At a recent late-May dinner Kalamazoo College feted the 2015 Kalamazoo county high school graduates who earned Heyl Scholarships for Kalamazoo College (to major in science or math) or Western Michigan University (to attend the Bronson School of Nursing). The scholarship covers tuition, book costs, and room charges. Scholarship winners are (l-r): front row — McKinzie Ervin, Cydney Martell, Kayla Park; second row — Farzad Razi, Jessica Wile, Mia Orlando; back row — Pete Schultz, Maggie Smith, and Rachel Wheat. Ervin, Martell, Park, Razi, Wile, Orlando, Schultz, and Smith will attend Kalamazoo College. Wheat will attend WMU’s Bronson School of Nursing. (photo by Tony Dugal)
students
A Stories Story
“Tacos for Dragons” is just one of the many books featured in filmmaker Danny Kim’s new documentary “The Stories They Tell.”
The saga of the unlikely pairing of dragons and tacos is the labor of two seemingly unlikely co-authors, one a Kalamazoo College student and the other a third grader at Woodward Elementary in Kalamazoo.
And yet such collaborations are unlikely no more, thanks to the Co-authorship Project, the subject of Kim’s 80-minute film and the heart of Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan’s developmental psychology class for the last 15 years. The Co-authorship Project gives K students the opportunity to create an original storybook with an elementary student in order to gain a deeper insight into child development. Tan’s developmental psychology class is one of many academic service-learning courses that are designed in collaboration with the College’s Center for Civic Engagement.
The documentary showcases the project from beginning to end, starting with the picking of partners and culminating in the various unique completed works. The film spans almost a decade and a half of story making, to which Kim had unique access. He and Tan are husband and wife.
True to its etymology, animation infuses both the class and the film. “The co-authorship project has made the developmental psychology class come to life,” said Tan,” awakening ideas with real world experience. The collaborations give my students something more than what they could get in books alone.” Likewise, it is truly Kim’s animation of the creativity in each story that makes this film leap to life.
“The documentary is really about relationships, learning, connecting, and imagination,” said Tan.
All of these qualities get at the heart of what the co-authorship project is for both the K students and the children.
“Imagination and creativity is a core part of the project,” said Tan. “One skill that children naturally possess is imagination and creativity.”
Kim added that the contact with college students could help to inspire elementary school aged partners to pursue higher education.
The film highlights how much each interaction with a child can help augment what a college student knows about child development and affect a life path.
The life’s work of at least two of Tan’s former students offers proof. After viewing a sneak preview of the film on campus in April, both women confirmed that the project directly influenced their decisions to pursue education as a career.
Rachelle (Tomac) Busman ’05 is a school psychologist in the Byron Center (Michigan) School District and Sally (Warner) Read ’08 is the Head of the Kazoo School, an independent school in Kalamazoo.
“I remember everything about the little girl I worked with,” said Busman.
Kim’s film captures the value (and magic) of the project for both K students and Woodward students, as well as the idea’s birth and maturation in his wife’s developmental psychology class. Kim said he hopes the documentary inspires similar projects elsewhere.
“It would be wonderful if somebody saw it and said maybe we could start something like this,” said Kim.
Although the film is not yet released to the public, Kim does plan to have a formal showing once final edits have been made.
Text by Matt Munoz ’14; photo by Danny Kim; art by Pennilane Mara
Kalamazoo College’s Maya Sykes ’18 Earns U.S. State Department Critical Language Scholarship
Kalamazoo College first-year student Maya Sykes ’18 has been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to study Chinese in Beijing, China during summer 2015. Maya, a west-side Chicago native, is one of approximately 550 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students chose to study critical needs languages this summer. CLS participants will spend seven to ten weeks in intensive language institutes this summer in one of 13 countries to study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, or Urdu.
“I am happy and nervous about earning the CLS scholarship,” said Maya, a self-described introvert and “K-pop” fan. “I’m a little nervous about going, but I’m happy I don’t have to look for a job this summer.”
Maya said she has been “interested in Asian culture since middle school. My cousins speak Mandarin Chinese and influenced me to do so. My current plan is to major in East Asian Studies at K and perhaps minor in Chinese and English.”
Outside of the classroom, Maya is active in the Student Activities Committee, a student-led organization that provides a variety of fun and healthy outlets to K students while committee offering members opportunities for campus leadership and involvement. She also tutors kindergarteners and second-graders at Woodward Elementary School through the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement.
The CLS Program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. It provides fully-funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences. CLS Program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.
Selected finalists for the 2015 CLS Program hail from 49 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia and represent more than 200 institutions of higher education from across the United States, including public and private universities, liberal arts colleges, minority-serving institutions and community colleges.
Amanda Johnson ’17 Earns Boren Scholarship to Study in China during 2015-16 Academic Year
Kalamazoo College sophomore Amanda Johnson ’17 has received a David L. Boren Scholarship to study in China during the 2015-2016 academic year. The $20,000 award will allow her to study Chinese in Beijing and Harbin.
Boren Scholarships are funded by the National Security Education Program, a federal government program that focuses on geographic areas, languages, and fields of study deemed critical to United States national security.
Amanda is one of only 171 undergraduate students (all U.S. passport holders) to receive the 2015-16 Boren award.
“Through the Boren Scholarship, I will focus on improving my Mandarin, immersing myself in Chinese culture, and taking part in both an internship and one-on-one study with a Chinese professor on a topic of my choosing,” said Amanda, a sophomore from Hudsonville, Mich.
In addition to pursuing majors in economics and political science and a minor in Chinese while at K, Amanda is secretary of finance for K’s Student Commission, a consultant for the student Writing Center, and a teaching assistant for the Economics Department. She also is active on campus with the movement for an intercultural center.
Upon receiving the Boren Scholarship, Amanda was enthusiastic about such a wonderful opportunity and the networks it would provide. She says it’s the result of “an amazing support system” that has helped her at K.
“By the time I submitted my final Boren application I had more than 18 rough drafts that had been edited by professors, staff members, and fellow students. This highlights what students at Kalamazoo College can do with a community that supports their endeavors.”
In exchange for funding, Boren award recipients agree to work in the federal government for a period of at least one year following their formal education. Amanda says she may consider fulfilling her Boren Scholarship requirement with the Department of Homeland Security as an asylum officer, helping adjudicate asylum cases by using her Chinese (and Spanish) language skills. Ultimately, she hopes to pursue a career with the United States Department of State and she is excited about the opportunity the Boren Scholarship will give her to jumpstart her career.
During the winter break of her sophomore year, Amanda interned with the Human Rights Initiative of Northern Texas, a nonprofit organization that provides immigration services to individuals who have experienced human rights violations in their home country. This internship opportunity, funded by the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, allowed Amanda to work with asylum applicants and utilize her Spanish and Chinese language skills throughout the application process.
The Boren awards are named for former U.S. Senator David L. Boren, the principal author of the legislation that created the National Security Education Program. Boren Scholars (undergrads) and Fellows (graduate students) will live in 40 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East. They will study 37 different languages that are considered critical to U.S. interests, including Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin, Russian, Swahili, and Wolof.
Current Kalamazoo College seniors Luke Winship (China/Mandarin) and Erin Eagan (Senegal/Wolof) are previous Boren Scholars.
Author and Journalist David Finkel Delivers Kalamazoo College Commencement Address June 14
David Finkel, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of “The Good Soldiers” and “Thank You for Your Service,” will deliver the commencement address to the Kalamazoo College graduating class of 2015 on Sunday June 14 at 1:00 p.m. on the campus Quad, located at 1200 Academy St. in Kalamazoo.
Finkel will also receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the College. Asia Liza Morales ’15 will address her fellow graduates in the role of senior speaker. Attorney, author, and LGBTQ activist Urvashi Vaid, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Law degree from the College.
Kalamazoo College commencement is free and open to the public. Parking will be in high demand, so allow extra time. The College sets up about 3,000 folding chairs on the campus Quad and guests are invited to bring a lawn chair or blanket to stretch out on the grass. In case of rain, Anderson Athletic Center (1015 Academy St.) is the alternate site. Unfortunately, the gym can only accommodate the graduates, a few of their family members, and K administrators and faculty. K uses a special ticketing process for those seats.
For those unable to attend, K Commencement will be live-streamed via the Web.
David Finkel was the summer common reading author for the class of 2015 prior to their arrival at the College in fall 2011. He visited the K campus during students’ first-year orientation, giving a lecture and reading from “The Good Soldiers,” his bestselling account of a U.S. Army infantry unit during the Iraq War “surge.” The book earned the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and was named best book of 2009 by the New York Times.
Per K tradition, Finkel returns to deliver the commencement address to the same class of students he met in 2011.
Urvashi Vaid is director of the Engaging Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. Her most recent book is “Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics.” She was executive director of the Arcus Foundation from 2005 to 2010 and was instrumental in creating the vision for what is now Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Ms. Vaid received her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and her law degree from Northeastern University Law School.
Asia Morales has pursued a major in biology with an interest in environmental studies while at K. She has been a Peer Leader, President’s Ambassador, StuComm representative, and a member of multiple civic engagement programs and student organizations, including S3A (Sexual Safety & Support Alliance), which educates, advocates, and provides support for victims of sexual assault. A Posse Scholar from Los Angeles, Asia studied abroad in Spain.
Finkel’s most recent book, the critically acclaimed “Thank You for Your Service,” chronicles the challenges faced by American soldiers and their families in war’s aftermath. Among its many awards, the book was named a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Award in nonfiction and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. It was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly, one of the top 10 books of the year by The Washington Post, and best nonfiction book of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews.
An editor and writer for The Washington Post, Finkel has reported from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, and across the United States, and has covered wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He received the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2012 for “his long-form newswriting that has transformed readers’ understanding of military service and sacrifice.”
Finkel won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for “his ambitious, clear-eyed case study of the United States government’s attempt to bring democracy to Yemen.” He received his B.A. degree from University of Florida in 1977.
NINE PARTS OF DESIRE in the Dungeon Theatre
When Nine Parts of Desire premiered in New York City in the early 2000s, Gloria Steinem wrote, “The female half of Iraq has come to America.” It is with this philosophy in mind that Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College presents Heather Raffo’s play about the lives and stories of nine women, all of whom have a relationship to the physical, spiritual, and emotional spaces of modern Iraq. The play opens Thursday, April 30, at 7:30 p.m. and runs Friday and Saturday, May 1 and 2, at 8 p.m. The final performance occurs Sunday, May 3, at 2 p.m. All performances occur in the Dungeon Theatre in the Light Fine Arts Building on Kalamazoo College’s campus.
The play strives to celebrate the lives and identities of these women by complicating the archetypal portrayal of their country and its citizens. Each character seems to walk on a knife’s edge between contrasts—freedom and containment, tenacity and docility, knowledge and naivety, danger and desire—and each character tells a story of how these tensions have dictated her life.
None of Raffo’s characters are oppressed in a simple, two-dimensional way. Each woman approaches the world differently, and their stories and struggles are distinctly their own. What connects the women to each other and to the audience is far deeper than a shared experience of time and place. It is love–the negotiation and exploration of its many manifestations–that makes the piece cohesive and universal. In the play, one character muses, “It is the same, anywhere you live. if you love like an Iraqi woman. If you love like you can’t breathe.”
Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College invites you to come bear witness to these stories of struggle and triumph. In post-911 America, where ignorance and discrimination, and even hatred, often stand in the way of human connection, it is essential that we open our hearts, our ears, and our to these stories. In the words of Raffo herself, “Come. Now you sign the witness book.”
Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for seniors 65 and older, and $15 for other adults. Please call 269.337.7333 or visit the Festival Playhouse website for more information.
Text by Jane Huffman ’15. Photo by Emily Salswedel ’16.
Beyond the Blood
The outside gaze that condemns is the subject of Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College’s spring term production of CARRIE the musical.
“Almost the very first lyrics concern the horror of going to high school every day and the pain of trying to fit in–‘Every Day, I Just Pray Every Move I Make is Right,’” said Ed Menta, the James A. B. Stone College Professor of Theatre Arts, and the director of CARRIE the Musical. “Through song, choreography, social media, light scenery, and costumes, we hope to make this musical a fun and interactive experience for our audience that also explores one of the major social issues of our time: bullying,” he added.
Gabrielle Holme-Miller ’17, who plays the lead role of Carrie, emphasizes the need for the focus on aggression: “Almost everyone in their adolescence will find themselves a victim, aggressor, or witness to bullying in some form. Carrie’s suffering and torment is symbolic of the unacknowledged bullying many young people face.”
Festival Playhouse and the Kalamazoo College Department of Music will collaborate on the May production. The play opens Thursday, May 14, at 7:30 p.m., and continues Friday and Saturday, May 15 and 16, at 8 p.m., and on Sunday, May 17, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Additional performances occur Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. and Friday, May 22 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for seniors, and $15 for other adults. For reservations call 269.337.7333. For more information visit the Festival Playhouse website.
The performance features Professor of Music James Turner, vocal director; Jack Brooks, conductor; Kate Yancho, choreographer; Lanford J. Potts, scenic designer; Katie Anderson ’15, lighting designer; and Lindsay Worthington ’15, sound designer. CARRIE the musical is based on the novel, Carrie, by Stephen King and the book by Lawrence D. Cohen. Michael Gore scored the music; Dean Pitchford wrote the lyrics.
K’s 3 of 300
Three Kalamazoo College chemistry majors presented at the 2015 Experimental Biology meeting, a joint meeting of six different societies including the American Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) as well as societies for physiology, nutrition, pharmacology, pathology, and anatomy. More than 15,000 scientists attended the meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.
Rina Fujiwara ’15, Sarah Glass ’17, and Victoria Osorio ’16 shared results of the research they did in collaboration with Professor of Chemistry Laura Furge. Their presentations were part of both the Undergraduate Poster Competition and as part of the regular scientific session for ASBMB. Some 300 undergraduate posters composed the ASBMB competition from students across the country and from a variety of college and universities.
Fujiwara’s work, part of her Senior Individualized Project (SIP), showed how the work of two human liver enzymes vital to the body’s processing of medicines is halted by two small molecule inhibitors. The research took place in the Furge lab at Kalamazoo College and was published in Drug Metabolism and Disposition (Fall 2014). Other co-authors included Furge, Amanda Bolles ’14, and Erran Briggs ’14.
Glass and Osorio presented a poster that centered on recent work in the Furge lab with variants of an enzyme responsible for metabolism (or processing in the body) of about 15 percent of all medicines. The presence of these enzyme variants in different individuals can lead to vastly different responses to some pharmaceutical drugs, including cough syrup, the breast cancer drug tamoxifen, and many more. Though not present at the meeting, Mike Glista ’06) and Parker de Waal ’13) were co-authors on the posters.
This summer Fujiwara will enter the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Osorio and Glass will continue research with Furge this summer. Both plan to attend graduate school after graduating from Kalamazoo College.
At the Boston meeting Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss once again directed her highly acclaimed HOPES project, connecting science teachers with practicing scientists to enhance the quality and hands-on authenticity of primary and secondary classroom science instruction.
Professors Furge and Stevens-Truss are members of the ASBMB and attend the meeting every year. Travel to ASBMB for students Fujiwara, Glass, and Osorio was supported by grants from the Richard J. Cook Research Fellowship Fund (Fujiwara), an award from the ASBMB Student Affiliate (Fujiwara), the Provost Office (Glass, Osorio), and a grant to Furge through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Travel for Furge and Truss was supported by the Hutchcroft Endowment as well as NIH and grants from ASBMB.
Commitment, Heart and Soul
Eight Kalamazoo College seniors–each of them Civic Engagement Scholars in K’s Center for Civic Engagement–will receive Michigan Campus Compact (MiCC) Awards for their dedication to community service. Kacey Cook and Mele Makalo earned the MiCC Commitment to Service Award, recognizes up to two students per member campus in the state of Michigan for either the breadth or depth of their community involvement or service experiences. Only 31 students in the state will receive this award.
Jasmine An, Hannah Bogard, Alejandra Castillo, Katherine Rapin, Andrea Satchwell, and Rose Tobin will receive the Heart and Soul Award, “given to students to recognize their time, effort, and personal commitment to their communities through service. “We are thrilled that our remarkable students are receiving these awards,” said Alison Geist, director of the Center for Civic Engagement. “We are even more thrilled that we have had the honor to work closely with them.” The eight will be feted at an awards brunch in East Lansing on April 18. MiCC promotes the education and commitment of Michigan college students to be civically engaged citizens, through creating and expanding academic, co-curricular and campus-wide opportunities for community service, service-learning and civic engagement.
Senior Honored in Speech Contest
Vageesha Liyana-Gunawardana ’15 won the Special Prize in the annual Michigan Japanese Speech Contest, held at the Japanese Consulate in Detroit. Vageesha’s speech was titled “The Policeman I Met That Day Does Not Know My Name.” According to his Japanese language teacher, Assistant Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori, the speech is based on his study abroad experience in Tokyo, during which Vageesha was questioned by the police on thirteen different occasions. Inspired by Nobel Peace Prize winner Lester Pearson, Vageesha’s reflection upon these seemingly negative experiences reaffirmed the importance of meeting people and making an effort to understand each individual at deeper levels in order to work toward world peace. His talk, of course, was delivered in Japanese. Vageesha is a chemistry major at Kalamazoo College. He is a United World College alumnus (he attended high school at Pearson UWC in Victoria, British Columbia) and a Davis Scholar. At K he also works in the Center for International Programs.