Category: Faculty & Staff

Kalamazoo College Faculty Members Achieve Outside the Classroom

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Kalamazoo College faculty members not only teach, also advise students, and serve on numerous committees that help direct the College’s academic programs, they publish books, essays, scientific papers, and other writings, and they receive awards, grants, and countless other accolades. Below are recent achievements by just a few K faculty members. Well done, professors!

(By the way, K has a very low (13-1) student-to-faculty ratio. Of the nearly 100 full-time “resident” faculty, 96 percent hold a Ph.D. or equivalent terminal degree.

 

Bob Batsell, professor of psychology, received a 2014-2015 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant, from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee, for his project “Test Enhanced Learning in the Psychology Classroom.”

Jeff Bartz, professor of chemistry, received a $220,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his project entitled “Photodissociation Dynamics Studied by Velocity-Mapping Ion Imaging.”

Lisa Brock, academic director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership and associate professor of history, co-edited a special issue of the Radical History Review on the global antiapartheid movement.

Henry Cohen, emeritus professor of romance languages and literature, published the article “The river, the levee, love and confession: The thematic of Grazia Deledda’s L’argine” in Forum Italicum.

Kiran Cunningham, professor of anthropology, received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee, for her project “An Assessment of Transformative Learning through Change-Oriented Research.”

John Dugas, professor of political science and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership associate, published two book chapters. “Old Wine in New Wineskins: Incorporating the ‘Ungoverned Spaces’ Concept into Plan Columbia,” appeared in U.S. National Security Concerns in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Concept of Ungoverned Spaces and Failed States. “Colombia” appeared in Politics of Latin America.

Peter Erdi, Luce professor of complex systems studies, co-authored Stochastic Chemical Kinetics, a book published by Springer.

Dennis Frost, Wen Chao Chen associate professor of East Asian social sciences, published “Sporting Disability: Official Representations of the Disabled Body at Tokyo’s 1964 Paralympics” in the Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science. He also received a 2014-15 scholarship of teaching and learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for his project “Acquiring the Gift of Gab: Demystifying Public Speaking.”

Laura Furge, Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney professor of chemistry, published two papers with student co-authors: “Mechanism-based Inactivation of Human Cytochrome p450 3A4 by Two Piperazine containing Compounds” appeared in Drug Metabolism and Disposition; “Molecular Dynamics of CYP2D6 Polymorphisms in the Absence and Presence of a Mechanism-based Inactivator Reveals Changes in Local Flexibility and Substrate Access Channels” appeared in PLoS One. Also, her article “Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education” was published in Social Ecology of the Classroom: Issues of Inclusivity. 

Adriana Garriga-Lopez, assistant professor of anthropology and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership associate, published “Azucar dura y melaza vaga” in the online journal 80grados.

Menelik Geremew is the new Stephen B. Monroe assistant professor of money and banking, a chair held by the faculty member within the Department of Economics and Business who teaches in the field of money and banking. Charles J. Monroe established this chair in 1966 in honor of his father, Stephen B. Monroe.

Christine Hahn, assistant professor of art and art history, has begun a three-year term on the College Art Association’s (CAA) Committee on Diversity Practices, one of CAA’s nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees. Her committee supports the development of global perspectives on art and visual culture; promotes artistic, curatorial, scholarly, and institutional practices; and assesses and evaluates the development and implementation of curricular innovation, new research methods, curatorial and pedagogical strategies, and hiring practices that contribute to the realization of these goals. The Committee is committed to organizing conference sessions that address issues concerning race and ethnicity.

Autumn Hostetter, associate professor of psychology, had three articles published recently. “Gesture-speech integration in children with specific language impairment” appeared in the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders; “Gesutre in Reasoning: An Embodied Perspective” appeared in The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition; and “Action Attenuates the Effect of Visibility on Gesture Rates” appeared in the journal Cognitive Science. She also received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for her project “Test Enhanced Learning in the Psychology Classroom.”

Patrik Hultberg, associate professor of economics, received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for his project “Assessing the Flipped Classroom.”

Andrew Koehler, associate professor of music and director of the Kalamazoo Philharmonic won the American Prize in Orchestral Programming – Community Division.

Maksim Kokushkin, assistant professor of sociology published “Standpoint Theory is Dead, Long Live Standpoint Theory! Why Standpoint Thinking Should Be Embraced by Scholars Who Do Not Identify as Feminists?” in the Journal of Arts and Humanities.

Amy Lane, visiting assistant professor of sociology, received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for her project “An Assessment of Transformative Learning through Change-Oriented Research.”

Charlene Boyer Lewis, professor of history, was selected into the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program.

 

Sarah Lindley, associate professor of art, had an exhibition at the Lansing Art Gallery titled “Of Consequences: Industry & Surrounds.” She also received a Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) Expanding Collaboration Initiative titled “Surrounding Industry and Environs: An Intellectual Resource Collective.”

Amy MacMillan, L. Lee Stryker assistant professor of business management and her co-authors received the award for best conference refereed paper from the Marketing Management Association for their paper “Improving the Collaborative Online Student Evaluation Process.”

Simona Moti, assistant professor of German, had her essay “Between Political Engagement and Political Unconscious: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Slavic East” published as a chapter in the edited volume of German Literature as World Literature.

Andy Mozina, professor of English, published Quality Snacks, a book of 15 short fiction stories.

Stacy Nowicki, Title IX coordinator and library director, was appointed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to the Library of Michigan Board of Trustees.

Jennifer Perry, visiting assistant professor of psychology, received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for her project “Test Enhanced Learning in the Psychology Classroom.”

Taylor Petrey, Lucinda Hinsdale Stone assistant professor of religion, published his article “Semen Stains: Seminal Procreation and the Patrilineal Genealogy of Salvation in Tertullian” in the Journal of Early Christian Studies.

Di Seuss, writer in residence and assistant professor of English, received residency at Hedgebrook, a writing retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, Wash. Her essay/prose poem was published in Brevity and several of her poems have been selected to be published in the Missouri Review. Her piece “Wal-Mart Parking Lot” received the “½ K Prize” from the Indiana Review and her piece “Free Beer” was selected to be included in Best American Poetry 2014. Di is now in a tenure track position at K.

Mike Sosulski, associate provost and chair and associate professor of German, won 2014’s Best Article Award from the journal Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German with his article “From Broadway to Berlin: Transformative Learning through German Hip-Hop.”

Noriko Sugimori, assistant professor of Japanese, received a grant from the GLCA Expanding Collaboration Initiative for the project “Bringing East Asia to the Great Lakes Region: An Intergenerational Cross-Cultural Digital Oral History Project.”

Amanda Wollenberg, assistant professor of biology, was a recipient of a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant, from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for her project “Assessment of Student Experiences in the Cell and Molecular Biology Lab.”.

Margaret Wiedenhoeft, associate director for the Center of International Programs, was selected as one of three co-editors of the forthcoming 4th Edition of NAFSA’s Guide to Education Abroad for Administrators and Advisors.

Michael Wollenberg, assistant Professor of biology, co-authored “Propioniobacterium-Produced Coproporphyrin III Induces Staphylococcus aureus Aggregation and Biofirm Formation.” a paper titled in mBio.

[Malllory Zink ’15, helped compile this list. Thanks, Mallory!]

First Language: Music!

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Kalamazoo College Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan TanOur first “language” is music, according to the latest Psychology Today blog post of Kalamazoo College Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan. Or, more accurately, our first language is the interaction of our bodies with music, which begins as young as 10 months old! We may not synchronize our movements with the sound until the age of four (or thereabouts), but as infants we sure love to enlist our new skills in movement to explore sounds. In fact, this is how we build our knowledge about the physical properties of objects. And young as they may be, infants engage in that exploration very systematically. Finally, infants express their musical sensitivity in the way they listen to music. Siu-Lan provides video examples of the many nuances she discusses in this, her most recent blog post, and the infants she enlists to underscore her points are unforgettable (some have been seen by more than 20 million viewers). Our music-body language may be our first, but it lasts. I was thinking about this idea (and Siu-Lan’s blog) just yesterday on my walk to the bus, reciting in my head two lines from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (nearly the last words the two lovers speak to each other when both are conscious). Juliet: “O, now begone! More light and light it grows.”/ Romeo: “More light and light, more dark and dark our woes.” Two lines of iambic pentameter that match the iambs of a human heart beat, or a walk to the bus stop. What’s interesting is whether the music of the lines (and heart’s systole and diastole) help the hearer more deeply understand the complex combination of sorrow and joy that Shakespeare explores in his play. If so (and this reader thinks it is), then our first language matters a great deal to a life deeply lived.

Challenge and Imagination: Working Science at K

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Kalamazoo College alumnus Parker de Waal
Parker de Waal ’13

Parker de Waal ’13 had a wish: he wanted to work on a computational chemistry project.

Laura Furge, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Professor of Chemistry, had a challenge: she needed models of the variants of an important human enzyme. (Some background: The aforementioned enzyme, found in the liver, helps the body process medicines, but it’s not exactly the same–hence, variants–in all individuals. Such variability means some people react differently (including adversely) to important medicines. That’s a serious health problem, and part of Furge’s current grant from the National Institutes of Health calls for the study of these variants. And for such study a model of the variants’ structures would certainly be useful!)

In spring 2013, wish met challenge, and, one year later, the two researchers (along with co-author Kyle Sunden ’16) have published a paper in PLoS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science.

That culminating publication traces back to a laboratory question: Could de Waal (a student in Furge’s “Advanced Biochemistry” class) make computational models of the variants? “I suggested some different ways to approach the problem,” says Furge, “and those approaches took Parker all of about two days!” It was at that point that de Waal suggested to Furge some different, more powerful computational approaches–specifically, molecular dynamics using more sophisticated software. “I said, ’Let’s go for it!’” says Furge. “And we both started on the journey to learn more about Molecular Dynamics approaches.”

The journey included consulting with other scientists around the country and the world (Germany, the Czech Republic) both by email and in person at various scientific conferences. Furge and de Waal used a supercomputer at the University of Texas for the computational work. Analysis of the resulting structures was completed by Furge and Sunden during the winter and spring terms of 2014. “The project is a beautiful example of how research and teaching go together at K,” says Furge. The work has been presented at two major medical meetings.

The paper includes 21 figures and tables. Parker de Waal performed all the experiments that led to the figures; Sunden did the experiments and analyses for two of the figures. Furge did the majority of the analysis. In true liberal arts fashion, the cross-disciplinary work combines computer science and biochemistry. Furge taught Sunden, a chemistry and computer science double major, the relevant biochemistry as they progressed with the project. Sunden hopes to continue the work for his Senior Individualized Project after he returns from study abroad in Australia. The work may one day contribute to personalized solutions for people who have adverse drug reactions to important medicines. The paper has had more than 300 views in the six weeks since it’s been published.

Great academics, cross-disciplinary collaboration, research at the edge, and science that matters! Science education at Kalamazoo College: a double helix of challenge and imagination.

Advancing Civic Engagement

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Kalamazoo College alulmna Jillian McLaughlinLike many Kalamazoo College alumni, Jillian McLaughlin ’10 is as creative as she is passionate (in her case, about important public policy issues). This fall the public policy graduate student (she attends the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University) collaborated with photographer Peter Rausse to create the “Unsexy Policy Project.”

The project’s goal is to get people, especially people aged 18 to 29, to think about, and act on, policy issues that, stuffy as they may seem, affect millions of people. McLaughlin’s tactic: bring back the “unsexy!” or, put another way, articulate a matter’s gravitas and hitch it to a metaphor generally recognized as “sexy.” In application, this meant combining cheese- or beef-cake photos of some dozen current or former students of the Kennedy School with short, lay-language summaries of a particular issue, such as voter ID laws, tax reform, telecommunication competition, among others. The project took three days to complete and rolled out before the November mid-term elections. McLaughlin and Rausse made a calendar out of the photos and will donate proceeds from sales to an organization selected by the project’s Facebook fans.

Before she started her graduate program, McLaughlin worked as a researcher for the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy organization dedicated to improving the economic security of low-income individuals and families. At K she majored in political science and was an outstanding cross-country runner. We love her title at the Unsexy Policy Project: “Co-Founder and Chief Mischief Maker.” Very K-like.
Try and Keep Up - The federal minimum wage should rise with inflationMan lying on desk with four folders

K Professor and Students Publish Important Chemistry Research

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K students Rina Fujiwara, Erran Briggs and Amanda Bolles with Professor Laura Furge
Medicinal researchers and members of the Furge Lab (l-r): Rina Fujiwara, Erran Briggs, Amanda Bolles, and Laura Furge

Laura Furge, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Professor of Chemistry at Kalamazoo College, is the senior and corresponding author of an important scientific paper that includes three Kalamazoo College student co-authors: Amanda Bolles ’14, Rina Fujiwara ’15, and Erran Briggs ’14. The paper is titled “Mechanism-based Inactivation of Human Cytochrome P450 3A4 by Two Piperazine-containing Compounds” and appears in Drug Metabolism and Disposition, a highly regarded, high impact international journal published by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. The research the paper describes, which was conducted in the Furge Lab on K’s campus, contributes the understanding of how some drugs “apply the brakes to” the activity of an enzyme–in this particular case, an enzyme important to the metabolism (or processing) of about half of all medicines! What are the human implications of the work? “Many individuals take multiple medicines each day,” said Furge. “Multiple-drug regimens can lead to unwanted side effects, including drug-induced inhibition of the very enzymes responsible for the metabolism and clearance of other co-administered drugs.” In fact, side effects from drug interactions of polypharmacy therapy are the number one cause of hospitalization in the U.S. “This paper adds in understanding of how certain classes of drugs may cause this type of unfavorable medical event,” said Furge. “New insights will hopefully lead to better prevention in the future.”

The paper includes 13 figures and tables. Furge noted that Bolles, Fujiwara, and Briggs performed all the experiments that lead to those figures, and “all the work was done on the campus at Kalamazoo College. We had all the equipment here needed to complete these studies, and we have already started full swing on another set of experiments for a future publication.” The students have presented parts of the preliminary data at national meetings in the past year, and the research forms of basis of the Senior Individualized Projects for Bolles and Fujiwara.

Such research, and the extraordinary educational opportunities it provides for K students, requires the cooperation, coordination, and collaboration of many funding sources. “This is so important,” Furge stressed. The Richard Cook Fellowship and the Alan and Elaine Hutchcroft Fund (endowments created and supported by alumni gifts) paid for the summer stipends of Fujiwara and Bolles, respectively. The mass spectrometer essential to the experiments was paid for in part by the Hutchcroft Fund and a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The research also was funded by grants Furge secured from the National Institutes of Health.

“Drug Metabolism and Disposition is an international journal with a high impact factor,” added Furge. Impact factors measure how frequently manuscripts in a journal are referenced by other authors.

Baby Tears and Dancing Twins

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Kalamazoo College Psychology Professor Siu-Lan TanPsychology Press has launched a new social media campaign called “Ask Dr. Tan.” And, yes, it’s “our” Dr. Tan–Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan. Psychology Press is one of her publishers. Their Twitter account has many followers (among the highest number of any academic press). To celebrate having surpassed 50,000 followers, Psychology Press asked Siu-Lan to do #ASKDRTAN.

They chose wisely. Even though Siu-Lan confessed (in a recent BeLight article) to being a neophyte in the world of social media, her blog about a baby moved to tears by her mother’s singing was an incredibly successful “must-read” on two popular blogs in 2013. Psychology Press has launched its Twitter campaign with videos of twin girls dancing to their father’s guitar at ages 1, 2, and 3. The videos had gone viral, and #ASKDRTAN invites denizens of the blogosphere and Twitterverse to ask Siu-Lan any questions that come to mind about the girls’ behavior and their early responses to music. Example: What do most infants respond to first in music: melody or rhythm?

Siu-Lan will receive all questions before October 29 via Psychology Press’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. Submitters of questions deemed top picks get a prize (a free copy of her book, Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance). Top pick questions will be developed as part of an article that will appear on the Psychology Press website and on Siu-Lan’s Psychology Today blog, What Shapes Film?

Philharmonia Director Wins Music Award

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Associate Professor of Music Andrew KoehlerAssociate Professor of Music Andrew Koehler, who also serves as music director of the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, is the 2014 winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award—in the community division. Andrew was selected from applications reviewed this summer from all across the United States. The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The award honors the work of Vytautas Marijosius, who served for 35 years as director of orchestral activities at the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford. Andrew has appeared as a guest with the West Michigan Symphony; the Lyatoshynsky Chamber Orchestra in Kyiv, Ukraine; and the Festival South Chamber Orchestra in Mississippi, among others. Recently, he took part in the 9th Grzegorz Fitelberg International Conductor’s Competition in Katowice, Poland, where he won First Distinction and the Youth Jury Prize. Andrew is a graduate of Yale College, where he completed a B.A. in music and German studies (graduating with honors and distinction in both majors). He holds a certificate in conducting from the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, where he studied for two years as a Fulbright scholar, as well as a Master’s degree from Northwestern University.

A “Big World” K Story

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K graduates Idah Chungu and Charles Holmes
Fellow K graduates Idah Chungu (left) and Charles Holmes, M.D., M.P.H., in Lusaka, Zambia

Conventional wisdom holds that it’s a small world, but really it’s a big world with a lot of K in it. “A young woman came by my office to introduce herself,” wrote Charles Holmes ’93, M.D., M.P.H., the director and chief executive officer of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research (CIDRZ) in Zambia (Lusaka).

Charles was writing to his old biology professor, Paul Sotherland, the former professor of biology who now serves as the College’s coordinator of educational effectiveness. CIDRZ is a non-governmental organization that improves access to quality healthcare in Zambia through capacity development and implementation of sustainable public health programs. And the young woman who stopped by Charles’s office was Idah Chungu ’13, who earned her degree at K (economics) as an international student. She matriculated to K from Zambia.

Charles told Paul the rest of the story. “In a funny coincidence, my parents were biking through Kalamazoo a few months ago and my dad was wearing the Zambian soccer jersey that I gave him. Idah noticed the jersey and ran over to them to introduce herself and find out what he was doing wearing a Zambian soccer jersey in the middle of Michigan. He recommended that she stop by our offices once she was back in Lusaka, which led to yesterday’s meeting.”

Charles majored in biology at K (hence his strong connection to Paul). He completed medical school at Wayne State University, and internal medicine and infectious disease training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Prior to his position in Lusaka, he was deeply involved in the global response against HIV disease and AIDS. He loves Zambia and its people. “I highly recommend a trip,” he wrote to Paul, ever the naturalist. “We saw African wild dogs and a pennant winged nightjar in Kafue National Park last weekend!”

Zambia is located in south eastern Africa, bordered by Angola on its west, and Zimbabwe and Mozambique on its east. Both far from and near to the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa (Sierra Leone and Liberia). “We’re integrating some Ebola sensitization into our community work,” Charles wrote. “And we’re trying to put a team together to go west to help. It’s challenging because we’re always stretched thin simply running our own projects.”

After graduating from K, Idah worked for the College’s advancement division and for the Center for International Programs. She is currently looking for a job in Lusaka. Who knows, perhaps she and Charles will one day become colleagues. It is, after all, a big world with a lot of K in it.

Rolling Through…Time?

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Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan’s latest blogProfessor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan’s latest blog–“Rolling Through Time“–reunites her with former K student John Baxa in a conversation about an animated short feature John helped create. That short is titled “Ball” and is about time. Or is it memory (its power and limitations)? Or aging? Play or death?  All this in a three-minute animated short? Of course, suggests Siu-Lan and John. It’s a matter of layers (certainly a part of What Shapes Film) as well as all that a viewer brings to the experience (the story is in the eye of the beholder). Enjoy your own encounter, to which you bring…what?

Three or four viewings evoked for me two poems, one by Wislawa Szymborska and the other by K’s own Con Hilberry. The poems are related to each other and to the animated short, though the three differ, especially in the feeling of their endings. The poems are shared below.

John graduated from K in 2009. He majored in psychology and earned a concentration in media studies. He recently completed a Master’s degree in entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon. His short has no speech or text. Layers of image and music are everything. The music, somewhat ironically, is titled “Words.”

Still Life With a Balloon
(by Wislawa Szymborska, from Poems New and Collected 1957-1997, Harcourt, Inc., 1998)

Returning memories?
No, at the time of death
I’d like to see lost objects
return instead.

Avalanches of gloves,
coats, suitcases, umbrellas—
come, and I’ll say at last:
What good’s all this?

Safety pins, two odd combs,
a paper rose, a knife,
some string—come, and I’ll say
at last: I haven’t missed you.

Please turn up, key, come out,
wherever you’ve been hiding,
in time for me to say:
You’ve gotten rusty friend!

Downpours of affidavits,
permits and questionnaires,
rain down and I will say:
I see the sun behind you.

My watch, dropped in a river,
bob up and let me seize you—
then, face to face, I’ll say:
Your so-called time is up.

And lastly, toy balloon
once kidnapped by the wind—
come home, and I will say:
There are no children here.

Fly out the open window
and into the wide world;
let someone else should “Look!”
and I will cry.

Memory
(by Conrad Hilberry, from Until the Full Moon Has Its Say, Wayne State University Press, 2014)

Everything that was—touch
football in the street, Peggy

McKay in the hay wagon,
Miss LaBatt’s geometry, the second

floor in Madison, where
one daughter slept in a closet.

Is any of this true? Nightgowns,
glances, griefs existing nowhere

but in this sieve of memory.
Newspaper files, bank accounts,

court records—nothing there.
It’s gone, except for these scratchy

words—blackbird on a branch,
long story caught in his throat.

Paper’s Tops at Conference

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Amy MacMillan among three receiving awardsAmy MacMillan, the L. Lee Stryker Assistant Professor of Business Management, co-authored a paper titled “Improving the Collaborative Online Student Evaluation Process”—a research effort so fine it received the award for Best Conference Refereed Paper from the Marketing Management Association. The award was presented at a lunch during the MMA conference in San Antonio, Texas. Amy wrote, “I am enjoying representing Kalamazoo College at this conference, attended by hundreds of marketing educators, as well as industry experts and journal editors. From teaching ideas to research strategies technology tools, there are many things I’m excited to bring back to campus.” The financial support to attend the conference is part of the endowed professorship that Amy holds. That aspect of endowed professorships–the encouragement of faculty learning and scholarship–is one reason they are so important and a primary focus of The Campaign for Kalamazoo College. Amy (at left) is pictured with two of the paper’s co-authors (both from Western Michigan University). The fourth co-author teaches in China.