Charles Holmes, MD ’93 Leads Effort to Combat Infectious Disease in Zambia

Kalamazoo College alumnus Charles Homes speaking at a lecturn
Charles Holmes, MD ’93 has “a legacy of listening to, and using science, say long-time Washington workers in the AIDS response.”

Charles Holmes 93 was completing his medical education when he lived and worked for three months in Malawi in 1999. The AIDS epidemic there, uncontrolled, was peaking. Desperately sick people lay three to a bed in the Lilongwe hospital where Holmes worked, and where the best medicine on hand could only alleviate their agony until they died.

“Deaths were an hourly occurrence,” he said later. “It was an important and formative experience for me to be a firsthand witness to that tragedy.”

It has shaped his work and interests ever since, he added.

This month, he packed his bags for Africa again, to lead the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, widely considered one of the most effective in-country programs to improve health care capacities in a resource-poor country.

Read more about this Kalamazoo College graduate’s work in Science Speaks: HIV and TB News, a project of the Center for Global Health Policy.

Kalamazoo College Well Represented in the Third Annual Kalamazoo New Play Festival

The thing’s the plays
In which we see the work of Ks!

“Ks” refers to the Kalamazoo College alumni, student, and occasional professor (and Summer Common Reading author) whose work is part of the Theatre Kalamazoo New Play Festival that will be held January 25 and 26 at the Epic Theatre in downtown Kalamazoo. Dana Robinson ’11 and Rebecca Staudenmaier ’11 are the authors of 10-minute plays that are part of the festival–Outdoors and The House of South, respectively. Outdoors will play at 4 PM on Saturday, January 26; The House of South is part of the 8 PM group of plays on the same day. Current senior Megan Rosenberg is directing the play Bringing Home the Bones by Bonnie Jo Campbell, who was the College’s Summer Common Reading author (Once Upon a River) in Fall 2012. Campbell also is an adjunct professor in the English department. Sponsoring theatres are Farmers Alley Theatre (Outdoors), Fancy Pants Theatre (The House of South), and Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College (Bringing Home the Bones). The Festival is free; no reservations are necessary. For more information please, and to learn the other plays featured in the Festival, please call any participating theatre or log on to the Theatre Kalamazoo website.

 

Stephanie (Harker) Schau ’90 Earns Teaching Award

Stephanie (Harker) Schau ’90 is the 2012 recipient of the John E. Oster Award, which recognizes teaching excellence in the Sturgis (Mich.) Public School system. Stephanie was a member of Phi Beta Kappa at K and was selected for the James Bird Balch Prize for Outstanding Senior Studying American History.

Henry David and K Alum Rob

I’ve been on a walk with Henry David Thoreau—not literally, of course, but a second reading (or multiple readings) of Walden can seem like an attentive wood-or-wetland perambulation with its author. I came across this: “At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.” Wait, wait … that reminds me of another favorite author, science writer and scientist Rob Dunn ’97, who writes in a recent article (in which Rob’s grandfather makes an indelible impression): “So much for my New Year’s resolution, though maybe part of the problem is that we still know so little about so many fields that it is nearly impossible to make it to the end of a story without encountering the unknown.” His resolution was to answer the science questions that come up in everyday life. His “Year in Review” blog article (Scientific American) kicked off the resolution with 11 questions. But pretty soon the questions were multiplying, not answers. But that’s a good thing that comes in part from Rob’s long lineage of questioners who “went long” and went broad to go long (Rob’s other resolution is to write shorter articles, but I’m glad that’s unlikely to work, too). It’s no wonder Rob attended K.

K Alumna Arianna Schindle ’08 Is Still a Social Activist

Arianna Schindle ’08 is committed to improving peoples’ lives, whether in an impoverished Thai village or along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Read about this social justice crusader from Kalamazoo College in a profile by author, historian, and columnist John Hallwas in the McDonough County (Illinois) Voice.

The Physics of Immortality

The Goods are dead, but their good’s alive! Walter and William Good, both members of the Class of 1937, have been deceased from some time, but their legacy lives at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. The Goods created the Guff, the first successful radio controlled aircraft, and a replica of the aircraft is now on permanent display at the Air Zoo. The aircraft was created with vacuum tube-based control units; it won first place in the 1939, 1940, and 1947 R/C Airplane Nationals. The original plane resides at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The Good brothers graduated from K with bachelor’s degrees in physics, and they then went on to earn doctorates in the subject.

K Alumnus’ Documentary Film Nominated for an Oscar

A documentary film by David France ’81 titled  “How to Survive a Plague,” about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, is one of five in the category to be nominated for an Oscar Award. Oscar nomination is not the only recognition France has received for his film. The Gothic Independent Film Awards and the Boston Society of Film Critics voted it the best documentary film of 2012. And the Independent Spirit Awards, which occur the day before the Oscars, has nominated “How to Survive a Plague” for Best Documentary. France’s film chronicles the tireless efforts of activists in the 1980s and early 1990s bring attention to the disease and mount a response appropriate to it–in terms of research, social policies, and human dignity compassion. An article on France and the film appeared recently in the New York Times.

K Alumna Wins Prize for Science Journalism

Kirsten Weir ’99 is the winner of the 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the children’s science news category. The awards are administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for professional journalists to honor distinguished reporting for a general audience. Weir received the award for her article “Uninvited Guests,” which appeared in the April/May 2012 issue of Current Health Kids. In a way that appeals to children and adults the article describes the parasites and microbes that live in and on our bodies. Said Weir: “Kids often seem to think that science is something that happens in a laboratory or a faraway place. I loved that this story underscored how much is still unknown about the organisms living right under our noses (not to mention the rest of our bodies).”

Kalamazoo College’s Only Rhodes Scholar Offers Advice to WMU Finalist

Former K President George Rainsford and Rhodes Scholar recipient Becky Gray in 1981
Former K President George Rainsford congratulates K student and Rhodes Scholar recipient Becky Gray in 1981.

Kalamazoo College alumna Becky Gray ’81 is the only student from K or Western Michigan University ever to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. In a Nov.15, 2012 Kalamazoo Gazette article, she offered some words of advice for Rhodes Scholarship finalist Mitch Zajac, a WMU graduate student and former football player.

Kalamazoo College Alumna Helps Develop Bicycle Safety Simulator

Jodie Plumert ’85, professor and chair of psychology at the University of Iowa is helping lead a joint research project with the University’s computer science department to develop a simulator that uses virtual environment technology to study children’s decision making process when riding a bike. The simulator employs a stationary bicycle sitting in the middle of three large screens and equipped to feed real-time information into a computer network, which creates an interactive virtual environment. Bicyclists “ride” up to a simulated intersection, assess the traffic “crossing” on the screens around them, then determine when it’s safe for them to cross. Read more about Jodie and her research on her UI webpage.

Check out the video below where Jodie helps demonstrate the simulator.