students

Kalamazoo College Commencement 2013

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Students tossing graduation caps in the airKalamazoo College will host Commencement for the Class of 2013 on Sunday, June 16, at 1:00 p.m., on the campus Quad. About 3,000 people are expected to attend the event, which is free and open to the public.

A total of 344 graduates from 27 states and eight foreign countries (China, Ecuador, Haiti, Hong Kong, Jamaica, South Korea, Thailand, Zambia) will receive Bachelor’s of Arts degrees in 30 majors; 65 graduates are double-majors. Approximately 55 percent of class members are female, 45 percent are male, and more than 19 percent self-report as students of color.

For the first time, the K Commencement will be live-streamed via the Internet. Visit the Kalamazoo College Commencement webpage (www.kzoo.edu/alumni/commencement) on Sunday, June 16, at 1:00 p.m. to watch the ceremony live.

On Saturday, K hosts a Senior Awards Program at 1:30 and a baccalaureate service at 8:00 p.m. for seniors and their families in Stetson Chapel.

Graduating senior Regina Pell was chosen by her K classmates to deliver Commencement remarks on their behalf. Pell is a history major from Grand Rapids who studied abroad at Goldsmiths University in London as a junior. She also completed one concentration in American Studies and a second in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Walter E. Massey, Ph.D., will deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary doctorate of science degree. Dr. Massey is president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a post he assumed in the fall of 2010. He is also the president emeritus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, having served as president there from 1995 to 2007. Immediately prior to that post, he was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs of the University of California system. A prominent physicist, Dr. Massey served as director of the Argonne National Laboratory from 1979 to 1984, and was professor of physics and vice president of research at the University of Chicago from 1979 to 1991. He also served as director of the National Science Foundation from 1991 to 1993, appointed by former President George H.W. Bush. Additionally, he served as professor of physics and dean of the college at Brown University.

Rachel Kushner, author of Telex from Cuba and the recently published The Flamethrowers, will also receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters degree and speak to K seniors. Kushner was the Class of 2013’s Summer Common Reading author and spoke to class members during their fall 2009 orientation at K. At the time, Ms. Kushner was a finalist for the National Book Award and for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was a winner of the California Book Award. Kushner earned a B.A. degree from the University of California in Berkeley and a Masters in Fine Arts degree from Columbia University. Along with her novels she has written numerous features for ArtForum, edited the infamous literary magazines Grand Street and BOMB, and founded Soft Targets, a magazine devoted to art, literary theory, poetry, and fiction. She is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow.

Sophomore’s Poems Draw Acclaim

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Jane Huffman, a sophomore double-major (English and Theatre) is already getting poems and fiction published in good journals. Two of her poems–“Animal” and “Vegetable” appear in e-magazine Bad Penny Review. Two other poems will publish in forthcoming issues of print magazines: “Bad Poetry, or The Ways in Which we use our Hands” will appear in Galavant, and “Vegetable” will appear in NewerYork. Says Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss, “Jane’s phenomenal.”

Building A Community Course

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Creators and members of the capstone course "Engaged Community Membership"
Creators and members of the capstone course “Engaged Community Membership” included (l-r): front row–Dan Kilburn and Alex Armstrong; back row–Jensen Sprowl, Marissa Rossman, Kiran Cunningham, Sara Haverkamp, Kami Cross, and Nicole Allman. Not pictured are Chris Cain and Ellen Conner. Cunningham is a member of the Class of 1983. Everyone else is a member of the Class of 2013.

The seniors taking the class, “Engaged Community Membership” (see photo), can build more than a good retaining wall in the College’s Grove area. They also can build a valuable course. And they did–their own capstone course.

In the winter quarter some 50 interested seniors met to begin to plan a “Senior capstone” course, one that would reflect the best thinking of seniors about a course that  structures reflection on their previous three and two-thirds years of academic and experiential rigor. The result of this winter planning was the spring quarter pass-fail class: “Engaged Community Membership.” The notion of community became the theme, according to class member and anthropology-sociology major Nicole Allman ’13.

The class eventually attracted nine seniors representing some 10 majors and Professor of Anthropology Kiran Cunningham ’83.

“We determined the course goals, set projects, and created the syllabus,” said Allman. “We focused on skill-based, concrete ideas surrounding the concept of community,” she added. Two projects in particular became the core of the course–a senior class recipe and cook book, tapping the experience of the Class of 2013 both on- and off-campus, including extending families throughout the world; and a landscaping and retaining wall project in the College’s Grove area.

Allman loved the class for both its hands-on and reflective qualities. “It was a valuable capstone experience that drew out and extended what we’d learned in the classroom and out over the past three years,” she said. “For me it clarified what it means to build a community and provided a blueprint for doing so that I can use to become a part of new communities.” The cookbook, she added, will be published (electronically) and shared with classmates and wider audiences.

More information access the project will be shared in the future.

K at Michigan Academy of Science Arts and Letters

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The 2013 Michigan Academy of Science Arts and Letters annual conference featured some 450 participants presenting in 33 academic sections on a wide range of topics. Seven of those presenters were Kalamazoo College students: Alex Armstrong ’13, Ryan Berry ’13, Ian Flanagan ’13, Alexander Numbers ’13, Jonathan Romero ’13, Hayden Uihlein ’14, and Jennifer Wendel ’14. These students were sponsored by Charlene Boyer Lewis, associate professor of history, and Chris Latiolais, associate professor of philosophy.

K Business Students Claim Project Management Prize

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Christian Giancarlo, Forrest Todd, Jack Massion, Marjorie Toshach, Harold Kaefer and DeLin Shen
K′s PMI team (l-r): Christian Giancarlo ’13, Forrest Todd ’13, Jack Massion ’14, Marjorie Toshach ’13, Harold Kaefer, DeLin Shen. Photo: Chuck Stull.

Four Kalamazoo College students won a fourth-place team prize—and a $1,000 check—in an intercollegiate project management competition in Grand Rapids hosted by the Project Management Institute (PMI) West Michigan Chapter.

Christian Giancarlo ’13, Forrest Todd ’13, Jack Massion ’14, and Marjorie Toshach ’13 worked as a team to improve the fictional business MichiganToStay, Inc.

“Basically we had to revamp the attraction and retention programs for employees,” said Todd.

In addition to meeting with each other and formulating a plan, the K students received help from mentors DeLin Shen and Harold Kaefer of Kalamazoo-based Stryker Corp. The team faced different deadlines and tasks throughout the competition and presented its entire process to a panel of judges.

K Senior Instructor of Economics Chuck Stull organized the team.

“I am proud of how well all of the K competitors did and excited to see their hard work recognized,” Stull said. “This project took an impressive amount of work and I’m very appreciative of all the time contributed by the local business mentors. The students learned so much working closely with business professionals from Stryker, Kellogg, Pfizer, Deloitte, Jacobs Engineering, and Chaucer Consulting.”

Stull also thanked K alumnus Joel Mergen ’86 for bring the project to his attention.

“What drew me to [the project] was the experience of working with the mentors,” Toshach said. “I spent more time on it than some of my classes.”

The project happened independently of class, so team members spent their free time working on it. Toshach said the experience of working on a project allowed her insight into a process that would have been difficult to learn in the classroom.

“The material itself is dry, so you need a scenario to add to it right away,” she said. “I think that made a huge difference with the learning experience.”

Todd agreed. “It was cool because you got to learn how it’s applicable, what this stuff actually means in the business world and how we can actually help the customer, even though it was fictitious,” he said.

K Students Part of Monroe-Brown Foundation Internship Program

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Four Kalamazoo College students will be participating in the Monroe-Brown Foundation’s internship program during the summer of 2013. The group is one of the largest K cohorts ever for this competitive program.

The paid internships are augmented with $5,000 scholarships following successful completion. The Center for Career and Professional Development promotes this program alongside its own Field Experience Program and has been building K students’ participation in both.

This year’s Monroe-Brown internship class from K (and the companies where they will work) are: Cassie Thompson ’14, Abraxas; Mark Ghafari ’14, Eaton Corporation; Giancarlo Anemone ’15, LKF Marketing; and Emerson Talanda-Fisher ’15, Parker Hannifin. Interestingly, three of the four participate in intercollegiate athletics–Ghafari in basketball; Anemone and Talanda-Fisher in soccer.

Heyls Feted at K; Most Will Stay

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10 Heyl Scholars
Photo by Tony Dugal

At a May dinner, Kalamazoo College feted the 2013 Kalamazoo county high school graduates who earned Heyl Scholarships for Kalamazoo College (science and math) or Western Michigan University (nursing). The scholarship covers tuition, book costs, and room charges.

The winners are (l-r): first row—-Raoul Wadhwa, Sharifa Amini, Madison McBarnes; second row—-Graeme Timmeney, Marlena VandeStreek, Eric Thornburg; third row—-Andrew Kaylor, Colleen Orwin, Brice Calco; back row—-Christie Goodyke. Not pictured is Quinton Colwell. Attending K next fall will be Calco, Colwell, Kaylor, McBarnes, Orwin, Thornburg, Timmeney, and Wadhwa. Amini, Goodyke, and VandeStreek will attend the WMU Bronson School of Nursing.

K Math Competitors Return to Campus as Prime Primes

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Six math students pose with a trophy
The first- and fifth-place finishers at LMMC 2013!

Two Kalamazoo College math teams came out as “prime primes” at the annual Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition, held this year at Aquinas College. “Prime primes” as in first place and fifth place finishers among this year’s field of 20 participating teams.

The first place team included Tibin John ’15, Fayang Pan ’15, and Umang Varma ’14. K’s fifth place finishers were Matt Mills ’13, Philip Mulder ’15, and Sajan Silwal ’14.

It was Kalamazoo College’s third consecutive first-place finish in the LMMC, and that’s no mean feat according to Professor of Mathematics John Fink. “The teams sign in and are given their packet,” explained Fink. “At 9:30 each team is shown to its workroom, and for the next three hours, members work together to produce as many solutions as they can to the ten problems they are given. At 12:30 sharp they turn in their solutions. In the afternoon, teams make public presentations of their solutions.”

Winners take home what’s called the Klein Kup Trophy. LMMC was first held in 1979 at Kalamazoo College (the site rotates from year to year). K won the first year, and once again about a decade later, and then experienced a Klein Kup drought until its recent three-peat. For many years, participating schools were the liberal arts colleges in the Lower Peninsula, but then other schools got wind of the competition. UM-Flint, UM-Dearborn, Ferris State, and Lawrence Tech, among others, began sending teams. “For most of its history the Klein Kup has traveled back and forth between Hope and Calvin,” said Fink. “But with our recent results the Baptists seem to have finally broken the predestinarian grip that Hope and Calvin held for so many years!”

Pictured are the “prime primes” with this year’s Klein Kup (l-r): front row–Philip Mulder, Matt Mills, Tibin John; back row–Fayang Pan, Sajan Silwal, and Umang Varma.

K Students Earn International Language Scholarships

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Sophomores Luke Winship and Erin Eagan have been named Boren Scholars. The Boren is a national scholarship promoting the study of less commonly taught languages.

Luke will spend his junior year in China studying Mandarin; Erin will spend six months in Senegal studying Wolof.

Boren Scholarships are funded by the National Security Education Program (NSEP), which focuses on geographic areas, languages, and fields of study deemed critical to United States national security. Boren Scholars represent a variety of academic backgrounds, but all are interested in studying languages often considered roads less taken.

K Student Presents at Conference on Japanese Culture

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In April, sophomore Adam Eisenstein joined Assistant Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori to present “Not Lost in Translation: Preserving Japanese Culture in Anime” at the inaugural Michigan Japanese Heritage and Culture Conference at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Adam developed his conference paper extending his analysis of English translations of Osaka dialect in Japanese anime/manga, “Azumanga Daioh.” His work originated in a K class titled “Japanese Language in Society.” Senior Kathleen Reno contributed to the presentation but was unable to attend the conference.