awards

One Explores, One Connects; Honorees Strengthen K

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Binney Girdler studies what makes ecosystems flourish. Louise Tennant-Filkins helps people flourish.

For the ways they strengthen the Kalamazoo College community, Girdler and Tennant-Filkins received two of the College’s most significant employee honors today at the fall all-campus gathering. Girdler, a professor of biology, was named the recipient of the 2026–27 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship, while Tennant-Filkins, executive assistant to the vice president of student development, received the W. Haydn Ambrose Prize for Extraordinary Service.

The awards recognize different forms of impact. Girdler has distinguished herself through scholarship that engages students in meaningful research, while Tennant-Filkins has earned a reputation for service, care and commitment to the campus community.

Girdler directs K’s environmental studies program and teaches courses including Environmental Science, Ecology and Conservation, Plant Biology, and Population and Community Ecology. Her work often brings students into the research process, allowing them to contribute to scientific discovery while developing their skills as researchers.

Most recently, Girdler has guided student summer research on Beaver Island, where she helps protect Pitcher’s thistle, an important early spring food source for pollinators. She has also contributed to international research examining how urbanization and climate change influence evolution and collaborated on student research exploring whether replacing mowing with grazing can benefit agricultural ecosystems.

Her mentorship extends beyond the field and laboratory. Girdler has accompanied students to professional ecology conferences, giving them opportunities to present their work, engage with scientists from across the country and build professional networks.

Lucasse nominators recognized Girdler’s ability to grow a student’s passion for science and help them launch academic pursuits at the graduate level during life after K.

If Girdler’s impact can be measured through discovery and scholarship, Tennant-Filkins’ influence is felt through the daily interactions and acts of kindness that help make K feel like home. Tennant-Filkins’ honor is presented annually to a staff member whose contributions have had a meaningful positive impact on the College community. The selection committee includes staff leaders and previous Ambrose Prize recipients and considers nominations from students, faculty and staff.

Tennant-Filkins joined K in 2018 in the Business Office before moving to Student Development in 2019. Her nominations came from across campus, including many students who highlighted her encouragement, positivity and genuine concern for their success and well-being.

One example cited by nominators was Sew What?, a Friday afternoon program she created where students can learn basic clothing repair skills or bring items for Tennant-Filkins to repair. The program reflects the practical, personal support she provides while continuing her regular responsibilities.

Another nominator said, “Some people make a campus run and others make it feel like home. Louise does both.”

Together, Girdler and Tennant-Filkins represent two essential elements of K’s mission: advancing knowledge and creating opportunities for students to participate in meaningful scholarship, while also strengthening the relationships, traditions and everyday acts of care that help students feel supported, connected and at home on campus.

Lucasse Award recipient with President Crowley
President Karlyn Crowley (left) congratulates Professor of Biology Binney Girdler on earning the 2026–27 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship.
President Crowley congratulates Louise Tennant-Filkins on earning the Ambrose Prize.
President Crowley congratulates Louise Tennant-Filkins on earning the W. Haydn Ambrose Prize for Extraordinary Service.

Forbes Names Kalamazoo College as State’s Top Private College 

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Forbes

Kalamazoo College has earned the top spot among Michigan’s private colleges in Forbes’ latest annual rankings of America’s top colleges, while also earning recognition among the nation’s best small colleges. 

K ranked No. 181 overall in the publication’s 2027 America’s Top Colleges list, which highlights 500 colleges and universities that produce high-earning, successful and influential graduates from all economic backgrounds, with less student debt. K also ranked 48th among the nation’s top small colleges. 

Forbes’ rankings evaluated 1,600 public and not-for-profit schools for undergraduates based on outcomes that matter to students after graduation. The rankings emphasize graduation rates, alumni earnings, student debt, leadership outcomes and other measures of career and financial success, rather than institutional reputation or selectivity. 

K’s profile on Forbes’ website highlights the College’s personalized education and strong emphasis on experiential learning. Forbes notes that students combine a flexible curriculum with study abroad, undergraduate research, career development and a Senior Integrated Project through the K-Plan. 

For prospective students and families weighing the return on investment on a college education, the latest rankings offer an independent measure of what K delivers: graduates from all economic backgrounds who go on to succeed in their careers and communities, with less student debt.  

Kalamazoo College Named to Money’s Best Colleges in America 2026

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Picture of the Kalamazoo College campus Quad for a Money magazine story on best colleges
Kalamazoo College received a rating of four stars among Money’s Best Colleges in America 2026.

Kalamazoo College has earned a four-star rating in Money’s Best Colleges in America 2026, recognizing the College for delivering a strong combination of educational quality, affordability and graduate outcomes.

Each year, Money evaluates more than 700 colleges and universities to help students and families identify schools that provide an outstanding value. The ratings consider graduation rates, the net price of a degree, financial aid, student debt, alumni earnings, and economic mobility. Schools also must meet baseline standards for graduation rates, financial stability and sufficient, reliable data reporting to be considered for inclusion.

The recognition reflects K’s long-standing commitment to providing a personalized liberal arts education through the K-Plan, which combines top-tier academics with study abroad, undergraduate research, internships and other experiential learning opportunities.

The impact of those experiences is reflected in alumni outcomes. According to the Fall 2024 National Alumni Career Mobility Survey, 90% of Kalamazoo College graduates from 2014–19 participated in at least one high-impact educational experience. Among those alumni, 85% reported being satisfied with their careers, 86% said their work is meaningful, and 84% said they regularly use skills developed through their Kalamazoo College education.

K Retains ‘Hidden Gem’ Status for Academics, Athletics

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For the third year in a row, Kalamazoo College has been selected as a Hidden Gem by College Raptor, a planning platform that helps students and families find college matches driven by algorithms to find their best-fit schools at the best price.  

This selection for 2026 places K among the top eight institutions in the Great Lakes Region of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. It further recognizes the College as one of the best in the country based on a combination of factors including retention rates, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratio, endowment per student, selectivity and other key metrics as reported through the National Center for Education Statistics. 

“For today’s students, expanding the definition of ‘dream school’ to include attainable options that align with family income, grades and additional factors can help more students arrive at college with confidence,” College Raptor co-founder William Staib said. “That’s what our Hidden Gems list and College Match tool aim to do.”

Stetson Chapel picture for Hidden Gem story
Kalamazoo College has retained its status as a College Raptor Hidden Gem for 2026.

College Raptor also ranks K among 25 Hidden Gems for Division III athletics. To qualify for either list, an institution must receive fewer than 5,000 applications per year, have fewer than 7,000 undergraduate students, offer at least five unique majors and have an acceptance rate of at least 10%. 

College Raptor’s full methodology is outlined on its website. 

K Awards Two Employees with Lucasse, Ambrose Honors

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Kalamazoo College today honored one faculty member and one staff member with two of the highest awards the College bestows on employees. Professor of Mathematics Eric Barth received the 2025–26 Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching, and Campus Safety Officer Adam Kaur was named the recipient of the W. Haydn Ambrose Prize for Extraordinary Service. 

Barth has served K for more than 28 years as a department chair, assistant provost, first-year class dean and director of the dual-degree engineering program. He has held his professor title since 1997. During the pandemic, he was a leader in providing resources to faculty about effective online teaching. 

Barth was granted K’s Outstanding Advisor Award in 2019. He also was a College leader in developing a partial-unit course to help struggling students develop the skills for academic success through a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) grant awarded to K in 2018. 

Nominators said Barth’s teaching exemplifies a holistic commitment to student learning and success. Through course feedback, students have described him as being passionate, encouraging, supportive and engaging while he strives to get the best out of every student. A ceremony to confer the Lucasse Fellowship traditionally occurs in the spring term, during which the honored faculty member speaks about their work. 

Kaur has worked at K since 2021. Nominators said his varied background—including a degree in education and a previous career in hospitality—gives him a broad range of skills. He’s also kind, helpful and thoughtful with tremendous foresight and an empathetic ear as he handles emergent situations calmly, efficiently and expertly with optimism in challenging circumstances. His presence sets a positive tone for students to interact with Campus Safety while making K a better place to live, work and learn. 

Kaur’s interests extend beyond his work to the campus community. He regularly attends Hornet athletic contests, and he is something of a legend for his remarkable rapport with K’s squirrel population. 

The Ambrose Prize is named after W. Haydn Ambrose, who served K for more than 20 years in a variety of roles, including assistant to the president for church relations, dean of admission and financial aid, and vice president for development. Ambrose was known for being thoughtful in the projects he addressed and treating people with respect. In addition to a financial award, Kaur has earned a crystal award to commemorate the achievement and an invitation to sit on the Prize’s selection committee for two years. 

Congratulations to both of the honorees.  

Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez congratulates Professor of Mathematics Eric Barth on earning the 2025-26 Lucasse Award
Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez (left) congratulates Professor of Mathematics Eric Barth on earning the 2025–26 Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching.
Campus Safety Officer Adam Kaur received the 2025 W. Haydn Ambrose Prize for Extraordinary Service from President Gonzalez
Campus Safety Officer Adam Kaur receives the 2025 W. Haydn Ambrose Prize for Extraordinary Service from President Gonzalez.

El Concilio Honors K President

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A nonprofit organization honored Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez this weekend with an award that recognizes his efforts to support and create greater opportunities for students in Kalamazoo.

El Concilio, established in 1981, serves the local Latinx community by providing culturally sensitive social services, advocacy and programs that foster self-sufficiency, preserve cultural heritage and support the community’s economic well-being. Gonzalez received its Nezahualcoyotl Award, an annual honor granted to a Latinx professional leader, at the Nuestras Raices Gala on Saturday at the Radisson Plaza Hotel of Kalamazoo.

In a letter to Gonzalez, El Concilio Chief Executive Officer Adrian Vazquez-Alatorre noted that as president of K, Gonzalez has worked to create a path for many generations of students to walk and achieve their dreams. He also cited the College’s partnership with El Concilio through the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, which works to build experiential education opportunities to help students develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills of social responsibility, intercultural understanding, lifelong learning and leadership.

“In collaboration with Kalamazoo College, we had over 50 student volunteers and interns in the last few years,” Vazquez-Alatorre said. “Thank you for all you have done for the Latinx students inside and outside of Kalamazoo College.”

“I am deeply honored to receive the Nezahualcoyotl Award from El Concilio, an award named after leader, poet and visionary whose legacy still echoes through centuries,” Gonzalez said. “This recognition reflects the shared commitment between Kalamazoo College and our community partners to empower students through education, opportunity and cultural pride. Receiving the Netzahualcoyotl Award reminds me of his timeless words: ‘Let us leave at least flowers, let us leave at least songs.’ As I prepare to retire from Kalamazoo College, I hope that our work leaves behind something beautiful—something that uplifts not only individuals, but entire generations and echoes beyond today.”

Suzie Gonzalez, President Jorge G. Gonzalez and El Concilio CEO Adrian Vazquez-Alatorre
Suzie Gonzalez ’83 (from left), President Jorge G. Gonzalez and El Concilio CEO Adrian Vazquez-Alatorre were among the people attending El Concilio’s Nuestras Raices Gala on Saturday where President Gonzalez received the Nezahualcoyotl Award.

Princeton Review Rates K Among Best Values

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When prospective families weigh the return on investment of a college education, they can rest assured that Kalamazoo College provides one of the best values in the U.S., according to the Princeton Review. 

For the fourth consecutive year, the education services company has included K on its Best Value Colleges list, placing the institution among the top 209 in the country for 2025 regardless of size, location or private/public status. K is one of just five Michigan institutions overall and two privates to receive the honor. 

Although schools are not ranked individually, K was selected as a best value based on 40 data points that calculate ratings based on academic offerings, costs, financial aid, career services, graduation rates and student debt. The Princeton Review also considers student surveys and PayScale.com reviews of alumni salaries. K received an overall ROI score of 90 out of 99 with additional high marks for its accessible faculty at 92, interesting professors at 92 and financial aid at 91.  

K’s profile at the Princeton Review website features student surveys that describe building “personal relationships with their peers and professors” at “a campus run by and for the students.” The flexible curriculum encourages students “to explore exactly what they want to learn,” while K’s alumni are easy to contact and have a strong culture of support for current students. 

Kalamazoo College campus 2025 best values
For the fourth year in a row, Kalamazoo College has been rated among the nation’s best values by the Princeton Review, an education services company.

“The schools on our Best Value Colleges list this year are truly exceptional,” Princeton Review Editor-in-Chief Rob Franek said. “They offer outstanding academics and excellent career services. They also demonstrate extraordinary commitments to affordability via generous financial aid and/or comparatively low sticker prices. We commend them for all that they do to help students afford to attend them and we recommend them highly to college applicants.” 

For more information on the Princeton Review’s methodology, visit its website. 

Student, Faculty Research Partners Earn National Recognition

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Maxwell Rhames ’25 and Daniela Arias-Rotondo, Kalamazoo College’s Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science, are receiving national recognition for their three years of work together that culminated in Rhames’ Senior Integrated Project (SIP).

Arias-Rotondo’s synthetic inorganic chemistry lab works to find ways of converting light into energy. In Rhames’ SIP, that meant examining what alternative metals could possibly be used to make things like solar panels less expensive, one day assisting a global shift toward renewable energy.

“When you have some sort of inorganic complex that absorbs light, that light can get transformed into chemical energy in the form of electricity,” Rhames said. “A common example is with solar panels, but the metals that they use in them are rare, and as a result, incredibly expensive. We were looking at taking some cheaper metals that you could find anywhere in a much more sustainable way and asking whether they can work.”

For their efforts, the two have received an honorable mention in the 2024 Division of Inorganic Chemistry Award for Undergraduate Research, which recognizes research that students and faculty perform in tandem. The award, given through the American Chemical Society, has three divisions between national labs, research universities and institutions that primarily consist of undergraduates. Rhames and Arias-Rotondo were honored in the primarily-undergraduates category, which covers scientists from hundreds of schools across the country.

“The traditional photoactive metals are iridium and ruthenium, and we’re looking at manganese, which is the third-most abundant transition metal on Earth,” Rhames said. “In the state we use it in, it’s stable and nontoxic, so it’s a great alternative. We’re looking at how we can bridge the gap between saying, ‘this could be really cool,’ and actually getting it to where we could apply it in some of these areas.”

Arias-Rotondo said she and Rhames use spectroscopy to understand what kind of light the compounds they create absorb and what happens after they absorb it.

Student and professor with national Undergraduate Research Award
Maxwell Rhames ’25 and Daniela Arias-Rotondo, Kalamazoo College’s Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science, have received national recognition with an honorable mention in the 2024 Division of Inorganic Chemistry Award for Undergraduate Research, which recognizes research that students and faculty perform in tandem.

“One of the problems that we’re finding is that once our compounds absorb light and get to what we call an excited state, that excited state doesn’t last long enough yet for them to be useful,” she said. “But Max’s work has been instrumental because he was the first one in the group to make these kinds of compounds. Now that we’ve been able to understand their properties and investigate some of them, other students in our lab can understand how to make them better. We are making a name for ourselves by laying the groundwork for making these compounds.”

Rhames has discussed his SIP at the Inter-American Photochemical Society and American Chemical Society conferences, where his fellow scientists were enthused about his work on a national scale.

“That’s been the coolest thing, because when you put something out there, you don’t know what people are going to think of it,” he said. “And generally, their reactions have been super rewarding. I enjoy doing the work myself, but it’s even cooler to know that other people find it equally exciting. It’s an added bonus.”

Rhames won’t be the first or the last in his family to graduate from K when he walks the stage at Commencement in June. Both of his parents, Frank ’92 and Jody ’92, are alumni, and his sister, Claire ’27, is a current student. However, he’s clearly found his own path having performed research in Arias-Rotondo’s lab ever since his first year on campus. In addition, he will start a Ph.D. program at the University of Delaware in fall, and he hopes to one day serve as a faculty member at an institution like K.

“K is small, so you get to make a lot of good connections with your professors,” Rhames said. “I was three or four weeks into my first term as a college student, and all of a sudden, I’m in a lab doing the work with the research. There are no post-docs or graduate students. It is just the undergraduates and the faculty doing all of the work. That would’ve been a lot harder to do had I not gone to K.”

College Raptor Honors K as a Gem for Academics, Athletics

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For the second year in a row, Kalamazoo College has been selected as a Hidden Gem by College Raptor, a planning platform that helps students and families find college matches driven by algorithms to find their best-fit schools at the best price.  

This selection—which places K among the top 15 institutions in the Great Lakes Region of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana—recognizes the College as one of the best in the country based on a combination of factors including retention rates, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratio, endowment per student, selectivity and other key metrics as reported through the National Center for Education Statistics. 

“For students seeking the enriching experience of a smaller college with exceptional programs, institutions like K emerge as prime options, and we are honored to spotlight them with the recognition they genuinely deserve,” College Raptor co-founder and CEO William Staib said. 

College Raptor also ranks K 11th in the country among 25 Hidden Gems for Division III athletics. To qualify for either list, an institution must receive fewer than 5,000 applications per year, have fewer than 7,000 undergraduate students, offer at least five unique majors and have an acceptance rate of at least 10%. 

College Raptor’s full methodology is outlined on its website. 

Stetson Chapel in fall for College Raptor story
College Raptor places Kalamazoo College among the top 15 institutions overall in the Great Lakes Region of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, and rates K 11th nationally for opportunities in Division III athletics.