The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts has gone to the birds with a new exhibition, Birds of a Feather: John Costin and John James Audubon, featuring works loaned by the A.M. Todd Rare Book Collection at Kalamazoo College.
The exhibition is open from March 24 to June 24 and pairs images of species featured in Michigan native Costin’s recent “Large Florida Birds” project with corresponding work created in the 1830s by Audubon, still America’s most famous ornithologist.
CONTACT: Jeff Palmer, 269.337.5724
January 17, 2012
Kalamazoo, Mich. – Kalamazoo College has received a $23 million grant to endow the work of its Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL). The grant, made by the Arcus Foundation, will support a broad array of activities including: student scholarships and two endowed professorships, student internships and leadership development programming, faculty and staff fellowships, public lectures and conferences, local and global partnerships, and residencies for social justice scholars and practitioners.
“The breadth of the grant makes it exceptional,” said Kalamazoo College President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran. “The entire Kalamazoo College community is extremely grateful to the Arcus Foundation and its founder, Jon Stryker, for their belief in the mission of the College and the Arcus Center. Their support will help put Kalamazoo on a path to become a higher education leader in the field of social justice and leadership development.”
The mission of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership is to support the pursuit of human rights and social justice by developing emerging leaders and sustaining existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice, creating a pivotal role for liberal arts education in engendering a more just world.
It’s a mission consistent with the College’s history, liberal arts tradition, and mission to develop enlightened leaders, said President Wilson-Oyelaran.
“The Arcus Center builds on the College’s strengths in the area of academics, career development, international engagement, and independent study—all elements of each ‘K’ student’s distinctive K-Plan. When combined with other curricular and co-curricular programs such as our Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning, our Center for International Programs, and our unique Guilds initiative, this will take the K-Plan to a new level of excellence.”
The Arcus Foundation grant is the largest grant in the College’s 179-year history, and one of the largest given for a social justice purpose to an undergraduate institution in the United States.
“I know from my own experience the emphasis that ‘K’ College places on developing global citizens who can be effective agents of transformational change,” said Jon Stryker, a Kalamazoo College alumnus and trustee, who founded the Arcus Foundation in 2000.
“Our intent in making this grant is to foster diverse leaders who advance social justice in all its dimensions – from anti-racism to economic justice to equality for all sexual orientations and gender identities. We envision ‘K’ College becoming the place to be for young people who aspire to develop the strategies and lead the work that will make our world more just and humane. This ambition maps directly to the values shared by the Foundation and the College.”
Arcus CEO Dr. Yvette C. Burton added, “Social justice is critical to our future because it maximizes the societal value and impact of advances in a wide range of disciplines, including medicine, information technology and environmental conservation. Institutions of higher learning have a tremendous role to play in advancing social justice theory and practice. Kalamazoo College’s legacy in international study, service education, and other key areas position it for leadership in this exciting field.”
Among the numerous ACSJL programs that the $23 million grant will support are:
The grant will also fund ACSJL staff positions, including its co-directors Jaime M. Grant, executive director, and Lisa Brock, academic director.
Jaime Grant, Ph.D., has worked for more than 20 years with a variety of national and international organizations focused on social justice and human rights for women, youth, and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community, as well as victims of sexual and domestic assault, and people living with mental illness. She’s published in major academic journals, and her commentaries have appeared broadly in the consumer press.
Lisa Brock, Ph.D., is a historian and activist who has merged her academic interest with Southern African social justice struggles. Her articles on Africa and the African Diaspora have appeared in dozens of academic journals and as book chapters. Her latest writing project is a comparative study of Afro-descended peoples in the United States and Cuba.
The Arcus Foundation and Jon Stryker have long supported Kalamazoo College. In 2009, the Foundation provided a $200,000 planning grant and a $2.1 million project grant to help launch the ACSJL. It provided a $5.6 million grant in 2008 to fund tuition and programming support for 50 students from Los Angeles public schools to attend “K” through the Posse Foundation, and a $5 million grant in 2001 to support the “K” study abroad program.
The Arcus Foundation (www.arcusfoundation.org) is a leading global foundation advancing pressing social justice and conservation issues. Specifically, Arcus works to advance LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) equality, as well as to conserve and protect the great apes. The Arcus Foundation works globally and has offices in Kalamazoo, Mich., New York City, and Cambridge, UK.
Founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu) is a nationally recognized liberal arts college and the creator of the K-Plan that emphasizes rigorous scholarship, learning by practice, and both international and intercultural engagement. Its 1,400 students hail from 30 states and 24 countries. Kalamazoo College does more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.
Sierra Club magazine ranks Kalamazoo College as the 58th “greenest” institution of higher learning in the United States in its annual “America’s Coolest Schools” rankings. The ranking is based on a 12-page questionnaire sent to 940 four-year undergraduate colleges and universities. Questions center on environmental goals and achievements. Ten categories include energy supply, efficiency, food, academics, purchasing, transportation, waste management, administration, financial investments, and a catch-all called “other initiatives.”
Kalamazoo College is also included in the Princeton Review’s 2011 Guide to 311 Green Colleges, developed in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council. Kalamazoo also received a solid “B” on the 2011 College Sustainability Report Card from the Sustainable Endowments Institute.
CONTACT: Jeff Palmer, 269.337.5724
May 17, 2011
–Award-winning Studio Gang Architects create a
“unique, welcoming space” and “dynamic, accessible crossroads”–
–College moves oldest structure on campus to make way for newest–
[KALAMAZOO, Mich. – May 17, 2011] Kalamazoo College officials today unveiled the preliminary design for a new building to house the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Renderings from Chicago-based Studio Gang Architects were shown to the College community and neighbors at a campus gathering Monday. Detailed drawings will follow by fall. Construction will last an estimated 12 months. No start date has been set, however, because the College must first work its way through a campus master planning and rezoning process, which includes the new Arcus Center building.
Located at the campus’s highest elevation, on the southeast corner of Academy and Monroe streets, the Arcus Center is designed to be inviting and open, in keeping with other recent renovations on campus, most notably Hicks Student Center (completed in 2009) and Upjohn Library Commons (2005).
“We’re very excited to release early images of what will be a unique, welcoming structure,” said Kalamazoo President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran. “These drawings reflect the creative and collaborative process we are going through to create a space in which current and future social justice leaders will collaborate to research and learn. We are so very pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with Studio Gang on this project.”
The one-story building will be approximately 9,500 square feet and serve as an interactive space for the College and the community. Three gently arcing exterior walls define the structure’s central gathering space and embrace the surrounding landscape. Michigan-sourced white cedar will be used to construct the wood masonry exterior. Large expanses of glass at the ends of the three arcs and clerestory glazing will bring light and views of the surrounding landscape into the interior. The building will incorporate a range of green building strategies and expects to attain a LEED rating.
The Studio Gang team, led by the firm’s founder and principal, Jeanne Gang, has visited Kalamazoo numerous times since summer 2010. “We’ve met with ‘K’ students, faculty, staff, and alumni, as well as some local residents and community partners in a creative, deliberative process,” said Gang. “Our goal is to create a dynamic, accessible space where interaction is facilitated and ideas shared.”
Kalamazoo College’s newest building will rise on the site of its oldest, Hoben House, a two-story brick home constructed in 1925 by then Kalamazoo College President Allan Hoben. It was his residence and home to successive “K” presidents until 1978, when it became headquarters of the L. Lee Stryker Center for Management Studies and Educational Services. A two-story frame addition constructed in 1985 included meeting rooms, offices and an outside deck. After the Stryker Center closed in 2007, the building housed a succession of campus programs and offices.
The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership was slated to move into the Hoben/Stryker building, but renovation options fell short of the Center’s needs. In summer 2010, founder and president of the Arcus Foundation and “K” College alumnus Jon Stryker pledged funds for a new building. Rather than raze the existing structure, the College identified private landowners who were willing to move the original Hoben House to their nearby off-campus lot. The College has removed the 1985 addition and Hoben House is due to be moved to its new location on the corner of South and Monroe streets by June 1.
The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (https://reason.kzoo.edu/csjl) is a new initiative by Kalamazoo College, launched in 2009 with a two-year, $2.1 million grant from the Arcus Foundation (www.arcusfoundation.org). Supporting Kalamazoo College’s mission to prepare graduates who provide enlightened leadership to an interconnected and increasingly complex world, and responding to the need for development of engaged citizens who have the abilities to envision and create a socially just world, the Arcus Center will develop new leaders and sustain existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice.
Founded by Jeanne Gang, FAIA, in 1997, Studio Gang is a rising international practice whose work confronts pressing contemporary issues. Conceived as a collective of architects, designers, and thinkers, the studio acts as a lab for testing ideas on varying scales: from cities to environments to individual buildings’ unique material properties. The firm’s provocative and alluring architecture is exemplified by such recent projects such as the Aqua Tower (2009 Emporis Skyscraper of the Year), Columbia College Chicago’s Media Production Center (a cutting-edge film production and teaching facility), and the Lincoln Park Zoo South Pond (an educational pavilion and landscape that is quickly becoming a new Chicago landmark). Studio Gang’s work has received national and international recognition and has been published and exhibited widely, most notably at the International Venice Biennale, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Building Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Founded in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1833, Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu) is a nationally recognized liberal arts college and the creator of the “K-Plan,” which emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, and both international and intercultural engagement. “K” College has approximately 1,370 students from 38 states and 31 countries; nearly 20 percent are students of color.
Approximately 85 percent of Kalamazoo students participate in a meaningful, immersive international and intercultural experience at more than 50 programs in 25 countries on six continents; more than two-thirds complete an internship or externship; more than half participate in course-based or student-led co-curricular service-learning projects; and all students engage in a Senior Individualized Project, an in-depth research or creative project done in the senior year.
CONTACT: Jeff Palmer, 269.337.5724
April 9, 2010
Grant will help fund College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
activities and associate director position
Kalamazoo, Mich. (April 9, 2010) — Kalamazoo College has received a $400,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation that will assist in the planning, development, and implementation of the curricula, programming, and learning opportunities for the College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. The grant will also fund, for three years, the position of associate director at the Center.
Donna Lartigue, a former Kellogg Foundation program director, has been hired to fill the associate director position beginning May 1. She will be responsible for helping to carry out the goals of the Kellogg Foundation grant and assisting Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Interim Director Carol Anderson in day-to-day operations until a permanent executive director and academic director are hired. Nationwide searches for both are underway. Candidates are being interviewed and selections will be announced later this spring.
Currently in its first year of operation, Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership offers lectures by individuals who are recognized nationally and internationally for their work in the field of social justice; short-term residencies for scholars, artists, and activists who will interact with the campus and the local community; opportunities for the development of new courses and leadership programs in the area of social justice and human rights; and conferences that address major issues related to the creation of a more just world.
A kickoff lecture—open to the public—will be held Tuesday April 13 at 8 p.m. in Dalton Theatre in the Light Fine Arts Building on the Kalamazoo College campus. Joia Mukherjee, M.D., medical director of Partners in Health will speak on the topic “Learning from Haiti: Relief and Long-Term Partnerships in the Developing World.” Partners in Health was founded in 1987 by Paul Farmer, M.D. Dr. Mukherjee has spent much of the past three months in Haiti helping to mobilize grassroots community health workers and rebuild the capacity of Haiti’s public sector to provide health care and other essential social services.
From 2003-09, Donna Lartigue served as a program director with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, leading its hometown grant making initiatives and providing support to its civic engagement, nonprofit effectiveness, and women’s philanthropy programming. She was a senior program officer at Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City from 1991-2002, where she led its comprehensive high school reform and school-to-work program investments. Prior to that, she worked for the Missouri State Department of Economic Development, the City of Springfield (Mo.) Job Council of the Ozarks, and as a middle school teacher in Augusta, Georgia.
Established in 1930, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and southern Africa. For further information, please visit the Foundation’s website at www.wkkf.org.
Founded in Kalamazoo in 1833, Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu) is a nationally recognized liberal arts college and the creator of the “K-Plan” that emphasizes rigorous scholarship, learning through practice, service learning, international and intercultural engagement, and a senior independent project.
