Kalamazoo College has been selected to the Honor Roll of the 2013 Michigan’s Healthiest Employers program. Word of the award came to Ken Wood, the College’s wellness and fitness advisor. The awards and best practices program is presented by Crain’s Detroit Business, MiBiz, and Priority Health to recognize companies around the state whose policies, programs, and culture create healthy employees and healthy workplaces. As an honor roll member, the College will be invited to attend the Healthiest Employers Awards & Best Practices event (January 10, 2014) at DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids. After a healthy breakfast, finalists and honor roll organizations will enjoy a panel discussion with the winning companies to learn about their best practices, challenges, and plans for the future.
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Endowed Six Help Extend Excellence and Impact
In late September K announced the launch of the public phase of its $125 million Campaign for Kalamazoo College (of which $84 million has been raised). The excellence and impact of a K education derives directly from the quality of its faculty. Toward the end of ensuring that excellence and impact, the campaign is already having an effect–specifically by supporting six new endowed professorships (a final goal of the campaign is to fund 10 endowed professorships). Five of the six positions have been appointed. The sixth will soon be named. The five appointees are:
The Arcus Social Justice Leadership Assistant Professor of Anthropology — Adriana Garriga-López
The Arcus Social Justice Leadership Associate Professor of Political Science — John Dugas
Lucinda Hinsdale Stone Assistant Professor of Religion — Taylor Petrey
James B. Stone College Professor of Theatre Arts — Ed Menta
Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics and Business — Ahmed Hussen
Endowed faculty positions honor outstanding faculty members and provide funds for research and the pedagogical explorations of those professors. Such positions suggest the academic prestige of Kalamazoo College. New endowed faculty positions allow faculty expansion in critical academic fields. And because the money for such positions comes from earnings from the principal of endowed gifts, these professorships remove stress on the College’s operating budget, enabling the College to apply the savings that result to educational innovations and opportunities which are often as unforeseen as they are important. The ultimate beneficiaries are Kalamazoo College students and the nonpareil learning experiences they forge with their professors. The Campaign for Kalamazoo College seeks to raise $62 million in endowment monies to support not just new faculty chairs, but also scholarships for students and improvements to the programs that constitute the K-Plan.
Transition Fan
Professor of Physics Jan Tobochnik is a self-described “big fan” of phase transitions–solids to liquids; liquids to gas; magnetic to non-magnetic; the fall of the Soviet Union. Just a few examples of spectacular phase transitions, and phase transitions are “always interesting,” says Tobochnik. Also, some systems act like they are at a phase transition, such as perhaps the neural firings of the brain. In particular, he’s intrigued by the physics associated with the very moment of change–a period of “criticality” at which all scales of behavior are important.
So it’s no surprise that for the next three years his research (supported by a grant from the Petroleum Research Fund) will involve reproducing experimental data and generation of new data through computer models of melting. Wait…melting? Surely a phenomenon as long observed as this (just set an ice cube on the counter) is thoroughly known to science. Not so, says Tobochnik. “Science has no comprehensive theory for three-dimensional melting,” he says. “Consider that ice cube on the counter–we know it melts from the outside in, but we only know the mechanisms for melting related to surfaces or defects. Absent a surface or a defect, we don’t know how a material melts. We have no general theory, which, in the case of new materials, makes the prediction of melting points and other properties unreliable.”
Two very recent–and painstaking–experiments (one at Harvard, the other in China) managed to explore the phenomenon of melting when there are no surfaces or defects by using colloidal spheres suspended in a fluid. The result was some fascinating new data. But the experiment is extremely difficult to set up, making replication, confirmation, and extension of the data a problem. Tobochnik’s grant will enable his lab to work with the Harvard group to set up a computer modeling simulation of the experiment. That modeling will confirm and, hopefully, provide new knowledge of melting in three dimensional substances.
The grant will fund two students in Tobochnik’s lab for three consecutive summers. They may, or MAY NOT, be physics majors doing SIP work. “Many times I prefer to provide significant research experiences to younger students, including first-years,” Tobochnik says.
“Three out of four … like a coffin or a door”
Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss won the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize for prose of 500 words or less. Brief nonfiction, prose poetry, or short-short stories are eligible for the prize. Di’s winning entry is titled “Wal-Mart Parking Lot,” and about it the contest judge wrote: “[It] offers readers an unexpected vision of American culture filtered through consumer culture and 20th century art history.” Di also was a finalist in three prestigious poetry competitions: the Orlando Prize (from A Room of Her Own Foundation); the River Styx Poetry Prize, 2013; and the Able Muse Poetry Prize, 2013. Last fall she was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the English department at Colorado College.
New poems of Di’s appear in Unsplendid, Rattle, North American Review, and The Missouri Review. The latter journal featured the four poems in its online Text Box anthology, which includes an introduction to the poems (from which comes the Di Seuss quote that serves as title to this post) as well as questions and writing prompts. Di’s next public readings will occur November 4 (in Mount Pleasant, Mich., as part of the Wellspring Literary Series) and February 6, 2014 (at the University of Michigan, as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series). Her third collection of poems, Four-Legged Girl, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2015.
Kalamazoo College Recognized as Green Generation Customer of the Year by Consumers Energy
[Sept. 27, 2013] Consumers Energy has named Kalamazoo College its “Green Generation Customer of the Year” in recognition of the College’s overall sustainability effort and its voluntary participation in this renewable energy program.
The 1,450-student liberal arts and sciences college located midway between Detroit and Chicago purchases 720,000 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of renewable energy annually from Consumers Energy, enough to supply 8 percent of the College’s total electrical usage.
“Sustainability is a strong focus at Kalamazoo College. Receiving this award lets us know that others recognize our commitment to the environment and that gives us reason to be proud,” said Paul Manstrom, K’s associate vice president for facilities management. “We began purchasing electricity through the Green Generation program as part of a project to renovate the Hicks Student Center on campus to standards developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, earning the first LEED Silver certification in southwest Michigan in the process. We’ve found that participating in Green Generation has been a great fit for us.”
Kalamazoo College has been a Green Generation participant since January 2009. It’s one of the Top 10 participants in the Green Generation program, having purchased more than 2.5 million KWh of renewable energy since enrolling. The recently-completed Athletics Field House and the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (currently under construction) will be the two “greenest” buildings on campus, furthering the college’s sustainability credentials.
“It’s with great enthusiasm we single out the achievements of Kalamazoo College in supporting renewable energy efforts in Michigan,” said Thomas Shirilla, Consumers Energy’s program manager for Green Generation. “K’s leadership in this voluntary program is commendable. It demonstrates commitment to and optimism for Michigan’s future.”
Past Green Generation customer of the year recipients are Irwin Seating, Grand Rapids Community College, University of Michigan – Flint, Dow Corning, City of Grand Rapids, and Wolverine Worldwide.
Consumers Energy’s Green Generation program has nearly 17,000 customer-participants and was the first voluntary renewable energy program in Michigan. It was launched in 2005 following authorization by the Michigan Public Service Commission. More than 100 organizations are enrolled in the Green Generation program.
Green Generation has led to the development of several renewable energy projects in the state, including the Michigan Wind 1 park in the Thumb region. Other Green Generation projects include biomass facilities located near Birch Run, Lennon, and Marshall. Consumers Energy also purchases electricity for the program generated by wind turbines near Mackinaw City. All of the projects are located in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula and all sources are Green-e certified as renewable.
The Green Generation program offers Consumers Energy’s electric customers an opportunity to support renewable energy by enrolling in the voluntary program and paying a small premium. Program information is available at .
Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu) was founded in 1833 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It is the oldest college in Michigan and among the 100 oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States. K is a nationally recognized liberal arts and sciences college with nearly 1,450 students and the creator of the K-Plan that emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, leadership development, and international and intercultural engagement. Kalamazoo College does more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.
Consumers Energy, Michigan’s largest utility, is the principal subsidiary of CMS Energy (NYSE: CMS), providing natural gas and electricity to 6.6 million of the state’s 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties.
View and download the above photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/consumersenergy/9953170725/
For more information regarding Consumers Energy, visit us at: www.consumersenergy.com or join us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/consumersenergymichigan
Consumers Energy Media Contacts: Roger Morgenstern, 517/530-4364 or Terry DeDoes, 517/374-2159
Shaping Space and Social Interaction
Hannah Knoll ’13 is a recent Kalamazoo College graduate with a passion for design and an aspiration to be an architect. She majored in physics with minors in mathematics and studio art. “I am interested primarily in the relationship between community and the physical landscape, leading to my desired career in architecture or urban design, fields I began to explore through jobs, internships and my study abroad experience in Copenhagen, Denmark,” said Knoll. She is currently updating architectural drawings for K’s facilities management department and serving as the Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Art for the 2013-2014 academic year. Her busy schedule nevertheless left her time to enter ArtPrize. Her submission is called “Spaces Between.” The entry includes five bench-like objects that together outline a single rectangular form that relates to the room it is in.
“The fragmentation of this rectangle creates spaces between the individual pieces, spaces that can be experienced by the viewer as they sit and interact with the work. This is part of a series of projects exploring how physical elements and objects that shape space can influence social interactions.”
The Art of a Scientist
When Dan Van Horn ’50 earned his degree in biology, focusing on ornithology, at Kalamazoo College, he came to science with an eye for art. A visit to the Indiana Dunes during his college years intrigued Van Horn, drawing his eye to plant life, but also to the resident birds. Alongside biology, Van Horn studied watercolor painting, but after graduating and going into military service, he switched from watercolor to photography.
Van Horn went on to graduate school to earn a master’s and then his doctoral degree in zoology at the University of Colorado. He was a professor of biology at several colleges and universities, later also a founding member of the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs biology department shortly after the branch opened in 1966. Since retiring from teaching, he has immersed himself in art again, winning many awards. He is a signature member of four national watercolor societies, and in 2013, Van Horn was selected for the American Watercolor Society’s 146th Annual Exhibition. The show is traveling to many venues across the United States throughout 2013.
Van Horn lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife, but because he grew up in Chicago, many of his watercolors feature that city.
Odds and Ends With a K Connection
Matters of T-shirts, essays, and scholarships meant good news for three people who share a Kalamazoo College connection.
Writer and college instructor Chris Tower ’85 shows off his Kalamazoo College pride on his T-Shirt blog, “I would not be the person I am today if I had not attended and ultimately graduated from Kalamazoo College.”
Congratulations to Tessa Moore ’15. Her essay, The Ezili, earned her the Voynovich Scholarship, which hasn’t been awarded since 2008.
Mariah Hennen ’15 was 35 out of more than 100 students nationwide to be awarded the Jo Anne J. Trow National Scholarship. Recipients must maintain a 3.5 GPA. Selections are based on academic records, applicants’ statements, and campus and community activities.
K Civic Engagement Director Honored With Health Award
Alison Geist, director of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, received the 2013 Spirit of Health Equity Award from Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services. The award recognizes her “ongoing commitment and dedication to health equity in the Kalamazoo community.” In addition to her work with the CCE (formerly the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning), Geist teaches a course in public health at K and co-administers the College′s Community and Global Health concentration. She received the award at the First Annual Summit on Health Equity in Kalamazoo. Congrats, Alison!
Dean’s List Spring 2013
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 Spring 2013 academic term.
Spring 2013
| A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T V W Y Z | ||
AAyaka Abe B Gordon Backer CKathryn Callaghan DSusmitha Daggubati EJamie Eathorne FAlan Faber III GAndrew Galimberti |
HZari Haggenmiller ISierra Imanse JAdriana Jarquin KJagdeep Kaur LRory Landis MLucy MacArthur Jr. NVictoria Najacht OMoses Odhiambo |
PJane Packer QRBrian Raetz SClemence Saillant TTyler Tabenske UElizabeth Uribe VTrevor Vader WKyra Walenga YElizabeth Yang ZCheryl Zhang |