Category: Events

Kalamazoo College Commencement 2015 Will Be Held June 14 at 2:15 on the Quad

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Graduation caps are thrown in the air

NOTE: DUE TO RAIN, COMMENCEMENT IS CHANGED TO 2:15 OUTDOORS ON THE QUAD!

Kalamazoo College 2015 commencement will be held Sunday June 14, 2:15 p.m., on the campus Quad (1200 Academy St.). Approximately 330 K seniors will receive B.A. degrees.

Kalamazoo College commencement is free and open to the public. Parking will be in high demand, so allow extra time. The College sets up about 3,000 folding chairs on the Quad and guests are invited to bring a lawn chair or blanket to stretch out on the grass. In case of rain, Anderson Athletic Center (1015 Academy St.) is the alternate site. The gym can only accommodate the graduates and a few of their family members, as well as K administrators, trustees, and faculty members. K uses a special ticketing process for those seats.

Speakers include Kalamazoo College President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, Board Vice-Chair S. Si Johnson ’78, Alumni Association Executive Board Chair Alexandra Foley Altman ’97, and senior class speaker Asia Liza Morales ’15.

The Kalamazoo College class of 2015 is one of the most diverse in the College’s history. About 33 percent of students came from states other than Michigan. Nearly 20 percent self-identify as American Indian, Asian, Black or African-American, Hispanic, or two or more races. Fourteen students identify as non-U.S. resident aliens and 32 countries overall are represented by class members.

David Finkel, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of “The Good Soldiers” and “Thank You for Your Service,” will deliver the commencement address and receive an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the College. Finkel was the summer common reading author for the class of 2015 prior to their arrival as first-year students at the College in fall 2011. He visited the K campus during students’ orientation, giving a lecture and reading from “The Good Soldiers,” his bestselling account of a U.S. Army infantry unit during the Iraq War “surge.” Finkel won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his case study of the United States government’s attempt to bring democracy to Yemen. Per K tradition, the summer common reading author returns to deliver the commencement address to the same class of students he met in 2011.

Attorney, author, and LGBTQ activist Urvashi Vaid, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Law degree from the College on Sunday. Vaid is the president the Vaid Group, LLC, a consulting firm that works on ending inequality of all kinds. She is the former director of the Engaging Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. Her most recent book is “Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics.” She was executive director of the Arcus Foundation from 2005 to 2010 and was instrumental in creating the vision for what is now Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu), founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts college and the creator of the K-Plan that emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, leadership development, and international and intercultural engagement.

Kalamazoo College does more in four years, so students can do more in a lifetime.

What’s the Value of a College Education?

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Kalamazoo College is a member of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC). CIC President Richard Ekman participated in a panel discussion in San Francisco on April 29 on the topic, “What’s the Value of a College Education?” Other panelists included Mary Marcy, president of Dominican University of California; Alecia DeCoudreaux, president of Mills College; Claude Steele, executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California Berkeley; and Mohammad Qayoumi, president of California State University San Jose. Monica R. Martinez, deeper learning senior fellow for the Hewlett Foundation and commissioner of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, served as moderator.

The show will air on Friday, May 15 at 8:00 p.m. on KQED88.5 FM Radio in San Francisco and will be subsequently broadcast on hundreds of radio stations nationally. The program was just over an hour.

Program Description: For the United States to remain competitive in the global economy, our citizens need to be innovative, versatile, and well-educated. To provide for these qualifications, does our model of higher education need a wholesale renovation? What would an education that is tailored to the needs of the 21st century – and affordable to all – even look like? Join this distinguished panel of public and private college educators to tackle the difficult challenges ahead: What is the value of a liberal arts college education versus a preprofessional vocational skill-building model? Why does college cost so much? How can we close the gap between attendance and graduation rates? Can we design blended in-person and online courses that are both instructive and cost-efficient? And finally, how can we get our state and federal governments to continue to support higher education and to take the financial burden off of students?

Author and Journalist David Finkel Delivers Kalamazoo College Commencement Address June 14

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Graduation caps tossed in the airDavid Finkel, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of “The Good Soldiers” and “Thank You for Your Service,” will deliver the commencement address to the Kalamazoo College graduating class of 2015 on Sunday June 14 at 1:00 p.m. on the campus Quad, located at 1200 Academy St. in Kalamazoo.

Finkel will also receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the College. Asia Liza Morales ’15 will address her fellow graduates in the role of senior speaker. Attorney, author, and LGBTQ activist Urvashi Vaid, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Law degree from the College.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Finkel
David Finkel

Kalamazoo College commencement is free and open to the public. Parking will be in high demand, so allow extra time. The College sets up about 3,000 folding chairs on the campus Quad and guests are invited to bring a lawn chair or blanket to stretch out on the grass. In case of rain, Anderson Athletic Center (1015 Academy St.) is the alternate site. Unfortunately, the gym can only accommodate the graduates, a few of their family members, and K administrators and faculty. K uses a special ticketing process for those seats.

For those unable to attend, K Commencement will be live-streamed via the Web.

David Finkel was the summer common reading author for the class of 2015 prior to their arrival at the College in fall 2011. He visited the K campus during students’ first-year orientation, giving a lecture and reading from “The Good Soldiers,” his bestselling account of a U.S. Army infantry unit during the Iraq War “surge.” The book earned the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and was named best book of 2009 by the New York Times.

Per K tradition, Finkel returns to deliver the commencement address to the same class of students he met in 2011.

Urvashi Vaid
Urvashi Vaid

Urvashi Vaid is director of the Engaging Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. Her most recent book is “Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics.” She was executive director of the Arcus Foundation from 2005 to 2010 and was instrumental in creating the vision for what is now Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Ms. Vaid received her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and her law degree from Northeastern University Law School.

Asia Morales has pursued a major in biology with an interest in environmental studies while at K. She has been a Peer Leader, President’s Ambassador, StuComm representative, and a member of multiple civic engagement programs and student organizations, including S3A (Sexual Safety & Support Alliance), which educates, advocates, and provides support for victims of sexual assault. A Posse Scholar from Los Angeles, Asia studied abroad in Spain.

Student speaker Asia Morales
Asia Morales ’15

Finkel’s most recent book, the critically acclaimed “Thank You for Your Service,” chronicles the challenges faced by American soldiers and their families in war’s aftermath. Among its many awards, the book was named a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Award in nonfiction and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. It was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly, one of the top 10 books of the year by The Washington Post, and best nonfiction book of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews.

An editor and writer for The Washington Post, Finkel has reported from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, and across the United States, and has covered wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He received the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2012 for “his long-form newswriting that has transformed readers’ understanding of military service and sacrifice.”

Finkel won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for “his ambitious, clear-eyed case study of the United States government’s attempt to bring democracy to Yemen.” He received his B.A. degree from University of Florida in 1977.

NINE PARTS OF DESIRE in the Dungeon Theatre

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Eight students rehearse for "Nine Parts of Desire"
The cast of NINE PARTS OF DESIRE (l-r): standing — Aliera Morasch (Mullaya), Anita Ghans (The Doctor) Anya Opshinsky (Lalal), Isabela Agosa (Umm Ghada); seated — Jasmine Khin (Nanna), Grace Gilmore (Huda), Cheynne Harvey (Amal), and Abby Fraser (Iraqi Girl)

When Nine Parts of Desire premiered in New York City in the early 2000s, Gloria Steinem wrote, “The female half of Iraq has come to America.” It is with this philosophy in mind that Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College presents Heather Raffo’s play about the lives and stories of nine women, all of whom have a relationship to the physical, spiritual, and emotional spaces of modern Iraq. The play opens Thursday, April 30, at 7:30 p.m. and runs Friday and Saturday, May 1 and 2, at 8 p.m. The final performance occurs Sunday, May 3, at 2 p.m. All performances occur in the Dungeon Theatre in the Light Fine Arts Building on Kalamazoo College’s campus.

The play strives to celebrate the lives and identities of these women by complicating the archetypal portrayal of their country and its citizens. Each character seems to walk on a knife’s edge between contrasts—freedom and containment, tenacity and docility, knowledge and naivety, danger and desire—and each character tells a story of how these tensions have dictated her life.

None of Raffo’s characters are oppressed in a simple, two-dimensional way. Each woman approaches the world differently, and their stories and struggles are distinctly their own. What connects the women to each other and to the audience is far deeper than a shared experience of time and place. It is love–the negotiation and exploration of its many manifestations–that makes the piece cohesive and universal. In the play, one character muses, “It is the same, anywhere you live. if you love like an Iraqi woman. If you love like you can’t breathe.”

Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College invites you to come bear witness to these stories of struggle and triumph. In post-911 America, where ignorance and discrimination, and even hatred, often stand in the way of human connection, it is essential that we open our hearts, our ears, and our to these stories. In the words of Raffo herself, “Come. Now you sign the witness book.”

Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for seniors 65 and older, and $15 for other adults. Please call 269.337.7333 or visit the Festival Playhouse website for more information.

Text by Jane Huffman ’15. Photo by Emily Salswedel ’16.

Beyond the Blood

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K students rehearse for "Carrie"
Gabrielle Holme-Miller ’17 (Carrie White) and members of the cast (background) in CARRIE the musical. Photo by Emily Salswedel ’16.

The outside gaze that condemns is the subject of Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College’s spring term production of CARRIE the musical.

“Almost the very first lyrics concern the horror of going to high school every day and the pain of trying to fit in–‘Every Day, I Just Pray Every Move I Make is Right,’” said Ed Menta, the James A. B. Stone College Professor of Theatre Arts, and the director of CARRIE the Musical. “Through song, choreography, social media, light scenery, and costumes, we hope to make this musical a fun and interactive experience for our audience that also explores one of the major social issues of our time: bullying,” he added.

Gabrielle Holme-Miller ’17, who plays the lead role of Carrie, emphasizes the need for the focus on aggression: “Almost everyone in their adolescence will find themselves a victim, aggressor, or witness to bullying in some form. Carrie’s suffering and torment is symbolic of the unacknowledged bullying many young people face.”

Festival Playhouse and the Kalamazoo College Department of Music will collaborate on the May production. The play opens Thursday, May 14, at 7:30 p.m., and continues Friday and Saturday, May 15 and 16, at 8 p.m., and on Sunday, May 17, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Additional performances occur Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. and Friday, May 22 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for seniors, and $15 for other adults. For reservations call 269.337.7333. For more information visit the Festival Playhouse website.

The performance features Professor of Music James Turner, vocal director; Jack Brooks, conductor; Kate Yancho, choreographer; Lanford J. Potts, scenic designer; Katie Anderson ’15, lighting designer; and Lindsay Worthington ’15, sound designer. CARRIE the musical is based on the novel, Carrie, by Stephen King and the book by Lawrence D. Cohen. Michael Gore scored the music; Dean Pitchford wrote the lyrics.

Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Delivers Lecture, Meets with K Students

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Visiting Scholar Jeff Wasserstrom
Phi Beta Kappa 2015 Visiting Scholar Jeff Wasserstrom. (Photo: Steve Zylius, UCI Communications)

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Ph.D., delivers the annual Phi Beta Kappa lecture Tuesday, April 21, 8:00 p.m., in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room (1153 Academy St.) on the Kalamazoo College campus.

His lecture, “Angry Ghosts: Chinese Boxers, Foreign Invaders, and the Tragedies of 1900,” is free and open to the public. He will also meet separately with K students during his two-day visit to the campus.

Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California—Irvine, and editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. An associate fellow of the Asia Society, he is the author of four books, among them “Student Protests in 20th-Century China” and “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.” He is also the co-editor of several other books, including “Chinese Characters,” an anthology of profiles of individuals. His current research focuses on the Boxer Uprising and the foreign invasion that crushed it in 1900.

Since 1956, the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Visiting Scholar Program has been offering undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America’s most distinguished scholars. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students.

The 13 men and women participating during 2014-2015 will visit 100 colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, spending two days on each campus and taking full part in the academic life of the institution. They will meet informally with students and faculty members, participate in classroom discussions and seminars, and give a public lecture open to the entire academic community. Now entering its 59th year, the Visiting Scholar Program has sent 623 Scholars on 5,092 two-day visits.

Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest academic honor society. It has chapters at 283 institutions and more than half a million members throughout the country. Its mission is to champion education in the liberal arts and sciences, to recognize academic excellence, and to foster freedom of thought and expression.

 

 

Additional information about the Visiting Scholar Program can be found on Phi Beta Kappa’s website (www.pbk.org).

 

Kalamazoo College Lecture Will Focus on the Holocaust

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Professor Doris L. BergenThe 2015 Edward Moritz Lecture in History coincides with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps and the end of World War II. The lecture will occur Thursday, April 16, at 7 p.m. in Dewing Hall Room 103. The event is free and open to the public. Professor Doris L. Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto (and one of the world’s most distinguished scholars of the Holocaust), will speak on “Holocaust or Genocide? Uniqueness and Universality.”

Professor Bergen received her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina, where she studied with Professor Gerhard Weinberg. Her research focuses on issues of religion, gender, and ethnicity in the Holocaust and World War II and comparatively in other cases of extreme violence. She has written many books including War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2003). The recipient of many honors and awards, Professor Bergen is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington , D.C.

The annual Edward Moritz Lecture pays tribute to the late Professor Edward Moritz, who taught British and European history at Kalamazoo College from 1955 to 1988 and served for many years as department chair.

TEDx Comes to K

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Tanush Jagdish with a TED Talks banner
Tanush Jagdish

Good ideas will be spread across (and via) Kalamazoo College this spring when a descendant of the popular TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks series comes to campus as TEDxKalamazooCollege.

First-year student Tanush Jagdish, of Bangalore, India, is the main organizer of the inaugural event, to be held May 16, and thereafter (hopefully) to occur annually. Jagdish says he came up with the idea after being impressed with the cooperation and collaboration he saw between students and faculty at the College, in everything from research to planning campus events.

Concentrating on biology and chemistry, he is already working on high-level research in the lab of Dr. Michael Wollenberg, assistant professor of biology.

“Even as a first-year, I am already learning fantastic things,” Jagdish says. “I have been so impressed with the College. I figured, why not showcase K? Holding an event like this that is known worldwide will help to build the image of the school. A TED event is a great way to go about doing that.”

There are still some small details to be worked out, but the tentative theme for the talk is “Breaking Borders,” Jagdish says. The talk is to have nine speakers: two students, one alumnus, and six K faculty. Shannon Haupt ’16 will speak on “Fossil fuel divestment campaign as a model for a multi-issue, dynamic, and collective force for change.” The title of senior Tibin John’s talk is “Implications of computational simulation and dynamical systems theory for biomedical research.” Liberal arts polymath and ArtPrize finalist Ladislav Hanka ’75 is “can’t miss” with “Collaborating with bees to produce works of art that explore and reflect the sublime quality of nature.”

Faculty presenters include:

• Tim Kailing (Biology)—Biological Principles and philosophies of instruction and education

• Jeanne Hess (Physical Education)—Sportuality: the transcendental power of blending sport, spirit, and education

• Jan Tobochnik (Physics)—Using computational models to display and predict wealth distribution

• Carol Anderson (Religion)—Exploring the relationship between religion, gender, and sexuality

• Jim Langeland (Biology)—Constructing advanced modelling techniques for understanding aspects of genetics, including chromosomal recombination

• Bob Batsell (Psychology)—Application of learning theories in helping cancer patients undergo chemotherapy

Jagdish saw that the College encouraged the cross-pollination of ideas between diverse academic disciplines, and he wanted to highlight this unique take on learning, he says. At K, he says, ideas are allowed to swirl and be discussed openly.

“The talk will focus on breaking the boundaries between the liberal arts and sciences,” he says. Speakers will discuss the environment, sustainability, the liberal arts, and other topics.

TEDx was created in the spirit of the mission of the popular TED Talk series, which is to promulgate ideas worth spreading.” TEDx supports independent organizers who want to create a TED-like event in their own community. Those interested in hosting a TEDx event must wade through a rigorous application process and climb a mountain of application material.

Jagdish submitted the application in December, and heard back in January with the go-ahead. It’s very rare for an institution of higher education to receive permission from the organization to host an event, he says.

“It usually takes long time to be granted a license to host a TEDx event. But I think they liked the idea of a small liberal arts college hosting a talk. It’s a very prestigious thing to be granted a license.”

Adding to Jagdish’s enthusiasm for the TEDx event is that the push to host it has been almost entirely student led. That autonomy, he says, highlights the faith and freedom College officials place in K students and is a testament to the culture of self-led learning that the College is so well-known for.

“It’s amazing, really,” he says. “I think it shows how the College is focused on building leadership skills in its students. I have already seen leadership develop among those students involved in organizing this event. Now, hopefully, the world can see what K is all about, too.” Text by Chris Killian

Hornets at National Championship Meet

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Kalamazoo College men's and women's swimming and diving teamsFive Hornet members of the men’s and women’s swimming and diving team have qualified for the 2015 NCAA Division III Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships. Qualifiers are Tristyn Edsall ’17, Ellen Neveux ’17, Colleen Orwin ’17, Christina Park ’17, and Will Guedes ’15. The championships take place March 18 through March 21 at the Conroe Natatorium in Shenandoah, Texas. In addition to the national competition, there will be an opportunity to meet the K swimmers, divers, and coaches in an informal dinner setting on Saturday, March 21. The Office of Alumni Relations will host a complimentary dinner immediately following the competition at Guri Do Sul Brazilin Steakhouse (1400 Research Forest Drive, The Woodlands, Texas). Please confirm your attendance no later than Monday, March 16, by contacting Kerri Barker, assistant director of alumni relations (269.337.7289). Tickets for the championships are $80 for an all-session pass, which includes prelims and finals on all four days.

Campus-Wide Meeting Called

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Shortly after midnight this morning (March 4) an entry of hate speech that included a threat for March 5 against faculty was anonymously placed in a Student Commission “Google Doc” document. Kalamazoo College sent the message below to all members of the K community and called for a 4 p.m. campus-wide meeting to discuss measures regarding safety and the campus environment. The meeting will occur in Stetson Chapel.

Standing for Our Values

Dear Members of the Kalamazoo College Community:

Just after midnight on Wednesday morning, March 4, Kalamazoo College officials were informed that a highly inflammatory entry had been placed in a Student Commission Google Doc, a document repository hosted on Google servers which allows for group editing and sharing online. The entry is racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, and homophobic. It also contained a direct threat for March 5 aimed at “faculty at Kalamazoo U, that will teach them the value of campus carry.”

As soon as we became aware of this matter, the associate dean of student development and other College administrators (including the president met with approximately 40 deeply concerned students. Over the course of more than three hours in the early morning we discussed safety measures for students directly involved (those whose contact information may have been identified by the person(s) responsible for the inflammatory entry) and students generally. We outlined measures for immediate implementation, and a campus-wide meeting later this afternoon will update concrete actions underway and to be done. An officer from the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety (KDPS) met with several students as well.

The College and KDPS consider the inflammatory entry a hate crime, and KDPS is investigating it as such. Police investigators also have informed the FBI and enlisted the agency’s support in the matter. Information Services personnel are attempting to determine the identity of the source of the anonymous entry. Kalamazoo College and KDPS take all threats seriously. Our campus Security staff and the KDPS will be on heightened alert with more patrols through the campus until further notice.

The Student Commission created the Google Doc in order to share information with students in hopes of being more transparent. The document allowed anonymous editing, and this capability extended to persons not associated with K.

The inflammatory comments are antithetical to Kalamazoo College and to its Honor System, which calls us to “respect those with whom we may differ and to recognize the rights held by others.” We invite all of us to stand together to reject any action that dehumanizes members of our community.

We also urge all of us to take responsibility for the accuracy of what we choose to share on social media about these matters. Posting information that is not factual carries the potential to do harm. The College’s Honor System commits us to “honesty in speech and conduct.”

We believe that Kalamazoo College is a safe place for students, faculty, staff, and visitors, and we are committed to creating a learning environment of free inquiry that not only is safe but also feels safe for all.
We invite the campus community to convene this afternoon (March 4) at 4 p.m. in Stetson Chapel for an hour of reflection that also will include an update on measures regarding safety and the campus environment. A KDPS officer will attend the meeting.

The initial assessment of KDPS is that this incident is not a credible threat and that it is unlikely to be acted upon. Nevertheless, it is unnerving for many people, and we are taking precautions and measures to address the concerns of those who feel uneasy. Please be aware of your surroundings, and if you see anything you consider amiss please report it to the Security Department.

Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran
Mickey McDonald
Sarah Westfall
James Prince
Al DeSimone
Eric Staab
Greg Diment
Melanie Williams