Get ready: Kalamazoo College is holding its Day of Gracious Giving on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. The annual giving day is the college’s largest fundraising day of the year, and the entire K community is invited to come together to provide vital support for the student experience.
Contributions of all sizes support scholarships and financial aid, faculty resources and K’s highest priorities, empowering K students to explore the world in new and exciting ways and creating life-changing experiences. Last year’s Day of Gracious Giving raised more than $564,000 from 1,314 donors, not including the anonymous matching pool.
This year’s theme celebrates the Kalamazoo College journey—the unexpected discoveries, remarkable achievements and lifelong connections that come with being a K student.
The Day of Gracious Giving is inspired by another beloved K tradition, the Day of Gracious Living. That event falls on a date chosen by student representatives, a surprise that’s revealed when the campus-wide email goes out and the chapel bells begin to ring, signaling to all students: classes are canceled, gather up your friends and have an amazing day!
“The Day of Gracious Giving continues to signify the traditional spirit of the Day of Gracious Living, one of care, appreciation and gratitude for this amazing community,” said Laurel Palmer, director of the Kalamazoo College Fund.
Palmer encourages everyone to help illuminate paths for K students, igniting the spark of discovery—blazing trails for today’s explorers and tomorrow’s innovators with the warmth of your generosity. This day is about participation, and your engagement makes gifts and students go places!
On May 7, follow K on social media and check for updates in your email to start your adventure in giving!
Contributions of all sizes on the Day of Gracious Giving will help provide Kalamazoo College with funds for scholarships and financial aid, faculty resources and life-changing experiences. Make plans to participate and donate on Wednesday, May 7.
“Making a gift—of any size—on the Day of Gracious Giving helps launch new opportunities for students, creating ways of impact that inspire countless journeys at home and abroad,” Palmer said.
A Kalamazoo College alumna is among the people playing important roles in the fight against Parkinson’s disease (PD) at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), headquartered in New York City.
The foundation, which launched in 2000, says it’s dedicated to finding a cure for PD—a progressive chronic neurological movement disorder—through an aggressive research agenda that also ensures the development of improved therapies for those living with the disease today. As the organization’s director of research resources, Nicole Polinski, Ph.D. ’12 ensures that industry and academic researchers have access to the biology tools—called reagents—and preclinical models that they need for performing biology and chemistry experiments.
High-quality research tools are vital for successful, reproducible science. MJFF’s Research Tools Program team, including Polinkski, works with the research community to understand the gaps in the research tool space, develop and distribute reagents and models to fill these gaps, and better understand the characteristics of available research tools.
“I think my biggest challenge is to make sure that our limited resources have the biggest impact possible,” Polinski said. “It’s trying to identify what we need as we get suggestions for where we should focus our laboratory-tool development. It’s trying to connect the dots between different things you’re hearing from different folks to make sure that we prioritize and select the programs that have the potential to impact a lot of labs. Figuring out what to prioritize and who to work with on those programs.”
The early signs of Parkinson’s disease include tremors, often in the hands or fingers; a loss of smell; trouble moving or walking, including stiffness and balance problems; constipation; a reduction of facial expressions; dizziness or fainting; sleeping problems and stooping or hunching over. Polinski said Parkinson’s is diagnosed through such traditional motor systems, but until recently, it’s pathology could only be confirmed at autopsy. As a result, misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis is still all too common.
“The two pathological hallmarks that are confirmed in an autopsy are in the brain,” Polinski said. “One is the presence of a protein that’s normally in the brain, but it starts to clump abnormally with Parkinson’s. It’s the presence of those clumps and then the loss of a specific brain system, which consists of a circuit that deals with movement.”
Research, though, through MJFF and its partners, is beginning to provide more methods for diagnosis as well as treatment.
Nicole Polinski ’12
National Parkinson’s Awareness Month
April is Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month. Organizations such as The Michael J. Fox Foundation, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the American Parkinson Disease Association host events and campaigns, provide resources for people living with Parkinson’s, and support research efforts in the fight against the ailment, which afflicts more than 10 million people worldwide including about 1 million in the U.S.
In 2023, an international coalition of scientists led by MJFF discovered a Parkinson’s biomarker—a tool that can detect the earliest biological signs of the disease in living people.
“We need better ways to diagnose it, and I think we’re making good headway,” Polinski said. “There’s now a test with cerebrospinal fluid that can detect those clumps. It’s still not perfect. A lumbar puncture to collect the fluid is not easy. Hopefully, we might be able to use saliva and blood or other bodily fluids that require less invasive procedures in the future.”
Michael J. Fox is widely known as an actor for his role as Alex P. Keaton on the 1980s situation comedy Family Ties. He later became a movie star with roles in Teen Wolf,Back to the Future, The Secret of My Success and Casualties of War. In 1991, Fox developed a tremor in his pinky finger. He consulted a neurologist and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at just 29 years old. Still, he found a way to channel that life-changing news into a way to help others.
“I’ve met Michael a number of times and he came to our all-staff meeting earlier this year for a fireside chat,” Polinski said. “He talked about his experience and where he’s at now. You know how he feels about the work and all that the foundation he established has accomplished. It’s always great to see him. He’s as nice as he is portrayed.”
In her early years at K, Polinski knew she wanted to major in biology, but no one in her family had a science background, and her exposure to the medical field was primarily through medical doctors. She assumed she would also go to medical school and become a physician herself until she started her Senior Integrated Project (SIP).
“I ended up doing a summer internship at a spinal cord injury lab at The Ohio State University and I really liked being in the lab,” Polinski said. “After that, I started looking more into graduate schools and went on to get a Ph.D. in neuroscience.”
Shortly after graduate school at Michigan State University, she began working for The Michael J. Fox Foundation as a research program officer, advancing to associate director and senior associate director before earning her current position. It’s a role she relishes, knowing her work contributes to an important fight.
“We’re well on our way to improving ways to diagnose Parkinson’s disease with some recent breakthroughs, and we have more diverse therapeutic strategies in testing than ever before,” Polinski said. “On top of that, we’re identifying new pathways to tackle Parkinson’s disease by looking at patient bio samples to better understand the disease at a basic biological level. I’ve been here almost nine years, and no two days ever look the same. It’s a field that is ever evolving, and even within my laboratory tools space, new technologies and targets are popping up that need support with new players in the field. It’s something that’s always changing, and I really enjoy that challenging feature of this work. I never get bored, and I love my job.”
Shruti Debburman ’26 has found a home away from home on study abroad in Clermont-Ferrand with her host parents, Arielle and Stéphane Calipel, pictured here on the Puy de Combegrasse volcanic peak.
Study abroad in Clermont-Ferrand has been a dream come true for Debburman, pictured here with Olivia Cannizzaro ’26 at vendanges (grape harvesting).
A double major in French and psychology with a minor in music, Debburman has studied pipe organ at the conservatory of Clermont-Ferrand during her study abroad.
Living in France is everything Shruti Debburman ’26 dreamed of since she was 9 years old.
In fact, Debburman had been in Clermont-Ferrand on study abroad from Kalamazoo College for only two weeks before she started to feel that the six-month study abroad program—which had seemed overwhelming in advance—would not be long enough.
“I got here at the end of August, and once I was here, time went by so differently,” Debburman said. “Time started to move very quickly, and I knew that in six months I was not going to be ready to leave, and that I would want more time. I am so happy here; I don’t want to leave when there’s so much to do that I’m not going to be able to have done by February. I wouldn’t be fluent enough, and I don’t want to leave not being as fluent as possible. And I thought, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, why not take full advantage of it?”
With the support of program administrators, her parents and her host family, Debburman extended her stay from a February end date into the middle of May.
“I want to make the most of it, to really speak French without giving in to English, to push myself in terms of grammar and vocabulary and speaking correctly,” Debburman said. “I would like to make some more French friends, and I’m excited to travel more.”
Growing up in Lake Bluff, Illinois, as a fan of both reading and baking, Debburman got hooked on France thanks to a French cookbook of her mom’s from Le Cordon Bleu culinary institute.
“It’s really complicated, all the types of doughs you can make, all the types of sauces, all the types of creams,” Debburman said. “I read the thing cover to cover, and I was like, ‘I must learn how to do this. And I need to learn about France, because all of this is so cool, and it must be an interesting country that it comes from.’ I was at a Montessori school and we didn’t have a language class, but what’s incredible about Montessori is that it encourages students to spend time pursuing their interests during the school day, so for example, our assistant teacher had studied French in college, so she was giving me little French lessons on the side.”
K appealed to Debburman based on small class sizes, flexible curriculum and emphasis on study abroad. While her intention to major in French persisted, she took advantage of the ability to explore other areas of interest, considering a second major first in history, then in classics, then music. Currently, she has declared a double major in French and psychology with a minor in music.
For study abroad, Jan Solberg, professor of French and Francophone studies, encouraged Debburman to consider Clermont-Ferrand.
“It’s a very immersive program, but it’s also a small and very supportive program,” Debburman said. “I think she knew it was the right place for me.”
The Clermont-Ferrand program runs during K’s fall and winter terms in partnership with Institution Saint Alyre, an educational establishment that includes primary and secondary schools as well as higher education. Students live with host families and take classes in French language, culture and civilization designed especially for K students as well as classes in French literature and philosophy or modern world history and economy alongside Saint-Alyre students. They complete an Integrative Cultural Project (ICRP) and volunteer at the international short film festival held in Clermont in early February before returning to Kalamazoo for spring term.
An anxious flier, Debburman remembers feeling surprisingly calm while soldiering through the journey to France, including a long flight delay, being met at the airport by the program’s resident director and her host dad, and her host dad driving her to their home. There she met her host mom and a younger daughter who lives on her own but came for dinner and brought her boyfriend—and the travel caught up with her.
“It was such a long day, and I gave everyone the most scatterbrained impression of myself,” Debburman said. “I’m normally pretty put together on the outside, but I was so worried about making a good impression that I kind of forgot how to speak French. My host mom is fluent in English, thankfully, so there were some moments of half English, half French going on, and it was a lot. But everyone was wonderful, incredibly welcoming and kind. I was worried about being an imposition, and they did such a good job making me feel like I was not intruding or an imposition and I felt like part of the family right away.”
Her host family has been a highlight of her time in Clermont. Having grown up as an only child, Debburman relishes the opportunity to experience family dinners, game nights and life with siblings.
She also loves getting to know Clermont-Ferrand, which she finds an interesting city with a manageable size. The city’s population of just under 150,000 is roughly double the population of Kalamazoo, but with a size of about 16 square miles, it covers between half and three quarters as much land as Kalamazoo.
“You can walk most places downtown,” Debburman said. “I have a 10-minute walk most places, because I’m close to the middle. If you’re going somewhere farther out, there is decent public transportation. It’s not super cosmopolitan, so you have to speak French and get good at it quickly.”
Improving French fluency is also necessary in the coursework, which Debburman found challenging at first.
“Classes were more lecture heavy than in my classes at K. In French, especially, and in the rest of the humanities, K classes are mostly discussion based. It also felt fast. The first couple of weeks, I was just writing stuff down as fast as possible, without having a clue what I was writing. But then it got easier. The more I was around the language, I started understanding it better, until it felt like I was actually learning the material in class.”
The study abroad program at Clermont-Ferrand proved a perfect fit for Debburman, pictured at the Mémorial de Caen.
Debburman, pictured at the Loire River, extended her study abroad in Clermont-Ferrand when she decided six months was not enough time.
In Clermont-Ferrand, Debburman visits the Chateau de Chavaniac, the Marquis de Lafayette’s childhood home, with Jacob McKinney ’26, Françoise Evangelista, resident director, and Didier Croze, civilization teacher.
Learning French literature and economics alongside French students offers an intriguing contrast for Debburman—one class right in her wheelhouse, the other brand new to her, and both with a distinctively French perspective.
In addition, Debburman and (until February) the other two K students studying in Clermont-Ferrand this academic year attend a French language class, a French culture and civilization class, and a time set aside for extra support with the economics teacher, where they review material from class or go deeper on topics that are relevant to their interests.
“Those classes are very flexible,” Debburman said. “It’s what we need to learn or what we want to learn.
Our teachers are absolutely fabulous. They’re so engaging.”
Debburman also takes pipe organ lessons at the Regional Conservatory for music, dance and theatre, and she completed her ICRP at the Conservatory, researching and writing about the history and current state of the pipe organ in France.
For the ICRP, each student chooses a topic or question of interest to him or her and completes 40 hours of work on a site and 10 interviews with professionals in the field, often tied to an internship. Having played piano since she was 5 years old and viola since high school, Debburman grew interested in the academic side of music at K and started pipe organ lessons during her first year.
“I didn’t realize how absolutely in love I would end up with the instrument,” Debburman said. While true mastery of many instruments requires an early start, pipe organists often begin as teenagers, because they need to have achieved their full height and a level of piano competence.
“It’s usually a weird connection—in French, they call it ‘un coup de foudre,’ which is like love at first sight,” Debburman said. “It literally translates to crack of lightning, so it’s like love struck; you hear it or you play it for the first time, and it’s like destiny, you just know it’s your instrument.”
Struggling to find 10 pipe organ professionals in Clermont even with her contacts at the Conservatory, Debburman expanded her interviewees to include students of the pipe organ, which enriched her final product.
“I didn’t think of doing that at first, but I found that the students put a lot of thought into it, they answered very thoroughly, and I feel like some of the insights that I got from them were more creative and out of the box,” Debburman said. “The kids still have that enthusiasm in them, a spark. It was interesting to have the kids explain how they fell in love with it while it’s still fresh for them.”
Debburman did get to meet (and interview) professionals—people who are important in the pipe organ world—and she had the opportunity to play historic instruments in the process.
In her time abroad, Debburman has traveled to many places; Normandy, Florence and London were highlights for her, offering natural beauty, architecture, history and amazing food.
“We went skiing in the Alps,” Debburman said. “I think that would be a collective highlight for all of us. I’d never skied in my life. I was terrified, and it was really fun. It’s the coolest possible place to try it.”
Since the two other K students left Clermont in February, some things have stayed the same for Debburman—her host family was happy to extend her stay; most of her classes remained consistent—while other things have shifted. In addition to adjusting to the absence of her fellow Hornets, Debburman has been thinking about her Senior Integrated Project (something related to medieval feminist literature), started a French book club with her former resident director, and added a Latin class with high school students to her schedule.
“That’s been an interesting experience, because translating Latin to English is one thing, but translating Latin to French, one language that is not my first language to other language that’s not my first language, is complicated,” Debburman said. “It’s also interesting being with high school kids, because they have so much energy. They talk differently, and they’re a lot more willing to test out their English. They ask a lot of questions that tell you a lot about how French people see the U.S.”
Her K-specific classes are now one-on-one, opening opportunities to explore topics of particular interest for Debburman.
“In French, we don’t have much grammar to do, and the teacher has been bringing in documents on all these different French women of interest, like one of the lawyers who was instrumental in legalizing abortion, a female artist, female scientists. I’m focusing on a lot of medieval history with my history teacher. It’s very flexible, very individualized, which is a special opportunity, because that’s not usually how school works. This is unique, and I think it’s valuable to my education.”
Debburman’s experiences in France have improved her fluency, flexibility, communication and confidence.
“Study abroad has changed my life,” she said. “I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened and will happen for the next couple of months. I have a family here for life now, I’ve gotten to see incredible places, I’ve met wonderful people. I’ve gotten to play organs that are 200 years old. I’ve made new friends. I’ve reconnected with old friends from high school, and that’s been lovely as well. It’s very much a dream come true to be here and to be enjoying it so much. I am sure that little me would be so proud and absolutely over the moon.”
She hopes other French students will consider Clermont-Ferrand.
“It’s an extremely special program, and all the people in the program, the teachers, the families, the satellite families you can do activities with, they’re all wonderful,” Debburman said. “There are so many unique opportunities, and you will not regret going there. It was one of the best decisions of my life.”
Connecting Back: From France to Kalamazoo
While reflecting on her study abroad experience in Clermont-Ferrand, Shruti Debburman ’26 also appreciates other opportunities K has offered her, both on and off campus.
“Being part of Kalamazoo Philharmonia, K Phil, has been a big part of my time at K. I did not get in on my first try, but got in on the second try, so it felt very fulfilling. I play viola, and K Phil is mostly community members with a pretty small group of students, which means that we as students get close. Some of the closest friends I have at K are from orchestra.”
Debburman has worked in the Music Department office as well as the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (ORSL), through which she also takes part in Interfaith Student Leaders.
“ORSL was another place I made some of my closest friends,” she said. “When I first came to K, I was not sure that K was the right place for me. My second term, I found Interfaith, and it’s been a community that has made my experience at K so wonderful. It’s made me grow and think, and it’s pushed me, and I love that.”
In the ORSL Cavern space, Liz Candido, College chaplain, has proven an important mentor for Debburman.
“She’s been supportive throughout my ups and downs at K, and also so open and encouraging of all the weird questions I throw at her,” Debburman said. “I have a tendency to walk into the Cavern at the start of my shift and have some theological question that I’d been thinking about, and she is so kind and talks me through it. We go into the history and the language, like the Greek, and it’s so interesting. She’s been very encouraging of my interest in theology and helpful whenever I’ve done something in classes that involves something religion-related.”
In the French department, Jan Solberg, professor of French and Francophone studies, has offered invaluable support and connection.
Debburman, Cannizzaro and Adrien Chandioux, a Saint-Alyre student, visit the Manoir de Clos Lucé, Leonardo da Vinci’s home.
“She was my first French professor at K, and the way she taught French, it made me keep loving the language,” Debburman said. “I had definitely had my moments of hating it; every single year of high school, I said, ‘I’m going to drop French next year.’ She helped me love the language, and she’s been incredibly supportive of me academically; she’s helped me through some of my decisions and classes. In terms of life, she’s been there for me throughout my time at K and has been super supportive. And she’s in orchestra, too, so that’s fun. She’s there in every part of my life.”
During the summers, Debburman has completed an internship at the National Alliance on Mental Illness in their North suburban office of Chicago and research at Rosalind Franklin University in West Chicago.
Returning to Kalamazoo for her last year, Debburman looks forward to returning to Interfaith and collective music making as well as tackling her Senior Integrated Project. Beyond that, she plans to apply for a fellowship or scholarship that would allow her to spend more time abroad post-graduation exploring her interests before settling into a Ph.D. and research path.
Kalamazoo College will mark the relaunch of its African studies concentration in May with Africa Month 2025, a vibrant celebration organized by Director of African Studies Dominique Somda and Assistant Professor of French Manfa Sanogo.
Africa Month will invite thoughtful and meaningful engagement with Africa and Afro-descendants worldwide thanks in part to support from a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence grant and the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. They will welcome visionary scholars, artists, curators and thinkers whose work challenges certitudes and expands horizons.
The events, all at the Arcus Center at 201 Monroe St. in Kalamazoo, include:
Africa Month 2025 will celebrate the relaunch of Kalamazoo College’s African studies concentration with events that welcome visionary scholars, artists, curators and thinkers whose work challenges certitudes and expands horizons.
Divine Fuh of the University of Cape Town in an opening lecture titled “Decolonizing Knowledges and Building Transformative Partnerships” on Friday, May 9, at 4:15 p.m.
The opening of an art exhibit titled Becoming of the Day: Refusing the Timeline, featuring artist Anthony Obayomi of the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign on Friday, May 9, at 6 p.m.
A faculty and staff workshop titled “Disobedient Pedagogies in Liberal Arts Education” on Saturday, May 10, at 9 a.m.
A roundtable discussion titled “Rethinking the Ethics of Knowledge with the Global South” featuring speakers Herimampita Rarivomanantsoa of Université d’Antananarivo, Madagascar, and Cyndy Garcia Weyandt of Kalamazoo College on Saturday, May 10, at 2 p.m.
A public lecture titled “African Disobedient Feminism: Madness as an Approach to Emancipation” with writer Ken Bugul of Senegal on Saturday, May 10, at 5:30 p.m.
A conversation with artist and art professor Chido Johnson titled “Sadza Space: The Zimbabwe Cultural Centre in Detroit” on Sunday, May 11, at 11 a.m.
A luncheon and Haitian Flag Day lecture titled “Untimely Periodicals: Haiti and the Archives of Caribbean Thought” with speakers Medhi Chalmers and Carine Schermann of Florida State University on Sunday, May 11, at noon.
Somda said she is immensely grateful for an opportunity to welcome colleagues, guests and students to discussions about Africa. She added that the relaunched African studies concentration will offer students a wealth of enriching opportunities through an expanded curriculum and fresh perspective.
“Our new program deliberately extends beyond continental boundaries to embrace Africa’s full geographic and intellectual reach—including its edges, islands and diasporic extensions across the globe,” Somda said. “Beginning next fall, students can enroll in our new core course, Global Africa, which explores these interconnections. In winter term, our course Thinking Africa will centralize the continent’s deep historical connections with the world and its foundational role in critical intellectual traditions. Beyond coursework, the African studies program is planning year-round engagement through curated events, including film screenings, scholarly talks and unique forums for intellectual exchange. These dynamic encounters will create spaces for students to engage directly with diverse perspectives and cutting-edge scholarship. By taking this more expansive approach to African Studies, students will develop a sophisticated understanding of Africa’s global significance and participate in reimagining how we study, understand, and engage with Africa and its diasporas in the contemporary world.”
Sanogo, as a postcolonial scholar and language instructor, anticipates exciting opportunities for students inside and outside the classroom.
“By centering the diaspora, or rather by decentering the continent, the program deconstructs hierarchies of power and knowledge and invites students to reimagine the world from the perspectives of Africa and its diaspora while thinking critically about the global flow of knowledge, power and culture,” Sanogo said.
Divine Fuh
Herimampita Rarivomanantsoa
Ken Bugul
Mehdi Chalmers
Anthony Obayomi
Cyndy Garcia Weyandt
Chido Johnson
Carine Schermann
“This includes access to courses rooted in Black intellectual traditions; reevaluating what constitutes African languages, extending that privilege to French and Spanish, for example; and learning African languages, exploring study abroad programs in Black-majority regions such as Dakar and Nairobi.”
William Weber Chair of Social Science Amy Elman receives the 2025 Lux Esto Award from President Jorge G. Gonzalez during Founders Day events at Stetson Chapel on Friday, April 25.
Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo receives the Outstanding First-Year Advocate Award from President Gonzalez at Founders Day.
Dow Associate professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Perez receives the Outstanding Advisor Award from President Gonzalez at Founders Day
Amy Elman, the William Weber Chair of Social Science, is this year’s recipient of the Lux Esto Award of Excellence as announced today during the College’s Founders Day celebration, marking K’s 192nd year.
The award recognizes an employee who has served the institution for at least 26 years and has contributed significantly to the campus. The recipient—chosen by a committee with student, faculty and staff representatives—is an employee who exemplifies the spirit of K through selfless dedication and goodwill.
At K, Elman has taught a variety of courses within the political science, women’s studies and Jewish studies departments. During her tenure, she has also been a visiting professor at Haifa University in Israel, Harvard University, SUNY Potsdam, Middlebury College, Uppsala University in Sweden and New York University.
Elman has received two Fulbright grants, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a grant from the Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew University. She has written three books: The European Union, Antisemitism and the Politics of Denial (2014); Sexual Equality in an Integrated Europe (2007); and Sexual Subordination and State Intervention: Comparing Sweden and the United States (1996). She also edited Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge (1996). In the 1997–98 academic year, she was awarded K’s Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for outstanding scholarship.
In accordance with Founders Day traditions, two other employees received community awards. Dow Associate Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas–Pérez was given the Outstanding Advisor Award and Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo received the First-Year Advocate Award.
Before arriving at K, Vargas-Perez worked as an adjunct instructor at Western Michigan University, where he earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic.
Vargas-Perez has taught courses at K in data structures, algorithms, parallel computing, computing for environmental science, object-oriented programming, and programming in Java and web development. His research interests include high-performance computing, parallel and distributed algorithms, computational genomics, and data structures and compression.
Jazz quartet Liam McElroy (piano), Laura DeVilbiss (flute), Garrick Hohm (string bass) and Adam Cornier-Bridgeforth (drums) performed at the Founders Day celebration.
President’s Student Ambassadors Ava Williams ’26 and Madeline Hollander ’26 introduced President Gonzalez at the 192nd Founders Day celebration.
President Gonzalez recognized the students who served this year as President’s Student Ambassadors and shared the names of 13 more who will serve beginning this fall.
Nominators said Vargas–Pérez has consistently gone above and beyond his responsibilities as a professor to promote learning while finding opportunities for his advisees.
Arias-Rotondo has earned significant funding in support of her research and her commitment to engaging students in hands-on experiences in her lab. A $250,000 grant in 2023 from the National Science Foundation’s Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS) provided funding for student researchers, typically eight to 10 per term. In 2024, she received a $50,000 American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund grant, which will support her and her students’ upcoming research regarding petroleum byproducts. H.
Arias-Rotondo teaches Introductory Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Structure and Reactivity, and commonly takes students to ACS conferences. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Nominators said she has been a dependable, inspirational and fierce advocate for students.
Gonzalez also recognized the students who served as President’s Student Ambassadors in the 2024–25 academic year and introduced those who will serve the College beginning this fall in 2025–26. As student leaders, President’s Student Ambassadors serve as an extension of the president’s hospitality at events and gatherings, welcoming alumni and guests of the College with a spirit of inclusion. About 15 students serve as ambassadors each academic year. The students selected show strong communication skills; demonstrate leadership through academic life, student life or community service; and maintain a minimum grade-point average.
The 2024-25 ambassadors have been:
Jaylen Bowles-Swain ’26
Christopher Cayton ’25
Kyle Cooper ’25
Blake Filkins ’26
James Hauke ’26
Maya Hester ’25
Madeline Hollander ’25
Gavin Houtkooper ’25
Katie Kraemer ’25
Isabelle Mason ’27
Alex Nam ’25
Tyrus Parnell, Jr. ’25
Isabella Pellegrom ’25
Addison Peter ’25
Maxwell Rhames ’25
Emiliano Alvarado Rescala ’27
Amelie Sack ’27
Dean Turpin ’25
Ava Williams ’25
The 2025-26 ambassadors succeeding this year’s seniors will be:
Kalamazoo College announced today that it’s launching plans to build new residence halls on its historic campus, a step that reflects the College’s long-term commitment to enhancing student life and academic experiences as detailed in its latest campus master plan.
Construction on the project along West Main Street in Kalamazoo will begin in May of this year and is currently scheduled for occupancy in fall 2027. The buildings will primarily house juniors and seniors and provide space for 218 beds. Progressive Companies is designing the building and Owen-Ames-Kimball is constructing.
“K is a college that offers a top-notch, world-class education,” Vice President for Student Development Malcolm Smith said. “Our students deserve to live in buildings that draw in the academic experience and match that education. When people start to see the pictures and the construction equipment on campus, we think there will be a lot of buzz because construction means investment.”
Kalamazoo College will hold a ground breaking in June on a project to build two fully accessible, barrier-free residence halls that will consist of two towers, both four floors high, connected by a common space to create an L shape with universal design.
The new residence halls are part of an effort to meet a growing need for affordable, on-campus housing as off-campus housing costs continue to increase. The growing popularity of an already strong study abroad program also is prompting a demand for on-campus housing each midyear as students return from overseas. Yet Smith notes that there are even more important, tangible benefits to students who reside on campus.
“You see a higher retention rate and therefore a higher graduation rate when students stay on campus,” Smith said. “Students have increased access to resources, community, co-curricular programs, interactions with their peers, the faculty and services. Studies have shown that on-campus living can lead to measurable increases in academic success, critical thinking skills, life-skill development, belongingness and more. There are so many benefits to a full residential model, and we’re trying to recapture that.”
Smith said the additional residence hall space makes it more likely students will stay on campus for four years, while providing students with a “coming home” feel. Student input was sought early in the planning process to capture their needs and hopes for the new facilities.
The fully accessible, barrier-free residence halls will consist of two towers, both four floors high, connected by a common space to create an L shape with universal design. It will provide green space and help form another quad on campus with Crissey and Severn residence halls while maintaining K’s Georgian architectural styles. The common space inside will be accessible to all students and include a community kitchen, a marketplace, a terrace with outdoor seating that faces the community, and a hall lounge suitable for presentations and programming—similar to K’s Olmsted Room in Mandelle Hall.
Privacy will increase for the students living there as occupants move deeper into the building’s village-style living spaces. About 88% of the rooms will be single occupancy and 12% will be double occupancy, to suit the needs of upper-level students.
Passers-by will see carport-like solar panels that will supply electricity to the halls, where a parking lot covers a geo-thermal field, providing heating and cooling to the new halls. K’s nearby Hoop House, a greenhouse used by students for all-season produce production, will stay in its current location. As completion nears, locally sourced furnishings will be installed toward the end of summer 2027.
The cost of the project is expected to be about $55 million with $25 million in funding provided by a 2023 anonymous donation. Energy tax credits estimated at $4.64 million and bonds will also contribute to the financing.
“The last new residence hall was built on campus in 1967,” said President Jorge G. Gonzalez. “A lot has changed since the 1960s and this investment will help meet the modern needs of students while also providing space that can reduce the College’s carbon footprint and operating costs, compared with older facilities. Living on campus plays a vital role in student life, and we are excited for all the ways these new halls will enhance that experience for K students.”
A groundbreaking ceremony for the project is being planned for June.
Ariadne Markou ’25 will graduate in November from the dream school she never actually thought she would attend, in a field she didn’t anticipate studying, with a plan to pursue the one career she was sure was not for her.
A Kalamazoo Promise student, she dreamed of attending Kalamazoo College when she was young. In high school, however, she struggled with undiagnosed ADHD and her emotional health.
She took time off from school after graduation, working as a receptionist in a law firm, before starting classes at Western Michigan University.
“I wanted to be a cosmetic dermatologist, and I was asking my sister, who’s a science teacher, a lot of questions, and she was like, ‘Oh, these are biochemistry questions,’” Markou said. “So, I went to Western to major in biochemistry and Japanese.”
When biochemistry turned out not to be a good fit, she took another break from school. While considering a major in art or economics, she enrolled at Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC), where she joined the honors program.
When a K representative visited the program, Markou saw a path back into her original dream. In fall 2023, she came to K as a 22-year-old transfer student.
“The honors program at KVCC was very writing intensive,” she said. “There was an emphasis on having connections with professors, and it was an experience like I’d never had before. Coming to K has been a great transition, because I still have the opportunity to write and to have connections like I did there.”
A paper she wrote at KVCC analyzing the “work for hire” doctrine and copyright law helped her overcome her child-of-lawyers resistance to the idea of being an attorney, a career that aligns well with the interdisciplinary approach offered by K.
“I loved the puzzling involved in the legal analysis, and I realized this is something that I’m passionate about,” Markou said. “I want to do everything, but I have one life. I would stay in school if I could, just to learn everything, because I would love to be a software engineer; I would love to do philosophy; I would love to do biochem and learn every language I could. I like how diverse of a field law is, because I could do medical malpractice one day and criminal defense the next.”
In her Senior Integrated Project, Ariadne Markou ’25 examines the social and cultural value of creative expression and draws upon legal theories and copyright law to suggest potential improvements in American legislation to better protect creators.
Markou works at the 9th Circuit Court and as a social media manager for a law firm. She wants to be an attorney at a law firm, but more importantly, she wants to be happy in life.
At K, Markou continued to study Japanese while selecting a major in anthropology/sociology and a minor in philosophy. While not officially fulfilling the requirements for a concentration in critical theory, she has taken as many classes in the program as possible and currently serves as the departmental student advisor.
Markou has packed maximum engagement into her compressed time at K. She participated in the Humanities Integrated Locational Learning (HILL) Project, traveling to San Diego to study the representational politics of art on the border, constructing and maintaining border identities, and how art makes community. She performed summer research with Nupur Joshi, assistant professor of anthropology and sociology, on legal considerations in the Mukuru informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. Markou also served on student government and is president of the law student organization.
Relationships have made her experiences possible and valuable.
“I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had,” Markou said. “My professors have been the biggest supporters, and I’m lucky to learn from such brilliant people. My life has been enriched, not just educationally or intellectually, but also personally. It’s awesome being in an environment where you hear so many different perspectives and have people who can call you on things and say, ‘Hey, that might not be correct,’ and do it with such dignity and respect that you know that you’re valued. I’m proud of the relationships that I have with my current professors, my family, my previous professors. It makes everything so worthwhile.”
When it came time to choose a Senior Integrated Project (SIP), Markou found herself reflecting on how her previous research into ownership and theft of creative work tied into timely conversations around generative artificial intelligence.
“I’ve always loved art and music, and I think there’s something irreplaceable when you’re engaging with works created by humans,” Markou said. “Thinking about AI generating these works was really unsettling for me.”
Markou researched and wrote a SIP in the anthropology and sociology department, titled “Creativity in the Age of AI: A Critical Examination of Artificially-Generated Works.” Under the guidance of her SIP advisor, Benjamin Kampler, assistant professor of anthropology, Markou delved into legal and social issues involved in the interplay of generative AI and the creative industry.
Her SIP examines the social and cultural value of creative expression and draws upon legal theories and copyright law to suggest potential improvements in American legislation to better protect creators. Throughout the process, Markou learned and struggled, found surprises and challenges, and leaned on input and support from family, friends and faculty.
Kampler and Markou joined the K community at the same time, and navigated the SIP process, new to both, together. Kampler helped particularly when Markou struggled to find sociological theories about art and met during the summer to review her work.
Markou’s lawyer parents offered feedback on the writing and terminology, and a former professor at KVCC agreed to read a draft and provide input. Markou’s partner, a computer engineer, shared his expertise, as did Alyce Brady, the Rosemary K. Brown Professor in Computer Science, and her husband, John. Their help proved vital, as one of the challenges that arose was that Markou does not have a background in computer science.
“It was frustrating at times, but I’ve long accepted that it’s OK to not get things the first time, so I treated the difficulty of not knowing about AI as an opportunity to learn,” Markou said.
Even for those with a computer science background, it can be hard to stay current with AI’s constant evolution—another challenge Markou faced, both in finding relevant resources and in shaping her own paper.
“AI is adapting and increasing so rapidly that articles are not publishing in the timeline that can keep up with it,” Markou said. “I ended up sticking to a lot of theoretical articles about AI; I can’t talk about specific developments because it will be outdated so quickly.”
Despite writing broadly, Markou acknowledges her finished SIP has probably already fallen victim to this trend. When she presents at the anthropology and sociology department’s Hightower SIP Symposium this spring, she plans to offer a disclaimer that her research may not reflect the current situation.
A less serious challenge, yet eminently relatable for K seniors and alumni: Formatting her paper to fit correctly in the SIP folder.
“Honestly, one of the craziest things was having to physically print it out and put it in the folder,” Markou said. “I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, like, ‘Does anybody have a screwdriver? I need to take out part of this three-hole punch, because I need two holes.’”
As she learned about generative AI and expanded her knowledge on copyright laws, Markou was surprised to discover how inaccessible AI training databases are.
“I thought that training databases would have been a lot more transparent,” she said. “I thought it would be understandable, if people had the knowledge, computer engineers or computer scientists, I thought people in those fields would at least know, but they don’t. I ended my paper with a couple suggestions, and one of them was to have increased transparency on databases, because it allows artists to come forward and say, ‘Hey, my stuff was in here, and I didn’t agree to that.’ I really was put off by how hard the use of source materials was to see and understand.”
She also continued to develop in appreciation for creative work, from the Mona Lisa to improvised jazz to fan fiction.
“Art and creation have never been a means to an end,” Markou said. “There’s so much value in connecting with people, in stories being told. AI is great as the occasional assistive tool, but it has never been, and it will never be, a replacement for humanity. I’ll use ChatGPT to help explain things, but I would never ask it to write something for me, because there’s no me in that. I don’t care if my work’s perfect; I just want to be proud of it. I hope people see that there is such deep value in being an autonomous person existing in the world.”
Outside of her K-Plan, Markou works at the 9th Circuit Court in Kalamazoo and as a social media manager for a law firm, has been a youth board member at the Southwest Michigan chapter of the Red Cross, and skis (for fun now—she skied competitively when she was younger). She volunteers with Gentiva Hospice, visiting patients and even sitting with them as they pass away. That experience has helped her develop perspective.
“We only get one life,” Markou said. “I want to be an attorney, but what matters most is that I want to be content; that is my big goal in life. My dad always told us, ‘It doesn’t matter what grades you get; it doesn’t matter if you get the highest paying job; I just want you to live a life surrounded by things that you love,’ and I try to live my life that way.
“I’m proud of myself for finding this path. It was hard to get here, and here I am. I’m figuring this out. I am so grateful for that.”
A local activist known for constructing the first legally built tiny house in the county will be a keynote speaker for the 2025 Sustainability Senior Integrated Project (SIP) Symposium at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.
Ben Brown will address the symposium in a lecture titled Rumors of Hope. A writer and international speaker, he will discuss his years of public engagement through social justice movements, urban farming, food sovereignty, energy sovereignty and economics.
Brown, who grew up on a family farm in Southwest Michigan, is also an expert in the affordable-housing movement and is a founding member of the Kalamazoo Electric Vehicle Association (KEVA). He continues to be involved in environmental and conservation work and is credited with helping to preserve several cultural resources.
In 2017, Brown provided WMUK Radio with a video tour around his tiny house, which measures less than 270 square feet. Kalamazoo Valley Habitat for Humanity assisted in the house’s construction.
The SIP Symposium will feature student presentations representing a variety of academic departments at K and include research on topics such as food access, marine eco-systems, sustainability transitions for public transportation in Kalamazoo, sheep grazing and soil health, carbon sequestration and more. K recently featured one of the SIPs, a project on coral reefs in the Philippines by Brooke Dolhay ’25, on its website.
Writer and international speaker Ben Brown will discuss his years of public engagement through social justice movements, urban farming, food sovereignty, energy sovereignty and economics at the 2025 Sustainability SIP Symposium at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.
If you’ve ever played the game Spot it!, then you know it’s both disarmingly simple and endlessly replayable. Each card features eight symbols, and between any two cards in the game deck, there is always one—and only one—matching symbol. Several variations change the mechanics, but the goal always remains the same: Be the fastest player to spot and name the matches.
What is the secret to the game? How does it work? Well—it may come down to math.
On April 29, at 7 p.m. in Dewing Hall Room 103, Sarah Koch will deliver a talk titled “Spotting the Math in Spot it!,” this year’s installment of the George Kitchen Memorial Lecture at Kalamazoo College. The lectureship provides an opportunity for mathematicians to speak about their work in a way that is accessible to high school students and math educators.
“We’ll play Spot it! and explore ways to answer various questions about the game,” promises the description for the talk. “We will discover that there is a remarkable amount of mathematics underlying this game, including a tantalizing mathematical mystery.”
Koch, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, researches complex dynamical systems, working to understand the infinitely complicated structure of beautiful fractals that emerge. She holds two Ph.D.s in mathematics, one from the Université de Provence in Marseille, and one from Cornell University. She is the director of the Math Corps at U(M), a summer camp for middle schoolers and high school mentors from Ypsilanti and Detroit, and the organizer of the Math Mondays in Ypsi Program, which has temporarily been replaced with Super Saturdays. In addition to doing math, she enjoys teaching, working with students and making kindness chains.
Stephen Oloo, associate professor of mathematics at Kalamazoo College, said Koch was suggested as a speaker by a visiting professor who had graduated from U of M.
“I did a bit of research and could see she loves doing this kind of talk,” Oloo said. “We don’t choose just any mathematician. Our speakers are always active research mathematicians, and they like to give math talks aimed at an early high school sort of student. They like outreach. They tend to have a few talks prepared that are pitched at just the right level.”
Sarah Koch, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, researches complex dynamical systems and will deliver the 2025 Kitchen Lecture through a game with math ties titled Spot It!
Spotting the Math in Spot It!
What: The 2025 George Kitchen Memorial Lecture at Kalamazoo College, given by Sarah Koch, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
Oloo said the math department at K communicates the intent and audience of the lectures to the speaker, who chooses his or her own topic.
“I know this talk is going to be good,” Oloo said. “It strikes me as it will probably have a lot of combinatorics, what you can think of as advanced counting, which tends to have interesting results while being very accessible. From the nature of the game, there are all kinds of interesting questions you could ask. When you deal out a hand of Spot it! cards, how many possible different combinations are there? How big does the deck have to be? If you dealt two or three or four cards, what would they have in common and different? I’m sure she’ll have some surprising things for us. Probably she’ll talk about strategy. There are probably ways to approach the game that you could figure out by studying the math.”
The lecture’s target audience of high school students honors George Kitchen, who was a local mathematician and teacher and firmly believed that a love for mathematics and its applications could be cultivated in every student. In the 1980s, Kitchen helped start a regular gathering at K of college and high school math teachers called Calculus Connection, along with John Fink, Kalamazoo College professor emeritus of mathematics.
“George was a wonderful teacher, and he was really demanding, but he would always support his students in what he demanded of them,” Fink said.
When Kitchen died, members of Calculus Connection decided to fund an endowment to support a lecture series to honor Kitchen’s memory. The George Kitchen Memorial Lecture at Kalamazoo College was founded in 1999 and has taken place every spring since, excepting a hiatus from 2020-2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Obviously we think math is important, and math and science knowledge, education, literacy, are good things,” Oloo said. “This has been a good way to get students in the area excited about math, to show them that math is not just this dull thing.”
The talks also build local connections and help improve K’s visibility with area high schoolers. A whole community has developed over the years, with the audience often including not only math teachers and high school students and their parents, but also former students of George Kitchen as well as parents of long-grown children who first experienced the lectures when their children were in high school and continue to attend.
“I’ve seen how popular these can be, the surprising number of people intrigued by mathematical ideas,” Oloo said. “My hopes are good attendance, and that people would leave feeling like they’ve learned something—both that it was fun, and that they are now a little bit more knowledgeable.”
For example, the 2024 speaker brought a statistics and probability lens to, among other things, conspiracy theories such as the Lincoln–Kennedy coincidences urban legend that points out a large number of similarities between the two presidents, including the fact that their assassins were both known by three names composed of 15 letters.
“He was diving into the numbers, and things you encounter that seem almost spooky, but in this talk, you realize, ‘Oh, it’s not that weird.’ It’s just a function of doing the math, how many people we have on the planet,” Oloo said. “It was a great lecture where people in the audience who knew probability have thought about these things and know how the numbers work, while for many of us, it’s new, and you could learn something that actually alters how you view the world. I’m not a big statistics guy, and I left that talk armed with this new piece of knowledge. When I encounter people claiming, ‘Oh, this is a really spooky coincidence,’ now I can say, ‘No, it’s just the numbers. It’s not that weird.’”
The music of a modern-day pop star helped a Kalamazoo College class discover last term that poetry, despite its history and ancient beginnings, still shapes how we as humans can sort through our emotions and define our identities. As a result, if you feel a need to be expressive in April, which serves as National Poetry Month, don’t just shake it off. Learn instead from Visiting Assistant Professor Monique McDade and the students who took Reading the World and Identities: Taylor Swift and Other Tortured Poets.
Swift could aptly be described as a tortured poet, sharing her intense emotional conflicts, acute sensitivities and tendencies to dwell on life’s darker aspects through her music, just as many great creatives have throughout history. Modern music itself is a form of poetry, characterized by its expressive language, rhythm, rhyme and ability to evoke emotions and tell stories, often in a way that resonates with a broad audience, particularly through song lyrics. These poetic elements make Swift a strong choice of performers to study alongside writers from Angelou to Wordsworth.
“It’s been an interesting class for me as a teacher because I’ve been a Swifty since I was 15, which was about the same age she was at the time,” McDade said. “Now, I have the chance to talk about her and teach her to a new generation.”
McDade was surprised to learn how few of the students going into the class would’ve counted themselves among Swifties, who self-identify as big Taylor Swift fans. She said out of 19 students in the class, only four said they were among the die-hard followers. That presented an opportunity.
“I was scared going in that we would’ve just been geeking out with no critical capacity,” McDade said. “Instead, I’ve heard, ‘I’m skeptical of this or that,’ and it’s been really fun to watch them soften to her. When we think about her as a poet rather than a pop artist, I think students get a different perspective, so those that are maybe not considering themselves fans walk away with a different respect for what she’s doing, even if it’s not their taste.”
Students pursued course assignments that consisted of readings about poets, a podcast and weekly reflections—pondering how they themselves might be considered tortured poets.
“Every week we had a prompt related to the course content, where I asked them to write a poem,” McDade said. “Some of them hated it, some of them loved it and some of them have grown to love it, but it’s been really beautiful. They were reading Taylor Swift or another poet, and they wrote a poem in reference to it or responded to it in some way. It’s showing how being an artist is about relating to other people. It’s OK if what they write seems to be insignificant or unimportant to the rest of the world, because Taylor has built an entire empire off of it.”
The podcast project grouped students together to create four episodes and a complementary blog that explored how different influences can shape the identity of an artist like Swift.
“In our contemporary age, nothing is more influential than the internet,” McDade said. “I wanted students to think about engaging ethically in online conversations about someone like Taylor Swift. We live in an age where people like to say a lot of things online that they wouldn’t say in person to someone.”
McDade’s favorite podcast title was “The Asylum I Grew up in.” The group included Grace Barber ’28.
“We decided on the title for our podcast because we wanted to have some fun playing on a Taylor Swift lyric, but also we wanted to capture some of the seriousness of the topic we were discussing,” Barber said. “‘The asylum where they raised me’ is a lyric from a song our group loves, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, and hints at the brutal nature of the media we were talking about.”
Students make their final presentations in the winter 2025 session of Reading the World and Identities: Taylor Swift and Other Tortured Poets.
Students in Reading the World and Identities: Taylor Swift and Other Tortured Poets pursued course assignments that consisted of readings about poets, a podcast and weekly reflections.
The podcast examined different so-called asylums that Swift faced during her formative years, such as the media spotlight or being a female in the music industry.
“Speaking for myself, looking at Taylor Swift as a poet throughout this project and course really expanded what I define as a poet,” Barber said. “Exploring the identity of being a ‘tortured poet’ and applying it to anyone, not just historic poets and artists, really connected listening to Taylor Swift’s music with many common experiences of girlhood, womanhood and growth through hardship. Literature and poetry can encompass a lot more things than I had previously thought of with English class, and I had so much fun in this course listening to music and poetry in a new way.”
National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 to highlight the importance of poetry and poets in culture while encouraging the reading, writing and appreciation of poetry.
“A big thing with this course, as with National Poetry Month, has been that we wanted to make a case for the importance of poetry,” McDade said. “On my syllabus, we pull a quote from author Julia Kristeva about poetic language as a destabilizing force to social norms or to power structures. In some ways, this gets interpreted as madness, so the students have been able to think about the things that torture them. Here on campus, a lot of them will talk about feeling not good enough, and because that resonates with Taylor, a lot of her lyrics talk about that, too. It’s been fun to think about poetry not as something elitist or highbrow, but as something all of us can practice. Maybe we’re not all going to make careers off of it, but we all certainly can practice it.”
