Soprano Katelin Spencer will do a concert at Kalamazoo College on Sunday, January 25. The Brighton (Mich.) native received her bachelor’s degree in voice performance from the University of Michigan and her master’s degree in opera performance and literature from Northwestern University. Spencer currently lives in Kalamazoo and is a frequent soloist with the Kalamazoo Bach Festival. Her other recent appearances in Kalamazoo included Farmer’s Alley Theatre productions of “The Light in the Piazza” and “Pinkalicious.” Her Sunday performance will feature works by Fauré, Schubert, Bernstein, Carpenter, among others. The concert is free and open to the public. It was take place at 4 p.m. in Dalton Theatre. For more information call 269.337.7070. Article by Mallory Zink ’15
campus
Campus Symposium Will Focus on Ebola Epidemic
As is often true with epidemics of highly lethal diseases, the response to the ongoing outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa reveals much about matters human and humane. These matters include fear and courage, stigmatization, power, poverty, inequity, cross cultural acumen, individual and collective responsibility, infrastructure, response time, the role of global citizens, and blindness (willful or otherwise) to the extent of human interdependence. Several such matters will be the subject of a symposium that will occur at Kalamazoo College on Friday and Saturday, January 30 and 31. The symposium is titled “Ebola in Perspective: Our Roles as Global Citizens,” and all events are free and open to the public (RSVP to Jax Lee Gardner, 269.337.7053). The Friday night keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Alhaji Njai. It will occur at 7 p.m. in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room. Njai is a research scientist with the Global Product Safety and Regulatory Affairs division of Proctor and Gamble, inc., and a research fellow in pathological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He broadcasts a weekly radio program to his native Sierra Leone that discusses issues around public health, science, and development.
Topics of the Saturday symposium (which will occur in the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.) will be, among others, the history of the Ebola virus, public health systems and policy implications, the biology of the virus, prediction and control models of the outbreak, and our role as global citizens. Presenters include epidemiologists, public health experts, and disease spread pattern analysts. This group includes Dr. Rachel Snow, associate professor of health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan; Dr. Peter Orris, professor and associate director of the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health, University of Illinois School of Public Health; Dr. Adam Hume, postdoctoral fellow, Boston University School of Medicine; Dr. Marisa Eisenberg, assistant professor, department of epidemiology, University of Michigan; and Amel Omari ’09, a pre-doctoral candidate at University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.
Omari joins other Kalamazoo College-affiliated experts who will participate in the symposium, including Dr. Péter Èrdi, the Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies; Dr. Adriana Garriga-López, the Arcus Social Justice Leadership Assistant Professor of Sociology; Kathleen West ’77, co-director of Public Health Institute’s Leadership for Women’s Health program, and Kamal Kamalaldin ’17, a sophomore at K considering majors in chemistry, biology, and computer science.
Attendance is free. For further information and to RSVP please contact Jax Lee Gardner (269.337.7053.) The event is sponsored by Kalamazoo College’s African studies program, provost office, community and global health concentration, and the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College.
K Closes for Holiday Break
Kalamazoo College will close for its annual holiday break–December 24 through January 2.
Anyone who wishes to make a gift to K before the end of the calendar year may call the College’s main line (269.337.7000) between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. eastern standard time on December 26, 29, 30, and 31, and a staff member will be happy to assist. At any other time the College is closed for the holiday, a donor may contact Laurel Palmer, director of the Kalamazoo College Fund, at 269.598.2007. Gifts also may be made online or by post marking a mailed gift by December 31, 2014.
The College’s residence halls open on January 3 at 9 a.m. Students are not permitted to check in early. The first meal in the dining center is lunch on January 3. Classes start Monday, January 5.
The emergency contact number for the College is 269.337.7321, and that number is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.
New Arcus Center Building at Kalamazoo College Continues to Attract News Media Attention
The new home of Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership continues to garner national and even international attention. Print and online publications that focus on architecture and design have been especially interested in the new building. Here’s a partial list of recent articles. We’ll add more as we see them. (Photo credit: Steve Hall © Hedrich Blessing)
arcus center by studio gang provides open forum for social justice
DesignBoom / Dec. 9, 2014
Timber disks speckle the concave facades of Studio Gang’s Michigan college building
Dezeen / Dec. 9, 2014
Drei Achsen für Gerechtigkeit Pavillon von Studio Gang in Michigan
BauNetz Magazin / Dec. 9, 2014
Pictorial: Studio Gang’s sylvan retreat in Kalamazoo, Michigan
A/N: The Architect’s Newspaper / Dec. 9, 2014
Arcus Center design, construction demonstrate social, economic and environmental justice
Kalamazoo Gazette / Sept. 20, 2014
Stoking a Hearth for Human Rights: The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership in Kalamazoo
New York Times / Oct. 15, 2014
K Professor and Students Publish Important Chemistry Research
Laura Furge, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Professor of Chemistry at Kalamazoo College, is the senior and corresponding author of an important scientific paper that includes three Kalamazoo College student co-authors: Amanda Bolles ’14, Rina Fujiwara ’15, and Erran Briggs ’14. The paper is titled “Mechanism-based Inactivation of Human Cytochrome P450 3A4 by Two Piperazine-containing Compounds” and appears in Drug Metabolism and Disposition, a highly regarded, high impact international journal published by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. The research the paper describes, which was conducted in the Furge Lab on K’s campus, contributes the understanding of how some drugs “apply the brakes to” the activity of an enzyme–in this particular case, an enzyme important to the metabolism (or processing) of about half of all medicines! What are the human implications of the work? “Many individuals take multiple medicines each day,” said Furge. “Multiple-drug regimens can lead to unwanted side effects, including drug-induced inhibition of the very enzymes responsible for the metabolism and clearance of other co-administered drugs.” In fact, side effects from drug interactions of polypharmacy therapy are the number one cause of hospitalization in the U.S. “This paper adds in understanding of how certain classes of drugs may cause this type of unfavorable medical event,” said Furge. “New insights will hopefully lead to better prevention in the future.”
The paper includes 13 figures and tables. Furge noted that Bolles, Fujiwara, and Briggs performed all the experiments that lead to those figures, and “all the work was done on the campus at Kalamazoo College. We had all the equipment here needed to complete these studies, and we have already started full swing on another set of experiments for a future publication.” The students have presented parts of the preliminary data at national meetings in the past year, and the research forms of basis of the Senior Individualized Projects for Bolles and Fujiwara.
Such research, and the extraordinary educational opportunities it provides for K students, requires the cooperation, coordination, and collaboration of many funding sources. “This is so important,” Furge stressed. The Richard Cook Fellowship and the Alan and Elaine Hutchcroft Fund (endowments created and supported by alumni gifts) paid for the summer stipends of Fujiwara and Bolles, respectively. The mass spectrometer essential to the experiments was paid for in part by the Hutchcroft Fund and a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The research also was funded by grants Furge secured from the National Institutes of Health.
“Drug Metabolism and Disposition is an international journal with a high impact factor,” added Furge. Impact factors measure how frequently manuscripts in a journal are referenced by other authors.
With/Out ¿Borders? Opens Thursday
More than 500 social justice advocates, scholars and leaders ranging from civil rights icons and eccentric artists to young organizers and poet laureates will be on the Kalamazoo College campus, as well as locations throughout the city, this weekend, Sept. 25-28 to participate in the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL) “With/Out ¿Borders?” conference.
Attendees will engage in questioning–and openly attempt to complicate –the political, ideological, cultural, and social barriers that make up our world. Thought-provoking plenary sessions, participatory think tanks, and moving and entertaining artistic performances are just some of the diverse and engaging platforms that will be used to question the borders that surround so much of our world today–and develop paradigms and strategies to break them down.
Well-known performance artists and cultural workers Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Michèle Ceballos Michot, whom make up the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra, will be on stage on Friday afternoon with Adriana Garriga-López, the Arcus Social Justice Leadership Assistant Professor of Anthropology. The trio will discuss, instigate, and agitate on the meaning of border politics, performance, and the role of art in the process.
Later that day, the conference will take on a more poetic note, as two well-known poets read form their work and engage with local poet and activist Denise Miller and Lisa Brock, academic director of the ACSJL.
Nikki Finney, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry, and Keorapetse “Willie” Kgositsile, former poet laureate of South Africa, will bear witness to history and exile and set the stage alive with “truth telling” and love poems crafted out of the struggles of black people from both the southern areas of the United States and South Africa.
Civil rights icon Angela Davis will take to the stage on Saturday morning, along with distinguished African American studies expert Robin D. G. Kelley, peace activists Lynn Pollack and Leenah Odeh and academics Alex Lubin and Saree Makdisi, to discuss the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) Movement emerging globally in support of the Palestinian people, who live in walled, or “bordered” territories.
Participants in this plenary session will ask if the BDS movement is the next critical solidarity movement of our time, who it’s for, who it’s against, and why.
Cities will take center stage later Saturday, when a plenary of scholars and organizers examine resistance movements in cities today. Organizer and writer Kali Akuno, Detroit-based activist shea howell and David Stovall, professor of African-American studies, will discuss teacher protests in Chicago, water rights issues in Detroit, city planning strategies in Jackson, Miss., and minimum-wage increase advocacy efforts nationwide at this plenary moderated by Rhonda Williams, associate professor of History at Case Western University.
The future of various social justice movements will be on display in the Hicks Center Banquet Room Sunday morning, where a host of young social justice advocates and organizers will discuss their own projects, talk about the need for more youth to become involved and analyze the New Youth Movement.
Civil rights organizers Phillip Agnew and Charlene Carruthers, undocumented immigrant advocate Lulu Martinez, climate change organizer Will Lawrence, sexual assault awareness organizer Zoe Ridolfi-Starr and voting rights advocate Sean Estelle will be in on the discussion, moderated by the Mia Henry, executive director of the ACSJL.
For a full list of events, go to the conference’s schedule page.
Arcus Center Building Dedication is Open to the Public, Friday Sept. 19, 4:00 p.m.
Kalamazoo College hosts a dedication and ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4 P.M., Friday Sept. 19, for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership building at 205 Monroe St., at the corner of Academy St. in Kalamazoo, Mich. The 10,000 sq. ft. structure—the newest on the K campus—was constructed by Miller-Davis Company of Kalamazoo and designed by Studio Gang Architects of Chicago.
The dedication event is free and open to the public. Guests are encouraged to park in the K Athletics Fields parking lot, 1600 W. Michigan Ave., and take continuously operating shuttle vans to the ceremony.
Speakers will include Charlotte Hall ’66, chair, K board of trustees; Jon Stryker ’82, K trustee; Jeanne Gang, founder of Studio Gang Architects; Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, K president; and Cameron Goodall ’15, K student commission president.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony will include Carol Anderson, K professor of religion and chair of the Department of Religion; Lisa Brock, academic director of K’s Arcus Center; and Mia Henry, executive director of K’s Arcus Center.
Refreshments and an open house in the new building follow.
The Arcus Center building features offices, work areas, and classroom/seminar spaces situated around a central hearth and kitchen area. Wooden benches around the central fireplace preserve and repurpose wood from the site’s trees. The building’s structural frame includes 680 pieces of steel—many curved, some in two planes, and no two alike.
The building’s three-sided form emphasizes academic learning, relationships with the natural world, and interdependency of communities. A predominance of curvature represents arms open to all to join in social justice work.
The exterior cordwood masonry construction—northern Michigan white cedar logs of varying diameter in 11- to 36-inch lengths—symbolizes the diversity of humanity. While cordwood construction is traditional to the upper Midwest, this is believed to be the first commercial or institutional structure in North America to employ this technique.
The College will seek Gold LEED certification for the new building. Its geothermal heating and cooling system (12 wells drilled to a depth of 400 feet) meets the College’s stringent energy efficiency standard. A radiant and forced convection heating system transforms the Center’s entire floor into a heat duct, with air movement undetectable to the senses. Onsite drainage and retention reduces storm water runoff.
K gratefully acknowledges Steelcase Inc. and Custer Workplace Interiors for their generosity in helping supply office furnishings for the new Arcus Center building.
The Arcus Center building and its $5 million construction cost is a gift to the College from Jon Stryker, a member of the K board of trustees and of the K class of 1982. Jon is founder and president of the Arcus Foundation (www.arcusfoundation.org), a private, global grant-making organization with offices in New York City, Kalamazoo, and Cambridge, U.K., that supports the advancement of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights, and conservation of the world’s great apes. Jon is a founding board member of the Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy in Northern Kenya, Save the Chimps in Ft. Pierce, Fla., and Greenleaf Trust, a trust bank in Kalamazoo. He also serves on the board of the Friends of the Highline in New York City. Jon is a registered architect in the State of Michigan. He earned a B.A. degree in biology from K and a M.A. degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.
MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang is the founder of Studio Gang Architects, a Chicago-based collective of architects, designers, and thinkers practicing internationally. Jeanne uses architecture as a medium of active response to contemporary issues and their impact on human experience. Each of her projects resonates with its specific site and culture while addressing larger global themes such as urbanization, climate, and sustainability. With this approach, Studio Gang has produced some of today’s most innovative and visually compelling architecture. The firm’s projects range from tall buildings like the Aqua Tower, whose façade encourages building community in the vertical dimension, to the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo, where 14 acres of biodiverse habitat are designed to double as storm water infrastructure and engaging public space.
Founded in 1909, Miller-Davis Company is headquartered in Kalamazoo, Mich., with an additional office in South Bend, Ind. It is a full-service construction company providing general contracting, construction management, design-build, and construction consulting services. Miller-Davis has served as the construction manager on numerous Kalamazoo College projects for more than 80 years. In addition to the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, these projects include Upjohn Library Commons, Hicks Student Center, the K Natatorium, Stetson Chapel, Mandelle Administration Building, Hoben Residence Hall, and Trowbridge Residence Hall.
The mission of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (www.kzoo.edu/socialjustice) is to support the pursuit of human rights and social justice by developing emerging leaders and sustaining existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice, creating a pivotal role for liberal arts education in engendering amore just world. The Arcus Center was established at Kalamazoo College in 2009 through generous funding from the Arcus Foundation. In 2012, the College received a $23 million grant from the Foundation to endow the Center’s activities.
Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu), founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts and sciences 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.
Working Together to End Violence
Kalamazoo College’s Ethnic Studies program is collaborating with the student organization, Sexual Safety and Support Alliance, and the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL) to present “Working Together to End Violence.” The event will occur on Friday, September 26, at 2:35 p.m. in the ACSJL building on K’s campus, and it will feature a viewing and discussion of the film Hearing Radmilla. The film was produced and edited by Angela Webb and documents the turbulent reign of Radmilla Cody, Miss Navajo Nation 1997-98, and the first biracial person to hold that title. The film chronicles her development as the goodwill and cultural ambassador of the Navajo Nation and her success as an award-winning vocal artist. Later Cody was sentenced to 21 months in a federal corrections facility for misprision of a felony, essentially concealing knowledge of a crime. The extenuating circumstances included an abusive boyfriend involved in marijuana trafficking. When Cody was released in 2004 she became a passionate activist against domestic violence. Both Webb and Cody will attend and participate in the discussion, which is part of the social justice leadership center’s With/Out ¿Borders? Conference.
The film offers an unparalleled treatment of race and gender in the U.S., according to Reid Gomez, who directs the College’s Ethnic Studies program and will serve as the moderator of the event. “No other film crosses the firm racial boundaries that police the categories of Black and Indian. Significantly, the film also addresses the epidemic of domestic violence and the singular position of women in prison.”
The issue of domestic violence has been prominent recently as a result of developments in the case of former Baltimore Raven Ray Rice and his wife Janay Palmer Rice. But the issue is longstanding and particularly acute for indigenous women. “According to a U.N. report, indigenous women are eight times more likely to be murdered that non-indigenous women,” said Gomez. “The violence against Black and Indian/indigenous women has largely been ignored, disavowed, and rendered invisible.”
Gomez has high praise for the film. “Webb was able to tell Cody’s complex story (of colonialism, racism, and domestic violence) without resorting to any grotesque display or to the erotics of terror.”
Convocation 2014
With this ceremony we formally welcome the matriculating class into the Kalamazoo College community. President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, Provost Michael McDonald, Dean of Students Sarah Westfall, Chaplain Elizabeth Candido, faculty, staff, and peer leaders welcome new students and their families. Brad O’Neill ’93, chief executive officer and co-founder of TechValidate Software (Berkeley, California), will deliver the keynote address. Convocation concludes with all new students signing the Matriculation Book. In case of rain, families may watch convocation in the Dalton Theatre.
Kalamazoo College Conference Gathers Experts on Immigrant and Undocumented Youth
Amidst the controversy surrounding the nearly 60,000 undocumented and unaccompanied youth who have migrated to the United States in recent months, primarily from Central America, international experts on immigrant and undocumented youth will convene at Kalamazoo College. Their gathering is part of the With/Out – ¿Borders? conference hosted by the Kalamazoo College Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (September 25 through 28). Conference events related to this timely topic include:
* Roundtables exploring migration and identity on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, as well as the nature and impact of relations at that border both locally and globally.
* A daylong Think Tank on networks and support for undocumented youth and those working with them, held in collaboration with Kalamazoo’s Hispanic American Council. And,
* A workshop and performance by acclaimed performance artist and MacArthur “Genius” Guillermo Gómez-Peña, whose eclectic “Chicano cyberpunk” pieces often focus on the intercultural experience of Mexicans in the US.
Participants also will include James Roberts (University of Maryland School of Social Work and Johns Hopkins), Rudy Lozano (Chicago immigrant rights activist), and Lulú Martínez (undocumented student at the University of Illinois at Chicago and one of the Dream Nine). Local participants include Lucy Guevara-Vélez of Western Michigan University, Jill Hermann-Wilmarth and Simona Moti of Kalamazoo College, and Lori Mercedes and Adam Poole of the Hispanic American Council.
All activists, artists, students, researchers, and others interested in immigration and social justice are invited to attend the With/Out – ¿Borders? conference. Registration is on a sliding scale from $35 – $125, and group rates are available. Space is limited, and interested persons are urged to register as soon as possible. The four-day conference features discussion, workshops, a film festival and performances on important hot-button issues, including immigration and migration, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, activism and art, and urban revolt and renewal.
The mission of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership is to support the pursuit of human rights and social justice by developing emerging leaders and sustaining existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice, creating a pivotal role for liberal arts education in engendering a more just world.
Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu), founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts and sciences 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.