College Awarded $800,000 Grant to Strengthen Experiential Learning

Continuing a record of generous support for Kalamazoo College, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $800,000 to fund a project aimed at updating and strengthening the College’s experiential learning program, a cornerstone of the K-Plan.

Experiential Learning
Putting experiential learning into action, second-year student Madison Butler addresses the Kalamazoo County Commission about a report her class assembled on the county’s local identification card initiative. An $800,000 grant will help the College explore ways to weave such opportunities more tightly into the Kalamazoo College experience.

The grant is the largest yet to K from the foundation, one of the nation’s prime philanthropic supporters of liberal arts education. It brings to more than $4 million the total in grants the New York-based foundation has given the College since the mid-1970s.

The grant recognizes the value of K’s unique approach to liberal arts education, as embodied in the K-Plan: rigorous academics, study abroad, individual scholarship and, of course, experiential education — which provides students opportunities for hands-on, immersive learning in real-life situations.

The four-year award will cover the cost of bringing together students, faculty and staff in various settings and through a variety of means to explore and experiment with:

  • reducing barriers to participation in experiential learning;
  • strengthening faculty engagement with experiential learning; and
  • evolving the K-Plan and expanding its utility and educational impact.

Assistant Professor of English Marin Heinritz ’99, a former chair of the College’s Experiential Education Committee, along with a steering committee for the project, will work with a “design thinking” consultant to facilitate a collaboration between faculty, staff and students around these goals.

Heinritz recalled that as the College altered the K-Plan in the late 1990s, her graduating class was the last to have the second-year spring quarter dedicated to off-campus career development activities such as internships followed by summer classes before the junior year abroad. That revision of the College’s schedule along with factors both economic and societal, she said, may have contributed to decreased participation in some experiential learning programs among K students.

She said the design thinking process focuses on the needs and expectations of those being served—in this case, students—and is intended to inspire innovative strategies for making experiential learning a more organic part of the curriculum.

“The idea is to help elicit thinking from us so we can begin to problem-solve,” Heinritz said. “We’ve gotten this amazing grant so we have these great resources and time to see how it’s going to evolve. There are all kinds of possibilities.”

She said one proposal might be to devise classes that take advantage of K’s long winter break by using part of it for a capstone experience directly related to the material covered in the classroom.

“So for example, I teach a food and travel writing sophomore seminar, and it would be really fun to take the students somewhere connected with that and give them lots of writing and reflection assignments,” she said. “That would change the way I teach that class fundamentally to give them a direct experience.”

College Provost Mickey McDonald also pointed to existing models, such as a project led by Anthropology and Sociology Assistant Professor Francisco Villegas that involved students in Kalamazoo County’s initiative to establish a local ID card for those unable to obtain other forms of government identification. He said that through the process led by Heinritz, students, faculty and staff will seek to make the connections between experiential learning and other parts of the K-Plan “much more explicit for our students.”

“I think there’s a really different landscape now than there was even 10 years ago, before the Great Recession, and so students and their families are thinking about how to hit the ground running as soon as they graduate,” McDonald said. Amid concerns about finishing a degree in the minimum possible time, they can see experiential learning as a luxury or disconnected from their long-term goals.

“One of the ideal outcomes would be that almost no student would see any kind of barrier to experiential learning,” McDonald said. “If we think this kind of education is the best way to prepare them to be great citizens of the world, then we need to take as many of these barriers away as possible.”

McDonald said the focus on such issues, while certain to be greatly enhanced by the grant, is not new, and that students could begin benefiting from the innovative programs it produces as early as the 2018-19 academic year – in line with the launch of the College’s new strategic plan this spring.

“The commitment to the K-Plan, to experiential education, is going to be a central priority of the strategic plan,” he said. “I think this grant and the work that we’ve been doing are going to resonate very well with it.”

International Chemistry Magazine Publishes K Grad’s Research

A 2017 Kalamazoo College graduate has been published in Angewandte Chemie, a German international chemistry magazine, for his senior individualized project (SIP) involving how prescription medications interact with the human body.

John Bailey presents his research published in an international chemistry magazine
John Bailey ’17 presents research related to his senior individualized project.

John Bailey, who was a chemistry major and math minor from Midland, Mich., performed research through a group at Michigan State University focusing on aromaticity. The term describes a ring-shaped molecule that exhibits more stability than other connective arrangements with the same atoms.

The research and resulting chemistry magazine article highlights how stability involving aromaticity could allow a greater range of choices in a pharmaceutical’s design, maximizing the drug’s effect in a targeted human system without harming other systems in a patient’s body.

The article, titled “High-Field NMR Spectroscopy Reveals Aromaticity-Modulated Hydrogen Bonding (AMHB) in Heterocycle,” has no immediate effect on how drugs are formulated or prescribed. Still, the results could one day have strong clinical implications for treatment courses such as chemotherapy. As a result, the research doesn’t stand to make Bailey famous, but a positive advancement in medicine one day will have been the result of many people like Bailey collaborating and building on each other’s work.

“It feels good to have work I’ve done out there that could be helpful to other humans,” he said.

Bailey is in Kalamazoo for at least an additional year, but would eventually like to attend graduate school and end up professionally as a leader in a research lab. He credits Chemistry Professor Jeffrey Bartz and Math Professor Eric Barth for giving him the guidance and encouragement he needed to succeed with his SIP.

“Hopefully, I will have enough knowledge I can be an effective member of my community professionally and nonprofessionally,” Bailey said. “I think K did a good job letting me understand how big a place the world is and how much I need to be humble. I want to keep working hard because no one is ever done growing.”

 

Kalamazoo College Included in ‘Fiske Guide to Colleges’ for 2018

The publisher Sourcebooks announced Tuesday that Kalamazoo College again is included in the annual “Fiske Guide to Colleges,” a useful resource for high school students and their families when they research prospective colleges.

Fiske Guide to Colleges logo
Kalamazoo College again will be one of more than 300 schools featured in the 2018 version in the “Fiske Guide to Colleges”

The 2018 publication, compiled by former New York Times Education Editor Edward B. Fiske, is a selective, subjective and systematic look at more than 300 colleges and universities in the United States, Canada and the UK.

The “Fiske Guide to Colleges” is available as a paperback book, as an iPad app on iTunes, and as a Web program on CollegeCountdown.com. The guide’s readers discover the personality of a college based on a broad range of subjects throughout the text including the student body, academics, social life, financial aid, campus setting, housing, food and extracurricular activities.

Kalamazoo College “aims to prepare students for real life by helping them synthesize the liberal arts education they receive on campus with their experiences abroad,” the publication says, adding that K students are passionate and determined to make a difference. The guide also discusses the K-Plan, Kalamazoo College’s four-part, integrated approach to an excellent education in the liberal arts and sciences. K-Plan tenets include:

  • rigorous academics. The flexibility and rigor of K’s curriculum provides students with a customized academic experience;
  • experiential education. Students connect classroom learning with real-world experience by completing career development internships or externships, participating in civic engagement and service-learning projects, and getting involved in social justice leadership work;
  • international and intercultural experience. Students choose from 42 study abroad programs in 24 countries across six continents; and
  • independent scholarship. As the culmination of their learning, students explore a subject of their choice, resulting in an in-depth, graduate-level research thesis, performance or creative work known as a Senior Individualized Project.

 

7 K Students Attend Experimental Biology, 2 Honored

Seven Kalamazoo College students attended the annual Experimental Biology meeting in Chicago in May including two honored in the event’s undergraduate research posters competition.

Experimental Biology Posters Competition
K students Raoul Wadhwa (second from left) and Sarah Glass (second from right) received honors in the Experimental Biology undergraduate research posters competition. They are joined by professors Regina Stevens-Truss and Laura Furge.

About 225 undergraduates from across the country participated in Experimental Biology’s poster competition in the categories of:

  • proteins and enzymes;
  • metabolism, bioenergetics, lipids and signal transduction;
  • DNA, RNA, chromosomes and gene regulation; and
  • cell and developmental biology.

Sarah Glass ’17, of Shelbyville, Mich., was awarded first place in the “proteins and enzymes” posters category and received an award of $500. Raoul Wadhwa ’17 – originally from Portage, Mich., and now of Chicago – earned honorable mention recognition in “proteins and enzymes.”

The event is a joint meeting of six different societies including the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) as well as societies for physiology, nutrition, pharmacology, pathology and anatomy.

Glass said the meeting was a great opportunity to find out what’s going on in science and to practice presenting research. She is a chemistry major who will pursue a Ph.D. starting this fall at Vanderbilt University.

Glass presented research associated with her Senior Individualized Project (SIP). She investigated enzymes in the human liver that help process medicines, work that may become relevant in predicting how individuals will respond to their medications.

In contrast to Glass, it might seem strange that Wadhwa, a math major, not only participated but earned honors in an event largely attended by chemistry and biology majors. However, this project – which also was his SIP – united his interdisciplinary interests in computer science, math, biology and chemistry.

Experimental Biology Meeting in Chicago
K students Christi Cho, Sarah Glass, Raoul Wadhwa, Cydney Martell, Jacqueline Mills, Sharat Kamath and Susmitha Narisetty joined professors Laura Furge and Regina Stevens-Truss at the annual Experimental Biology meeting in Chicago.

“Something like this could only happen at K,” he said, adding he owes a “thank you” to chemistry professors Regina Stevens-Truss and Laura Furge. Their guidance helped him inside and outside the lab, especially as they coached him in professionally presenting scientific research. “This would never have happened at a big university.”

Wadhwa described his research as still being a ways off from clinical application, although he was looking at a new class of potential drug therapies that in some ways are similar to antibiotics. He helped develop software used to predict the antibacterial potential of peptides being studied in Truss’s lab, work that could one day prove vital in this age of antibiotic resistance. Wadhwa will attend the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western University starting this fall.

Other K representatives included chemistry majors Christi Cho ’17, Jacqueline Mills ’18 and Cydney Martell ’19; along with biology majors Sharat Kamath ’18 and Susmitha Narisetty ’19. Cho also presented her SIP research and Narisetty presented results from her summer internship at South Dakota State University.

Psych SIPs at MUPRC

Five senior psychology majors with Proffessor Brittany Liu
Psychology majors who joined Professor Brittany Liu (far right) at this year’s MUPRC included (l-r)–Perri Nicholson, Jessica Varana, Elizabeth Hanley, Grace Barry, and Rachel LePage. Not pictured is Professor Robert Batsell.

Five senior psychology majors presented their Senior Individualized Projects at the 28th annual Michigan Undergraduate Psychology Research Conference [MUPRC] held on the campus of Albion College. Grace Barry presented the talk “The association of narrative structure and psychological well-being in emerging adulthood.” Elizabeth Hanley presented the talk “Reflexive attention to configural and local motion cues in a biological motion display.” Rachel LePage presented the poster “Variation in reward-sensitivity and negative affect in high-risk youth brain-reward function.” Perri Nicholson presented the talk “Saccharin consumption does not result in increased weight gain in rats.” Jessica Varana presented the talk “Moral decision making: Empathy as an indicator for utilitarian or deontological moral judgments.” The students were accompanied by Kalamazoo College psychology faculty members Brittany Liu and Robert Batsell.

SIPs Go Pro

Aaron Schoenfeldt, Mariah Hennen, Krystal Wilson and Callie Daniels-Howell
K presenters as MSS (l-r): Aaron Schoenfeldt, Mariah Hennen, Krystal Wilson, and Callie Daniels-Howell

Four senior anthropology and sociology majors presented their Senior Individualized research at the annual conference of the Midwest Sociological Society (MSS) in Kansas City. Aaron Schoenfeldt, Mariah Hennen, Krystal Wilson, and Callie Daniels-Howell shared their work on sports and identity, re-conceptualizing study abroad, the culture of natural birth, and child hospice care and compassion, respectively. All four participated in regular paper and panel sessions along with sociology faculty, graduate students, and professionals from the Midwest and other parts of the country. “The conference was a very rewarding experience.” said Wilson. “I had the opportunity to present my work with individuals who were just as interested and dedicated in their sociological projects as I was. I also really enjoyed networking and connecting with graduate students discussing the various topics of our research and how we can take it to the public.”

Kalamazoo College Hosts THREE Art Hop Stops

Got Art? Kalamazoo College will host THREE stops on the monthly downtown Kalamazoo Art Hop, Friday Feb. 6. Each stop is open 5-8 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Artist Nayda Collazo-Llorens at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
Nayda Collazo-Llorens and Stanger Land

STRANGER LAND
Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership

205 Monroe St.
Stranger Land is a site-specific project by artist Nayda Collazo-Llorens. This text-based piece is the first to be commissioned for the new Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership building. See the new building and talk with the artist about her methods and inspiration for the piece.

Displays of Senior Individualized Projects from K students
K Community Art Studio in Park Trades Center

SIP SELECTIONS
Kalamazoo College Community Art Studio

Park Trades Center
326 W. Kalamazoo Ave. / Suite 312 (3rd Floor)
SIP Selections features select digital, video, and other media by senior K art majors from their Senior Individualized Projects. Meet the artists, discuss their work, and check out the K community studio in the Park Trades Center.

Art from the Petals and Paws Exhibit
Petals and Paws In A.M. Todd Rare Book Room

PETALS & PAWS
A.M Todd Rare Book Room

Upjohn Library
3rd Floor
150 Thompson St.
Petals & Paws features select flora and fauna resources from K’s permanent collection of art, books and more.

The Petals & Paws exhibit remains open thru March 12 (Mon, Tue, Thu – 1-3 p.m.)

Mara Richman ’14: Have Research, Will Travel

Senior psychology major Mara Richman in front of a projection screen
Mara Richman ’14 presenting her research in Rome

Mara Richman ’14 recently cut classes for an entire week. But the senior psychology major wasn’t goofing off. Rather, she attended the International Borderline Personality and Allied Disorders annual conference in Rome—at their invitation—to deliver her research paper “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in Major Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Meta-Analysis”

She was the conference’s youngest oral presenter.

“There were researchers from all over the world on this topic and I presented before a huge audience,” said Mara.

“I have a passion for meta-analysis and this is one of several that I have done on my own. This one looked at differences in mental state decoding between borderline personality disorder and major depressed patients.”

The National Institute of Mental Health defines borderline personality disorder (BPD) as a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships. Most people with BPD suffer from problems with regulating emotions and thoughts, impulsive and reckless behavior, and unstable relationships with other people.

Mara’s paper was based on independent research she conducted while on study abroad at Kalamazoo College’s Budapest Semester in Cognitive Science, under the mentorship of Zsolt Unoka, M.D., Ph.D. She visited with Dr. Unoka during the Rome conference.

One of her K professors, Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies Peter Erdi, Ph.D., helped her arrange the research project. Help with funding for her Rome trip came from K’s Office of the Provost, Department of Psychology, and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

“The conference truly shaped me and it was great to network with people in the field to learn more about the BPD,” said Mara.

Mara completed her SIP this past summer at Harvard University where she moved forward her BPD research by studying identity disturbance. She currently has 12 peer-reviewed journal articles in review or awaiting publication. Previously, she received an award from the American Psychological Association for outstanding research.

“My K advisor, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Jennifer Perry, Ph.D., has been a huge help in guiding me and helping me make these decisions.”

Mara, who came to K from Tampa, Fla., completed all of her graduation requirements early and will leave campus at the end of this fall quarter. She hopes to land fulltime work in a clinical facility in order to gain more clinical experience before pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a focus on BPD.

Inaugural Symposium Features Distinguished Alumnus

The first ever economics and business Senior Individualized Project symposium is bringing back one the department’s own to serve as keynote speaker. Will Dobbie ’04 will address senior econ and business majors during a dinner that will follow the poster presentation to occur in the Hicks Center at 4:30 PM on May 22.

After graduating from K, Dobbie earned his master’s degree in economics from the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. (economics and public policy) from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Dobbie is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs.

Dobbie’s research interests are primarily in the areas of labor economics and the economics of education. His work has examined the effect of school inputs on student outcomes, the importance of peer effects, the impact of voluntary youth service, and the benefits of the consumer bankruptcy system. Earlier this year he received an award from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research for writing the best doctoral dissertation in the field of labor-related economics. Ahmed Hussen, the Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics and Business, attended that event. “Will’s lecture was based on his highly acclaimed and controversial work on high performing charter schools in New York City,” says Hussen. “We are delighted to have him back for our first SIP symposium. He has accomplished a great deal in such a short period of time after graduating from K–living proof that we do more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.”