Institutional Announcements Archives - Page 13 of 25

Kalamazoo College Alumnus Jon Stryker Commits $20 Million in Student Scholarships

Posted on June 15, 2018March 22, 2022

Stryker’s contribution establishes a 10-year scholarship program at the College for talented students in need of financial support.

Kalamazoo College is proud to announce today the establishment of the Jon L. Stryker Future Leaders Scholarship Program. Through a generous $20 million contribution from Jon Stryker, the scholarship program has been created to assist students in need of financial support and to further Kalamazoo College’s commitment to diversity within its student body. The program, beginning in academic year 2018-2019, will provide $2 million in scholarships annually over the next 10 years.

Kalamazoo College Alumnus Jon Stryker Scholarships — Jon Stryker ’82 believes education for all people is a highly effective way to break the cycles of marginalization and inequality that continue to plague this country. His generous $20 million gift will provide scholarships to future leaders seeking a Kalamazoo College education.

The Jon L. Stryker Future Leaders scholarships will primarily support students of color, first generation college students and students from lower income families.

“We are incredibly grateful to Jon Stryker for this remarkable gift that opens the doors of our unique institution to students who otherwise would not have this opportunity. The future of our society depends on our ability to develop leaders from diverse backgrounds. It is an honor that Jon has placed this tremendous trust in his alma mater,” said Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez.

Stryker’s contribution supports and affirms the goals of the College’s new strategic plan, “Advancing Kalamazoo College: A Strategic Vision for 2023.”

Additionally, the gift is being made in anticipation of Kalamazoo College’s next fundraising campaign and is intended to encourage other alumni, families and friends of the College to contribute $20 million toward endowed scholarships.

“I am thrilled to be able to make this contribution to my alma mater with the goal of advancing diversity and inclusion in higher education,” Stryker said. “Supporting a pathway to higher education for all people is a highly effective way to break the cycles of marginalization and inequality that continue to plague this country. There is much more work to be done and my hope is to inspire more members of the Kalamazoo College community to make additional contributions to support diverse students at K.”

The scholarships made possible by Stryker’s contribution and others like it will have an immediate and long-term impact for current and future members of the College’s student body.

Jon Stryker, a native of Kalamazoo, Mich., is an architect and philanthropist. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from Kalamazoo College in 1982 and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2000, he established the Arcus Foundation to support the advancement of LGBT civil rights globally and the conservation of the world’s great apes.

He has been an influential contributor to Kalamazoo College over the years. He serves on the College’s Board of Trustees, and has made more than $10 million in funding grants to support the College’s highly ranked study abroad program and enrollment diversity efforts. In 2008, he established a $5.6 million grant to fund the tuition and financial support of 50 Posse Scholars, a program of the Posse Foundation to pair high-performing public high school students from underrepresented groups in higher education with full, four-year academic scholarships.

Additionally, his Arcus Foundation awarded the College more than $25 million in grants to create and sustain The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. The center became fully operational on campus in academic year 2010-2011 and supports the College’s goal to develop emerging leaders and sustaining existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice. Stryker also funded the award-winning building that houses the center. This building, designed by Studio Gang in Chicago, was dedicated in September 2014.

Through these and other donations, Stryker has given a total of $66 million to Kalamazoo College. For Stryker’s devotion to K, he was awarded the College’s Distinguished Service Award in 2010.

Kalamazoo College is a nationally recognized residential liberal arts college located in Kalamazoo, Mich. The creator of the K-Plan, Kalamazoo College provides an individualized education that integrates rigorous academics with life-changing experiential learning opportunities.

Environmental Education Seeded with Grant Support

Posted on June 13, 2018September 17, 2024

Environmental education and sustainability have deep roots at Kalamazoo College. Now, they’re set for an era of new growth.

The Center for Environmental Stewardship, which got its start during the 2010-2015 Campaign for Kalamazoo College, will take a giant leap forward with a newly announced $250,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

Environmental education student examining plants — Examining a patch of Oriental bittersweet, an invasive plant, Mathew Holmes-Hackerd ’20 makes use of Kalamazoo College’s Lillian Anderson Arboretum as part of a research project. A $250,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations will help the College spread environmental education and sustainability throughout its curriculum and make wider use of the Arboretum via the Center for Environmental Stewardship.

The center’s goals are to:

Increase sustainability and environmental stewardship across the curriculum.
Enable more students to incorporate sustainability and environmental education into their work.
Build on existing assets to expand the College’s capacity for responsible resource management and sustainable development.
Increase the effectiveness of College’s Lillian Anderson Arboretum as a learning lab for the campus and community.

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations are a major supporter of private colleges and universities like K, based on their conviction that “an educated society strengthens democracy through principled, thoughtful and compassionate leadership.” The Center for Environmental Stewardship is consistent with Kalamazoo College’s strategic vision of integrating academic rigor with life-changing experiential education in a values-driven community.

Biology Department Chair Binney Girdler says the grant will allow the hiring of a dedicated director for the Center for Environmental Stewardship, a key element of launching a program with the breadth and depth envisioned.

Girdler, whose duties include serving as faculty director of the arboretum, says environmental studies are nothing new at K — the subject has been an interdisciplinary minor for about 30 years, and both biology and chemistry classes make heavy use of the arboretum for those and other courses. She also says the College has a record of sustainability initiatives dating back at least to the launching of a recycling effort in the 1990s.

In addition, the College is a signatory to the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. And in 2016, thanks to a grant from the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, it opened the solar-powered Dr. H. Lewis Batts Jr. and Jean M. Batts Pavilion to help host programming at the arboretum.

“So we’ve had these bubbles of passion around the campus, but no one person to get their arms around the whole thing and to really center it, and enrich it, and expand it,” Girdler says.

The director, whose position will be half-time, “will be able to really do some connecting the dots and cultivating collaborations among” faculty in their classes, the College’s facilities staff, student organizations, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership and the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, she says.

“It will be more than the sum of the parts,” she adds.

Working with the director, she says, will be a student Environmental Leadership Corps, with paid positions dedicated to sustainability initiatives both on campus and involving the wider Kalamazoo community. She says those students will engage Kalamazoo-area residents “from pre-K to gray” through activities such as leading interpretive hikes at the arboretum, a 140-acre expanse of woods, meadows and marshes six miles from the College in Oshtemo Township.

“We’ll be cultivating a corps of students who themselves have gained from their connections with the natural world and their understanding of sustainability, and having them lead others to the understanding that we’re all in this together,” Girdler says.

Ultimately she expects efforts to acquaint students with environmental education and sustainability issues, and the related use of the arboretum, to spread far beyond science courses like the ones she teaches. She cites a music class that held a session at the arboretum, where it coaxed sound and rhythms from sticks, stones and other natural materials, and a philosophy class that used the forest to explore environmental themes.

“Our poets should go out, our musicians should go out, to experience the complexity of nature,” she says. “You have to see all those interactions, you have to feel it, you have to smell it. There’s no substitute for being outdoors.”

Grants will be available to faculty members across the College to help them design instructional modules that make use of the arboretum.

Mathew Holmes-Hackerd ’20, a biology major, shares Girdler’s enthusiasm for the arboretum’s possibilities. He will be conducting a survey there this fall of the invasive species colonizing the former farmland, a 1982 gift to the College by the late Lillian Anderson ’26.

“We’re really fortunate to have this,” he says as he searches along the Arboretum’s Meadow Run Trail for patches of Oriental bittersweet, an invasive vine that can overwhelm and damage native trees. “It’s going to be really amazing.”

SAGA Foundation Grant Expands Kalamazoo College Programs

Posted on June 11, 2018March 22, 2022

SAGA Foundation, a nonprofit organization committed to cultivating leadership, has awarded a $1.1 million grant to Kalamazoo College to support the College’s mission to develop enlightened leaders.

The grant, honoring foundation creator Bill Laughlin, will have a far-reaching impact on Kalamazoo College’s campus and in the greater Kalamazoo area by:

SAGA Foundation founder Bill Laughlin with his dog — Bill Laughlin had a deep connection with Kalamazoo College that began in 1951 through Saga Corporation, a food and restaurant company he co-founded. He lived on campus with his dogs in Welles Hall for a short time.

Providing SAGA Foundation scholarships for the College’s juniors and seniors
Supporting a Bill Laughlin Endowed Internship program, giving stipends to K students working with nonprofit organizations
Establishing a Bill Laughlin Leadership Award presented annually to two students who best demonstrate leadership, an entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to community
Enhancing the College’s men’s and women’s golf teams
Initiating Laughlin Links, an outreach program introducing golf, and teaching valuable life skills, to youth in the Kalamazoo community

“This grant will offer amazing opportunities for Kalamazoo College students to develop their leadership skills on campus and beyond,” Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez said. “It supports K’s approach to the liberal arts by emphasizing experiential education within our local community as well as nationally. We are excited and honored by SAGA Foundation’s trust and confidence.”

The deep connection between Laughlin and K began in 1951 through Saga Corporation, a food and restaurant company he co-founded that supplied the College with food service. Laughlin headed the food service program and became a popular figure at K, briefly living with his dogs in the basement of Welles Hall. He occasionally taught economics and coached the golf team, which won five MIAA conference championships under his guidance in the late 1950s and early 60s.

As Laughlin’s business grew, he served on the boards of more than 45 nonprofit, political and business organizations, including the College’s Board of Trustees from 1963-1980. SAGA Foundation was established to continue his charitable efforts and promote his values. SAGA Foundation President David Bartoshuk said Laughlin was a visionary who believed global problems require bold actions through collaboration, teamwork and open communication.

“Entrusted with continuing Bill’s legacy, SAGA Foundation is honored to partner with the College and provide a multifaceted grant that supports underserved youth and promotes entrepreneurship and leadership,” Bartoshuk said. “We are especially inspired by the creative ways the supported programs incentivize students to bring their passion to the community and make a lasting impact on the world.”

Kalamazoo College, founded in 1833, is a nationally recognized residential liberal arts college located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The creator of the K-Plan, Kalamazoo College provides an individualized education that integrates rigorous academics with life-changing experiential learning opportunities.

Hoop House Construction Will Grow Gardening at K

Posted on May 29, 2018April 5, 2023

Hoop house sounds like a nickname for a basketball arena.

In the field of agriculture, however, it’s a term for a kind of light yet sturdy, metal-framed greenhouse with a clear polyvinyl cover that can be erected anywhere it’s needed. A hoop house provides a year-round environment for growing vegetables, flowers and other cold-sensitive plants.

Hoop house students gathered around plants — Kalamazoo College’s Just Food Collective collaborated on a proposal for a “hoop house” greenhouse that, with contributions from alumni and friends of the College, will greatly expand the year-round gardening space at the College. Gathering in the College greenhouse the group currently uses are some of the Just Food Collective members involved in the proposal (from left): Maya Gurfinkel ’20, Aiden Voss ’20, Natalie Thompson ’19, Elliott Boinais ’21 and Lee Carter ’18.

This fall, thanks to a well-crafted proposal by the student members of Kalamazoo College’s Just Food Collective, a program of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement (CCE), and the generosity of donors, an 1,800-square-foot hoop house will rise in a corner of the intramural field north of the Fitness and Wellness Center parking lot.

It will be several times the size of the College’s existing greenhouse behind Hoben Hall. And unlike that structure, where potted plants are grown on tables, the crops in the hoop house will be planted in ground-level boxes, making them easier to tend, sustain and harvest.

Ultimately, say student organizers such as Lee Carter ’18, a CCE Civic Engagement Scholar, the food produced in the hoop house could become part of the supply chain for the College’s Dining Services and perhaps for other food programs in the Kalamazoo community. It’s part of a wider goal of the Just Food Collective to increase the use of locally sourced food, easing nutritional inequities, bringing more transparency to the food supply system and reducing the College’s carbon footprint.

The idea has been around for over a decade. CCE Director Alison Geist says it got its start with a group called Farms to K, a program that grew from the service-learning first-year seminars Cultivating Community, first taught in 2008 by English professor Amelia Katanski ’92, and Roots in the Earth, led by College Writing Center Director Amy Newday, that focus on food justice and sustainable agriculture. Katanski and Newday serve as advisors to the group and Larry Bell ’80, founder of Bell’s Brewery, has provided support.

Artist rendition of Hoop House — An artist’s depiction of the College’s new 1,800-square-foot hoop house, which will be erected in a corner of the intramurals field north of the Fitness and Wellness Center.

The CCE, students and faculty revived and expanded the mission of Farms to K in spring 2016 as the Just Food Collective, whose mission includes policy work on food insecurity. The students involved included Carter, who says he grew up in a “back to the land, homesteader” household in rural New Hampshire that always had a vegetable garden. With Newday, an owner of Shelbyville, Michigan’s, Harvest of Joy Farm, as mentor, they drew up a simple proposal for a hoop house, and Anika Sproull ’17, wrote a senior individualized project (SIP) advocating that K invest in sustainable agriculture.

Over the next two years, more than a dozen students devised a detailed, illustrated proposal and prepared a presentation that, Geist says, “just bowled over” President’s Staff. The proposal lays out the plan and explains how it would provide learning opportunities for existing classes and connect to campus programs such as a composting initiative. It also details the involvement of paid and volunteer student workers, tells how it would fulfill existing College policies concerning environmental justice and sustainability, looks at what other colleges and universities are doing and even includes the results of an informal survey demonstrating K student support for the idea.

Alumni and other supporters of the College, impressed by the plan, contributed the $26,200 needed to fund it.

“I was personally blown away by how quickly [the College] raised the money,” says Just Food Collective Civic Engagement Scholar Natalie Thompson ’19, who participated in the presentation.

Geist says she believes the donors were enthusiastic because they saw it as “a really K kind of thing,” where students used the freedom inherent in the K-Plan to take the lead and work outside of traditional structures. It’s the sort of student-led initiative, with one foot in the classroom and the other in contemporary social issues, that will spread throughout K’s curriculum under the new strategic plan. The plan calls for the College to “become the definitive leader in integrating academic rigor with life-changing experiential education in a values-driven community.”

“This is a really good example” of what the plan envisions, Geist says. “We’re not educating leaders of tomorrow, we’re educating leaders of today.”

As a 2018-19 Civic Engagement Scholar, Just Food Collective member Elliott Boinais ’21 will be in charge of the project, advised by Newday.

Geist cites it as a “fellowship in learning” — a principle that has illuminated the College’s approach to education for almost a century and which defines the CCE’s mission.

“It provides a prototype for what this kind of collaborative learning community can look like and achieve in the future,” she says.

“I hope it’s going to outlast our time here,” says Just Food Civic Engagement Scholar Aiden Voss ’20.

The graduating Carter regrets he won’t be around for the completion of the hoop house, which the philosophy major says he has dreamed about since he was a sophomore in a nearby Living-Learning Housing Unit, gazing at the intramural field as he drank his morning coffee while sitting on a sofa he dragged onto the porch.

Still, his K-Plan has revolved around food, with a SIP on food and philosophy and his experience helping lead a sustainable agriculture initiative. And his next step demonstrates the value of the education he received when, he says, he chose K over culinary school: This fall, he will begin work as a line chef at Canlis, the James Beard Award-winning restaurant widely acclaimed as Seattle’s finest.

“It’s really worked out,” he says.

Experience, Opportunity Intersect for City, K

Posted on April 20, 2018March 22, 2022

“Win-win.”

That’s the phrase Kalamazoo city government officials and Kalamazoo College faculty and staff frequently use to describe a burgeoning partnership in which K students are gaining invaluable hands-on experience conducting research that is providing the city much-needed data to focus unprecedented community improvement efforts.

Sharmeen Chauhdry and Kevin Ford of Shared Prosperity Kalamazoo — Sharmeen Chauhdry ’20 has gained experience conducting research for programs such as Shared Prosperity Kalamazoo, an antipoverty initiative coordinated by Kevin Ford. Chauhdry, seen here with Ford at the city planning office, will continue her experiential education with a summer internship through the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement.

Though having students work with the city is not a new idea, it’s getting fresh attention because of a strategic confluence. The K Board of Trustees has adopted a new strategic plan for the College that calls for strengthening the K-Plan in part by finding more effective ways to link classroom learning to real-world experiences. And the city, with tens of millions of dollars in philanthropic support, is implementing its own strategic vision, Imagine Kalamazoo, with new initiatives such as Shared Prosperity Kalamazoo that provide just those sorts of opportunities.

“From its perspective as an institution and a brain trust and a shaper of young lives, the College benefits,” says Kevin Ford, coordinator of the innovative antipoverty program. “And from the city perspective, we have that relationship with an influential local institution and we can tap into that brain trust and the opportunity to do research—things we don’t have.”

“I think it’s a real opportunity,” says K Anthropology Professor Kiran Cunningham ’83, long an advocate of such programs.

“It just a win-win all around,” says Laura Lam ’99, Kalamazoo’s assistant city manager in charge of Imagine Kalamazoo, who credits an early K-city learning partnership for launching her career.

Alison Geist, director of K’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement (CCE), says the new partnership is far larger than anything that preceded it. A model for how it will work is Cunningham’s winter term 2018 Social Research for Social Change class. Students not only read and discussed how to do research, they joined Shared Prosperity Kalamazoo to conduct it, interviewing residents about their needs.

The student-researchers, advised by Cunningham and Ford, focused on the means low-income residents have devised on their own for dealing with barriers to employment, such as costly child care and limited public transportation. Among those strategies: pooling resources to look after one another’s children during working hours and creating a sort of informal Uber to ensure jobs are accessible even when bus routes aren’t.

As the culmination of their classwork, the students wrote a report and recommendations documenting those solutions and the residents’ suggestions for how to make them more effective and broadly available. Shared Prosperity Kalamazoo is using the data in partnership with community members to devise new initiatives.

The city is in a position to carry out this work because of a burst of philanthropy intended to narrow the gap between what has been described as Kalamazoo’s two divergent cultures—one characterized by an uncommon cultural and educational resources, and the other plagued by persistent poverty and inequity. Underpinning the initiative, William D. Johnston, husband of former K Trustee Ronda Stryker, and William Parfet, brother of K Trustee Donald Parfet, joined forces to donate $70.3 million, creating the City of Kalamazoo Foundation for Excellence.

The city’s growing need for data to carry out its ambitious plans, and the College’s push to provide students opportunities to apply their learning, are coming together at just the right time, says Geist. She says the CCE is dedicating nearly half of its upcoming internships to Kalamazoo city programs, working with City Planner Christina Anderson ‘98.

“This is such an amazing opportunity,” Geist says. “It’s a real city with real city assets. It faces so many of the challenges faced by Rust Belt cities elsewhere but it has so many resources to address those issues.”

One of Cunningham’s students in the winter term research class, Sharmeen Chauhdry ’20, says being part of Shared Prosperity Kalamazoo brought home lessons about how ground-level community research can pave the way for meaningful change.

“We got to see what the real experts, the people in these situations, say about what works and what doesn’t, and what they need,” she says.

The anthropology-sociology major says she now sees government as a potential career choice, and will continue her work with the city this summer in one of the CCE internships.

Even for those who don’t choose such a career path, the benefits of experiential learning with the city government can have a lifelong effect, Geist says.

“It creates opportunities for our students so they can learn what it means to be a citizen,” she says.

Kalamazoo College is a Top Producer of Fulbright Students

Posted on February 19, 2018March 22, 2022

Kalamazoo College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities producing the most Fulbright students for the 2017-18 academic year. The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced the honor Sunday.

Four K representatives out of 12 applicants earned Fulbright awards this year, placing the College among the top Fulbright-producing bachelor’s institutions.

Four K representatives out of 12 applicants were named Fulbright winners, placing the College among the top Fulbright-producing bachelor’s institutions. Many candidates apply as graduating seniors, but alumni can apply as well. Graduating seniors apply through their institution. Alumni can apply through their institution or as at-large candidates.

K’s representatives are:

Andrea Beitel ’17, who earned a research/study award and is now in the U.K.;
Riley Cook ’15, who earned a research/study award and is in Germany;
Dejah Crystal ’17, who earned an English Teaching Assistantship in Taiwan; and
Sapana Gupta ’17, who earned an English Teaching Assistantship in Germany.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. Top-producing institutions are highlighted annually in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 380,000 participants, chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential, with opportunities to exchange ideas and contribute to solutions to shared international concerns. More than 1,900 U.S. students, artists and young professionals in more than 100 fields of study are offered Fulbright Program grants to study, teach English and conduct research abroad each year. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program operates in more than 140 countries throughout the world.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State, funded by an annual appropriation from Congress to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education.

The Fulbright Program also awards grants to U.S. scholars, teachers and faculty to conduct research and teach overseas. In addition, about 4,000 foreign Fulbright students and scholars come to the United States annually to study, lecture, conduct research and teach foreign languages.

Grant Will Boost Student Research Experience

Posted on January 30, 2018April 4, 2022

Kalamazoo College’s efforts to get science majors experience in student research, one of the most important factors in providing them an exceptional start in their post-college careers, just got a big boost.

The Sherman Fairchild Foundation will provide $247,500 to fund stipends of $4,000 apiece for students in biology, chemistry and physics to conduct research in summer. The three-year grant will also provide up to $1,500 apiece for students to attend scientific conferences to present their findings and to offset the cost of supplies, said Associate Professor of Physics Arthur Cole, who will serve as director of the project.

The student research beneficiaries, 15 each summer, will include both rising seniors working on their Senior Individualized Projects (SIPs) and younger students, allowing them to get early exposure to life in the lab before deciding whether to pursue science as a career, Cole said. He worked with Assistant Professor of Biology Santiago Salinas, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dwight Williams and Anne Dueweke, director of grants, fellowships and research, to conceptualize and develop the grant proposal.

“It gives students an earlier chance to seek out research experiences,” Cole said. “A lot of times you think you want to go into the sciences and you don’t know what research is like until you get to try it.”

He said the grant also will make it possible for those who support themselves while attending the College to concentrate on student research, rather than having to seek summer jobs, and could open doors for members of groups who are underrepresented in the sciences.

Salinas said summer research as an undergraduate played a major role in his own decision to become a scientist and professor.

“It’s more than what’s in the textbook,” he said. “They start to see the bigger picture. And they get to try things. It’s how they learn. And it’s fun.”

For those who do decide to pursue scientific careers, Williams said, the opportunity to get early research experience can give them a “leg up” on getting further grants and research opportunities.

“It’s a great way for us to get more students involved in research, particularly with an emphasis on first- and second-year students, instead of waiting until they’re seniors working on their SIPs” he said.

Though most of the research that the grant funds will involve students working with professors on the College’s campus, it will also provide support for up to three K students a year to participate in research at other institutions, Cole said.

College Awarded $800,000 Grant to Strengthen Experiential Learning

Posted on January 22, 2018April 4, 2022

Continuing a record of generous support for Kalamazoo College, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $800,000 to fund a project aimed at updating and strengthening the College’s experiential learning program, a cornerstone of the K-Plan.

Experiential Learning — Putting experiential learning into action, second-year student Madison Butler addresses the Kalamazoo County Commission about a report her class assembled on the county’s local identification card initiative. An $800,000 grant will help the College explore ways to weave such opportunities more tightly into the Kalamazoo College experience.

The grant is the largest yet to K from the foundation, one of the nation’s prime philanthropic supporters of liberal arts education. It brings to more than $4 million the total in grants the New York-based foundation has given the College since the mid-1970s.

The grant recognizes the value of K’s unique approach to liberal arts education, as embodied in the K-Plan: rigorous academics, study abroad, individual scholarship and, of course, experiential education — which provides students opportunities for hands-on, immersive learning in real-life situations.

The four-year award will cover the cost of bringing together students, faculty and staff in various settings and through a variety of means to explore and experiment with:

reducing barriers to participation in experiential learning;
strengthening faculty engagement with experiential learning; and
evolving the K-Plan and expanding its utility and educational impact.

Assistant Professor of English Marin Heinritz ’99, a former chair of the College’s Experiential Education Committee, along with a steering committee for the project, will work with a “design thinking” consultant to facilitate a collaboration between faculty, staff and students around these goals.

Heinritz recalled that as the College altered the K-Plan in the late 1990s, her graduating class was the last to have the second-year spring quarter dedicated to off-campus career development activities such as internships followed by summer classes before the junior year abroad. That revision of the College’s schedule along with factors both economic and societal, she said, may have contributed to decreased participation in some experiential learning programs among K students.

She said the design thinking process focuses on the needs and expectations of those being served—in this case, students—and is intended to inspire innovative strategies for making experiential learning a more organic part of the curriculum.

“The idea is to help elicit thinking from us so we can begin to problem-solve,” Heinritz said. “We’ve gotten this amazing grant so we have these great resources and time to see how it’s going to evolve. There are all kinds of possibilities.”

She said one proposal might be to devise classes that take advantage of K’s long winter break by using part of it for a capstone experience directly related to the material covered in the classroom.

“So for example, I teach a food and travel writing sophomore seminar, and it would be really fun to take the students somewhere connected with that and give them lots of writing and reflection assignments,” she said. “That would change the way I teach that class fundamentally to give them a direct experience.”

College Provost Mickey McDonald also pointed to existing models, such as a project led by Anthropology and Sociology Assistant Professor Francisco Villegas that involved students in Kalamazoo County’s initiative to establish a local ID card for those unable to obtain other forms of government identification. He said that through the process led by Heinritz, students, faculty and staff will seek to make the connections between experiential learning and other parts of the K-Plan “much more explicit for our students.”

“I think there’s a really different landscape now than there was even 10 years ago, before the Great Recession, and so students and their families are thinking about how to hit the ground running as soon as they graduate,” McDonald said. Amid concerns about finishing a degree in the minimum possible time, they can see experiential learning as a luxury or disconnected from their long-term goals.

“One of the ideal outcomes would be that almost no student would see any kind of barrier to experiential learning,” McDonald said. “If we think this kind of education is the best way to prepare them to be great citizens of the world, then we need to take as many of these barriers away as possible.”

McDonald said the focus on such issues, while certain to be greatly enhanced by the grant, is not new, and that students could begin benefiting from the innovative programs it produces as early as the 2018-19 academic year – in line with the launch of the College’s new strategic plan this spring.

“The commitment to the K-Plan, to experiential education, is going to be a central priority of the strategic plan,” he said. “I think this grant and the work that we’ve been doing are going to resonate very well with it.”

GLCA Appoints K Provost as its New President

Posted on December 15, 2017March 13, 2024

The Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) has appointed Kalamazoo College Provost Mickey McDonald as its new president. McDonald will begin his position at the GLCA in July 2018.

New GLCA President Mickey McDonald — Kalamazoo College Provost Mickey McDonald will begin serving the Great Lakes Association of Colleges (GLCA) as its president in July 2018.

K President Jorge Gonzalez will consult with faculty leadership to plan for the appointment of an interim provost to serve during the 2018-19 academic year. K will also begin preparations for a national search for the provost position.

In a message to faculty and staff, President Gonzalez wrote that McDonald provided invaluable support and counsel during his presidency. “I will miss his sharp mind, insightful knowledge of the College and of higher education, unflappable personality, good humor, and friendship. Mickey’s selection for the GLCA presidency is a testament of his leadership abilities and of K’s reputation in the higher education community.”

During his nearly 10 years of service, McDonald significantly shaped Kalamazoo College’s faculty, curriculum and future. He hired approximately one-third of the tenure-track/tenured faculty currently at K, increasing faculty of color from approximately 15 percent to 25 percent, and women faculty from approximately 45 percent to 55 percent.

McDonald helped support implementation of many of the elements of the Plan for Kalamazoo College’s Future including faculty approval of new graduation requirements and other curricular innovations, and an increasing emphasis on making K more diverse and inclusive. His leadership will help shape the vision of K for the next five years as he currently serves as co-coordinator of K’s current strategic planning initiative.

With former President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran and others, McDonald helped envision, plan and establish the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. He also helped secure more than $3.25 million in major institutional grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (in support of the Shared Passages Program and also in support of major diversity and inclusion initiatives), the Sherman-Fairchild Foundation, Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation, and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, among others. He served as acting president of K from December 2013 through March 2014.

Higher education leadership and local community engagement are values K holds, and McDonald participated enthusiastically and frequently. Locally, he serves on the Board of Directors of Farmers Alley Theatre, and regionally, he served on the Southwest Michigan First Education Committee. He served as a member of the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education and served as facilitator for a number of leadership development programs for the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC).

Happy Holidays from Kalamazoo College

Posted on December 6, 2017March 22, 2022

Dear Friends:

Kalamazoo College Holiday Card Holidays Preview — Happy holidays from Kalamazoo College! Click on this image for our holiday video.

We have called many places home: Michigan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Texas and California. During the holiday season, when thoughts naturally turn to home and family, ours come back to the place where destiny and good fortune have brought us: Kalamazoo College. The snowy Michigan winters cannot diminish the warmth with which we have been embraced here, nor dim the glow of this institution.

That light is embodied in the symbols of Kalamazoo College, from the beacon atop Stetson Chapel to our motto, Lux Esto: Be Light. And it shows in the way our students and alumni approach life – graciously, with the enlightenment that comes from being at home in the world.

It also illuminates our hearts. While we may live apart and represent the rich variety of humanity, we – the students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of Kalamazoo College – have a common focal point in our lives: our shared experience as part of this extraordinary community.

No matter who we are, where we live or what our cultural backgrounds may be, that special spirit binds us as a family – one that shares, in K, a common home. And home is where the heart is – never more so than at this time of year when we celebrate enduring bonds.

In the kinship of the Kalamazoo College community, we wish you a season when, in the words of our Alma Mater, “hope and joy renew.” And if, in the coming year, your travels should bring you this way, we will welcome you home.

Sincerely,

President Jorge G. Gonzalez and Suzie (Martin) Gonzalez ’83

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