People in the News

Tim Moffit, Economics, was elected member-at-large of the Board of Directors of Delta Dental of Michigan, one of the largest dental plan administrators in the nation.

Richard Koenig, Art, is one of three photographers featured in an exhibition titled "Almost Reality." The exhibition occurs May 14 through June 11 at the Dayton Visual Arts Center (118 N. Jefferson Street, Dayton, Ohio). Its collection of altered photography and photographic installations explores ways in which photography does (and does not) represent reality.

Bob Batsell, Psychology, and students Katie Reimink '09 and Leigh Ann Ulrey '11 traveled to San Antonio, Texas, in April to present their behavorial neuroscience research at the annual meeting of the Southwestern Comparative Psychology Association. Reimink delivered the lab's oral presentation--"CS-US Interval Determines Overshadowing or Potentiation in a Taste-Taste Compound," which also featured Ulrey, Batsell, and Kalamazoo College alumna Elizabeth Wakefield '08 as co-authors. Reimink earned the H. Wayne Ludvigson "Outstanding Paper Presentation" award for her work. Reimink, Batsell, and Ulrey are pictured at left.

Tom Rice, Art, is one of 27 U.S., Canadian, and British artists participating in "The Luster of Silver," an exhibition at the Evansville (Ind.) Museum of Arts, History, and Science. The exhibition runs from June 28 through September 13 and offers a selection of exceptional drawings executed in silverpoint medium, which is characterized by a shimmering and hauntingly memorable look. Silverpoint is a very demanding medium requiring consummate draftsman skills. Marks are made with fine or sterling silver on a prepared ground--erasures are impossible--and the resultant drawing slowly oxidizes to the warm golden brown of tarnished silver. The medium has endured for more than eight centuries. For additional information contact the Museum at 812.425.2406 or check its website. In other news, Tom is one of 30 artist across the state whose work was selected for the Michigan Masters Invitational art exhibition at the Kresge Art Museum in East Lansing. The Michigan Masters exhibition opened on May 2 and runs through July 31. Two paintings from Rice's "Cosmology" series will be exhibited, and one will be reproduced in a catalog of the exhibition.

Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, President, has received the 2009 Glass Ceiling Award from the Kalamazoo Network, an educational organization whose mission is to advance the self growth and success of women in their roles within the community. Since 1994, the award has recognized a woman in the Kalamazoo community who is either the first or one of a few women in her field to break through gender barriers on the path to career success. Previous Glass Ceiling Award recipients include Kalamazoo Valley Community College President Marilyn Schlack (1996); Kalamazoo County Juvenile Court Judge Carolyn Williams (1997); Caroline Ham and Betty Lee Ongley, the first woman mayor of Kalamazoo and first woman mayor of Portage, respectively (2002); and former superintendent of Kalamazoo Public Schools Janice Brown (2005). Dr. Wilson-Oyelaran is the first woman and first African-American to serve as president of Kalamazoo College, a post she has held since July 2005. This year's Glass Ceiling Award will be presented at the network's annual May 12 dinner meeting.

Members of the Stephanie Vibbert Women’s Leadership Research Team—seniors Sara Nestor (middle) and Heather Myers (right) and Associate Professor of Psychology Karyn Boatwright—traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, in March to present research titled “College Women’s Conceptualization of Effective Leadership: Changes Over a 4-year Liberal Arts Education”at the 34th annual Association for Women in Psychology (AWP) conference.  Rachel Brainerd ’08 and current seniors Kristie McAlpine, Kelly Bauer, Leigh Ann Ulrey, Andrea Potthoff, and Katie Keegan contributed to this longitudinal study of women’s leadership perceptions and aspirations.  The conference featured the theme of “Feminist Empowerment Through Unity and Diversity” and provided researchers with an opportunity to share their findings in an inviting, collaborative atmosphere. 

Amy Elman, Political Science, is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies.  She has begun a new project on the European Union and its efforts to combat anti-Semitism.  She recently presented her work at Harvard’s Center and soon departs for Europe and Israel’s Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew University.

Writer-in-Residence Di Seuss has won the Juniper Prize, a very prestigious annual poetry prize from University of Massachusetts Press. Her second book, The River Purrs and Burns, was selected by the poet James Tate from several hundred manuscripts. The honor includes publication of the book and a cash award. Two of her poems recently were published by Blackbird and two new poems will be forthcoming in The New Orleans Review. Seuss also learned that Poetry (circulation: 30,000), which prints about 300 poems a year from 90,000 submissions, will publish her poem "Song in my Heart" later this year. Seuss also had a villanelle accepted for an anthology of villanelles co-edited by Patricia Smith and Annie Finch. That book will come later this year.

An exhibit titled "photographic prevarications" by Associate Professor of Art Richard Koenig is part of a two-artist show called REALITY CHECK at the Pictura Gallery in Bloomington, Indiana.

Lanny Potts, Theatre Arts and Provost Office, completed a project as the lead design consultant for the newly opened professional Farmers Alley Theatre. He provided the lighting design for Farmers Alley's inaugural production of "A Few Good Men."

Péter Érdi, Physics and the Center for Complex Systems Studies, will travel to Munich, Germany, to attend a Workshop on Computational Neuropsychiatry, a new field that has emerged in the last five years. He is one of only four speakers from the U.S. Érdi was the featured speaker in the College of Information Science and Technology (IST) Colloquium Lecture Series at Pennsylvania State University. Érdi, an expert in network models and social dynamics spoke in the Cybertorium on the Penn State campus. The Colloquium Lecture Series is held by graduate students in the IST 590 course. The students bring in several speakers each year and host a series of seminars led by experts that explore in-depth the areas within IST and related disciplines. Érdi recently became a member of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Committee. During the summer he gave an invited talk, “The Schizophrenic Brain: A Broken Hermeneutic Circle,” at the International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks in Prague. He also gave an invited lecture at the Institute für Neuroinformatik in Zurich. He also published a paper, “Impaired associative learning in schizophrenia: Behavioral and computational studies,” in Cognitive Neurodynamics 2 (207-219)(2008). The paper describes work done in collaboration with Dr. Vaibhav Diwadkar (Wayne State University). Kalamazoo College students Brad Flaugher and Trevor Jones were coauthors, along with Érdi’s Hungarian students and co-workers. During his sabbatical (Fall 2008) Érdi presented lectures in Texas, Washington, D.C., and Japan. Subjects included the complex systems perspective of institutional decision making mechanisms; computational psychiatry; the complex systems approach to social systems; and how concepts of evolution fertilized complex systems theory.