Category: Alumni

Ebola Responders

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Greg Raczniak at the Sierra Leone Kailahun District Medical Clinic
Greg Raczniak at the Sierra Leone Kailahun District Medical Clinic

Greg Raczniak ’96 is working in Sierra Leone as part of the Ebola response team of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The U.S. Navy veteran serves as a preventive medicine resident at CDC. His work in Sierra Leone involves contact tracing (finding and monitoring people who have come in contact with persons displaying symptoms) a key tactic in controlling infectious disease epidemics. An article on Greg appeared in Task & Purpose, a news site for veterans, by veterans. Greg majored in biology at K and studied abroad in Muenster, Germany. He was a standout swimmer on the Hornet Men’s swim team. After graduation her earned his medical degree at Eastern Virginia Medical School and a doctorate in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. He entered an internship program at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, followed by a tour at the Navy’s research station in Ghana. During his service with the Navy, Greg obtained certification in tropical disease and traveler’s health, and decided to complete training in undersea and submarine medicine. Greg is completing a master’s in public health at Tulane University as part of his medical residency in preventive medicine. Nor is he the only K graduate working in Africa to help contain the Ebola epidemic. Paloma Clohossey ’11 is in Monrovia, Liberia, part of the U.S. government’s Ebola Disaster Response Team in that country. Paloma works for the United States Agency for International Development and has lived and worked in Africa often, beginning with her study abroad experience in Nairobi, Kenya. Liberia and Sierra Leone are the two countries where the outbreak of the virus has hit the hardest.

Wild Ride

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Looping roller coasterIf you reach Information Services Help Desk Administrator Russell Cooper ’89, you can expect a calm, soothing, and professional presence to assist you with your computer needs. But don’t let his grey-suit-and-conservative-sounding voice fool you, there’s some wild rides in that personality. Rides as in roller coasters! And that’s only one of Russell’s passions. Another is photography, and he’s combined the two in his 2014 ArtPrize submission, For Your Amusement. “I love photography, and I love roller coasters (riding and photographing),” said Russell. “And I’ve been looking for a way to put them together.” The “marriage” is a collage of photos seamlessly melded together to create the ultimate roller coaster experience. Russell is a pretty good writer as well. Here’s a sample from his artist statement: “Arms down, head back, and hold on. Slowly climbing your way to the top of the never-ending lift hill. Click. Click. Click. Click. Excitement and fear awaits. Heart in your throat, stomach-churning, cannot breathe. Prepare for the thrill ride of your life. Cresting the peak, you suddenly drop down the hill, wind in your hair, hands in the air, screams of pure joy, air-time lifting you out of your seat. The 3 minutes feel like an eternity, yet over in a flash. Let’s go again!” You gotta love that liberal arts versatility. Russell majored in music and studied abroad in Muenster, Germany.

ArtPrize opens to the public on Sept 24th and runs until the 12th of October. It’s a democratic art exhibition involving several hundred thousand visitors and over 1500 artists and everyone gets to vote for their favorites…like Russell. We’d love to know about other alumni who have submitted entries for ArtPrize 2014. Let us know, and we’ll let our readers know.

Kalamazoo College students launch Versapp app with help from an alumnus

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Giancarlo Anemone ’15 and Will Guedes ’15Users of a new social media application developed by two K juniors no longer have to worry about not having a second chance to make a first impression with its concept of anonymous interaction.

Versapp, a social media application combining anonymity and community, was developed by Giancarlo Anemone ’15 and Will Guedes ’15 with the help of angel investor Trevor Hough ’08.

Launched last month for the iOS platform, with an Android version to follow, Versapp allows users to send a message using their friends list to initiate a conversation while remaining unidentified using the one-to-one chat feature. Or, users may participate in a group message where the participants are known but the comments remain anonymous.

Read more about Will, Giancarlo, and Trevor in an article by Rachel Weick in the August 8, 2014 edition of Grand Rapids Business Journal.

 

Pie are squared away in K alumna’s Detroit bakery

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Lisa Ludwinski ’06 and her Sister Pie bakery has won this year’s Comerica Hatch Detroit contest aimed at boosting start-up businesses. Lisa was awarded $50,000, defeating three other semifinalists, and will get legal, accounting, and information technology services from Hatch Detroit sponsors.

Read all about it in this Detroit Free Press article. Congrats, Lisa and Sister Pie!

THIS JUST IN: Sister Pie is a semifinalist in the Hatch Detroit 2014 contest to win $50,000 to put toward its bricks and mortar bakery. Visit the Hatch Detroit website or Facebook page for details and to cast you votes (by AUGUST 14) for Lisa Ludwinski and Sister Pie .

Advertisement asking for Hatch Detroit Votes for Sister Pie
Vote early and vote often, but vote by August 14: http://sisterpie.com/hatch-detroit-2014

When Lisa Ludwinski ’06 opened a pie baking business in Detroit in 2012, she started in her mother’s kitchen. Within a year, the level of business demanded that she move into a commercial kitchen in Hannan House on Woodward Ave. in Midtown. Now, with a production that includes selling pies and more at Parker Street Market, Germack, and Eastern Market, along with taking orders and making deliveries far and wide (seven days a week), she’s begun to build out her own bakery in a West Village space.

Read about Lisa’s new entrepreneurial venture — and why she knew it had to be called “Sister Pie” — in the August 6 issue of Metro Times, Detroit’s free weekly alternative newspaper. (Thank you Tim Krause ’07 for sending the link to us. Hope there’s a slice of pie in it for you — and us!)

Good luck, Lisa! Let your alma mater know when Sister Pie’s new location is open for business.

Visit Sister Pie’s website (http://sisterpie.com) and Sister Pie’s Facebook (www.facebook.com/SisterPie) to see the latest news and menu items.

Making Research Click

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Michael Finkler uses a pencil to point as Bel Da Silva looks on
Michael Finkler and Bel Da Silva study the embryonic development of snapping turtles.

Michael Finkler ’91, Ph.D., “pays forward” the kind of hands-on research opportunity he had at K (thanks to his mentor, Associate Provost Paul Sotherland, who was teaching biology when Finkler was a student). Finkler is a professor of biology at Indiana University Kokomo. This past summer he hosted in his lab Brazil native Bel Da Silva, an undergraduate student (Federal University of Amazonas) participating in an exchange program called Science Without Borders. She assisted in Finkler’s ongoing research of snapping turtle embryo development. IU-Kokomo posted a story about the collaboration in its online newsletter, and in the interview for that story, Finkler paid tribute to Sotherland: “’I had a really great mentor as I completed my undergraduate thesis, and that’s when research really clicked for me,” he said. “That’s why I’m a professor now, because of that mentoring. In Bel’s case, I also saw an opportunity to get experience working with an international student.’” Sotherland served as Finkler’s SIP advisor. In fact, their SIP work (a productive collaboration that included John Van Orman) eventually led to the 1998 publication of a paper titled “Experimental manipulation of egg quality in chickens: influence of albumen and yolk on the size and body composition of near-term embryos in a precocial bird” in the Journal of Comparative Physiology. Seems that the seed of a K experiential opportunity like the Senior Individualized Project grows across time and borders. After all, the IU-Kokomo article notes that Da Silva intends to become a professor and researcher, the kind of scientist and teacher who will provide hands-on research opportunities for students from Brazil and other countries.

Second “Tourist” Voyage, Absent the Cannibalism

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Kalamazoo College alumnus Rob Dunn
Scientist, science writer, professor of science, and K alum Rob Dunn

Scientist and science writer Rob Dunn ’97 (also an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University) traveled to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 2012, on assignment for National Geographic Magazine to write about the area’s ecosystem. He fulfilled his obligation and wrote a very fine article (great verbs!) titled “The Generous Gulf.”

Only months later did Rob learn some back story to his National Geographic story–specifically, that he wasn’t the first in his family to make a “tourist” voyage to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. His forebear, one Thomas But (or Butt or Butts), son of the doctor to King Henry VIII, set sail for the Gulf in April of 1536. The voyages of the two relatives, separated by nearly five centuries, nevertheless shared a few similarities. And, THANKFULLY, the voyages differed in other (significant) ways. For example, Rob didn’t kill and eat any of his fellow travelers.

What Rob did do is write the fascinating back story for the Blog, Your Wild Life. It’s a great read, and we recommend it to our readers.

Kalamazoo College grad Raven Fisher hopes to change children’s futures, one math problem at a time

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Kalamazoo College graduate Raven Fisher at Dewing Hall
Raven Fisher ’14

Raven Fisher ’14 has now begun her studies at Western Michigan University as a prestigious W.K. Kellogg Foundation Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellow. The Detroit native and University Liggett High School graduate was a math major at K. Her goal is to teach middle school math. Raven excelled in many areas at K both in and out of the classroom. She was very active in the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement. In both her sophomore and senior years, Raven, and her classmate Roxann Lawrence ’14 served as Civic Engagement Scholars who co-led the Community Advocates for Parents and Students at Interfaith Homes, a tutoring program that hopes to ensure that all students, no matter their economic circumstances, can take advantage of the Kalamazoo Promise, which offers free college tuition to any Kalamazoo Public Schools graduate.

 

Ensemble Kalamazoo Includes K Harpist

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Harpist Eleanor Wong
Eleanor Wong ’12 plays harp for the group “Ensemble Kalamazoo.” Photo by Aaron Geller ’08

A group known as “Ensemble Kalamazoo” recently proved that music can be equal parts silence and sound. The group performed a collection of atonal pieces during a late June concert. Its harpist is Kalamazoo College alumna Eleanor Wong ’12.

Eleanor came to the harp by way of her reluctance for the piano. An early hint: during childhood piano lessons she much preferred to strum the strings inside the instrument rather than finger the keys outside. Not a problem when a musical tradition is as strong as it is in the Wong family. Eleanor’s uncle, Bradley Wong, who attended the June concert, was recently named Western Michigan University’s director of music.

The concert’s compositions sounded like a musical equivalent of the post-war art movement of abstract expressionism. Peter Ablinger’s Weiss/Weisslich 3” (White/Off-White), for example, sounded like a blank white canvas painted white and splashed with a few drops of various colors that seldom coincided.

“It was difficult to play at first,” said Eleanor. And she remarked on the long rehearsal sessions the unorthodox song structures required, “But the emphasis on texture rather than traditional melody and harmony trains your ear in a new way,” she added.

The unorthodox selections featured some fascinating instruments–such as WMU graduate Zachary Boyt’s comb-and-Macbook combination (part of fellow WMU graduate Valeria Jonard’s composition The Broken Harp) that produced a sound that seemed to blend a wind chime and a leaky faucet. The composition’s simplicity and complexity turned on the Boyt’s strumming of the comb, which was amplified by the computer.

“Watching the performance refueled my own artistic opinions,” said Adam Schumaker, an instructor of musical composition at Kalamazoo College.  He stressed the importance of experiencing live performances. “Even though I approach music differently, avant-garde performances reinforce what I want to do with music.”

If he, or anyone else, wishes to enjoy Eleanor’s work with “Ensemble Kalamazoo,” then he will have to attend the group’s summer concerts. Eleanor is off to the University of Oregon in August to study arts administration.

Inaugural Symposium Features Distinguished Alumnus

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The first ever economics and business Senior Individualized Project symposium is bringing back one the department’s own to serve as keynote speaker. Will Dobbie ’04 will address senior econ and business majors during a dinner that will follow the poster presentation to occur in the Hicks Center at 4:30 PM on May 22.

After graduating from K, Dobbie earned his master’s degree in economics from the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. (economics and public policy) from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Dobbie is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs.

Dobbie’s research interests are primarily in the areas of labor economics and the economics of education. His work has examined the effect of school inputs on student outcomes, the importance of peer effects, the impact of voluntary youth service, and the benefits of the consumer bankruptcy system. Earlier this year he received an award from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research for writing the best doctoral dissertation in the field of labor-related economics. Ahmed Hussen, the Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics and Business, attended that event. “Will’s lecture was based on his highly acclaimed and controversial work on high performing charter schools in New York City,” says Hussen. “We are delighted to have him back for our first SIP symposium. He has accomplished a great deal in such a short period of time after graduating from K–living proof that we do more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.”

Jason Kohl ’06 Shows His Award-Winning Film “The Slaughter” at Kalamazoo College

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Kalamazoo College alumnus Jason Kohl
Jason Kohl ’06

Jason Kohl ’06 shows his award-winning film “The Slaughter” at Kalamazoo College, Tuesday, April 22 at 7:00 p.m. in Light Fine Arts Recital Hall. Sponsored by Kalamazoo College Media Studies, the film is free and open to the public.

Michigan-born Jason B. Kohl is an Austrian/American Filmmaker. He got his B.A. in creative writing from Kalamazoo College in 2006 before moving to Berlin, Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship. In 2012 he got his MFA in directing from UCLA Film School in Los Angeles.

His UCLA MFA Thesis Film “The Slaughter” premiered at the 2013 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas and was a finalist for the Student Academy Awards. It continues to play festivals like BFI London, Locarno, and Ann Arbor. Filmmaker Magazine called it “a masterfully directed story.”

The short film stars “Breaking Bad” actor Michael Shamus Wiles, and is about a pig farmer who tests his unemployed son’s determination to join the family business.

Jason’s been a finalist or semifinalist for several prestigious labs including the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, the Torino Film Festival’s Adaptlab, and the Nantucket Screenwriters Colony.

He’s an alumnus of the Locarno Filmmaker Academy and a curator for Short of the Week, the premiere online destination for short films.

From 2012-2013 he returned to Berlin to complete postgraduate directing studies at the German Film and Television Academy as a DAAD Artist Study Scholar. He remains based in Berlin, where he is developing various feature projects.

Jason does for hire directing work with his partner Nora Mandray. As Mako Film, their clients include MSNBC, Etsy and Vocativ.

His first nonfiction book, a practical guide to film school, will be published by the Focal Press in 2015.

Read more about Jason and see clips from his work here: http://jasonbkohl.com.