Associate Professor of Art Sarah Lindley received the Michigan Campus Compact Faculty/Staff Service Learning Award.
Michigan Campus Compact (MiCC) honored Associate Professor of Art Sarah Lindley with its biennial MiCC Faculty/Staff Community Service-Learning Award, the highest honor that MiCC bestows on faculty and staff in the state of Michigan.
Lindley has made outstanding contributions in service-learning, and she has inspired students to become involved in service-learning through modeling, influencing, and instruction. She was nominated by Alison Geist, director of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement.
Since 2005 Lindley has taught at least one community-engaged arts course every year, and her students have completed multiple projects involving a wide variety of community partners and thousands of residents. Lindley has worked with the County Center for Health Equity, Kalamazoo Loaves & Fishes, Michigan Commission for the Blind, the YWCA, Education for the Arts, Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative, the Black Arts and Cultural Center, Ministry with Community, and Art Hop. She and her students have used arts as a vehicle for community and personal transformation, creating work that is useful, thoughtful, and inclusive. Lindley created the new Kalamazoo College Community Studio in the downtown Park Trades Center, and she has previously been honored with the Marcia Jackson Hunger Awareness Award by Kalamazoo Loaves & Fishes.
MiCC is a coalition of college and university presidents who are committed to fulfilling the public purpose of higher education. The organization helps students develop into engaged citizens by creating and expanding academic, co-curricular, and campus-wide opportunities for community service, service-learning, and civic engagement.
Dr. Purnima Mane, President and Chief Executive Officer of Pathfinder International
“Empowering girls with information and giving them a voice enables them to say ’no’ to early marriage, ’no’ to dropping out of school, and ’no’ to an early pregnancy or unsafe sex that might cost them their future.” So wrote Dr. Purnima Mane, President and Chief Executive Officer of Pathfinder International.
Next week Mane will visit the Kalamazoo College campus to give a talk titled “Catalysts for Change: Empowering Youth through Sexual and Reproductive Rights.” The event will occur on Tuesday, October 22, at 7 p.m. in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room. It is free and open to the public.
Pathfinder International believes that people everywhere have the right to live a healthy sexual and reproductive life. For more than 55 years, The organization has worked to expand access to quality sexual and reproductive health care to enable and empower individuals to make choices about their body and their future. “When people take charge of their life choices–such as if or when and how often to have children–they gain confidence and strength,” said Mane. “They can better pursue their education, contribute to the local economy, and engage in their communities.”
Mane is a distinguished diplomat, leader, manager, academician, and social activist, as well as an internationally recognized expert on HIV, maternal health, behavior change, gender, and population. Pathfinder International has more than 1,000 staff around the world, an annual budget exceeding $100 million, and sexual and reproductive health programs in more than 20 developing countries.
Mane’s visit to Kalamazoo College is co-sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement and the Office of Student Development.
Alison Geist, director of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, received the 2013 Spirit of Health Equity Award from Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services. The award recognizes her “ongoing commitment and dedication to health equity in the Kalamazoo community.” In addition to her work with the CCE (formerly the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning), Geist teaches a course in public health at K and co-administers the College′s Community and Global Health concentration. She received the award at the First Annual Summit on Health Equity in Kalamazoo. Congrats, Alison!
Faiza Fayyaz ′13 with one of her students at KRESA Young Adult Program at West Campus school in Kalamazoo.
Kalamazoo College senior Faiza Fayyaz has received a 2013 YWCA Young Women of Achievement Award and will be honored at the 29th annual YWCA Women of Achievement Award Celebration, on Tuesday, May 21, 5:30 p.m. at the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites in Kalamazoo.
The YWCA Young Women of Achievement Awards are given to high school and college age women in the Kalamazoo community who have records of accomplishment in academic studies and extracurricular activities, have made significant contributions to their school and/or community, demonstrate leadership ability, and exemplify qualities of character and thought consistent with the mission and vision of the YWCA.
Faiza will soon earn her B.A. degree in biology with a minor in psychology and a concentration in health sciences. She has also been a biology research assistant at Western Michigan University. Outside the classroom, Faiza has been active in student organizations Active Minds (focusing on mental health issues among college students) and KDesi (working to preserve and promote South Asian cultures and religions on the K campus and in the surrounding community).
Through the College′s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service Learning, Faiza has also spent many hours engaged with students from the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency (KRESA) Young Adult Program at West Campus school, She has also been engaged in civic activities at Borgess Hospital and in a local physical therapy clinic.
Earlier this month, the YWCA announced that Kalamazoo College trustee Ronda Stryker is its recipient of the Lifetime Woman of Achievement Award.
K students will log more than 35,000 hours of civic engagement during the 2012-13 academic year.
Kalamazoo College has been named a Presidential Award Finalist in the 2013 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The Honor Roll recognizes higher education institutions that reflect the values of exemplary community service and achieve meaningful outcomes in their communities.
K is one of only 14 institutions (and the only one from Michigan) receiving the Presidential Award Finalist honor out of nearly 700 nationwide that were considered. K has been recognized every year since the Honor Roll was launched in 2006, and was also named a Finalist in 2011. Five institutions were named Presidential Awardees this year, the highest honor.
“Selection as a Presidential Award Finalist is recognition from the highest levels of the federal government of K’s commitment to service-learning and civic engagement on our campus and beyond,” said Alison Geist, director of the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute of Service-Learning.
“This honors the commitment of K students and our community partners not only in Kalamazoo and throughout Southwest Michigan, but internationally, as well.”
According to Geist, about 74 percent of Kalamazoo College students will participate in civic engagement activities during their four years at the College. During the 2012-13 academic year alone, K students will contribute more than 35,000 hours to this effort. K offers about 30 service-learning courses that include community-based civic engagement activities, and students lead programs that take place every week throughout the year.
In the Greater Kalamazoo community, students work through approximately 40 different community partners including Kalamazoo Public Schools, Fair Food Matters, Goodwill Industries, Kalamazoo County Center for Healthy Equity, and Ministry with Community.
K students advocate for improved food access and health, and work in community gardens, serve as math tutors to elementary school children, employ theatre as empowerment with juvenile home residents, develop environmental justice programming with migrant workers for whom English is a second language, and many other roles to promote social justice.
“Our goal is to help K students gain hands-on, real world experiences that build their critical thinking, problem problem-solving, and communications skills, while fostering an interest in civic engagement and strengthening our community,” said Geist.
More and more K students are carrying this civic engagement interest to other countries, she added. About 85 percent of K students study abroad, mostly during their junior year, at more than 40 program sites on six continents. Many students now complete an Intercultural Research Project in their host country that includes a civic engagement component. Recent examples include a student who worked as a physiotherapy assistant at an aged care facility in Australia, another who taught English to students at a school for children of migrant workers in China, one who taught songs in Spanish to first-graders at a rural Mexican school, and one who raised funds to distribute portable solar-powered lanterns to elderly Kenyan residents.
Geist also commended the growing number of international students at Kalamazoo College who participate in civic engagement activities in Kalamazoo and Southwest Michigan.
The Corporation for National and Community Service oversees the President’s Honor Roll in collaboration with the U.S. Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development, Campus Compact, and the American Council on Education. Honorees are chosen based on a series of selection factors, including the scope and innovation of service projects, the extent to which service-learning is embedded in the curriculum, the school’s commitment to long-term campus-community partnerships, and measurable community outcomes as a result of the service. The entire 2013 Honor Roll list is available at www.nationalservice.gov/honorroll.
Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu) does more in four years so that students can do more in a lifetime. K offers rigorous academic explorations in the liberal arts and the flexibility to shape non-classroom experiences (study abroad, civic engagement, career internships, social justice leadership, and professional networking) into a résumé that gives students a leg-up for graduate school and employment. The K experience develops the ability to think and solve problems, and we measure those outcomes to continually improve.
“Everyone Has a STEAK in It” speakers (l-r): Shadae Sutherland ’14, Lanna Lewis (ACSJL), DeAngelo Glaze ’14, Mariah Hennen ’15 (CES), Darwin Rodriguez ’13, Amelia Katanski ’92 (English, Farms to K), and Katherine Rapin ’15 (CES).
“Everyone Has a STEAK in It: Implications of How We Eat at K” was the theme of Winter Quarter 2013 Week One (Jan. 11) Community Reflection in Stetson Chapel. Sponsored by the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning, several K community members spoke about the importance of food as part of the College’s food vendor selection process continuing this quarter.
Migrant Rights Action Civic Engagement Scholar Mariah Hennen ’15 addressed the crowd of more than 100 students and faculty members on the importance of the food vendor selection. “Decisions always have ramifications, and choosing a dining service provider for Kalamazoo College is no exception,” she said. Shadae Sutherland ’14 spoke about her experience of moving to Kalamazoo from Jamaica, where she was used to eating food her family grew and produced. “The food that I have had here tastes quite different from the ones I have had in Jamaica. The flavor is very diminished,” she said. She stressed that an ideal food provider for the cafeteria should offer more options for people with dietary restrictions.
Dining Vendor Selection Committee member DeAngelo Glaze ’14, Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL) Administrative Assistant Lanna Lewis, Associate Professor of English and Farms 2 K faculty advisor Amelia Katanski ’92, Student Commission Vice President Darwin Rodriguez ’13, and Farms to K Civic Engagement Scholar Katherine Rapin ’15 shared their unique perspectives on food justice. By telling stories about their own gastronomic histories from a political, racial, epicurean, genealogical, biological, and cultural standpoint, each speaker encouraged audience members to evaluate their own relationship with food systems in order to participate in the food provider selection process. “We have the institutional buying power to redefine how our food system works,” said Katanski. “We can serve as a leader—an institution that puts our values into action.”
“Everyone Has a STEAK in It” speakers were (l-r) Shadae Sutherland ’14, Lanna Lewis (ACSJL), DeAngelo Glaze ’14, Mariah Hennen ’15 (CES), Darwin Rodriguez ’13, Amelia Katanski ’92 (English, Farms to K), and Katherine Rapin ’15 (CES).
Community Reflection offers a unique forum for discussion, worship, performance, and community expression each Friday at 10:50 AM (refreshments at 10:30) in Stetson Chapel. The entire campus community and general public are invited. The Week Two (Jan. 18) Reflection, “A Dream Deferred, a Dream Made Reality? Marking the 50th Anniversary of the “I Have a Dream Speech.”will feature Harvey Hollins III ’87, director of the Office of Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives for the State of Michigan.
K Senior Shoshana Schultz hold “A Year of Food in Kalamazoo,” a calendar created by her and other K students.
Cultivating Community is a first-year seminar taught by Associate Professor of English Amelia Katanski ’92. It’s a service-learning course that combines academic inquiry with a project rooted in a local issue or organization.
This fall, Cultivating Community students broke into groups to interview and photograph people active in the area food community for the purpose of creating a 2013 calendar titled “A Year of Food in Kalamazoo.”
Subjects ranged from farmers and farm worker advocates, to organic food vendors such as Bridgett Blough ’08, who operates her own food truck business called The Organic Gypsy.
Teacher’s Assistant Shoshana Schultz ’13 worked as a go-between for the students, Katanski, and the People’s Food Co-Op, the class’s community partner.
“The seminar engages students in a critical examination of national food justice issues and introduces them to local food vendors who face these issues daily,” said Schultz. “The calendar is a meaningful and active way to address food justice and for others in the Kalamazoo community to be part of the discussion.
Now a senior, Schultz took Cultivating Community her first year at K. “My first year completely framed the way that I got to know the Kalamazoo community,” she said. “I’m proud of the work the students did this year.”
The calendars are on sale now at the People’s Food Co-Op in Kalamazoo for $15.
Externs Lauren Gaunt ’15 and Brianna Melgar ’14 with host John Kerley ’61 on the construction site of a replica of a Spanish galleon at the San Diego Maritime Museum.
From Santa Monica, California, to Silver Spring, Maryland, from Kenya to the United Kingdom, Kalamazoo College student interns and externs are hard at work this summer, honing marketable skills, gaining experience, and building relationships with professionals in various fields. Through the Center for Career and Professional Development’s Discovery Externship and Field Experience Programs, 39 externs and 85 interns are trying on careers in fields as diverse as medical research, non-profit administration, and small-business management. Many are hosted by the 48 K alumni who are serving this summer as supervisors and mentors. Many are supported financially by endowed career development funding put in place by generous donors over the years. Externs work and live with alumni hosts for one to four weeks, and interns spend at least six weeks in a supervised workplace setting. This summer the CCPD is partnering again with the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning to support the latter’s Community Building Interns, at work in Kalamazoo area nonprofit organizations. CCPD also collaborates with the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, whose interns are work at social justice advocacy organizations from Detroit to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. CCPD provides pre-departure orientations, learning contracts, opportunities for regular structured reflection, and feedback and evaluation processes for both student and supervisor. One externship host, Heidi Gregori-Gahan ’76, described her summer experience: “The 2-week program was intense in terms of my focus and the time spent with [my extern] during the evenings and on weekends. We had many meals together, went to a play, toured a couple of historic sites, went to a concert, and more. I think the host needs to be prepared to devote a lot of time and energy to ensuring the success of the program, and I enjoyed every moment of it. It was so nice to be able to share a part of the profession I love (international education) with an aspiring young professional–but also to know that I was giving back to the college which has meant so much in my life, both personally and professionally.”
Ten Kalamazoo College students who are creating their own theater production this spring with guidance from a guest director from Varanasi, India, will take the show to Varanasi this summer and get a chance to see a country whose culture they have been exploring in class and on stage.
The “Kahani” project — which came about through a unique collaboration of the College’s Theatre Arts Department, Center for International Programs, and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership—combines many of the key elements of a K education: rigorous scholarship, critical thinking, international engagement, interdisciplinary exploration, social-justice discussions…and don’t leave out creativity and performance opportunities.
Students are spending just seven weeks devising the scenes for “Kahani” (which means “Story” in Hindi) before they present it May 10-13 at the College’s Nelda Balch Playhouse. And they are required to attend both rehearsals and a class taught by guest director Irfana Majumdar, a visiting fellow of the Arcus Center. In the photo at left, Jane Huffman ’15 (standing), Joe Westerfield ’15 (seated), and Sam Bertken ’12 rehearse for the play. Majumdar assigned readings of a novel and short stories by Indian women writers as jumping-off points for script creation, and many of those pieces explore gender and power dynamics within close relationships.
“Instead of using big issues like communalism, which are also very important in the world, I decided to stay inside smaller, closer human relationships, like within a family,” Majumdar said, “I think it’s very important for men and women to explore these issues of gender together.”
Much of the theater work Majumdar does is “devised work,” meaning it does not begin with a set script. “What is interesting about the project we’re doing, and exciting,” she said, “is…that it’s really a lot about the actors. And since they’re students and they’re just learning to act and beginning their journey of theater, it’s a way to really explore more of themselves and bring that into a project.”
The chance to create a theater piece with fellow students has been exhilarating for senior theater major Sam Bertken, a 22-year-old from northern California.
Samantha Jolly ’15 (left) and McKenna Kring ’15 rehearse for Kahani at Kalamazoo College, a play that will be performed by Kalamazoo College students in the Nelda Balch Playhouse on the K campus May 10-13, and in Varanasi, India, in July.
“I love the possibility for something completely new to be created,” said Bertken when the group was about three weeks into the project. He said the students started off doing exercises to “create a physical vocabulary” and build trust and then focused on their compositional skills. To create potential scenes for the final production, they split into small groups and began voicing their ideas, one right after another.
The process has not been without its challenges, though. “It’s tough,” Bertken said. “Every time you come in you have to be really open to possibilities. The biggest problem is time. There’s this balance of ‘Are we including everybody’s ideas?’ and then ‘Are we being efficient with our time?’”
But they have had a great teacher in Majumdar, he said. “She’s been able to make those of us who’ve never done a devised theater piece feel very confident about our ability to accomplish this project, which is something to be said.”
Back in Varanasi, Majumdar leads a theater studio that’s part of a nongovernmental organization called Nirman, which offers arts-based education for primary and secondary students and study-abroad opportunities for college students. It became one of K’s 43 study-abroad sites in 2010, according to CIP Associate Director Margaret Wiedenhoeft.
The “Kahani” project got started after K religion professor Carol Anderson met Majumdar during a sojourn in India. Majumdar and her mother, Nita, who also helps run the Nirman organization, then visited K about two years ago, and Anderson introduced Professor of Theatre Arts Ed Menta to the women.
“I found out Irfana has a great theater background, and she’s also a filmmaker,” said Menta. “And I thought, ‘Wow, we gotta do something. The stars are lining up right to sort of have a convergence of theater, social justice, and interculturalism. What could be better? It’s like many of the programs and aspirations of the College coming together in one project.’”
Jaime Grant, executive director of the Arcus Center, sees Majumdar as “a perfect visiting fellow” whose work can broaden “theater people’s visions of what theater is for” and “social justice people’s ideas of what’s in their toolbox to create change.”
“If you look at social justice movements throughout the world, theater is often part and parcel of that work,” Grant said. And because the “Kahani” project is a collaborative one in which everyone has a voice, “the process itself speaks to social justice,” Grant added.
The project has been a perfect fit for “Kahani” stage manager Kathleen “Kat” Barrett, a junior majoring both in Theater Arts and in Human Development and Social Relations, a course of study that combines anthropology, sociology and psychology. She said she wanted a college experience that would boost her critical-thinking skills and challenge her thinking about the world. She also likes to keep really busy.
“I’m in various rehearsals from six to midnight most nights,” Barrett said, “but I love what I’m doing. And this production is such an amazing project that the faculty has put together for us.”
“Kahani” will take the stage at Nirman in July as the students travel to India for about 10 days, accompanied by Majumdar, Grant, Menta, and Professor of Theatre Arts Lanny Potts. For Barrett, the journey will be a return trip. She spent July through December studying at Nirman and then a few more weeks traveling through India.
“I’m really excited to go back,” said the 21-year-old, who grew up in the small northern Michigan town of Shelby. “I loved India. I loved the city (of Varanasi). It’s not Delhi. It’s not modernized in a lot of ways. But it has so much character. It’s one of the most religious locations in India because it’s right on the holy Ganges River. It has so many stories and so many people and so much culture.”
Barrett, like so many others at Kalamazoo College, is also thrilled about this opportunity for her fellow students. “I’m so excited that they put in so much work, so much critical energy and then they get to go to India and not only perform it but see the world they’ve been thinking about so much.”
In academic year 2011-12, some 28 Civic Engagement Scholars (CES) are leading 20 different service-learning programs in collaboration with some 17 community partners. According to Breigh Montgomery, Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning, Institute programming this year will focus on food justice – with CES for MiRA (Migrant Rights Action), Farms to K, El Sol Elementary School Garden, Community Garden/Nutrition Liaison, and Club Grub at Woodward Elementary School.
Other programs use creative expression for empowerment among incarcerated youth and returning citizens; promote health (including provision of Spanish interpreter services in clinical settings and reproductive health education to young women); educate public school children about nutrition and gardening; encourage critical dialogue about access to arts; advocate for fair and local food; foster adult literacy; and reduce educational disparities and promote college access by working with hundreds of Kalamazoo Public School students in schools, community-based organizations, and on our campus.
This year’s civic engagement scholars and programs are:
Luis Basurto-Jimenez (Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies Medical Spanish Interpreter Program),
Zena Blake Mark (Keeping the Doors Open Math Enrichment Program ),
Ebony Brown (KDO),
Fanny Cruz (Helping Youth Through Personal Empowerment),
