceptance rate of only 15 percent in 2014. Corps members have 3.4 GPA average.
“We are pleased but not surprised at the high ranking of Kalamazoo College among contributors of graduates to TFA,” said Joan Hawxhurst, director of K’s Center for Career and Professional Development.
“Given the many opportunities K students have for meaningful experiences in local public school classrooms, and the theoretical rigor with which they learn to approach social issues, it’s gratifying but not surprising that so many would gravitate toward TFA after graduation.”
The ten K alumni joined what TFA called the most diverse teaching corps in its 25-year history. Fully one-third of TFA’s new corps members are the first in their families to attend college, nearly half were Pell Grant recipients (a marker for students who come from families of limited financial means), and half identify as people of color.
Here are the ten K alumni who joined TFA in 2014 and the regions in which they teach: Darrin Camilleri ’14 (Detroit), Michael Francisco ’14 (Delaware), John Hogue ’03 (Cleveland), Matthew Munoz ’14 (New Jersey), Gisella Newbery ’14 (Chicago), Ayesha Popper ’14 (Las Vegas), Alexander Rigney ’13 (Detroit), Kaitlyn Steffenhagen ’14 (Milwaukee), Samantha Voss ’14 (Detroit), and Dayon Woodford ’14 (Milwaukee).
For more information about Teach for America, visit their website: www.teachforamerica.org, and follow them on Facebook or Twitter.
[Mallory Zink ’15 contributed to this report.]