Spanish

New Student Travel Fund Honors Beloved Professor

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When Margarita Costero Campos joined the Department of Romance Languages at Kalamazoo College in 1988, she was part of the Spanish program’s growth from one professor to three. Since then, Spanish has become its own department and expanded to eight combined full-time and part-time faculty members.

Recently, 28 sophomores signed up as Spanish majors at Declaration of Major Day. More than 975 Kalamazoo College students have studied in Spain, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica since 2012.

Engagement with Spanish language and cultures is clearly strong, and a new fund in honor of Campos supports students who carry that torch forward.

Campos taught at K from 1988 to 1997 and passed away in May 2024 at 92 years old. Her family, including her widower, Dr. José Luis Campos; six children; and 13 grandchildren established the Margarita Costero Campos Student Travel Award in November 2024. The fund will assist academically dedicated students with travel to Spanish-speaking countries for purposes including research, conference presentations, internships and study abroad, with preference given to students who major or minor in Spanish.

The fund is an apt legacy for Campos. Born in Madrid, Spain, she was forced into exile—first in France, then in Mexico City—with her family when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. Campos excelled as a student in Mexico City, particularly in language and literature. She studied for several years at the University of Texas, with a summer stint in Oxford that remained one of her fondest memories, said her son Isaac Campos.

“She loved teaching at Kalamazoo College,” he said. “It had been her lifelong dream to be a professor at a college or university, and when she achieved her position at K, she cherished it. She also believed that study abroad was perhaps the most important experience a student could have. While she was self-effacing to a fault, we know she would be thrilled to know that, long after her death, K students would continue to learn Spanish and study abroad with her support.”

Enid Valle, a professor of Spanish at Kalamazoo College, joined the faculty at K in 1989, a year after Campos.

“Margarita was teaching all the very advanced language classes,” Valle said. “Margarita was our expert in grammar, and she was passionate about it. She was delighted always to explain things, to figure things out, and she would give you every nuance possible.”

A learned and extremely well-read person, Campos spoke French and knew Latin and classical Greek in addition to Spanish and English. She actively participated in groups and programs across campus, such as the former Center for European Studies, and was involved in the establishment of one-year teaching assistantships for international students at K. In addition to excelling at evaluating and selecting texts for courses, she built strong relationships with colleagues and students.

“She was attentive to students’ needs and had a keen eye for students’ individual skill levels,” Valle said. “She was highly regarded among the students and very much liked.”

Ivett López Malagamba, associate professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Spanish Language and Literatures, came to K in 2017, the year Spanish became its own department. Although Campos was long retired by then, she remained connected to K.

“Even though I never worked with her, I benefitted from her intellectual curiosity and lifelong learning,” López Malagamba said. The two met through a reading group with another colleague, and Campos once read and offered comments on an article that López Malagamba eventually published. Campos continued to serve as a resource for the whole department.

“Margarita and I became good friends throughout the years,” Valle said. “I kept consulting her, and so did other colleagues, after she retired. I remember one evening being stuck with some kind of grammar question, and I called her. It was that kind of a friendship, and she had that kind of expertise.”

After retirement, Campos would periodically return to speak to the Spanish 203 course whenever they would read the poem “Explico algunas cosas” by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The poem mentions a particular house in Madrid, in which Campos lived as a child.

Donate to the Margarita Costero Campos Student Travel Award 

To honor Margarita Campos’ legacy and support K students who want to further their studies with travel to a Spanish-speaking country, please make a gift online to the Margarita Costero Campos Student Travel Award (under “I’d like to support,” select “Other” and type Campos Student Travel Award in the designation box) or contact Lindsay O’Donohue at 269.337.7299 or lindsay.odonohue@kzoo.edu.  

Campos Student Travel Fund
Margarita Costero Campos taught at K from 1988 to 1997 and died in May 2024 at 92 years old. Her family, including her widower, Dr. José Luis Campos; six children; and 13 grandchildren established the Margarita Costero Campos Student Travel Award.
Campos Student Travel Fund
The student travel fund in Campos’ name will assist academically dedicated students with travel to Spanish-speaking countries for purposes including research, conference presentations, internships and study abroad, with preference given to students who major or minor in Spanish.

“She was so passionate about the Spanish language, and she could explain to you absolutely anything and everything,” Valle said. “We all miss her greatly.”

“Our mother was an extraordinarily hardworking and ethical person,” Isaac Campos said. “She was also totally dedicated to teaching and her students. She was the epitome of a great educator. We knew she would want to prioritize study abroad, student need and academic excellence, and so we worked with K to structure the award that way.”

The Spanish department worked with the Campos family to ensure that structure responds to or reflects the changing complexities of travel abroad.

“How do we support, and provide access for, students to complete intellectual projects that require travel or research abroad?” López Malagamba said. “We want this fund to benefit as many students as possible.”

Students who travel to Spanish-speaking countries aren’t only learning Spanish. They are studying film, economics, health systems, indigenous communities and more. They are preparing for future careers in teaching, law, chemistry, politics and more.

“Indeed, we’re educating them on language and political, social and economic issues of the Spanish-speaking world,” López Malagamba said. “Ultimately, for us in the Spanish department, intercultural experiences play a significant role in fostering ethical considerations and assessments. Our goal is for students to ponder questions such as: How do you adapt your values to the values of other cultures? How is your experience in connection with the Spanish-speaking culture shaping your values and your objectives in your personal or professional future?”

While abroad, whether studying or doing research, some students are able to make academic, philosophical and business connections that may lead to a job or a new career path after K.

“This is only our eighth year as a department, but we have very active students when it comes to engaging with the world beyond our Kalamazoo community,” López Malagamba said. “To be able to support them with this fund is very exciting.”

The fund will start providing financial support for travel to Spanish-speaking countries next academic year.

“We’re hoping that friends, former students, colleagues and anyone who believes in the importance of language education and study abroad will contribute whatever they can to grow the award for the benefit of generations of K students,” Isaac Campos said. “Our mother would’ve been so pleased to know that a certain former student, or colleague, or friend in the community helped to make this an especially meaningful gift to deserving students far into the future.”

Student Group Empowers Women to Seek Roles in Business

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As International Women’s Day approaches on March 8, leaders of Kalamazoo College’s Professional Women’s Club (PWC) are reflecting on a successful term of empowering female-identifying students to explore their future career goals.

Open to all majors, PWC brings together students who are seeking to succeed in a variety of professional spaces, especially those where women remain underrepresented.

“With the diversity in academics at a liberal arts school like K, you have the ability to pursue many different passions,” said PWC co-President Alexa Wonacott ’25, who double majors in business and Spanish. “I think our club is cool because you’re working with biology students, psych students and more, and we all have something in common that we want to work on within ourselves. I think it’s awesome that K offers all these different paths, yet you still find a group of people that you have something in common with.”

Recent PWC events have included LinkedIn and résumé-writing workshops. They’ve also involved conversations with Amy MacMillan, who is the L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business at K, and her daughter, Lindsay, a former vice president at Goldman Sachs, and current keynote speaker, author, writing coach and creative leadership expert. Lindsay’s discussions, for example, included elements regarding how to bring creativity into the corporate world.

The Professional Women's Club leadership board, consisting of four women students, marks International Women's Day
The Kalamazoo College Professional Women’s Club leadership board includes Alexa Wonacott ’25 (from left), Bailey Callaway ’25, Grace Westerhuis ’26 and Amelia Rooks ’26.

PWC member Grace Westerhuis ’26 and co-President Bailey Callaway ’25 noted they were especially inspired by Lindsay’s message regarding how to fail successfully, and they said their experiences in the group as a whole have been beneficial.

“I thought it was important for me to practice my professional skills and try networking,” Westerhuis said. “Then, I really enjoyed connecting with other female-identifying students, learning about their majors and working together to create this environment where we’re all supporting each other and figuring out our careers and futures.”

“As a business major, I’ve noticed that there are always just a select few female-identifying students within any of my courses because we’re choosing a predominantly male field,” Callaway said. “I felt like it was very important to foster an environment where it was accepting of the women in our school, where we could have our ideas supported and uplifted.”

All three students said PWC has helped them figure out how they plan to proceed when they jump into careers as women in life after K. Callaway, for example, wants to work in hospital or healthcare administration.

“I’ve been surrounded by healthcare my entire life, but I definitely am not the type of person to go in on the clinical side,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed pursuing business, especially at K, so I want to help people, but maybe more in the background by being an administrator.”

Westerhuis, as a junior, still has some time to figure out what she wants to do, although she has enjoyed pursuing ethics and business development.

“I’m looking into finding a consulting path I enjoy, maybe in B to B, so I would like to give advice on how to practice good business ethics because I think our world needs that right now,” she said. “I also love to travel, so anything that can get me to another country sounds great.”

Like Westerhuis, Wonacott enjoyed her study abroad experience and loves to travel.

“I’m hoping to go back abroad after graduation,” she said. “I recently applied for a program that would take me back to Spain to teach for about a year. After that, I’d love to work in international business. I’m interested in large global markets, so some kind of intersection between leadership, travel and big business would be ideal.”

International Women’s Day can trace its roots to February 28, 1909, when the now-dissolved Socialist Party of America organized the first National Woman’s Day. In 1910, a German woman named Clara Zetkin proposed the idea of a global International Women’s Day, so that people around the world could celebrate at the same time. In 1975, the United Nations—which had dubbed the year International Women’s Year—celebrated International Women’s Day on March 8 for the first time. Since then, the U.N. has encouraged more countries to embrace the holiday and its goal of celebrating “acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities,” according to the U.N.’s website.

Workplace inclusion and decision-making power remain key issues of discussion on International Women’s Day in 2025. In 2024, an S&P Global analysis of more than 1,100 companies showed that women hold about 25.1% of senior management or leadership roles. That figure is up slightly from 24% in 2022 and 23% in 2021, although representation clearly remains low, especially with women of color who hold only about 7% of all c-suite positions at major corporations. Women also hold only about 29% of all revenue-generating management roles in the U.S. and 24.9% of businesses’ board positions.

Wonacott, Westerhuis and Callaway agree that it’s important for PWC to present role models when helping other women learn how to succeed in business despite such odds. They point to alumnae such as Michelle Fanroy ’88, who occasionally visits business classes at K. She is the vice president of the Alumni Association Engagement Board, a member of the Kalamazoo College Board of Trustees, and the founder and president of Access One Consulting, which provides leadership development, mentoring program design and diversity planning and training to corporations.

Wonacott added that the group’s impact grows when students are able to engage one on one with the topics presented at each meeting.

“If somebody can come to our career workshop and leave feeling good about their résumé or their LinkedIn profile, that feels successful to me in the sense that we’re making sure everybody feels like they’ve gotten a lot out of a meeting,” she said.

Callaway emphasized that International Women’s Day is a chance for PWC to highlight and amplify important stories on campus, around the country and around the world.

“We throw around the word celebration a lot, but I feel like that is a good word to describe what the day is about,” she said. “That’s what we try to do as an organization on campus is just uplift, support and promote women.”

Three New K Grads to Teach in Spain

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Three recent Kalamazoo College grads have earned opportunities to work as English language teaching assistants and cultural ambassadors in Spain starting this fall. 

Ali Randel, Andre Walker Jr. and Maggie Zorn, all from the class of 2024, have been selected for the North American Language and Culture Assistants Program (NALCAP) through the Education Office of the Embassy of Spain. They will work under the supervision of teachers in Spain to help Spanish students improve their English skills and understand American culture. 

NALCAP recipients receive a monthly stipend and medical insurance for 14–16 hours of assistant teaching per week. They make their own housing arrangements and are encouraged to immerse themselves in the language and culture of Spain while sharing the language and culture of the United States with the students they teach. The program runs from October 1 to May 31, and participants can choose to apply for a renewal. 

Map of Spain

Ali Randel

Randel double majored in English and Spanish at K; completed a journalism Senior Integrated Project (SIP) about health and wellness resources on campus; was a student participant, wellness intern and president her senior year with Hillel at K; and studied abroad in Cáceres, Spain. On study abroad, she met several NALCAP participants, including a K alum, which first piqued her interest in the program. She knew she wanted to return to Spain after graduation, and Director of Grants, Fellowships and Research Jessica Fowle helped her consider options and apply to programs including NALCAP. 

During her time in Spain, Randel hopes to continue improving her Spanish speaking skills, travel throughout Europe, and spend time with her host family from Cáceres. 

“When I was on study abroad, my speaking improved a lot, and I’m hoping that I can continue to improve that and also learn more about Spanish culture,” Randel said. “I loved it in Spain so much when I studied abroad, and I can’t wait to get back and experience it through a different lens, with high school students, in a professional role and in a different city.” 

Randel is placed at a high school in Bedmar y Garcíez, a small town in the southern Spanish province of Jaén. 

Ali Randel in Spain
Ali Randel ’24 has been selected for the North American Language and Culture Assistants Program (NALCAP) through the Education Office of the Embassy of Spain. She will be at a high school in Bedmar y Garcíez, a small town in the southern Spanish province of Jaén. 

Andre Walker Jr.

A psychology and Spanish double major, Walker incorporated both fields of study into his SIP by studying possible reasons bilingual people have been found to be more creative. During his time at K, Walker participated in the Black Student Organization, the Latinx Student Organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the volleyball club. He also studied abroad in Chile. 

While applying to NALCAP, Walker was finishing his SIP and reading about how other countries prioritize learning a second language, especially English. 

“In Spain, they start as early as primary, which I think is amazing, because the earlier you start, the more proficient you can become at a second language,” Walker said. “I want to see what the bilingual experience is outside of the United States, see how different and how beneficial it really is, and use that as a force to encourage more bilingual education here.” 

Walker will teach primary students in the city of Santiago de Compostela in the northwestern region of Galicia. He hopes to improve his Spanish, learn some of a regional language called Galego (closely related to Portuguese), travel, and possibly extend the research of his SIP. 

“I’m using this as a driving force of my long-term goals of wanting to use Spanish in the workplace,” Walker said. “I want to be able to advocate for the importance of hiring more bilingual people and the success they can bring for the overall work environment and spread the importance of bilingual education.” 

Andre Walker
Andre Walker Jr. ’24 ill teach primary students in the city of Santiago de Compostela in the northwestern region of Galicia through NALCAP.

Maggie Zorn

Zorn studied business and Spanish at K, was a swimming and diving student-athlete and studied abroad in Cáceres. Zorn also volunteered for the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement in Swim for Success, which offers swimming lessons to disadvantaged local children in a partnership with the City of Kalamazoo Parks and Recreation Department. 

Zorn has been placed in Almonte, a town in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva in the region of Andalucía, with high school-age students. 

“I am very grateful for the opportunity to revisit Spain, as I went to Cáceres as a junior for study abroad,” Zorn said. “I am incredibly passionate about teaching, and as a Spanish major, I see this as a way to combine my interests; long term, I am hoping to potentially turn teaching into a career. I am most looking forward to learning more about the culture and enjoying the natural spaces.” 

Maggie Zorn
Maggie Zorn ’24 has been placed in Almonte, a town in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva in the region of Andalucía, through NALCAP.

Alumna Widens Death Culture Studies With Sherbin Fellowship

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Sherbin Fellowship recipient Sydney Salgado shakes hands with President Jorge G. Gonzalez at Commencement
Sydney Salgado ’24 shakes hands with Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez at Commencement. She is just the second K graduate to receive a Jerry Sherbin Fellowship, designed to send one graduating senior overseas to explore a topic of personal interest for one year.
Sherbin Fellowship recipient Sydney Salgado visited cemeteries in Mexico
Salgado performed ethnographic research regarding death culture in Mexico for her Senior Integrated Project (SIP) by interviewing people in the cemetery near Mexico City where her grandfather and uncle were buried.
Adornments at cemetery in Mexico
Salgado’s SIP included a chapter on material culture and relics that create connections between the living and the deceased.

When her uncle and grandfather died unexpectedly, Sydney Salgado ’24 traveled to Mexico to attend their funerals, and what she noticed was thought provoking.

Funerals in Mexico were more celebrations of life than mourners grieving over the deceased. They were about deceased individuals living on as eternal spirits. And even long after their loved ones had died, friends and families celebrated birthdays and anniversaries of the deceased and family at gravesites.

Such observations pushed Salgado to pursue ethnographic research around Latin American cultures and how they view death in unique ways. At first, that research involved a 74-page Senior Integrated Project (SIP), enthusiastically supported by Associate Professor of Religion Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, and developed when Salgado interviewed people in the cemetery near Mexico City where her grandfather and uncle were buried.

“I showed up to the cemetery every day, and no matter what time it was, I could converse with families, a flower salesperson, people cleaning tombstones, or people serenading tombs, and I learned so much from their stories and experiences while seeing them through my own eyes,” Salgado said of her honors-earning work.

And now, a special Kalamazoo College fellowship will take her abroad again to extend that research through more Latin American cultures. Salgado—a triple major in religion, Spanish and international area studies in Latin America from Highland Park, Illinois—is just the second K graduate to receive a Jerry Sherbin Fellowship, designed to send one graduating senior overseas to explore a topic of personal interest for one year.

The fellowship was established by alumnus Robert Sherbin ’79 and named after his father. Sherbin participated in study abroad at K by traveling to the University of Nairobi, where he was one of just six undergrads from the U.S. and the only K student. Later, as a senior, he received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, an external grant through the Watson Foundation, that allowed him to create and follow through with a one-year project overseas.

Salgado’s SIP on death culture in Mexico included three chapters: the first exploring the sources of Mexican practices surrounding the dead in Aztec and indigenous beliefs such as the nine layers of death, the Day of the Dead and the eternal nature of the soul; the second on material culture and relics that create connections between the living and the deceased; and the third on the economy of death as the living can buy flowers, food, toys, snacks, tombstones and more, all for the sake of the dead, in the immediate vicinity of Mexican cemeteries. She expects to see similar themes and practices, but some surprises and unique characteristics as well, with her Sherbin Fellowship itinerary taking her to places such as Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico and Argentina.

Vendor sells goods near a Mexican cemetery for the living to buy for their dead loved ones
Part of Salgado’s SIP research investigated the economy of death as the living can buy flowers, food, toys, snacks, tombstones and more, all for the sake of the dead, in the immediate vicinity of Mexican cemeteries.
Mexico cemetery with elaborate graves
Salgado’s Sherbin Fellowship itinerary will take her to places such as Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico and Argentina.
Flowers and decorations adorn gravesites in Mexico
Locations such as Puerto Rico and Peru—with their large populations of indigenous people—could reveal practices even more rooted in indigenous traditions than in Mexico, Salgado said.

In Colombia, for example, Salgado hopes to find evidence of “no nombre” or “sin nombre,” which means “nameless.”

“Crime rates are high in a lot of Latin American countries, and I’d argue that’s the case for Colombia,” Salgado said. “With those crime rates in smaller towns, Colombians will adopt unclaimed bodies and bury them. They’re treated like saints, so in addition to going to church, Colombians go to the cemetery to ask for protection, love, forgiveness or whatever it is they need.”

Locations such as Puerto Rico and Peru—with their large populations of indigenous people—could reveal practices even more rooted in indigenous traditions than in Mexico, Salgado said. And with Argentina, she will have opportunities to visit cemeteries such as La Recoleta, which contains the graves of notable people such as Argentinian military leaders, presidents and political figure Eva Perón.

“I want to go there because I didn’t have time with my SIP to explore things like the art design of tombstones,” Salgado said. “In Latin America, different objects symbolize different things. If you have a tree with birds on your tombstone, for example, it signifies a mother separating from her kids. There’s so much that goes into the design and architecture of these mausoleums and tombs, especially with them being historic. I would love to know more about the personalization of each.”

Salgado will send quarterly updates to Sherbin, the College and the Center for International Programs (CIP) on her progress abroad. Plus, upon returning to the U.S., she will promote her experience during the 2025 fall term, inspiring students to apply for the fellowship themselves. But in the meantime, she would like to thank the people who supported her candidacy for the Sherbin fellowship.

“I would have never dreamed of this opportunity in a million years until now,” Salgado said. “Having this fellowship is amazing, especially for a first-generation, lower-income student who would never think this could happen. When I told my parents I was applying for this, they said, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s so exciting.’ And now I get to tell them that I’m traveling the world.”

Alumna Swings for the Fences, Scores Baseball Job

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After years of supporting her home state Atlanta Braves, Samantha Moss ’23 is aligning herself this Opening Day with a different team that often wears navy blue.

“I’m Team Umpire, 100%,” Moss said.

It might seem unusual for a fan to say that, but the Kalamazoo College alumna has a new job working for Major League Baseball: Moss, a timing operations administrator, is at MLB headquarters in New York, where she’s ready to assist on-the-field officials who need help interpreting the league’s new rules, especially those related to pitch clocks.

Starting last year, pitchers had 15 seconds to throw a pitch with the bases empty and 20 seconds with a runner on base. If a pitcher hadn’t started his delivery toward home plate before the pitch clock expired, he was charged with a ball. Plus, hitters needed to be in the batter’s box with eight seconds left on a pitch clock. If a batter delayed entering the box, he was charged with a strike.

Those rules were among several that helped drastically reduce the time it took to play a game from slightly more than three hours in 2022 to less than two and a half hours in 2023. This year, MLB has tweaked those rules in an effort to further speed up games. For example, a pitcher will have 18 seconds instead of 20 with runners on base to deliver his pitch this year. The league also is:

  • Decreasing the number of pitching mound visits a team is allowed each game to four in the first through eighth innings with an additional visit permitted in the ninth inning.
  • Adjusting when a pitch clock will reset after a dead ball situation such as a foul ball. Instead of waiting for a pitcher to retake the mound, the clock will restart as soon as the pitcher receives the ball.
  • Requiring any pitcher who warms up on the field to face at least one hitter. In the past, a manager commonly would remove his pitcher before a pitch was thrown if their opponent brought in a pinch hitter to gain an advantage in a lefty-versus-righty match-up.

The changes require trained people such as Moss, a former K softball player and economics and Spanish double major who knows baseball well, to provide administrative support when questions related to specific situations arise.

“Similar to the people in Replay, we’re watching all the games at once and waiting for pitch clock violations,” Moss said. “When they do happen, we’re acting on it, sending what we need to send to the right people to ensure the rules are followed precisely. We need to make sure we know the rules in and out and relay those rules to the umpires and the people who control the pitch clock during the games. It’s a well-oiled system for it only being in its first year. We’re there for when a problem arises during the game or if the umpires need to clarify a rule. If we’re noticing things happening on the field, we’re a different perspective to help out.”

Samantha Moss in New York City, where she has earned a baseball job
Samantha Moss ’23 is serving Major League Baseball as a timing operations administrator this season in New York.
Samantha Moss celebrates a victory with her softball teammates
Moss, a former K softball player, will provide administrative support at MLB headquarters in New York when questions related to new rules arise on the field.

Moss first connected with MLB when she asked K baseball coach Mike Ott whether he knew anyone who works in the league. As luck would have it, Ott knows Jack Clark ’17, a K trustee and former Hornets baseball team captain, who started working with MLB in Replay Operations and now is its manager of draft operations. Thanks in part to Clark and a lot of continued networking, Moss attended baseball’s Winter Meetings last year and one of its events, Take the Field, a women-led conference.

“I always had an idea that I wanted to work in baseball when I started applying for jobs last year, but I wanted to be realistic, too,” Moss said. “I thought getting a corporate job is what I was supposed to do after I graduated from college. That conference was a game-changer for me. I got advice from women who are succeeding in the industry, and it opened my eyes to some possibilities I hadn’t considered before. I mark that as a pivot point in my career goals.”

Over the past year, Moss has coached and played softball in Sweden, worked in Grand Rapids and lived in Atlanta for a time while applying to about 90 baseball jobs. MLB, though, came along just in time for the season, and just two weeks after the call, Moss moved to New York.

“This just had to be what I did,” Moss said. “It’s one of those things where you say ‘yes’ and figure out the details for making it happen later.”

The full-time job is seasonal, although Moss is thrilled to be working in the sport and can’t wait to find out where her position might lead.

“I’m excited to be in the building with a lot of important baseball executives,” Moss said. “I feel like it’s a great place to network and see what opportunities there are around the league with MLB and with the individual teams. Baseball is a very fluid environment in terms of people’s positions and people are constantly moving in and out, up and down and all over. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next year. I just know that I want to work in baseball. At the conference, somebody said, ‘Any job in baseball is a good job in baseball.’ And that’s so right. I’ll just trust my ability to make decisions this year and follow my gut in my career.”

Five Faculty Earn Tenure

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Five Kalamazoo College faculty members from the Spanish, religion, mathematics, computer science and East Asian studies departments have been awarded tenure along with promotion to associate professor.

The tenure milestone recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship and service to the College, and signifies its confidence in the contributions these faculty will make throughout their careers. The Board of Trustees-approved tenure recipients are:

Assistant Professor of Spanish Ivett Lopez Malagamba

López Malagamba currently serves as a co-chair in the Department of Spanish Language and Literatures. In her time at K, she has taught beginning through intermediate language courses, and advanced courses on Latin American literature and visual culture topics including indigeneity, contemporary women writers, fiction and documentary film, visual culture practices, and representations of nature. In fall 2019, she took 27 students to the Dominican Republic as part of K’s first faculty-lead experiential study abroad program.

Lopez Malagamba’s research centers on 20th– and 21st-century Latin American literature and visual culture. Her publications explore questions around exclusionary social and political practices and discourses in contexts of armed conflict, migration, and forced displacement. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Peninsular and Latin American literatures and Latin American Studies, and her Ph.D. in Hispanic language and literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. López Malagamba’s experience extends to the non-profit sector. Before earning her Ph.D., she worked with Latinx youth in Southern California facilitating educational programs to prepare them for college. López Malagamba sees her work at K as a continuation of her commitment to help youth access and successfully navigate higher education.     

Assistant Professor of Spanish Ivett Lopez Malagamba (middle) with Spanish 101 students.

Marlene Crandall Francis Assistant Professor of Religion Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada

Maldonado-Estrada serves as the editor of the journal Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, a co-chair of the men and masculinities unit at the American Academy of Religion, and an editorial board member of the journal American Religion.

At K, Maldonado-Estrada has taught courses on religion and masculinity, Catholics in the Americas, urban religion, and religions of Latin America. As an ethnographer, her research includes focuses on material culture, contemporary Catholicism, and gender and embodiment. In 2021, Maldonado-Estrada was among 24 scholars from around the world selected for the Sacred Writes public scholarship training cohort. She was also chosen as one of the Young Scholars in American Religion at IUPUI’s Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture.

Maldonado-Estrada is the author of Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an ethnography about masculinity and men’s devotional lives in a gentrified neighborhood in New York City. She also is working on projects about the technological and sensory history of prayer, and Latinx art and religion in New York City. She received a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Tenure recipient Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada
Marlene Crandall Francis Assistant Professor of Religion Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Stephen Oloo

Oloo served K as a visiting assistant professor from 2015-2017 before earning his current position in which he teaches a variety of pure math classes such as Calculus I, II and III, Number Theory, Real Analysis and Abstract Algebra.

Beyond teaching he has served in various roles by directing the Math and Physics Center, being in charge of the George Kitchen Memorial Lecture, and running the math club MathletiKs.

Oloo’s Ph.D. work was in topology of algebraic varieties and geometric representation theory. He is currently applying his knowledge of geometry and representation theory in a collaboration with physics professor Dave Wilson in which they are studying how viruses change shapes as they undergo maturation. He holds mathematics degrees including a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College, and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Tenure recipient Stephen Oloo
Assistant Professor of Mathematics Stephen Oloo

Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Perez

Before arriving at K, Vargas-Perez worked as an adjunct instructor at Western Michigan University, where he earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic.

Vargas-Perez has taught courses at K in data structures, algorithms, parallel computing, computing for environmental science, object-oriented programming, and programming in Java and web development. His research interests include high-performance computing, parallel and distributed algorithms, computational genomics, and data structures and compression.

Tenure recipient Sandino Vargas-Perez
Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Perez

Chinese Endowed Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Literature Leihua Weng

Weng has taught first-year Chinese, advanced Chinese, Women in China, 20th Century Urban China, and Chinese Films at K. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Pacific Lutheran University before joining the College.

Weng holds a bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University, a master’s degree from Peking University and a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. Her research interests have spanned the receptions of classical texts, modern and late imperial Chinese literature, and gender studies. She is currently engaged in research on late imperial Chinese literature and is working on a book about the reception of Plato in modern China.

Chinese Endowed Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Literature Leihua Weng
Chinese Endowed Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Literature Leihua Weng

K Faculty Present at Global Pragmatics Seminar

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Linguistics professors and graduate students from about 70 countries heard presentations from Kalamazoo College Associate Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori and Assistant Professor of Spanish Tris Faulkner at a pragmatics seminar in July.

The International Pragmatics Conference, themed “The shape of interaction: the pragmatics of (a)typicality,” was conducted at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Solbosch Campus, in Brussels, Belgium.

Sugimori’s presentation, titled “Exploring What Are Atypical and Typical in Modern Japanese: Newspaper Imperial Honorifics and Language Policies,” built on her past studies examining the changes in and the use of Japanese imperial honorifics, representing a variety of political slants in modern Japan during and after World War II. Honorifics are titles or words that imply or express high status, politeness or respect.

Faulkner’s presentation, titled “The Relationship Between Mood and Modal Concord in Spanish Directive Complements,” centered on past experimental studies that demonstrated that traditionally-described, “subjunctive-requiring” clauses are not as stringently subjunctive as previously put forth. In this presentation, she discussed “weak” directive predicates (such as recomendar que ‘to recommend that’ and aconsejar que ‘to advise that’) and their use of the indicative (instead of the customary use of the subjunctive) in contexts designated to putting forth a singular order or command as opposed to dual or bilateral instructions.

The semiannual conference is presented by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), a global scientific organization devoted to the study of language. Established in 1986, it currently has about 1,500 members and targets successful communication across languages and borders.

Pragmatics Conference Faculty
Kalamazoo College Associate Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori (left) and Assistant Professor of Spanish Tris Faulkner were presenters at the International Pragmatics Conference at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Solbosch Campus, in Brussels, Belgium.

Walking Alone, Gathering Together: Solitude and Community on the Camino de Santiago

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Two women at a marker along the Camino de Santiago
Struggling with sore feet and blisters, Fiona O’Rielly ’23 rented a bike to reach the Camino Finisterre. 
One female student looking at the ocean at the Camino Finisterre along the Camino de Santiago trail
O’Rielly ’23 arrives at the Camino Finisterre
O'Rielly walks during her first day at the Pyrenees mountain range along the Camino de Santiago
O’Rielly walks during her first day at the Pyrenees mountain range along the Camino de Santiago.

July 2022 was the hottest calendar month in Spain since records were first kept in 1961. It was also the month that Fiona O’Rielly ’23 set out on a 500-mile hike across Spain. O’Rielly’s sweltering passage along the ancient pilgrimage route Camino de Santiago, and the interviews she conducted with other walkers along the way, formed the basis for her Spanish Senior Integrated Project (SIP), Caminando el Camino: Una experiencia de comunidad. 

The SIP process helped O’Rielly reflect and gain perspective on community, solitude and relationships during her last year on the Kalamazoo College campus—which was also her first full year on campus, due to a college experience upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

O’Rielly wrote her SIP in Spanish and in four parts, focusing on the historical context of the Camino de Santiago, the shift toward more secular pilgrimages and increase in use, the impact of the pandemic on the Camino and on tourism in Spain, and O’Rielly’s interview findings and personal reflections. 

The Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrimage routes leading to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the Biblical apostle St. James the Great are buried. It began in the ninth century and became a major pilgrimage route of medieval Christianity by the 10th century. 

Since the 1990s, the Camino de Santiago has regained the popularity it had in the Middle Ages, with hundreds of thousands walking the route each year. Although some of those walkers continue to be religious pilgrims, many now walk for a variety of more secular reasons. 

O'Rielly walks along the final stage of the Camino de Santiago through Galicia, Spain
O’Rielly walks along the final stage of the Camino de Santiago through Galicia, Spain.
O'Rielly stops at one of the albergues, or hostels, along the route to stay the night along the Camino de Santiago
O’Rielly stops at one of the albergues, or hostels, along the route to stay the night.
O'Rielly began her journey at the St. Jean-Pied-du-Port in France
O’Rielly began her journey at the St. Jean-Pied-du-Port in France.

O’Rielly walked the Camino Francés, the most popular route, which stretches about 500 miles, or 800 kilometers, from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port in France to the cathedral in Santiago, in the heat of summer. That July, the average daily high was 85˚F, with the hottest day reaching 106˚F. August wasn’t much better, with an average daily high of 81˚F and a peak of 100˚F.  

“It was pretty unbearable some days,” O’Rielly said. “A lot of the time, the sun was very intense and there wasn’t a lot of shade.” 

She battled heat rash, sunburn, dehydration and blisters, often rising by 4 a.m. to get the day’s miles walked before the heat of the day. She carried a backpack with a change of clothes, a sleeping bag liner, a guidebook and lots of water. 

During the day, O’Rielly did a lot of solo walking, often starting off with two friends who joined her on the Camino before each settled into their own pace and thoughts. Some days she listened to the sounds of nature; other days, the rhythm of traffic; at times, she plugged into music on her phone, especially a folk band from Ohio called Caamp, which released a new album while she was walking. 

The path varies in style and surroundings, ranging from mountainous dirt trail to flat gravel path to narrow road shoulder. Well-marked with yellow arrows, the Camino passes through a range of landscapes as well as many small towns where pilgrims stop at cafes to eat or at albergues (hostels along the route) to stay the night. 

In the evenings, O’Rielly would reconnect with her friends and other pilgrims in the towns and albergues along the route. She would also conduct interviews for her SIP.  

“I wanted those conversations to happen more organically, and I did talk to people that way, but those conversations specifically for my SIP happened mainly in the albergues, which is the main community aspect of the Camino,” O’Rielly said. “A lot of people will walk the whole day alone, and then come together, gather, share a meal, play cards, and get to know other walkers in these hostels.” 

O'Rielly organizes documents from her interviews at an albergue along her route on the Camino de Santiago
O’Rielly organizes documents from her interviews at an albergue along her route.
O'Rielly stops at a cathedral in Santiago, Spain
O’Rielly stops at a cathedral in Santiago, Spain.
O'Rielly plans her journey along the Camino de Santiago
O’Rielly plans her journey along the Camino de Santiago.

Most pilgrims were open and friendly, willing to be interviewed and to share their stories. O’Rielly ended up interviewing 15 hikers from all over the world, including Spain, the U.S., New Zealand, Ireland and Argentina. She conducted about half the interviews in Spanish, and wrote her SIP in Spanish, which was challenging and important in her Spanish learning progression.  

“I wanted to hear a lot of people’s stories and I think most people were open with that and happy to talk,” she said. “They were also understanding of me as someone who’s learning Spanish. When I was having these interviews in Spanish, there were definitely grammatical errors on my part, and people were patient and also excited to share their experiences. Maybe some people saw this as a way for them to take the time and reflect and talk it out as they were having this experience. Everyone was really welcoming.” 

In her interviews, O’Rielly met pilgrims who chose to walk for religious or spiritual reasons, as part of their struggles with addiction, because they were facing a transition in life, as part of their grieving process and to spread a loved one’s ashes, because they felt lost and unsure of their direction, because they wanted to see the country in all its variety, and more. 

One big theme that emerged from O’Rielly’s interviews was the need for both solitude and community. 

“Most people I talked to started the Camino alone,” she said. “I remember one in particular who started alone, then met this group on the first day. They would hike alone, then they would all gather and pick the same hostel and cook a meal at the end of the day. Having the time to really be alone with your thoughts and then being able to come together and have that community and those friendships is really special.” 

Another big theme that resonated personally for O’Rielly was acceptance of relationships that are anchored to a particular time or place. 

A series of stamps depicting stops along the Camino de Santiago
The Pilgrim Passport or Credencial is an official accreditation that identifies people who walk across the Camino de Santiago.

“I’ve had a lot of experiences in my life recently of intense times of bonding with people for a short period of time, and then having to walk away from that relationship,” O’Rielly said. “It’s been hard for me to realize that I can’t keep in touch with everyone.” 

For example, O’Rielly came to Kalamazoo College in fall 2019, where the Ann Arbor native participated in LandSea, joined the swim team, took Spanish classes and built community on the close-knit campus. Then came March 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic closing the state down and sending O’Rielly and the rest of the campus home. Along with so many others, O’Rielly found herself abruptly removed from the community she had started to establish at K. 

Her second year at K, O’Rielly lived in a Kalamazoo apartment with friends, attending classes virtually and rarely venturing outside her COVID bubble. 

Then O’Rielly left that community to spend her entire third year of college abroad in Cáceres, Spain. In Cáceres, she first lived with a host family and took classes through the Universidad de Extremadura with about a dozen other K students from September to February. At that point, the other K students returned to Kalamazoo, while O’Rielly stayed behind in Cáceres until June, moving into an apartment with two international students from Italy and taking Universidad classes on her own.  

On the Camino, O’Rielly found herself in a similar situation yet again, meeting people in a context of openness and self-discovery, bonding quickly and intensely, then separating, possibly forever. She also found the time and space to reflect on those relationships. 

“I remember having this conversation with my friend, and she said something like, ‘The relationships I made on the Camino are meant to be left on the Camino. They’re not mine to take,’” O’Rielly said. “That was a powerful moment for me, personally, to realize that I’ve had these beautiful moments and shared these connections with people, and it’s temporary, and that’s OK. Maybe they’ll come back again, and I can be content with these relationships as they are.” 

Walking the Camino alone gave O’Rielly time to think about the interviews she had conducted, brainstorm the format for her SIP, reflect on her own experiences and what they meant to her, and let her mind wander wherever it happened to go. 

“It’s really beautiful to have an experience like the Camino and be able to take time to sit with it and reflect on what I gained,” O’Rielly said. “In a lot of my experiences, I’ve just had to move on because I’m back in school or on to the next thing. Having that time benefitted me a lot.” 

The home stretch of the Camino can bring a bit of culture shock after all that solitude and small community. Church groups and large organizations often walk the last 100 or 200 kilometers, so the quiet Camino becomes a river of people by the time a pilgrim passes through the town of Sarria, especially during the summer peak season. 

“How far to walk each day and where to stay each night was very spontaneous until about the last two weeks,” O’Rielly said. “In Sarria, you’re reaching the last 100 kilometers of the Camino, and that’s when the crowds come in. Then I was booking hostels in advance and on more of a schedule.” 

Between the increasing number of pilgrims, and the bigger size of Santiago de Compostela, the end of the Camino can be jarring for pilgrims who walk the whole route. 

“I felt a bit overwhelmed,” O’Rielly said.  

O'Rielly walks through Garcia, Spain, along the Camino de Santiago
O’Rielly walks through Garcia, Spain, along the Camino de Santiago.

After two nights in Santiago, she struck out again, on a sort of alternate ending to the Camino—about an additional 90 kilometers to Fisterra, or Finisterra, “the end of the world.”  

Struggling with sore feet and blisters, O’Rielly rented a bike for the Camino Finisterre. 

“I thought a bike would be so much easier,” O’Rielly said. “I rented panniers to put my stuff in, though, and every time I would go up a hill, the bike would just tip. It ended up being really difficult, and I think walking would have been easier.” 

Fisterra, however, was worth the extra work, and her three nights there were a satisfying end to her pilgrimage. 

“It’s this beautiful route along the coast, and you end at the ocean,” she said. “It was amazing to swim in the ocean and relax, and I felt a lot more of the community there. I reunited with some people I had met early on the Camino and it was a really special ending point for me.” 

Now O’Rielly is deep in her last and first full year on the Kalamazoo College campus, done writing her SIP, finishing a major in Spanish with a minor in English following the journalism course sequence. She is grateful for the experiences she has had and the professors, the Hough Foundation SIP Grant and funding from the Center for International Programs that made those opportunities possible.  

After graduation, she hopes to return to Spain, possibly through the North American Language and Culture Assistants Program. 

“That would be a good way for me to continue speaking Spanish and take some time to reflect on what I would like to study next,” O’Rielly said. “There’s a lot of different things I’m interested in. I would love to go to graduate school in a Spanish-speaking country, but figuring that out could take some time and I’m not rushed at all for that.” 

Just like she did on the Camino de Santiago, Fiona O’Rielly will take things one step at a time. 

O’Rielly walked the Camino Francés route of the Camino de Santiago, which stretches about 500 miles, from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port in France to the cathedral in Santiago, Spain.

Linguistics Professor to Visit K

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The Department of Spanish Language and Literature and the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership are welcoming University of Illinois at Chicago Professor of Spanish Linguistics Kim Potowski for her lecture, “Apples and Oranges: Best Approaches in Working with Spanish Heritage Speakers.” 

The talk will be held on March 1 from 4:15 to 5:15 p.m. in the Hicks Banquet Room at Kalamazoo College. 

Potowski began directing UIC’s Spanish Heritage Language Program in 2002, and she is the founding director of its summer study abroad program in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she spent a year as a Fulbright scholar. Her advocacy for the value of education in two languages for all U.S. children was the focus of her 2013 TEDx talk, “No child left monolingual.” 

Potowski has served as the editor of the journal Spanish in Context since 2009. She also has authored and edited more than a dozen books including El español de los Estados Unidos, Heritage Language Teaching: Research and Practice, Language and Identity in a Dual-Immersion School, and Conversaciones Escritas. 

Register for the in-person lecture online or plan to attend the livestream through Zoom. 

University of Illinois at Chicago Professor of Spanish Linguistics Kim Potowski
University of Illinois at Chicago Professor of Spanish Linguistics Kim Potowski will visit Kalamazoo College on March 1 and provide a lecture titled. “Apples and Oranges: Best Approaches in Working with Spanish Heritage Speakers.”

Student-Athlete Researches Exercise Response in Fruit Flies

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Marco Savone Holds Research Report on Fruit Flies
Marco Savone ’22 completed his Senior Integrated
Project (SIP) as part of a research study on exercising
fruit flies at Wayne State Medical School.

While many student-athletes at Kalamazoo College are interested in health and wellness, there might only be one who has applied that interest not only to sports, classes, externships and travel, but also to fruit flies. 

Marco Savone ’22 is a chemistry major and Spanish minor on the pre-med track who played football at K for four years. His first year at K, he completed an externship refining nutrition plans for a local health company. COVID-19 scrapped his study abroad plans, but he was able to make a medical volunteering trip to Costa Rica.  

In summer 2021, Savone completed his Senior Integrated Project (SIP) by participating in a three-month research study at Wayne State Medical School with exercising fruit flies. 

“It sounds bizarre at first,” Savone said. “They’re one of the very few labs in the country that does this. They want to apply the fruit fly model to human models because fruit flies have about 60 percent of their genome similar to humans and share many genes that are related to those in the human exercise response. Their goal is to be able to apply what they find with fruit flies to mice and rodents, and eventually human studies with exercise physiology.” 

Fruit flies also make good test subjects because they are cheap and have short lifespans. Within 60 days, researchers can see the effects of exercise over a full lifespan. 

“Humans live a long time so it’s hard to look at a human model in regards to how exercise affects the health span,” Savone said. “Ideally you would need a longitudinal study.” 

Marco-Savone-in-Scrubs
Walker Chung ’22 (left) and Marco Savone ’22 were
part of a medical volunteer trip to Costa Rica.

Savone took part in a study exploring the relationship between exercise and two gene-encoded proteins, myostatin and follistatin, that are involved in muscle mass development. Through a process called RNAi, or gene silencing, one group of fruit flies had myostatin basically eliminated in their systems, while a second group underwent the same process with follistatin. 

Within each group, Savone exercised one sub-group and did not exercise another. 

“We had lots of vials and they were all labeled with stickers,” Savone said. “We had this machine that would move the vials up and then they would drop down, and when the flies would feel the impact, they would fall to the bottom of their vial and then they would start climbing up to the top. This process would be repeated to act like a treadmill for the flies.”  

The team would measure the speed and endurance of the fruit flies over time. 

“One overarching thing that I did find was that we did see exercise responses with the two groups of flies,” Savone said. “We tested them for how long they would basically run, how fast they would fatigue. Then we also looked at their climbing speed to see how fast they would climb up their vial and we did see that exercise improved climbing speed and endurance.” 

While Savone experienced some success, he also learned from setbacks in the research. The RT-PCR test to verify how much of each gene was expressed in the fruit flies did not work, and Savone had to pivot to another type of testing. 

Marco-Savone-with-football-team
Marco Savone ’22 (right) values his experience as a
student-athlete for the lessons he learned
in teamwork, leadership and time management.

“I was really bummed that it didn’t work out,” he said. “But I was told by my mentor that it’s a hard thing to get used to and you need a lot of practice. I didn’t feel as bad when he told me that. 

“Research is so unpredictable. You have to learn how to troubleshoot when something goes wrong, and there are so many outcomes that can happen. There may be one singular thing you want to find, but you may find different things you didn’t even expect to see. That was really eye opening for me.” 

Savone sees immense benefit in gaining hands-on research experience outside of K to bring back and apply to classwork. He also benefitted from mentorship and collaboration with the lab staff, mainly Ph.D. students, and from a presentation he gave at Wayne State that boosted his confidence when presenting his SIP at the chemistry symposium. 

His experiences at Wayne State also came into play in January, when Savone started a short-term contracted position with Kalamazoo lab Genemarkers, LLC, which had pivoted during the pandemic from skincare-product testing to COVID-19 testing. 

His job involved separating test tube vials and preparing them for RT-PCR testing, the same type of testing he had attempted on the fruit flies at Wayne State. Savone also helped chart data for the tests.  

“They were just starting to train me on other things, but unfortunately, since I was a contract employee, they had to let me go when the COVID numbers went down significantly,” Savone said. “It was interesting to see how that whole process works behind the scenes of the COVID testing and it was a rewarding experience.” 

After graduating this June, Savone plans to study for the MCAT in the summer and take at least two gap years to work in clinical research before attending medical school, perhaps back at Wayne State. 

Looking back on the past four years, Savone sees how far he’s come. He credits his growth to the academics at K, his hands-on experiences at Wayne State and Genemarkers, and the lessons in teamwork and time management he learned as a student-athlete. 

“My experiences wouldn’t have been possible without going to K,” Savone said. “If I had to redo the whole thing again, I would do it the same.”