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Winter Term Will Open January 8

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Kalamazoo College will open for winter term classes on Wednesday, January 8. The Wednesday schedule of classes will be in effect.

Some students and faculty members may not be able to reach campus by Wednesday. Everyone should provide the greatest degree of flexibility, understanding that some may be delayed in their return.  Students: if you are not able to be in class, please communicate via email with your professors to let them know.  Faculty: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your students.

The campus is in good shape for pedestrian traffic, thanks to the excellent work by the Facilities Management team. Please check weather reports throughout the week (especially for Wednesday) and dress appropriately.

Winter Quarter Opening UPDATE

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Pedestrian traffic conditions on campus are good and we anticipate opening winter quarter on Tuesday, January 7. That said, we will continue to monitor the weather, surrounding transportation conditions, and campus parking in order to make a final decision tonight or early tomorrow morning regarding the opening of winter quarter.

We will inform students, faculty, and staff of that decision tonight or early tomorrow morning.

Even if we do commence winter term classes tomorrow (Tuesday, January 7) we will ask that all faculty and students provide the greatest flexibility, understanding that some may be delayed in their return.  Students: if you are not able to be in class, please communicate via e-mail with your professors to let them know.  Faculty: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your students.  Staff: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your supervisor.

We know that there has been a great deal of disruption in travel, especially airline and bus cancellations.  We ask that everyone use appropriate discretion regarding their travel plans and make your return to campus when you feel it is safest to do so.

College Will Be Closed on January 6

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Due to the weather emergency, Kalamazoo College will be closed on Monday, January 6. Only essential employees should report to campus.

Dining Services will be open for students.

Winter quarter will open on Tuesday, January 7, WITH TUESDAY’S CLASS SCHEDULE. Students are encouraged to check their e-mail accounts often because faculty may choose to contact students via e-mail with information pertinent to classes.

Additional snow is predicted for Sunday night and into Monday. Frigid temperatures are in the forecast. Everyone should try to stay inside, stay warm, and stay safe.

Weather and Winter Quarter Start

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We have been carefully monitoring the weather conditions locally as well as regionally and nationally.  Facilities Management staff have focused their priorities today on clearing roads and parking lots as well as areas around residence halls and the Hicks Student Center.

We have not yet made a determination whether classes will be postponed tomorrow, but we will do so later today or early tomorrow and will communicate any postponement via the K-Alert system as well as on the College website.  We know that there has been a great deal of disruption in travel, especially airline and bus cancellations.  We ask that everyone use appropriate discretion regarding their travel plans and make your return to campus when you feel it is safest to do so.

Even if we do commence winter term classes tomorrow,  we will ask that all faculty and students provide the greatest flexibility, understanding that some may be delayed in their return.  Students: if you are not able to be in class, please communicate via email with your professors to let them know.  Faculty: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your students.  Staff: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your supervisor.

Thank you for your understanding, and please be safe.

– President’s Staff

Poet Reads from REDUCED TO JOY

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Book Cover of "Reduced to Joy"Poet and philosopher Mark Nepo will give a publication reading for his new book of poems, Reduced to Joy, on Tuesday, November 19, at 7PM in Stetson Chapel at Kalamazoo College. The event is free and open to the public. The new book, just out from Viva Editions, contains 73 poems retrieved and shaped over the last 13 years. Wrote Nepo: “These poems explore the nature of working with what we’re given until it wears us through to joy.”

“Mark Nepo’s poems reduce me first to grateful silence, and then to tears, and then to laughter, and then to praise,” says Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute and author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow. “He joins a long tradition of truth-seeking, wild-hearted poets—Rumi, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver-—and deserves a place in the center of the circle with them.” Nepo has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for 40 years. The New York Times bestselling author has published 14 books and recorded eight audio projects. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages.

In a recent two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey, Nepo shares his thoughts on embracing the moment, the power of listening, and more.

Music Down in My Soul

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Artistic graphic for the Music Down in My Soul concertThe Kalamazoo College Singers and Women’s Ensemble presents the choral composition, Music Down in My Soul, on Sunday, November 17, at 3 p.m. at Stetson Chapel on the Kalamazoo College campus. The concert is free and open to the public. Music Down in My Soul was arranged by Moses Hogan, an African-American composer and arranger of choral music best known for his settings of spirituals. The concert also features selections by Benjamin Britten, Anders Edenroth, Joan Szymko, Randall Stroope, and Eric Whitacre. The songs evoke a spiritual theme within oneself–understanding the emotions within and celebrating them through music. The Kalamazoo College Singers and Women’s Ensemble consists of some 60 students and under the direction of Professor of Music James Turner. The event is sponsored by the K music department.

 

Trumpet and More

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Keith Geiman sitting with a trumpet
Keith Geiman

Keith Geiman will perform a recital at Kalamazoo College on Saturday, November 9, in the Light Fine Arts Dalton Theatre. The recital begins at 7 PM and is free an open to the public. Geiman is 2nd trumpet with the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra, a member of the Kalamazoo Brass and the Kalamazoo Symphony Brass Quintet, and an instructor of applied trumpet at K. Geiman will be accompanied by Thomas Britton, piano, performing selections by a variety of composers. The program also features Associate Professor of Music Andrew Koehler, violin, and Professor of Music Leslie Tung, piano, accompanying in The Trio for Trumpet, Violin and Piano (Eric Ewazen). Other compositions to be performed include Selections from Suite in D Major (Jacques Alexandre de Saint-Luc), Sicilienne (Maria Theresia von Paradis), Concerto in F minor, Op. 18 (Oskar Böhme), and Tango from ‘Espana’ Op. 165 No. 2 (Isaac Albéniz). Geiman served as principal trumpet of the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra from 2009 to 2011. The recital is sponsored by the Kalamazoo College music department.

Rare Books Living

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A tiny Bible in the palm of a hand
A tiny Bible, strange denizen of the A.M. Todd Rare Book Room

It’s time for me to start living, which means a visit to the Upjohn Library’s rare book room. Detroit Free Press Staff Writer Zlati Meyer makes it a priority to discover and visit interesting locations on the campuses of Michigan’s colleges and universities. She often writes about these must-sees in her column “You haven’t lived here until:” The November 3 column’s feature is none other than K’s A.M. Todd Rare Book Room and its curator Paul Smithson ’68. Because I’ve visited the rare book room, one could say I do “live” in Kalamazoo, but perhaps that purchase is more precarious than I thought. After all, there are many artifacts about which I had no knowledge until reading Meyer’s column–the hand-lettered “Raven,” Pope’s Homer, and the discovery of oxygen, to name just a few. Time to reinvigorate my lease on life; a rare book visit! Stat! The collection is open 1 PM to 3 PM, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, or by appointment with Paul. The current exhibit–“What the Dickens? Victorian England in the A.M. Todd Rare Book Room Collection”–continues through November 26.

Posse at K Turns Four; Nationally, 25

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Kalamazoo College graduated its first group of Posse students in June 2013, its four-year orange-and-black anniversary in a national program that, in November, celebrates its silver anniversary.

K was the first Michigan school to partner with the Posse Foundation (with the organization’s Los Angeles chapter). The program finds students with academic and leadership potential who might otherwise be overlooked by traditional admissions metrics, gives them several months of training, and sends them off to elite undergraduate institutions in groups of 10 to 12 other students from the same city. The program also provides support for the students once they are on campus. Seeing K’s first 10 Posse graduates and their parents—and their tears—at K’s 2013 commencement, says Jon Stryker ’82, was very moving. “It’s not often you can give a gift that changes a life.” Stryker made a gift to K to support the first five years of the program. Posse at K will persist beyond those five years, and support for the program is a focus of K’s fundraising effort, “The Campaign for Kalamazoo College.”

In late October, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about the Posse Program’s 25th anniversary (“A Quarter-Century of ’’Posses’’ Underscores the Power of the Cohort,” by Libby Sander). The article quotes Kalamazoo College President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran.