At a May dinner in the Hicks Center Kalamazoo College celebrated the 2014 Kalamazoo County high school graduates who earned Heyl Scholarships for Kalamazoo College (science and math) or Western Michigan University (nursing). The scholarship covers tuition, book costs, and room charges. The 2014 Heyl scholars include (l-r): front row—Rachel Chang, Fiona Beaton, Emily Fletcher, Amber Salome; back row—Jacob Naranjo, Peter Rossi, Jager Hartman, and Abhay Goel. Beaton will attend WMU; the other seven will begin their undergraduate studies at K in September. Not pictured is Alexandria Oswalt, who also will attend K. (Photo by Anthony Dugal Photography)
awards
Germany Honors K History Professor
David Barclay, the Margaret and Roger Scholten Professor of International Studies, was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik Deutschland), the country’s highest decoration, popularly known as the Federal Cross of Merit. Because he was unable to receive the award in Berlin, it was presented to him at a ceremony at the German Consulate General in Chicago on June 17.
The website of the Federal President of Germany describes honor as follows: “The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany was instituted in 1951 by Federal President Theodor Heuss. It is the only honour that may be awarded in all fields of endeavour and is the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation. The Order of Merit may be awarded to Germans as well as foreigners for achievements in the political, economic, social or intellectual realm and for all kinds of outstanding services to the nation in the field of social, charitable or philanthropic work.”
At K, Barclay has taught a wide variety of courses on European history and German history. He directed the Center of Western European Studies at Kalamazoo College from 1990 to 2003, and he currently serves as the executive director of the German Studies Association. He is the author of numerous books and articles, and the focus of his scholarship in particular has been the history of West Berlin from 1948 to 1994. Barclay has received many academic awards and honors, among the most prominent of these was his selection as the George H.W. Bush/Axel Springer Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin (2007). He and fellow faculty member Joe Fugate (professor emeritus of German and director emeritus of the foreign study program) are two Kalamazoo College faculty to receive the Order of Merit.
Inaugural Symposium Features Distinguished Alumnus
The first ever economics and business Senior Individualized Project symposium is bringing back one the department’s own to serve as keynote speaker. Will Dobbie ’04 will address senior econ and business majors during a dinner that will follow the poster presentation to occur in the Hicks Center at 4:30 PM on May 22.
After graduating from K, Dobbie earned his master’s degree in economics from the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. (economics and public policy) from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Dobbie is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs.
Dobbie’s research interests are primarily in the areas of labor economics and the economics of education. His work has examined the effect of school inputs on student outcomes, the importance of peer effects, the impact of voluntary youth service, and the benefits of the consumer bankruptcy system. Earlier this year he received an award from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research for writing the best doctoral dissertation in the field of labor-related economics. Ahmed Hussen, the Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics and Business, attended that event. “Will’s lecture was based on his highly acclaimed and controversial work on high performing charter schools in New York City,” says Hussen. “We are delighted to have him back for our first SIP symposium. He has accomplished a great deal in such a short period of time after graduating from K–living proof that we do more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.”
More-in-FourPeat
Kalamazoo College has won the coveted Klein Cup for the fourth consecutive year. “If we keep this up, perhaps the award should be re-named the K Kup,” said John Fink, the Rosemary K. Brown Professor in Mathematics and Computer Science. The Klein Cup honors the first place finisher in the annual Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition (LMMC). This year’s math dust-up took place a Lawrence Technological University (Southfield, Mich.) and featured 20 teams from nine schools. K sent three teams that placed first, second, and tenth. Not bad. And since half the first place team and all of the second place team are underclassmen, the prospects for next year look good. K Kup, indeed! This year’s K math hornets included: first place team–Umang Varma and Tibin John; second place team–Raoul Wadhwa, Ngoc (Van) Truong, and Raj Bhagat; tenth place team–Sajan Silwal, Mehmet Kologlu, and Alex Townsend.
Professor John Fink Honored by the Mathematical Association of America’s Michigan Chapter
K Professor John Fink, Ph.D. has received the 2014 Distinguished Service Award from the Michigan Section of the Mathematical Association of America “for the many contributions he has made to his institution [Kalamazoo College!], to our [MAA Michigan] Section, and to the larger mathematical community for many years,” sayeth the citation. Fink is K’s Rosemary K. Brown Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science. A longtime member and past governor of the MAA Michigan section, he was honored with the Section’s Distinguished Teacher Award in 2001. In 1989, he co-founded the Michigan All-Stars team of high school mathematics students, serving as the team coach in national competitions for 17 years. He served as Department of Mathematics and Computer Science chair at K for 10 years. This spring, he was recognized with Kalamazoo College’s Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship Award for Excellence in Teaching. He delivered his acceptance lecture May 6 in the Mandelle Hall’s Olmsted Room to a standing-room only audience of students, faculty, staff, family, friends, and fellow math aficionados. Congrats, Professor Fink. If dedication, love, and talent count for anything, you really add up!
Four in More Than 15,000
Four Kalamazoo College students attended at the 2014 Experimental Biology Meeting: Amanda Bolles ’14, Chemistry; Rina Fujiwara ’15, Chemistry; Virginia Greenberger ’14, Chemistry; and Michael Korn ’14, Biology. Experimental Biology is a joint meeting of six different societies including the American Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) as well as societies for physiology, nutrition, pharmacology, pathology, and anatomy. The meeting provides a great opportunity for students to present their work and attend a variety of engaging scientific talks. More than 15,000 scientists attended the event in San Diego, Calif.
Bolles and Fujiwara presented their research findings during the Undergraduate Poster Competition and during the regular scientific session for ASBMB. Their research involves recent work completed in the laboratory of Professor of Chemistry Laura Furge. That work has shown that two different (but related) compounds inactivate P450 3A4, an enzyme in the liver and intestine that metabolizes (or processes) a major pharmaceutical drug. The titles of the Bolles and Fujiwara posters were, respectively, “5-Fluoro-2-[4-[(2-phenyl-1H-imidazol-5-yl)methyl]-1 piperazinyl]pyrimidine is a mechanism based inactivator of CYP3A4” and “Mechanism-based inactivation of human CYP3A4 by a piperazine-containing compound.” The ASBMB competition includes posters of some 300 students from a variety of college and universities across the country. One grand prize award was presented to a student in each of four research categories (bioenergetics/protein structure, cell biology/developmental biology, DNA/gene regulation, and immunology/microbiology/neurobiology). Bolles won the $500 grand prize in the bioenergetics/protein structure category and was recognized the next day before an audience of hundreds of scientists, educators, and students at the award lecture for outstanding contributions to education. Bolles’s presentation derived from her Senior Individualized Project (SIP), which will be published later this year along with results from co-author Fujiwara.
Greenberger conducted her SIP research in the laboratory of Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss. The abstract she presented at the meeting was titled “Bacterial Action of Novel Cationic Peptide Sequences.” As more antibiotic resistance is observed in patients, new sources of antibiotics are being investigated, including short peptide sequences. Greenberger’s work in the Truss lab was aimed at determining the antibiotic activity (and the precise mechanisms of action that yielded the activity) of two newly studied peptide sequences.
Dr. Furge also presented a poster in the ASBMB regular scientific session based on work started last year by Parker de Waal ’13. The work began as part of a course assignment in Furge’s “Advanced Biochemistry” course and grew into an elegant computational study of structural differences between select variants of the drug-metabolizing enzyme P450 2D6. de Waal used molecular dynamics methods to show how subtle differences in the enzyme structure can help explain differences in the metabolizing abilities of the enzymes. The study is being completed by Kyle Sunden ’16. While in San Diego, Furge spent an afternoon at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy at the University of California-San Diego discussing the implications and approach of the study with other scientists in this field.
Korn attended the American Physiological Society (APS) portion of the Experimental Biology meeting. He presented the results of his SIP work (conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Christopher Mendias at the University of Michigan) in the APS Student Poster Competition. Korn’s abstract received the David Bruce Outstanding Undergraduate Abstract Award. The title of his presentation was “Simvastatin reduces myosteatosis following chronic skeletal muscle injury.”
The future is promising for all four of these outstanding student researchers. In the fall, Bolles will enter the University of Michigan Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences; Greenberger will matriculate to the chemistry department at Pennsylvania State University to begin work on her Ph.D; Korn will attend the University of Michigan Medical School; and Fujiwara will complete her SIP with Furge this summer. She plans to attend graduate school after her June 2015 graduation from K.
Professors Furge and Truss are both members of the ASBMB and attend the annual meeting each year. Truss also directs a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded workshop for area high school science teachers in connection with the annual ASBMB meeting. This year’s workshop attracted more than a dozen local teachers who learned science and teaching strategies to use in their classrooms. Attendees at the workshop are also eligible for mini-grants to support further development of their teaching after the workshop. A recent article describes the impact of this workshop (which is in its fourth year).
In other meeting news, the Ruth Kirschstein Diversity in Science Award was given jointly to President Freeman Hrabowski III and Professor Michael Summers of University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Professor Summers was the SIP mentor to Erran Briggs ’14 and has worked closely with Professor Truss on the Professional Development and Minority Affairs Committees of ASBMB. Professor Summers also visited K’s campus in 2010 as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Guest Scholar Lecturer. Given the connections, and important work of Summers and Hrabowski, Professor Truss arranged for Bolles, Fujiwara, and Greenberger to interview Summers for Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership’s Praxis Center. Following the interview, Summers treated the students and Truss to lunch overlooking the San Diego Harbor marina! Notes from the interview will be posted on the Praxis website.
Travel to ASBMB for Bolles, Fujiwara, and Greenberger was supported by grants from the Provost Office, the Heyl Foundation (Greenberger), and the ACSJL. Korn’s travel to the meeting was sponsored by grant funds from his SIP advisor and the University of Michigan. Furge and Truss were supported by the Hutchcroft Endowment as well as their NIH and NSF grants, respectively. Next year’s Experimental Biology Meeting will occur in Boston, Mass.
Abigail Miner ’14 receives “Young Democrat of the Year” award from the Michigan Democratic Party
Abigail Miner ’14 received the “Young Democrat of the Year” award on April 26 from the Michigan Democratic Party at its annual Jefferson-Jackson fundraising and awards dinner at Cobo Center in Detroit. In addition to meeting “some of my heroes” currently serving or running for state and federal office, Abigail said she dined with U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow and had her photo taken with former President Bill Clinton. Abigail recently completed a year-long term as membership director for the Michigan Federation of College Democrats. During her term in office, the number of chapters on Michigan campuses doubled from seven to 14. She’s also served as an officer in the College Democrats chapter at K. Abigail is a political science major from Elmhurst, Ill., and the daughter of Ed Miner ’76 and Colleen Sherburne ’77. Her K-Plan includes study abroad in Rome, an internship at the American-Turkish Council in Washington, D.C., four years performing with the Kalamazoo College Singers, and four years working in the K Admission office as a tour guide and intern.
Jason Kohl ’06 Shows His Award-Winning Film “The Slaughter” at Kalamazoo College
Jason Kohl ’06 shows his award-winning film “The Slaughter” at Kalamazoo College, Tuesday, April 22 at 7:00 p.m. in Light Fine Arts Recital Hall. Sponsored by Kalamazoo College Media Studies, the film is free and open to the public.
Michigan-born Jason B. Kohl is an Austrian/American Filmmaker. He got his B.A. in creative writing from Kalamazoo College in 2006 before moving to Berlin, Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship. In 2012 he got his MFA in directing from UCLA Film School in Los Angeles.
His UCLA MFA Thesis Film “The Slaughter” premiered at the 2013 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas and was a finalist for the Student Academy Awards. It continues to play festivals like BFI London, Locarno, and Ann Arbor. Filmmaker Magazine called it “a masterfully directed story.”
The short film stars “Breaking Bad” actor Michael Shamus Wiles, and is about a pig farmer who tests his unemployed son’s determination to join the family business.
Jason’s been a finalist or semifinalist for several prestigious labs including the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, the Torino Film Festival’s Adaptlab, and the Nantucket Screenwriters Colony.
He’s an alumnus of the Locarno Filmmaker Academy and a curator for Short of the Week, the premiere online destination for short films.
From 2012-2013 he returned to Berlin to complete postgraduate directing studies at the German Film and Television Academy as a DAAD Artist Study Scholar. He remains based in Berlin, where he is developing various feature projects.
Jason does for hire directing work with his partner Nora Mandray. As Mako Film, their clients include MSNBC, Etsy and Vocativ.
His first nonfiction book, a practical guide to film school, will be published by the Focal Press in 2015.
Read more about Jason and see clips from his work here: http://jasonbkohl.com.
Dean’s List Winter 2014
Congratulations to the following Kalamazoo College students, who achieved a grade point average of 3.5 or better for a full-time course load of at least three units, without failing or withdrawing from any course, during the Winter 2014 academic term. Kudos to the entire group of some 300 students, and good luck in Spring term, 2014.
Winter 2014
| A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | ||
AAyaka Abe B Shreya Bahl CFrancisco Cabrera DPaula Dallacqua EJamie Eathorne FRachel Fadler GAndrew Galimberti |
HKayan Hales I Pinar Inanli JDana Jacobson KKamalaldin Kamalaldin LRebecca La Croix MMadeleine MacWilliams NVictoria Najacht OAgust Olafsson |
PDana Page Q
RBrian Raetz SKatharine Scheck TTyler Tabenske UKelly Usakoski VTrevor Vader WRaoul Wadhwa XAnja Xheka YSuyeon Yang ZLauren Zehnder |
A Strong Sustainability Finish
The Recyclemania 2014 tournament is “in the books;” and Kalamazoo College finished first in two categories–the Per Capita Classic, and Bottles and Cans. Recyclemania is the annual friendly competition among 461 universities and colleges in the U.S. and Canada dedicated to promoting waste reduction and recycling on campus.
Colleges and universities competing in the eight-week competition are ranked according to how much recycling, trash, and food waste they collect. Between the early-February kickoff and the tournament’s final day on March 29, participating schools collectively recycled or composted 89.1 million pounds of recyclables and organic materials, preventing the release of 126,597 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere, which is the same as preventing annual emissions from 24,823 cars. K’s share of that success in greenhouse gas reduction is 139 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which converts to 27 cars off the road or the energy consumption of 12 households.
Rob Townsend, facilities management, and the coordinator of K’s Recyclemania tournament presence, administered K’s participation this year a little differently than in previous years: “No advertising, promotion, or public relations of any sort,” he said. “I was curious to see how well the College would do in the tournament just going about its daily business.” In other words, to what degree is recycling and waste minimization in our DNA, so to speak. Despite the strong finish, K won’t rest on its laurels. “We have some weaknesses,” says Townsend. “I would love to see us improve our waste minimization struggle,” the number of pounds of waste generated per person. Winner in that category was Valencia Community College (Kissimmee, Fla.), generating a meager 2.87 pounds of waste per person. K finished 134th at 81.8 pounds per person.
At least we are recycling much of that waste. At 48.62 pounds, K took first in the total pounds of recyclables per person (a.k.a. the “Per Capita Classic”). In the bottles and cans category, K led the way with nearly 15 pounds of recycled materials per person.
K did well in other tournament categories. In addition to its first place finishes, it placed in the top 20 in the Grand Champion category, the Paper category, and the Corrugated Cardboard category.