Kalamazoo College faculty members Noriko Sugimori, Ryan Fong, Amy MacMillan and Marin Heinritz ’99 are being promoted from associate professor to full professor, recognizing the dedication they’ve had to their students and careers.
Noriko Sugimori, Professor of Japanese
Sugimori joined Kalamazoo College in 2009 and serves as chair of both the East Asian Studies Department and the Japanese program. She specializes in sociolinguistics and was a faculty fellow with the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership from 2023-2025. Her Mellon Foundation-supported oral history project, War Memories, explored Japanese-speaking individuals’ recollections of World War II and was the first to use a bilingual metadata synchronizer to record, transcribe and translate interviews.
Sugimori holds a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from Boston University, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, two master’s degrees in TESOL from Michigan State University and Teachers College at Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree from Toyama University in Japan.
Ryan Fong, Professor of English
Fong joined the English department at Kalamazoo College in 2012. From 2020–23, he served as a faculty fellow with the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. His teaching focuses on British literature, with additional courses in literary theory, literature by East Asian emigrants, and women, gender and sexuality studies. He co-founded Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom, a digital project that reimagines the teaching of Victorian studies, and is completing a book titled Unsettling: Indigenous Literatures and the Work of Victorian Studies.
Fong holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree in English from the University of California, Davis and a bachelor’s degree from Whittier College.
Amy MacMillan, Professor of Business
MacMillan joined Kalamazoo College in 2012 and is the L. Lee Stryker Professor of Business Management and co-chair of the Department of Economics and Business. She teaches courses in marketing and management, including international and strategic marketing. Previously, she taught at Western Michigan University, where she was named a faculty fellow at the Lee Honors College for teaching excellence. Her earlier career included leadership roles at General Electric, Procter & Gamble and Sara Lee in the U.S. and Europe. MacMillan serves on the Colgate University Board of Trustees.
She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University.
Marin Heinritz ’99, Professor of English
Heinritz joined Kalamazoo College in 2003, and she teaches courses in journalism and creative writing, including creative nonfiction. A prolific writer, she has authored more than 1,000 published pieces across memoirs, literary journalism, arts criticism and more. Her current book project, Out of Body, is a memoir about coming of age with cancer. Heinritz has received numerous honors, including the Third Coast Non-Fiction Prize and several creative writing awards from Western Michigan University.
She holds a Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in creative writing from WMU, an M.S. in journalism with distinction from Boston University, and a bachelor’s degree from K.
