awards

Kalamazoo College Announces Finalists for $25,000 Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice Leadership

Posted on

Kalamazoo College is pleased to announce the finalists for its inaugural $25,000 Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice Leadership.

Fifteen finalist projects are collaboratively led by scholars and activists from eight U.S. cities (Columbus, Ohio; Detroit; Los Angeles; New York; Oakland, Cal.; Olympia, Wash.; South Bend, Ind.; and Urbana, Ill.; and ten nations including Germany, Honduras, Hungary, India, Malawi, Palestine, Rwanda, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. One of these projects will earn the $25,000 Global Prize.

Three finalists—two from Kalamazoo and one from Marshall—are eligible for a $5,000 Regional Prize for a project that originates in Southwest Michigan.

All finalists will present their work May 9-11 in Dalton Theatre on the K campus to jurors and attendees who will discuss and deliberate over the course of a three-day “Prize Weekend.” Global and Regional Prize winners will be announced by Kalamazoo College President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, on Saturday, May 11 at 7:15 in Dalton.

“The Kalamazoo College Global Prize creates an opportunity for our students, faculty, and the local community to interact with scholars and activists who are at the leading edge of collaborative social justice leadership practices around the country and around the world,” Wilson-Oyelaran said.

“The Global Prize also matches up with K’s mission to prepare its graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world,” she said.

Visit https://reason.kzoo.edu/csjl/clprize/finalists  to see a brief description of each finalist and link to its video entry. Facebook users may also view each video and “Like” their favorites ).

Each Global Prize applicant submitted a video (8-10 minutes) describing a social justice project, its innovative approach, and its collaborative leadership structure. A total of 188 entries were received from 23 countries and 25 U.S. states (including 14 from Southwest Michigan) by the March 8 deadline.

“The Global Prize undertaking truly presents an excellent opportunity for K students and the entire community to see social justice theory in action and to reflect on what we see as promising practices in the pursuit of a more just world,” said Lisa Brock, academic director of Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, which is administering the Global Prize competition.

According to Brock, a wide variety of social justice issues are addressed among the finalists, including: education access and equity, environmental sustainability, food sovereignty, health inequities, human rights violations against prisoners and LGBTQI people, immigration, international development, racism, workers’ rights, and more.

“Several finalists involve projects and partners that cross state and international borders,” Brock said. “One project from India, for example, includes partners in Columbus, Ohio and South Bend, Indiana. And the project from South Africa includes collaborators in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.”

More than 50 people, including K students, faculty, and staff members, as well as social justice advocates in Kalamazoo and elsewhere, juried the semifinal round of the competition and selected the 18 finalists. Jurors included: author, political activist, and University of California-Santa Cruz scholar Angela Y. Davis; former Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission Cary Alan Johnson; and shea howell, Detroit-based author, educator, columnist, and board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership.

The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership was launched in 2009 with support from the Arcus Foundation (www.arcusfoundation.org), including a $23 million endowment grant in January 2012. Supporting Kalamazoo College’s mission to prepare its graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world, the ACSJL will develop new leaders and sustain existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice.

Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu), founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts college 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.

K Trustee Ronda Stryker Receives YWCA Lifetime Award

Posted on
Ronda Stryker
Ronda Stryker

Kalamazoo College Trustee and Kalamazoo-area philanthropist Ronda Stryker will receive the 2013 YWCA Lifetime Woman of Achievement Award at an award celebration May 21 at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in downtown Kalamazoo.

The YWCA Award is given to an area person who has demonstrated a lifetime of outstanding contributions to the well-being of the community, state or nation, and has a record of accomplishment, leadership and positive role modeling as a volunteer and/or in a career.

Stryker has volunteered in various capacities with numerous organizations including Kalamazoo Community Foundation, Women’s Education Coalition Fund, Pathfinder International, Girl Scouts, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, United Way, Communities in Schools, Spelman College, University of Northern Colorado, Western Michigan University, Lakeside for Children, Kalamazoo County Juvenile Home Foundation, and YWCA of Kalamazoo.

She has served as a Kalamazoo College trustee for more than 20 years. In 2001, she helped establish the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning, named for her grandmother. Through the Institute, K students contribute more than 30,000 hours of community service-learning and civic engagement each year.

Read more about Ronda Stryker and the YWCA award in a recent Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive article.

Kalamazoo Poets

Posted on

If you like poetry and you like Michigan, check out a recent post (Awesome Mitten, Michigan Books Project) that includes a short review of four books of poetry, each with strong Michigan connections. The first of the four reviewed is Writer-in-Residence Di Seuss’s award-winning Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open. Other poets featured are John Rybicki, Laura Kasischke, and Jared Randall. Rybicki and Kasischke have done poetry readings on campus.

And in other news of Kalamazoo poets, Gail Griffin, the Ann V. and Donald R. Parfet Professor of English, won the annual poetry contest sponsored by FOLIO, a literary magazine published by American University (Washington, D.C.) Gail’s submission was her first ever “glosa,” a Spanish form of four 10-line stanzas based on a quatrain from another poem. Gail wrote, “I took some lines from a news story that particularly disturbed me and broke them into four lines of poetry. I’ve been working for a few years on poems and short prose inspired by weird, funny, or otherwise outrageous news stories.”

The contest judge was Martha Collins, a widely published poet who is affiliated with Oberlin College. Collins wrote, “I greatly admire the way [Griffin’s] ’Glosa: Man Held in Burning of Homeless Woman in Los Angeles’ moves through time, going back to Adam and forward to a ’millennium hence’ to elucidate a bit of news. The glosa form and a Genesis-inspired movement through the week are among the poetic strategies the author uses to create a richly-collaged reflection on the (gendered) need ’to love and loathe,’ as well as more generally disturbing aspects of our contemporary society.”

We look forward to sharing Gail’s poem when it is published in FOLIO later this year.

K alumnus and trustee Eugene Bissell ’76 is a Hall of Famer

Posted on

Eugene Bissell ’76 didn’t know much about propane when he started in the industry in the 1980s. And yet, the Kalamazoo College and Wharton School of Business graduate listened and learned along the way, ultimately becoming president and CEO of AmeriGas, the country’s largest propane retailer, and one of the industry’s most influential people. Read about Eugene’s long and winding road to the top of his profession (including a stint as a truck driver) while maintaining a commitment to elder care, community service, and to K.

David France ’81 Talks about His Oscar-nominated Documentary on NPR

Posted on
Protest featured in “How to Survive a Plague”
An image from an ACT UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) protest, featured in “How to Survive a Plague.” (Donna Binder)

David France ’81 was interviewed on the National Public Radio program “Here and Now” on Friday March 8 talking about “How to Survive a Plague,” his Oscar-nominated documentary about the early days of the AIDS crisis and the response to that crisis by activists, health officials, politicians, and the public.

David will host a showing of his film on Sunday, May 5, at Kalamazoo College. More details will follow soon.

Meanwhile, click here to listen to David’s NPR interview.

K Professor Wins Routledge Prize

Posted on

Dennis J. Frost’s article, “Tokyo’s Other Games: The Origins and Impact of the 1964 Paralympics,” has been chosen the winner of the Routledge Prize for the best article published in the International Journal of the History of Sport in 2012. The article appeared in the March issue of the Journal that year.

Frost is the Wen Chao Chen Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Kalamazoo College and the author of the book, Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan.

K Honors Extraordinary Student Leaders

Posted on

2013 Senior Leadership Award WinnersLeadership development is part of the mission of Kalamazoo College, and gains in leadership capability for every student is one of K’s goals. Each year the College recognizes extraordinary leadership–leaders’ leaders, so to speak–with the annual Senior Leadership Recognition Award.

The 30 seniors honored this year serve as student organization leaders, athletic team captains, student housing resident assistants, peer leaders, departmental student advisors, teaching assistants, literacy tutors, civic engagement scholars, career advisors in the Center for Career and Professional Development, and peer advisors for the Center for International Programs.

Their leadership has benefited fellow students and members of the Kalamazoo community, and their work has contributed to the achievements of organizations such as Helping Youth through Personal Empowerment, the First-Year Experience Program, Farms to K, Student Commission, the Chapel Program, Student Activities Committee, K-Crew, Community Advocates for Parents and Students, the Writing Center, Jewish Student Organization, LandSea, Black Student Organization, Frelon Dance Company, Gospel Choir, Kalamazoo Outing Club, OrangeZest, Asian and Pacific Islander Student Association, and Model United Nations, among others.

The 2013 Senior Leaders are (l-r): front row–Kathleen Barrett, Marjorie Toshach, Allison Liddane, Brittany King-Pleas, Eric Glanz, Darwin Rodriguez; second row–Monika Egerer, Charles Weber, Mary Goyings, Hannah Gray, Eeva Stout-Sharp, Bianca Rasho, Yongle Wang, Grace Kelley, Shoshana Schultz-Purves; third row–Michael Hicks, Caitlin McCarthy, Moriam Aigoro, Elizabeth Vincensi, Craig Isser, In Hae Sohn, Samantha Gross; back row–Melissa Sparow, Lauren Rosenthal, Bradley Merritt, Ian Flanagan, and Angiola Gabriel. Not pictured are Cierra Gillard, Mara Livezey, and Margaux Reckard.

K’s Chem Club Sieves Out Victorious

Posted on
Lydia Manager, Mara Livezey, Joe Widmer, Amanda Bolles, Josh Abbott and Tibin John
2013 Winners of the Battle of the Chemistry Clubs are (l-r): Lydia Manager ’13, Mara Livezey ’13, Joe Widmer ’14, Amanda Bolles ’14, Josh Abbott ’13, and Tibin John ’15

Kalamazoo College’s American Chemical Society (ACS) student group brought home to the chemistry department the coveted ‘Silver Sep Funnel’ Trophy from Michigan State University this winter. The students pipette-ed, read spectra, analyzed, and even danced their way to victory, and as the safest team (“which is the most important part for us,” says Regina Stevens-Truss, who shares co-advising duties for the group with fellow chemistry professor Jeff Bartz). The K ACS student group participated last year for the first time and placed sixth. This year, they won the overall competition, brought home best “safety dance,” earned most artistic accolades for the “best scientific-themed hangman,” and were also the “safest working team” based on OSHA standards.

2013 was the sixth annual Battle of the Chemistry Clubs, an event that originally put into the pipette pit (so to speak) the University of Michigan-Flint against the University of Detroit Mercy. The field has since grown to 12 schools, with Kalamazoo College joining in 2012. Competition consists of several activities that test a team’s knowledge and skill as it pertains to different chemistry concepts. All activities are team based (each with 4 or more students) and are scored and ranked based on time or accuracy. Morning prelims are followed by the afternoon’s “playoffs mode,” with only one team taking home the hardware.

Josh Abbott was the only returning K “letter winner” from last year’s sixth-place team. He vowed then that K would be well represented this year and wrote immediately after this winter’s competition to Dr. Truss: “I would just like to let you know we brought some hardware back for Dow.” Sweet!

K Biennial Social Justice Prize Debuts in Spring; Apply Now

Posted on

The first Kalamazoo College Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice Leadership will be awarded the weekend of May 10-11 on the Kalamazoo College campus. Entries for the prizes are due by March 8. Jurors include human rights activist Angela Davis and Cary Alan Johnson, former executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Two prizes will be awarded–a $25,000 Global Prize (for which regional entrants are also eligible) and a $5,000 Regional Prize that will go to projects/applicants based in the following Michigan counties: Berrien, Cass, St. Joseph, Branch, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, Van Buren, Allegan, Barry, Kent, Ottawa, and Muskegon.

From all entries 20 finalists will come to campus to share their work and application video with Kalamazoo College students and the local social justice learning community. “We envision the competition as a ‘social justice TED’ sort of format,” said Jaime Grant, executive director of Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. “Applicants upload an 8-10 minute video onto our application site and fill out the one-page form there. No grant application!”

The accessible format will help uncover original grassroots thinking and practice in social justice collaboration around the globe. “We’re encouraging people to put out their breakthrough thinking and aspirations even if they don’t have a fully formed project,”explained Grant. “This competition should unearth possibility and show us new ways forward. We are equally excited to see ‘veteran’ works that demonstrate unsung and breathtaking outcomes.’’

“Prize weekend” will be a great opportunity for social justice learners. Throughout that weekend applicants will present their work in person, and K students, faculty, staff, and community members will discuss ground-breaking work with finalists in small break-out sessions.

Apply now! The deadline for entries is March 8.