Rehearsal for the Festival Playhouse production of Bad Jews. (left to right) Aidan Johnson ’17, Kate Kreiss ’19, Lauren Landman ’18, Kyle Lampar ’17. (Photo by Emily Salswedel ’17)
Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College presents the contemporary comedy Bad Jews, a play that explores what it means to be Jewish in contemporary American society. Written by Joshua Harmon, the play will have four performances in the Dungeon Theatre (Light Fine Arts Building) on Thursday through Sunday (Feb. 25-28). It is part of Festival Playhouse’s 2015-16 season “Theatre and Belonging: Stories of Ethnicity and Racial Identity.”
Staged in the round, with production design by Lanny Potts (professor of theatre arts) and costumes by Elaine Kauffman, the story takes place in an apartment in New York City shortly after the death of the family patriarch, the grandfather of Liam, his younger brother Jonah, and their cousin, Daphna.
Liam is Jewish in name only and chooses to pursue everything that has nothing to do with his heritage. Daphna intentionally embraces all things Jewish. Like Melody, Liam’s shiksa girlfriend, Jonah often seems caught in the middle between the extremes of his cousins. It is not until the end of the play we learn where he stands on the question, “How Jewish are you?” The New York Times praised the play as the best comedy of the season, characterized by ”delectably savage humor.” The subject matter and language are for mature audiences.
K’s production is a collaboration between director Ed Menta (the James A. B. Stone College Professor of Theatre Arts) and Jeffrey Haus (associate professor of history and religion and director of the College’s Jewish Studies Program). Menta and Haus invited Dr. Jonathan Freedman, Jewish studies scholar from the University of Michigan, to speak about the play and its themes on Wednesday, February 24, in the Olmsted Room at 7 p.m.. Freedman and Haus will also lead a talkback following the Thursday performance of the play.
The play opens Thursday, February 25, at 7:30 p.m. Additional evening performances occur Friday and Saturday, February 26 and 27, at 8 p.m., and a matinee concludes the run on Sunday, February 27, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for senior citizens, and $15 for other adults. For reservations call 269.337.7333. For more information, visit the Festival Playhouse website.
Assistant Professor of Political Science Justin Berry (and members of his “Voting, Campaigns and Elections” class) knew that the 2016 William Weber Lecture in Government and Society was too big an opportunity not to share widely. The late January event featured Martin Gilens, author and professor of politics at Princeton University, speaking on the subject “Economic Inequality and Political Power in America.” Dr. Berry reached out to the one high school student who attends his class and he, in turn, gathered many of his high school classmates to attend the lecture. After the event, he wrote to Dr. Berry: “I have to say, I really do appreciate your willingness to let a mob of high school kids participate in the event. We spent the next day in class having a heated discussion regarding the topics that were covered within Dr. Gilens’ speech. I believe that I speak for all that attended when I say that it was a very informative and memorable event. Our government teacher was disappointed that he couldn’t attend, but he had prior obligations. I do know that for next year he will try to bring back some of his students to have them sit in on the lecture, making it an annual event.” Well done, Dr. Berry! The photo shows Professor Gilens (third from right) with some of the high school attendees. The William Weber Lecture in Government and Society was founded by Bill Weber, a 1939 graduate of K, and it is administered by the Department of Political Science. Past lecturers have included David Broder, E.J. Dionne, Frances Fox Piven, Van Jones and Joan Mandelle, among others.
Senior tennis player Katie Clark ’16 would be lying if she said she wasn’t nervous or scared when she decided to jump ship from Fairfax, Va., after high school and attend Kalamazoo College.
But before she left, a close family friend gave her peace of mind and a thought that’s stuck with her to this day.
“This part of your life isn’t dying, your circle is just getting bigger,” the friend told her.
Clark’s circle has expanded exponentially since stepping on campus.
“Honestly, I didn’t know I was going to be happy here until I showed up the first day,” Clark said. “It was a little different that someone from the East Coast would go to this little funky school in Michigan called Kalamazoo. But I remember pulling up to campus and thinking ‘Oh, it’s actually so beautiful here and everyone seems really nice and maybe I’ll like it.’
“Turns out, I’ve always enjoyed it.”
Leading on and off the court
As an athlete, Clark’s circle grew quickly as she became immersed in the women’s tennis family, but she was also introduced to another area on campus because of her involvement with tennis.
“Two or three years ago my coach recognized that women’s tennis had never really played that significant of a role on the Athletic Leadership Council, so he recommended I start attending,” Clark said. “It was a really good fit because the goals and work that ALC does very much align with my personal reasons for wanting to be a student-athlete.”
Clark, ALC’s active secretary, said her time with ALC helped her establish her identity beyond “student” or “athlete.” The organization allows her to simply be a part of the Kalamazoo College community.
“ALC engages student athletes with community work such as working with Special Olympics, but it also creates and hosts events for the entire campus.”
As a senior member of ALC and the tennis team, Clark is excited to be able to help shape the culture of the campus and her team.
From the court to Congress
A history major and a political science minor, Clark secured an internship with Senior United States Senator Charles Schumer in the summer of 2014 on Capitol Hill.
Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Katie Clark
When she arrived in Washington D.C. she learned her work would be primarily left up to her to figure out.
“Instead of the internship being very structured, it really was what you made out of it,” she said. “That’s one of the more valuable things I took away from my experience.
“Throughout my education, ever since kindergarten, people just give you things to do all the time and that’s a very easy thing to get accustomed to. On the other hand, working to find work for myself was new to me.”
Her assigned tasks included fielding calls from constituents, answering questions about policy in a cordial manner, organizing the mail and also giving tours of the Capitol Building. Her most valuable experience came from the work she assigned herself.
“I would find senatorial briefings on my own and would go talk to the responsible staffer to ask if they wanted me to write a memo and do research on the subject.
“A lot of times the staffer wouldn’t actually need the memo, but the interaction was about establishing the connection and having them realize that you want to be there. When they actually did need help with something significant they knew that I was well versed in that subject.”
She enjoyed the experience, and the feeling was mutual–Clark returned to the same position the following summer.
Expanding globally
Katie Clark in Thailand
Thailand is a place many people never see in their lifetime, but Clark’s circle stretched across the globe when she decided to experience the country and culture during the fall and winter terms of her junior year.
Clark didn’t want to just be a student in an unfamiliar environment; she wanted to immerse herself within a community and learn from people with vastly different understandings of life.
“My program was predominantly experiential-based learning, so other than the first six weeks we were in the field the entire time,” she said. “We spent most of our time in host villages living and learning from different members of the community.”
The days’ events and tasks ranged from meeting with government officials and local business men and women, to helping families clean their roofs and taking children to school. The topics of discussion ranged from overfishing to gender and religion.
“I wanted to be enrolled in a study abroad program that would give me something I wouldn’t be able to get on my own,” Clark said. Turns out that “something” was a deep connection to “communities and very rural areas in the mountains in northern Thailand.”
Growing beyond graduation
Using the experiences she’s had and the connections she’s made during her three and half years at K, Clark hopes to continue lengthening the radius of her circle as she begins to prepare for life after Kalamazoo.
“I have so many different areas of support here at K. School is something that I really value and enjoy. For my professors to be able to push me to be the best student I can be is special.
“Instead of just telling me ‘good work’ sometimes my professors will tell me ‘you can do better than this.’”
With her senior tennis season surely at the front of her mind and set to get underway in less than a month, her goal after graduation is to join the Peace Corps.
It’s safe to say–and Clark has no doubt–that wherever her path leads her next, she’ll be well-prepared.
(Text and photos by Kurt Miller, assistant sports information director)
The cast of the Festival Playhouse production of FAMILY CRIMES (photo by Emily Salswedel ‘16)
Playwright and director Belinda McCauley ’16 presents her one-act play, Family Crimes, in the Dungeon Theatre on Thursday, February 11, through Sunday, February 14. The four performances are part of Kalamazoo College’s Senior Performance Series.
The play centers on a family of three generations of Latina women who have made enormous sacrifices in their pasts, resulting in long held secrets. “Each must decide what she values and what family means to her as these secrets are revealed to the audience and each other,” says McCauley.
Cast member Johanna Keller Flores ’18 (Marta) stresses the role of race in the story: “The play is a depiction of a family battling its demons like any other, but recognizes the damage racism, machismo and prejudice can inflict on relationships and actions.”
The result, according to actress Aliera Morasch ’16 (Estela), is a complex and deeply layered story. “I am honored to be part of a production that recognizes my body and my family’s story through developed, flawed, and multi-dimensional characters,” says Morasch. “Family Crimes challenges me to think about identity, family dynamics, and family histories in a new and complex way. Its blend of secrets, race, abandonment, love, sexuality and morality makes for dynamic storytelling that is simultaneously haunting and uplifting.”
Tickets are free for Kalamazoo College community members (students, faculty and staff) and five dollars for general admission. Thursday’s show begins at 7:30 p.m.; curtain rises at 8 p.m for Friday and Saturday’s performances and at 2 p.m. for Sunday’s concluding production. Call 269.337.7333 for reservations. Tickets also may be purchased at the door one hour before performance. The Dungeon Theatre is located in the Light Fine Arts Building on Kalamazoo College’s campus.
A monument to experimental success in microbial evolution (and a pretty dandy learning experience)
Talk about making the most of an opportunity! Sophomore Tanush Jagdish took the initiative to contact microbiologist Richard Lenski (Michigan State University), who had visited Kalamazoo College last spring as the biology department’s Diebold Symposium keynote speaker. Tanush inquired about research possibilities in Lenski’s lab over the December break. Tanush has been working in Assistant Professor of Biology Michael Wollenberg’s microbiology research lab at K since his first year, so he was already familiar with techniques he would need to work in Lenski’s lab. Lenski graciously extended an offer to Tanush and paired him up with a postdoctoral fellow to work on microbial evolution. Tanush loved the work (that’s probably an understatement).
“This experience becomes the most intensive and profound one in my (extremely short) research career,” he wrote. “Through a very fortunate set of events, I got to work on the strain of E-coli that famously learned to eat citrate after 20 years of evolution. Essentially, in order to trace the potentiating mutations back through time, I was trying to figure out the set of genes that are required for citrate consumption in the evolved strain.
“Everything went amazingly well–my experiments worked, the yields were great! I transformed and scanned through more than 1,600 strains from a mutant library, consuming over 3,500 agar plates. As is Lenski lab tradition with large experiments, I got to build my own tower from the plates.” (see photo). Tanush also expressed his appreciation for the opportunity to work with the post-doc with whom he was paired, Dr. Zachary Blount.
“Dr. Blount was extremely kind and generous with his time when he mentored me,” said Tanush. “He is very well regarded in the evolutionary biology community (he characterized the citrate consuming bacteria after conducting what is still the largest genetic screen in academic history).”
Congratulations, Tanush, a beautiful example of leveraging the opportunity of a break between terms.
This week Sara Stack ’15 will break from her study of insects (she is working on a master’s degree in entomology at Purdue University) to travel to San Francisco and present a classics paper at the 2016 annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). From insects to classics!? Therein hangs a liberal arts tale, vintage Kalamazoo College.
Stack’s paper–“Princess, Prisoner, Queen: Searching for Identity and Agency in the Life of Kleopatra Selene”–is one of only four undergraduate research projects selected for presentation at the AIA meeting.
Selection was nation wide and very competitive,” said Senior Instructor in Classics Anne Haeckl. Stack wrote the paper for Professor Haeckl’s Junior Classics Seminar, which provided, said Stack, “an amazing opportunity to explore Selene’s life through the lens of intersectional feminism.”
Kleopatra Selene is one of history’s forgotten women, mentioned only marginally (if at all) in the history- and world-changing story of her famous parents, the Roman general Mark Antony and the last queen of Egypt, Kleopatra VII. Theirs was a story that crowded the stage of the entire Mediterranean world of their time, a story that has inspired countless historical and literary interpretations from Plutarch to Shakespeare to a recent bestseller biography by Stacy Schiff.
“I’ve always been very interested in history, particularly dynamic historical women,” said Stack, who majored in biology and religion. “Kleopatra VII has been a particular favorite of mine since childhood; my favorite book is a 1000-page novel called The Memoirs of Cleopatra. Because I’m so familiar with her mother, I’ve been aware of Selene for a long time, but I started to wonder about her as a historical figure in her own right.
“The most interesting part of my research was how strongly Selene’s political agenda and identity were influenced by the events of her childhood.”
After her parents’ defeat by Octavian (later the Roman emperor Augustus), Selene became Augustus’ prisoner and political pawn. He marched the 10-year-old girl in his Egyptian triumph through the streets of Rome as a symbol of her fallen dynasty and conquered nation. He gave her to his sister to raise and later arranged her marriage to Juba, king of Mauretania (today’s Algeria). “As the queen of Mauretania she very clearly identified herself as a Ptolemy (her mother’s royal house) and a Hellenized Egyptian queen,” said Stack. “She commissioned coins in her own right, not just in conjunction with her husband, and portrayed herself with the imagery and titles of her mother, Kleopatra VII. To me this indicates that she never forgot her heritage or her family, and used her power to maintain their legacy.”
Haeckl had equal praise for Stack’s research paper and for the liberal arts ethos from which it took wing. “At K we value the breadth and depth of academic course work and the Senior Individualized Project. It’s hard to find a more dynamic example of that than Sara, with her curiosity and hard work in biology, religion and classics.”
Stack’s biology SIP studied the effect of the emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle that kills ash trees, on the biodiversity of a family of beetles known as Carabidae. “I really enjoyed my SIP research, and it was ultimately what made me fall in love with entomology and got me into graduate school,” said Stack.
She obviously also enjoyed her classical research. “She unified and analyzed through a feminist lens the scattered corpus of ancient material culture and texts relating to Selene,” praised Haeckl, work that yielded a new and original understanding of Selene’s “increasingly empowered agency and self-identification as a North African queen.”
Haeckl also presented research at the AIA annual meeting. Her work posits a specific identity (the Emperor Caracella) of a painted limestone statuette depicting a falcon-headed human figure in the armor of a Roman imperator. Haeckl’s paper, “Caracalla as Birdman? Proposing an Imperial Identity for the British Museum’s ’Horus in Roman Military Costume,” explicates the iconography of the statue (Horus was the Egyptian falcon-god) in terms of both the public image Caracalla cultivated (as an ordinary Roman soldier and latter day Alexander the Great) and a specific visit Caracalla made to Alexandria in 215.
Congratulations to the following Kalamazoo College students, who achieved a grade point average of 3.5 or better for a full-time course load of at least three units, without failing or withdrawing from any course, during the Fall 2015 academic term. Students who elect to take a letter-graded course on a credit/no credit basis (CR/NC) are not eligible for Dean’s List consideration during that term. Nor are students who receive an F, NC or W grade for that particular term. Students with incomplete (I) or in-progress (IP) grades will be considered for Dean’s List upon receipt of the final grades. Dean’s List recognition is posted on students’ transcripts. Kudos to the entire group of nearly 350 students, and good luck in Winter Term, 2016.
Madison Adams
Tyler Allen
Allegra Allgeier
Steven Andrews
Lucas Arbulu
Elizabeth Arellano
Lauren Arquette
Meredith Ashton
Max Aulbach
B
Dalbyeol Bae
Zoe Barnes
William Bartz
Jade Beauregard
Grace Beck
Hayley Beltz
Christian Benedict
Katherine Bennett
Hannah Berger
Kevin Bhimani
Abhjeet Bhullar
Zoey Blake-Mark
Allison Bloomfield
Sean Bogue
Jacob Bonifacio
Maria Bonvicini
Riley Boyd
Chancellor Boyer
Emily Boyle
Allie Brodsky
Erin Brown
Sarena Brown
Molly Brueger
Thomas Bryant
Hayley Buckhout
Matthew Burczyk
Janice Burnett
Mary Burnett
Erin Butler
C
Alexander Cadigan
Mackenzie Callahan
Kalyn Campbell
Angel Caranna
Charles Carson
Lee Carter
Rachel Chang
Madeleine Chilcote
Emiline Chipman
Heeseong Cho
Qynce Chumley
Josefina Cibelli
Christopher Coburn
Kate Colebrook
MaryClare Colombo
Cody Colvin
Quinton Colwell
Dejah Crystal
D
Christina Dandar
Steven Davis
Sophia Davis-Rodak
Hadiya Deas-Richberg
Joanna Dell’Olio
Ricardo DelOlmo-Parrado
Lynette Desjarlais
Kaitey Dettmann
Mikayla Doepker
Guillermo Dominguez Garcia
Amelia Donohoe
Johanna Drentlaw
E
America Edwards
Meredith Edwards
Emma Eisenbeis
Tiffany Ellis
Anna Emenheiser
Rachel Epstein
Jonathon Ernest
McKinzie Ervin
Andriana Evangelista
F
Alex Fairhall
Jessie Fales
Mario Ferrini
Elizabeth Fiator
Stephanie Finnern
Emily Fletcher
Delaney Fordell
Monet Foster
Maria Franco
Rachel Frank
Ian Freshwater
Maria Fujii
Lydia Fyie
G
Owen Galvin
Brett Garwood
Charlotte Gavin
Sarah George
Joseph Giacalone
Camille Giacobone
Sarah Glass
Samantha Gleason
Beau Godkin
Abhay Goel
Emily Good
Monica Gorgas
Natalie Gratsch
Claire Greening
Jena Groshek
In Hye Gu
Caleb Gurd
David Gurrola
H
Emary Hall
Nora Harris
Hadley Harrison
Kelly Haugland
Mara Hazen
Kyle Hernandez
Natalie Hershenson
Samantha Hicks
Sophie Higdon
Adelaide Hilarides
Louis Hochster
Shelby Hopper
Meghan Horal
Andrew Horton
Taylor Horton
Daniel Horwitz
Elise Houcek
Claire Howland
Jason Hugan
Briana Huisken
I
J
Sadie Jackson
Dongkeun Jeon
YanYan Jiang
Katherine Johnson
K
Claire Kalina
Kamalaldin Kamalaldin
Amira Kamoo
Kyle Kane
Elyse Kaplan
Gwendolen Keller
Samuel Kepes
Christina Keramidas
Benjamin Kileen
Sean Kill
Dahwi Kim
Min Soo Kim
Savannah Kinchen
Sai Klein
Hannah Kline
Julia Koreman
Katherine Kreiss
Julia Kresch
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Lauren Landman
Mackenzie Landman
Gabriela Latta
Madeline Lauver
Zachary LeBlanc
Da Bin Lee
Omar Leon
Sarah Levett
Hyunyn Lim
Gordon Liu
Giovanni LoGrasso
Sara Lonsberry
Brandon Lopez
Francisco Lopez Jr.
Jordan Loredo
Nicholas Ludka
Cameron Lund
Liam Lundy
M
Andrea MacMichael
Alicia Madgwick
Eleftherios Manopoulos
Cydney Martell
Elizabeth Martin
Sophia Martin
Deziray Martinez
Takumi Matsuzawa
Kelsey Matthews
Madison McBarnes
Karly McCall
Belinda McCauley
Abigail McDonough
Ivy McKee
Daisy McLaughlin
Molly Meddock
Molly Merkel
Vanessa Merritt
Franklin Meyer
Hannah Meyers
Samuel Meyers
Shannon Milan
Taylor Miles
Sarafina Milianti
Myranda Miller
Sangtawun Miller
Suzanne Miller
Zach Miller
Jamie Misevich
Mallika Mitra
Ethel Mogilevsky
Jacob Mooradian
Alejandra Morales
Aidan Morley
Amanda Moss
Christopher Muir
Emma Mullenax
Justin Murshak
Nkatha Mwenda
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Harsha Nand
Jacob Naranjo
Laetitia Ndiaye
Hung Nguyen
Phuong Nguyen
Viet Nguyen
Lionel Niyongabire
Rosemarie Nocita
Skyler Norgaard
Mackenzie Norman
Brooke Nosanchuk
Andrew Novetsky
O
Josiah Olah
Michael Oravetz
Eli Orenstein
Eli Orenstein
Colleen Orwin
Alexandria Oswalt
Ty Owens
P
Nirmita Palakodaty
Maxwell Palese
James Paprocki
Kayla Park
Andrew Parsons
Arju Patel
Khusbu Patel
Kaeli Peach
Elizabeth Penix
Marlisa Pennington
Jessica Penny
Lauren Perlaki
Emma Peters
Caroline Peterson
Bradley Popiel
Tulani Pryor
Q
Yilan Qiu
R
Arianna Raemont
Sydney Riddick
Cecilia Ringo
Skylar Rizzolo
Ramisa Rob
Scott Roberts
Lilia Robins
Megan Rochlitz
Katherine Rogers
Rebecca Rogers
Anna Roodbergen
Jeremy Roth
Timothy Rutledge
Keigan Ryckman
S
Rumsha Sajid
Amber Salome
William Sargent
Mason Sarosi
Anselm Scheck
Christa Scheck
Katharine Scheck
Austen Scheer
Maison Scheuer
Ashley Schmidt
Eleanor Schodowski
Aaron Schwark
Madalyn Seveska
Ruhma Shahid
Sharif Shaker
Chase Shelbourne
Tianqi Shen
Ke Sheng
Muneeb Siddiqui
Sharon Situ
Austin Smith
Bailey Smith
Benjamin Smith
Erin Smith
Grace Smith
Logan Smith
Margaret Smith
Kathleen Sorensen
Federico Spalletti
Maya Srkalovic
Petra Stoppel
Ellen Stormont
Thomas Stuut
Mengxi Sun
T
Lily Talmers
Abigail Taylor
Sophia Taylor-Havens
Ani Terterian
Audrey Thomas
Derek Thomas
Natalie Thompson
Noah Thornton
Carolyn Topper
Camila Trefftz
Kelly Treharne
Dakota Trinka
Sydney Troost
Lydia Turke
Elizabeth Tyburski
U
Eva Ugelow
V
Kaela Van Til
David Vanderkloot
Taylor VanWinkle
Travis Veenhuis
Elisia Venegas
Anh-Tu Vu
W
Raoul Wadhwa
Evelyn Wagner
Jacob Waier
Sidney Wall
Timothy Walsh
Jacob Wasko
Micheal Watson
Connor Webb
Ailih Weeldreyer
John Wehr
Cameron Werner
Caitlyn Whitcomb
Alex White
Zachary White
Joshua Whitney
Hans Wieland
Raphael Wieland
Jordan Wiley
Carolyn Williams
Kiavanne Williams
Natalia Wohletz
Madeline Woods
X
Mingyue Xu
Y
Kimberly Yang
Brent Yelton
Seo Ho Yi
Lily York
Adre Yusi
K students (l-r) Natalie Davenport ’16, Octavia Smith ’18 and Melany Diaz ’16 showed local 6th- and 7th-grade girls that there is no magic to learning computer science.
More Kalamazoo College Computer Science majors doing good things:
Recently, Natalie Davenport ’16, Octavia Smith ’18 and Melany Diaz ’16 (l-r in photo) led sessions on Android app creation for Kalamazoo-area sixth- and seventh-grade girls at GISMO (Girls Investigate Science and Math Opportunities), held at KAMSC (Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center).
In six separate sessions (with about 15 girls per session) titled “Magic 8-Ball with App Inventor” the K women guided the GISMO girls through steps to create an Android app that, when activated (by pressing a button or shaking the device), gives a random response just like the iconic fortune-telling “Magic 8-ball” toy.
They also shared their experiences and excitement about computing with the middle school girls and, according to Associate Professor of Computer Science Pam Cutter, “were excited in return to see how quickly these girls caught on to the programming ideas they presented and their desire to do more of this at home.”
Q: Magic 8-Ball, can women do computer science?
A: Our sources say, “Yes! Definitely!”
On any given day you can find a Kalamazoo College student playing ping pong, shooting baskets or serving up a hot meal at the Douglass Community Association.
A center for social, recreational and community development activities in the city’s Northside neighborhood, the Douglass Community Association has served Kalamazoo residents for nearly 100 years.
“For decades, I’ve watched Kalamazoo College students come by the bus full to volunteer at the Douglass,” says Dr. Charles Warfield, president of the Metropolitan Kalamazoo branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “As a more than 70-year resident of Kalamazoo, I have consistently seen Kalamazoo College support the efforts of the black community and be front runners in the area of social justice.”
Each week during the academic year, many of the more than 100 K students who work in the local community through service-learning courses or co-curricular programming coordinated by the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement head to Kalamazoo’s Northside Neighborhood, home to many members of the city’s black community. K students work with teachers and elementary age students at Woodward School and with families who are part of Community Advocates for Parents and Students (CAPS), a grassroots organization that provides tutoring services to children residing in the Interfaith Neighborhood Housing community. Since its founding in 2001, K’s Center for Civic Engagement, through service-learning courses and student-led programs, has engaged more than 6,500 K students in long-term, reciprocal partnerships to foster academic learning, critical problem-solving, and a lifetime of civic engagement while strengthening the Kalamazoo community.
This long-standing community partnership, in addition to the work of Kalamazoo College President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, Warfield says, contributed to the recognition of both the College and its president with the Vanguard Award at the NAACP’s 35th Annual Freedom Fund Banquet.
The Vanguard Award honors an organization or group of people whose forward thinking has significantly affected the lives of all people, and specifically people of color in Kalamazoo. Past recipients include the City of Kalamazoo, Sid Ellis and the Black Arts and Cultural Center, and the philanthropists of the Kalamazoo Promise.
“We have outstanding people in our midst who make it their business to make a difference in the lives of those in need,” Warfield says. “We need to honor organizations and people who invest so unselfishly in our community to make this a better place to live now and for the future.”
During President Wilson-Oyelaran’s 10 years at the College, she has worked tirelessly, Warfield asserts, in the name of social justice.
“Kalamazoo College has always been one of the bright lights of social justice,” he says. “Dr. Wilson-Oyelaran stepped in and didn’t miss a beat. I can’t think of anyone or anyplace more deserving of the Vanguard Award.”
During her tenure at the College, President Wilson-Oyelaran has helped the College make its campus and educational experience more diverse—increasing the number of first generation, low-income, international and domestic students of color who study here.
President Wilson-Oyelaran’s commitment to social justice and leadership development, however, may be most evident in the creation of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL), a formal program that integrates the academic experience with social justice activism geared toward helping students make communities and the world more equitable for all.
The ACSJL, opened in 2009, supports initiatives proposed by students, staff and faculty; provides forward-thinking programming; offers fellowships for emerging and veteran social justice leaders; and hosts annual signature events with global reach.
“I am incredibly humbled and honored to receive the Vanguard Award and accept it on behalf of Kalamazoo College,” says President Wilson-Oyelaran. “It is really gratifying to have the community recognize the many years of investment in the Kalamazoo community by our faculty, staff and students and to take note of the College’s efforts to become a more diverse and inclusive community.”
The NAACP’s 35th Annual Freedom Fund Banquet was held November 7, 2015 at Western Michigan University’s Bernhard Center.
Article by Erin (Miller) Dominianni ’95; photo by Keith Mumma
Students at the two Kalamazoo College study abroad centers in France (Strasbourg and Clermont-Ferrand) and in other countries are reported safe. K’s Center for International Programs continues to be in contact with students and with program directors in France and other countries. Students are being encouraged to check in with their families and program directors, they are being reminded about safety habits, and they are being advised about possible travel delays
The College is also addressing the well-being of students from France who are currently studying on campus.
The Kalamazoo College community sends its thoughts and prayers to the people of France.
