Iraq Expert Will Speak on Campus

Harvard law professor Noah Feldman will deliver a lecture and Q&A titled “Iraq: Is There Any Way Out?” on Friday, May 16, at 7 PM in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room. The event is free and open to the public. Feldman is an adjunct senior fellow at he Council on Foreign Relations. He specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis n the relationship between law and religion, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. In 2003 he served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law, or interim constitution. He is the author of Fall and Rise of the Islamic State; Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem; What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building; and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. He earned his AB (Harvard) in Near Eastern languages and civilizations, his DPhil (Oxford) in Islamic thought, and his JD from Yale Law School.

Charlotte Hall '66 Elected President of ASNE

Orlando Sentinel Editor Charlotte Hall '66 has been elected president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the nation's largest association of daily newspaper editors. Hall was elected Wednesday, April 16, at the association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., and immediately began her term. She will also chair the association's board. Hall spoke at the Capital Conference, which included ASNE and the Newspaper Association of America publishers group. She said a key theme of her tenure would be editors leading change within the industry. She also said the organization should promote "news literacy for young people, helping them to become smart media consumers." Hall was hired as editor and vice president of the Sentinel in 2004, joining the newspaper from Newsday on Long Island, N.Y., where she had held several top management positions.

Diversity Summit Team

A Kalamazoo College team focused on racial and ethnic diversity attended the GLCA Presidents’ Diversity Summit in Toledo in April. Team members included (l-r): Amelia Katanski, English; Zaide Pixley, First-year Experience; President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran; Margaret Wiedenhoeft, Center for International Programs; Joellen Silberman, Enrollment; Karen Joshua-Wathel, Student Development; Sarah Westfall, Student Development; Interim Provost Jan Tobochnik, Physics; Emilia Tse, Class of 2011; and Ahmed Hussen, Economics (not pictured are team members Erik Aiken, Class of 2010, and Laura Andersen, Human Resources). A year in the planning, the two-day summit featured a first day of interaction with fellow GLCA teams and with speakers, thought leaders, and researchers in the area of racial and ethnic diversity. The second day provided each team the opportunity to reflect on what was learned and how it might apply to next steps on individual campuses. The second day’s work complemented the Kalamazoo team’s pre-summit preparation, during which members identified “K”-specific issues, programs, questions, challenges, and solutions in the area of racial and ethnic diversity. The team will meet in late May to create a plan that will lead to improvements in diversity and, in turn, an educational experience excellent for the 21st century.

Visiting Scholar is an Expert on Ancient Egypt

Roger Bagnall will deliver the Kalamazoo College’s annual Phi Beta Kappa Lecture on Tuesday, May 13, at 8 PM in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room. The title of his talk is “Early Christian Books in Egypt,” and the event is free and open to the public. Bagnall is the director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. He is professor emeritus of classics and history at Columbia University, where he also served as curator of the papyrus collection in the Columbia University Libraries. His principal areas of research are in the field of papyrology, and the social, economic, and administrative history of Egypt in late antiquity. His publications include Egypt in Late Antiquity, Demography of Roman Egypt, and Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History. The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available each year 12 or more distinguished scholars who visit 100 colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic society. The purpose of the program is to contribute the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholars and resident faculty and students.

Undergraduates Present Research

A number of Kalamazoo College students recently have presented research at major conferences. Elizabeth Wakefield ’08, Katie Reimink ’09, and Associate Professor of Psychology Robert Batsell attended the 30th Brown Symposium and the annual meeting of the Southwestern Comparative Psychology Association at Southwestern University (Georgetown, Texas). Wakefield was awarded the H. Wayne Ludvigson Outstanding Undergraduate Research Presentation for the work “Effects of inflation on taste-potentiated taste aversion.” A number of students, accompanied by Batsell, participated in the 21st annual Michigan Undergraduate Research Conference (MUPRC), held in Albion. Rose Grose ’08 and Micah Smith ’10 presented the paper “Cognitive Dissonance in Practice: Two Attempts to Increase Recycling on a College Campus.” Other co-authors of that paper were Hallie Hinkhouse ’11, Nicole Pitcairn ’08, and Alyssa Templer ’10. Rachel Brainerd ’08 presented a paper titled “The Interrelation Between Language, Social Referencing Skills, and Infants’ Goal Understanding at 9.5 Months of Age.” Allison Iott ’09 and Alex Gardner ’09 presented a poster titled “Gender Specific Differences in Happiness in Relation to Sexual Experiences Among College Students.” Dennis Guiser ’09 was a co-author on that project. Chemistry majors Zach Denkins ’09 and Nicholas Kelly ’09 (Nick is pictured above, at right) attended the American Chemical Society’s National Meeting in New Orleans. Denkins and Kelly conducted research last summer in the lab of Sherine O’Bare at Western Michigan University. O’Bare has moved to the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Kelly and Denkins will work on their SIPs this summer in her lab at UNCC.

Find Your Fish

Dr. Neil Shubin will deliver the 2008 Diebold Symposium keynote address on Thursday, May 1, at 4 PM in Room 226 of the Down Science Center. Shubin is associate dean of the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago and author of the book Your Inner Fish:A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion Year History of the Human Body. The title of his talk is "Finding Your Inner Fish." The Diebold Symposium is an annual scientific meeting sponsored by the biology department and dedicated to the memory of Dr. Frances "Dieb" Deibold (1900-1989), a member of the department for 44 years. Senior biology majors present the results of their Senior Individualized Projects at the Diebold Symposium. Oral presentations are made as short seminars or as posters, and the entire symposium is open to the public.

"Ain't Got Time To Die"

Exactly halfway through the College’s 175th Anniversary Convocation (Thursday, April 24, Stetson Chapel), the College Singers and Bach Festival Chorus animated the moment with their rendition of the spiritual “Ain’t Got Time to Die.” To animate a moment is a miracle, and this moment, because it was made alive by that song, became equipoise of the College’s past and future. The song celebrates the immortality of what is greater than the self and thus seemed fitting to praise an idea of education (the liberal arts, with its word history rooted in learning and freedom) that has lived for 175 years. That idea includes the call to service, as speaker Thomas Brown ’67 noted when he described one outcome of Allan Hoben’s "Fellowship in Learning:" the evolution of a student’s “best self, and therefore his charter for service to mankind.” Allan Hoben was Tom’s grandfather. Gail Griffin’s talk, “Reading the Stones,” reminded the audience that the educational ideals embodied by the College’s founding spirits, Lucinda and James Stone, are never guaranteed. Those ideals—inclusiveness, the questioning of orthodoxy, intimate and passionate teaching infused with the experience of multiple languages and cultures—are nurtured or threatened by the decisions made by those who stand in the 175-year tradition that is Kalamazoo College. “Those” include you and me. Griffin is the Ann V. and Donald R. Parfet Distinguished Professor of English. Marlene Crandell Francis ’58 recalled the importance of Herbert Lee Stetson’s “Christian spirit and values” central to his vision of the College. In the stones of the chapel built by Hoben and named for Stetson are chiseled the Greek words for “fellowship of spirit.” Like the spiritual the choir sang, the ceremony sought and celebrated what is immortal in Kalamazoo College. Tennis legend Vic Braden ’51 (pictured above) received an honorary degree, and in his acceptance shared the spirit of service and humor. He spoke of his work on behalf of the light that burns in every individual and which should be augmented with access to educational opportunity for everyone. Humor helps remind us of our human limits, and the audience enjoyed Vic’s recollection of a doubles match he and his partner played against Bobby Riggs and an elephant. The pachyderm seemed to enjoy the game immensely. Braden lost the match. President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran called us to the hard work of ensuring that the best of the College's past inspires its future. She also announced the College’s 175th anniversary web site and timeline. The immortality of an idea, an ideal, a spirit, is purchased through struggle. Kalamazoo College ain’t got time to die.

Anniversary Proclamation Issued

Kalamazoo Vice Mayor (and Kalamazoo College professor of economics) Hannah McKinney reads a proclamation at City Hall celebrating the 175-year anniversary of Kalamazoo College and the 50-year anniversary of its study abroad program at the April 21 Kalamazoo City Commission meeting. Listening are (l-r) Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning Community Liaison Teresa Denton, chemistry major Alyssa McNamara ’11, President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, mathematics major Tyrice Fitzpatrick ’11, and Rosemary K. Brown Professor in Mathematics and Computer Science John Fink. President Wilson-Oyelaran used the occasion to discuss the College’s long history of community service and to announce that the College has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The HHMI grant will—among other things—fund programs such as “Keeping the Doors Open,” an after school and summer camp math program that pairs Kalamazoo Public School middle school students with Kalamazoo College students. Alyssa and Tyrice are mentors in the “Keeping the Doors Open” program that is directed by Teresa and John.

So begins the article, “Joining the Guilds” (Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, 4/22), and the words are apt for an institution with a 175-year tradition of being a leader in higher educational innovation. Guilds will take their place in the legacy that includes a fellowship in learning and the Kalamazoo Plan. Guilds coordinator Joan Hawxhurst is quoted throughout the story. The Guilds allow students to engage deeply with an interdisciplinary issue about which they’re passionate. This process occurs in three ways: by building networks with professionals (mostly Kalamazoo College alumni) who share the students’ passion for that issue; by creating a pathway of varied "educational experiences," both academic and non-academic; and by joining “with a group of people across generations, across disciplines, who are excited about thinking about sustainability or about business or about justice and peace.” Some 170 individuals have signed up for the four Guilds—Health, Peace and Justice, Sustainability, and Business—but Hawxhurst says that many more are involved than have actually registered. Not bad considering the initial Guild summit occurred just three and a half months ago.

Alzheimer's Research Draws Interest

In early April senior Biology major Leanne Lawwell (shown in photo, at left) presented a poster at the American Undergraduate Poster Competition in San Diego, Calif. The competition is sponsored by the American Societies of Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (ASBMB). Leanne’s presentation was one of 151 selected from undergraduate students across the country. She was also one of just 17 recipients of an ASBMB Competitive Undergraduate Student Travel Award ($400) based on excellence of her submitted abstract. Her presentation at this international meeting was based on her SIP research work during the summer of 2007 in the lab of Dr. Regina Stevens-Truss, Chemistry. The lab’s major focus is in understanding the role of the enzyme nitric oxide synthase in diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Specifically, Leanne worked on understanding the role of protein kinase c and cellular signaling molecules in the expression of nitric oxide synthase in microglial cells. Microglial cells are involved in the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, and for several years Dr. Stevens-Truss has been interested in understanding the precise nature of that involvement. Leanne’s presentation was well received and drew interest from many scientists. “She performed beautifully,” said Stevens-Truss, who attended the meeting and served as a judge during the student poster presentation. “Leanne explained the work cogently and represented Kalamazoo College well.” Dr. Stevens-Truss will encourage “K” students to attend this meeting every spring. The 2009 meeting will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana next April.

Trash Champ

Recyclemania results are in! Kalamazoo College participated in seven contests and finished in the top 10 in five of those. And those finishes included two firsts and two seconds against a greater number of competitors compared to last year. When it comes to recycling, “K”’s a CHAMP. The 10-week friendly competition is divided into two broad divisions called “Whole Campus” and “Partial Campus.” Kalamazoo College participates in the former, in which the entire college community takes part. Within that division “K” competed in the following categories. Per Capita—collecting the largest amount of acceptable recyclables per person: Kalamazoo College, FIRST of 180 contestants at 75.22 pounds per person. Targeted Materials (Cardboard): Kalamazoo College, SECOND of 160 contestants at 32.29 pounds per person. Targeted Materials (Bottles and Cans): Kalamazoo College, SECOND of 161 contestants at 20.96 pound per person. Targeted Materials (Paper): Kalamazoo College, EIGHTH of 163 contestants at 21.97 pound per person. Grand Champion—the pool of institutions competing in both the per capita and waste minimization (see below) categories and thereby demonstrating the greatest achievement in both recycling and source reduction: Kalamazoo College, FIRST of 88 contestants. The Grand Champion category is expressed as the percentage of total waste generated that is recycled. A high percentage is achieved two ways—minimizing waste and increasing the recycling of the waste you generate. “K” had a whopping 58.93 percent (a greater than 4 percent improvement over last year). The Waste Minimization score expresses in pounds the amount of waste generated per person and, like golf, a low score is better, showing that we are living more lightly on the planet. The College finished 77th of 95 contestants in this category, but its 2008 score of 127.65 pounds per person was a significant improvement over last year’s 137.66 pounds. The Gorilla contest measures in tons the total 10-week tally of recyclables (for obvious reasons more populous institutions usually do better in this category). The College finished 94th of 200 contestants, recycling 48.6 tons of material (almost a ton more than last year). Those 48.6 tons are the equivalent of 826 trees saved. Way to go, “K!” Way to go Recycling Department, whose members give a hearty thanks to everybody in the College community.

Well in Spain

Festival Playhouse’s February production of Lisa Kron’s Well will be performed at Muestra Internacional de Teatro Universitario 2008 (International Student Theatre Festival) in Cáceres, Spain, the week of April 21. To prepare, Festival Playhouse will restage the Tony Award nominated play for one performance on April 18 at 8 PM in Dalton Theater. The event is free and open to the public. The cast of the February production returns for the Dalton reprise and the performance in Spain. Professional actress Sharon Williams plays the role of the mother. All other roles are performed by Kalamazoo College students, including senior Emily Harpe as Lisa Kron. Kron, an acclaimed playwright and performer, is a member the Kalamazoo College Class of 1983. Kalamazoo College Director of Theatre Ed Menta directed Well, which he described as an autobiographical comedy “about wellness, racial integration, and the relationship between a mother and daughter.” In this “solo show with other people in it,” Kron asks the provocative question: Are we responsible for our own illness? The answers she gets are more complicated than she bargained for when the play spins into riotously funny and unexpected territory. Well debuted at the Public Theater in New York in 2004, and was listed among the year’s best plays by the New York Times, AP, the Newark Star Ledger, Backstage and the Advocate. An acclaimed run at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco followed in 2005. The play opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theater in March 2006, and received Tony nominations for Best Actress (Kron) and Best Actress in a Featured Role (Jayne Houdyshell, who played the mother in the Broadway production).

Cleaner Switch

In concert with Green “K” Project and the Sustainability House, Kalamazoo College facilities management has switched to environmentally safe non-toxic cleaning products. Green “K” Project was initiated by Mondy Jamshidi ’06, and its success at Kalamazoo College has prompted a city-wide effort to promote the use of sustainable non-toxic cleaning and household goods in at least a quarter of Kalamazoo homes by Earth Day. “Individual health, public health, and environmental integrity will be the benefits of the effort,” said Jamshidi. Persons interested in Green “K” Project can contact her at buildingwellnessforpeace@gmail.com or 269.720.2150.

Kalamazoo College students pursuing business careers will be able to do so with a Bachelor of Arts degree in business. Faculty recently voted unanimously to add a business major to the catalog for the 2008-09 academic year. Previously, only a single major in Economics and Business was available. The College will continue to offer a major in Economics, a minor in Economics, and a minor in Business. Students also may earn a minor in International Economics and Business. The department also will replace the traditional two-course introductory sequence in microeconomics and macroeconomics with a single Principles of Economics course and wider array of intermediate level microeconomic and macroeconomic electives. The business major combines with other campus initiatives intended to connect the liberal arts educational experience and the world that students will encounter after graduation. These initiatives include career exploration, preparation, and placement assistance from the Center of Career Development; networking opportunities with alumni through the recently-launched Business Guild; and a series of “Business Boot Camps” in which alumni share with students tips for sharpening job search skills.

The Aetna Foundation contributed $20,000 that the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning will use to help Kalamazoo College students work to improve the health of area Hispanics. Students work directly with health care providers, social and legal services workers, and hundreds of Hispanic individuals and families in Kalamazoo and southwest Michigan. Often these students have studied abroad in Latin American and Spain and apply their language and cultural skills to address local issues. Programs include a new service-learning course, “Culture of Health and Disease in the Hispanic Community,” in which teams of students provide health information, education, and interpreter services to individuals and families. Students also work as interpreters for new and expectant mothers at Kalamazoo’s Family Health Center Maternal and Infant Health Program. Through Farmworker Legal Services, “K” students develop and deliver educational programs for area migrant farm workers to help them report and limit their exposure to pesticides. And during summer 2008, three students will serve in community-based internships with local agencies to provide health education to the Hispanic community.

Alumna Awarded Scoville Fellowship

Rebecca Bornstein ’07 was awarded the Scoville Fellowship in International Peace and Security. She is a Scoville Fellow at the Homeland Security Project. Her research focuses on homeland security information and intelligence needs for 21st-century threats, particularly terrorism and infectious diseases. After completing her fellowship, she plans to attend graduate school in the area of strategic studies and the Middle East. She graduated cum laude from “K” with a bachelor’s degree in political science. She studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and conducted research for the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. The Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship was established in 1987 to provide college graduates an opportunity to gain a Washington perspective on key issues of peace and security. Supported by a monthly stipend, Fellows serve as full-time junior staff members at the participating organization of their choice. Bornstein is one of 113 persons to have received a fellowship. Her primary research interests include terrorism, intelligence, and the Middle East.

Olympics Weiji

He doesn’t consider himself much of an athlete, but Guoqi Xu, History, is in the worldwide news a lot these days for his opinion on sports. Xu wrote the book Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008, recently published by Harvard University Press. He also will deliver the College's annual Moritz Lecture in History, "Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: Dangers and Opportunities," on Wednesday, May 7, at 7 PM in the Olmsted Room. The book is about the political uses of sport, particularly China’s century-long dream of hosting an Olympics and excelling in “Western” Olympic games as a means of internationalization or engaging with the outside ideas, forces, and trends that would ensure national survival and enhance international position. The long dream of hosting an Olympics has arrived, and it is a “weiji”—or “crisis”—in the Chinese sense of the word, combining “wei,” or danger, with “ji,” opportunity. With the Beijing Games right around the corner, Xu has been interviewed by many wire services and publications, including The Associated Press (several times), Reuters, Washington Post, Information (an influential Danish newspaper), and others, for his perspective on the Olympic Games and international politics. He’s been invited by institutions throughout the United States and the world to give talks about his book. He’s also published a number of journal articles. An article on a China's European military expedition plan during the First World War appeared in the January 2008 edition of the Journal of Military History. Next month two of his articles will be published. A piece about the People's Republic of China's first participation in the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki will appear in an international journal from a French research center. And his article on the Nationalist Regime's participation in three Olympics (1932, 1936, and 1948) will be published by Chinese Historical Review. In June the Journal of Michigan International Lawyers will publish his article "How to understand China: A Historical Perspective."

Seniors' Anti-Malaria Project Wins Funding

A proposal submitted by three Kalamazoo College seniors, Arianna Schindle, Julianna Weaver and Stephanie Willette, was among the 100 projects funded for $10,000 by the Davis United World College (UWC) Scholar Program. The three women will travel to Thailand to work with local agencies in providing mosquito nets and malaria-prevention education to internally displaced people along the Thai-Burma border. Malaria has been cited in almost half the deaths among this population, and children are the most vulnerable. The three students, along with other students on campus have been raising additional funds for nets. Davis Projects for Peace invited students from schools participating in the UWC Scholars Program to submit plans for grassroots projects for peace, to be implemented during the summer of 2008. The program, in its second year, honors philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who launched the initiative on the occasion of her 100th birthday in 2007. It encourages and supports motivated youth to create and implement their ideas for building peace throughout the world in the 21st century. A competition for the funding took place on 81 of the 88 campuses in the UWC Scholars Program. “We are grateful to the many students, faculty and staff who participated in this year’s competition,” said Executive Director of the Davis UWC Scholars Program Philip O. Geier. “Kathryn Davis is a leader, and what she has set in motion with this important challenge is a growing number of young people committed to putting into place the building blocks for peace.” The winning projects propose specific plans of action that will have lasting effects — from post conflict community building to youth empowerment and education programs to improved community water supplies worldwide to a multitude of agrarian enterprises in countries where famine is pervasive. Students will travel to more than 54 countries over the summer to work on their projects and report on their experiences once they return. A complete list of the participating schools and projects, as well as a summary of the 2007 projects and a video interview with Davis from 2006, is available here.

Syzygy

Not long ago the orbits of four “planets” conjoined in way to suggest something of the peculiarity and value of the Kalamazoo College learning experience. The “planets,” if you will, included a Business Boot Camp (Kalamazoo College alumni in the midst of distinguished careers in the world of business returned to campus to discuss “boot camp” basics for success in that world); a proposal for curricular change by the College’s Distinctiveness Initiative Task Force (DITF); a survey of American business leaders about preparation of U.S. college graduates for business careers; and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a comprehensive test (which the College uses, among others) to assess how well students have learned to think, reason, solve problems, and write, and to what extent improvements, or added value, in these critical skills result from a particular undergraduate learning experience. That’s a mouthful. Let’s start with the survey. Conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as part of its Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative, the survey showed that most employers felt that college educated applicants needed to improve considerably in the areas of global knowledge, self-direction, and writing skills in order to be better prepared to advance within their companies. These employers questioned the effectiveness (as assessment tools) of multiple-choice and general-knowledge tests, preferring learning approaches that provide students experiences in which they must apply what they’ve learned in class to real world settings and assessment methods that measure the ability to perform such application. The best preparation for advancement in business, according to surveyed employers (and “Boot Camp” returnees, see below), included faculty-supervised internships, community-based projects, and comprehensive senior projects. Sound like the “K”-Plan? It’s about to get better. Curricular revisions proposed by the DITF are designed to strengthen elements of the “K”-Plan that contribute to students’ excellent performance on the CLA. Those revisions include three core seminars that better integrate “signature experiences” with classroom academics. The signature experiences include study “away,” (either abroad or in a domestic program like the Philadelphia Urban Studies, GLCA Arts Program in New York, or U.S.-Mexico Border Studies Program), and the SIP. Other new revisions under consideration are an integrated interdisciplinary minor and a global study minor, both of which may help address the higher education deficiencies noted by business leaders. K-Plan business leaders who attended the Winter Business Boot Camp included Gary Lewis ’00, Alex Luttschyn ’00, Ryan Shockley ’00, Samir Gokhale ’03, Alana Shaw ’04, Michael Soenen ’92, Brad O’Neill, ’93, Mike McFall ’94, Jeff Fink ’79, and Fred Fischer ’85.

An Inaugural Reunion

The inaugural address of the Donald C. Flesche Visiting Scholar Lectureship reunites one of the most inspirational teachers in College history with, arguably, the foremost political analyst and journalist of our time. And that’s fitting, given that one of Professor Flesche’s career highlights here (he taught at Kalamazoo College from 1962-1998) was the quarter during which he and David Broder (Washington Post) team-taught a class on the Congress and the President. Broder will lead an informal discussion for students at 4 PM on Thursday, March 6, in the Olmsted Room. At 8 PM in Dalton Theatre he will deliver the first “Flesche Lecture.” The event is free and open to the public. The subject of his talk will be an analysis of the U.S. political scene as the country approaches the 2008 presidential elections. Flesche is professor emeritus of political science, longtime “Voice of the Hornets” at countless athletic events, and a beloved teacher. The lectureship endowment was started by Professor Flesche’s former students as a way to honor his inspirational teaching, and it will ensure that the conversations among learners on campus include the very best scholars in the world. Flesche praised this art of “liberal arts conversation” as one of the most memorable highlights in his teaching career in his address accepting the 1991 Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching. “I enjoy the environment of a liberal arts college by sitting in on impromptu bull sessions of faculty members who are discussing the latest news stories,” he said. “I still find it exciting to hear the views of our philosophers or our biologists or our economists or whomever as the faculty discusses today’s news.”

Rock the Bowl

Despite a two-decade hiatus, the Kalamazoo’s College Bowl quiz bowl team acquitted itself quite well in a regional tournament that took place in East Lansing last weekend. “K” finished in third place, made the play-offs, and posted a 7-2 record in the 10-team round robin. Kalamazoo College victories included wins over the University of Michigan and eventual champ Ohio State University. Sophomore Joel Knight was named to the ACUI Region 7 All-Region team and finished second in scoring in the tournament most valuable player race. The best 16 teams in the country compete in the national tournament, and Kalamazoo College finished just short of a bid to the nationals. “In one or two years, I think we’ll be there,” said senior captain and coach Jimmy Kelly. In addition to Kelly and Knight, team members included sophomores Kyle Lincoln, Mark Morrow, and Anna Williams. Kelly was appointed to his post by Student Activities Coordinator Brian Dietz. Other members were selected to the team after winning Kalamazoo’s campus tournament on February 7. College Bowl produces academic competitions throughout the nation and the world.

College Names New Provost

Michael A. "Mickey" McDonald, Ph.D., will become the new Provost at Kalamazoo College on July 1, 2008. In that position he will serve as the College's chief academic officer with oversight of all educational affairs and activities, including academic personnel. "On behalf of the entire campus community, I want to welcome Mickey to Kalamazoo College," said President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran. "He brings a wealth of experience and an enthusiasm for teaching and learning." McDonald earned his B.S. degree and Ph.D. in mathematics at Davidson College and Duke University, respectively. Since 1993 he has served in a variety of faculty and administrative posts at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He is currently the associate dean for curriculum and academic affairs at Occidental. McDonald replaces Gregory Mahler, Ph.D., who left the provost office in June 2007 to take the position of academic dean and vice president for academic affairs at Earlham College (Richmond, Ind.). Kalamazoo College Interim Provost Jan Tobochnik will continue to serve in the position until McDonald takes over in July, at which time Tobochnik will return to the physics department and his post as editor of American Journal of Physics.

Guilds Gear Up

The four charter Guilds have wasted no time launching their “first-step” projects. The first Guilds Summit occurred January 12 and included breakout sessions (see photo) for each charter—Sustainability, Business, Health, and Peace and Justice. The focus of each breakout was a Spring quarter first-step project. On April 11 and 12, the Business Guild plans a lecture and panel discussion on entrepreneurship. Each event will feature successful alumni entrepreneurs, including Barry Smith ’70, owner of Great Lakes Aviation. The Health Guild will host a symposium on insect-borne diseases on May 16. The event will combine students’ work in the areas of eye health (several students plan to attend an international symposium, Unite For Sight, on public health, eye care, and international development in April) and malaria prevention (K students are involved in the Nothing But Nets effort to provide mosquito bed nets to families in sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is endemic). It will also feature students’ work in Dr. Ann Fraser’s entomology course and Alison Geist’s public health course. The Justice and Peace Guild will sponsor a Hunger Forum on April 29 that will include experts on nutrition and disease. Participants will discuss local and internatonal hunger issues and enourage the campus community to seek ways to contribute to local hunger efforts and larger policy initiatives. The Forum is the brainchild of senior Jennie Smith, who did a social justice internship at the Alliance to End Hunger. The Justice and Peace Guild plans to work with campus food service provider Sodexho and the campus Farms to K organization to possibly develop a Campus Kitchens Program at Kalamazoo College. The Sustainability Guild’s first-step project includes a panel discussion (April 25) featuring alumni experts on environmental issue. On the following day (April 26) student organizations will showcase sustainability projects at an outdoor event that also features networking opportunities and an educational mini-fair for children on the science of sustainability.

Senior Leaders

Nineteen students were honored with the Kalamazoo College 2008 Senior Leadership Recognition Award. Each was nominated by a professor or staff member on the basis of exemplary leadership in academic or extracurricular endeavors or both. Some are athletes, others are active in student organizations, many are involved in service learning and work diligently to improve the lives of others. They were feted at a recognition awards dinner (Febrary 1) that featured remarks by President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, Vice President for Student Development and Dean of Students Sarah Westfall, Associate Dean of Students Karen Joshua-Wathel, and Associate Dean of Students Dana Jansma. The 19 senior leaders are (photo above, l-r): front row—Nora Seilheimer, Elizabeth Lamphier, Sarah Nicholus, Stephanie Willette, Elena Brooks, Arianna Schindle, second row—Leanne Lawwell, Emma Perry, Laura Winkler, Alexandra McCubbrey, Brady Donaldson, Elizabeth Wakefield, back row—Rachel Udow, Marcquel Pickett, Britnei Clark, Jessica Bard, Jeffrey Crapko, Eric Beers, and Zachary Ebling.

Award Winner

The Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) conferred its 2008 New Writers Award in the fiction category to Andy Mozina, English, for his book The Women Were Leaving the Men. The judges praised the 13 stories that make this collection for the quirkiness of the characters and for the range of emotions explored in their circumstances. They also noted Mozina’s mastery of “the unexpected image and ending gesture, so you stop to admire his sentences, at the way he consistently pulls together his stories and ends on moments that bring the human struggle into surprising and clear focus.” The New Writers Award seeks to recognize promising writers and provide undergraduate students an opportunity to meet with writers in early stages of their careers. Three categories receive awards: fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

Complexity Explained

Finally! For those of us who know that chaos, catastrophes, cooperation and competition are facts, not just empty theory, Professor Péter Érdi has written "Complexity Explained." Érdi is Henry R. Luce Professor of Complex System Studies at Kalamazoo. "Complexity" is his fifth book, and it cuts across numerous disciplines including physics, chemistry, life sciences, math, economics, sociology and more, even fine art! The book explains why complex systems research is important in understanding the structure, function and dynamics of complex natural and social phenomena. He presents models of love and war, (turns out that they are not very different), studies the dynamics of urban segregation, opinion formations and drug propagation. According to Érdi, seemingly complex and disparate phenomena such as earthquakes, stock market crashes and epileptic seizures, have similar architecture and are predictive...or at least the limits of their predictability can be understood and widened. Still sound too complex? Relax, says Professor Érdi. "Complexity" is accessible to both science majors and lay audiences. The book, published by Springer, is available from the Kalamazoo College bookstore (and Amazon.com).

Happy Birthday, Kalamazoo College! On April 22, 1833, the College was chartered by the state of Michigan. But it’ll take more than one day to celebrate all that’s transpired from that historic moment. Besides, 2008 marks another significant anniversary: 50 years of study abroad. So mark your calendars for a number of events (starting with a very special Founders Convocation on April 24, 2008, at 4 PM, in Stetson Chapel) and get ready for some fun with a serious purpose: to connect students, faculty, staff (past and present); friends; and townspeople more deeply to the history and values of Kalamazoo College. At the Founders Convocation students will make music, distinguished faculty and alumni will speak, and College pioneers will be honored. On Saturday, May 17, students, faculty, staff, and interested alumni will help mark our birthday with gifts of service to the community our campus has called home for nearly two centuries. Commencement weekend (June 14-15) will feature the publication of the College’s first comprehensive history, A Fellowship in Learning: Kalamazoo College, 1833-2008, written by our very own Marlene Crandell Francis ’58. Homecoming events will focus on the 50th anniversary of study abroad and include panel discussions, various country program reunions, and memorabilia displays. All of us can participate, even if some of us cannot attend, through a history website that will launch later this year and grow throughout the year and beyond. It will contain a timeline of the College’s history, a library of digital images and theme pages (athletics, faculty, student life, and more), and a place for alumni to share their memories and pictures with the entire College community. It’s a special year at a special place. The celebrations won’t be complete without you.

Professor of History Guoqi Xu’s third book, “Convergence of the Civilizations: Chinese Laborers in France during the First World War,” was recently published in both Chinese and French editions. This book examines the case of Chinese laborers in France during the Great War. With the help from members of the Chinese elite and the Chinese government, about 140,000 Chinese laborers were recruited by the British and French governments during World War I to support their fighting against the Germans. By focusing on this rarely studied group of Chinese who became directly involved with the Great War and Western civilization, the book addresses questions such as why China wanted to send its laborers to help the British and French governments; who those laborers were; what happened to them when they arrived in Europe; what kind of treatment they received in the West, and most importantly, what role they played in the Chinese search for a new national identity and internationalization, as well as what contributions these largely illiterate Chinese made in the fusion of Chinese and Western civilizations. Both editions include about 200 rare photos. Professor Xu’s fourth book, “Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008,” is scheduled to be published in March 2008 from Harvard University Press. Its Chinese version, through the arrangement of Harvard University Press, will be published in late Spring 2008 by Dong Fang Chubanshe in Beijing.

McKinney Named to Top NLC Policy Leadership Post

Hannah McKinney, professor of economics (and vice-mayor of Kalamazoo), has been appointed to chair the National League of Cities’ (NLC) CityFutures Panel on Equity and Opportunity in 2008. The panel identifies emerging challenges resulting from inequalities based on race, economics, and demographics, and it shares strategies to reduce municipal poverty, increase affordable housing, and address diversity and racial justice. “The year ahead will be critical for the future of this country – and for our cities and towns,” said NLC President Cynthia McCollum, who announced McKinney’s appointment. “I will look to Hannah’s leadership on this important panel to define our expectations and sharpen our message on behalf of cities and towns.” McKinney is a co-author of Tapping the Power of City Hall to Build Equitable Communities: 10 City Profiles (along with Kalamazoo College colleague Kiran Cunningham, Anthropology and Sociology, Phyllis Furdell from the NLC). The book looks at ten cities and the actions their leaders took to increase employment, reduce blight, improve living standards, and create more equitable allocation of city resources in low-income neighborhoods. The cities range from Burien, Wash., with a population of under 32,000 to San José, Calif., with nearly 900,000 people. Other cities include Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Kalamazoo.

Professor Publishes Book on Sexual Equality

Professor of Political Science Amy Elman’s third book, Sexual Equality in an Integrated Europe, has been published by Palgrave Macmillan Press. The book had its genesis in a series of lectures in her Kalamazoo College course, “The European Union: Institutions, Actors, Aliens, and Outcomes,” and it has generated considerable praise. “Elman offers a much needed critical appraisal of the European Union’s (EU) gender equality initiatives,” wrote Myra Max Ferree, professor of sociology and director of the Center for German and European Studies at the University of Wisconsin. “With a sharp eye for the gap between rhetoric and reality, she exposes how the language and politics of integration increase expectations of equality but actually allow member states and the transnational polity to avoid responsibility for implementation….Elman reveals how women of color, lesbians, and immigrants fall through the cracks of ‘gender’ policy-making in Europe, a failure that has implications for all women who place their hopes for equality in the modernization of gender regimes that the EU exemplifies.”

Open Doors for Keeping the Doors Open

A grant from TG Public Benefit will help Kalamazoo College keep the doors open of “Keeping the Doors Open,” a math program that pairs Kalamazoo College mentors with 40 students from Kalamazoo Public Schools’ three middle schools. The focus is on math, a door, says Professor of Mathematics John Fink, which opens to many career paths. “And more so than many disciplines, math requires an uninterrupted commitment over all the pre-college years of schooling. So closing the door on math in middle school in effect limits a far greater number of opportunities.” Middle school is the critical time to keep open math, and math-related, opportunities, and “Keeping the Doors Open” is not a remedial program. Twice a week, for two and a half hours, the selected middle schoolers, who are good at math and members of groups traditionally underrepresented in math and science, meet with and learn from their Kalamazoo College mentors. Parents of program participants are actively engaged in the program, meeting with a parent liaison to learn how to best advocate for their children. TG’s grant funds a third of this year’s program’s cost. Other supporters include the Moses Kimball Foundation, the Harold and Grace Upjohn Foundation, Kalamazoo Public Schools, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning LaPlante Endowment. The program is administered by the Institute for Service-Learning.

The National Science Foundation has awarded chemistry professor Regina Stevens-Truss a grant to support research designed to help explain how a crucial enzyme in the human body does its work. But most importantly, says Stevens-Truss, the grant provides Kalamazoo College students with an avenue to develop their critical thinking about research while doing something they feel is state-of-the-art and meaningful. “It’s an incredible opportunity to get undergraduate students, especially those from groups underrepresented in scientific research, immersed into hands-on laboratory work as early as the first year,” she says. Stevens-Truss and her students will map interactions between the enzyme nitric oxide synthase (NOS) and a chemical called calmodulin. NOS is found in many different kinds of human cells. Its main product, nitric oxide, plays a role in important body functions, such as the regulation of blood vessels and the signaling that goes on between nerve cells. Diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s may be linked to the improper regulation of nitric oxide levels. “What we don’t know is how regulation is achieved and what parts of the molecule need to be regulated,” says Stevens-Truss. NOS has many moving parts, so to speak. How do cells in one instance use it efficiently, while others have a hard time? Stevens-Truss and her students will examine NOS closely by taking it apart, studying the pieces, and then trying to put it back together.

College Commits to Climate Neutral Campus

Kalamazoo College recently joined 347 other colleges and universities as a signatory to the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, a pledge by the institutions’ leaders to sharply reduce and eventually eliminate their emissions that contribute to climate change. Kalamazoo College is the second college in the State of Michigan to sign the document. President Wilson-Oyelaran has established a campus wide committee, chaired by Director of Facilities Management Paul Manstrom, which will create a comprehensive institutional action plan to move towards climate neutrality. In addition, in the short term, the College will require ENERGY STAR certification for products purchased by the university, continue its participation in the Recyclemania Waste Minimization competition, and launch a campaign to reduce campus waste currently going into landfills. These efforts build on ongoing commitments to sustainability, including the College’s nationally recognized recycling program, the anticipated silver level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for the renovation of the College’s student center, and the “Farms to ‘K’,” a program administered through the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute of Service-Learning. The program promotes local sustainable agriculture and the use of locally grown food in the College’s food services operation, one beneficial effect of which is reduction in transportation emissions. For her work on this program, Kalamazoo College student Holly Anderson was one of five students in the United States to receive the 2007 Howard R. Swearer Student Humanitarian Award.

Citizen

Kalamazoo College seeks to educate citizens “at home in the world,” but what exactly does that mean? Professor of Mathematics John Fink’s Fulbright Scholar experience in Ecuador provides an example. In 2003 John went to Ecuador to teach linear algebra at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), a four-year private college. He did much more. He developed a program to help improve math skills of students at Colegio Quitumbe, a public school in the south of Quito. He organized a group of USFQ students to tutor sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, a project modeled after “Keeping the Doors Open,” a summer-fall math camp for middle school students funded by Howard Hughes Medical Institute that John administered at Kalamazoo College. Both the U.S. and Ecuador programs share a goal to inspire kids with the potential of educational opportunities in general and of mathematics specifically. During his Fulbright work in Ecuador John also organized a weekly professional development workshop for teachers. All this giving gave back. Says John, “The work I did in Ecuador has taught me much about what I can do in the U.S. to address problems in mathematics education.” In spring 2007 he returned to Ecuador (Fulbright Senior Specialist grant) to provide a workshop for high school teachers of calculus, whom John described as “my heroes.” World citizenship may defy a simple definition, but service-learning become a habit of heart is a key component.

Many know the exclamation: “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.” But careful researchers guard against the reverse—“I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”—with confirmatory studies. Such studies are particularly important when the results of an initial study are compelling enough to provoke a EUREKA! response. Such was the case when Kalamazoo College students (members of the Class of 2006) first took the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a direct measure of the effect of specific four-year undergraduate experiences on students’ development of critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and writing—the skills one seeks from the college experience. The test accounts for the quality of the students (based on their college entrance exam scores) thereby isolating the effect of particular undergraduate curriculums. Our students' performance on that first test showed that the Kalamazoo College learning experience adds value well above expected to the development of the higher order thinking skills college should develop. In fact, in the initial CLA, a direct measure of educational outcomes, Kalamazoo College placed in the top 2.6 percent of the 113 institutions that participated. Fast forward a year: on August 10, 2007, the College learned the results of its second CLA test (members of the Class of 2007). According to Paul Sotherland, Biology, the results of this second test confirm the first. “Our seniors this year performed essentially the same as our seniors last year, scoring in the 10th decile, better than 90 percent of seniors at other institutions,” said Sotherland. “This year’s data show that last year’s were not a “fluke” of having a bunch of particularly good students, from a particularly good class, take and blow the top off the CLA. I’ve always believed—and seen—that Kalamazoo College is doing something very effective for the development of higher order thinking skills. Now I know my seeing is not a matter of my believing, and that’s exciting!”

Fulbright Five (and More)

Five Kalamazoo College graduates have received Fulbright U.S. Student Scholarships. Each will travel abroad for the 2007-2008 academic year and be one of more than 1,300 U.S. citizens using a Fulbright to study abroad this year. Nathaniel Krefman ’06 will study biology in Spain; Megan Martin ’00 will travel to Mexico to study communications. Rachael Rehberg ’07 and Kyle Hartwell ’07 will focus their year of postgraduate study abroad on the subject of teaching English as a foreign language, and they will do this work in Germany. Emily Cornwell '07 will study biology in Australia. Cornwell and Krefman earned their bachelor’s degrees in biology; Rehberg and Hartwell in German studies. Martin earned her bachelor’s degree in English. Fulbright scholars are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Two other members of the Class of 2007 will study abroad during the upcoming academic year, supported by German University Fellowships. Kim Carsok will study at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität-Erlangen-Nürnberg, and Peter Schneider will study at the University of Bonn.

Assessment Leaders

Assessing the effect of a college education on the development of the skills and habits of mind for which people attend college has been identified as a top priority by the U.S. Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Among other factors, globalization is expanding competition in a knowledge-based economy and the cost of college is too high not to know what works best for developing critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and effective writing. Through a grant from the Teagle Foundation, Kalamazoo College is taking a leadership role in assessment, and this leadership is evident in a paper, “Multiple Drafts of a College’s Narrative,” published in Peer Review (Spring 2007, Vol. 9, No. 2). Authors Paul Sotherland, biology; Anne Dueweke, institutional research; Kiran Cunningham, anthropology; and Bob Grossman, psychology; present results of an ongoing analysis of factors influencing the performance of Kalamazoo College students on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). Kalamazoo College seniors performed very well on the CLA. Their performance, when compared with that of first-year students, showed an exceptionally high value added by a Kalamazoo College education to the development of critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing. In fact, the value added was in the “well above expected” range, along with two other institutions of the 113 that administered the CLA in 2005-2006. The ongoing analysis described in this paper suggests some of the Kalamazoo College undergraduate experiences responsible for the “value-added” effect and prompts tantalizing questions about what the College can do to maximize and broaden this effect to all students.

Just As Well

Nothing’s rotten in the state of Festival Playhouse’s 44th season: an array of great plays that combine themes of wellness and justice. Main stage performances include Shakespeare’s Hamlet (an all-female version), the Midwest premier of Well (written by Broadway playwright, actress, and Kalamazoo College alumna Lisa Kron), and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches. The College’s Dungeon Theatre will stage Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, and SubUrbia, by Eric Bogosian. The season also features the annual “Senior Performance Series” in which students direct one-act plays. Main stage performances are held in the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse, and tickets for opening nights are $1 at the door only. All other performances are $15 for adults, $10 for students and senior citizens. Dungeon Theatre ticket prices are $5 at the door only. For more information, call 269.337.7333 or visit www.kzoo.edu/theatre. To see the schedule for the 44th season, titled “Just as Well: Seeking Wellness Through the Ties That Bind Us,” click here.

8 P.M. "Early Christian Books in Egypt," the Phi Beta Kappa Lecture by Roger Bagnall, New York University, Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room, LAC

8 P.M. "Move This Earth," spoken word preformance by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, featuring poetry and music on the issues of growin up Asian-American, cultural pride, political activism, immigration, sexual assault, and violence against women, Dewing Hall Room 103, LAC

8 P.M. Talk on Sexual Assault, Megan Chuhran, PorchLight Counseling Services, provides information on sexual assault and its effects, Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room, LAC

8 P.M. "Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches," playwright Tony Kushner's drama set in the AIDS epidemic during Ronald Reagan's presidency, Nelda K. Balch Playhouse, LAC

10:30 A.M. Refreshments and Music; 11 A.M. Jama: "A Day for Gracious Giving," students in "Cool Cities" and "Building Blocks" classes talk about buiding and engaged community, Stetson Chapel

4 P.M. Plagues and Pests: Insect Borne Diseases and Related Issues, the Health Guild presents a symposium featuring student presentations and keynote speaker Bruce Benton '64, who will discuss his work at the World Bank on the treatment and prevention of onchocerciasis, a parasitic disease spread by black flies, Dewing Hall Room 103, LAC

6:30 P.M. World Night, street dances and music from throughout the world, Dalton Theatre, LAC

8 P.M. "Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches," playwright Tony Kushner's drama set in the AIDS epidemic during Ronald Reagan's presidency, Nelda K. Balch Playhouse, LAC

Day of Gracious Giving, the College's 175th Anniversary Salute to the City of Kalamazoo, check here to register for volunteer sites/projects

8 P.M. "Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches," playwright Tony Kushner's drama set in the AIDS epidemic during Ronald Reagan's presidency, Nelda K. Balch Playhouse, LAC