In celebrating the power that comes with the sharing of scientific knowledge, the Chemistry Club at Kalamazoo College participated in two community events this fall where local students and families—children in particular—could engage with hands-on experiments and interactive displays.
Hundreds attended the events, which were packed with activities designed to spark curiosity and inspire future scientists. Students such as Isabella Pellegrom ’25, at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, and Justin Essing ’25, at the Air Zoo, were among the demonstrators representing K.
Pellegrom and her peers fascinated the general public by showing how children can protect themselves from UV radiation. Using UV-reactive beads made into bracelets, experimenters could see colors change from a neutral color into purple, blue or pink when UV light is shined onto them.
“It makes the kids really happy every time they see it,” Pellegrom said. “And then we have certain things that they can do to protect the beads from changing color, which could represent protecting themselves, their eyes or their skin from getting burned.”
The experiment used sunglasses, various types of clothing and sunscreen to help museum attendees recognize the best ways to protect themselves.
“It shocks a lot of people that sunscreen doesn’t completely protect the beads from changing color,” Pellegrom said. “We’ll start the demonstration by asking the kids whether they have ever gotten some sort of sunburn, and they sometimes say, ‘Oh! My dad got the worst sunburn in Florida last month’ or something like that. It’s funny because, as you’re telling the kids this, the parents many times say, ‘See, this is why I tell you to put on your sunscreen.’”
At the Air Zoo, Essing helped operate a booth that used the College’s virtual reality headsets to show Portage Public Schools students the structure of a COVID-19 protein so they could make connections between an illness they would feel and the science behind a virus’ structure. He said with multiple youths immersed within virtual reality at any given time, it was difficult to keep them from bumping into each other, but a common effort proved successful in engaging everyone.
“We had some people giving our spiel and explaining some of these tough concepts to kids,” Essing said. “Others were helping students put on the headsets. They all had to work as a team toward a common goal of educating and inspiring young students to pursue the sciences.”
Several members of Kalamazoo College’s Chemistry Club, including Isabella Pellegrom ’25 (bottom right), have participated in community science days over the past few years at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum including this one in 2023.
Kalamazoo College Chemistry Club members including Justin Essing ’25 (seated left) attended an Air Zoo event where they helped Portage Public Schools students view an enlarged model of a COVID-19 protein.
These are examples of how K chemistry students, and Chemistry Club members specifically, go beyond the classroom and labs to communicate what they learn in the community.
“I think it’s a great opportunity,” Pellegrom said. “And it’s one of the best parts about this club. It’s a fun experience to get together with people, take time out of your schedule, and talk about science or just be around other people who are interested in it.”
Essing said the community opportunities and the 66 students involved show the strength of the Chemistry Club and why it endures year after year.
“We all have personal relationships with each other, both through this Chemistry Club and taking classes together,” he said. “With the small campus size, everybody gets to know each other pretty well, personally and professionally. I feel that allows us to coordinate our goals together and figure out how to reach them in and out of the classroom.”
Kalamazoo College has appointed six faculty members as endowed chairs, recognizing their achievements as professors. Endowed chairs are positions funded through the annual earnings from an endowed gift or gifts to the College. The honor reflects the value donors attribute to the excellent teaching and mentorship that occurs at K and how much donors want to see that excellence continue.
The honorees are:
Espelencia Baptiste, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Senior Faculty Chair
Anne Marie Butler, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Junior Faculty Chair
E. Binney Girdler, the Dow Distinguished Professor in Natural Sciences
Sohini Pillai, the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities
Dwight Williams, the Kurt D. Kaufman Endowed Chair
Daniela Arias-Rotondo, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science
Espelencia Baptiste, Anthropology-Sociology
Baptiste is currently on sabbatical in Benin where she is working on a book project focused on different ways Africans and Haitians claim each other across time and space. Her research focus centers on the relationship between Africa and its diasporas. She has been active and engaged within the College since her arrival; most recently, she received the College’s Outstanding Advisor Award in 2023 and served as Posse mentor from 2019-2022.
Her courses include Lest We Forget: Memory and Identity in the African Diaspora, You Are What You Eat: Food and Identity In a Global Perspective, Communities and Schools, and Missionaries to Pilgrims: Diasporic Returns to Africa. Within her teaching, she is invested in challenging students to imagine the production of power, particularly as it relates to belonging, as a continuous phenomenon.
Baptiste has a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Espelencia Baptiste, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership senior chair, received the College’s Outstanding Advisor Award in 2023 as presented by President Jorge G. Gonzalez
Anne Marie Butler, Art and Art History; Women, Gender and Sexuality (WGS)
Butler has a joint appointment in Art History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her research focuses on contemporary Tunisian art within frameworks of global contemporary art, contemporary global surrealism studies, Southwest Asia North Africa studies, gender and sexuality studies, and queer theory. At K, she teaches at the intersection of visual culture and gender studies, instructing courses such as Art, Power and Society; Queer Aesthetics; Performance Art; and core WGS classes, and this is her fourth season as volunteer assistant coach for the swimming and diving team at K.
Butler is co-editor for the volume Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia and North Africa, which will be available in October (Intellect Press). She has been published in ASAP/Journal, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and The London Review of Education. She is also an editor for the volume Surrealism and Ecology, expected in 2026.
Butler has a bachelor’s degree from Scripps College, a master’s degree from New York University and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Anne Marie Butler is the the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership junior chair.
E. Binney Girdler, Biology
Girdler is the director of K’s environmental studies program and a biology department faculty member. She focuses on plant ecology and conservation biology with her research involving studies of the structure and dynamics of terrestrial plant communities.
Girdler previously had an endowed chair as the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science. She develops relationships with area natural-resource agencies and non-profit conservation groups to match her expertise with their research needs and the access needs of students. In 2022, she and K Associate Professor of Biology Santiago Salinas contributed to a global research project that proves humans are affecting evolution through urbanization and climate change. The study served as a cover story for the journal Science.
Girdler commonly teaches courses titled Environmental Science, Ecology and Conservation, and Population and Community Ecology along with an environmental studies senior seminar. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Dow Distinguished Professor in Natural Sciences E. Binney Girdler at Batts Pavilion.
Sohini Pillai, Religion
Pillai is the director of film and media studies at K and a faculty member in the religion department. She is a comparatist of South Asian religious literature, and her area of specialization is the Mahabharata and Ramayana epic traditions.
Pillai is the author of Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative (Oxford University Press, 2024), a comprehensive study of premodern retellings of the Mahabharata epic in regional South Asian languages. She is also the co-editor of Many Mahabharatas (State University of New York Press, 2021) with Nell Shapiro Hawley and the co-author of Women in Hindu Traditions (New York University Press, under contract) with Emilia Bachrach and Jennifer Ortegren. Her courses have included Religion in South Asia; Hindu Traditions; Islam in South Asia; Dance, Drama, and Devotion in South Asia; Religion, Bollywood, and Beyond; Jedi, Sith, and Mandalorians: Religion and Star Wars; and Princesses, Demonesses, and Warriors: The Women of the South Asian Epics.
Pillai has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley; a master’s degree from Columbia University; and a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College.
Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities Sohini Pillai displays some of her personal Star Wars memorabilia including a painting of Grogu gifted to her by a student.
Dwight Williams, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Williams previously was an endowed chair at K, having served as the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry from 2018–2020. He teaches courses including Organic Chemistry I and II, Advanced Organic Chemistry and Introductory Chemistry. His research interests include synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry and pharmacology.
Williams spent a year as a lecturer at Longwood University before becoming an assistant professor at Lynchburg College. At Lynchburg, he found a passion for the synthesis and structural characterization of natural products as potential neuroprotectants.
Williams learned more about those subjects after accepting a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral research fellowship at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. During that fellowship, he worked in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology, where his work was published in six peer-reviewed journals.
Kurt D. Kaufman Endowed Chair Dwight Williams holding a molecular model in his office.
Daniela Arias-Rotondo, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Arias-Rotondo earned a grant valued at $250,000 last year from the National Science Foundation through its Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS). The LEAPS-MPS grant emphasizes helping pre-tenure faculty at institutions that do not traditionally receive significant amounts of NSF-MPS funding, including predominantly undergraduate institutions, as well as achieving excellence through diversity. She uses the funding primarily to pay her student researchers, typically eight to 10 per term, and bring more research experiences into the classroom.
This year, Arias-Rotondo earned an American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund grant, which will provide $50,000 to her work while backing her lab’s upcoming research regarding petroleum byproducts. Her lab traditionally develops molecules that absorb energy from light while transforming that energy into electricity. The grant will allow her and her students to take molecules they have designed to act as catalysts and unlock chemical transformations through a process called photoredox catalysis. In this case, those transformations involve petroleum byproducts and how they might be used.
Arias-Rotondo teaches Introductory Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Structure and Reactivity, and commonly takes students to ACS conferences. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University.
Daniela Arias-Rotondo has been named the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science.
Lily Grelak ’25 (left) served Director of Science, Math, Business and Economics Learning Centers Rachel Love (right) as the research assistant for Love’s Science Communication and Society course this spring. Love also has taught courses such as Plant-Animal Interactions and Plants and Human Health while researching pollinator-prey conflict since joining K in 2021. Love holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Grand Valley State University and a Ph.D. from Leiden University of the Netherlands in evolution, ecology and ethnobiology.
Children left a June Children’s Nature Playscape event with sticker-portraits of eight scientists to further spur interest in research and discoveries. Artwork was led by local artists @Comfort and Adam with contributions from Avery Brockington ’26 and others.
Children appreciated coloring books and pages of the local scientists featured at a Children’s Nature Playscape event designed to make science more accessible in the community.
Science! The word alone is enough to strike fear into the hearts of schoolchildren if they find the subject matter challenging. But fear not. Students and faculty from Kalamazoo College and scientists from around Southwest Michigan can help.
The Science Communication and Society course at K made it their mission this spring to share the research of local scientists through intentional communication and activities for the community of Kalamazoo. Taught by the Director of Science, Math, Business and Economics Learning Centers Rachel Love with support from research assistant Lily Grelak ’25, the course examined the role science communication has in society to create accessible content through teamwork and creativity.
Artist Comfort Love helped lead the artwork featured at the Children’s Nature Playscape event.
Kalamazoo College students helped lead science activities at stations including this one about pollinators.
Twenty-six K students communicate the research of each local scientist. This station featured keys and locks to explain how enzymes can fit together with underlying substances, called substrates in compounds, to change their shape.
The culmination was a public event at the Children’s Nature Playscape of Kalamazoo in June, where more than 80 children and their families met local scientists and the 26 K students that worked hard all term to effectively communicate the research of each participating scientist. Activity stations brought science to life for the visiting children and their families, and each kiddo left with a stockpile of amazing comics-like sticker-portraits of each scientist and a corresponding coloring book to further spur interest in research and discoveries. Artwork was led by local artists @Comfort and Adam with contributions from K student Avery Brockington ’26 and additional local artists.
“As a person who wants to continue working in science and be a scientist, an effort like this is impactful,” Grelak said. “I have to often remind myself how I’m communicating information to my given audience. If I’m communicating large pieces of science research to family and friends, for example, it’s very different than when I’m in my classroom, so this has been a great opportunity to learn some communication skills.”
Through some enthusiastic interviews, Grelak—a biochemistry major—helped recruit several prominent Michigan scientists:
Kalamazoo College Professor of Biology Ann Fraser: Fraser’s research has centered around biodiversity and the behavior of insects. She has used behavioral, physiological and ecological approaches to probe how interactions between insect species arise and are maintained, and the consequences of these interactions for generating biodiversity. In 2008, her lab began focusing on pollinators and their conservation. She has worked with students to document native bee diversity in Southwest Michigan, examine interactions between bees and native plants, launch the citizen science project Southwest Michigan Bee Watch and collaborate on a project examining pollinator health and apple grower livelihoods in the Western Himalayas. Fraser’s station at the Playscape event had crafts where children made their own pollinators and learned about insects like bees.
Kalamazoo College Dorothy Heyl Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Regina Stevens-Truss: Since joining the faculty at K in January 2000, Stevens-Truss has been teaching courses such as Chemical Reactivity, Biochemistry, Medicinal Chemistry and Infection: Global Health and Social Justice. She is also the College’s director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence grant, which was awarded to K’s science division in 2018. Current research in her lab focuses on testing a variety of compounds, such as peptides and small molecules, for antimicrobial activity. Stevens-Truss’s station featured keys and locks to explain how enzymes can fit together with underlying substances, called substrates in compounds, to change their shape.
Kalamazoo College Dorothy Heyl Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Regina Stevens-Truss (left) and Professor of Biology Ann Fraser
Kalamazoo College Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Pérez: Vargas-Perez has taught courses at K in data structures, algorithms, parallel computing, computing for environmental science, object-oriented programming, and programming in Java and web development. His research interests include high-performance computing, parallel and distributed algorithms, computational genomics, and data structures and compression. His table at the Playscape event showed children the parts of a computer with a matching game to show how the parts relate and how computers can be used to better understand the human brain.
Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Pérez
Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine Associate Professor Momoko Yoshimoto: Yoshimoto joined the Center for Immunobiology in the Department of Investigative Medicine at WMU’s medical school in September 2023. She obtained her medical degree in Japan and completed a comprehensive five-year residency and fellowship in general pediatrics and pediatric hematology-oncology after serving one year as an attending pediatric hematology oncologist. In 2005, Yoshimoto joined Indiana University School of Medicine as a postdoctoral researcher, where she was promoted to research assistant professor in 2009. In 2016, she was recruited as an associate professor at the Center for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Yoshimoto’s table at the Playscape event told attendees about their blood and what’s in it using props such as candy.
Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine Associate Professor Momoko Yoshimoto (second from left).
Western Michigan University Professor of Biological Sciences Yan Lu: Lu studies the biochemical, genetic and physiological approaches that could make photosynthesis more efficient to help meet the world’s increasing demands for foods, fibers and fuels. She serves as the principal investigator of BIROETS, an NSF-funded research program at WMU that provides middle and high school science teachers in Southwest Michigan with authentic research experience and transformative curricular improvement and professional development opportunities. Lu’s table at the Playscape event allowed children to pot their own plants to show the importance of photosynthesis.
Western Michigan University Professor of Biological Sciences Yan Lu
Michigan State University Assistant Professor Dan Campbell: Campbell studies how genetics and environmental influences affect brain development, which may contribute to the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder. His research has shown that increased levels of air pollution can lead to the same changes in brain development as some genetic mutations. Campbell’s table at the Playscape event used bubbles to help explain that chemicals such as smoke in the air might not always be visible but could be harmful.
Artwork by @Comfort and Adam—with contributions from K student Avery Brockington ’26 and additional local artists—depicted scientists such as Yoshimoto (from left), Campbell and Love.
Michigan State University Assistant Professor Barbara Thompson: As a trained behavioral neuroscientist, Thompson and her laboratory explore functional disruptions in behavior and attempt to explain the changes responsible for them. The long-term goals of her studies are to better understand the disruptions and the neural circuitry responsible, thereby allowing for the design of interventions for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. Her activity at the Playscape was a matching game that showed the relationships between different words and how the brain organizes information.
Michigan State University Assistant Professor Barbara Thompson
Looking ahead
Grelak expects the science communication course to be offered again and reveals that K students might focus on other generational groups within the community in future courses.
“In a diverse community like Kalamazoo, we want all races and all genders to interact with information and be inspired,” she said. “We wanted to have a really diverse group of scientists and we were easily able to do that. But continuing to diversify our audience would help the community feel represented.”
In addition to the community goals of stretching positive regard and identity in science, K students involved in this senior seminar fortified high-demand post-graduation skills such as recognizing and addressing cultural nuances to ensure inclusivity and resonance with diverse audiences evaluating and applying their own skills and knowledge to a complex project and building relationships with stakeholders. Through these connections Shun Yonehara ’24 even secured an internship in Yoshimoto’s laboratory.
Although the first run of this course has wrapped up, the science communication created in this course continues throughout the summer. Awesome information about each local scientist is being shared on the socials of this year’s community partner, @kalamazooplayscape, on Instagram and Facebook. Feed your science curiosity by following along. Pending future funding, be on the lookout to engage with this local science initiative for many years to come.
Shun Yonehara ’24 earned an internship in Yoshimoto’s laboratory.
K students helped local scientists introduce children to issues in science.
K students and Vargas-Pérez showed children the parts of a computer to show how the parts relate and how computers can be used to better understand the human brain.
Campbell’s table at the Playscape event used bubbles to help explain that chemicals such as smoke in the air might not always be visible but could be harmful.
Children showed off their coloring skills through pages featuring local scientists.
Local artists helped reinforce what children learned from local scientists by producing coloring pages, a coloring book and stickers.
A coloring book distributed at the Playscape event helped children appreciate local scientists and their work.
Only 6 years old when her family moved to Michigan in 2009, Ifeoma Uwaje ’24 retains a deep love for her home in Nigeria and remembers the pain of losing young classmates to malaria due to a lack of resources and access to healthcare. Emotional visits back home in 2017 and 2022 elicited a deep desire in Uwaje to improve circumstances for her first community.
As she anticipates graduating from Kalamazoo College this spring with a degree in biochemistry, Uwaje hopes eventually to combine her commitment to community with her love for science—and her Senior Integrated Project (SIP), currently underway, represents one possible path forward.
Starting college virtually, in the midst of a pandemic, brought home to Uwaje how essential community is for her, and how lonely she was without it. Once she got to campus, she jumped right in, becoming involved with Sukuma Dow, which supports and empowers students of color in STEM, and Kalama-Africa, which creates space to engage with African and Caribbean cultures and experiences.
“The isolation of the pandemic motivated me to find my community here on campus, which made my experiences so much better,” Uwaje said. “I’m grateful for the community I was able to find here.”
Through Kalama-Africa, Uwaje has been part of building a close-knit community and sharing culture and food from different parts of Africa and the Caribbean, both within the organization and with the larger campus community, particularly through events like Afro Fiesta Desi Sol. Both her work as a resident assistant and her involvement with Sukuma Dow have allowed her to experience receiving and offering support.
Ifeoma Uwaje ’24 poses with Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss during Dress Like Your Professor Day in summer 2022.
Uwaje drew on childhood experiences in Nigeria, where she remembers classmates dying of malaria, to inspire her Senior Integrated Project. Her SIP is an extension of a small-group project for her medicinal chemistry class involving computational research on improving a pharmaceutical drug.
Participation and leadership with the executive board of student group Kalama-Africa, pictured during Afro Fiesta Desi Sol, has offered community and fellowship at K for Uwaje, far right.
Uwaje, fourth from left, with the executive board of student group Kalama-Africa, cherishes the opportunities she has found at K to share and learn about different African and Caribbean cultures.
“I love interacting with my residents and getting to know their stories and connecting with them on a personal level,” Uwaje said. “It warms my heart when my residents come and talk to me about anything, and I’m happy that I can create a safe and welcoming atmosphere for them.
“Sukuma Dow has also been a rewarding experience because when I was a sophomore, it was nice that I had older students that I could go to for advice on how to be a better student or how to do well in a class and for a listening ear those days where things were really stressful. Now that I’m a senior, I’m happy that I can also give advice to younger students, tell them things that I did, reassure them and make them feel supported, and let them know, ‘Hey, you’re not alone. You can do this. You’ve got this. I believe in you.’”
Uwaje has also volunteered at Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes and participated in science outreach for elementary, middle and high school students in Kalamazoo.
Coming to K, Uwaje intended to major in biology. Quickly, however, classes with Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss deepened her interest in chemistry, and Uwaje settled on a new major offered from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
“Being a biochemistry major has been so rewarding,” Uwaje said. “It made everything in my science education make sense. Biology is amazing, and understanding the chemical aspect really exhilarated me because I could learn all of these different reactions that are going on in our bodies and see how they apply to and affect our daily lives.”
Throughout the summer after her sophomore year and the fall of her junior year, Uwaje conducted research in Stevens-Truss’ biochemistry lab.
“It’s a dual research project with Dr. [Dwight] Williams’ lab,” Uwaje said. “In Dr. Williams’ lab, they synthesized a series of potential antibiotic hybrid compounds, while in Dr. Truss’ lab, we tested the ability of these antibiotics to inhibit growth of different strains of bacteria.”
While she was specifically testing these antibiotic hybrid compounds on Staphylococcusaureus and E. coli, Uwaje was absorbing a larger lesson and inspiration.
“Working in Dr. Truss’ lab taught me that it’s OK to make mistakes,” she said. “I was very scared coming in because I didn’t want to mess up, but Dr. Truss created an atmosphere where it was OK to make mistakes and I was able to learn from making those mistakes. I’ve been able to take the lessons that I learned and remind myself that things happen, life happens, and the main thing is to keep going and keep learning. Dr. Truss was very calm. Anytime I would mess up something, she’d be like, ‘Oh, that was not quite what you had to do, but that’s OK. Here’s how we’re going to solve that,’ and she was very welcoming and not judgmental about it.”
Stevens-Truss suggested that Uwaje, who was interested in medicinal chemistry, could complete her SIP in tandem with her medicinal chemistry class. In the class, students learn how to run computational design and research before choosing a pharmaceutical drug to explore and attempt to improve in small groups.
Uwaje’s group is researching changes that could make anti-malarial drugs more effective and potentially longer-lasting.
“I am looking to derivatize anti-malarial compounds—basically increasing the binding affinity of these anti-malarial drugs to the specific receptor it binds to,” Uwaje said. “I’ll test three to five derivatives to see how these derivatives bind to the receptor, and potentially see if my derivative fits into the receptor well and if it binds tighter to the receptor.”
Although this is a “dry lab,” without actual synthesis and without testing these compounds on biological agents, Uwaje is excited to approach the same basic question of her previous research experience—how can we make this medicine better?—from the other end.
“When I was doing research for Dr. Truss, I was testing compounds that were already synthesized in the Williams lab. The data we produced in the Truss lab would help inform what modifications could maximize the antibiotic’s activity, potency and selectivity. For my SIP, although I’m not synthesizing compounds, I am modifying the structure of these anti-malarial drugs in hopes of increasing the drug’s affinity. In both cases, we’re putting already-known compounds together to potentially make a better drug.
“During the wet lab, we were actually testing these compounds, which is pretty cool. With the computational research, we’re using all of the tools on the computer to modify and make the compounds, thinking, ‘If I add this certain group here, how will it change my compound? Will it make it stronger? Will it make it weaker?’ The technology is cool. I like that I’ve been able to test compounds in the lab, and with my SIP, I like that I’m able to explore different ways I could strengthen and make a better compound.”
And of course, improvements to anti-malarial drugs hold personal meaning for Uwaje.
“There’s certain things that you will never forget in a lifetime,” she said. “I remember my classmates passing away from malaria, so coming into K and given the opportunity to study and design a potential improvement for any drug that I want, those memories ultimately motivated my SIP, because I’ve had many losses from malaria which could have been preventable. Seeing things like that as a young child, I remember feeling so helpless. I knew there were drugs out there that can help prevent malaria, so I decided, what if I look at these drugs, see how their mechanism of action works and see if I could increase the affinity of these drugs to potentially make them even better?”
Stronger medicine alone won’t fix the problem. Knowing that, Uwaje’s plans include a couple years off school before applying to medical school, and eventually returning to Nigeria to improve conditions in any way she can.
“Going back home, seeing the lack of adequate health care and the lack of resources that people have, motivated me from a young age to pursue medicine. My mom was one of the main doctors in my community back in Nigeria. Her contributions to the community actually inspired me to fully commit and pursue this role. I don’t know how just yet, but I know that I’ll do something to help increase access to health care for all back home, because the community needs it. Research, advocacy, medicine—if I could do all of that I would 100 percent do it.”
The last points of the 2023 Kalamazoo College football season might be among the most significant in team history even if they didn’t get tallied as planned.
Madison Barch ’24, No. 48 in orange and black, thought she was about to attempt her last kick in college on November 11 at Trine, when—in the final minute—the snap on an extra point was bobbled, forcing her to improvise. She scrambled and unexpectedly ran wide open at the left side of the end zone with a pass from holder Josh Nichols ’24 on its way.
“I could just see the ball coming in, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Madison, of all the times to catch a ball, you have to catch this ball right now,’” Barch said.
She had already been the first woman to score for the K football team two years prior by booting an extra point on September 4, 2021, in a game at Oberlin. But now, as Barch wrapped her fingers around the ball, she tallied a two-point conversion, recording what are believed to be the first non-kicking points by a woman at any level in the history of NCAA football.
“It was completely unplanned,” Barch said. “Coach joked around afterward asking me how much I had to pay Josh to get him to do that. I said, ‘Nothing, I swear!’ We always practiced it as a team just in case of emergencies, but it felt like an out-of-body experience. I don’t remember feeling anything when it happened. I just remember catching the ball. I then was so excited. There were so many emotions. It took all the self-control I had in me not to spike the ball like Rob Gronkowski. I didn’t think coach would be happy if we got a penalty from that.”
The Hornets lost 42-29 that day, but the team celebrated as though it had won a conference championship. Barch finished the game 3-for-3 on extra point attempts. Plus, all the young girls who showed up at K football games year after year to see Barch play had another reason to look up to her.
“I remember some of the guys running on the field and hitting my helmet, yelling, ‘Oh, my gosh!’” Barch said. “I was so excited that I almost forgot to give the ball back to the referee. I ran back, gave the ball to the referee and there was just a huddle of teammates.”
Barch’s football pursuits began in seventh grade while growing up in Utica, Michigan. Her sisters always had tried a variety of sports, and her male peers, after seeing her play soccer, encouraged her to try kicking for the football team. Her dad, Peter, was excited to let her try it, but Barch’s mom, Michele, needed to be convinced.
“I don’t know how I convinced her, but I did somehow,” Barch said. “I’m sure she was frightened, but now, she’s my number one fan by far.”
In being that top fan, Mom convinced Barch to pursue football through high school—where ESPN once showed her practicing field goals of more than 50 yards—and even into college. That led Barch to attend a prestigious prospect camp in Tennessee where she was its first-ever female invitee, and make spreadsheets that listed prospective schools along with the names and email addresses of their head coaches and special teams coaches.
“I’m so glad she pushed me through that,” Barch said. “She knows me better than I know myself.”
After hearing from a few Division II and III schools, Barch visited K and fell in love. A subsequent visit to another school didn’t go well.
“I remember sitting in the car with my dad on the way home from that visit, and I told him that I wanted to go to Kalamazoo,” Barch said. “I didn’t see myself going anywhere else. I’ve had so many good experiences over the past few years at K and it’s been life changing. I made so many good friends, so many good connections and I just don’t know where I would be if I never went to K.”
Barch still had some challenges on the road to her biggest accomplishments. Her K experience began with distance learning as a result of COVID-19 in fall 2020. The football team then attempted to move its fall 2020 season to spring 2021, but injuries forced them to cancel after two games. Barch also had a hip injury and a couple of personal illnesses along the way.
Regardless, Barch went on to elect a biochemistry major and stuck with football. She’s been on the MIAA Academic Honor Roll the past three years. She also became a President’s Student Ambassador—representing the College at formal events for community leaders, alumni and donors as an extension of the president’s office—and an Admission employee who leads prospective students on campus tours.
While she may have just wrapped up her collegiate football career, she’s looking forward to starting the next phase of her life. After graduating next spring, she would like to follow her dad’s lead into law enforcement and work in forensics, possibly starting with an internship with the Michigan State Police.
“I was in a 400-level chemistry class with Dr. Jennifer Furchak this fall called instrumental analysis, and we got to meet with an alumna from K who works in forensics in Tennessee,” Barch said. “Hearing from her and having that class was interesting. I think I would like working in ballistics and firearms analysis. Thinking about how I can trace one little shell casing back to wherever it came from seems cool to me. And yet I’m not too stressed about what I’m going to do. Whatever God has planned for me is going to work itself out.”
Kicker Madison Barch ’24 caught a two-point conversion against Trine on November 11, representing what are believed to be the first non-kicking points tallied by a woman at any level in college football history. Photo by Laura Moat.
Barch recognizes the support she receives from family when she discusses her football achievements. They include (from left) brother-in-law, Josh Abate; second-oldest sister, Mackenzie Abate; dad, Peter Barch next to Madison; her mom, Michele Barch; oldest sister, Meaghan Barch; younger sister, Marissa Barch; and cousin, Amanda Krieger.
Barch completes a kick in a Kalamazoo College football game. Her recent two-point conversion against Trine made college football history. Photo by Kimberley Moss.
Barch stands with some of her family members on Senior Day. Photo by Kimberley Moss.
A National Science Foundation grant for almost $250,000 is boosting inclusivity and access to lab experiences in the Kalamazoo College Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo, known around campus as Dr. DAR, was awarded $249,972 under the foundation’s Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS). The LEAPS-MPS grant emphasizes helping pre-tenure faculty at institutions that do not traditionally receive significant amounts of NSF-MPS funding, including predominantly undergraduate institutions, as well as achieving excellence through diversity.
Arias-Rotondo will use the grant funding primarily to pay her student researchers—typically eight to 10 per term, known as DARlings—and to bring more research experiences into the classroom.
While the chemistry and biochemistry department is typically not able to pay students to work in the lab during the school year, “This grant lets me do that, so my students can work in the lab instead of having to take another job on or off campus,” Arias-Rotondo said. “That’s a great way to ensure that more people can have access to this experience, as opposed to only the people who have free time they can volunteer.”
The grant will also pay students who work in the lab over the summer (usually four or five), freeing up departmental and College funding that would normally pay those stipends.
“Not having to pay those four or five students through the provost’s office or the chemistry and biochemistry department means we will have money for other students to do research with us here in our department, or maybe in biology or physics, so that benefits not just my group, but the department and the College as a whole.”
The other primary focus of the grant is a re-design of the lab portion of the inorganic chemistry course CHEM 330.
“While we have some good lab courses here in our department where students get to learn a lot of techniques and a lot of concepts, many of those lab experiences are what we call canned experiments, meaning that they are not open ended,” Arias-Rotondo said. “You are making X compound, or you’re running Y experiment, and we know what you’re going to get in the end. We have some courses where we do more open-ended labs, which the students tend to enjoy more because there’s more of the unknown and problem solving. It’s very transformative because it shows you a different side of chemistry.”
Inspired by the work of colleagues in the department, particularly Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss, Arias-Rotondo has been able to use the grant to revamp the lab for CHEM 330, inorganic chemistry, to more closely resemble research.
“That’s really good for the students,” Arias-Rotondo said. “It’s more work, but it’s also more rewarding, because now they are doing things that are new, and they are making molecules that no one made before.”
Providing access to lab experiences for more students at K truly changes lives.
“It gives them the opportunity to see what research is really like,” Arias-Rotondo said. “It also gives them a challenge that is theirs. I’ve seen students who were very unsure of what to do—not because they are not good, but because they’ve never had the opportunity to prove themselves—and you give them this task. You support them, you tell them, ‘This is hard, but I trust that you can do it,’ and they rise to the challenge. It’s amazing to see the transformation in them. They learn a lot about chemistry. They learn a lot of techniques. They get a better idea of what a career in research could look like. And they learn a lot about themselves, about asking for help and working independently, but also working as part of a team, about troubleshooting, and they gain a lot of confidence.”
Working in a lab also increases students’ sense of belonging.
“They make friends,” Arias-Rotondo said. “They meet people within our department, further ahead or behind, depending on who they are. They meet more professors and students, and they feel more a part of the department, even before they declare their major. They’re like, ‘Oh, this is my place. These are my people.’ And it helps them see themselves as scientists.”
In addition to paying student researchers and improving lab coursework experiences, the grant is paying for supplies in Arias-Rotondo’s lab, where she and her DARlings work on making compounds that can absorb solar energy and turn it into electricity using manganese, a low-cost, low-toxicity alternative to the materials currently used in solar energy conversion, which tend to be rare, expensive and difficult to mine.
The grant will also provide a summer salary for Arias-Rotondo’s research, help fund travel for students to attend conferences and share their results, and potentially purchase or update small instruments for the lab.
Arias-Rotondo applied for the LEAPS-MPS grant in January 2023, with the help of Director of Grants, Fellowships and Research Jessica Fowle and colleagues in the chemistry department.
“Jess is amazing; I don’t think I could have done this without her,” Arias-Rotondo said. “I also had a lot of support from my department with writing, reading drafts, giving feedback.”
In August, she learned she had been awarded the grant, and it started Sept. 1. Arias-Rotondo has two years to spend the money, with an option to extend it to a third year if needed.
“It’s just under a quarter million,” Arias-Rotondo said. “Sometimes I can’t believe that anyone would trust me with that. I say this because a lot of times, I look around and think, ‘Who thought that I could do this?’ It’s a dream come true, and this grant is amazing, but it’s also like, ‘Wow, someone thought that I could do it.’
“A lot of times students don’t trust themselves. Imposter syndrome is a real thing, and students look at me and think, ‘Oh, she’s got it. Professors know what they’re doing.’ It’s important to me to let people know that’s not true. It’s not like one day your feelings of inadequacy just lift off, and now you feel so confident that everything is great. You keep having doubts. I care about letting them know that, so if they get to grad school, or they get their Ph.D., or whenever, and they still feel like they are faking it, they still feel like they are not good enough, they know that doesn’t mean that they are not good enough. That’s just the way our brains work. You can be great and still feel like you’re not. I keep talking about that because it’s important to normalize it.”
Experiences like those afforded by the LEAPS-MPS grant go a long way toward building students’ confidence in themselves.
“I’m really excited for all the things that this grant is doing for students,” Arias-Rotondo said. “It gives them a lot of opportunities. You can see how excited they are when they present posters, or when they talk about research with their friends, not just learning chemistry, but also self-confidence that they can do hard things. You can see the progression. It doesn’t matter how good they were when they started. At the end of it, they are so much tighter with each other, they have learned so much, and they are so much better.”
A grant from the National Science Foundation will help Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo pay students who work in her research lab, such as Maxwell Rhames ’25 (left) and Caelan Frazier ’23, pictured during the summer of 2022.
Arias-Rotondo took a holiday photo before the end of term with her fall 2023 student researchers, the first group to be paid for their school-year work in her lab.
Arias-Rotondo is pictured with her summer 2023 lab group, (from left) Maxwell Rhames ’25, Maddie Coffman ’24, Deepa Jha ’24, Arias-Rotondo, Sam Ewald ’24, Mirella Villani ’24 and Will Tocco ’26.
Arias-Rotondo is pictured with a 3D-printed version of one of the molecules her lab has made.
Arias-Rotondo is pictured at Commencement 2023 are graduating DARlings (from left) Shay Brown ’23, Chloe Lucci ’23, Arias-Rotondo, Mia Tucci ’23, Zekie Mulder ’23 and Caelan Frazier ’23.
Darsalam Amir ’24, a triple major in business and economics, biochemistry, and religion, is launching a natural fragrance company based on her family’s heritage from her dorm room.
With the help of a student team from Amy MacMillan’s Principles of Marketing class, Amir held a fragrance testing in Hicks Student Center to narrow down which scents she should produce and sell first.
Operculum onycha shells from Chad are a key ingredient in the handcrafted perfumes and incense Amir makes in her dorm room and sells at oudalsalamscents.com.
Darsalam Amir ’24 started pondering the idea of launching a fragrance business based on her family’s cultural heritage in high school.
At Kalamazoo College, she found the support she needed to bring that dream to life before she graduates. As of November 15, Oud Al Salam is up and running, offering body oil, incense and perfume in two different sandalwood and musk scents at oudalsalamscents.com.
A triple major in biochemistry, economics and business, and religion, Amir was born in Sudan. Her mother is Sudanese, and her father’s family is from Chad. The two African nations share a border, and Amir’s parents grew up in similar cultures.
After living in several different African countries, Amir’s family settled in Ghana when she was 3 years old. When she was 11, they moved to Lansing, Michigan—both times for educational opportunities for Amir and her siblings. At the same time, her father insisted that they speak only Zaghawa at home and maintain connections to their cultural background through food, dress and music.
The creation and use of natural scents represent a big piece of that cultural connection for Amir. On the Oud Al Salam website and on her Instagram at oud_al_Salam, Amir shares both updates about her scents and insights into their cultural significance.
“The scents and fragrances I create are a direct reflection of the cultural significance of perfumes and incense in my community,” Amir said. “They have held a special place in our lives for generations and have been a part of our traditions and rituals. The art of crafting perfumes and incense is a communal activity in my family and community.”
In Ghana and in the U.S., Amir’s mother found Sudanese communities that gathered often at each other’s houses.
“I vividly remember the gatherings, the sharing of fragrances, and the discussions about formulas and tweaks to create unique scents,” Amir said. “This cultural practice fostered a sense of togetherness, identity and appreciation for our heritage. By sharing these fragrances with a broader audience through my company, I am preserving and promoting the cultural heritage of my family and community. The scents are not just products; they are a bridge that connects people to our roots, evokes memories and fosters an understanding and appreciation of the beauty of diversity.”
Having completed an early college program, Amir came to K with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in pre-health studies. She planned to earn a bachelor’s in biochemistry and proceed to medical school.
“I came to K thinking, ‘I know exactly what I want, I’m going to get in and out,’” Amir said. “I only needed a few courses to get my degree. Then the K culture got me and I wanted the full experience.”
Amir worked with a student team from Amy MacMillan’s Principles of Marketing class to help launch her natural fragrance business. Pictured at the end-of-term presentation are (from left) James Dailey ’26, Helen Le ’26, Amir, Francesca Ventura ’26, Zach DeVito ’26 and Eric Paternoster ’26.
Principles of Marketing students James Dailey ’26 (left) and Eric Paternoster ’26 stage a photo shoot for the natural fragrance business launched by Amir.
Amir’s Principles of Marketing student team staged a photo shoot to create this promotional image for her website.
Amir realized business classes at K might help her budding entrepreneurship more than her years of unsatisfying internet research had. She started with introductory economics classes and basic accounting—which she found fascinating—before working her way up to marketing classes with L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business Management Amy MacMillan. She found inspiration in MacMillan’s Principles of Marketing course, where students work with clients to build a marketing plan.
“Our client was in nonprofit work,” Amir said. “She wasn’t making any money, but she was running this business, and I thought, ‘If she’s doing it, I could do it, too.’ It was a real-world situation. I had thought I was doing market research by watching YouTube videos and reading online articles. Now we were doing real market research and it was so impactful.”
Amir had been working in a pharmacy and saving as much as she could to invest in her company. When she finished the Principles of Marketing course as an enrolled student consultant, she approached MacMillan about returning as a client.
“I knew Darsalam to be a very dedicated student, so I knew that she would follow through and make it a worthwhile project,” MacMillan said. “I was also intrigued with her idea. When you introduce a new product, you want to make sure it is truly something new and different that meets a meaningful need. In this case, the idea of this high-end perfume that would incorporate ingredients from Chad seemed like a unique positioning that would have appeal.”
While the class has had a few past clients who are current K students, that happens rarely—and MacMillan gets excited about it every time.
“What I love about it is students supporting other students, and the recognition that you don’t have to wait until you’re grown up to be an entrepreneur; you can be an entrepreneur now and have these great ideas,” MacMillan said. “What really excites me about this is that peer-to-peer experience.”
Working with Amir provided her team with real-time, hands-on experience.
“The student teams work with the client the whole term,” MacMillan said. “The final presentation is usually a plan the client can execute sometime in the next six to 12 months. What is just wild about this project is that they’ve actually been off and running. They did fragrance testing in Hicks where they helped test both the appeal of certain fragrances and which ideas resonated most to help Darsalam understand not just how to choose the fragrances, but how to position and market them. It’s unfolding under their eyes, a business using their input in real time.”
During summer 2023, Amir traveled to Chad for the first time since her family settled in Ghana so many years ago. While conducting interviews, visiting museums and translating texts in service of her Senior Integrated Project examining how the Zaghawa people of Chad embraced Islam and synchronized it with their pre-Islamic beliefs and practices, Amir also spent time with family she had never met and visited local markets, with a cousin as her guide, to buy fragrance ingredients.
Amir’s ingredients for her fragrances include musk stones, sandalwood and operculum onycha shells she purchased in markets in Chad.
Amir is launching a natural fragrance company, Oud Al Salam, to share an important aspect of her family’s culture. “My work is a tribute to the traditions I cherish and a means of sharing the richness of my Sudanese-Chadian heritage with the world.”
Helen Le ’26, a member of Amir’s Principles of Marketing student team, agreed.
“Everything we have learned in class we apply immediately to our project,” Le said. “I feel like it is a more authentic experience and perspective. This class allows me to quickly apply the knowledge I’ve learned in practical situations.”
The project experience taught Le about handling workload, working in a group, time management, how to promote and execute ideas, and more.
“Darsalam’s energy and attitude will bring her and the business more success in the future,” Le said. “‘Where Fragrance Becomes a Cultural Connection’ is one of my favorite Oud Al Salam mission statement sentences. This is the part I like the most about this start-up; it is not only about selling a product, but also the experiences and the cultural promotion.”
“It’s exciting when you see a student take an idea and make it into a reality, especially when it aligns with a passion of theirs,” MacMillan said. “It’s a way for Darsalam to blend her business skills with her cultural heritage and to bring something new and different to the market.”
The student team has provided crucial marketing research, surveys, product testing and pricing assistance, Amir said. Her friend Amalia Kaerezi ’25 helped design the logo. An entrepreneurship workshop with David Rhoa, visiting assistant professor of economics and business, has helped inspire and shape Oud Al Salam. Her chemistry knowledge and lab experience proved invaluable in the process of developing the fragrances. Even her religion major has played a role, as a summer 2023 trip to Chad in service of her Senior Integrated Project in the religion department offered an opportunity to learn from family, practice perfumery and purchase ingredients—musk stones, sandalwood and operculum onycha shells.
Other supplies, such as bottles and labels, have been purchased online.
“One of the main hurdles has been finding reliable vendors who understand and share my vision for designing unique and appealing product packages,” Amir said. “This process has taught me the value of persistence and the importance of building strong partnerships with suppliers who believe in the same aesthetic and quality standards that I uphold. Balancing my business with my other commitments both on and off campus has been another significant challenge.”
In addition to her three majors and her pharmacy job, Amir works in the College library and as a residential assistant for Trowbridge and Dewaters halls. She also serves as president of Kalama-Africa and as an active member of the diversity committee for Kalamazoo College Council of Student Representatives.
“Sometimes we walk behind Harmon past the K buses that say, ‘More in four,’” Amir said. “Whenever my friends see that, they’re like, ‘That’s you, Darsalam! They said more in four, you said more in a lifetime, and you’re doing it.’ That slogan speaks to me right now. I tried to get all the experience that I could in these four years.”
Amir plans to graduate in spring 2024 and take two gap years to develop Oud Al Salam before beginning medical school. She is looking into fellowships that could help her travel around Africa to learn more about the art of perfumes and incense.
Launching Oud Al Salam is just the beginning of the dream. Amir wants to explore sustainable and eco-friendly packaging, collaborations with local artisans, support for the communities where she sources ingredients, and classes for people interested in learning more about perfumery.
“I’m genuinely excited about the future of my company,” Amir said. “My primary goal is to see it thrive and reach new heights, with our scents becoming household names that people trust and love. I envision physical stores opening up across Michigan, offering our customers a tangible and immersive experience with our fragrances.
“My goal is not just to sell products but to create a brand that resonates with people on a deeper level and contributes positively to society.”
Amir said her fragrance company’s name is derived from the Arabic word for “comes from wood” as well as from her name.
The chair at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering will deliver the Dreyfus Lecture, sponsored by Kalamazoo College’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, this Thursday.
B. Frank Gupton—whose research group is focused on the development of continuous processing technology to facilitate the discovery, development and commercialization of drug products—will discuss public access to essential medicines in a post-pandemic environment. He is the founder of VCU’s Medicines for All institute, which focuses on improving global access to lifesaving medicines.
Before joining VCU, Gupton’s 30-year industrial career centered on the development and commercialization of chemical processes for pharmaceutical applications. That time included years he served as the executive director of North American process development for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, where he led the commercialization of the HIV drug nevirapine.
Medicines for All Institute Founder B. Frank Gupton will speak Thursday at Kalamazoo College’s Dreyfus Lecture.
In 2018, Gupton received the American Chemical Society Award for Affordable Green Chemistry and the Presidential Award for Green Chemistry. In 2019, he earned the Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry and Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Round Table. Gupton holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Richmond and graduate degrees in organic chemistry from Georgia Tech and VCU.
The public is invited to the lecture, which will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Dalton Theatre. For more information, contact the chemistry and biochemistry department at 269.337.7007.
When scientists perform research, what they discover is often proprietary and kept in close confidence until results are published or patented. Erin Somsel ’24, however, would rather share her research with the world.
Somsel, a biochemistry major at Kalamazoo College, is working on her Senior Integrated Project with Associate Professor of Chemistry Dwight Williams and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, which engages top students from about 25 global institutions in research through the Open Synthesis Network. Their combined efforts provide shared, open-source information, allowing entire teams to look into the molecules and compounds that present the most promise for developing medicines that fight neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).
NTDs are a diverse group of 20 conditions that disproportionately infect women and children in impoverished communities with devastating health, social and economic consequences. Many are vector-borne with animal reservoirs and complex life cycles that complicate their public-health control. Plus, drug companies often don’t see the benefits of helping impoverished communities that are less profitable.
The open-source initiative, though, is more interested in cooperative work and says its participating researchers have developed 12 treatments for six deadly diseases, potentially saving millions of lives.
“That’s appealing to me because there are scientists from everywhere that work on this project,” Somsel said. “I think that’s a cool way of getting everyone involved in the scientific community to come up with a solution to a big problem.”
Somsel hopes her work will contribute to a treatment for a seventh affliction, Chagas disease. The inflammatory condition is most common in South America, Central America and Mexico with rare cases in the southern United States. It spreads through the feces of a parasite often called the kissing bug, as it damages the heart and other vital organs when the bug bites humans.
“A lot of the work on the drugs for Chagas disease was done in the 1960s, so there’s an urgent need for new ones,” Somsel said. “Chagas has two phases, acute and chronic. The acute phase has common symptoms such as fever, headache and fatigue, but if it turns chronic, it can cause cardiomyopathy and serious gastrointestinal problems. The drugs only work in the acute phase, so if it’s not caught, it’s life-threatening. There’s also no vaccine against Chagas disease.”
In the lab, IC50 values represent the concentrations at which substances inhibit parasites through biological and biochemical processes. The hope is to find IC50 values through molecules and compounds that warrant further research.
“I’ve been working on optimizing our processes and I got the procedure down so that we could start generating some of the compounds that we wanted to,” Somsel said. “The next step is to continue building the library of the chemicals we want to make and send them into the Open Synthesis Network, where it will test them for the activity against the parasites.”
Erin Somsel ’24 hopes her research will contribute to a treatment for Chagas disease, an inflammatory condition most common in South America, Central America and Mexico with rare cases in the southern United States.
Somsel first was introduced to NTD research when she was on study abroad in Costa Rica. While there she studied Latin American health care systems in an environment that challenged her to grow.
Somsel first was introduced to NTD research when she was on study abroad in Costa Rica. While there she studied Latin American health care systems, including Costa Rica’s, in an environment that challenged her to grow.
“I think K has a unique culture of pushing students beyond their comfort zone,” she said. “I don’t think that I would have had that experience at any other place.”
Now, with that experience—plus a K-Plan that involves student organizations such as the Health Professions Society and the Sisters in Science, athletics through the women’s soccer team, and academics as a teaching assistant for introductory chemistry—Somsel feels like she’s prepared to one day succeed in medical school, where she will continue pursuing lab research. Hopefully, that will involve further research involving NTDs.
“Success for me used to be going to class, getting A’s and stuff like that,” Somsel said. “Then, I started working in the lab. I found that there are many little things that build up to success. When I had a reaction that wasn’t successful, it was easy for me to say, ‘I was unsuccessful today.’ But Dr. Williams helped me put it in a different perspective. He could say, ‘No, you were unsuccessful in generating this compound, but you were successful in realizing this solvent didn’t work, so we can try something else and move forward.’ I think that has really shaped me as a student. It helped me understand that if at first something doesn’t work for me, I’m going to keep trying and persisting to find something that does.”
As an aficionado of science, biochemistry major Jordyn Wilson ’24 is drawn to Kalamazoo College and its student research.
“I’ve always been a ‘Why is this? Why is that?’ kind of person,” she said. “My mom has said that about me, too. I just want to know more about how things work. Science gives me an avenue to do that.”
That means the Parchment (Michigan) High School graduate was thrilled three years ago when she received word that she had earned a Heyl scholarship to attend K.
“It was right before COVID happened,” Wilson said. “I remember we all had our interviews and I was waiting and hoping. Then one day I was walking downstairs to my room when I got a call from an unknown number. I wasn’t sure I should answer it, but I did. They said, ‘Congrats! You’ve received the Heyl scholarship.’ I was very excited, feeling very grateful and very blessed.”
The scholarship’s fund was established in 1971 through the will of Dr. Frederick Heyl and Mrs. Elsie Heyl. Frederick Heyl was the first chemist at The Upjohn Company, later becoming a vice president and the company’s first director of research. Since then, Heyl scholarships have enabled hundreds of high school graduates from Kalamazoo County, including Wilson, to attend Kalamazoo College for STEM-focused majors or Western Michigan University for nursing, with renewable benefits for up to four years that cover tuition, fees, housing and a book allowance.
If there was a downside to her honor, it was the timing. She started college during the pandemic and most of her classes were virtual at the time. One exception, though, was her spring Chemistry 120 lab led by Laboratory Instructor Yit-Yian Lua.
“I remember talking to Dr. Y-Y about how much I missed research,” Wilson said. “I missed being in the lab, which was always a lot of fun for me.”
Jordyn Wilson ’24 was thrilled three years ago when she received word that she had earned a Heyl scholarship to attend Kalamazoo College.
The very next day, Wilson received an email from Dorothy Heyl Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Regina Stevens-Truss, asking Wilson if she wanted join her lab’s research. Three years later, Wilson and Stevens-Truss are still working together, examining antibiotics.
“She’s very supportive of me and the ideas I have,” Wilson said of Stevens-Truss. “If there’s something I want to learn or something I think we can do, she says ‘Yes, we totally could do that.’ She’s letting me explore which is one thing I love about her.”
Today, Wilson is studying molecular hybrids, which are made by hybridizing two different molecules with some antimicrobial activity to create a molecule with elevated activity. She also studies antimicrobial peptides, which are short chains of amino acids found in the immune systems of many living organisms.
Her student activities draw her to intramural volleyball; a TA position in organic chemistry; a leadership role in Sukuma, which provides a fellowship for students of color; and membership in Kalama-Africa, a community to celebrate and engage with African cultures and experiences on campus. She’s also a member of the Kalamazoo College Dance Team and pursues art and the game of billiards in her free time. She has even created a student organization called Art and Soul, which centers on using art to promote self-care and self-expression. The club explores a new art form each week, allowing members to discover art they enjoy while building community.
“I’ve always leaned on art as a way to destress and just express myself as an act of self-care,” Wilson said. “It’s never just one thing that I’m doing. I’m always doing multiple projects. I’ve grown up with art and it’s a big thing for me and my family. I definitely think it balances the science part of me if I need to back off from STEM or I need a break from school.”
One day, she hopes to attend grad school and seek a Ph.D. in biochemistry as research is so much a part of her life. In the meantime, she’ll just celebrate her life at K.
“One of the main reasons I picked K is its size,” she said. “I liked how small it was and that it could help me connect with my professors and other students. I think I get more opportunities here than I would at a big school. It feels like we’re a close-knit community.”
