students

Top 25!

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Rob Townsend stands with two students
“Recycle Rob” Townsend (center) with two student “RecycleManiacs.”

Kalamazoo College placed 24th overall in 2013 RecycleMania, a friendly (and eco-friendly) sustainability competition among colleges and universities that focuses on waste minimization and recycling. More than 600 schools in the United States and Canada participated this year. 2013 was an off-year for K compared to its performances of previous years; nevertheless, it finished in the top 25 in six of the competition′s eight measurement categories.

RecycleMania began in 2001 as a competition between two schools. More schools were invited in the following years. Kalamazoo College joined the fun in 2005 and quickly became a two-time first-place winner in the recycled bottles and cans category. The College won grand champion in 2008 and enjoyed three consecutive top-five overall finishes before 2013.

The K recycling program was started in 1992, with Rob Townsend–a.k.a. “Recycle Rob”–as its beloved leader. Sustainability is one of the pillars of the Kalamazoo College honor code. In 2007, President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment.

Like K, Recyclemania is a small entity that makes a big difference. Calculations for the 2011 Recyclemania  results show the combined efforts of participants that year prevented the release of 127,553 metric tons of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent to the release of greenhouse gas emissions from 25,000 passenger cars. That′s big!

At K, students can help the earth year round. They can use “The Bat Cave” in the basement of Dewaters Residence Hall. The Bat Cave houses the Resource Exchange Program where students have donated numerous items for reuse.

Bat Cave also is home to HUB (Helping Understand Bikes). HUB students fix and rent bikes. And don′t forget to bring your e-waste (computers, printers, cartridges, cell phones, calculators, etc.) to the Bat Cave. The recycling program is always looking for student workers. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Fourteen Comes in ’13

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Author Vaddey Ratner
Vaddey Ratner, author of  “In the Shadow of the Banyan”

Kalamazoo College marks its 14th annual Summer Common Reading (SCR) program in Fall 2013 with The New York Times bestseller In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner. SCR is the first step in Kalamazoo College′s first year experience. The assigned reading and short written responses lead to discussions with fellow first-year students, faculty and staff among other readers.

SCR began in 1999. Each year the author of the selected text visits campus and reads and discusses the work with the incoming class during orientation week. This year’s novel focuses on the character of Raami, a five year old girl living in Cambodia’s capital city at the time of the Khmer Rouge coup. “Often, when students first read a SCR selection, they don’t usually like the characters. But when the students interact with the author they become really involved, and they begin to enjoy the texts”, said Zaide Pixley, dean of the first year and advising.

In the Shadow of the Banyon was suggested by Writer in Residence Diane Seuss, one of three members of an SCR team that evaluates and determines each year′s selection. Other members are  Pixley and Marin Heinritz, assistant professor of English and journalism. According to Pixley, potential selections must be  “recent, appealing, well written, and intercultural. The author must be willing to visit campus and have the ability to engage with eighteen-year-old readers.”

During the summer the students are asked to write a response paper based on one of several prompts. Orientation week discussions focus on the responses and continue into the classroom with first year seminars. First year seminars were added to Kalamazoo College′s curriculum in 1990. The seminars develop the critical thinking and writing skills that are necessary for college-level work. Seminar professors read the SCR selection and students’ written responses, meet with the author during orientation, and discuss the book with their seminar classes.

Each seminar class is assigned a peer leader, an upperclassman student who mentors first-years and fosters community among the seminar members. Peer leaders often participate in the first year forums, special events that focus on the goals of the First Year Experience. Many of the forums connect back to the issues and perspectives raised in SCR discussions.

All members of the K community are invited to read In the Shadow of the Banyan before classes start this September. Author Vaddey Ratner will visit the campus on Friday, September 12, to read from her novel at 8 PM in Stetson Chapel. She will discuss her work with students at 10 AM on Friday, September 13.

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.