For so many alumni, Kalamazoo College wasn’t just where they went to school; it was a place that felt like home, from the friendships they forged to the passions they discovered. On May 6, the Day of Gracious Giving, K’s annual one-day fundraising celebration, invites alumni, parents and friends of the College to invest in those same experiences for today’s students.
“When I talk with alumni and they reflect on their time at K, they talk about more than academics. They talk about discovering who they are, the mentorship they received, and the lifelong connections they built,” said Lindsay O’Donohue, senior director of constituent programs and annual giving, whose team organizes the Day of Gracious Giving. “That’s what inspires them to give back, ensuring that every student who comes to K can find their place here too.”
Why Your Gift Matters
The Day of Gracious Giving is the College’s largest annual fundraising event, powered by participation. Gifts made throughout the day go to work right away, funding scholarships, programs, faculty, and K’s highest priorities.
The 2026 Day of Gracious Giving is May 6.
With 98 percent of students receiving scholarships or financial aid, donor support helps ensure that a K education remains accessible.
“From first-time donors to longtime supporters, every gift—no matter the size—helps support the quintessential K experiences that students carry with them long after graduation,” O’Donohue said.
How to Get Involved
Building on last year’s momentum, this year’s goal is to grow participation to 1,200 donors across the K community.
Visit the Day of Gracious Giving page to hear directly from students and make your tax-deductible gift. Matches and challenges throughout the day will amplify each contribution, unlocking additional support as more donors participate.
You can also spread the word about the Day of Gracious Giving by sharing a quick message with classmates and friends, posting on social media about why you chose to give to K, and sharing K’s Day of Gracious Giving content.
“As a community, we can make a real difference in a single day,” O’Donohue said. “I invite everyone who believes in the power of a K education to join us on May 6.”
A Kalamazoo College alumna has been awarded a prestigious NASA Hubble Fellowship, an honor given to just 24 early-career scientists nationwide.
Hayley Beltz ’18, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas, was selected from a pool of more than 400 applicants for the highly competitive program, which supports independent research in astrophysics.
As a senior double majoring in physics and mathematics at K, Beltz received an Astronomy Achievement Student Award and a Chambliss Medal through the American Astronomical Society (AAS), recognizing her exemplary Senior Integrated Project (SIP) presentations at the organization’s meetings. Her SIP involved quasar spectroscopy, meaning she analyzed light that is billions of years old to find and measure the large concentrations of hydrogen that develop as stars form.
“My time at Kalamazoo College gave me the strong physics and math background that I needed for graduate school,” Beltz said. “I loved working as a consultant for the Math and Physics Center, which helped me grow my skills as a mentor and teacher. Being able to try out research with multiple professors at K helped solidify my desire to continue my education and become a scientist. I am very grateful to all the faculty who answered my many questions in office hours, wrote me letters of recommendation, and helped shape me into the astronomer that I am today.”
Beltz earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2023. She then conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland from August 2023 to January 2026 before moving to her current position in Kansas. Recently, her work has focused on “Hot Jupiters,” which are gas giant exoplanets about the size of Jupiter that orbit extremely close to their stars, completing an orbit in just a few days. Temperatures during their daytime can exceed 2,000 degrees.
The Hubble Fellowship will support Beltz’s research for the next three years as she continues developing computer models of exoplanets beyond our solar system with a focus on how magnetic fields shape their atmospheres.
“Learning about these other planets helps us understand the full range of planet formation in our galaxy,” Beltz said. “Magnetic fields are especially important because they play a key role in shaping environments like Earth’s, where life can exist.”
Hayley Beltz ’18
In 2018, Beltz was one of just five undergraduates from across the country to earn a Chambliss Medal from the American Astronomical Society.
When Kalamazoo College alumnus Cody Colvin ’18 stepped onto a set in Traverse City last year to portray one of the most disturbing criminals in recent Michigan history, he carried with him a lesson he learned nearly a decade earlier in a voice and diction class: “Whatever comes up, comes up.”
That advice, given to him by Professor of Theatre Arts Ren Pruis during a Shakespearean sonnet exercise, would prove instrumental as Colvin tackled the challenging role of Christopher Thomas in Hulu’s Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror, a crime miniseries that climbed to No. 3 on the streaming platform after its August release.
The show dramatizes the harrowing true story of Samantha Stites, a former Grand Valley State University student who endured nearly 12 years of stalking by Thomas, a man about seven or eight years her senior. The ordeal culminated with dark subject matter including a kidnapping to a dungeon-like bunker, which demanded extraordinary emotional preparation from the actors re-creating the events.
“To me, it’s about as difficult a character as anyone can ever portray,” Colvin said. “How do you get in the mindset of someone like that? How do they see themselves? How do they see the other person?”
A Lesson That Changed Everything
The answer, Colvin discovered, was in the foundation he built at K under Pruis’ guidance during her voice and diction class. Performing a Shakespearean sonnet, he unexpectedly laughed, despite the piece not being comedic.
“I thought, ‘Oh, no. I’m going to get marked down for this,’ but I kept laughing through it,” Colvin said. “And she said, ‘Go with it.’ She said, ‘Whatever comes up, comes up.’”
That simple instruction became what Colvin now calls “the most important thing about acting that almost no one ever teaches you.”
“What I’ve learned in acting and performing is that humans don’t make any sense, so when you get on stage or on screen, and you have emotion that comes up that is not what you prepared for, you go with it,” he said.
Developing a Monster
The philosophy proved essential during the intensive eight-day shoot, where 12- to 15-hour workdays were common. The production, which conducted a statewide casting search in Michigan and Illinois for its leads, brought together a professional crew including Sarah Mast, an executive producer from MTV’s The Hills.
But Pruis’ character-development class provided another crucial building block. An assignment requiring students to stay in character for two hours prepared Colvin for the demands of portraying Thomas across full shooting days.
Kalamazoo College alumnus Cody Colvin ’18 portrays Christopher Thomas, who stalked and kidnapped Samantha Stites, in the Hulu miniseries “Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror.” Watch the trailer here.
Colvin is an award-winning director, producer and co-executive producer. He founded Colvin Theatrical in 2020. In 2023, he launched Colvin Media to expand into broader film, television and advertising projects.
“I already know that I could be in character for hours and hours, and improvise, respond and think as that person,” Colvin said.
Playing Thomas, described by Colvin as “a horrible criminal with little conscience,” required accessing dark psychological territory. Yet the approach Pruis instilled in him, allowing authentic emotions to surface rather than imposing preconceived choices, made the grueling schedule and the acting challenges manageable and the performance honest.
“It makes it so much easier for 12 hours a day to act, because you’re not managing your emotions, you’re just letting it all happen,” Colvin said. “And that’s what creates the best performances.”
A Love for the Camera
For Colvin, who has devoted much of his career to directing and producing, the experience reaffirmed where his true passion lies, and he expressed clear aspirations for his future.
“I’d love to keep doing stuff on screen,” he said. “That’s my dream. I just love it.”
As he continues to build his career, Colvin carries forward the transformative lessons from his K education, proof that sometimes the most profound professional preparation happens not in the spotlight, but in a college setting where a faculty member encourages a laughing student to simply “go with it.”
From award-winning filmmakers and scientists tracking migratory birds to alumni shaping public policy, professional sports and global education, Kalamazoo College graduates made headlines in 2025 for work that reflects the breadth of a K education and its impact on the world. This year’s top alumni stories highlight achievements rooted in creativity, curiosity and service, demonstrating how K alumni continue to lead, innovate and open doors for others long after Commencement. Here are the top 10 features as determined by your clicks.
Cody Colvin ’18 was honored in February with the Michigan Association of Broadcasters’ Best Independent Producer award, which recognizes the best public television program in the state by an independent producer. Colvin shares the honor with fellow producers Emilee Syrewicze and Phil Lane for their work on Stinney: An American Execution, a cinematic capture of Opera Grand Rapids’ groundbreaking world premiere.
Colvin served as director, producer and co-executive producer on the project, which tells the harrowing true story of George Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old Black boy who, in 1944, became the youngest person ever legally executed in the U.S. after being wrongfully convicted of the murder of two white girls in South Carolina.
Daniel Sampson plays George Stinney Sr. in “Stinney: An American Execution.”
Three Kalamazoo College alumni with ties to the film Grassland celebrated the drama’s digital release on Apple TV+ in 2025. The movie stars Quincy Isaiah ’17, best known for his role as Magic Johnson in HBO Max’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, with Adam Edery ’19 contributing as a producer and Shon Powell ’18 as consulting producer.
Grassland aims to shed light on modern marijuana incarceration issues. After festival premieres and a private screening at K’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, the project continues to spark conversation and advocacy, with its team partnering with organizations such as the Last Prisoner Project to drive real-world policy changes.
Actor Quincy Isaiah ’17 (left) and Producer Adam Edery ’19 returned to Kalamazoo College to screen their independent film titled “Grassland” in 2023. The film was released digitally this past January.
A growing study abroad program at Southeastern Oklahoma State University is drawing rave reviews from students thanks in part to K alumnus Kyle Lincoln ’10, who serves as an associate professor of history and study abroad director at the institution.
Lincoln, influenced by his own study abroad experience in Rome through K, has helped develop opportunities for full-semester, half-semester and summer-term programs offered through exchange partnerships, federally-funded programs, special fellowships offered by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, and competitive programs for foreign language study. He said he brings to SEOSU the same belief that was instilled in him at K: that immersive, global experiences should be encouraged and accessible to all students, not just a privileged few.
Kyle Lincoln ’10 (third from right) is a study abroad director and associate professor at Southeast Oklahoma State University.
Eleven recent K graduates are pursuing their passions around the world as Fulbright scholars and teaching assistants, while continuing a rich tradition of post-grad international learning and service. Erik Danielson ’25, Alex Nam ’25, Leo McGreevy ’25, Stacy Escobar ’21 and Joseph Horsfield ’25 are Fulbright scholars in the U.S. Student Program. Fuzail Ahmed ’25, Maya Hester ’25, Sierra Hieshetter ’25 and Alexa Wonacott ’25 are serving the Spanish government through teaching assistantships and the North American Language and Culture Assistants Program (NALCAP) of Spain. Madeline Hollander ’25 and McKenna Lee Wasmer ’25 are fulfilling government teaching assistantships through NALCAP in France.
Alex Nam ’25 is one of five Kalamazoo College alumni abroad in the 2025-26 academic year while serving the Fulbright U.S. Student Program as an English teaching assistant in Austria. He is pictured during his study abroad experience in Germany.
Sarah Rockwell ’02—a senior research biologist with the Klamath Bird Observatory (KBO) in Ashland, Oregon—followed the incredible journeys of two varieties of migratory birds including one that was found through her research to fly from Oregon to Brazil and back.
Rockwell joined collaborators from the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and Cape Arago Audubon to work after dusk with purple martin bird colonies along the Oregon coast and at Fern Ridge Reservoir. Separately, she worked with KBO Director of Conservation Jaime Stephens to study Oregon vesper sparrows.
With both species, Rockwell and her collaborators made harnesses equipped with GPS tags that the birds could comfortably wear like a backpack with loops going around their legs. Rockwell then waited almost a year for the birds to complete their round-trip migrations so GPS devices could be collected for data retrieval. Their efforts to protect the birds by finding what threats they might face during their migrations have proven successful.
KBO Senior Research Biologist Sarah Rockwell ’02 (left) works with birds alongside Field Technician Sam Webb on a boat at the Fern Ridge Reservoir.
Nicole Polinski ’12 is among the people playing important roles in the fight against Parkinson’s disease at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), headquartered in New York City. She 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 that could provide more methods for the condition’s diagnosis and treatment.
Nicole Polinski ’12 is a director of research resources at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
A chance meeting at Kalamazoo House in September 2023 between the Hesslers (Nancy ’68 and Jan ’65) and Lily Toohey ’26 started like many K stories as the proud alumni were praising their alma mater, encouraging the unsure student to apply.
They exchanged numbers, and when Toohey let the Hesslers know that she had been accepted and offered an excellent scholarship, the couple promised per-term financial support that would cover the rest of her tuition.
Toohey arrived at K with an associate’s degree in business and went on to pair her business major with an art minor. Through study away in the New York Arts Program, she completed two photography internships, including behind-the-scenes work at New York Fashion Week, coming away with a new focus on fashion marketing photography.
“You know, my parents took a chance on me,” Nancy said. “I asked my dad once, when I wanted to thank my parents, ‘What can I do?’ He said, ‘Pay it forward.’ …Lily is doing amazing things and making the most of the opportunity. If I can be part of that, as far as I’m concerned, that’s the very least I could do. It’s up to those of us who can and who have benefited from K’s education to support young people in experiencing it, too.”
When Nancy Hessler ’68 met Lily Toohey ’26, she saw a drive in Toohey along with aspirations that align with K’s values.
Each year during Homecoming and Reunion Weekend, K recognizes alumni whose accomplishments, service and achievements bring honor and distinction to the College and represent the lasting value of a K education. In 2025, David Strauss received the Weimer K. Hicks Award, Susan Stuck Thoms ’70 and David Thoms ’70 received the Distinguished Service Award, Quincy Isaiah earned the Young Alumni Award, and Lila Lazarus ’84 received the Distinguished Achievement Award.
David ’70 and Susan Thoms ’70 received the Distinguished Service Award at K’s Homecoming this year.
If you’re familiar with the 2011 movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, you might have a ballpark idea of what Thomas Bentley ’25 now does as an analyst for the Minnesota Twins. Although Hill’s character is fictional, he represents an amalgamation of everyone who serves a Major League Baseball team in pro personnel. Bentley performs similar work by evaluating statistics to determine how the Twins might improve their organization by making trades with other teams.
Last spring, Bentley joined alumni such as Jordan Wiley ’19 and Samantha Moss ’23 by working in Major League Baseball roles within two years of Commencement. Another young alum, Jack Clark ’17, is the manager of MLB draft operations and has worked in professional baseball since 2020. And like theirs, Bentley’s position is ideal for someone who has been a baseball fan since childhood.
Thomas Bentley ’25 joined alumni such as Jordan Wiley ’19 and Samantha Moss ’23 by working in Major League Baseball roles within two years of their Commencement. Bentley was hired as an analyst in Baseball Operations, making his input vital in the trades the Minnesota Twins pursue.
When Olivia DiGiulio ’25 arrived at K, Michigan was new to her. She was a Portland, Oregon, native with a budding interest in civic engagement and a curiosity regarding how policy could shape communities. Just four years later, she is growing local roots and works in what has become an ideal full-time role in youth advocacy.
The bridge between those two points was a Community Building Internship (CBI) through the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement (CCE). In summer 2024, DiGiulio was placed with the Kalamazoo Youth Development Network (KYD), a nonprofit that supports after-school and summer programs across the city. And today, she works as a policy and advocacy coordinator at the Michigan After-School Partnership (MASP), a statewide organization that does for Michigan what KYD does for Kalamazoo by supporting out-of-school programs, advocating for funding and pushing for systemic change.
“Truly, this is my dream job,” DiGiulio said. “I have to pinch myself that I get to do this work. And it all started with that summer internship.”
Olivia DiGiulio ’25 turned an internship at Kalamazoo Youth Development Network into a dream career with the Michigan After-School Partnership.
Each year during Homecoming and Reunion Weekend, Kalamazoo College recognizes alumni whose accomplishments, service and achievements bring honor and distinction to the College and represent the lasting value of a K education.
The Alumni Association presented its 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards on Friday, October 3, recognizing the following honorees:
David Strauss,the Weimer K. Hicks Award.This award honors a current or retired employee who has provided long-term support to College programs or activities beyond the call of duty while offering excellent service in the performance of their job. After teaching at K, he worked to establish an endowed scholarship that honors his retired colleague, David Barclay. Two College awards bear his name, the David Strauss Prize in American Studies and the Strauss/Wickstrom Senior Integrated Project Endowment.
Susan Stuckey Thoms ’70 and David Thoms ’70,the Distinguished Service Award.The honor recognizes individuals who have made exceptional volunteer contributions to Kalamazoo College. Susan practiced ophthalmology, first in private practice, and later as a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center. David practiced law for 44 years, and his work was honored with numerous professional accolades. David was a College trustee for five years; Susan continues her service into her eighth year as a member of Women’s Council. Both have long assisted students with career advice and served as mentors in law and medicine.
Quincy Isaiah ’17, Young Alumni Award. The citation awards a K alum—within 15 years of their graduation—for outstanding achievement; personal growth in their career; or outstanding professional, civic and cultural service. Isaiah is an actor who earned a Rising Star Award for his portrayal of Magic Johnson in Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on HBO Max. More recently, he played the role of Brandon—a character struggling to move forward after a mistake he made as a child—in Grassland. The 2023 film attempts to change society’s views about marijuana-incarceration policies.
Lila Lazarus ’84, Distinguished Achievement Award. The honor recognizes alumni who achieve distinction in their professional fields. Lazarus has worked in journalism and health communication for more than 39 years. She received the Silver Circle Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Michigan Chapter. She is the founder and owner of Lila Productions LLC.
David Strauss
Lila Lazarus
Quincy Isaiah
David and Susan Thoms
1990 men’s tennis team
1993 volleyball team
Five individuals, a men’s tennis team, a volleyball team and three men’s basketball teams were also inducted into the College’s Athletics Hall of Fame during the Distinguished Alumni Awards. They were:
On Saturday, October 4, the College’s Emeriti Club honored two alumni with its annual Citation of Merit Award. They were:
Carl Bekofske ’64. Bekofske has practiced law in Flint for more than four decades. He is also a Chapter Thirteen trustee for Genesee, Lapeer, Livingston and Shiawassee counties and serves as a Genesee County public administrator.
Sally Padley ’62. In 1972, Padley began a decades-long career as an educator with Kalamazoo Public Schools, Kalamazoo Valley Community College and Western Michigan University’s Academic and Talented Youth Program.
Kalamazoo College will welcome back distinguished alumnus Gerald Rosen ’73 as the keynote speaker for the 2025 Donald C. Flesche Lecture. The event, “The Grand Bargain: Lessons from the Detroit Bankruptcy,” will take place at 8 p.m. Wednesday, September 24, in the Olmsted Room of Mandelle Hall. The lecture will be free and open to the public, and a livestream will be available for those unable to attend.
Rosen, a retired federal judge for the Eastern District of Michigan and former chief judge of the court, is best known for his role in Detroit’s historic bankruptcy case. His leadership in crafting the “Grand Bargain” helped the city exit bankruptcy in 2014 while protecting the pensions of thousands of retirees and preserving the Detroit Institute of Arts’ world-renowned collection.
Rosen also spoke at K in the 2015 Weber Lecture and was interviewed as a guest at an event for students in 2018. After earning his law degree at George Washington University, Rosen went on to a distinguished career in private practice before being appointed to the federal bench in 1989. During nearly three decades as a judge, including seven years as chief judge, he presided over landmark cases involving terrorism, constitutional questions and civil rights.
Rosen returns to campus as his story is reaching new audiences. His 2024 book, Grand Bargain: The Inside Story of Detroit’s Dramatic Journey from Bankruptcy to Rebirth, provides a behind-the-scenes account of how city officials, state leaders, philanthropists and creditors came together to negotiate a solution once thought impossible. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has described Rosen as “a very important figure in Detroit’s history” whose “daring leadership, wisdom and diplomacy” helped set the stage for the city’s recovery. Rosen discussed the book in a January interview with WMUK 102.1. He and his book also will be spotlighted in the fall edition of Lux Esto.
The annual Flesche Lecture honors Donald C. Flesche, a longtime professor of political science at Kalamazoo College, who influenced generations of students—including Rosen himself. While studying at K, Rosen majored in political science and took courses with Flesche that helped shape his career in law and public service.
Retired judge and author Gerald Rosen ’73 will visit Kalamazoo College on September 24 to deliver the annual Flesche Lecture. A livestream will be available.
When Olivia DiGiulio ’25 arrived at Kalamazoo College, Michigan was new to her. She was a Portland, Oregon, native with a budding interest in civic engagement and a curiosity about how policy could shape communities. Just four years later, she is growing local roots and works in what has become an ideal full-time role in youth advocacy.
The bridge between those two points was a Community Building Internship (CBI) through the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) at K. In summer 2024, DiGiulio was placed with the Kalamazoo Youth Development Network (KYD), a nonprofit that supports after-school and summer programs across the city. The organization acts as an intermediary for dozens of community programs, ranging from the YMCA to the Kalamazoo Nature Center while providing training, coaching and professional development for program leaders.
Each summer, the CBI program supports students and CCE community partners by offering immersive paid roles developed with the organizations exclusively for K students. Since 2009, with funds from donors and K’s Center for Career and Professional Development, the CCE has offered about 20 internships a year in positions that promote social change and equity in Kalamazoo. In these six- to eight-week experiences, students gain exceptional professional skills and knowledge of local and global issues, while building community capacity to address food security, youth development, the creative arts, health equity, neighborhood planning, neurodiversity, community gardens and childcare policy, among others.
“It was a great opportunity to get the lay of the land for Kalamazoo grassroots, community-based movements,” DiGiulio said. “I could see all the ways their internal network supported the external network of programs in the area. It was energizing and beautiful to witness all the amazing work they were doing.”
Finding Her Place in Kalamazoo
DiGiulio’s internship gave her a firsthand look at the joy behind youth development and revealed the systemic barriers that keep many young people from participating, chief among them was transportation.
Olivia DiGiulio ’25 found an internship at Kalamazoo Youth Development Network through the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement before turning the experience into a dream career with the Michigan After-School Partnership.
“There are a lot of youth in Michigan who don’t have access to after-school or summer programs because of the limitations related to transportation,” DiGiulio said. “That realization led me into conversations about policy and advocacy that reaffirmed my desire to support systems-level barrier removals as part of my career.”
DiGiulio’s daily schedule at KYD rarely ever repeated itself day to day. Some mornings began with a drive out to observe summer programs, where she helped assess the quality of activities. Other days, she tabled at community events such as the National Day of Summer Learning at Bronson Park, connecting with families and showcasing opportunities for youth. Back in the office, DiGiulio helped process evaluations from youths and families, and supported staff with program-improvement efforts. But what stood out most to her was the culture of the organization.
“KYD Network is very focused on ensuring staff develop as people as much as professionals,” she said. “We had team meetings where we reflected on our values and how to live them out authentically in our work. Seeing my coworkers build such trustworthy and meaningful relationships with community partners was really inspiring.”
Through KYD Network, DiGiulio supported a transportation affinity group that brought together leaders and advocates to think about solutions. The Michigan After-School Partnership (MASP) is a statewide organization that does for Michigan what KYD does for Kalamazoo by supporting out-of-school programs, advocating for funding and pushing for systemic change. By the time graduation rolled around, MASP offered her a full-time position as a policy and advocacy coordinator.
“Truly, this is my dream job,” she said. “I have to pinch myself that I get to do this work. And it all started with that summer internship.”
The Long Game of Change
Today, in her MASP role, DiGiulio leans on those lessons. Advocacy, she said, is rarely about quick wins. Instead, progress comes in steady steps with incremental policy changes, persistent conversations with legislators, and deepening relationships with program directors across the state.
“Measuring success in this work means recognizing that it’s the long game,” she explained. “It’s about building transformational relationships and keeping the drumbeat of advocacy going so momentum continues to build.”
One of her current priorities is transportation equity, which ensures that young people across the state can get to the programs designed for them. Another is securing increased funding for after-school and summer programs. Both, she said, are multi-year efforts.
“I break it down into what can I do this week, what I need to plan for next month, and what has to be set up for the next budget cycle,” she said. “It’s about moving the vision forward one step at a time.”
Seeds Planted Before College
DiGiulio’s passion for civic engagement was first nurtured back home in Portland. In high school, she worked with the Blanchet House, a nonprofit offering free meals and addiction-recovery programs. As a student ambassador, she designed projects that introduced middle school students to issues of food insecurity and houselessness.
“That experience helped me realize I love building connections with people and also analyzing the systems shaping their lives,” she said. “I wanted to find a way to bring relationship building and systems change together. That’s what led me to policy and advocacy.”
K turned out to be the right fit to grow those interests. She took part in CCE programs such as Club Grub, volunteered with Building Blocks of Kalamazoo, and enrolled in courses such as Urban Planning as a Liberal Art, taught by then-CCE Director Alison Geist and local city planners.
“K really values experiential learning,” DiGiulio reflected. “And the friendships I made across disciplines were just as transformative. My friends in biochemistry, public health, and music all shaped how I see the world and the work I want to do.”
Though she never expected it, Kalamazoo—and Michigan more broadly—have become a second home. She cherishes the green spaces, the walkable neighborhoods and the friendships that stretch beyond campus.
“As someone who didn’t grow up here, it’s been special to see the city through the eyes of young people who call it home,” she said. “I feel like I’ve built a community both at K and in Kalamazoo itself.”
Looking Back and Ahead
As DiGiulio settles into her role at MASP, she often thinks back to that pivotal summer in 2024 and the CBI program that made it possible. Her story is a reminder of what CBIs are designed to do as they give students a chance to learn from the community, serve in meaningful ways, and sometimes discover the work they were meant to do all along.
“I’m extremely grateful for the CBI program,” she said. “It fostered meaningful connections with the Kalamazoo community and opened the door to my career. The relationships I found at K have been transformational in my life.”
Kalamazoo College is bringing its tight-knit community even closer together with the launch of a new social media site designed exclusively for students, faculty, staff and alumni. This LinkedIn-style platform provides a professional space to build connections, seek career advice and share opportunities with fellow K Hornets.
KConnect, designed through the platform AlumniFire, grew out of a desire to strengthen the K network and build relationships. Through it, alumni have options to share one-time advice or serve as ongoing advisors as they control how often they want students to contact them. They also can review students’ resumes, provide interview tips and join a community for fresh ideas, collaboration and partnerships. Students then can explore career paths through conversations with alumni in their prospective fields, get tips on searching for jobs and professional life, set up virtual conversations and in-person meetups, build confidence by networking in a low-pressure space and help fellow students by sharing personal experiences.
In KConnect, alumni can share one-time advice or serve as ongoing advisors to students as they control how often they want students to contact them. It’s also a place where alumni can make connections with former classmates.
“Alumni reach out to us often and say, ‘I don’t want to just wait for students to find me on LinkedIn. I want to have career conversations with students because I navigated a difficult situation with my career, and I don’t want other students to have to go through that,’” CCPD Director Valerie Miller said. “If we can direct alumni to this platform, they can say exactly what they want to offer students, and students can find them more quickly.”
Although K alumni and students have always been proud of having strong connections, the new platform offers a digital home for those interactions to flourish. KConnect ensures that students won’t need a LinkedIn Premium account or an appointment with a career coach to reach out to alumni. And because K alumni sign up for it specifically to provide mentoring and more, students know that the alumni want to be contacted. It’s also a great tool for alumni to connect with old friends, contact each other with career questions, and post about their businesses in the business directory.
CCPD Associate Director Rachel Wood added that the platform provides students with a tool to prepare for their careers sooner in their years at K.
“We used to see students engaging a little bit with career stuff their first year, and a little more their sophomore year before doing so heavily into their senior year,” Wood said. “We want to help students approach that differently. We think of KConnect as a great place for sophomores to have those career conversations earlier at K, around the time that they’re making decisions about their majors. It’s not that a major equals what someone does in their career, but if they want to go into finance, for example, they’re going to want to have an internship in that field, so they’re going to want to make connections with folks that work in finance earlier on. Students can do that in KConnect.”
“We have students who come to K with great professional networks, and potentially, the skill to log into KConnect and know exactly what to do with it,” Wood said. “But for those who are new to networking, this platform comes with us doing work on the back end to teach students how to use it, as they all will receive access to it. That elevates what you get from being a K student and it opens doors for people who might not have a professional network coming into K.”
Miller and Wood credit CCPD Assistant Director for Experiential Opportunities Richard Sylvester with doing much of the behind-the-scenes work to select a platform, test it with stakeholders and ensure that it meets the needs of students and alumni.
“One of the biggest initial challenges was selecting the right platform—one that would not only meet the current needs of students and alumni but also scale with us as we grow,” Sylvester said. “We didn’t take that decision lightly. We explored and evaluated several options and AlumniFire stood out as the partner best aligned with our goals and vision for students.”
From start to finish, the process of building KConnect took about seven or eight months, which Sylvester said speaks to the care the CCPD took to set it up right. The result is an exciting and easy-to-use platform. In fact, once they’re registered, participants won’t even have to log in to the platform to use it should they choose only to exchange messages. They can receive email alerts when they get messages and simply reply to them while automatically replying to the message on KConnect at the same time.
Students, faculty, staff and alumni can find instructions for KConnect and register for it through the CCPD website. Registering is possible with a kzoo.edu email address or, for alumni, with a personal email address.
“A platform like KConnect, which will eventually serve hundreds, if not thousands, of alumni and students, needs broad support and trust across campus,” Sylvester said. “We knew this tool had the potential to address a long-standing challenge: reducing the friction that often exists in connecting students with alumni for mentorship, networking, career exploration and experiential learning opportunities like internships and job shadows. Because of the platform’s potential impact, we invested time in meeting with people, demoing the platform, listening to feedback and concerns, and making sure everyone felt confident in the direction we were heading.”
As the platform continues to grow, the CCPD hopes it will serve as an example of the power of a liberal arts community that fosters relationships, sparks collaboration and ensures that Hornets always are buzzing with opportunities to share with each other thanks to having shared experiences as students.
“I often tell the story that I went to a large university and, despite the massive size of my network, I don’t have the network that K grads have because there just isn’t the same kind of alumni affinity for my university,” Miller said. “Here, if somebody says, ‘I did this on the Quad or at Red Square,’ everybody knows what that means. There’s a recognition and a connection that students can share with alumni before they even meet.”
The CCPD won’t measure its success with KConnect by the number of users it has, even though Sylvester admits he would love to see thousands of people using it over time. It’s more about fulfilling a deeper promise of what it means to be a student or alum in the K community.
“When someone chooses K, they’re not just choosing a school, they’re joining a community that cares about them,” Sylvester said. “It’s a community that’s invested in their success during their four years on campus and through the rest of their lives. Just by creating a profile and being willing to offer a bit of your wisdom, your story or your perspective, you will help create a rich, supportive network for students and fellow alumni. That’s how we build the kind of community we all want to be a part of one connection at a time.”
A recent honor handed to Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement Director Sashae Mitchell ’13 will help students continue strengthening community partnerships beyond Kalamazoo College through critical engagement and collaborative learning for years to come.
Mitchell is one of 18 faculty and staff from 13 states selected for the 2025–26 cohort of engaged scholars through Campus Compact’s Engaged Scholars Initiative. The effort is a professional-development program that supports early-career faculty and staff in strengthening their community-engaged efforts and programs.
Scholars were selected this year based on their commitment to centering equity in their civic- and community-engagement work. In applying, members of the cohort were asked to outline their interest in the program and share how they expect to grow with it.
“I am truly honored and elated to have been selected for the fifth cohort of Campus Compact’s Engaged Scholars Initiative,” Mitchell said. “It’s a privilege to work alongside an amazing group of faculty and staff from across the country who are deeply committed to advancing community engagement in higher education. This opportunity aligns closely with one of my core professional goals of developing my identity and practice as a community-engaged scholar and researcher, so I’m excited to grow through this experience.”
Throughout the academic year, Mitchell will participate in virtual meetings, in-person retreats and collaborative scholarly work to strengthen her own scholarship and, in turn, empower K students, faculty and staff and lead change in the Kalamazoo area.
“What excites me most about this opportunity is that it not only supports my own professional development, but also directly benefits the work of the CCE,” Mitchell said. “One of our ongoing priorities has been to amplify the impactful work happening through the CCE, both on campus and in the broader community, and being part of this national cohort will help us elevate our story, share our successes, and identify areas for growth.”
Sashae Mitchell ’13 has been selected for the 2025–26 cohort of engaged scholars through Campus Compact’s Engaged Scholars Initiative.
Mitchell earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at K, where she was actively involved in the CCE as a Civic Engagement Scholar through Community Advocates for Parents and Students (CAPS), a grassroots community organization that provides tutoring opportunities to Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) students who live at Interfaith Homes. It offers a structured but fun environment with relationship-based homework help, literacy and math support, field trips and information about getting into colleges. After graduating, Mitchell worked with the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, where she contributed to research teams analyzing data on the Kalamazoo Promise and other aspects of KPS.
Mitchell later earned a master’s degree in international education and development from the University of Pennsylvania. Since then, she has worked with organizations in the U.S., South Africa and her home country of Jamaica, conducting research on educational disparities. She has also implemented and evaluated interventions and innovative solutions to address these inequities.
As the CCE’s director, Mitchell promotes, develops, manages, funds and evaluates sustainable and effective academic and co-curricular programs while building strategic relationships with community partners and faculty, overseeing programming, collaborating with on- and off-campus partners, and leading CCE teams.
“By learning alongside peers from across the country, I’ll gain new insights into best practices in community-engaged scholarship and programming,” Mitchell said. “These lessons will inform how we support our student leaders, strengthen our community partnerships, collaborate with faculty and deepen the impact of our work. Ultimately, this honor helps position the CCE to be even more intentional, reflective and sustainable in serving both our students and the community.”
Campus Compact Vice President Nicole Springer said each engaged scholar, including Mitchell, already has demonstrated an impressive level of dedication and passion for civic and community engagement.
“Each year, our engaged scholars learn with and from each other, engage in scholarship production, and connect in collaborative ways that contribute to their own individual leadership and the growth of the field of higher education civic and community engagement,” Springer said. “I can’t wait to see how this group progresses over the next year as they engage in this transformative process.”
More students at Southeastern Oklahoma State University (SEOSU) have applied for passports and are prepared to see the world thanks in part to a Kalamazoo College alumnus inspired by his own study abroad experiences.
Kyle Lincoln ’10 is an associate professor of history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma, about 100 miles northeast of Dallas, Texas. He also has been appointed the university’s study abroad director. The university last year had just 14 out of more than 6,000 enrolled students participating in study abroad, but the number overall is trending higher under Lincoln’s watch.
“I can remember starting to talk about going on study abroad when I was a first-year student at K, and now I can talk to our students to plant the idea with them,” Lincoln said. “Someone else then sits near our students in class while saying something like, ‘When I was in Vienna, something amazing happened.’ That’s when students pull the trigger and decide to go. Horizontal marketing like that is pretty powerful for us. And to me, it’s gratifying to know the number of students participating in study abroad here is growing. If we can get it up to about 10% participation, that would be a legacy number for me.”
SEOSU primarily serves students from a 12-county area in the state, all of which consistently rank among the 50 counties in the country with the lowest average household incomes. Additionally, approximately 46% of SEOSU’s students identify as students of color, including about 28% who identify as Native American. Despite these long odds, Southeastern excels in supporting its students through their graduation date and beyond, and consistently ranks in the top 10 universities in the country in graduating Native American students. When Lincoln arrived, there were few opportunities for students to pursue international immersion. Many students come from high-financial-need backgrounds and historically underserved communities, where optional educational opportunities like study abroad were not commonly seen as accessible.
A fledgling study abroad program began about 10 years prior to Lincoln’s arrival, when the honors program director at SEOSU decided that her students needed to see more of the world through short-term study abroad opportunities. Other students were invited along, yet participation stayed low. Lincoln, though, had gained experience leading study abroad programs while teaching at Webster University during graduate school, and he told officials at his new institution that he could dedicate himself to furthering its international immersion efforts.
Lincoln has since helped develop opportunities for full-semester, half-semester and summer-term programs offered through exchange partnerships, federally-funded programs, special fellowships offered by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, and competitive programs for foreign language study. But much of that development started almost by accident.
“The person who was planning to lead a program to Greece my first year at Southeastern ended up leaving the university,” Lincoln said. “I couldn’t say no when the honors director asked if I wanted to go. From there, we’ve been adding more faculty-led trips. We’ve gone to Belize and Guatemala, and we’re getting ready to go to Spain next year. We went to Iceland this last spring, too. Right now, we have five full-semester programs. I have a proposal on our president’s desk to add about 20 sites in 13 or 14 countries within the next year. That’s a pretty substantial increase in the programs we would be offering, especially for a school that doesn’t really have a dedicated study abroad office except for me.”
Lincoln, who is originally from Ionia, Michigan, said he visited K during high school when Steven Cairns ’93, Ionia’s AP history teacher, encouraged him to do so. The College’s brick-lined streets and trees, which reminded him of home, ultimately helped him decide to attend. As a K student, he took Latin classes and began learning Greek in classics department courses before spending a term abroad in Rome.
He has modeled some of SEOSU’s study abroad structure on his experience at K.
“I remember doing the background work to apply for graduate school and looking at my transcript,” he said. “I noticed I didn’t have separate transcripts from K and from studying abroad. I didn’t think about that for a long time, but it stuck in the back of my head, and we now do something similar at Southeastern. All the students that enroll in study abroad for semester or summer-term programs, enroll in classes that have a prefix of ‘Intl,’ which is international studies with me. Then, as the course codes fluctuate based on what classes they’re taking somewhere else, they stay enrolled at Southeastern despite being at Webster’s campus in Athens or the Universidad Nebrija campus in Madrid. From a practical perspective, that lets them stay on course to graduate. It also keeps enrollment verification for the state of Oklahoma, tribal funders, regional funders, philanthropic organizations or regional scholarships.”
Kyle Lincoln ’10 (third from right) is a study abroad director and associate professor of history at Southeast Oklahoma State University. Lincoln has helped develop opportunities for full-semester, half-semester and summer-term programs at his institution.
As a Kalamazoo College student, Lincoln took Latin classes and began learning Greek in classics department courses before spending a term abroad in Rome.
Lincoln’s own study abroad experience at K meant so much to him that he now takes SEOSU students to places such as Belize and Guatemala.
Such a practice helps students maintain their access to university services, too.
“It makes the advising part easy for me, and it also means that the students can, for example, stay in contact with campus health services if they need to because they’re still enrolled with us,” Lincoln said. “They haven’t just gone to another university and enrolled in classes there. One study abroad director horror story I have that had a happy ending: I had a student whose appendix burst while she was in Geneva. Having that happen 4,000 miles from home is scary, but she called me and the campus directors, which allowed us to get some paperwork started. Her biggest complaint by the end? Why was the hospital food in Geneva better than cafeteria food at home!”
As a result, she made a full recovery without any out-of-pocket costs and still benefited from her study abroad experience. Lincoln said it puts students’ minds at ease when they know something about what they can expect and that their school has experience with what to do in emergencies.
The biggest challenge ahead is now building a lasting study abroad culture at SEOSU, which traditionally had students saying, “People like us don’t do that; that’s a rich-kid thing or an East Coast thing.” Lincoln brings to the institution the same belief that was instilled in him at K: that immersive, global experiences should be encouraged and accessible to all students, not just a privileged few.
“The financial challenges are often real for our students, yet building a lasting culture of study abroad at Southeastern has been the bigger challenge,” Lincoln said. “I will tell my students that they go with people they don’t know yet, but I do know them, and we can trust them. There might even be real opportunities abroad they can’t get at our campus or maybe we don’t have the faculty that can give them the variety that they want in their education. There’s also a transformative power in being in the place where something is happening.”
And so far, student feedback after study abroad has been encouraging, indicating the school is ready to ramp up participation.
“At this point, we’re seeing a 100% success rate,” he said. “One hundred percent of the students who go come back and ask questions like, ‘Can I go again? How do I do this forever? Can you tell me what programs for graduate school focus on international education? Is there a way to live abroad and get a master’s degree?’
“I want to make sure my students see study abroad as an opportunity that’s more accessible than they might think and a chance to do something life changing. I want it not to be a question of whether they can go, but when.”
Lincoln previously led study abroad experiences as a graduate student at Webster University after graduating from K.
