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Kalamazoo College Guilds:
Bridging Communities, Connecting Professionals,
Developing Leaders
The Kalamazoo College experience includes study abroad, career externships and internships, student organizations, and the Senior Individualized Project. These signature experiences complement the College’s rigorous academics in the liberal arts. The combination of these elements provides Kalamazoo's graduates with a distinctive education.
Now a new initiative will connect students with alumni and engage both with current world challenges. As a result, the program will help students integrate the elements of their particular K-Plans as well as their undergraduate and post-undergraduate paths.
The Kalamazoo College Guilds will bring together alumni and current students, faculty and staff around interdisciplinary issues that affect today’s world. These voluntary membership organizations will integrate experiences and classroom learning and provide networking opportunities in order to bridge the students’ liberal arts education with the world they will encounter upon graduation. Guilds will connect students to mentors, foster leadership among students, and allow participants to understand and practice their potential to improve the world through their work.
The idea behind the Guilds is based on the emerging body of literature about “communities of practice.” Corporations and organizations have developed ways for groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic to deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Group members may not work together every day, but they meet because they find value in their interactions. Communities of practice create value by connecting their members’ passion and professional development for the betterment of their organizations.
The Kalamazoo College Guilds will create value in similar ways. Guilds will provide:
1. connections between the elements of the K-Plan that result in a more integrated undergraduate experience;
2. professional development for students;
3. networking/relationship-building opportunities for both students and alumni;
4. opportunities for alumni participation, fostering lifelong connections to college;
5. a sense of college community that crosses disciplines and class cohorts and is shared by students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends;
6. the engagement of collective expertise and experience to form new perspectives and insights into global issues;
7. distinctiveness for Kalamazoo College;
8. opportunities for leadership development;
9. strong town-and-gown connections; and
10. the opportunity to critically review and modify the College’s core curriculum.
Work related to Guilds is occurring now on campus. Examples include service-learning and faculty partnerships on course innovations; the Discovery Externship program; the presentation of related SIPs in public symposia; alumni engagement with students during events like Homecoming and in employer recruitment sessions. The Kalamazoo College Guilds have the potential to weave together distinctive threads of the undergraduate experience into a lifelong connection to the college.
A committee of faculty, staff, students and alumni, has recommended the support of four initial pre-guilds: Environmental Sustainability, Business, Justice and Peace, and Health. A “pre-guild” is formed when a critical mass of students and alumni coalesce around one of these areas of interest. Pre-guildss may apply to a Guilds Council for official status. Once approved, the new Guild will have access to funding and support. Guild members will have electronic and face-to-face opportunities for communication and connection. Guilds may host speakers, conferences, and gatherings both here and elsewhere. They may undertake projects that build upon passion for, and professional development in, their area of interest. Specific outcomes are not prescribed and will depend on the energy and interests of the Guild’s members.
For information on how to become part of a Kalamazoo College Guild,
contact the initiative coordinator, Joan Hawxhurst, at (269) 337-7384 or joan.hawxhurst@kzoo.edu.
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Online Meeting Places
guilds.kzoo.edu
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