faculty

Book launches, annual colloquium concludes for Olasope Oyelaran

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Kalamazoo College Scholar-in-Residence Olasope O. Oyelaran
Olasope Oyelaran

Within a 24-hour period, Kalamazoo College Scholar-in-Residence Olasope O. Oyelaran, Ph.D., will see his new book launch and his annual International Colloquium at the National Black Theatre Festival close for another year.

Oyelaran, husband of K President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, edited “Gem of the Ocean: Essays on August Wilson in the Black Diaspora” with Kwame S. Dawes. The book launched August 7 at Winston-Salem State University where Oyelaran taught in the Department of English and Foreign Languages from 1990 to 2005.

In 1993, Oyelaran founded the International Colloquium at the National Black Theatre Festival at Winston-Salem and remains its coordinator. The colloquium, which runs concurrently with the Festival, provides a forum for black-theater scholars and professionals from black cultures worldwide to examine real-life issues through the lens of theater. “Gem of the Ocean” documents much of the 2007 Colloquium, which paid tribute to August Wilson and to festival founder Larry Leon Hamlin, who died that year.

The 2015 colloquium, titled “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Black Theatre and Performance,” concludes Aug. 8, one day following the book’s launch.

“August Wilson was all about access in the theater,” Oyelaran said in a recent Winston-Salem Journal article. “It is a coincidence that the book is coming out on Friday.”

People in the News: RoboLobsterman, K Streeter, Top Baker…and a beloved professor

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Read all about it! These members of the Kalamazoo College community are People in the News!

Kalamazoo College alumnus Dan Blustein tinkers with RoboLobster
Dan Blustein ’06 and RoboLobster

Dan Blustein ’06 earned his Ph.D. degree in January from Northeastern University in Boston where he helped to build and perfect a robotic lobster (no kidding) to help the United States Navy detect underwater mines near shorelines. His “RoboLobster is a robot with eight legs (each with six wires to contract or extend the robot’s leg “muscles”) and an acrylic, cylindrical body containing an electronic circuit board (the brains of the operation). Besides potentially helping the Navy, the new and improved robot can run computational neuroscience models, enabling researchers to test biological theories by programming the robot with certain hypotheses, seeing what happens, and comparing it to real world observations. Dan is now headed to the University of New Brunswick in Canada to research new ways that patients control prosthetic limbs. Currently, amputees must look at their prostheses to move them. Dan is interested in finding what sensory information about joint movement can augment visual cues.

K street lobbyist Sage Eastman
Sage Eastman ’96, K Street lobbyist.

Sage Eastman ’96, the longtime right-hand man to former U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), is now a lobbyist at Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen Bingel and Thomas. Sage got his start in GOP politics roughly two decades ago with then-Gov. John Engler of Michigan — now himself a K Street mainstay at the Business Roundtable. After working for Engler, he worked a few more campaign cycles in Michigan before moving to Washington in 2003 to work in Camp’s personal office. http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/lobbyist-profiles/245059-k-street-cultivator

Sister Pie owner Lisa Ludwinski with a friend
Lisa Ludwinski ’06 (left), 2015 Eater Young Gun.

Lisa Ludwinski ’06 has been named one of the best chef’s in the United States by Eater, which bills itself as a national source for people who care about dining and drinking in the nation’s most important food cities. Lisa, owner of Sister Pie Bakery in Detroit, was honored as one of the best in Eater’s national Young Guns contest. She and 16 other rising culinary stars from across the country were fêted at a gala celebration in June in Los Angeles.
http://www.eater.com/2015/6/9/8751385/eater-young-guns-party-2015#4763400

David Scarrow, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, is the namesake for the 2015 Scarrow Friday Forum lecture series at Bay View, the resort community by Petoskey in northern Michigan. The series hosts leading professionals in areas pertinent to local, national, and world issues. The series is named in honor of Professor Scarrow, a long-time Bay View resident who recruited outstanding speakers to the Bay View campus for more than 15 years and remains active with the Bay View Education Committee and the Bay View American Experience Lecture week. www.petoskeynews.com/news/community/scarrow-forums-begin-june/article_fa653d10-ffd7-531f-8a27-3c319d0a10a5.html

 

Professor of Chemistry Jeff Bartz is the new Kurt D. Kaufman Chair at Kalamazoo College

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Professor of Chemistry and Kurt D. Kaufman Chair Jeff Bartz with some of his students in K's Dow Science Center
Professor of Chemistry and Kurt D. Kaufman Chair Jeff Bartz with some of his students in K’s Dow Science Center…

Professor of Chemistry Jeffrey Bartz, Ph.D., is Kalamazoo College’s new Kurt D. Kaufman Chair. His appointment—made at the recommendation of Provost Mickey McDonald and confirmed by the College’s board of trustees—becomes effective July 1, 2015, and runs through June 30, 2020.

The chair was established through a gift by late Kalamazoo College Trustee Paul Todd ’42 in recognition of Kurt Kaufman’s significant leadership and wide influence as a faculty member at K. It’s awarded to a K faculty member to “recognize and honor campus leadership and excellence in teaching.” Regina Stevens-Truss (Chemistry) has held the Kaufman Chair for the past five years.

“I offer my warmest congratulations to Professor Bartz,” said K President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran. “Provost McDonald’s recommendation highlights Professor Bartz’s ongoing excellence as a teacher in the classroom, in the laboratory, and as a mentor. He is known as a teaching innovator on campus and for mentoring and supporting students of color and first-generation students.”

Professor Jeff Bartz with three students at K's laser lab
…and in the College’s Laser Lab.

Jeff Bartz joined the K chemistry department as an assistant professor in 1997 and became a full professor in 2011. He teaches courses in physical and general chemistry and works with K students in the research laboratory. His research is in the area of chemical dynamics.

He earned a B.S. degree in chemistry with a minor in mathematics from Southwest Minnesota State University in 1985 and his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992.

Visit Professor Bartz’s webpage.

Kurt Kaufman was a professor of chemistry at K from 1956 to 1980 who was lauded by students and faculty colleagues as an accomplished researcher and gifted communicator who loved to teach. He died in 2008.

Hornets and Bears, Oh My!

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Advertisement for K Night at the Kalamazoo Growlers gameKalamazoo College poet (and professor emeritus of English) Conrad Hilberry once wrote a poem about kids playing sandlot baseball, noting that, after a hit, the run from home to (hopefully) home again was counterclockwise—in other words: against time, a circle-sprint (maybe even ending in a dramatic slide) in the general direction of that magical place called when-we-were-younger.

Well, dust off your old baseball hat, it’s time for some time travel and everything else associated with an evening at the ballpark.

Kalamazoo College, and the Kalamazoo Growlers baseball association, presents “K Night” at Homer Stryker Field (undoubtedly the most aptly named baseball park in the country!) on Friday, July 17, at 7:05 p.m. And to throw in a little mythology to go with all that poetry, “K Night” activities include Star Wars Night and a raffle of Chewbacca-themed jerseys. Whoopee! Or, should we say: WOOKEE!

At the game, the College’s first class of Promise students will be introduced. And, speaking of firsts, the first pitch will be thrown by Kalamazoo College head softball coach Melanie Hamlin, the four-year collegiate standout from the University of Redlands. (After that first pitch, we wouldn’t be surprised if the home team asks her to stay on the field.)

Fireworks follow the game, and tickets ($12) include a new Growlers hat, which means you can throw out the old one you dusted off, or start a collection.

Bring your friends and family to support both Kalamazoo College and the Kalamazoo Growlers.

To get your tickets contact Lynsey VanSweden (269.337.7082) in the Athletic and Physical Education office. Last day to purchase tickets is Friday, July 10. Cash or check is accepted. Go Hornets! Go Growlers!

Exposure Pathways

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Sarah Lindley art installationAssociate Professor of Art Sarah Lindley was interviewed by WMUK about her installation “Exposure Pathways.”

Sarah is the creator of one part of a three-part art installation taking place in the former Plainwell Paper Mill. “Exposure Pathways” appears with “After Operation,” an exhibition of photographs by Steve Nelson, and with “The Way We Worked,” a traveling exhibition of historic photography from the Smithsonian Institute.

After producing paper for more than 100 years Plainwell Paper Mill ceased production in 2000. In 2006 the city of Plainwell purchased the site and subsequently moved its offices to a redeveloped area of the mill. Several of the vacant structures were razed, and the historic buildings remain in a state of decline. The abandoned structures are surroundings served as source materials for the explorations of the sculptress and photographer.

The installation can be viewed from June 13 to July 19 at the former mill, along the Kalamazoo River Superfund site. One enters the exhibition through Plainwell City Hall (211 North Main Street). Gallery Talks occur Saturday, June 20 at 10:30 a.m. or 1 p.m. Those talks are open to the public and families are welcome. An Artists’ Reception (also open to the public and families) is set for Wednesday, July 15, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Come earlier if you wish to see the space with better light. Hours for the exhibition are: Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; Tuesday by appointment; Wednesday and Thursday, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“My project is in the abandoned part of the mill,” says Sarah, “which is worth the trip, itself!”

Kalamazoo College Receives 87 Entries from 22 Countries and 18 States for 2015 Global Prize for Transformative Social Justice Leadership

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Global Prize for Transformative Social Justice Leadership 2015 advertisementKalamazoo College has received 87 entries from 22 countries to its 2015 Global Prize for Transformative Social Justice Leadership. Entry deadline for the juried competition was April 17. Ten finalists will be announced in early July and vie for a $25,000 prize during a Global Social Justice Leadership Exchange, Oct. 9-11, on the K campus in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Entries came from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central America, North America, and South America. Entries from the United States came from 27 cities in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Eleven entries came from Michigan, including four from the Kalamazoo area.

“We are thrilled by the number and geographic scope of the entries we received,” said Mia Henry, executive director of K’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL), which is hosting the competition. “We are impressed and inspired by the breadth and depth of the issues the applicants are addressing,” she added.

The 87 entries address 12 distinct themes: art and justice, economic justice, educational equity, environmental justice, food justice, gender and sexualities, health equity, human rights, immigration, mass incarceration, politics and justice, and race and racism.

Jurors, consisting of Kalamazoo College faculty, students, administrators, and community members have been hard at work to determine the ten finalists. Each entry—in the form of an eight- to 10-minute video—has been reviewed by three jurors.

Each finalist will be awarded $1,000 and brought to the K campus Oct. 9-11 where they will present their video and make a case for their projects to an audience consisting of a second jury, other finalists, Kalamazoo College campus members, invited guests, and the general public.
Jurors will select one project to receive the $25,000 Global Prize at the end of the weekend gathering.

“The competition was open to anyone in the world doing grassroots, transformative social justice work that challenges structural inequality and that centers the voices of those most impacted,” said ACSJL academic director Lisa Brock, Ph.D.

“The prize weekend will feature a leadership exchange that includes workshops and think-tank discussions among the finalists, an online publication, and video documentation that finalists can share long after prize weekend is over,” Brock said.

More information about the Kalamazoo College Global Prize for Transformative Social Justice Leadership is available at www.kzoo.edu/SocialJusticeLeadershipPrize.

Kalamazoo College held its inaugural Global Prize in Social Justice Leadership in May 2013.
Instead of awarding a single $25,000 prize, as had been planned, the jurors were split and ultimately decided to award three Global Prizes for $10,000 each.

The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership was launched in 2009 with support from the Arcus Foundation (www.arcusfoundation.org), including a $23 million endowment grant in January 2012. Supporting Kalamazoo College’s mission to prepare its graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world, the ACSJL will develop new leaders and sustain existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice.

Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu), founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts college and the creator of the K-Plan that emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, leadership development, and international and intercultural engagement. Kalamazoo College does more in four years, so students can do more in a lifetime.

Max Cherem ’04 appointed as Marlene Crandell Francis Assistant Professor of Philosophy

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Kalamazoo College alumnus Max Cherem
Max Cherem ’04

Max Cherem ’04, assistant professor of philosophy, has been appointed as the Marlene Crandell Francis Assistant Professor of Philosophy beginning July 1, 2015 and running through June 30, 2018. This endowed chair is designated for “an entry-level teacher-scholar with demonstrated achievement and exceptional promise.”

Max is a K graduate, class of 2004, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Nepal the following year. He began his tenure track appointment at K in 2011 and completed his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2012. His paper “Refugee Rights: Against an Expanded Refugee Definition and Unilateral Protection Elsewhere Policies,” was recently accepted for publication in the highly regarded Journal of Political Philosophy.

Max was one of four persons in the country honored with the prestigious Humanities Writ Large Visiting Faculty Fellowship for the 2015-16 academic year. He will spend the year at Duke University working in the philosophy department and in the Kenan Institute for Ethics. His work focuses on the ethical challenges created by “externalized” state border controls: policies that try to prevent migrant arrival by projecting or outsourcing a nation’s authority over migration beyond its regular territorial borders. While he is at Duke, Max will work on two research projects about the due process standards appropriate for refugee status adjudications and the ethical issues raised by partnerships that delegate or coordinate authority. He also plans on volunteering with the refugee community in Durham area so as to learn about resettlement from their perspective. At K, Max’s teaching and research focuses on social and political philosophy, ethics and biomedical ethics, critical social theory, and philosophy of law.

Kalamazoo College alumna Marlene Crandell Francis
Marlene Crandell Francis ’58

Marlene Crandell Francis graduated from K in 1958 with a B.A. in English. She earned an M.A. in that subject from the University of Akron and taught there for 20 years. Returning to Michigan, she earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration at the University of Michigan. Marlene joined the Kalamazoo College board of trustees in 1980 and served on its executive committee and as secretary of the board before being elected an emerita trustee in 1998. She is the author of “A Fellowship in Learning: Kalamazoo College, 1833 – 2008,” published on the 175th anniversary of the College’s founding. Marlene and her husband, Arthur, live in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The (Busy) Life of a Writer

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Kalamazoo College Writer-in-Residence Diane SeussThe New Yorker magazine has accepted for publication a poem by Kalamazoo College Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss ’78. The poem is expected to appear in the fall. Many other good things happening relative to Di’s writing.

Her third book of poems, Four-Legged Girl, comes out in early October from Graywolf Press, arguably the best poetry press in the country

She also recently finished a draft of her fourth collection, which will likely come out from Graywolf 2018. “It’s a departure for me–titled Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl–and all based on the aesthetics of early still life painting,” wrote Di. “I’ll be revising that manuscript this summer and working on some new stuff. Poems from Two Dead Peacocks are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and (yes) the New Yorker. I also have new poems coming out in Blackbird this spring and various other magazines.”

Di had a residency last summer at Hedgebrook, a retreat space for women writers on Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington State in Puget Sound. There she wrote a good portion of Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. This summer she will be in residency at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire this coming summer to continue working on the fourth collection and generate new material for what she hopes “will be something like a memoir,” she wrote. “I believe MacDowell is the oldest artists residency in the country. It has hosted James Baldwin, Thornton Wilder, Leonard Bernstein, Willa Cather, Audre Lorde, and many more contemporary artists. I’m excited to be in a space where there are visual artists, musicians, and writers all in our own studios making new work.”

Di writes brief nonfiction as well as poetry. She recently learned she won Quarter After Eight magazine’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, and she will have another piece of nonfiction published in Brevity in the fall.

Breathless yet? Not Di. This month she will moderate a panel at the Associated Writing Programs National Conference in Minneapolis. The panel includes Di, poet Adrian Blevins, fiction/nonfiction writer Claire Evans, and fiction writer Bonnie Jo Campbell. It’s called “Hick Lit: Women Writing from the Circumference.”

Di will read her work at Sarah Lawrence College in June, and at Colby College in the fall.

Adding Voice to VISIONS

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Six faculty and staff members representing the VISIONS + Voices Planning Committee
The VISIONS + Voices Planning Committee includes (l-r)—Eric Wimbley, director of security; Mia Henry, executive director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership; Jacob Lemon, area coordinator for residence life; Kyle Schultz, circulation supervisor for Upjohn Library; Laura Wilson, associate director for the Kalamazoo College Fund; and Jane Hoinville, prospect research analyst for College advancement.

A committee of six faculty and staff members is offering a three-part multicultural training titled “VISIONS + Voices,” which is open to all Kalamazoo College employees.

The sessions build upon diversity training offered in previous years to faculty and staff through the “VISIONS” program. According to members of the planning committee, attendees felt that program provided helpful resources but lacked a platform for sharing personal experiences. “VISIONS + Voices” augments the original training.

“We felt we could extend some of the conversations we had. We wanted to explore these conversations in more depth,” said Jacob Lemon, residential life area coordinator and member of the “VISIONS + Voices” planning committee.

A Diversity and Inclusion Mini-Grant made the planning committee’s vision a reality.

“We felt it [the grant] was a good fit for the follow-up work we were doing,” said Mia Henry, committee member and executive director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

Three supplemental sessions are offered: “Microaggressions,” “Monoculture, Pluralism, and Multiculturalism,” and “Marginalization on Campus.”

The first session (microaggressions) took place on April 8. About 40 staff and faculty members attended, just short of the 50 person cap.

The major take-away from the first session was attendees’ openness and willing to develop support groups, according to committee member Kyle Schulz, circulation supervisor for Upjohn Library.

“It’s clear that there is a thirst for faculty and staff to connect with one another and learn,” said Henry.

Two more opportunities remain for interested community members to attend. The session on “Monoculture, Pluralism, and Multiculturalism” will be offered on Thursday, May 7, and the session regarding “Marginalization on Campus” will take place Friday, June 19. Both sessions occur from 8:15- a.m. to 10 a.m. at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

Interested faculty and staff may register online.

Text and photo by Matthew Muñoz ’14

Un-COMMONS Learning

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Six K colleagues work in the Learning Commons
The Learning Commons is all about collaboration. Among its champions are (l-r): Candace Bailey Combs, Hilary Wagner, Paul Sotherland, Robin Rank, Liz Smith, and Amy Newday.

Kalamazoo College’s ‘Learning Commons’ had its grand opening on Thursday, April 9. The Learning Commons is located on the first floor of Upjohn Library and is all about students helping other students raise their academic achievement.

Amy Newday, director of the Writing Center and one of several collaborators in the development of the Learning Commons said, “We are trying to move away from ‘cubicle’ style studying. Students actually learn and perform much better when they study in pairs or groups. With the Learning Commons, the end goal is to create a mobile physical space for intellectual collaboration.”

The Learning Commons offers peer assistance in math, physics, writing, science, and library research. Its five centers include the Writing Center, English as a Second Language, the Biology & Chemistry Center, the Math-Physics Center, and the Research Consultant Center. Learn more at the Learning Commons website.

Text by Mallory Zink ’15, Photo by Susan Andress