alumni

Bell’s Founder, Author to Earn Honorary Degrees at Commencement

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Alumnus Larry J. Bell ’80, founder of Bell’s Brewery, Inc., will be welcomed as Kalamazoo College’s 2023 Commencement speaker on Sunday, June 11.

Bell majored in political science at K before going on to found Bell’s Brewery Inc. in 1985—one of the earliest craft breweries in the Midwest. With popular and award-winning beers like Two Hearted Ale, Oberon and Hopslam, Bell’s Brewery grew into one of the largest craft breweries in the U.S., distributing to 43 states. In 2010, Bell was honored with The Brewers Association Recognition Award for his innovative brewing and dedication to the industry. He was also recognized in 2010 by Kalamazoo College with its Distinguished Achievement Award, which honors those alumni who have achieved distinction in their professional fields. Upper Hand Brewery, a sister company based in Escanaba on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, opened in 2014.

In November 2021, Bell reached an agreement with Lion, an Australian-based brewer, for the sale of Bell’s, and Bell officially retired from the helm of the company at the end of 2021. That year he was also named environmentalist of the year by the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter for his years of advocacy work, which included helping found the Great Lakes Business Network, a non-partisan business group that advocates for thriving ecosystems, economies, and communities in the Great Lakes Region. Since retirement, Bell has remained active philanthropically, making more than $14 million in donations to local organizations, including Kalamazoo College. A longtime supporter of the College, Bell has helped to fund food justice and sustainability programming, including support for The Larry J. Bell ’80 Environmental Stewardship Center in 2022. He also established a distinguished chair in American history, and in 2016, he endowed a scholarship fund for students needing financial assistance. Bell has also been a strong supporter of the arts in Kalamazoo, serving as Past Board President for the Irving S. Gilmore International Piano Festival; in 2022 he made a gift to The Gilmore to establish two awards for exceptional jazz pianists. He has also established the Larry J. Bell Library Foundation, which is developing a research library in downtown Kalamazoo to host Bell’s extensive collection of historical books and art collections. In addition to serving as the Commencement keynote speaker, Bell will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the College.

Along with Bell, author Jaroslav Kalfař will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from K. His debut novel, Spaceman of Bohemia, was the Summer Common Reading book for the incoming class of 2018, and Kalfař visited campus in September of that year to discuss his book as part of new student orientation. Per K tradition, he returns to address this same class of students at their commencement.

Kalfař was born in the Czech Republic, moving to the U.S. at age 15. He earned an M.F.A. from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow and a nominee for the first E.L. Doctorow Prize. In 2018, he was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Spaceman of Bohemia was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, The Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a nominee for the Dublin Literary Award. The book has been published in fifteen languages. A film adaptation directed by Johan Renck, starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, and Paul Dano, is coming to Netflix in 2023. Kalfar recently released his newest novel, A Brief History of Living Forever.

Past Kalamazoo College honorary degree recipients

Commencement speaker Larry Bell with his wife, Shannon Bell, and President Jorge G. Gonzalez
Larry Bell ’80, founder of Bell’s Brewery, Inc., will be welcomed as Kalamazoo College’s 2023 Commencement speaker on Sunday, June 12.
Commencement Author Jaroslav Kalfař
Author Jaroslav Kalfař will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Kalamazoo College during Commencement on Sunday, June 12.

Poetry Month, K Alumna Build Optimism, Faith in Virginia

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A Kalamazoo College alumna has undertaken a position noteworthy of recognition in April, which serves as National Poetry Month.

National Poetry Month was inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. It has since become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers and poets celebrating poetry. And now, Dani Badra ’08 is the poet laureate of Fairfax, Virginia, a role she relishes given that she provides her fellow Fairfax residents with a way to pursue optimism and faith in life through the written word.

“Poetry helps provide a deeper meaning to both difficult and beautiful and beautifully difficult things,” Badra said. With the difficulties, for example, “I think of the poem Amanda Gorman read at President Biden’s inaugural address that people across the nation remember. She was reading a poem days after the insurrection right where it happened. At that moment, her poem provided some meaning, some deeper thought that gave people hope, and helped us reinterpret where we are as a nation.”

Badra appreciates the way that the poet laureate position speaks to her creative side. Fairfax established its poet laureate position in 2020 through ArtsFairfax, a nonprofit organization designated as the county’s local arts agency. Since then, a chosen community member has served as a literary arts ambassador, promoting poetry in the county, region and state. She was selected for the role last October and will serve until 2024.

Supported through funding from the county, Badra has established a Poetry in the Parks program. In April, as a part of Arab American Heritage Month, she is conducting a poetry reading followed by a ghazal workshop to create an awareness for the lyric poems, which are common in Middle Eastern culture. She will conduct more poetry readings in June for Pride Month, in August for a Poetry Beneath the Stars workshop outdoors, and in November for a guided poetry workshop conducted by a naturalist at a local wetland area.

Additionally, Badra is creating “poetry plaques” that she hopes will be used as a long-term resource. Plaques placed in nature often have information about flora and fauna, but these will have a poem related to the region or the area’s environment.

“They will include a poem, a bio of the poet, some writing prompts for people to engage in and a QR code where county residents can submit their own writing inspired by that location,” Badra said. “We’re creating not only some environmental engagement, but some creative products as well.”

After graduating from K, Badra earned a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from George Mason University, where she was the poetry editor of So to Speak, a feminist literary and arts journal, and an intern for Split This Rock, a national network of socially engaged poets witnessing injustice and provoking social change.

Her poems have appeared in publications such as the Cincinnati Review, Guesthouse, Mizna and Beltway Poetry Quarterly among others. She also has led writing workshops at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, OutWrite DC and in high schools. She has been a featured reader for Split This Rock’s Sunday Kind of Love series, a judge for Brave New Voices in DC, and a participant in Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, a festival commemorating the 2007 bombing of a historic book market in Baghdad, Iraq.

Badra’s first chapbook, Dialogue with the Dead (Finishing Line Press, 2015), was largely inspired by her older sister, Rachal, who graduated from K herself in 2005, before passing from an undiagnosed genetic heart condition in 2012.

Poetry Month: Fairax County officials greet poet laureate Dani Badra at an ArtsFairfax event
Fairfax County Executive Bryan Hill (left) and Chairman Jeffrey McKay congratulate Danielle Badra ’08 on being named Fairfax’s poet laureate. Photo by A.E. Landes Photography.
Poetry Month: Nicole Tong standing with Dani Badra
Nicole Tong (left), who was the first poet laureate for Fairfax, Virginia, congratulates Kalamazoo College alumna Dani Badra ’08 on succeeding her. Photo by A.E. Landes Photography.
Poetry Month: Dani Badra portrait
Fairfax Poet Laureate and Kalamazoo College alumna Dani Badra ’08. Photo by Holly Mason.

“When she died, I found a folder of poems that I didn’t know she’d been writing,” Badra said. “When I found them, I knew I wanted to publish them somehow. They weren’t really in a publishable format, so through them, I created a much-needed dialogue with her.”

Much like the chap book, Badra’s manuscript, Like We Still Speak (University of Arkansas Press, 2021), was inspired by her sister. It earned the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. It was also named a semi-finalist for the Khayrallah Prize and listed in Entropy’s Best of 2020-2021: Poetry Books and Poetry Collections list.

“Like We Still Speak improves upon the ideas and polyvocal poetic forms behind Dialogue with the Dead and expands on them to include more voices, like my wife, and my mom and dad,” Badra said. K Professor Emerita “Di Seuss is in there, too.” She credits Seuss as playing a pivotal role in her development as a poet and expressed gratitude for the years at K she spent under her tutelage.

Badra works full-time as a technical writer and management analyst for Fairfax County Land Development Services, and she appreciates the opportunities that come with serving as a poet laureate.

“The poet laureate position appealed to me because it allows me the opportunity to pursue my heart’s passion,” Badra said. “In a way, I can also bring that same passion to other people in my community. I enjoy engaging with people as well as with these outdoor spaces. At the end of the day, people will take away from the programming what they do. I hope that I just inspire a group of people, however many that is, to want to walk around in nature and write about it.”

K Alumna’s First Libretto Wins Prestigious Opera Prize

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A Kalamazoo College alumna has won one of the largest and most prestigious awards for opera composers in the U.S. for her first-ever libretto. 

Ginger Strand ’87 has been awarded the 2023 Charles Ives Opera Prize, along with composer Laura Schwendinger, for their 2019 opera, Artemisia. The honor, granted by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, includes a $15,000 prize for Strand as librettist and $35,000 for Schwendinger as composer. 

The award came as a surprise to Strand. While they knew they had been nominated by Academy member and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Shulamit Ran, the prize is not awarded regularly. Established in 2008, the Charles Ives Opera Prize has only been previously awarded in 2008 and 2016. The prize is granted to a recent work that reflects the mission of the Academy to foster and sustain interest in literature, music and the fine arts by rewarding “works of highest aspiration and superior craft,” according to artsandletters.org. 

“I opened my email and there was this letter from the American Academy that said, ‘Good news from the Academy.’ I kind of thought I was being pranked or something; it just seemed unreal,” Strand said. “I called Laura, and asked, ‘Is this for real? Did we just win the Charles Ives Opera Prize?’ She was in a museum and she started screaming. She hadn’t seen her letter and I got to be the one who broke the news. It was very exciting and felt out of the blue, in particular being my first-ever libretto.” 

A five-member jury unanimously voted to award the Charles Ives Opera Prize to Artemisia. 

In the 35 years since Strand “learned how to learn” at Kalamazoo College, she had written copy for a consulting firm, short stories, essays, one novel and three books of narrative nonfiction before branching into opera. 

“It came about completely by chance,” Strand said.  

Having met at the MacDowell artist residency program, Strand and Schwendinger were long-time friends when Schwendinger confided in Strand over lunch that she was going to compose an opera and thought Strand should write the text. 

“She wanted to write about an amazing Baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi,” Strand said. “One of the reasons Laura and I became friends is that we have a lot of interests in common, one of which is women artists in history.” 

A five-member jury unanimously voted to award the Charles Ives Opera Prize to Ginger Strand ’87 for her first libretto, “Artemisia.”
Although Artemisia Gentileschi is better known now, the Baroque painter was ignored in history for a long period, with many of her works attributed to her father, Strand said.  

While Artemisia Gentileschi is better known now, she was ignored in history for a long period, with many of her works attributed to her father, Strand said.  

“She had a life story that was basically already an opera,” Strand said. “Her father taught her to paint and then he hired one of his assistants to teach her the art of perspective, and this assistant raped her. Her father sued for damage to property, because she was considered his property, and in the course of the trial, Artemisia was tortured to see if she was telling the truth. After the perpetrator was convicted, she was hastily married off to some other dude that she quickly dispensed with, and she went on to become a painter of great renown and had a rather illustrious career.” 

Schwendinger shared her concept of Artemisia’s paintings coming to life in the opera, and the two went their separate ways to compose the music and write the words. 

“It was really a collaborative process, partly because I didn’t necessarily know everything about what a composer needs out of a libretto,” Strand said. “Laura would say things like, ‘I see this moment as an emotional high point, and what we really need here is an aria; we need the two characters to sing something really intense.’ Then I would go away and work on that. Or, ‘I want all the singers on the stage here; they don’t have to be literally in the same place, but we need a big moment where they’re all contributing to the song,’ and I would work on that. Sometimes it was something as simple as, ‘You can’t end the line on this word, because the singers won’t be able to sing it.’ It was a learning process the whole way along.” 

The process was also fun for Strand. 

“Because it was an opera and not a work of nonfiction, I could make things up, although I based it on facts,” Strand said. “My starting point was her actual biography, some letters she wrote, and the paintings, of course. Then, where the historical record was faulty, I could imagine things and put them in, and that was super fun and unusual for me to give myself permission to make things up. It’s not something you’re allowed to do as a nonfiction writer.” 

The writing process took about a year, followed by another year or so of production before two premieres—a shortened chamber orchestra version in New York City and a full orchestra version in San Francisco. Strand attended both. 

“At certain moments, it was exhilarating,” she said. “Other moments, it was excruciating, thinking things like, ‘Why did I write this so long?’ Laura’s experience was completely different from mine because I was focused on the story and the words and she was focused on the music.” 

Author Ginger Strand at her New York City home
Ginger Strand ’87 has been awarded the 2023 Charles Ives Opera Prize, along with composer Laura Schwendinger, for their 2019 opera, “Artemisia.” Photo by Monika Graff.

Strand and Schwendinger will be awarded the Charles Ives Opera Prize at the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ annual ceremony in New York City in May. In the meantime, they’re continuing to collaborate on more operas—one of many writing projects for Strand. 

“I’m always nursing several obsessions, which is something my particular career has enabled me to do,” Strand said. “I don’t always know what will come of them. I’m working on another book proposal. Laura and I are thinking about possible future operas. I’ve got a couple essays and all kinds of things I’m working on. I always have a number of balls in the air, which goes all the way back to my K experiences, being comfortable working on multiple things at once.”

Payne Fellowship Sets Up K Alumna for Foreign Service Work

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A Kalamazoo College alumna is being honored with a prestigious fellowship that helps people interested in pursuing careers in the foreign service follow a path toward work in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Aramide Apo-Oyin ’22 will complete graduate school through a Payne Fellowship, named to honor former U.S. Rep. Donald M. Payne, and then work on the front lines of pressing global challenges such as poverty, hunger, injustice, disease, climate change, conflict and violent extremism with USAID.

“I knew that this fellowship was perfect for me because of the partnership with USAID, which does invaluable work around the globe,” she said. “The Donald M. Payne Fellowship gives me an opportunity that combines my interest in public health and public service on a global scale.”

The Payne Fellowship this year received more than 500 applications and only 30 fellows were selected. Apo-Oyin applied when she recognized the value she could bring to the fellowship, including her own background as a Nigerian American woman and the diverse experiences she had through the liberal arts at K.

“Initially, in college, I was on the pre-health track as a biology major, but I discovered my love of public health and service through my internship with the Advocate Aurora Health Transition Support Program,” Apo-Oyin said. “Through this public health internship, I was able to assist people from under-resourced communities in the Chicagoland area to help them overcome barriers to care that they were experiencing. These barriers included finding transportation to their next appointment, applying for Medicaid/Medicare, scheduling follow-up appointments, and educating patients on discharge instructions to reduce their risk of being readmitted to the hospital. In doing this work for over a year my passion for public health and service grew.”

Such experiences led Jessica Fowle—K’s director of grants, fellowships and research—to see Apo-Oyin as an ideal candidate for a Payne Fellowship as the two worked together throughout the application process.

Payne Fellow Aramide Apo-Oyin at Commencement in 2022
Aramide Apo-Oyin ’22 will complete graduate school through a Payne Fellowship and then work on the front lines of pressing global challenges with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“It was a true joy to work with Aramide as her fellowships advisor on the application process for her Payne Fellowship,” Fowle said. “Applying to this type of program requires reflection on and synthesis of scholarship, internships, co-curricular involvement, and life experience—articulating a vision for the future that captures the goal of the program. Aramide took full advantage of the opportunities at Kalamazoo College and is poised to fully engage with the educational and experiential foundations as a Payne Fellow, graduate student, and foreign service officer.”

The Payne fellowship provides up to $104,000 over two years toward tuition and fees in completing a master’s degree in international development or a related field; room, board, books and education-related expenses; and a stipend for housing, transportation and related expenses for two summer internships. Apo-Oyin is currently deciding which international development program she will be attending later this fall.

Her adventure will begin this spring when Apo-Oyin participates in an orientation at Howard University; there she will become familiar with all the aspects of the fellowship and enhance her understanding of and skills for an international-development career. She then will work in her first internship this summer, tending to international issues at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Her second internship will be overseas on a USAID mission next summer.

All of it represents a challenge Apo-Oyin is happy to accept as she takes her next step toward a career in the foreign service.

“I spent part of my formative years abroad in Nigeria and London,” Apo-Oyin said. “It was then that my interest in international work was ignited. Growing up in these places, I could see the difference between high-income and low-income countries. This experience widened my perspective of the world from a young age and planted a seed for my interest in international development. Now, If I have any advice for anyone who is interested in applying for this fellowship or other international affairs fellowships, it would be not to doubt yourself. Trust that your story of who you are and why you’re interested in this work is unique to you and it’ll only allow you to stand out in this process. Do your best to surround yourself with people who believe in you and trust in yourself.”

Restorative Justice Lessons Lead to Job Skills

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Kalamazoo College is known for providing academic experiences that can lead to real-world jobs. Take the example of Steph Guyor ’22.

Guyor’s senior seminar, led by Associate Professor of English Ryan Fong, tackled the concept of restorative or transformative justice, a newer community-based practice that helps society do more than hold law breakers accountable in a criminal justice system. Instead, restorative justice also addresses the dehumanization an offender typically experiences with their punishment, offering basic services along with pathways for making amends to victims and the community, reducing the likelihood for recidivism.

“Within the U.S., justice is traditionally focused on the offender and the crime they committed,” Guyor said. “The punishments are seen as deserved. Yet by focusing on the punishment, the factors that led to the harm being committed often go unexamined, and the needs of the person who’s harmed remain unmet. Viewing punishment as the only appropriate response around accountability ends up taking the form of shame and isolation, which furthers the relational divide and deters people from changing their harmful behaviors. Restorative and transformative justice work to reorient accountability away from punishments and toward meaningful consequences that allow connections to be restored and relational dynamics to be restored.”

Guyor, who double majored in psychology and women and gender studies (WGS), was intrigued by these concepts and said Fong’s class was enjoyable because it allowed her to see justice in a different way. Then came an opportunity to connect those studies to a job, when she heard Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo was hiring a restorative justice coordinator. The nonprofit organization is a secular, daytime shelter and resource center open 365 days a year that helps local residents address homelessness, poverty, substance abuse and other crises.

“I saw the posting and thought it could be an opportunity to make change locally in Kalamazoo in a way that’s influenced by getting to know people,” Guyor said. “I knew I wanted to try to find a way to integrate the psychological understanding of why people do what they do with a socially informed understanding of how social circumstances influence it.”

And today, Guyor relishes her job, which involves learning more about the restorative justice practices in place around the country while collecting data to determine what she can do to solve problems in Kalamazoo. Hopefully, that will lead to a new yet well-rounded restorative justice program at Ministry with Community that reduces the likelihood of repeat offenses.

“It comes with a lot of responsibility that a big part of me was afraid to take on given the idea that I did just graduate,” she said. “But it’s also a unique opportunity that I’m excited to have. I think the goal will be a culture shift within the organization so there will be fewer incidents with fewer people breaking community expectations, and more trust between the members, and between members and staff.”

Guyor said a common misconception about restorative or transformative justice is that it’s soft on offenders—that it lets people off the hook and fails to follow through on a punishment. She cautions against that idea.

“In reality, facing the people who you hurt and holding the space for them to explain their hurt is a lot harder,” Guyor said. “Restorative justice is about having high expectations for people along with a lot of support. It makes sure we’re holding people accountable to the changes they work toward, but not in a way that revolves around shame. In punitive settings, you’re doing things to people. In permissive settings, you’re doing things for people. But restorative justice is more about working with people to make change.”

Fong said he’s likely to continue teaching about restorative and transformative justice at K.

“So many students, especially WGS students, are interested in social justice and activism, but don’t always know what it looks like in practice beyond demonstrations and non-profit work,” he said. “In the wake of the 2020 protests and calls to defund the police, I saw many students wondering what that demand meant. Doing a deep dive into restorative and transformative justice was one way to understand how abolitionist organizers were working in concrete ways to build new systems and structures that address and eliminate violence.”

He’s also incredibly proud of Guyor and honored that he played a role in helping her find her career path.

“I hope she keeps drawing on the skills and knowledge she gained at K and as a WGS student to continue on it for the rest of her life,” Fong said. “That’s really my hope for all our WGS students: that they find meaningful ways to put their education into action.”

Donations Fund Restorative Justice Programs

Ministry with Community, a nonprofit organization, accepts donations for the restorative justice programs being built by K alumna Stephanie Guyor ’22. To donate directly to restorative justice efforts, visit the organization’s website.

Restorative justice professional Steph Guyor '22 outside Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo
Steph Guyor ’22 took classroom experiences with restorative justice and transformed them into a career at Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo.
Guyor, who double majored in psychology and women and gender studies at K, now works as the restorative justice coordinator at Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo.

A Practice in Gratitude: Scholarship Honors Late Professor Emeritus T. Jefferson Smith 

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The late T. Jefferson Smith was a long-time beloved Kalamazoo College math professor, the driving force behind bringing change ringing and the English tower bells to Stetson Chapel, and a true Renaissance man with a breath-taking assortment of hobbies. 

Known as both Jeff and T.J., Smith was respected and admired by students and colleagues alike during his nearly 30 years at Kalamazoo College. His life and legacy are now being honored with the Professor T. Jefferson Smith Memorial Scholarship. 

An anonymous donor established the fund as a practice of gratitude after a classroom experience where students were asked to name a personal hero, and many shared stories of teachers that changed their lives. 

“I thought, ‘Shouldn’t we do something to recognize teachers for how much they do for us?’” the donor said. “My feeling is that teachers may not know the impact they have on students, in part because students have a long trajectory ahead. Learning experiences can have an effect that may not appear for 10, 20, 30 years. It’s important to recognize our teachers for the formative effect they have on us at a very formative time of life.” 

Smith was initially hired by Kalamazoo College in 1961; after his first year of teaching, he was offered a research position with the geophysical staff at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. The opportunity was too good to pass up. Smith told his family that working in applied science would balance his theoretical training and benefit his future students when he returned to the College, which he did eagerly in 1967. Smith taught at K for nearly three decades before retiring in 1994. 

“Jeff and I enjoyed, admired and had deep and sincere affection for our students and our colleagues,” said his widow, Carol Smith, who was a reference librarian at K for many years. “K was a wonderful place to be and we loved all the time there.” 

Smith died in April 2019, at the age of 88. The scholarship, which supports Kalamazoo College students with financial need, would have pleased him, Carol Smith said. 

“Education was paramount in Jeff’s mind—the combination of the intellectual fulfillment of education and the ability to change your life,” Carol Smith said. “He grew up in rural Georgia—no plumbing, no running water, milk the cows before you go to school. His family was very close, very warm. They were very, very poor, and no one then had a college education, but his interest in music and education was encouraged. Jeff was an outstanding high school student, and he must have had some scholarship help to get through college, even though he worked as well. This scholarship would have meant so very much to him. It’s a perfect memorial for Jeff, and my children and I appreciate it very much.” 

Contributing to the fund is a practice of gratitude and appreciation for Alan Hewett ’71, very much in the spirit of the establishment of the scholarship. 

“I have supported K continuously since I graduated as a form of appreciation for the training and growth I gained there,” Hewett said. “I just added a gift to the T.J. Smith fund because T.J. was such a good mentor for me and because I wanted to acknowledge and honor that experience and the man. My biggest hope is that, in some small way, it will provide an opportunity for a few more people to attend K and gain some of the advantages that I received from K.” 

Those advantages included the opportunity to learn from Smith. 

“He was not only my favorite professor; he was one of the main reasons I went back to reunions while he was still teaching,” Hewett said. “At the time, it didn’t occur to me that T. J. was a Renaissance man.  I just liked his teaching style. In retrospect, he truly was a Renaissance man, interested in so many things and fun to be around.” 

Smith would bring his many interests into the classroom, incorporating stories of fighting kites, bell ringing, playing the viola, bicycle racing, model airplanes, bread baking and more into math lectures. (After retirement, he would continue and expand his hobbies, including yo-yos, spinning tops, apple growing, antique tractor restoration, the melodeon—a small, accordion-like musical instrument—and more.) 

“He could make people who didn’t care much for math enjoy it because they could get into the story,” Hewett said. “He managed to take things that were fun to do and move them into something you would have to use math for.” 

Smith received the Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching Award in 1985 for outstanding achievement in creative work, research and publication. In 1993, he was presented the Weimer K. Hicks Award for providing excellent service in the performance of his job and making a significant contribution to the College in founding the Kalamazoo College Guild of Change Ringers in 1977 and spearheading the 1984 installation of eight English bells in the tower of Stetson Chapel. Those efforts also led to him being named Ringing Master of the College in 1988. 

Change ringing with Smith has been a key part of the K experience for many alumni, including Tom Farthing ’83. With his first term under his belt, Farthing started winter term 1980 confident that he could handle the academics, yet unsure how and where he fit into the College—until the first Sunday of the term, when he tried change ringing. 

“It made sense to me immediately,” Farthing said. “It was this two-pronged thing: There was an activity that made sense to the way my brain works, and then there was Jeff, who was teaching people, encouraging people, smoothing the path. I found my people there, and that was the majority of my connection with the College.” 

The change ringing community brought Farthing together with his wife, Christine (Stibal) Farthing ’85, who was a friend in college. They stayed in contact after graduation, eventually becoming a couple, due to the community Smith developed and nurtured so well. 

“When I was a sophomore, my suitemates threw a surprise birthday party for me, and they invited Jeff, and he came,” Farthing said. “I can still picture him walking toward our suite and instantly everyone was all around him, which was typical. He was so engaging and eloquent and full of stories. He was just a magnet.” 

Smith was also an excellent professor, Farthing said, always prepared and interesting, and a role model. 

“He was big on self-improvement,” Farthing said. “He knew he should improve his handwriting because he was writing in front of students, so he studied calligraphy and developed his beautiful handwriting. He would work on his vocabulary, one word at a time. I remember ‘ubiquitous’ was his word for a while, and he just worked it into everyday conversation, and you’d say, ‘Oh, there’s that word again.’ ‘Copacetic’ was another one. He did that for years.” 

In the Smith family home on Bulkley Street, Carol Smith said, “there was a little southern porch off our bedroom, and Jeff turned it into his office. One of the classroom buildings was being renovated and he got an old chalkboard, which he put up in his office. He would go through his lectures, even writing on the board, before all his classes.” 

Smith was devoted to his students as well as his family, Carol Smith said. 

“He was extremely ethical, caring and warm and generous,” she said. “He was very devoted. He was quite passionate about things in an understated way.” 

Within the math department, those qualities helped Smith serve as a respected colleague and mentor. He was the first person whom Professor of Mathematics Emeritus John Fink met in Kalamazoo, greeting Fink at the train station with a firm handshake—a grip Fink can still feel.  

When Fink was a young professor struggling with the transition from his mathematics Ph.D. program to an undergraduate classroom, Smith—who generally was not one for giving advice—offered him a phrase Fink would return to again and again. 

“The gulf between where professors are as trained Ph.D. mathematicians and where the students are is so vast,” Fink said. “It was a shock to me, and I think it’s a shock for a lot of people. I came into Jeff’s office, and I was complaining about something, and he said, ‘It’s the undergraduate gamble.’ He didn’t say much more than that, but I carried it with me. It’s the undergraduate gamble. Whenever I would get frustrated, those words would come back to me. What’s the gamble? Well, I’m betting on the potential that is not yet evident in this student. I think that was Jeff’s approach to lots of things. He would bet on the potential, and I think he won most of the time. 

“Jeff was a great mentor for me. He took the undergraduate gamble on me. When I didn’t see anything in myself, he saw something in me—or maybe he didn’t, but he behaved in a way that would bring it out of me anyway.” 

In department meetings, two professors who had strong personalities would sit at either end of the table and “be talking past each other with lots of energy,” Fink said. “At some point, Jeff would just put his head into the exchange and say, ‘So what I hear is this.’ He would say it in a clear, accurate and eloquent way, and whatever he said, that turned out to be what the department did.” 

Smith had an appreciation for clarity, rigor, economy and beauty, Fink said; a positive, generous, attitude; a disarming Georgia accent and “aw shucks” attitude; and a way of holding students to rigorous expectations while maintaining a positive relationship with them. 

“If I was in the hallway outside of his classroom, I would listen to Jeff teaching and just appreciate his wonderful approach to the subject,” Fink said. “Whenever I would think that I might have gotten up to Jeff Smith quality in my own teaching, I would stand outside his classroom to listen and see how much farther I had to go.” 

Smith taught Fink how to handle the ropes for change ringing before Fink’s 1990 sabbatical to Oxford, England, so that Fink could ring while he was there. Fink currently teaches a class at Kalamazoo College on ringing, and is part of the band of change ringers that regularly rings in Stetson Chapel tower. 

When Fink learned of the Professor T. Jefferson Smith Memorial Scholarship, he felt joy, he said. He recalled how former students and change ringers came from all over the country for Smith’s memorial service, which he saw as a measure of the impact Smith had. 

“It’s fitting, then, that he can still have an impact on future students by this scholarship,” Fink said. “Now, I want those scholarship recipients to know Jeff in the way his students and colleagues did. This scholarship allows Jeff’s relationship to the College and his memory to be part of the foundation of another student’s education.”  

If you would like to support K students and give in honor of Professor Smith, please make a gift online to the Professor T. Jefferson Smith Memorial Scholarship or contact Nicki Poer, associate director of special initiatives, at 269.337.7281 or nicki.poer@kzoo.edu. 

Jeff Smith pointing at a blackboard
The late T. Jefferson Smith was a long-time beloved Kalamazoo College math professor and the driving force behind bringing change ringing and the English tower bells to Stetson Chapel.
T. Jefferson Smith received a plaque for 25th anniversary at Kalamazoo College before retiring with nearly 30 years of service in 1994.
Jeff Smith on Chapel Steps
Smith was respected and admired by students and colleagues alike. His life and legacy are now being honored with the Professor T. Jefferson Smith Memorial Scholarship. 
Jeff Smith with Students
Smith died in April 2019 at age 88. The scholarship named for him, which supports Kalamazoo College students with financial need, would have pleased him, his widow, Carol Smith, said. 
Smith received the Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching Award in 1985 for outstanding achievement in creative work, research and publication. In 1993, he was presented the Weimer K. Hicks Award for providing excellent service in the performance of his job and making a significant contribution to the College in founding the Kalamazoo College Guild of Change Ringers.
Jeff Smith with Student
When Professor of Mathematics Emeritus John Fink learned of the Professor T. Jefferson Smith Memorial Scholarship, he felt joy. He recalled how former students and change ringers came from all over the country for Smith’s memorial service. 

A Social Justice Warrior Fights for Your Health Care

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If you’re a Michigander, a Kalamazoo College alumna is fighting for your health care.

A short time after graduating from K, Audrey Gerard ’19 delayed treating what could have been a simple health issue because she had no health insurance. By delaying care, she needed to be hospitalized for eight days. She recovered, but without insurance coverage, her medical bills amounted to more than $100,000.

Thankfully, an emergency Medicare program pared down her costs. Yet her experience prompts her goal today of making sure you can avoid similar issues. Gerard works to expand access to medical care and insurance coverage across the state as the Health Care for All Organizer at Michigan United, a coalition of labor, business, social-service and civil-rights groups that fight for homeowners, renters, immigrant families, students and a variety of underrepresented constituencies.

“Talking about our medical needs is sort of taboo,” Gerard said. “It’s not something you’re going to bring up at work or talk about at the dinner table because it’s not the most pleasant thing. But once people start opening up and sharing their stories, they commonly start thinking that they’ve been directly and negatively impacted by issues surrounding their health care and they want to speak out. We want to support them.”

Gerard’s efforts in this respect were recognized in January when she received the Justice Warrior Award presented by the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity. The award is given to a community activist or organizer that led a community effort to bring about change on a local, county or statewide level. It was presented to Gerard for taking a risk, being courageous, and often conversing with people who disagreed with her about issues such as reproductive health and the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

Gerard, Michigan United as a whole, and its volunteers were invited to a roundtable with Michigan Voices, a nonprofit organization that invests in grassroots campaigns to advance equity-seeking community efforts. The roundtable worked with the ACLU to write the legislation for Michigan’s Reproductive Freedom for All initiative, leading people such as Gerard to rally support by collecting signatures all across the state. Gerard helped collect 1,400 signatures in an area of the Upper Peninsula that has about 4,000 residents.

Eventually, the initiative was approved for the midterm election ballot last fall as Proposal 3, and its ultimate success has since amended the state’s constitution, providing individual rights to reproductive freedom, including the right to make and carry out pregnancy-related decisions. 

“We realized this was a health care issue and we should absolutely be fighting on behalf of it,” Gerard said. “I took a big risk being in an incredibly conservative, rural community, far away from where I grew up in Ann Arbor, to be bold and to fight on behalf of these policies. There was an outpouring of support, even from people we wouldn’t have guessed would support it. They attended a rally that I organized, and they said they didn’t want the government determining what they could or couldn’t do with their bodies. We talked to 2,800 people here and knocked on that many doors to convey our point and make sure the Upper Peninsula was included in these critical conversations about reproductive health.”

In her sophomore year in high school, Gerard decided to attend Early College Alliance at Eastern Michigan University where she found herself interested in advocacy work. While attending ECA, she landed a part-time job with the environmental advocacy group Clean Water Action where she found her passion and skill for civic engagement.

As a senior at K, Gerard worked with the Just Food Collective student organization to secure a hoop house on campus. She also began working for another organization as a volunteer on a local campaign seeking to keep an asylum seeker in Kalamazoo in 2019. In 2020, she joined Michigan United for a short-term position before staying on to begin her full-time career as the organization’s statewide healthcare organizer.

Her full-time position was based in Kalamazoo at first, but she recognized a move to the Upper Peninsula was necessary if she and Michigan United wanted to effectively target health care equity across the state. After connecting with and consulting Governor Gretchen Whitmer and then-state Rep. Darrin Camilleri ’14 on a COVID-19 health-care relief package, Gerard advocated for her relocation, and since, she has lived in rural Michigan, supporting health care efforts there and elsewhere across the state.

“We all have a health care story and a reason to fight for health care for all,” Gerard said. “One of the biggest successes, I think, that we’ve had in this past year is getting people from rural Michigan involved in this work, because often people living in rural Michigan are the last to be thought about when it comes to health care policies, but they’re also very directly impacted.”

In 2022, Gerard’s professional efforts started slowly when she invited about 50 people to help form a Michigan Community Health Care Committee.

“No one showed up,” Gerard said. “One person eventually came and they were late. That’s when it dawned on me that I wasn’t getting people in their gut to feel strongly about prioritizing their health over the crazy-high cost of insurance, making meds affordable, and why we need to fight to stop medication rationing and outrageous prescription costs.”

Health Care Organizer Audrey Gerard '19, holding an award, and Michigan United Executive Director Ken Whitaker at a church
Audrey Gerard ’19 and Michigan United Executive Director Ken Whitaker celebrate Gerard receiving the Justice Warrior Award presented by the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity.
Audrey Gerard and several award honorees
Audrey Gerard ’19 (third from left) celebrates with other honorees when she receives the Justice Warrior Award presented by the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity.

Health Care and the World Day of Social Justice

Kalamazoo College is featuring Audrey Gerard ’19 on February 20, the World Day of Social Justice, for her work seeking health care equity across Michigan.

The United Nations first celebrated the World Day of Social Justice in 2009, when member states were invited to devote it to the promotion of national activities in accordance with the objectives and goals of the World Summit for Social Development.

As recognized by the World Summit, social development aims at social justice, solidarity, harmony and equality within and among countries and social justice, equality and equity constitute the fundamental values of all societies. To achieve “a society for all” governments made a commitment to the creation of a framework for action to promote social justice at national, regional and international levels. They also pledged to promote the equitable distribution of income and greater access to resources through equity and equality and opportunity for all. 

The solution entailed hitting the road to talk with 405 Michiganders from across the state about their experiences with health care.

“I realized I needed to have direct, one-on-one conversations with people in Michigan about their health care stories, because every single person, no matter who it is, has one,” Gerard said.

As she started, one conversation led to another as each interviewee referred Gerard to her next conversation.

“Slowly, as I did that, I was able to tell people about their skin in the game,” Gerard said. “People started coming to the meetings. We ended up having more than 400 people from around the state join the committee, which was comprised of people from Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Flint, Detroit, and more recently, the Upper Peninsula.”

Such work means Gerard and Michigan United can work directly with lawmakers and legislators through movement politics that accomplish social goals and continue fighting for health care efforts in the state. And as a result, you can expect Gerard and her colleagues to continue fighting for you.

“I give my biggest thanks to Ken Whitaker, the executive director of Michigan United,” Gerard said. “When he started, he was a volunteer just like I was. He went through the hoops of becoming a leader, becoming active in his community, and inspiring people through his vision. Between him and his wife, Shanay Watson-Whitaker, who was the deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom for All campaign, I’ve developed as a professional in more ways than I could express. I’m also grateful for my parents because they were so chill with me, letting their teenage daughter knock on doors in Southeast Michigan on school nights for a year. That’s built up my career and there’s plenty of opportunity in Michigan to do some amazing work.”

Fulbright Extends U.S. Student Program Top Producer Honors to K

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The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has named Kalamazoo College a Fulbright Top Producing Institution for U.S. Students. This recognition is given to the U.S. colleges and universities that received the highest number of applicants selected for the 2022-23 Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

K has four representatives in the U.S. Student Program, leading to the honor for the fifth time in the past six years. K is the only college in Michigan to earn the top producer distinction in the bachelor’s institution category.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships to graduating seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists so they may teach English, perform research or study abroad for one academic year.

Many candidates apply for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program as graduating seniors, though alumni may apply as well. Graduating seniors apply through their institution. Alumni can apply as scholars through their institution or as at-large candidates.

K’s student representatives in 2022-23 and their host countries are Rebecca Chan, Taiwan; Libby Burton and Kiernan Dean-Hall, Germany; and Julia Bienstock, Spain. Associate Professor of Biology Santiago Salinas represents K as a Fulbright Scholar, and Matthew Flotemersch ’20 was accepted into Fulbright’s U.S. Teaching Assistant Program in Austria for 2022-23.

“This distinction reminds us of what intercultural experiences mean to our students and why Kalamazoo College is an exceptional model for learning on a global scale,” Center for International Programs Executive Director Margaret Wiedenhoeft said. “We’re extremely proud of all of this year’s Fulbright representatives and our status as international immersion leaders.”

About the Fulbright Program

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. It is also among the largest and most diverse exchange programs in the world.

Fulbright awards about 9,000 merit-based scholarships in the United States and more than 160 countries every year to accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds and fields. Fulbrighters study, teach, conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to complex global challenges. Top-producing institutions are highlighted annually.

Rebecca Chan for Fulbright U.S. Student Program
Rebecca Chan ’22
Libby Burton '22
Libby Burton ’22

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

“On behalf of President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken, congratulations to the colleges and universities recognized as 2022-2023 Fulbright Top Producing Institutions, and to all the applicants who were selected for the Fulbright Program this year,” said Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. “Thanks to the visionary leadership of these institutions, administrators, and advisors, a new generation of Fulbrighters—changemakers, as I like to say—will catalyze lasting impact on their campus, in their communities and around the world.”

Kiernan Dean Hall
Kiernan Dean-Hall ’22
Fulbright Recipient Julia Bienstock 22
Julia Bienstock ’22

Matthew Flotemersch ’20

K Alumna, Humanitarian Promotes Social Justice Around the World

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If you need an antidote to the disappointment you may feel while watching world news, take heart that a Kalamazoo College alumna is doing what she can to stand up for international human rights and social justice as a humanitarian.

Sarah Fuhrman ’07 is working as the director of humanitarian policy at InterAction, an alliance of non-governmental organizations and partners in the United States mobilizing its members to serve the world’s most poor and vulnerable citizens while making the world a more prosperous place.

With InterAction and other non-governmental organizations, Fuhrman recently has traveled to South Sudan, where she embarked on a U.N. peer-to-peer mission to recommend improvements to the humanitarian response. She spent October in a similar capacity, traveling between Washington, D.C; Geneva, Switzerland, and Rome, Italy, to advocate for improvements to the humanitarian system. She is also part of a group that is producing practical measures to help armed actors mitigate conflict-induced food insecurity.

“We’ve been having a lot of conversations in the sector around decolonizing aid, power shifting and privilege,” Fuhrman said. “I ask myself, every day, whether it still makes sense for me as a white woman from the global north to work in this field. The answer so far is still yes, that as a U.S. citizen, it’s important that I push my government—the world’s largest humanitarian donor—to do better. But I’m also open to the possibility that at some point the answer might change and this might no longer be the place where I can make the most difference.”

Her push to make that difference began at K when she recognized that the world and all of us as citizens are more connected than we might think.

“I ended up at K because I wanted to go on study abroad,” Fuhrman said. “I went to India for six months and then wrote my SIP in southern Thailand. Those experiences showed me how small the world is and it fostered my love for the international community.”

After graduating and spending a year in AmeriCorps, Fuhrman attended Western Michigan University’s Cooley Law School in Lansing, where she found a passion for international human rights and humanitarian law. That love led Fuhrman to pursue a Master of Laws, or LLM, at University College London.

“I originally thought I would go on to do a Ph.D. and spend my career in academia,” Fuhrman said. “But I realized while I was in London that none of my professors and none of the other students in my cohort had ever worked for a government. I thought that if I were going to spend my career criticizing U.S. foreign policy, I should work for the U.S. government first and see what it was like on the inside. And I wanted to see whether international law really mattered for people when they needed it.”

With those goals in mind, Fuhrman and her partner—Brennan McBride ’07—packed up and moved to Washington, D.C., sight unseen. Fuhrman was hired into USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, where she worked as a senior information officer for nearly four years, until 2019.

“I was deployed about 50% of the time. For example, I worked on the U.S. government’s Iraq humanitarian response during the campaign to retake the city of Mosul from ISIS and then worked on regional responses in eastern and central Africa,” Fuhrman said. “I worked on the Yemen humanitarian response and responded to an earthquake in Mexico. I got to see what it looks like when the U.S. government uses its power responsibly and what it looks like when it makes mistakes.”

In 2020, Fuhrman moved on to roles as a humanitarian policy specialist and then the senior manager of humanitarian policy and advocacy with CARE, an organization that fights poverty and achieves social justice by empowering women and girls.

“I started at CARE right before the pandemic and was just getting my feet under me,” Fuhrman said. “All of a sudden, COVID was dominating the news. My boss called me right before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic and said, ‘Sarah, I think that COVID is going to be terrible for women and girls living in humanitarian settings. We should say something about it.’”

Within three days, Fuhrman and her boss had written and published the first paper on how COVID-19 would affect women and girls in crisis contexts. That later turned into a full scholarly article published in the BMJ Global Health journal with policy and programming recommendations.

Sarah Fuhrman ’07 visits Roman ruins while performing humanitarian work in northern Jordan
Sarah Fuhrman ’07 visits the Roman ruins in northern Jordan, while working on the Yemen response for the U.S. government in 2019. Fuhrman said she and her colleagues weren’t allowed in Yemen as the U.S. had no embassy there.
Sarah Fuhrman reading on a helicopter during a social justice mission
Fuhrman reads in 2022 on a helicopter between South Sudan’s Bentiu town and the capital city, Juba. She is accompanied by members of a Ghanaian peacekeeping troop.
Sarah Fuhrman looks over the Namibia landscape
Fuhrman looks over the Namibia landscape after performing humanitarian work through a deployment to USAID/OFDA’s regional office in Nairobi in 2018.
Sarah Fuhrman planting a tree with two others while performing humanitarian work in Kenya
Fuhrman and a colleague from USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) join a Kenyan Red Cross representative in planting a tree near a USAID-funded water-treatment plant in 2019.

In the summer of 2021, CARE sent Fuhrman to Afghanistan ahead of the U.S. withdrawal, anticipating that humanitarian needs would escalate, but underestimating the speed with which the Afghan government would collapse. She admitted to enduring some tense moments.

“We knew that the U.S. was pulling out its troops,” she said. “We knew that it was not going to go well. I was there to figure out how to help CARE scale up its humanitarian response, going all around Kabul, meeting with colleagues within CARE and others within the sector. What stands out to me is that no one thought the Taliban takeover was going to happen that fast. We were all talking in terms of months, and then it ended up being a matter of days. It was a hard time, because I had colleagues and friends in Afghanistan who were concerned about what would happen to them and their families. Many of those concerns came true.”

Before leaving CARE, Fuhrman became a part-time adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York. Today, she continues teaching while also working for InterAction. Through her years of service in the humanitarian sector, she recognizes that it’s easy to get discouraged by the frailty of international law, yet she believes there is reason for hope.

“I still wonder whether international law matters because I have seen governments and parties to conflicts violate international law on grand scales,” she said. “What is the point of international law if governments don’t abide by it, and more importantly, if we don’t have good mechanisms to enforce it? It’s technically against international humanitarian law for governments to prohibit humanitarians from accessing people in need and providing them with assistance, yet humanitarian access is one of the biggest challenges that I see in my work.”

However, she said we still can hold U.S. leaders accountable and seek to make change for the better.

“We’re at a unique moment where everything the U.S. government does has the potential to have an outsized impact. It could have an outsized impact in a negative way, entrenching inequalities and making things worse for generations to come. Or, we can help change the world’s course and meet needs more effectively, so there are fewer humanitarian needs tomorrow,” Fuhrman said. “It’s up to us how we how we choose to use this moment.”

Alumni Distinguished Themselves Nationally, Globally in 2022’s Top Stories

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Kalamazoo College alumni continued to distinguish themselves locally, nationally and around the world through personal accomplishments, professional achievements and efforts that will make a difference in the educations of K students for years to come. Here are their top 10 stories of the year as determined by your clicks at our website. 

10. Mental Health Pro Lauds Benefits of Gratitude 

When we address our mental health, we sometimes need to hear from people like Kristin Meekhof ’97, the author of A Widow’s Guide to Healing. She knows what it means to find strength after grief. 

Mental Health Professional Kristin Meekhof
Kristin Meekhof ’97 is a licensed therapist, life coach, speaker and best-selling author.

9. Award-Winning Journalist Addresses First-Year Students at Convocation 

Lila Lazarus ’84, an award-winning journalist, producer and motivational speaker, was the keynote speaker for Kalamazoo College’s 2022 Convocation on the Quad. Watch a replay of her speech. 

Lila Lazarus
Lila Lazarus ’84 is an award-winning journalist, producer and motivational speaker

8. ‘Reckoning’ Examines K’s Past to Build a Better Future 

Anne Dueweke ’84 believes we cannot understand where we are unless we understand where we’ve been, especially when it comes to the racial climate of the U.S. and, closer to home, Kalamazoo College. 

Portrait of Author Anne Dueweke
Author Anne Dueweke ’84

7. New Fellowship Provides Post-Grad Opportunity Abroad for K Students 

A generous leadership gift from Robert Sherbin ’79 is opening the doors to independent exploration outside the United States for Kalamazoo College graduates. 

Bob Sherbin establishing fellowship abroad
Robert Sherbin ’79

6. Alumna, Professor Emerita Earns Pulitzer Prize 

Alumna, Professor Emerita and former writer-in-residence Diane Seuss ’78 celebrated more recognition for her latest poetry collection, and this honor was the most prestigious yet. Seuss was granted a 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for frank: sonnets, a collection of poems that discuss topics including addiction, disease, poverty and death. The collection previously received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the LA Times Book Prize for poetry. 

Diane Seuss
Diane Seuss ’78

5. Super Bowl Halftime Show Was Planned Through K Alumna 

Alix Reynolds ’11 had a hand in transforming the field at Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles into a sparkling nightscape, duplicating a scene from Compton, California, as it set the stage for musicians Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent. 

Super Bowl Halftime Planner Alix Reynolds in the empty seating bowl at Sofi Stadium
Alix Reynolds ’11, an account manager for Lititz, Pennsylvania-based ATOMIC.

4. K Announces $5 Million Gift to Support Student Access 

Robert J. Kopecky ’72 established the Ervin J. and Violet A. Kopecky Endowed Scholarship Fund, named in honor of his parents, and the Robert J. Kopecky ’72 Endowed Study Abroad Fund. He also contributed to additional study abroad funding, current-use scholarships and the Kalamazoo College Fund. 

Bob Kopecky '72
Bob Kopecky ’72

3. Alumna, Professor Emerita, Poet Garnering Recognition 

With accolades rolling in for her latest book and a new collection of poetry on the horizon, Diane Seuss ’78 marked National Poetry Month in April with virtual readings across the country while reflecting on the successes and challenges of the past two years, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the John Updike Award and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Book Cover for Frank:Sonnets by Diane Seuss
Diane Seuss ’78 published her fifth collection of poetry, “frank: sonnets,” in 2021.

2. $500,000 Gift Establishes Endowment for Equity in Women’s Athletics 

The gift, from Dana Getman ’68, established the Getman Endowment for Equity in Women’s Athletics, which supports the College’s strategic plan, Advancing Kalamazoo College: A Strategic Vision for 2023. Getman hopes creating this fund will inspire others to recognize and address inequities women face in athletics and beyond. 

Dana Getman, Katie Getman and Teresa Getman for Equity Endowment
Dana Getman ’68 (center) visits the Kalamazoo College Fitness and Wellness Center with his wife, Teresa (left) and his daughter Kate Getman.

1. K Receives $5.25 Million Gift from Alumnus Larry Bell ’80 

This transformative gift will establish endowed funds to support the Center for Environmental Stewardship, a distinguished chair in American history, and food justice and sustainability programming. Additional funds will support both the Larry J. Bell ’80 Endowed Scholarship, which was established in 2017, and the Kalamazoo College Fund. 

Larry Bell at Homecoming_instagram
Shannon Bell (from left), Larry Bell ’80 and Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez.