The curtain will rise beginning Thursday on a production that’s based on historical figures, but not historical fact, at Kalamazoo College’s Festival Playhouse.
Playhouse Creatures begins in 1669 as theatres in England are reopening after 17 years of Puritan suppression under a regime led by Oliver Cromwell. The Restoration Era is beginning with a monarchy re-established under King Charles II, who declares that women—for the first time in England—should be the actors in female-identifying roles.
The play examines five of the most famous actresses of the English stage to provide a moving and often comic account of the trailblazers. The characters include Doll Common, played by Brooklyn Moore ’24; Nell Gwynn, played by Jericho Trevino ’27; Mrs. Mary Betterton, played by Abby Nelson ’24; Mrs. Rebecca Marshall, played by Cameo Green ’24; and Mrs. Elizabeth Farley, played by May Moe Tun ’25.
Playhouse Creatures is the first play slated for the Festival Playhouse’s 60th season, which features a theme of “Systems as Old as Time,” focusing on the harmful systems that hold back the oppressed and how people fight against them. It will highlight the ways that joy, laughter and solidarity can still exist and thrive despite those systems.
Jericho Trevino ’27 (left) and May Moe Tun ’25 rehearse for “Playhouse Creatures,” which runs Thursday, November 2–Sunday, November 5, at the Festival Playhouse.
“Nell Gwynn, our main character, became an incredibly influential figure in English society, but she starts the show in a very low place, and we see her rise,” said Max Wright ’26, who is serving as the play’s dramaturg. “We also see the difference between the young, new actors and the women who were older after acting early in the Restoration.”
Wright is stepping into a production role for the first time. However, they have been acting since fourth grade and they were a featured actor in the Festival Playhouse show of Othello last year. Their responsibilities for this production include a lobby display that provides basic historical context, a brief look back on women in theater, and a view into the lives that the real-life characters led.
“It’s a very heavy show, but I think a lot of it is about overcoming the constraints that are placed on you and still making your way in the world, while finding your own place despite someone else’s expectations and the hardships you have to go through,” Wright said. “It’s very focused on the community aspect of how women have leaned on each other and the sisterhood of feminism in history.”
The play will be staged at 7:30 p.m. on November 2–4, and at 2 p.m. November 5, in the Festival Playhouse Theatre at 129 Thompson St. Thursday’s show will include American Sign Language interpretation in a performance made possible with support from Theatre Kalamazoo and the James Gilmore Foundation. Tickets are available online or by calling the Festival Playhouse at 269.337.7333. Audiences should be aware that the play’s content includes flashing lights and situations including abortion and simulated violence.
“Theatre in general is a wonderful experience because it tells stories in ways that can’t be done elsewhere,” Wright said. “The aspect of live theatre—of physically seeing a story played out in front of you—is a form of communication that we’ve had throughout history. That is how we share our culture. That is how we share our community. That is how we share the stories of ourselves in our past. This is one of the stories of our past and it was a crucial point in time for women and theatre in general.”
Lina Alalami holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in foreign languages with a minor in journalism from the University of Jordan.
Alalami (left) and Kenia Coronel Gonzalez were two of the students representing K at the Michigan Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MiTESOL) conference.
A visiting international student with experience teaching English to youths was among a Kalamazoo College contingent that recently returned from presenting at a statewide teaching conference.
On October 14, Lina Alalami—from Aman, Jordan—was joined by Learning Support Specialist and ESL Coordinator Candance B. Combs, and students Paola Guzman Jimenez and Kenia Coronel Gonzalez at the Michigan Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MiTESOL) conference. Together, they spoke on “Engaging College Students as Teachers’ Assistants in Kalamazoo Public Schools.”
Alalami holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in foreign languages (German, Italian and English literature) with a minor in journalism from the University of Jordan. Influenced by diverse communities in Aman, Alalami developed an eagerness to learn new foreign languages and gain insights regarding different cultures. In addition, she wants to pursue a career where she can work to bring understanding between cultural groups around the world, especially in the Middle East.
One of the reasons why she decided to join K as a visiting international student is its great reputation with the K-Plan on an international level. She said K has a unique academic environment that cares about on- and off-campus communities.
At K, Alalami works closely with Combs in the academic course LANG295: One in a Billion, a class where K students each week visit newcomer classrooms in some of the Kalamazoo Public Schools to provide academic support to children and teens from Afghanistan, Rwanda, Syria and Central America. Through a collaboration with the Kalamazoo Teaching Volunteers, a Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement student-led program, Alalami also works as an assistant tutor at Maple Street Middle School, where she teaches Arabic to non-Arabic students. Additionally, she teaches English to ESL students and refugees as an assistant tutor at Millwood Middle School.
At the MiTESOL conference, Alalami discussed the Kalamazoo Teaching Volunteers, her student engagement and the Newcomers Newsletter produced by students in Combs’ classes.
“I always tend to be proactive and I want to give back to the community,” Alalami said. “I have been volunteering since the age of 13. My sense of altruism is something that drives my enthusiasm and commitment to support the newcomers.”In her on-campus involvement, she is part of the Arabic Student Union and actively contributes by supporting the events that help students learn more about Arabic culture. As an international student from a different cultural background, she feels a responsibility to step out of her comfort zone and counter stereotypes that students may have heard in the broader world. Similarly, she enjoys connecting with and learning from others.
“Being active on campus gives me an opportunity to meet and connect with a lot of K students,” Alalami said. “I have the chance to meet people with a wide range of different interests and passions. It makes me happy to learn something new every day about our college and student activism. I also saw at K-Fest that we have a diverse set of student organizations that contribute to our campus community. Kalamazoo College is a student-centric college that makes every student a proactive citizen.”
Editor’s note: This story was written by Blagoja Naskovski ’24. He serves as a social media ambassador for the College Marketing and Communications team.
Through a collaboration with the Kalamazoo Teaching Volunteers, Alalami works as an assistant tutor at Maple Street Middle School, where she teaches Arabic to non-Arabic students.
A liberal arts education from Kalamazoo College gives students a chance to expand their academic interests with great opportunities to turn hobbies into academic involvement. A great instance of that practice is Lizzy Rottenberk ’24, who is double majoring in mathematics and English with a focus on poetry.
In high school, Rottenberk was sure that mathematics was her main academic focus, while she considered poetry to be her hobby. That changed after she took classes through the English department at the end of her first year at K.
“Personally, writing poems has always represented a good way to self-reflect,” Rottenberk said. “It’s a passion that allows me to see how I am feeling and learn more about myself.”
In fact, for her Senior Integrated Project (SIP), she is merging her two passions of math and poetry. Together, they form “Academic Tangents,” where Rottenberk integrates calculus theorems with poetry structures and contexts. The project consists of reflective poems related to academic struggles with five different math concepts represented: functions, limits, derivatives, sequences and series, and anti-derivatives.
All those collections of poems start with a definition of the theorems, followed by a free-verse poem that redefines the theorem in a poetic way. Finally, Rottenberk incorporates poems representing the theorem in the structure and context. The following is an excerpt from a poem titled Connected and Continuous in her SIP:
Editor’s note: This story was written by Blagoja Naskovski ’24. He serves as a social media ambassador for the College Marketing and Communications team.
Lizzy Rottenberk ’24 is merging her two passions of math and poetry.
“Connected and Continuous” by Elizabeth Rottenberk
6:00 am eyes widen brain begins animation embarking towards the serene kitchen breakfast smells of sweet warmth and motivation pecan almond syrup comforting slightly chewy waffles leading to a freshly organized backpack filled with unlearned trig to be explored when the sun peaks above tree lines through a wired window the window that holds foreheads until listening and comprehension become equal wielding a pencil like the sword of King Arthur as he is who you traveled to learn about through the roughest of puddles, more ferocious of red lights but nevertheless, you arrived to hear the educators chant the literary devices and warn us about math’s greatest complexities and experience numerous “ah ha’s” that fuel flights into deeper TOK and AOK conversations until exit from the essential castle known as the education system has been granted headed home your mind becomes lured into a rooted nap as it shifts to autopilot the time for learning discontinues as the sun hides behind the tree line walking under the threshold to the kitchen where delicious satisfying-smelling food needs your dining fuel in the vessel that travels distances to calculate and conquer problems and write essays in MLA eyes closed 6:00 am
Rottenberk is active not only in academics, but also in many on-campus and off-campus initiatives. She currently works as a consultant at the Math and Physics Center, where she provides academic peer support to K students for advanced math classes. Moreover, she is the captain for the softball team and president of the Hacky Sack student organization. She is also a First-Year Experience mentor, which allows her to guide students while they adapt to new academic environments.
Off-campus, Rottenberk is part of Sustainable Living Guide, an organization that provides educational support and resources for healthy and sustainable living. Her commitment to this organization includes organizing virtual classes for sustainability, writing for social media and a website, and conducting research on climate action, zero-waste lifestyle and other topics.
“Being proactive makes me feel better and more productive,” Rottenberk said. “While participating in many on-campus initiatives, I feel that that I am not only contributing to my personal and professional growth, but also to my community.”
Rottenberk said K’s liberal arts education has empowered her to push her boundaries while allowing her to apply creative thinking in her academics. Two of her most influential classes at K have been ENG210: Intermediate Poetry Workshop, where she expanded her knowledge of how to write poems, and MATH320: Real Analysis.
“I would encourage students to be independent with established critical thought,” she said. “More importantly, I strongly suggest students utilize every opportunity that K classes offer when it comes to critical thinking.”
Lizzy Rottenberk ’24 is a captain for K’s softball team.
Claire Mullins ’26 will offered a Zoom about her exhibit, “A Century of Fashion.”
OnlinePresentation
Claire Mullins ’26 worked as an intern with the Little Traverse Historical Museum this summer, researching and installing the display “A Century of Fashion.” Claire’s online presentation on October 26 discussed her work via Zoom.
Kalamazoo College student Claire Mullins ’26 told a Zoom audience about her summer internship while sharing her research on the history of northern Michigan fashion on Thursday, October 26.
During the online event, sponsored by North Central Michigan College, Mullins detailed an exhibit of her creation titled A Century of Fashion, which is now on display at the Little Traverse Historical Society in Petoskey. The exhibit includes about 10 dresses that were donated to the society’s museum over the years along with educational storyboards she drafted while working with a clothing and costume historian. Her presentation went over each time period the dresses are from, what they’re made of, and why they would be worn.
“I want to work for a big museum or on archeological digs one day, so I’m hoping a presentation like this can show I have museum experience and that I already know how to use some museum software while putting on a display like this,” Mullins said. “I also hope the presentation will not only lead to awareness of the Little Traverse Historical Society, but maybe lead to some visits and draw some donations.”
Mullins, a classics major, said she developed a passion for fashion when she visited the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and saw the dresses that First Ladies have worn over the years. However, she wasn’t necessarily thinking about fashion when she sought an internship through Handshake, the College’s platform for jobs and internships. She was more concerned about finding an opportunity close to her Lewiston, Michigan, home, leading her to the Little Traverse Historical Society. There, Mullins interviewed with Executive Director Jane Garver, whose daughter, Grace, graduated from K this year.
Mullins found this 1953 Harvey Berin dress valued at more than $4,000 in a storage area at the Little Traverse Historical Society.
Mullins dressed in personal protective equipment to explore an old storage area and found one of the key additions to her exhibit, “A Century of Fashion.”
An olive green dress that dates to the 1880s is among several historical dresses on dislay at the Little Traverse Historical Society in Petosky.
Mullins uncovered a Harvey Berin dress valued at more than $4,000 during her internship.
“Our K connection helped in the interview, but I told her I was interested in history and that I wanted to specifically work at a museum,” Mullins said. “It went really well, we talked about K a lot, and when she called me back, she told me I got the job.”
Mullins started the internship by archiving some of the historical society’s collections in an online database until Garver mentioned that most of her interns undertake a project of their own choosing. About that time, Mullins visited her employer’s storage unit, where she found racks upon racks of clothing, dresses in particular.
With changing membership and management, along with a flooded old house that formerly served as a storage area, most of the items were undocumented, so Mullins took it upon herself to catalog as much as possible while arranging an on-display exhibit.
To secure her full exhibit, Mullins even went as far as donning personal protective equipment (PPE) to sift through a crawlspace once used for storage that contractors had haphazardly filled with spray insulation. That search—despite a frightening experience involving a mannequin arm suddenly appearing from under the insulation—proved to be fruitful: She found a 1953 Harvey Berin couture dress, custom made by hand in New York City and valued at more than $4,000.
“It wasn’t in our online database, which was the only way we could figure out where a lot of this stuff came from,” Mullins said. “Much of it was donated in the 90s and it wasn’t put in the computer system correctly. A lot of times, the person whose name was on it wasn’t even the person who donated it, so I’m also hoping that the presentation might lead someone to say, ‘My gosh, I remember my grandma wearing that dress,’ or ‘I think my mother wore that one time,”’so we can include that.”
Kalamazoo College students are not only known for their high academic accomplishments, but also their pro-active engagement in the local communities outside campus. One of those students is Rojina Timsina ’24, who has been civically engaged in her local communities since high school. Rojina’s earliest civic engagement experience included volunteering with the Refugee Educational Center in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Once she arrived in Kalamazoo, her sophomore year of college, she was drawn to the work that the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) did in the Kalamazoo community. Through the CCE, she worked as a classroom aide at El Sol Elementary School, where she assisted the teacher in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. Additionally, she worked as a monitor and tutor with the Homework Champions Tutoring program (HCT). Students who work with HTC join a partnership through the CCE that includes Kalamazoo Public Schools, the Refugee Outreach Collective and Western Michigan University to provide educational, emotional and holistic support to recently settled refugee students and their families in the Kalamazoo area.
This year, Rojina is one of the three Civic Engagement Scholars (CES) for the HCT program. As a CES, Rojina’s roles include recruiting K students for the program, facilitating orientations and reflection sessions, working toward expanding the program, and serving as a liaison between the K students and the community partners. “I was very drawn to the mission of HCT, and the group of very dedicated, aware and intentional people that were making this program happen,” Rojina said.
Rojina has also been involved in the public policy and non-profit sector during the past two summers. Through the CCE’s Community Building Internship program, she interned at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) (2022). As a public policy intern, she was working with coalitions around Michigan that were attempting to gain momentum on policies that would serve the communities they represented. Rojina’s favorite policy was the Drive Michigan Forward act that allowed Michigan residents to obtain a driver’s license regardless of their immigration status. Also through the CBI program, in 2023 Rojina interned at the Kalamazoo Youth Development Network, where she explored how the values of identity, belonging and agency are incorporated within the BIPOC youth programs. While studying abroad in Jordan, Rojina worked with a global organization called Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB). TBB connects refugees to international job opportunities, opening labor mobility as a complementary solution to traditional refugee resettlement. As an intern, she helped with the process of finding professional jobs overseas for refugees in Jordan and assisting them with the preparation process after they received the job.
Rojina is a senior working on her psychology major with an English minor. She enjoys the diversity of classes, viewpoints and ideas in both the psychology and English departments. “I have absolutely loved every class I have been in,” she said. “I have taken unique memories, knowledge, perspective, and ah-ha moments from every class. My First-Year Seminar, Culture of Slang, with Candace Combs challenged me to appreciate the uniqueness of my identity and find a community that I can fall back on to this day. One of my most beloved assignments has been a five-hour life history with a K student for my Narrative Analysis class with Dr. Gary Gregg. Some of my most significant memories this past year can be traced back to my beginning Arabic classes with Professor Anna Swank. The Arabic program at K really challenged me to step out of my comfort zone and paved a path for me to go abroad and live life in another language.”
Editor’s note: This story was written by Blagoja Naskovski, a senior at K, majoring economics with a minor in art history. Currently he serves as a social media ambassador for the College Marketing and Communications team.
Rojina Timsina ’24, seen here on study abroad in Jordan, is a Civic Engagement Scholar in the Homework Champions Tutoring program through the Center for Civic Engagement at Kalamazoo College.Rojina Timsina ’24 has been civically engaged in her local communities since high school.
Emily Haigh ’24 examines land snails under a microscope at Dow Science Center.
Georgios Gkolois ’24 said some people might think land snails are insignificant, which only inspires him to learn more about them.
Haigh and Gkolois sifted through leaf litter samples to find snails like these.
The next time you visit Kalamazoo College’s Lillian Anderson Arboretum or the Armintrout-Milbocker Nature Preserve in Allegan, Michigan, think about what you might be stepping in—but not for the reasons you might think.
There are land snails in the area, as small as 2 mm in diameter, which are endangered thanks to deforestation and pollution. Fortunately, Georgios Gkolois ’24 and Emily Haigh ’24 teamed up this summer to collect and examine some of them as a part of their Senior Integrated Projects (SIPs) while researching what can be done to help the species in decline.
To the naked eye, the snails can appear to be the tiniest specs of dirt. Yet the snails are important to the ecosystem, aiding decomposition processes by eating fallen logs and leaves. They also glean calcium from their food, concentrate it in their shells, and pass it up the food chain as they are consumed by predators. Haigh warns that if the snails decline further, the impact eventually would affect humans, because as the environment suffers, so do we.
“I’m planning to go to med school one day, but I have always been passionate about the environment,” Haigh said. “I’ve always wanted to be outside, and I thought this would be a cool way to explore environmental biology before I put my life into medicine. I’ve learned a lot about the importance of even the smallest, tiniest, most microscopic creatures because the little guys can still have a big impact on everything.”
Haigh and Gkolois examined leaf litter samples like this one to find land snails.
Haigh and Gkolois said land snails could often be found in mossy areas.
Haigh collected leaf litter samples at the Lillian Anderson Arboretum and the Armintrout-Milbocker Nature Preserve to find land snails.
Gkolois was relegated to a lab role this summer after breaking his ankle a matter of days before their fieldwork was scheduled to start. However, the misfortune provided a clear method for the partners to share their workload with Haigh in the field and Gkolois in the lab. First, Haigh collected samples through leaf litter in the natural areas, especially near fallen trees, under living trees and near moss. Later, in the lab, the samples’ moisture was removed through heat before Gkolois sorted the snails by examining them through microscopes.
“It seems amazing that a piece of log could be such a diverse community where we could find microhabitats,” Gkolois said. “While we were sorting, we saw snails that were as small as a grain of sand. A lot of people would think they’re insignificant and ask why we care about them. That just got me thinking that I wanted to know more about them.”
Professor of Biology Binney Girdley, serving as their SIP adviser, and zoologist Ashley Cole-Wick, a Michigan Natural Features Inventory conservation associate, worked with the students to shape the project as Gkolois and Haigh developed their SIPs.
“I’m looking into relationships between the volume of decomposing wood and the state of decomposition to the amount of land snail abundance and diversity,” Gkolois said. “Basically, I’m looking at categories of freshly fallen wood and live trees, intermediately decomposed logs and completely decomposed mulch. I want to find out what the snails like most.”
Haigh and Gkolois cooked leaf litter samples before examining them under microscopes to look for land snails.
Haigh and Gkolois collected land snails including some that were no bigger than a grain of sand.
Haigh and Gkolois commonly found land snails in leaf litter samples taken from mossy areas.
Haigh’s project differs slightly. During her field work, she wasn’t looking for levels of decomposition as much as she was for similar plots of land on a slope within about 25 meters of the Kalamazoo River to compare natural communities and find the areas where snails are most likely to be.
“I’ve learned a lot about conservation as a whole, especially animal conservation,” Haigh said. “I’ve learned about the importance of even the tiniest, most-microscopic creatures because these tiny guys can still have a big impact on everything. It taught me a lot about the environment and the impact we have on it.”
Because of their research, Gkolois and Haigh have calls to action for people who want to learn more.
“A lot of times people will remove pieces of logs from land without realizing they’re habitats for a lot of organisms, and not just land snails, but other micro-invertebrates.” Gkolois said. “My advice, as a result, would be to maintain awareness of such situations when managing land.”
“On the topic of conservation, we’ve been writing literature reviews for our SIPs,” Haigh said. “In that, I’ve found a lot of information on the habitats and variables that impact the snails. I think understanding what goes into the land snail communities and their ability to survive is an important factor in better conserving them. We want to make sure these little guys are here to stay.”
When scientists perform research, what they discover is often proprietary and kept in close confidence until results are published or patented. Erin Somsel ’24, however, would rather share her research with the world.
Somsel, a biochemistry major at Kalamazoo College, is working on her Senior Integrated Project with Associate Professor of Chemistry Dwight Williams and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, which engages top students from about 25 global institutions in research through the Open Synthesis Network. Their combined efforts provide shared, open-source information, allowing entire teams to look into the molecules and compounds that present the most promise for developing medicines that fight neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).
NTDs are a diverse group of 20 conditions that disproportionately infect women and children in impoverished communities with devastating health, social and economic consequences. Many are vector-borne with animal reservoirs and complex life cycles that complicate their public-health control. Plus, drug companies often don’t see the benefits of helping impoverished communities that are less profitable.
The open-source initiative, though, is more interested in cooperative work and says its participating researchers have developed 12 treatments for six deadly diseases, potentially saving millions of lives.
“That’s appealing to me because there are scientists from everywhere that work on this project,” Somsel said. “I think that’s a cool way of getting everyone involved in the scientific community to come up with a solution to a big problem.”
Somsel hopes her work will contribute to a treatment for a seventh affliction, Chagas disease. The inflammatory condition is most common in South America, Central America and Mexico with rare cases in the southern United States. It spreads through the feces of a parasite often called the kissing bug, as it damages the heart and other vital organs when the bug bites humans.
“A lot of the work on the drugs for Chagas disease was done in the 1960s, so there’s an urgent need for new ones,” Somsel said. “Chagas has two phases, acute and chronic. The acute phase has common symptoms such as fever, headache and fatigue, but if it turns chronic, it can cause cardiomyopathy and serious gastrointestinal problems. The drugs only work in the acute phase, so if it’s not caught, it’s life-threatening. There’s also no vaccine against Chagas disease.”
In the lab, IC50 values represent the concentrations at which substances inhibit parasites through biological and biochemical processes. The hope is to find IC50 values through molecules and compounds that warrant further research.
“I’ve been working on optimizing our processes and I got the procedure down so that we could start generating some of the compounds that we wanted to,” Somsel said. “The next step is to continue building the library of the chemicals we want to make and send them into the Open Synthesis Network, where it will test them for the activity against the parasites.”
Erin Somsel ’24 hopes her research will contribute to a treatment for Chagas disease, an inflammatory condition most common in South America, Central America and Mexico with rare cases in the southern United States.
Somsel first was introduced to NTD research when she was on study abroad in Costa Rica. While there she studied Latin American health care systems in an environment that challenged her to grow.
Somsel first was introduced to NTD research when she was on study abroad in Costa Rica. While there she studied Latin American health care systems, including Costa Rica’s, in an environment that challenged her to grow.
“I think K has a unique culture of pushing students beyond their comfort zone,” she said. “I don’t think that I would have had that experience at any other place.”
Now, with that experience—plus a K-Plan that involves student organizations such as the Health Professions Society and the Sisters in Science, athletics through the women’s soccer team, and academics as a teaching assistant for introductory chemistry—Somsel feels like she’s prepared to one day succeed in medical school, where she will continue pursuing lab research. Hopefully, that will involve further research involving NTDs.
“Success for me used to be going to class, getting A’s and stuff like that,” Somsel said. “Then, I started working in the lab. I found that there are many little things that build up to success. When I had a reaction that wasn’t successful, it was easy for me to say, ‘I was unsuccessful today.’ But Dr. Williams helped me put it in a different perspective. He could say, ‘No, you were unsuccessful in generating this compound, but you were successful in realizing this solvent didn’t work, so we can try something else and move forward.’ I think that has really shaped me as a student. It helped me understand that if at first something doesn’t work for me, I’m going to keep trying and persisting to find something that does.”
A microscope acquired in spring 2023 using grant funds is opening new opportunities for research and teaching in the Kalamazoo College biology department.
The fluorescence dissecting microscope boasts several advantages over other microscopes in the department, said Michael Wollenberg, associate professor of biology and department chair, and Amanda Wollenberg, associate professor of biology. Its features include optics that allow clear views of individual cells, fluorescence to help differentiate between types of cells, space to manipulate a sample while viewing it, and a dedicated camera and software program.
“We want to be able to look at single bacterial cells, and they’re one-millionth of a meter large, so they’re not visible to the naked eye,” Michael said. “What’s really important is that we have a microscope that has extremely good optics, and those optics resolve the sample very well—they magnify it to the point where we can see individual bacterial cells. Bacterial cells are clear and transparent, and having a set of fluorescent molecules inside the cell allows us to tag them with a glowing marker so we can say, ‘OK, that transparent cell that’s really tiny—that’s actually the bacterial cell we’re interested in, as opposed to schmutz or a eukaryotic cell or some other bacterial cell, and it’s located in X, Y or Z place, which gives us a three-dimensional resolution of the relationship that we’re looking at.’”
While many microscopes use white light to illuminate samples, a fluorescence microscope can do more.
“Bacteria might be too small to actually see just using white light,” Amanda said. “If you genetically manipulate those bacteria so that they glow fluorescent—and that’s a very common technique; people do it all the time, Michael can do it in his lab—if you have a microscope that can detect fluorescence, you can track those bacteria. You can see where they are because they’re glowing green.”
The microscope also has a camera and software program that allows the user to take and analyze photos through the microscope as well as project to a computer screen—two key advantages in research and in teaching that are new to the biology department in terms of dissecting microscopes.
“The camera and software are really important when it comes to trying to share the results of what we see with other scientists by publishing,” Amanda said. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, trust us, we saw it.’ You must have a picture, and it’s got to be a high-quality picture. Ideally, you also try to quantify some of the information in that picture. That means you don’t just show a picture. You say, ‘We took 100 pictures, and we did this analysis of the intensity of the color, using the software program, and in 70 percent of the pictures, the intensity was higher than a certain threshold.’”
The computer projection makes the microscope an excellent teaching tool.
“A microscope has two eyepieces,” Michael said. “You look in the eyepieces, and you’re the only person who can see what you’re seeing. This camera is a great way to project what the microscope sees to a larger group of people, be it a small research laboratory, like our summer research with undergraduates, or a small class.”
Biology major Allison Sokacz ’24 has worked in Michael Wollenberg’s lab for three summers. She recently started using the microscope in the summer research that will form the basis for her Senior Integrated Project.
“The intensity that lets you see the entire fluorescence from this microscope, versus some of the other scopes we have, is really helpful,” Sokacz said. “It’s a lot easier to see what you have.”
The camera is essential to her project, as she is working with two different forms of a bacteria and will be able to compare their locations using saved images. She also appreciates the benefits of the screen projection.
“Microscopy is hard, because only one person can see,” Sokacz said. “I just took microbiology with Dr. [Michael] Wollenberg this spring, and I really struggled with microscopy, because it’s different for everyone. My lab partner might say, put the zoom to this, but then I might not be able to see it. With this microscope, I can say what I see, and they can also see it, instead of, ‘Well, I saw this but then it moved off the screen,’ or, ‘I can’t get it in focus.’ Being able to show a whole room what you’re seeing is definitely helpful.”
In addition, the microscope has a wheel that allows for different filters that can detect different colors of fluorescence, which expands the future possibilities for use.
“You could label one type of bacteria with green and one with red, and now you can look at the dynamics,” Amanda said. “Are the green ones in one place, are the red ones in another place? Another thing researchers will do sometimes is to stain the host with one color and the bacteria with a different color, and that can help resolve some of the questions of what you are seeing.”
Garrick Hohm ’25 looks into the fluorescence dissecting microscope purchased for the biology department in spring 2023 using National Science Foundation grant funds.
Biology major Allison Sokacz ’24 demonstrates how the biology department’s new, grant-purchased microscope can be connected to a computer monitor for research and teaching.
Garrick Hohm ’25 looks into the fluorescence dissecting microscope
Allison Sokacz ’24 checks for the presence and location of bacteria in nematodes using a grant-purchased microscope that is opening up new research and teaching opportunities in the biology department.
The microscope was purchased using funds from a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant, awarded to the Wollenbergs in June 2018 to study mechanisms of specificity and tolerance in a nematode-bacterial symbiosis. About 9 percent of that budget was for the microscope, which cost about $35,000. The rest of the total includes about 12.5 percent for other materials and small equipment, 5 percent for travel, 26 percent for indirect costs like building infrastructure, and slightly less than half for student pay, summer salary and benefits.
“Science uses very condensed writing, where each word means so much,” Amanda said. “In the title of our research, ‘mechanisms’ tell you that we’re looking at the molecular side of things: not just that this happens, but how does it happen? ‘Specificity’ is getting at this idea that when two organisms are trying to have a relationship with each other, it’s not like just any bacteria can come in and live with any animal. ‘Tolerance’ is, even once they’ve found each other and formed that partnership, they have to keep getting along with each other. From the animal perspective, it can’t start killing off that bacteria like it does to other, more pathogenic bacteria. The specific relationship we’re looking at is a nematode-bacterial symbiosis. This is telling us that the animal is the nematode–that’s a roundworm that lives in the soil–and the partner it has is bacteria. Symbiosis is saying they’re in partnership, they both benefit each other. We’re trying to understand how they find each other and get along with each other within that system.”
The duo is well-suited to the research, with Michael bringing a microbiology perspective while Amanda has an immunology focus.
“The big picture is that we live in a microbial world where there’s lots and lots of microorganisms that are in and on our bodies and all animal bodies,” Michael said. “Basically, they facilitate everything that animals do; we can’t survive without them. Understanding how animals tolerate beneficial microorganisms is a big open scientific question. How do we train our immune systems, or how are our immune systems calibrated, so that the friendly bacteria get into association with organisms and maintain those associations that are beneficial?”
That’s not very well understood, Michael notes, “especially not in really complicated organisms like humans, where there are myriad different species of microorganisms that are associated with us. If you think about our gut, it’s like its own ecosystem. We do research with simple models to try to understand detailed answers to bigger biology questions, in the hopes that other scientists can apply that research to things that are more relevant for human health or other animals that have more complicated associations in their health.”
The new microscope is an invaluable tool in the Wollenbergs’ research, and they also look forward to the whole biology department finding ways to use it in the classroom.
“That was part of the reason we wanted to get this piece of equipment as well, is to integrate it with teaching and use it as a teaching tool,” Michael said. “As we’re coming online with the things we’ve wanted to do with the grant, it’s giving us ideas of how we can translate this into the classroom.”
As an aficionado of science, biochemistry major Jordyn Wilson ’24 is drawn to Kalamazoo College and its student research.
“I’ve always been a ‘Why is this? Why is that?’ kind of person,” she said. “My mom has said that about me, too. I just want to know more about how things work. Science gives me an avenue to do that.”
That means the Parchment (Michigan) High School graduate was thrilled three years ago when she received word that she had earned a Heyl scholarship to attend K.
“It was right before COVID happened,” Wilson said. “I remember we all had our interviews and I was waiting and hoping. Then one day I was walking downstairs to my room when I got a call from an unknown number. I wasn’t sure I should answer it, but I did. They said, ‘Congrats! You’ve received the Heyl scholarship.’ I was very excited, feeling very grateful and very blessed.”
The scholarship’s fund was established in 1971 through the will of Dr. Frederick Heyl and Mrs. Elsie Heyl. Frederick Heyl was the first chemist at The Upjohn Company, later becoming a vice president and the company’s first director of research. Since then, Heyl scholarships have enabled hundreds of high school graduates from Kalamazoo County, including Wilson, to attend Kalamazoo College for STEM-focused majors or Western Michigan University for nursing, with renewable benefits for up to four years that cover tuition, fees, housing and a book allowance.
If there was a downside to her honor, it was the timing. She started college during the pandemic and most of her classes were virtual at the time. One exception, though, was her spring Chemistry 120 lab led by Laboratory Instructor Yit-Yian Lua.
“I remember talking to Dr. Y-Y about how much I missed research,” Wilson said. “I missed being in the lab, which was always a lot of fun for me.”
Jordyn Wilson ’24 was thrilled three years ago when she received word that she had earned a Heyl scholarship to attend Kalamazoo College.
The very next day, Wilson received an email from Dorothy Heyl Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Regina Stevens-Truss, asking Wilson if she wanted join her lab’s research. Three years later, Wilson and Stevens-Truss are still working together, examining antibiotics.
“She’s very supportive of me and the ideas I have,” Wilson said of Stevens-Truss. “If there’s something I want to learn or something I think we can do, she says ‘Yes, we totally could do that.’ She’s letting me explore which is one thing I love about her.”
Today, Wilson is studying molecular hybrids, which are made by hybridizing two different molecules with some antimicrobial activity to create a molecule with elevated activity. She also studies antimicrobial peptides, which are short chains of amino acids found in the immune systems of many living organisms.
Her student activities draw her to intramural volleyball; a TA position in organic chemistry; a leadership role in Sukuma, which provides a fellowship for students of color; and membership in Kalama-Africa, a community to celebrate and engage with African cultures and experiences on campus. She’s also a member of the Kalamazoo College Dance Team and pursues art and the game of billiards in her free time. She has even created a student organization called Art and Soul, which centers on using art to promote self-care and self-expression. The club explores a new art form each week, allowing members to discover art they enjoy while building community.
“I’ve always leaned on art as a way to destress and just express myself as an act of self-care,” Wilson said. “It’s never just one thing that I’m doing. I’m always doing multiple projects. I’ve grown up with art and it’s a big thing for me and my family. I definitely think it balances the science part of me if I need to back off from STEM or I need a break from school.”
One day, she hopes to attend grad school and seek a Ph.D. in biochemistry as research is so much a part of her life. In the meantime, she’ll just celebrate her life at K.
“One of the main reasons I picked K is its size,” she said. “I liked how small it was and that it could help me connect with my professors and other students. I think I get more opportunities here than I would at a big school. It feels like we’re a close-knit community.”
Kalamazoo College Assistant Professor of Religion Sohini Pillai displays some of the personal Star Wars merchandise she has in her office including a painting of Grogu gifted to her by a student.
Pillai’s office leaves no doubt of her status as a Star Wars fan. The picture at left shows her likeness as a Jedi with her dog, Leia, dressed as Chewbacca. The picture at right is the dog’s face imposed on an image of Princess Leia’s clothing in the franchise’s first movie, “A New Hope.”
The Force is strong with the Star Wars community at K. Paige Anderson ’25, for example, wore Jedi robes and wielded a lightsaber for an Epic Epics presentation on the Star Wars film “Revenge of the Sith.”
Some Kalamazoo College students will learn the ways of the Force this fall in a new Star Wars-themed class that examines religion’s role in the franchise.
Their goals are to gain a better understanding of religious, cultural and historical contexts related to Star Wars while investigating key concepts in the study of religion such as canonization, myth, invented vs. traditional religions, cultural appropriation, colonization, indigenous cultures, orientalism and racism.
“There are so many themes in the Star Wars universe that are applicable to the study of religion,” Pillai said. “Just in the first week, for example, we’re going to be talking about orientalism and the exoticization of the Eastern world. The world of Tatooine was filmed in Tunisia and the whole planet is essentially based on the Middle East, the Ewoks speak in highspeed Tibetan, and many of the characters have names based on Sanskrit words. I’m really looking forward to it.”
The idea for the course developed not so long ago, in a classroom not so far away, when—in 2021—Pillai began teaching a First-Year Seminar, Epic Epics. The class used The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem, along with nine other narratives about a variety of heroic warriors and colossal battles, to examine how such stories have changed over time and influenced cultures.
Revenge of the Sith, a Star Wars prequel released in 2005, took center stage in final presentations that term with two students reflecting on the film through themes found in the epics. One of the students, Paige Anderson ’25, even offered her presentation while wearing Jedi robes and wielding a lightsaber. The conversations from those presentations and throughout the term pleased Pillai, who also is K’s director of film and media studies.
“Those students are hardcore Star Wars fans,” she said. “I was especially surprised by how much they loved the prequel trilogy. The story, if you haven’t seen the original Star Wars movies, is compelling and exciting. It’s a story about Anakin Skywalker turning to the Dark Side to become Darth Vader. But my students would have been in high school and middle school when the sequel trilogy came out. I thought they would’ve liked those more.”
Regardless of their favorite movies in the franchise, it was evident that student interest, not to mention her own fandom, could help Pillai develop Jedi, Sith, and Mandalorians: Religion and Star Wars. Pillai said she remembers first being interested in the Star Wars universe when she was in kindergarten and her parents introduced her to the first three films after she heard about the films from a classmate. When she was 9, The Phantom Menace, the original prequel, was the first Star Wars movie she saw in theaters. Today, her fandom continues with a variety of merchandise in her office, the Disney+ streaming shows, and an Instagram-famous Yorkshire terrier, Leia, named after the princess who is Pillai’s favorite character in the franchise.
“I distinctly remember growing up and seeing movies like The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty where these princesses are basically sitting there and doing nothing,” she said. “And then in kindergarten, seeing Princess Leia with a blaster and defending herself while also being a diplomat and speaking so eloquently, I was impressed by her. I think she’s one of the most incredible female characters in cinema. I liked the idea of Padmé being a queen at the age of 14, and I enjoyed Rey’s character in the new trilogy as well. And speaking of the new Ahsoka show, I love that three women including two women of color are leading it.”
If you were concerned that some in and around K would question the value of a Star Wars class in the curriculum, Darth Vader—and Pillai, for that matter—might say, “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
“I remember in the faculty meeting when we were voting on new classes that about 10 people all at once seconded the motion to adopt the course,” Pillai said. “I’ve had a lot of people—like Director of Athletics Becky Hall—say, ‘Send me the syllabus! I want to sit in on the class.’ I think there’s a lot of excitement for this. K has a solid Star Wars community.”
Pillai dresses her dog, Leia, as a Jedi while she dresses as R2-D2.
Pillai wears one of her favorite sweatshirts, which combines Star Wars with the film “Jodhaa Akbar,” which she covers in her Religion, Bollywood, and Beyond class.
The broader K community, from staff to alumni and beyond, has been equally supportive. One recent Twitter/X post said, “As a @kcollege alum, I am stone cold jealous of the students taking this class.” Another said, “The fact that I graduated from @kcollege 30 years too late to take this class is a big disappointment to me as a #StarWars fanatic!”
Then there are the junior and senior K students who didn’t exactly have to be scruffy-looking nerf-herders to realize that the course would be fun, entertaining, and educational as they filled the last seats in it during the second day of fall registration.
Pillai can’t be certain that Jedi, Sith, and Mandalorians: Religion and Star Wars will be offered again. As Yoda would state, it’s “difficult to say; always in motion is the future.” She hopes, however, that first-year students, sophomores, and students on study abroad this term will have opportunities to register for it, too.
“I’ll probably want to teach it again because I imagine it’s going to be super fun for me,” Pillai said. “In the future, I think I’m going to have to reserve spots for underclassmen because I feel bad that they weren’t able to take it this time around. But it’s great we have so much interest in it. I think that Star Wars can be used as an important teaching tool, especially in the world that we live in.”
