Four outstanding Kalamazoo College teachers were awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor. The four individuals, and their departments, are: Dennis Frost (Ph.D., Columbia University), history and East Asian studies; Christine Hahn (Ph.D., University of Chicago), art and art history; Autumn Hostetter (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison), psychology; and Babli Sinha (Ph.D., University of Chicago), English and media studies. Frost, who is the Wen Chao Chen Associate Professor of East Asian Social Sciences, will serve as Dean of the Sophomore Class. Hostetter will serve as Dean of the Junior Class. Features on these four will appear in upcoming issues of the College’s publications.
Category: Faculty & Staff
Kalamazoo College Joins “Generation Study Abroad” Initiative
Kalamazoo College has joined more than 150 other U.S. colleges and universities in the Institute of International Education’s Generation Study Abroad initiative that aims to double the number of U.S. college students who study abroad by 2020. Generation Study Abroad reflects the U.S. Department of Education’s international strategy that aims to provide all U.S. students with a “world-class education” and seeks “global competencies for all students.”
In IIE’s latest Open Doors publication that documents both the outbound study abroad and the inbound international student activity for U.S. colleges and universities, Kalamazoo College was ranked 15th among baccalaureate institutions for its 2011-2012 outbound study abroad participation of 80.8 percent. Additionally, the number of international students coming to K now approaches ten percent.
In the current academic year, 2013-2014, Kalamazoo College students have studied or will study abroad on programs ranging from ten to 30 weeks. The College offers its students 44 study abroad programs in 28 countries on six continents, pre-approved for transfer of credit. Approximately 20 K students will also engage in international internships or research during summer 2014. Numerous students also take advantage of the College’s U.S.-based “study away” opportunities throughout the year.
Students participating in Kalamazoo College sponsored study abroad programs of 18-30 weeks duration, typically engage in a cultural project in addition to taking classes at the partner institution. These cultural projects allow K students to work alongside local people, use the local language, and achieve locally set goals. These cultural projects help students achieve the learning outcomes the College expects from a K study abroad experience. These outcomes include:
- understand, through study and experience, the cultures of several parts of the world
- be sensitive to and respectful of personal and cultural differences
- engage with global issues and cultural diversity
- be proficient in at least one second language and display cultural competence in a variety of contexts
- act effectively and responsibly as a citizen, both locally and globally, and thereby enhance intercultural understanding.
Kalamazoo College students have embarked on study abroad experiences since 1958, making the College a pioneer in sending students abroad for immersive cultural, language, and study experiences. More information about the study abroad program at K is available at the Center for International Programs website: www.kzoo.edu/cip.
Art Professor Honored for Civic Engagement
Michigan Campus Compact (MiCC) honored Associate Professor of Art Sarah Lindley with its biennial MiCC Faculty/Staff Community Service-Learning Award, the highest honor that MiCC bestows on faculty and staff in the state of Michigan.
Lindley has made outstanding contributions in service-learning, and she has inspired students to become involved in service-learning through modeling, influencing, and instruction. She was nominated by Alison Geist, director of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement.
Since 2005 Lindley has taught at least one community-engaged arts course every year, and her students have completed multiple projects involving a wide variety of community partners and thousands of residents. Lindley has worked with the County Center for Health Equity, Kalamazoo Loaves & Fishes, Michigan Commission for the Blind, the YWCA, Education for the Arts, Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative, the Black Arts and Cultural Center, Ministry with Community, and Art Hop. She and her students have used arts as a vehicle for community and personal transformation, creating work that is useful, thoughtful, and inclusive. Lindley created the new Kalamazoo College Community Studio in the downtown Park Trades Center, and she has previously been honored with the Marcia Jackson Hunger Awareness Award by Kalamazoo Loaves & Fishes.
MiCC is a coalition of college and university presidents who are committed to fulfilling the public purpose of higher education. The organization helps students develop into engaged citizens by creating and expanding academic, co-curricular, and campus-wide opportunities for community service, service-learning, and civic engagement.
Headline and Lead Combine “Data,” “Value,” and Kalamazoo College
A Wall Street Journal article (“College Uses Test Data to Show Value,” by Douglas Belkin, February 20, 2014) describes K’s efforts to measure (and market) the gains its students experience in critical thinking and problem solving skills because of the K undergraduate learning experience.
The article notes that K leads a growing trend of colleges and universities becoming more transparent about sharing test data and other metrics to show the learning outcomes of a higher education. For his story Belkin interviewed Dean of Admission Eric Staab and Associate Provost Paul Sotherland as well students and their parents for his article. The piece notes that K (Sotherland) shares data that documents the effect and value of a K education with parents and prospective students during campus visits.
Much of that data originates from the Collegiate Learning Assessment, currently the most reliable direct measure of students’ gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, writing, and problem solving as a result of particular undergraduate learning experiences. What distinguishes the CLA from other assessments is its focus on direct measures of learning rather than an aggregate of surrogate markers that include, for example (in some rankings), the size of an institution’s endowment or the number of alumni that provide annual gifts.
Professor Emeritus of Sociology Richard Means Dies
Richard L. Means ’52, professor emeritus of sociology, died on February 15, 2014. He came to K as an undergraduate student in 1948, when he transferred from the University of Toledo. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. At K he won the Hodge Prize in philosophy and was president of the student body. He was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He and fellow K graduate, Joyce Allen, married in 1953.
Means earned a bachelor’s degree in divinity from Colgate Rochester Divinity School (1956) and an M.A. and Ph.D. (sociology) from Cornell University (1959 and 1964, respectively). He served as a chaplain at Cornell (1956-59) and was ordained as an Associate Minster of the First Congregational Church (1957). He returned to K in 1961, where he received tenure (1964) and was promoted to full professor (1972). He retired from K in 1993, having served the College for 32 years.
Among the qualities that made him exceptional, wrote his colleague and friend, Dean of the Chapel Robert Dewey, on the occasion of Mean’s 25th service anniversary with the College, were his “command of a discipline, intellectual curiosity beyond that discipline, stimulating conversation, collegial support, a sense of humor, a broad range of interests and an impressive knowledge of each, a passionate concern for the vitality and quality of the College and for the problems confronting society, the nation, and the world.” His research and teaching interests were broad and deep and included the family, criminology, mental health institutions, the sociology of religion, race relations, alcohol and drug abuse, the environment, and social gerontology. Citing the breadth of his colleague’s intellectual interests Dewey likened Means to “a man in a conning tower rotating his periscope across the wide horizon to see and grasp what he finds there.” Means wrote numerous journal articles on various topics in sociology and religion, and he was the author of the book The Ethical Imperative: The Value Crisis in America, which was used in college classes at Grinnell and Carleton, among others.
After he retired from K, Means served as interim minster of the First Congregational Church of Kalamazoo. He then served as interim minster of the First Congregational Church of Coloma, Michigan.
He is survived by Joyce, his wife of 60 years, their three children, three grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. A memorial service will be held at 2 PM on Thursday, February 20, at First Congregational Church, 129 S. Park Street. Friends and family will have the opportunity to gather for a time of remembrance and fellowship on Friday, February 21, beginning at 3:30 in the Kiva at Friendship Village, 1700 N. Drake Road.
Award for Japanese Speech a K First
Senior Megan Davis and first-year Katherine Ballew participated in the Michigan Japanese Speech Contest (held at Hinoki International School, Livonia, Mich.). The title of Megan’s speech was “A Moment in Which I Made a new Realization About the World.” Katherine’s speech, “Heading Toward a World Without Racism” was awarded an Honorary Mention. It was the first time a Kalamazoo College student has won award in the Japanese speech contest. The students attended the contest with Noriko Akimoto Sugimori, assistant professor of Japanese language. Pictured at left are (l-r): Megan, Katherine, and Professor Sugimori.
Emptying the White Knapsack
“Students of color at colleges across the country have been organizing for years to foreground their experiences of racism – raising a broad range of issues from campus life, to curriculum, to hiring practices and faculty representation of people of color. At Kalamazoo College, a growing number of students of color are raising key questions about a college’s readiness for meaningful engagement with issues of racism, while students at the University of Michigan and the University of California Los Angeles are organizing against erasure in the wake of legal decisions against affirmative action.
“Student organizing has been accompanied by seemingly endless discussions about white privilege and frequent references to Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 essay, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, a classic consciousness-raising piece about white privilege.
“For many white students, this article is an eye-opener because of its analysis that white people benefit from racist structures and the racist distribution of power and resources in US society every day of our lives. Yet this article remains limited because it offers no direction for its readers after coming to this awareness.
“I offer this piece as a follow-up to McIntosh...”
Read the rest of Jaime Grant’s compelling essay “Emptying the White Knapsack” on Praxis Center, an online resource center for scholars, activists, and artists hosted by Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Jaime Grant is contributing editor for Praxis Center’s “Gender and Sexualities” section, and recent Arcus Center executive director.
From action research and radical scholarship, to engaged teaching and grassroots activism, to community and cultural organizing and revelatory art practice, Praxis Center makes visible the imperative social justice work being done today. Read more about K’s Praxis Center.
Sound Affects DOOM
Sound off or sound on?
Turns out that music makes better DOOM–or, more precisely, players of that first-person video shooter game score a lot higher with the sound (music and effects) on … at least according to one study.
Associate Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan joined renowned video game composer Sascha Dikiciyan (Sonic Mayhem) to give an interview on the psychological effects of video game music. The interview occurred on the blog Consequence of Sound, a.k.a. CoS. That interview went live a couple days ago and is nearing 1,500 views on YouTube.
In order to tell the rest of the science behind the story, Professor Tan used her Psychology Today blog to post a related piece: “Video Games: Do you play better with sound on or off?”
Turns out the science is complicated. The results of the aforementioned DOOM study were seemingly contradicted by a study of Ridge Racer V, which found that gamers with the fastest lap times had the music off.
And it gets more complicated than that. Professor Tan’s K research (a collaboration with her SIP student John Baxa ’09) studied gamers playing Twilight Princess-Legend of Zelda (ya gotta love these names!). In the Twilight study, the worst performers played with both music and sound effects off. And the study found that the more the game’s audio was incrementally added, the more performance improved. And yet (in another wrinkle) the best performances occurred to background music UNRELATED TO THE GAME (!) … think boom box across the room. A closer examination suggested more nuances based on game familiarity and gaming skill. Turns out that average skill level newbies tune out the audio to focus exclusively on visual cues when first navigating the game. Not so for high skill level players, new to the game or not. These players are skilled, in part, because they pay attention–and effectively integrate–auditory and visual cues, both of which provide feedback for the best moves.
Tan writes: “I’m also reminded of what a participant in our study expressed so well: ’There’s more to a game than just high scores. It’s also about being transported and immersed in another world, and music and sound effects are what bring you there.’”
Indeed, writes Tan, “When you have a great soundtrack, music can be the soul of a game.” NOTE: Tan and Baxa (along with Matt Sprackman) published their music/video game research in 2010 and 2012. Baxa said it aided his entrance to graduate school for study on video games. He is currently a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University.
FREE BEER Among the BEST
Writer in Residence Di Seuss’s poem “Free Beer,” originally published in the Missouri Review, was selected by Terrance Hayes for the Best American Poetry anthology, which is due out in September of this year. When the poem appeared in Missouri Review, Di included an author’s note. “As I child,” she wrote, “I lured adults to my puppet show by offering free beer. We didn’t have the money for beer or puppets. I wasn’t lying; I was imagining, which is a form of hope.” Di’s second book of poems, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, received the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Her third book, Four-Legged Girl, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.
K Writers Publish Essays and Poems
Writer in Residence Diane Seuss has new work published, and so also has her good friend and former colleague, Professor Emerita of English Gail Griffin.
Di’s “Gyre,” an essay/prose poem, appears in Brevity, a great magazine of brief nonfiction. Several poems from a series she wrote on still life paintings were accepted by Missouri Review, which will publish them this spring. Those poems were finalists for that magazine’s poetry prize. Her poem “Wal-Mart Parking Lot” won the Indiana Review’s 1/2K Prize. In other news, Di received a residency at Hedgebrook, a writing retreat for women writers located on Whidbey Island, near Seattle. Di will spend some time there this summer.
Gail’s essay, “The Messenger,” appears in the the new issue of the Chattahoochie Review, in its special issue on animals. The piece “centers on the night my cat brought a live owl into the house,” says Gail. “And then it gets stranger.” Another of her essays, “Out of the Woods,” is published in a collection called Southern Sin, published by the magazine Creative Nonfiction. That essay is subtitled “Women Behaving Badly” and provides an account of Gail’s time in graduate school at the University of Virginia. “I think my piece isn’t nearly as racy or eyebrow-raising as some of the others,” she says. “It’s more a reflection on the intersections of race and gender in me and in the south.” Southern Sin isn’t out yet, but may be pre-ordered at Amazon or the Creative Nonfiction website.