Category: Faculty & Staff

Endowed Six Help Extend Excellence and Impact

Posted on

In late September K announced the launch of the public phase of its $125 million Campaign for Kalamazoo College (of which $84 million has been raised). The excellence and impact of a K education derives directly from the quality of its faculty. Toward the end of ensuring that excellence and impact, the campaign is already having an effect–specifically by supporting six new endowed professorships (a final goal of the campaign is to fund 10 endowed professorships). Five of the six positions have been appointed. The sixth will soon be named. The five appointees are:

The Arcus Social Justice Leadership Assistant Professor of Anthropology — Adriana Garriga-López

The Arcus Social Justice Leadership Associate Professor of Political Science — John Dugas

Lucinda Hinsdale Stone Assistant Professor of Religion — Taylor Petrey

James B. Stone College Professor of Theatre Arts — Ed Menta

Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics and Business — Ahmed Hussen

Endowed faculty positions honor outstanding faculty members and provide funds for research and the pedagogical explorations of those professors. Such positions suggest the academic prestige of Kalamazoo College. New endowed faculty positions allow faculty expansion in critical academic fields. And because the money for such positions comes from earnings from the principal of endowed gifts, these professorships remove stress on the College’s operating budget, enabling the College to apply the savings that result to educational innovations and opportunities which are often as unforeseen as they are important. The ultimate beneficiaries are Kalamazoo College students and the nonpareil learning experiences they forge with their professors. The Campaign for Kalamazoo College seeks to raise $62 million in endowment monies to support not just new faculty chairs, but also scholarships for students and improvements to the programs that constitute the K-Plan.

Transition Fan

Posted on

Professor of Physics Jan Tobochnik is a self-described “big fan” of phase transitions–solids to liquids; liquids to gas; magnetic to non-magnetic; the fall of the Soviet Union. Just a few examples of spectacular phase transitions, and phase transitions are “always interesting,” says Tobochnik. Also, some systems act like they are at a phase transition, such as perhaps the neural firings of the brain. In particular, he’s intrigued by the physics associated with the very moment of change–a period of “criticality” at which all scales of behavior are important.

So it’s no surprise that for the next three years his research (supported by a grant from the Petroleum Research Fund) will involve reproducing experimental data and generation of new data through computer models of melting. Wait…melting? Surely a phenomenon as long observed as this (just set an ice cube on the counter) is thoroughly known to science. Not so, says Tobochnik. “Science has no comprehensive theory for three-dimensional melting,” he says. “Consider that ice cube on the counter–we know it melts from the outside in, but we only know the mechanisms for melting related to surfaces or defects. Absent a surface or a defect, we don’t know how a material melts. We have no general theory, which, in the case of new materials, makes the prediction of melting points and other properties unreliable.”

Two very recent–and painstaking–experiments (one at Harvard, the other in China) managed to explore the phenomenon of melting when there are no surfaces or defects by using colloidal spheres suspended in a fluid. The result was some fascinating new data. But the experiment is extremely difficult to set up, making replication, confirmation, and extension of the data a problem. Tobochnik’s grant will enable his lab to work with the Harvard group to set up a computer modeling simulation of the experiment. That modeling will confirm and, hopefully, provide new knowledge of melting in three dimensional substances.

The grant will fund two students in Tobochnik’s lab for three consecutive summers. They may, or MAY NOT, be physics majors doing SIP work. “Many times I prefer to provide significant research experiences to younger students, including first-years,” Tobochnik says.

“Three out of four … like a coffin or a door”

Posted on

Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss won the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize for prose of 500 words or less. Brief nonfiction, prose poetry, or short-short stories are eligible for the prize. Di’s winning entry is titled “Wal-Mart Parking Lot,” and about it the contest judge wrote: “[It] offers readers an unexpected vision of American culture filtered through consumer culture and 20th century art history.” Di also was a finalist in three prestigious poetry competitions: the Orlando Prize (from A Room of Her Own Foundation); the River Styx Poetry Prize, 2013; and the Able Muse Poetry Prize, 2013. Last fall she was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the English department at Colorado College.

New poems of Di’s appear in Unsplendid, Rattle, North American Review, and The Missouri Review. The latter journal featured the four poems in its online Text Box anthology, which includes an introduction to the poems (from which comes the Di Seuss quote that serves as title to this post) as well as questions and writing prompts. Di’s next public readings will occur November 4 (in Mount Pleasant, Mich., as part of the Wellspring Literary Series) and February 6, 2014 (at the University of Michigan, as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series). Her third collection of poems, Four-Legged Girl, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2015.

Wilde for Potts

Posted on

Professor of Theatre Arts Lanny Potts received a 2013 Wilde Award for the “Best Lighting Designer Of The Year.” The award honors his work on The Light in the Piazza this past summer at Farmers Alley Theatre. The Wilde Awards were established by Pride Source Media Group to honor the excellent work produced by Michigan’s professional theaters. The Wildes are presented by EncoreMichigan.com, the most comprehensive resource for news and information about the state’s professional theater industry. Its team of 10 critics reviewed 179 productions produced or presented by 47 theater companies across the state and narrowed the slate to 71 productions. Of the 71 productions nominated, the top-honored show was The Light in the Piazza with six awards, including Lanny’s.

K Professor Siu-Lan Tan Teams with Hollywood Stars in “The Art of the Score”

Posted on
K Psychology Associate Professor Siu-Lan Tan
K Associate Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan

Kalamazoo College Associate Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan joined actor Alec Baldwin, Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, composer Carter Burwell, and Tufts University neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel as part of The Art of the Score: The Mind, Music, and Moving Images, a co-presentation by World Science Festival and the New York Philharmonic about the uniquely powerful role of music in shaping the emotional impact of film.

Professor Tan served as primary editor of The Psychology of Music in Multimedia published by Oxford University Press in 2013. This book has been recognized as the first to consolidate scientific research on how we integrate sound and image when engaging with film, television, video, interactive games, and computer interfaces. She is also first author of a leading text entitled Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance (Psychology Press/Routledge 2010, 2013). Tan’s work also appears in Music Perception, Psychology of Music, Psychomusicology, Empirical Musicology Review, International Journal of Gaming, and other journals.

Born in Indonesia and raised in Hong Kong, Siu-Lan Tan earned degrees in piano and music before attending Purdue University, Oxford University, and Georgetown University to complete an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology. She has taught at K since 1998.

Social Justice Networks in Action

Posted on

Alyssa Rickard ’12 works for the Africa Department of Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights. The organization’s Johannesburg (South Africa) office–and Rickard–are working on a project seeking people in southern Africa to serve as mentors to 20 Fellows of a Freedom House program called Empowerment of a New Generation of Leaders in Southern Africa (ENGLSA). The Fellows (and prospective mentees) are men and women between 25 and 45 years old from government, private sector and civil society organizations in Namibia and South Africa, all of whom are committed to ethical leadership and accountable governance. Prospective mentors will use one-on-one and group meetings as well as virtual interactions to mentor, drawing from their personal experiences and professional backgrounds to serve as trusted counselors, loyal advisors, sounding boards and coaches to mentees. Mentors will help the Fellows reflect on their developing competencies and enhance their leadership capacity. In her work, Rickard, who earned her B.A. as a political science major, is drawing on some of her own undergraduate mentors as resources, specifically the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership’s Lisa Brock and Prexy Nesbitt. Rickard took the College’s course on Nelson Mandela, co-taught by Brock and Nesbitt, and later joined one of Nesbitt’s trips to Africa. Both Brock and Nesbitt have extensive networks of social justice leaders in southern Africa that might help Rickard and Freedom House recruit the mentors for ENGLSA. The connection is one example of the worldwide impact of the ACSJL.

Professor Presents Psychology Symposium

Posted on

Psychology Professor Siu-Lan Tan presenting her book with colleaguesAssociate Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan co-presented a symposium with the president of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, Andrea Halpern, in August at the Society for Music Perception and Cognition in Toronto, Canada. The symposium was titled “The Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching and Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions,” and it explored strategies to successfully balance teaching and research in institutions such as liberal arts schools. This is an important topic because only about 8 percent of the society’s faculty members are at primarily undergraduate institutions. At the conference, Tan and her co-editors and co-authors were also present at Oxford University Press’ promotion for their new book The Psychology of Music in Multimedia. The photo shows Siu-Lan Tan (center) with two chapter authors at left (l-r: David Bashwiner and Mark Shevy) and two co-editors at right (l-r: Scott Lipscomb and Annabel Cohen). Sixteen other authors were involved in the book, residing in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Japan, Hong Kong, and Israel.

Physics Professor on the Starboard Guns

Posted on

Professor of Physics Tom Askew on a boatProfessor of Physics Tom Askew had physics in mind this summer–the physics of force and trajectory of early 19th-century cannon fire. Askew as deckhand and gunner on the Friends Good Will during a reenactment of the Battle of Lake Erie. Small but well-armed, Friends Good Will led the British battle line into action against the American fleet. Askew’s is a replica tall ship from the Michigan Maritime Museum in South Haven, and Askew serves on board every summer. The original Friends Good Will was built in Michigan at River Rouge in 1810 as a merchant vessel. In the summer of 1812, she was chartered by the federal government to take military supplies to Fort Dearborn, a small military and trading post at what is now Chicago. She was returning with furs and skins when she was lured into the harbor of Mackinac Island. The British, having taken the island just days before, were flying false colors above the fort ramparts. The British confiscated the vessel, cargo, and crew, renaming her “Little Belt.” She was armed, taken into service, and fought with the Royal Navy until September of 1813, when she was recaptured by United States Commodore Oliver Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie. Within an hour after the great guns fell silent, Commodore Perry mentioned her in his now famous dispatch, “We have met the enemy and they are ours: Two Ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” That sloop was Friends Good Will. The ship then served in the United States Navy, transporting General William Henry Harrison’s troops across Lake Erie in the successful invasion of Southern Ontario. She was driven ashore in a storm south of Buffalo in December 1813. In early January 1814, during efforts to re-launch the ship, the British unceremoniously burned the once-proud vessel during a raid on Buffalo.

Psych of Music

Posted on

Book cover for The Psychology of Music in Multimedia A book co-edited and co-authored by Associate Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan  was published this summer by Oxford University Press (United Kingdom). The Psychology of Music in Multimedia (edited by Siu-Lan Tan, Annabel J. Cohen, Scott D. Lipscomb, and Roger A. Kendall) is the first book to consolidate the scientific research on how we integrate sound and image when engaging with film, television, video, interactive games, and computer interfaces. Tan served as primary editor of this edited volume, which includes the work of 20 contributors representing seven countries and a wide range of disciplines including psychology, musicology, neuroscience, media studies, film, and communication.  She also contributed three chapters, including one on the role of sound and music in video games. Research studies co-authored by Tan and Kalamazoo College alumni Matthew Bezdek ’07, John Baxa ’09, and Elizabeth Wakefield ’08 are also discussed in the book.

Prep and Patience

Posted on
Bartz chemistry lab members Jeffrey Bartz, Myles Truss and Braeden Rodriguez.
Researchers in the Bartz chemistry lab include (l-r): Jeffrey Bartz, Myles Truss, and Braeden Rodriguez.

Myles Truss ’17 and Braeden Rodriguez ’16 are learning a great deal about chemistry during their summer internships in the laboratory of Associate Professor of Chemistry Jeffrey Bartz. Among the lessons is the extraordinary patience and preparation required to run an experiment that shoots lasers at chemical compounds in order to watch how they behave. According to Truss, it’s “a way of seeing” a chemical component “that combines chemistry and physics.” But things don’t always go as planned. Lasers need fixing, problems arise in the “beam machine,” sample preparation may go awry. According to Bartz, when a high tech piece of lab equipment breaks down his response often aligns with the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). And who would have thought chemistry taught that? Rodriguez and Truss are completing data from a Senior Individualized Project begun several years ago, which shows another key element of science–how it builds over time and through collaborations. Part of what they seek through laser “sight” is nitric oxide (NO) released from interesting compounds. Nitric oxide happens to be central to the chemistry research of someone quite close to Truss—his mother, Associate Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss, whose research has found nitric oxide to be of great interest in several cascades of chemical events associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Truss and Rodriguez are testing theory, says Bartz, more “pure” science than applied—with two key products nevertheless, Bartz adds: “the research itself, and aspiring scientists like these two young men.” Rodriguez intends to declare chemistry as his major winter quarter of his sophomore year. Truss begins his first year this fall and is leaning toward chemistry as a possible major.