William Weber Chair of Social Science Amy Elman receives the 2025 Lux Esto Award from President Jorge G. Gonzalez during Founders Day events at Stetson Chapel on Friday, April 25.
Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo receives the Outstanding First-Year Advocate Award from President Gonzalez at Founders Day.
Dow Associate professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Perez receives the Outstanding Advisor Award from President Gonzalez at Founders Day
Amy Elman, the William Weber Chair of Social Science, is this year’s recipient of the Lux Esto Award of Excellence as announced today during the College’s Founders Day celebration, marking K’s 192nd year.
The award recognizes an employee who has served the institution for at least 26 years and has contributed significantly to the campus. The recipient—chosen by a committee with student, faculty and staff representatives—is an employee who exemplifies the spirit of K through selfless dedication and goodwill.
At K, Elman has taught a variety of courses within the political science, women’s studies and Jewish studies departments. During her tenure, she has also been a visiting professor at Haifa University in Israel, Harvard University, SUNY Potsdam, Middlebury College, Uppsala University in Sweden and New York University.
Elman has received two Fulbright grants, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a grant from the Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew University. She has written three books: The European Union, Antisemitism and the Politics of Denial (2014); Sexual Equality in an Integrated Europe (2007); and Sexual Subordination and State Intervention: Comparing Sweden and the United States (1996). She also edited Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge (1996). In the 1997–98 academic year, she was awarded K’s Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for outstanding scholarship.
In accordance with Founders Day traditions, two other employees received community awards. Dow Associate Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas–Pérez was given the Outstanding Advisor Award and Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo received the First-Year Advocate Award.
Before arriving at K, Vargas-Perez worked as an adjunct instructor at Western Michigan University, where he earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic.
Vargas-Perez has taught courses at K in data structures, algorithms, parallel computing, computing for environmental science, object-oriented programming, and programming in Java and web development. His research interests include high-performance computing, parallel and distributed algorithms, computational genomics, and data structures and compression.
Jazz quartet Liam McElroy (piano), Laura DeVilbiss (flute), Garrick Hohm (string bass) and Adam Cornier-Bridgeforth (drums) performed at the Founders Day celebration.
President’s Student Ambassadors Ava Williams ’26 and Madeline Hollander ’26 introduced President Gonzalez at the 192nd Founders Day celebration.
President Gonzalez recognized the students who served this year as President’s Student Ambassadors and shared the names of 13 more who will serve beginning this fall.
Nominators said Vargas–Pérez has consistently gone above and beyond his responsibilities as a professor to promote learning while finding opportunities for his advisees.
Arias-Rotondo has earned significant funding in support of her research and her commitment to engaging students in hands-on experiences in her lab. A $250,000 grant in 2023 from the National Science Foundation’s Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS) provided funding for student researchers, typically eight to 10 per term. In 2024, she received a $50,000 American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund grant, which will support her and her students’ upcoming research regarding petroleum byproducts. H.
Arias-Rotondo teaches Introductory Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Structure and Reactivity, and commonly takes students to ACS conferences. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Nominators said she has been a dependable, inspirational and fierce advocate for students.
Gonzalez also recognized the students who served as President’s Student Ambassadors in the 2024–25 academic year and introduced those who will serve the College beginning this fall in 2025–26. As student leaders, President’s Student Ambassadors serve as an extension of the president’s hospitality at events and gatherings, welcoming alumni and guests of the College with a spirit of inclusion. About 15 students serve as ambassadors each academic year. The students selected show strong communication skills; demonstrate leadership through academic life, student life or community service; and maintain a minimum grade-point average.
The 2024-25 ambassadors have been:
Jaylen Bowles-Swain ’26
Christopher Cayton ’25
Kyle Cooper ’25
Blake Filkins ’26
James Hauke ’26
Maya Hester ’25
Madeline Hollander ’25
Gavin Houtkooper ’25
Katie Kraemer ’25
Isabelle Mason ’27
Alex Nam ’25
Tyrus Parnell, Jr. ’25
Isabella Pellegrom ’25
Addison Peter ’25
Maxwell Rhames ’25
Emiliano Alvarado Rescala ’27
Amelie Sack ’27
Dean Turpin ’25
Ava Williams ’25
The 2025-26 ambassadors succeeding this year’s seniors will be:
Kalamazoo College announced today that it’s launching plans to build new residence halls on its historic campus, a step that reflects the College’s long-term commitment to enhancing student life and academic experiences as detailed in its latest campus master plan.
Construction on the project along West Main Street in Kalamazoo will begin in May of this year and is currently scheduled for occupancy in fall 2027. The buildings will primarily house juniors and seniors and provide space for 218 beds. Progressive Companies is designing the building and Owen-Ames-Kimball is constructing.
“K is a college that offers a top-notch, world-class education,” Vice President for Student Development Malcolm Smith said. “Our students deserve to live in buildings that draw in the academic experience and match that education. When people start to see the pictures and the construction equipment on campus, we think there will be a lot of buzz because construction means investment.”
Kalamazoo College will hold a ground breaking in June on a project to build two fully accessible, barrier-free residence halls that will consist of two towers, both four floors high, connected by a common space to create an L shape with universal design.
The new residence halls are part of an effort to meet a growing need for affordable, on-campus housing as off-campus housing costs continue to increase. The growing popularity of an already strong study abroad program also is prompting a demand for on-campus housing each midyear as students return from overseas. Yet Smith notes that there are even more important, tangible benefits to students who reside on campus.
“You see a higher retention rate and therefore a higher graduation rate when students stay on campus,” Smith said. “Students have increased access to resources, community, co-curricular programs, interactions with their peers, the faculty and services. Studies have shown that on-campus living can lead to measurable increases in academic success, critical thinking skills, life-skill development, belongingness and more. There are so many benefits to a full residential model, and we’re trying to recapture that.”
Smith said the additional residence hall space makes it more likely students will stay on campus for four years, while providing students with a “coming home” feel. Student input was sought early in the planning process to capture their needs and hopes for the new facilities.
The fully accessible, barrier-free residence halls will consist of two towers, both four floors high, connected by a common space to create an L shape with universal design. It will provide green space and help form another quad on campus with Crissey and Severn residence halls while maintaining K’s Georgian architectural styles. The common space inside will be accessible to all students and include a community kitchen, a marketplace, a terrace with outdoor seating that faces the community, and a hall lounge suitable for presentations and programming—similar to K’s Olmsted Room in Mandelle Hall.
Privacy will increase for the students living there as occupants move deeper into the building’s village-style living spaces. About 88% of the rooms will be single occupancy and 12% will be double occupancy, to suit the needs of upper-level students.
Passers-by will see carport-like solar panels that will supply electricity to the halls, where a parking lot covers a geo-thermal field, providing heating and cooling to the new halls. K’s nearby Hoop House, a greenhouse used by students for all-season produce production, will stay in its current location. As completion nears, locally sourced furnishings will be installed toward the end of summer 2027.
The cost of the project is expected to be about $55 million with $25 million in funding provided by a 2023 anonymous donation. Energy tax credits estimated at $4.64 million and bonds will also contribute to the financing.
“The last new residence hall was built on campus in 1967,” said President Jorge G. Gonzalez. “A lot has changed since the 1960s and this investment will help meet the modern needs of students while also providing space that can reduce the College’s carbon footprint and operating costs, compared with older facilities. Living on campus plays a vital role in student life, and we are excited for all the ways these new halls will enhance that experience for K students.”
A groundbreaking ceremony for the project is being planned for June.
Ariadne Markou ’25 will graduate in November from the dream school she never actually thought she would attend, in a field she didn’t anticipate studying, with a plan to pursue the one career she was sure was not for her.
A Kalamazoo Promise student, she dreamed of attending Kalamazoo College when she was young. In high school, however, she struggled with undiagnosed ADHD and her emotional health.
She took time off from school after graduation, working as a receptionist in a law firm, before starting classes at Western Michigan University.
“I wanted to be a cosmetic dermatologist, and I was asking my sister, who’s a science teacher, a lot of questions, and she was like, ‘Oh, these are biochemistry questions,’” Markou said. “So, I went to Western to major in biochemistry and Japanese.”
When biochemistry turned out not to be a good fit, she took another break from school. While considering a major in art or economics, she enrolled at Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC), where she joined the honors program.
When a K representative visited the program, Markou saw a path back into her original dream. In fall 2023, she came to K as a 22-year-old transfer student.
“The honors program at KVCC was very writing intensive,” she said. “There was an emphasis on having connections with professors, and it was an experience like I’d never had before. Coming to K has been a great transition, because I still have the opportunity to write and to have connections like I did there.”
A paper she wrote at KVCC analyzing the “work for hire” doctrine and copyright law helped her overcome her child-of-lawyers resistance to the idea of being an attorney, a career that aligns well with the interdisciplinary approach offered by K.
“I loved the puzzling involved in the legal analysis, and I realized this is something that I’m passionate about,” Markou said. “I want to do everything, but I have one life. I would stay in school if I could, just to learn everything, because I would love to be a software engineer; I would love to do philosophy; I would love to do biochem and learn every language I could. I like how diverse of a field law is, because I could do medical malpractice one day and criminal defense the next.”
In her Senior Integrated Project, Ariadne Markou ’25 examines the social and cultural value of creative expression and draws upon legal theories and copyright law to suggest potential improvements in American legislation to better protect creators.
Markou works at the 9th Circuit Court and as a social media manager for a law firm. She wants to be an attorney at a law firm, but more importantly, she wants to be happy in life.
At K, Markou continued to study Japanese while selecting a major in anthropology/sociology and a minor in philosophy. While not officially fulfilling the requirements for a concentration in critical theory, she has taken as many classes in the program as possible and currently serves as the departmental student advisor.
Markou has packed maximum engagement into her compressed time at K. She participated in the Humanities Integrated Locational Learning (HILL) Project, traveling to San Diego to study the representational politics of art on the border, constructing and maintaining border identities, and how art makes community. She performed summer research with Nupur Joshi, assistant professor of anthropology and sociology, on legal considerations in the Mukuru informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. Markou also served on student government and is president of the law student organization.
Relationships have made her experiences possible and valuable.
“I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had,” Markou said. “My professors have been the biggest supporters, and I’m lucky to learn from such brilliant people. My life has been enriched, not just educationally or intellectually, but also personally. It’s awesome being in an environment where you hear so many different perspectives and have people who can call you on things and say, ‘Hey, that might not be correct,’ and do it with such dignity and respect that you know that you’re valued. I’m proud of the relationships that I have with my current professors, my family, my previous professors. It makes everything so worthwhile.”
When it came time to choose a Senior Integrated Project (SIP), Markou found herself reflecting on how her previous research into ownership and theft of creative work tied into timely conversations around generative artificial intelligence.
“I’ve always loved art and music, and I think there’s something irreplaceable when you’re engaging with works created by humans,” Markou said. “Thinking about AI generating these works was really unsettling for me.”
Markou researched and wrote a SIP in the anthropology and sociology department, titled “Creativity in the Age of AI: A Critical Examination of Artificially-Generated Works.” Under the guidance of her SIP advisor, Benjamin Kampler, assistant professor of anthropology, Markou delved into legal and social issues involved in the interplay of generative AI and the creative industry.
Her SIP examines the social and cultural value of creative expression and draws upon legal theories and copyright law to suggest potential improvements in American legislation to better protect creators. Throughout the process, Markou learned and struggled, found surprises and challenges, and leaned on input and support from family, friends and faculty.
Kampler and Markou joined the K community at the same time, and navigated the SIP process, new to both, together. Kampler helped particularly when Markou struggled to find sociological theories about art and met during the summer to review her work.
Markou’s lawyer parents offered feedback on the writing and terminology, and a former professor at KVCC agreed to read a draft and provide input. Markou’s partner, a computer engineer, shared his expertise, as did Alyce Brady, the Rosemary K. Brown Professor in Computer Science, and her husband, John. Their help proved vital, as one of the challenges that arose was that Markou does not have a background in computer science.
“It was frustrating at times, but I’ve long accepted that it’s OK to not get things the first time, so I treated the difficulty of not knowing about AI as an opportunity to learn,” Markou said.
Even for those with a computer science background, it can be hard to stay current with AI’s constant evolution—another challenge Markou faced, both in finding relevant resources and in shaping her own paper.
“AI is adapting and increasing so rapidly that articles are not publishing in the timeline that can keep up with it,” Markou said. “I ended up sticking to a lot of theoretical articles about AI; I can’t talk about specific developments because it will be outdated so quickly.”
Despite writing broadly, Markou acknowledges her finished SIP has probably already fallen victim to this trend. When she presents at the anthropology and sociology department’s Hightower SIP Symposium this spring, she plans to offer a disclaimer that her research may not reflect the current situation.
A less serious challenge, yet eminently relatable for K seniors and alumni: Formatting her paper to fit correctly in the SIP folder.
“Honestly, one of the craziest things was having to physically print it out and put it in the folder,” Markou said. “I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, like, ‘Does anybody have a screwdriver? I need to take out part of this three-hole punch, because I need two holes.’”
As she learned about generative AI and expanded her knowledge on copyright laws, Markou was surprised to discover how inaccessible AI training databases are.
“I thought that training databases would have been a lot more transparent,” she said. “I thought it would be understandable, if people had the knowledge, computer engineers or computer scientists, I thought people in those fields would at least know, but they don’t. I ended my paper with a couple suggestions, and one of them was to have increased transparency on databases, because it allows artists to come forward and say, ‘Hey, my stuff was in here, and I didn’t agree to that.’ I really was put off by how hard the use of source materials was to see and understand.”
She also continued to develop in appreciation for creative work, from the Mona Lisa to improvised jazz to fan fiction.
“Art and creation have never been a means to an end,” Markou said. “There’s so much value in connecting with people, in stories being told. AI is great as the occasional assistive tool, but it has never been, and it will never be, a replacement for humanity. I’ll use ChatGPT to help explain things, but I would never ask it to write something for me, because there’s no me in that. I don’t care if my work’s perfect; I just want to be proud of it. I hope people see that there is such deep value in being an autonomous person existing in the world.”
Outside of her K-Plan, Markou works at the 9th Circuit Court in Kalamazoo and as a social media manager for a law firm, has been a youth board member at the Southwest Michigan chapter of the Red Cross, and skis (for fun now—she skied competitively when she was younger). She volunteers with Gentiva Hospice, visiting patients and even sitting with them as they pass away. That experience has helped her develop perspective.
“We only get one life,” Markou said. “I want to be an attorney, but what matters most is that I want to be content; that is my big goal in life. My dad always told us, ‘It doesn’t matter what grades you get; it doesn’t matter if you get the highest paying job; I just want you to live a life surrounded by things that you love,’ and I try to live my life that way.
“I’m proud of myself for finding this path. It was hard to get here, and here I am. I’m figuring this out. I am so grateful for that.”
A local activist known for constructing the first legally built tiny house in the county will be a keynote speaker for the 2025 Sustainability Senior Integrated Project (SIP) Symposium at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.
Ben Brown will address the symposium in a lecture titled Rumors of Hope. A writer and international speaker, he will discuss his years of public engagement through social justice movements, urban farming, food sovereignty, energy sovereignty and economics.
Brown, who grew up on a family farm in Southwest Michigan, is also an expert in the affordable-housing movement and is a founding member of the Kalamazoo Electric Vehicle Association (KEVA). He continues to be involved in environmental and conservation work and is credited with helping to preserve several cultural resources.
In 2017, Brown provided WMUK Radio with a video tour around his tiny house, which measures less than 270 square feet. Kalamazoo Valley Habitat for Humanity assisted in the house’s construction.
The SIP Symposium will feature student presentations representing a variety of academic departments at K and include research on topics such as food access, marine eco-systems, sustainability transitions for public transportation in Kalamazoo, sheep grazing and soil health, carbon sequestration and more. K recently featured one of the SIPs, a project on coral reefs in the Philippines by Brooke Dolhay ’25, on its website.
Writer and international speaker Ben Brown will discuss his years of public engagement through social justice movements, urban farming, food sovereignty, energy sovereignty and economics at the 2025 Sustainability SIP Symposium at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.
If you’ve ever played the game Spot it!, then you know it’s both disarmingly simple and endlessly replayable. Each card features eight symbols, and between any two cards in the game deck, there is always one—and only one—matching symbol. Several variations change the mechanics, but the goal always remains the same: Be the fastest player to spot and name the matches.
What is the secret to the game? How does it work? Well—it may come down to math.
On April 29, at 7 p.m. in Dewing Hall Room 103, Sarah Koch will deliver a talk titled “Spotting the Math in Spot it!,” this year’s installment of the George Kitchen Memorial Lecture at Kalamazoo College. The lectureship provides an opportunity for mathematicians to speak about their work in a way that is accessible to high school students and math educators.
“We’ll play Spot it! and explore ways to answer various questions about the game,” promises the description for the talk. “We will discover that there is a remarkable amount of mathematics underlying this game, including a tantalizing mathematical mystery.”
Koch, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, researches complex dynamical systems, working to understand the infinitely complicated structure of beautiful fractals that emerge. She holds two Ph.D.s in mathematics, one from the Université de Provence in Marseille, and one from Cornell University. She is the director of the Math Corps at U(M), a summer camp for middle schoolers and high school mentors from Ypsilanti and Detroit, and the organizer of the Math Mondays in Ypsi Program, which has temporarily been replaced with Super Saturdays. In addition to doing math, she enjoys teaching, working with students and making kindness chains.
Stephen Oloo, associate professor of mathematics at Kalamazoo College, said Koch was suggested as a speaker by a visiting professor who had graduated from U of M.
“I did a bit of research and could see she loves doing this kind of talk,” Oloo said. “We don’t choose just any mathematician. Our speakers are always active research mathematicians, and they like to give math talks aimed at an early high school sort of student. They like outreach. They tend to have a few talks prepared that are pitched at just the right level.”
Sarah Koch, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, researches complex dynamical systems and will deliver the 2025 Kitchen Lecture through a game with math ties titled Spot It!
Spotting the Math in Spot It!
What: The 2025 George Kitchen Memorial Lecture at Kalamazoo College, given by Sarah Koch, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
Oloo said the math department at K communicates the intent and audience of the lectures to the speaker, who chooses his or her own topic.
“I know this talk is going to be good,” Oloo said. “It strikes me as it will probably have a lot of combinatorics, what you can think of as advanced counting, which tends to have interesting results while being very accessible. From the nature of the game, there are all kinds of interesting questions you could ask. When you deal out a hand of Spot it! cards, how many possible different combinations are there? How big does the deck have to be? If you dealt two or three or four cards, what would they have in common and different? I’m sure she’ll have some surprising things for us. Probably she’ll talk about strategy. There are probably ways to approach the game that you could figure out by studying the math.”
The lecture’s target audience of high school students honors George Kitchen, who was a local mathematician and teacher and firmly believed that a love for mathematics and its applications could be cultivated in every student. In the 1980s, Kitchen helped start a regular gathering at K of college and high school math teachers called Calculus Connection, along with John Fink, Kalamazoo College professor emeritus of mathematics.
“George was a wonderful teacher, and he was really demanding, but he would always support his students in what he demanded of them,” Fink said.
When Kitchen died, members of Calculus Connection decided to fund an endowment to support a lecture series to honor Kitchen’s memory. The George Kitchen Memorial Lecture at Kalamazoo College was founded in 1999 and has taken place every spring since, excepting a hiatus from 2020-2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Obviously we think math is important, and math and science knowledge, education, literacy, are good things,” Oloo said. “This has been a good way to get students in the area excited about math, to show them that math is not just this dull thing.”
The talks also build local connections and help improve K’s visibility with area high schoolers. A whole community has developed over the years, with the audience often including not only math teachers and high school students and their parents, but also former students of George Kitchen as well as parents of long-grown children who first experienced the lectures when their children were in high school and continue to attend.
“I’ve seen how popular these can be, the surprising number of people intrigued by mathematical ideas,” Oloo said. “My hopes are good attendance, and that people would leave feeling like they’ve learned something—both that it was fun, and that they are now a little bit more knowledgeable.”
For example, the 2024 speaker brought a statistics and probability lens to, among other things, conspiracy theories such as the Lincoln–Kennedy coincidences urban legend that points out a large number of similarities between the two presidents, including the fact that their assassins were both known by three names composed of 15 letters.
“He was diving into the numbers, and things you encounter that seem almost spooky, but in this talk, you realize, ‘Oh, it’s not that weird.’ It’s just a function of doing the math, how many people we have on the planet,” Oloo said. “It was a great lecture where people in the audience who knew probability have thought about these things and know how the numbers work, while for many of us, it’s new, and you could learn something that actually alters how you view the world. I’m not a big statistics guy, and I left that talk armed with this new piece of knowledge. When I encounter people claiming, ‘Oh, this is a really spooky coincidence,’ now I can say, ‘No, it’s just the numbers. It’s not that weird.’”
The music of a modern-day pop star helped a Kalamazoo College class discover last term that poetry, despite its history and ancient beginnings, still shapes how we as humans can sort through our emotions and define our identities. As a result, if you feel a need to be expressive in April, which serves as National Poetry Month, don’t just shake it off. Learn instead from Visiting Assistant Professor Monique McDade and the students who took Reading the World and Identities: Taylor Swift and Other Tortured Poets.
Swift could aptly be described as a tortured poet, sharing her intense emotional conflicts, acute sensitivities and tendencies to dwell on life’s darker aspects through her music, just as many great creatives have throughout history. Modern music itself is a form of poetry, characterized by its expressive language, rhythm, rhyme and ability to evoke emotions and tell stories, often in a way that resonates with a broad audience, particularly through song lyrics. These poetic elements make Swift a strong choice of performers to study alongside writers from Angelou to Wordsworth.
“It’s been an interesting class for me as a teacher because I’ve been a Swifty since I was 15, which was about the same age she was at the time,” McDade said. “Now, I have the chance to talk about her and teach her to a new generation.”
McDade was surprised to learn how few of the students going into the class would’ve counted themselves among Swifties, who self-identify as big Taylor Swift fans. She said out of 19 students in the class, only four said they were among the die-hard followers. That presented an opportunity.
“I was scared going in that we would’ve just been geeking out with no critical capacity,” McDade said. “Instead, I’ve heard, ‘I’m skeptical of this or that,’ and it’s been really fun to watch them soften to her. When we think about her as a poet rather than a pop artist, I think students get a different perspective, so those that are maybe not considering themselves fans walk away with a different respect for what she’s doing, even if it’s not their taste.”
Students pursued course assignments that consisted of readings about poets, a podcast and weekly reflections—pondering how they themselves might be considered tortured poets.
“Every week we had a prompt related to the course content, where I asked them to write a poem,” McDade said. “Some of them hated it, some of them loved it and some of them have grown to love it, but it’s been really beautiful. They were reading Taylor Swift or another poet, and they wrote a poem in reference to it or responded to it in some way. It’s showing how being an artist is about relating to other people. It’s OK if what they write seems to be insignificant or unimportant to the rest of the world, because Taylor has built an entire empire off of it.”
The podcast project grouped students together to create four episodes and a complementary blog that explored how different influences can shape the identity of an artist like Swift.
“In our contemporary age, nothing is more influential than the internet,” McDade said. “I wanted students to think about engaging ethically in online conversations about someone like Taylor Swift. We live in an age where people like to say a lot of things online that they wouldn’t say in person to someone.”
McDade’s favorite podcast title was “The Asylum I Grew up in.” The group included Grace Barber ’28.
“We decided on the title for our podcast because we wanted to have some fun playing on a Taylor Swift lyric, but also we wanted to capture some of the seriousness of the topic we were discussing,” Barber said. “‘The asylum where they raised me’ is a lyric from a song our group loves, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, and hints at the brutal nature of the media we were talking about.”
Students make their final presentations in the winter 2025 session of Reading the World and Identities: Taylor Swift and Other Tortured Poets.
Students in Reading the World and Identities: Taylor Swift and Other Tortured Poets pursued course assignments that consisted of readings about poets, a podcast and weekly reflections.
The podcast examined different so-called asylums that Swift faced during her formative years, such as the media spotlight or being a female in the music industry.
“Speaking for myself, looking at Taylor Swift as a poet throughout this project and course really expanded what I define as a poet,” Barber said. “Exploring the identity of being a ‘tortured poet’ and applying it to anyone, not just historic poets and artists, really connected listening to Taylor Swift’s music with many common experiences of girlhood, womanhood and growth through hardship. Literature and poetry can encompass a lot more things than I had previously thought of with English class, and I had so much fun in this course listening to music and poetry in a new way.”
National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 to highlight the importance of poetry and poets in culture while encouraging the reading, writing and appreciation of poetry.
“A big thing with this course, as with National Poetry Month, has been that we wanted to make a case for the importance of poetry,” McDade said. “On my syllabus, we pull a quote from author Julia Kristeva about poetic language as a destabilizing force to social norms or to power structures. In some ways, this gets interpreted as madness, so the students have been able to think about the things that torture them. Here on campus, a lot of them will talk about feeling not good enough, and because that resonates with Taylor, a lot of her lyrics talk about that, too. It’s been fun to think about poetry not as something elitist or highbrow, but as something all of us can practice. Maybe we’re not all going to make careers off of it, but we all certainly can practice it.”
Join vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Isabella Pellegrom ’25 when she shares new music from her upcoming second album, tentatively titled Lavender Bushes. The event—at 7 p.m. Friday, April 18, in Recital Hall at Light Fine Arts—will serve as her Senior Integrated Project concert performance.
Pellegrom released her first album, Nomadic Tendencies, in 2022. She said she decided to produce a second album for her SIP with inspiration from her brother, Jory, who she says is a fabulous guitarist and songwriter himself.
“I have distinct memories of sitting beside him as he played and wrote,” Pellegrom said. “There are three songs on the album—For a Cent, Oil Spills and Lines in Between—that were originally written by him. As he never had a chance to produce them himself, I wanted to take his songs and make them my own, whether that be in the arrangement for the studio version or getting to collaborate with him on finalizing lyrics. The album was then filled up with songs that I wrote throughout my years at Kalamazoo College.”
Pellegrom notes that some of the songs, such as the title track and In My Back Pocket, have been stashed away for an album since her first year at K, meaning they’re more polished. Others—such as Rainbows, So Sweet, Ocean Tides and Better Left Unknown—she fell in love with because they had a certain lyric or feel while going with the healing, introspective nature of the new album.
Pellegrom is a biochemistry and music double major and a member of the Chemistry Club at K. She’s also been a President’s Student Ambassador, representing the College at formal events for community leaders, alumni and donors as an extension of the president’s office. Plus, she has participated in inorganic chemistry research and completed a summer clinical research program at the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern.
As a musician, Pellegrom is a member of the Academy Street Winds, the Kalamazoo Jazz Band, the College Singers and the Limelights a cappella group. However, the songs on her SIP album are special, she said, because they are a representation of the creative growth she has experienced over the past four years.
“I wrote them during experiences of joy, sadness, confusion and clarity; all the while discovering more about who I am and who I want to be,” Pellegrom said. “Since writing my last album, I have continued to feel grounded in songwriting and I’ve found inspiration in nature.
“The biggest difference from the last album is that this one feels even more rooted in my personal emotions and events. I want to keep finding my voice through my lyrics and my sound through how I am feeling. This album is an exploration of the beauties found within the world. Even more, to me this album represents healing in its many forms and the ways in which I heal. I find healing through joyous moments with friends, through love felt in relationships, through support during moments of hardship and most of all through music. I hope that these songs are in any way healing for those who listen as well.”
Isabella Pellegrom ’25 sang music from “Nomadic Tendencies” during Founders Day in 2023.
Lavender Bushes Demos
Get a taste of whatPellegrom will perform at 7 p.m. Friday, April 18:
Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez announced today that he will retire from his position at the end of his contract on June 30, 2026, after 10 years leading the institution.
“Serving as K’s president has been the greatest honor of my life,” Gonzalez said. “After nearly a decade, it is a job I still look forward to every day, which makes this announcement so bittersweet for me. It has been a privilege to work alongside the exceptional faculty and staff, administration and Board of Trustees to guide K’s strategic priorities and provide transformative opportunities for our students, and I intend to finish my term with the same commitment and enthusiasm I brought to my first day at K.”
“The Board of Trustees has deeply appreciated President Gonzalez’s leadership. He leads with vision, optimism, wisdom, and trust,” said Board Chair Jody Clark ’80. “He approaches problem-solving with the analytic lens of an economist and the empathy of a humanitarian. He successfully brings the College’s mission to life for students, faculty, staff and alumni. He is totally committed to the success of our students. While we would love to extend his tenure at K, his retirement is well-deserved.”
Gonzalez became the 18th president of Kalamazoo College in 2016. In his time at K, Gonzalez has overseen strategic planning efforts designed to enrich curricular and co-curricular experiences, foster an inclusive and supportive campus for all, strengthen financial and enrollment sustainability and modernize K’s historic campus.
Campus renewal projects have included replacing the aging natatorium with a new 29,600-square-foot, LEED-certified two-story facility. The natatorium, which opened in 2021, hosts the College’s athletics events and other community programming. Additional projects have included a new Admission Center, renovations to Stetson Chapel, updates to classroom spaces to improve technology and flexibility of use, significant maintenance to Dow Science Center and the replacement of electrical and thermal systems across campus. Future projects include the construction of two new residence halls, slated to start in the summer of 2025, which will increase access to on-campus residential life for K students.
A fierce champion of the liberal arts and the benefits such a comprehensive education provides, Gonzalez has worked with administration, faculty and staff to expand access to K for talented students around the nation and the world. Incoming classes during his tenure have been among the most diverse by a number of demographics, with increased growth in first-generation and Pell-eligible college students. Ensuring access to all aspects of the K-Plan, the institution’s approach to a personalized, integrated curriculum, has also been a key focus. Additionally, athletic opportunities have expanded under Gonzalez’s leadership, with improved strength and conditioning programming and, most recently, men’s and women’s track and field returning to the list of varsity sports.
Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez announced Monday, April 14, that he will retire in June 2026.
Kalamazoo College Board of Trustees Chair Jody Clark ’80 will lead a national search for a new College president. President Jorge G. Gonzalez announced today that he will retire in June 2026.
In 2020 and 2021, Gonzalez guided the campus through the COVID-19 pandemic, working closely with the Board of Trustees and his administration while empowering faculty and staff to plan and make decisions. His collaborative approach helped K protect its community and support students in continuing their academic progress during an unprecedented global crisis.
In 2021, Gonzalez led the public launch of the Brighter Light Campaign, the institution’s largest fundraising campaign to date, which focused on support for student access to every facet of the K-Plan and investments in the institution’s faculty, instructional spaces, athletic programming, and other aspects of campus life. The campaign concluded in 2024 and exceeded two fundraising goals ($150 million and $190 million respectively), raising a total of $203,236,489 from more than 16,500 donors.
A 30+-year veteran in higher education, Gonzalez previously served as Occidental College’s vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college from 2010 until 2016. Prior to Occidental, Gonzalez was an economics faculty member at Trinity University for 21 years.
He earned a B.A. in economics from the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Monterrey, Mexico, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University.
Gonzalez is the president of the Board of the F.W. and Elsie L. Heyl Science Scholarship Fund, the chair of the Board of the Great Lakes Colleges Association, the Michigan Independent Colleges and Universities, and the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association and serves on the boards of the Annapolis Group, the American Council on Education, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, Bronson Healthcare Group, Kalamazoo Community Foundation, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. He served as the president of the International Trade and Finance Association in 2014.
The Board of Trustees will begin a national search for Kalamazoo College’s 19th president in partnership with Storbeck Search, a leading search firm in higher education and nonprofit leadership. A search committee comprised of trustees, faculty, staff, students and alumni will be chaired by Board Chair Jody Clark ’80.
An author and scholar of Islam in South Asia will deliver the 2025 Thompson Lecture, sponsored by Kalamazoo College’s religion department, at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in the Olmsted Room.
Ayesha Irani is an associate professor of Asian studies at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She specializes in Islam in South Asia, the literature and history of Bengal and Bangladesh, Sufism, Islamic art, translation studies and Middle Bangla codicology.
Irani’s lecture, titled “The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation, and the Making of Bengali Islam,” will draw from her book of the same name and examine the Nabivamsa of Saiyad Sultan, the first Bangla language biography of the Prophet Muhammad, revealing the power of vernacular transition in the Islamization of Bengal.
The Paul Lamont Thompson Lecture, named for the K president who served from 1938–49, brings in speakers who enrich the ethical understanding of the College’s position in society. The lecture was established by a gift from Thompson’s sons and daughters-in-law to recognize the crucial role he played in guiding the College through the Depression and World War II.
Author and scholar of Islam Ayesha Irani will deliver the 2025 Thompson Lecture at Kalamazoo College.
Amy McNutt ’25 is being honored as one of 232 students from across the country for her exceptional efforts to advance nonpartisan student-voter registration, education and turnout efforts at Kalamazoo College in the 2024 election cycle.
The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge has named McNutt, a Civic Engagement Scholar with K Votes, to its fourth annual ALL IN Student Voting Honor Roll. K Votes is a non-partisan coalition that informs K students, faculty and staff members about voting and civic engagement through the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement (CCE). This is the third-consecutive year that a K Votes Civic Engagement Scholar has received the award.
By integrating nonpartisan voter registration and education into campus life, colleges and universities can have a measurable impact in encouraging students to become active and engaged citizens. McNutt helped her peers register to vote, learn about the issues at stake, and find information on critical ballot measures in local and state races in 2024 through K Votes.
“Working in voting education and mobilization spoke to me when I took this role because it was a way for me to use my political science education to help my community here at K,” McNutt said. “Helping other students register to vote, facilitating meaningful conversations about our political systems, and evaluating current events with students has allowed me to share this knowledge and learn many lessons from my peers.”
The CCE has worked with dozens of faculty and staff for more than 15 years to support student-voter engagement. In recent years, CCE staff and paid student Civic Engagement Scholars have built community connections and campus structures with K Votes. Those efforts have helped hundreds of students through quarterly voter education events, democratic advocacy and activism, and the countless individual efforts by students to get their votes cast.
Amy McNutt ’25 (middle) helped her fellow Kalamazoo College students register to vote last fall. For her efforts in that and more as the K Votes Civic Engagement Scholar, she has received recognition on the ALL IN Student Voting Honor Roll.
“Rather than being a divisive topic, our events about politics have created rich learning environments where students of all backgrounds have learned from one another,” McNutt said. “Working with young adults—some of the voters with the most barriers to voting in the nation—is one of the most important aspects of this work to me. Building a campus that is civically engaged not only helps remedy this age disparity in voting, it gives students the tools to be civically engaged citizens for a lifetime.”
The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge empowers colleges and universities to achieve excellence in nonpartisan student civic engagement. With the support of the ALL IN staff, campuses like K that join the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge complete a set of action items to institutionalize nonpartisan civic learning, voter participation and ongoing engagement in our democracy on their campus. The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge engages more than 1,000 institutions that enroll more than 10 million students in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
“Whether they hosted nonpartisan voter registration drives or early voting celebrations, the students honored today made sure their peers did not sleep in on Election Day,” said Jen Domagal-Goldman, executive director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. “With 100,000 local elections happening across the country in 2025, ALL IN students continue to ensure that everyone on their campuses has the information they need to cast their ballot. The 232 Student Voting Honor Roll honorees lead by example, making nonpartisan voter participation a lifelong habit for themselves and their peers.”
