Category: Alumni

Career Summit Featured Speaker: Drew Dumsch ’90

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Registration for Career Summit 2018 is now closed. Students who are interested in attending but have not registered are welcome to stop by the registration table in the Hicks Student Center atrium before the session they would like to attend. Walk-ins will be accepted as space permits, especially on Saturday. See the Career Summit schedule online by clicking on ‘Agenda.’

A distinguished group of alumni will join Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists for Career Summit 2018. The event is two days of practical preparation April 6 and 7 for Life after K. Drew Dumsch ’90, the founder and president/CEO of The Ecology School, continues our series of features highlighting our speakers for the event. To learn more, visit our Career Summit 2018 news story.

Drew Dumsch ’90

Founder and President/CEO, The Ecology School

Drew Dumsch
Drew Dumsch ’90 is the founder and president/CEO of The Ecology School, a residential environmental learning center on the southern coast of Maine. He will be one of the featured speakers at Kalamazoo College’s Career Summit 2018.

Drew Dumsch is the founder and president/CEO of The Ecology School, a residential environmental learning center on the southern coast of Maine. Since its founding in 1998, The Ecology School has educated more than 175,000 children and adults and trained more than 350 ecology educators through the science of ecology and the practice of sustainability.

Drew is currently leading a capital campaign to purchase the 105-acre River Bend Farm in Saco, Maine, and over the next two years construct the most sustainable residential environmental learning center in the country. The Ecology School at River Bend Farm will include a full-scale agroecology farm operation, community environmental education programs, field ecology research and buildings constructed and certified under the Living Building Challenge and Living Community Challenge through the International Living Future Institute. River Bend Farm will be a 21st Century Education Center for Resilience, Healthy Communities and Conservation.

Drew has had leadership positions with the Maine Environmental Education Association and the New England Environmental Education Alliance and is also active with the North American Association of Environmental Education and the Residential Environmental Learning Centers national network. Drew earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Kalamazoo College and his master’s degree in English from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Drew is scheduled to speak during the following sessions of Career Summit 2018:

  • Roadblocks and Potholes: Surmounting Inevitable Challenges, 8:30 a.m. April 7
  • Start-Up 101: From Dream to Successful Venture, 10 a.m. April 7
  • Social Entrepreneurship: Finding Solutions to Community Problems, 10:45 a.m. April 7
  • Crafting a Whole Life: How Work Fits with Family, Community, Self-Care and Fun, 11:30 a.m. April 7

Other Scheduled Speakers

Career Summit Featured Speaker: Carolyn DeWitt ’04

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Registration for Career Summit 2018 is now closed. Students who are interested in attending but have not registered are welcome to stop by the registration table in the Hicks Student Center atrium before the session they would like to attend. Walk-ins will be accepted as space permits, especially on Saturday. See the Career Summit schedule online by clicking on ‘Agenda.’

A distinguished group of alumni will join Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists for Career Summit 2018. The event is two days of practical preparation April 6 and 7 for Life after K. Carolyn DeWitt ’04, the president and executive director of Rock the Vote, is the third in a series of features that will highlight our speakers for the event. To learn more, visit our Career Summit 2018 news story.

Carolyn DeWitt ’04

President, Executive Director at Rock the Vote

Carolyn DeWitt
Carolyn DeWitt ’04, a passionate and lifelong champion of the democratic process in the U.S. and abroad, has a diverse background in government, politics, international development, education and in the financial sector.

A passionate and lifelong champion of the democratic process in the U.S. and abroad, Carolyn DeWitt ’04 has a diverse background in government, politics, international development, education and in the financial sector.

It was during her time in South Africa, meeting with parties critical to the collapse of the apartheid system and the subsequent building of a democratic state, that Carolyn witnessed the power of youth movements. Convinced of the absolute necessity of a health democracy for marginalized groups, she continued on to work in Kenya, participating on the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission during an election year. Carolyn also served as senior international advisor to a youth political movement and potential presidential candidate in Madagascar.

Back home in the U.S., on the national political stage, Carolyn coordinated satellite media booking operations at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, training teams of volunteers and staffs and coordinating surrogate media appearances alongside DNC and Obama for America staff. On the local government level, Carolyn has worked as chief of staff at the Office of Chicago Alderman Daniel Solis, and as deputy campaign manager and finance director for the 25th Ward Regular Democratic Organization.

Shortly after relocating to Washington, D.C., Carolyn took up the position of director of special projects for a thriving start-up that sought to leverage technology to provide clinical services to persons with special education and development needs in less-developed countries. She has also provided services for therapists working in DC public schools. For the 2014 election cycle, Carolyn served as chief of staff at Pivot, a political communications firm.

Carolyn studied international and African studies, political science, psychology and women’s studies and earned her bachelor’s degree in political science and international and area studies from Kalamazoo College. She sits on the board of Coworker.org.

Carolyn is scheduled to speak during the following sessions of Career Summit 2018:

  • Dinner and Opening Plenary, 6 p.m. April 6
  • Thriving as a Woman in the Workplace, 10 a.m. April 7
  • Social Entrepreneurship: Finding Solutions to Community Problems, 10:45 a.m. April 7
  • Crafting a Whole Life: How Work Fits with Family, Community, Self-Care and Fun, 11:30 a.m. April 7

Other Scheduled Speakers

Career Summit Featured Speaker: Bill Duane ’94

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Registration for Career Summit 2018 is now closed. Students who are interested in attending but have not registered are welcome to stop by the registration table in the Hicks Student Center atrium before the session they would like to attend. Walk-ins will be accepted as space permits, especially on Saturday. See the Career Summit schedule online by clicking on ‘Agenda.’

A distinguished group of alumni will join Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists for Career Summit 2018. The event is two days of practical preparation April 6 and 7 for Life after K. Bill Duane ’94 is the first in a series of features that will highlight our speakers for the event. To learn more, visit our Career Summit 2018 news story.

Bill Duane ’94

Retired Superintendent of Well-Being at Google

Bill Duane
At Google, Bill Duane and his team created worldwide programs to move the needle on well-being at the individual, team and organizational level.

Bill Duane works at the intersection of individual resilience and organizational effectiveness, particularly in innovative and/or chaotic environments. As an engineering executive for Google earlier in his career, Bill was responsible for worldwide production engineering for Gmail, G Suite and WebSearch Infrastructure, leading a team of 130 people across five countries.

Though an amazing, interesting and rewarding ride, it also contained more burnout than was OK, which sparked a curiosity about how burnout worked. As he investigated burnout, Bill discovered a deep interest in the biological, psychological and interpersonal mechanisms of happiness, effectiveness and well-being which led him to create the role of Google’s Superintendent of Well-Being. At Google, he and his team created worldwide programs to move the needle on well-being at the individual, team and organizational level, partnering with various teams in the Google ecosystem to make it part of the culture.

After 12 years at Google and 25 years in corporate environments, he is taking his expertise to a more diverse set of individuals and organizations. Bill earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and anthropology from Kalamazoo College.

Bill is scheduled to speak in these Career Summit sessions:

  • Dinner and Opening Plenary, 6 p.m. April 6
  • Mentoring Matters: What You Gain from Trusted Advisers, 10 a.m. April 7
  • Tips for Bringing Your Identity to Work, 10:45 a.m. April 7
  • Serendipity: Making the Most of Unexpected Opportunities, 11:30 a.m. April 7.

Other Scheduled Speakers

Distinguished Judge Testifies to Power of K-Plan

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Testifying to the enduring value of the K-Plan, renowned former U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen ’73 told Kalamazoo College students in a campus visit that “it made me who I am.”

Judge Gerald Rosen talks with students at Kalamazoo College
Students were invited to meet retired Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen ’73 on Monday, Feb. 19, and hear him talk about how his K experience helped him forge an exemplary career in public service and law. That career included engineering the “Grand Bargain,” which brought Detroit out of bankruptcy and paved the way for Motown’s rebirth.

“I’m a real product of the K-Plan,” said the recently retired judge, who presided over the Detroit-based U.S. Eastern District of Michigan and handled cases that included the city’s 2013 bankruptcy, the largest of its kind in U.S. history.

He came to the College to play tennis, he said, and had a vague idea about becoming a doctor. However, a familiar nemesis of many a would-be medical student — “two words,” Rosen said. “Organic chemistry” — dissuaded him from pursuing that field. He said his academic adviser pushed him toward political science, often a path to law school, and the K-Plan did the rest.

In a question-and-answer session with a student audience in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall, Rosen recalled as particularly influential a history course that introduced him to the “roller coaster” career of Winston Churchill, the late wartime British prime minister who remains one of his heroes. He also cited philosophy courses that taught him the finer points of reasoning and writing; the challenge of participating in experiential learning opportunities that included working in the office of then-Michigan Gov. William Milliken; and study abroad in Sweden.

“I spent as many (terms) off campus as I did on campus,” he said, adding that experiences such as being a student teacher in an inner-city Philadelphia school challenged him to develop his self-reliance and fostered in him a sense of independence.

“You become confident in your ability to reason through things on your own,” he said. “I think if I had gone to a school that had a traditional program and a cookie-cutter curriculum I probably would have come out of it a different person than I am today.”

During his day at K, Rosen also spoke to a philosophy of law class led by Max Cherem ’04, the Marlene Crandell Francis assistant professor of philosophy; met with faculty; visited with the men’s tennis team as he praised K’s program as fostering “true student athletes;” and dined with President Jorge G. Gonzalez and Suzie (Martin) Gonzalez ’83.

Now beginning a new career as a high-level mediator with Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, Rosen served as a judge on the U.S. District Court in Detroit from 1990 to 2017 and was chief judge from 2009 to 2015. He long provided internships in his chambers to K students and graduates and received the Kalamazoo College Alumni Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2014.

 

Kalamazoo College is a Top Producer of Fulbright Students

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Kalamazoo College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities producing the most Fulbright students for the 2017-18 academic year. The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced the honor Sunday.

Fulbright Students logo
Four K representatives out of 12 applicants earned Fulbright awards this year, placing the College among the top Fulbright-producing bachelor’s institutions.

Four K representatives out of 12 applicants were named Fulbright winners, placing the College among the top Fulbright-producing bachelor’s institutions. Many candidates apply as graduating seniors, but alumni can apply as well. Graduating seniors apply through their institution. Alumni can apply through their institution or as at-large candidates.

K’s representatives are:

  • Andrea Beitel ’17, who earned a research/study award and is now in the U.K.;
  • Riley Cook ’15, who earned a research/study award and is in Germany;
  • Dejah Crystal ’17, who earned an English Teaching Assistantship in Taiwan; and
  • Sapana Gupta ’17, who earned an English Teaching Assistantship in Germany.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. Top-producing institutions are highlighted annually in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 380,000 participants, chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential, with opportunities to exchange ideas and contribute to solutions to shared international concerns. More than 1,900 U.S. students, artists and young professionals in more than 100 fields of study are offered Fulbright Program grants to study, teach English and conduct research abroad each year. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program operates in more than 140 countries throughout the world.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State, funded by an annual appropriation from Congress to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education.

The Fulbright Program also awards grants to U.S. scholars, teachers and faculty to conduct research and teach overseas. In addition, about 4,000 foreign Fulbright students and scholars come to the United States annually to study, lecture, conduct research and teach foreign languages.

Women’s Football Champion Inspires Campus with Tale of Perseverance

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Every year Kalamazoo College athletes and coaches present a Community Reflection session titled “Why We Play” where they share with the entire campus stories of what motivates them to compete, and the lessons and rewards of NCAA Division III athletics.

Women's Football Champion Liz Okey
Former women’s football champion Liz Okey ’07 displays the gold medal she won as part of the 2013 U.S. team.

Inevitably, a few seniors also express regret that their sporting careers are about to end. In 2007, Liz Okey was one of them. A Hornets volleyball player who served as team captain, Okey was moving on to graduate school and a career in Chicago.

“When I graduated … I thought my athletic career was over,” she told the audience in Stetson Chapel as she returned to K share her story at this year’s “Why We Play” reflection in late January.

Instead, she began a completely new adventure, discovering women’s tackle football, and in 2009, becoming a lineman for the Chicago Force, part of the Women’s Football Alliance.

“I tried out for the Force and traded my knee pads for shoulder pads,” she said.

Women’s tackle football is just like the men’s game, she said, except the ball is slightly smaller — and there’s no pay. She loved the game, and kept on playing until her fourth year. In the home opener of that season, which would see the Force contend for a national championship, she suffered a devastating injury.

Recovering from surgery for a fractured fibula required extensive physical therapy, she said, and after the Force lost a “nail-biter” championship game, she thought about retiring from football.

Women's Football Champion Liz Okey at center
Former women’s football champion Liz Okey ’07 lines up at center for the Chicago Force during the 2014 season.

“My body had been through it all, and I had spent eight months a year for the last four years living and breathing football,” she said. “After a lot of soul searching, I returned to the questions that brought us all here today: Why do I play? And I realized I was not ready to hang up my cleats. I had more to give.”

She recalled an annual volleyball drill at K that, as she put it, was “designed to cause players stress” by forcing them to compete against a numerically superior squad while repeatedly changing up their offense.

“Essentially, these players had to achieve the near-impossible, and yet the rule was they couldn’t quit. Every year we knew we were going to be pushed to the edge, and we only had one choice: to dig deeper and overcome,” she said. “I knew following that injury that I had more inside of me. I had more to give to my teammates, to my coaches, to the city that I represented and to the sport of football. I was not done yet.”

Nine months after her surgery, she won the competition to become the starting center on the U.S. Women’s National Team. The team went on to win the world championship that July in Finland, where the Americans crushed opponents from Sweden, Germany and Canada.

Women's Football Champion Liz Okey kneels
Former women’s football champion Liz Okey ’07 in a Chicago Force official team photo.

After that, Okey returned to the Force, which won a national championship the next month. When the team failed to repeat in 2014, she retired. She still proudly wears her championship rings and serves on the executive committee of the board of USA Football, the official youth football development partner of the NFL.

“There’s a magical thing about sports,” she said. “It teaches you things about life. How to withstand, react and rebound from life’s greatest adversities.”

She said returning to speak at K had been a dream of hers, and she urged current Hornets to pursue their own dreams with similar dedication.

“Future Hornets, this amazing campus and community has not seen your talents yet. Prepare to give it your all. Current students, your adult life is about to take off. Give the world everything you’ve got,” she said. “Faculty and coaches, you’re shaping the leaders of tomorrow. Protect them, push them and give them all the tools they need to succeed. Each of us will be tested on a regular basis. And under the layers of doubt and fear we each have more to give. So do one more rep, run that extra mile, volunteer one more hour and give it one more shot. You never know where that extra effort will take you.”

Trustee to be Tapped as Peace Corps Chief

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Kalamazoo College Trustee Josephine “Jody” K. Olsen will be nominated to head the Peace Corps, the agency has announced.

Peace Corps Chief Nominee Josephine Olsen
Photo provided by University of Maryland, Baltimore – Peace Corps chief nominee Josephine Olsen is a Kalamazoo College trustee.

A K trustee since 2010, Olsen previously has served as acting director of the Peace Corps and was the agency’s deputy director for seven years. She is currently a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Social Work. Her pending nomination by President Donald Trump is subject to confirmation by the Senate.

Kalamazoo College has a long relationship with the Peace Corps, ranking 13th among small schools on the agency’s 2017 list of Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities, and hundreds of the College’s alumni have served as volunteers since the Peace Corps was established in 1961.

As part of the confirmation process, Olsen will resign as a trustee. College President Jorge G. Gonzalez praised her service.

“Jody has been a great asset to our board and I am certain she will provide distinguished leadership for this crucial organization at a time when its work is more important than ever,” he said. “The Peace Corps has provided many Kalamazoo College graduates opportunities to make the world a better place while also helping them as they launch internationally focused careers.”

Olsen herself was a Peace Corps volunteer, serving in Tunisia from 1966 to 1968 after her graduation from the University of Utah, where she received a bachelor’s degree in sociology. She also holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

In addition to serving as acting director and deputy director of the Peace Corps, Olsen has been the agency’s chief of staff and regional director for North Africa, the Near East, Asia and the Pacific. She has also directed scholarly and international education organizations and is currently head of the University of the University of Maryland, Baltimore center for Global Education Initiatives, which provides experiential learning opportunities with international health organizations.

 

Inaugural K-Talk Shows Power of Alumni Ties

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[Hear more from Matt Thieleman in a TEDx Talk from Sept. 8, 2018.]

It’s an experience many Kalamazoo College alumni can relate to: spending four years working and learning with amazing and inspiring classmates, then going your separate ways, never to have the same sort of connection again.

Karman Kent and Matt Thieleman talk to the K community at the first K-Talk
Friday, Oct. 20, was the first event in a planned K-Talk series that Joan Hawxhurst, director of the College’s Center for Career and Professional Development, said will make it possible for alumni such as Karman Kent (left) and Matt Thieleman, both ’07, to share their ideas and experiences with the K community.

But for Karman Kent and Matt Thieleman, both ’07, a convergence of opportunity and expertise launched a post-college professional collaboration aimed at bringing the beneficial effects of mindfulness to stressed-out college students – an experience the two spoke about before an audience of students and fellow alumni in Dewing Hall on Homecoming Friday.

It was the first in a planned K-Talk series that Joan Hawxhurst, director of the College’s Center for Career and Professional Development, said will make it possible for alumni to share their ideas and experiences with the K community.

The project that renewed the ties between the two former classmates began after Kent joined Morehead-Cain, a foundation that provides full-ride merit scholarships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Now the foundation’s director of scholar selection, Kent found a community of high-achieving students, not unlike those at K, who were often severely stressed by the difficulties of meeting their own high expectations and those of others.

Thieleman, meanwhile, had launched a career in social media marketing, then discovered a passion for developing future leaders through training in mindfulness, the practice of focusing one’s attention on what is happening in the current moment. He launched a Nashville-based consultancy that, as he puts it, helps people recognize that actually “being present” in a situation is key to developing the ability to see the way forward in an increasingly noisy world.

Kent – seeking a way to get students to open up about their troubles – reached out to Thieleman, who brought his expertise to UNC for a seminar. He and Kent said they saw a surprising and “profound” transformation in the Morehead-Cain students who participated, with 95 percent recommending the program to others.

Thieleman continues to counsel students. And Kent said the foundation was so impressed with the results that it has hired a full-time adviser to coach its scholarship recipients in mindfulness techniques.

Hawxhurst said Kent and Thieleman’s experience points out the potential power of the K experience during and after college. Kent concurred.

“At Morehead-Cain … the alumni network is one of the biggest benefits to being in the program,” she said. “We have so many amazing alumni here at K. If we can have that kind of openness to working together, it can be transformative.”

Biology Alumnae Present at Reflections and Connections

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Kalamazoo College’s Biology Department welcomed alumnae Melba Sales-Griffin ’12 and Emily Cornwell ’07 to campus today for the department’s annual Reflections and Connections event as a part of Homecoming 2017. The event, established in honor of Professor Emeritus Paul Sotherland, shares the career highlights and happenings of K alumni as they reflect on their K experiences and beyond.

Kalamazoo College alumna Emily Cornwell Presents at Reflections and Connections
Kalamazoo College alumna Emily Cornwell ’07 told students Friday, Oct. 20, at Reflections and Connections that a series of seemingly inconsequential events in their education might someday create their career paths.
Biology Professor Binney Girdler introduces Melba Sales-Griffin
Biology Professor Binney Girdler introduces Melba Sales-Griffin ’12 Friday, Oct. 20, at Reflections and Connections.

Sales-Griffin, a Chicago native, majored in biology and minored in art. She studied abroad in Ecuador for six months as a junior. She also held a leadership role on the Student Activities Committee and was a senior resident assistant. After college, she learned HTML, CSS and UX/UI at the Starter League in Chicago before becoming its office manager. She also worked at the University of Chicago Survey Lab administering phone surveys in English and Spanish. Now, Sales-Griffin is a service delivery coordinator at MATTER, a health care technology incubator that supports startups in the health care space.

Cornwell spent a year in Australia as a Fulbright Scholar researching the physiology of osmotolerance in a native mollusk and earning an honors degree from Deakin University. After returning from Australia, she started a dual Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine and Ph.D. program at Cornell University, where she focused on the infection dynamics of an invasive fish virus in the Great Lakes. She later completed additional training to become a certified aquatic veterinarian.

After serving as an emergency small animal and exotic species veterinarian in Virginia, she became a general practice small animal and aquatic veterinarian in Maryland. At work, she enjoys educating pet owners, solving issues in internal medicine and training veterinary technicians.