Kalamazoo College is pleased to welcome the following faculty members to campus this fall:
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Bonnie Ebendick
Ebendick arrived at K after earning her Ph.D. in biological sciences in August from Western Michigan University (WMU). She previously earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology/biotechnology, with a specialization in microbiology, from Michigan State University.
Before attending WMU, Ebendick worked as a research scientist at Michigan State, the University of Toledo and Iontox, LLC, beginning in 1999. Her teaching experience includes positions as a lecture teaching assistant and recitation teaching assistant at both Michigan State and WMU.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Bonnie Ebendick joins the Kalamazoo College faculty.
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Kevin Fitton
Fitton recently earned his Ph.D. in English creative writing from WMU. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Hope College, a master’s degree in New Testament from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a Master of Fine Arts from Bennington College.
Before arriving at K, he taught first-year writing, children’s literature and creative writing workshops as a graduate assistant at WMU; courses in creativity and literature at Grand Valley State University; and academic writing at Olivet University.
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Kevin Fitton joins the Kalamazoo College faculty.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Andrew Jensen
Jensen arrived at K from the University of Michigan, where he was a postdoctoral researcher, a mentor for graduate and undergraduate researchers, and a guest lecturer for courses in chemical analysis, physical properties of analysis, environmental chemistry and mass spectrometry. He previously served as a graduate research assistant at the University of Colorado, Boulder and an undergraduate research assistant at Davidson College in North Carolina.
Jensen earned a Ph.D. in analytical, environmental and atmospheric chemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Davidson College.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics and Business Matthew Schultz
Schultz has prior teaching experience at Kellogg Community College, where he was an adjunct instructor for business courses specializing in economics; Lakeview School District, Climax-Scotts Community Schools and Battle Creek Central High School, where he taught marketing, accounting, entrepreneurship, business law, finance, business management, career preparation and computer science; and with the MiSTEM Network/Code.org, where he facilitated teacher training for the AP Computer Science Principles curriculum.
Schultz received a Ph.D. in education from Indiana Wesleyan University, a master’s degree in career and technical education from WMU, and both a Master of Business Administration and a bachelor’s degree in business management from Cornerstone University.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics and Business Matthew Schultz joins the Kalamazoo College faculty.
Assistant Professor of Spanish Language and Literature Brayan Serratos García
Serratos García recently earned a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature from Vanderbilt University, where he also completed a master’s degree in the same field. He holds a bachelor’s degree in World Languages and Cultures with an emphasis in Spanish from Iowa State University. His research explores transoceanic connections among Europe, Asia, and the Americas during the Early Modern period, with particular emphasis on the contributions of Indigenous and local knowledge-producers.
Serratos García has held teaching positions as instructor, adjunct faculty, teaching assistant, and course coordinator at Vanderbilt University and Fisk University, as well as a teaching appointment at Beijing Normal University. He has taught a wide range of courses from introductory language classes to advanced seminars on Spanish and Portuguese literature and culture. In addition to Spanish and Portuguese, he speaks Chinese and Italian and has lived, studied, and conducted research across Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States.
For Dwight Williams, the Kurt D. Kaufman Associate Professor of Chemistry at Kalamazoo College, persistence has paid off. After nearly a decade of research and one unsuccessful grant application, Williams has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support his work developing new molecules that could help protect brain cells from dying from neurodegenerative diseases.
The grant, worth nearly $385,000, is a milestone for both Williams and his students, who have played a central role in shaping the project since its inception.
“After an unsuccessful application in 2018, I went back to the basics and sought guidance and mentoring from my networks, which ultimately strengthened the resubmission,” Williams said. “Receiving this award is such an encouragement, not only for the research ahead, but also for the opportunities it generates for Kalamazoo College’s students.”
Tackling Neurodegeneration
Williams said that while neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Glaucoma each begin in different ways, they have been found to share a common cellular process that significantly damages or kills brain cells. His lab focuses on ways to block or reduce this process, extending the health and function of brain cells.
Over the course of the grant, Williams and his students will aim to synthesize and test five families of compounds, each consisting of several unique molecules, for their neuroprotective potential. Results will be shared with the broader scientific community through peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.
Expanding Opportunities for Students
The NIH funding represents more than just progress in the lab. It directly supports K students by providing stipends for two of them each summer for the next three years, ensuring that financial barriers don’t prevent their participation in research.
“Many of our students want to engage in scientific research, but limited funding has often been the biggest barrier,” Williams said. “This award helps bridge that gap by expanding access to meaningful research experiences.”
In addition to stipends, the grant will allow the lab to acquire new equipment and instrumentation, speeding up experiments and enabling access to data that previously wasn’t possible for the lab to collect. These upgrades, Williams said, will help his students grow as independent scientists while working on a project with real-world significance.
Williams defines success in part by the progress of his student researchers. His aim is to help them strengthen their scientific identity, deepen their research independence, and prepare for graduate school, professional careers and leadership roles.
“Being awarded this funding shows the scientific community the incredible talent and aptitude of the young scholars here at K,” Williams said. “The majority of the data used in this proposal was produced by our students. That is very impressive to me.”
Dwight Williams, the Kurt D. Kaufman Associate Professor of Chemistry at Kalamazoo College, has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support his work developing molecules that could help protect brain cells from neurodegenerative diseases. The grant is a milestone for both Williams and his students, who have helped shape the project.
Williams Thanks …
“I want to thank my many mentors, Dr. Yan Zhang and Dr. Jill Bettinger of Virginia Commonwealth University; Dr. Laura Furge; and Dr. Syliva Fitting of UNC-Chapel Hill, who have helped me bring this together. I am also deeply grateful to every young scholar who has contributed to this project over the years. Their dedication and creativity have been essential to moving the work forward. I am especially thankful to:
Suma Alzouhayli ’17
Myles Truss ’17
Rachel Chang ’18
Natalie Hershenson ’18
Christina Keramidas ’18
MinSoo Kim ’18
McKinzie Thiede ’19
Madeline Harding ’22
Skyler Rogers ’23
My-Anh Phan ’23
Rhys Koellmann ’24
Jenna Beach ’24
Cassy Bennett ’25
Katya Koublitsky ’25
Thank you for sharing your skills and talents with the Williams Lab and for contributing uniquely to this project since its inception. This award is a reflection of your hard work.”
Since Williams arrived at K in 2015, he has mentored dozens of students in the lab, recalling each by name and recognizing the role they played in advancing the work. “Their dedication and creativity have been essential to moving the work forward,” he said. “This award is a reflection of their hard work.”
Persistence and Gratitude
Williams also acknowledged the challenges of securing federal research support at a time when funding is increasingly limited. The lab’s first NIH application in 2018 was administratively withdrawn and rejected. The resubmitted proposal, sent in February 2024, required patience while awaiting the decision.
“Knowing that the federal funding landscape is changing only reinforces the necessity of persistence, perseverance and patience,” Williams said. “Things are going to be very different moving forward, but I am continually encouraged by our students because I know they can face tough challenges, execute excellent science and solve big problems by working together—all while having fun and building community along the way.”
Williams added that his faith has guided him throughout the process.
“I must first thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ,” he said. “Without Him, this opportunity would not have been possible.”
He also expressed gratitude to mentors at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and K, as well as to colleagues such as former Director of Faculty Grants Jessica Fowle ’00.
Looking Ahead
For Williams, the NIH grant represents both an achievement and a launching point. It will allow him to pursue ambitious research goals, expand opportunities for student scientists, and share discoveries that might one day contribute to new treatment strategies for people around the world.
“The work supported by this grant has the potential to benefit people far beyond our campus,” Williams said. “And the students engaged in this work will carry forward skills that will influence communities and fields for years to come.”
About 25 students and five faculty members from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry performed summer research together this year.
Summer was not a laid-back break for many of the students and faculty who put the sciences in the liberal arts and sciences at Kalamazoo College. It’s traditionally the time of year when students and professors often collaborate in Dow Science Center labs to advance research projects that could lead to important discoveries for the world.
“During the school year, our time to do research is limited,” said Daniela Arias-Rotondo, K’s Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science, an assistant professor of chemistry. “And while we keep making progress, the summer is when we can really dig deep. When students have uninterrupted time to do this work, we can start looking at more questions. We can go down some rabbit holes that maybe during the school year we avoid because we have less time. It’s fantastic for the students and a transformative experience for them.”
Student participants often work full-time, with most earning stipends that allow them an immersive experience that builds critical thinking and technical skills. Many of the projects will form the basis of students’ Senior Integrated Projects (SIPs). Some may even result in publications in academic journals or clarify career paths and strengthen graduate school applications. Students also present their findings at national conferences and in peer-reviewed publications, gaining recognition that often extends well beyond campus.
This kind of high-impact learning was on full display this summer through the work of five faculty from chemistry and biochemistry and about 25 students in their labs. The faculty included Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo, Associate Professor of Chemistry Blake Tresca, Kurt D. Kaufman Associate Professor of Chemistry Dwight Williams, Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Cecilia Vollbrecht.
Bea Putman ’26 (from left), Ava Schwachter ’27, Will Tocco ’26, Kate Suarez ’28 and CJ Aldred ’26 worked with Daniela Arias-Rotondo, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science, who is an assistant professor of chemistry at K.
Daniela Arias-Rotondo
Arias-Rotondo’s synthetic inorganic chemistry lab worked to find ways to convert light into electrical or chemical energy. In the 2024–25 academic year, that work—funded by a National Science Foundation grant—led to national recognition for her along with one of her students, Maxwell Rhames ’25, as they examined what alternative metals could possibly be used to make things like solar panels less expensive. Will Tocco ’26, Bea Putman ’26 and Kate Suarez ’28 continued that work this summer.
For Putman, the work represents her SIP. She said first-row transition metals such as manganese could hold the solutions she’s seeking because the metals are cheap and Earth abundant. Tocco, meanwhile, praised Arias-Rotondo—affectionately known to her students as Dr. DAR—for her guidance and leadership in the lab.
“A lot of people imagine their boss as a big, scary person who rags on them when they do something wrong,” Tocco said. “Dr. DAR is not like that at all. If something goes wrong, it simply went wrong. It’s all about falling forward and asking, ‘What did you learn? What can you do next time instead?’ It’s very instructive, and as a student, I get to learn a lot. Even when I fail, there’s always a bright side.”
CJ Aldred ’26 and Ava Schwachter ’27 also worked on a project for which Arias-Rotondo earned funding, this time through the ACS Petroleum Research Fund. For this project, molecules they designed acted as catalysts and unlocked chemical transformations through a process called photoredox catalysis. In this case, the transformations involved petroleum byproducts—the waste left behind after crude oil is extracted—and how those byproducts might be used.
Schwachter, much like Tocco, credited Arias-Rotondo for empowering students.
“When you make a mistake, she will ask, ‘Did you die?’ and ‘What did you learn?’” she said. “The mindset of her lab is safety first. That’s the top priority. The next priority is learning and then whether we get the product we expected. We want to move toward our goal, but the top priorities are safety and learning. It’s easy to feel high pressure because you want to succeed, but because the focus is so much on learning and safety, I feel like there’s less.”
Associate Professor of Chemistry Blake Tresca (from left) worked with Jack Bungart ’26, Max Plesscher ’26, Devi DeYoung ’26, Jocelyn Suranyi ’28 and SEED student Rowan Hagenbuch in his lab this summer along with Caleb Moore ’27 (not pictured).
Blake Tresca
In 2024, Tresca earned a National Science Foundation grant that provided three of his lab students with a stipend this summer while also covering the cost of a robot that made their research faster, easier and safer. Together, Jack Bungart ’26, Max Plesscher ’26 and Caleb Moore ’27 used organic compounds called diene amines to create peptoid nanomaterials, which are molecules showing promise in detecting harmful substances in water or people, for example.
In an independent project, Devi DeYoung ’26, a Heyl scholar from Portage, synthesized and computationally modeled peptoids to look for relationships between structural sequences and exhibited properties.
Even high school students occasionally have opportunities at K thanks to Project SEED, the American Chemical Society’s effort to provide lab experiences to underrepresented students. Jocelyn Suranyi ’28 in the past had been one of those SEED representatives and this summer mentored high school senior Rowan Hagenbuch in Tresca’s lab.
The two did similar work, but on different projects. Suranyi synthesized peptoids that will be used in the lab of Stevens-Truss. Hagenbuch synthesized peptoids that could help remove PFAS chemicals from water. PFAS are widely used in various consumer and industrial products due to their ability to repel water, grease and stains.
“I enjoy doing this work because it helps me develop more lab skills and working with people,” Hagenbuch said. “In a high school lab, I don’t necessarily get to experience what I’m doing this summer, so it helps me build my confidence.”
Suranyi was thrilled with her opportunities to perform research and with a chance to get to know Hagenbuch.
“I know what it’s like to come in as a random high school student and she’s understanding so much more than I did,” she said. “I look at her and I think how happy I am that she’s doing so well. It’s fantastic to work with her.”
Suranyi plans to formally declare a chemistry major and Chinese minor during her sophomore year, which begins this fall. She also enrolls as a guest student at Western Michigan University, which allows her to perform with the Bronco Marching Band.
“I’ve talked to people at Western and I’ve told them I’ve been doing lab research for the past three years,” Suranyi said. “They say, ‘That’s a crazy good experience. I can’t believe K lets so many undergraduates do that and without prior experience.'”
Trustin Christoper ’26 (back row, from left), SEED student Lizbeth Mares-Castro, Olivia Cannizzaro ’26, Kurt D. Kaufman Associate Professor of Chemistry Dwight Williams, Landrie Fridsma ’27, Isaac Duncan ’27 and Jake Asnis ’26, along with Alyson Ramillano ’26 (front row, from left), SEED student Dorian Roberts, Anni Schnell ’26, Julia Kozal ’27 and Eleanor Andrews ’26 were representatives of the Williams lab this summer.
Dwight Williams
You might’ve heard that too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil a dinner, but the same theory will never apply to the Williams lab at K.
Twelve students, the largest of any lab in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry this summer, worked with the associate professor of chemistry fondly known by students as Dr. D.
Those students combined their efforts on three projects, Williams said. One project designed novel antibacterial agents to hopefully make headway against antimicrobial resistance. Another designed molecules that might one day treat neurodegenerative diseases by inhibiting a specific pathway. The last designed new molecules that might be useful for treating Chagas disease and diabetes.
Alyson Ramillano ’26, a Posse Scholar from Los Angeles, was one of the students working in the first group. Specifically, she investigated the natural product Aquamyacin G, an antibiotic showing promise to see whether it can be made synthetically.
“Right now there is a need to identify novel antibiotics because antibiotic resistance has been an ongoing benefit crisis, but there isn’t a lot of financial incentive to invest in antibiotic discovery,” Ramillano said. “From my understanding, that motivated the Williams lab to look into an affordable synthetic that would lower the barriers of entry for further research into this compound.”
Ramillano added that she never would’ve thought she would be doing such research when she started college. Eleanor Andrews ’26, a biology major, didn’t originally plan on doing research this summer in the Williams lab either.
“I was going to do some shadowing at Bronson Hospital because I want to be a nurse,” Andrews said. “But a soccer teammate of mine worked in this lab last year, and I went and listened to her present her SIP. I fell in love with the idea of working here. I loved her project with how she was working to find things that fight antibiotic resistance.”
Andrews added that her lab work consisted of mixing two molecules together to see whether she can create an antibiotic.
“This excites me because it’s really hands on,” she said. “I’m a hands-on kind of person. The thought of sitting back isn’t really for me, so I’m trying find a solution by working on it and figuring out an interesting puzzle.”
Emily Dalecki ’26, Morgan Paye ’26, Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss and Anoushka Soares ’26 worked together in the Stevens-Truss lab this summer.
Regina Stevens-Truss
The Stevens-Truss lab worked in drug-discovery testing to help figure out whether science might be able to develop new antibiotics. She said her students explore by investigating whether antimicrobial peptides that are about 26 to 30 amino acids in length can kill or prevent bacteria from growing. They also analyzed the hybrid compounds synthesized in the Williams lab and the peptoids developed in Tresca’s lab to see whether they can kill bacteria.
“We’ve started working with a whole subset of bacteria known as ESKAPE pathogens,” Stevens-Truss said. “Each letter in ESKAPE stands for a different microorganism that has at least one antibiotic resistance. We know that you can go to the hospital and take penicillin because it cures certain things. But there are some penicillin-resistant bacteria that penicillin won’t kill, and many are now becoming resistant to more than one antibiotic. We’re looking at compounds now to see which of them can still kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
Three of Stevens-Truss’ students—Emily Dalecki ’26, Morgan Paye ’26 and Anoushka Soares ’26—are hoping to eventually go to medical school with such research being vital to their admission applications.
“Research is just something I’ve always enjoyed,” said Soares, a Heyl scholar from Portage. “It’s not something I had a lot of experience with outside high school, so I was curious about it when I got to K. As a first-year student, Dr. Truss had me in General Chemistry II and asked me if I wanted to do research. I told her that would be perfect for me because I was getting more interested. I thought I was going to be a biologist until Dr. Truss made that offer. I thought it was fantastic, all-encompassing and something I wanted to look into more.”
Paye said she was in a science enrichment program last year making this summer a big change for her thanks to a better overall experience and more collaboration.
“Dr. Truss had offered me a spot in her lab so I could start my SIP research when I had never actually had her as a professor before,” Paye said. “In fact, it was the first time we had ever met, so it was amazing that she had offered me the spot. We blend super well together.”
Dalecki said K is a place where students aren’t just numbers, so faculty know students’ names and are interested in student growth. Dr. Truss, however, is special.
“I felt like Dr. Truss really wanted me to become confident in my lab work and as a chemist,” she said. “I really appreciated that. I’ve had a lot of things going on outside of K that some of my professors didn’t notice. But Dr. Truss noticed that and cared about me. She wanted me to come out of my shell and believe in what I’m doing.”
What Students Said About Summer Research
Julia Kozal ’27
“I would say that working in the lab provides the best opportunity for undergraduates to know themselves better as workers and scientists. I’ve learned that I work best when I’m in the lab constantly and not taking breaks outside just so I can get in the flow of the work. It’s also important to build relationships with your classmates. I think biochemistry can be very intimidating as a major, but if you get to know the people you’re working with well, you have a built-in group of friends for the summer.”
Julia Kozal ’27
Landrie Fridsma ’27
“I took Organic Chemistry this year with Dr. D. He helped me challenge myself in a way I never have before and do things I never thought I would be able to do. When I heard about his research, I was intrigued and excited to keep learning in that way. I learned how to problem solve in his class and it has continued in the lab. I’m learning life skills that I don’t think I would get anywhere else.”
Landrie Fridsma ’27
Anni Schnell ’26
“I think being in the lab has helped me develop a new appreciation for patience. It gives me a different kind of determination when I have to figure something out. I sometimes fail, but I can figure out how to keep getting back on track, and with having other good students in the lab, it’s a low-pressure environment.”
Anni Schnell ’26
Olivia Cannizzaro ’26
“I’m familiar with this department and all the professors are wonderful. Their projects are super interesting and definitely have implications for the future. It’s fulfilling to be a part of something where long-term applications are important. It’s also a good time. You get to know the professors during the year, and then you spend the summer with them. It’s a really good way to have references in the future, because you spend so much time with them. They know you really well. They can speak to your skills. It’s important to have these people for your future as well beyond K.”
Olivia Cannizzaro ’26
Jake Asnis ’26
“I’ve been playing lacrosse since I was in second grade, and I had a teammate in high school who just graduated from K. He told me to reach out to the coach to see if I could play here. It’s definitely a great opportunity to be here because we get to do research. I’m a chemistry major, so with this research, I can get ready for grad school and do my SIP. It’s tough to do that during the academic year. With lacrosse, we have fall ball through about Week 7, and we’re practicing three to four times a week with other classes on top of that. We then start practicing for the spring sport in January and we go all the way through April, so the summer is a perfect time to do research where we can. We don’t have to worry about other academics and we can focus solely on research.”
Jake Asnis ’26
Isaac Duncan ’27
“I applied to a bunch of small schools similar to K, but specifically, I really liked that K has an excellent track record when it comes to sending students to medical and graduate schools. Like a lot of small schools, you can really get to know your professors here. I particularly love my professors in the chemistry department, they’re all just wonderful to be around. Sometimes it’s frustrating because the chemistry isn’t easy, but there’s always help if you look for it. All my peers are incredibly kind, and everyone is struggling together! I never feel like I’m completely on my own.”
Isaac Duncan ’27
SEED student Dorian Roberts
“I thought being in a lab this summer would be a great opportunity to get a jump start on learning how college labs work and how I can better plan for time management. I like how forward Dr. D is with his lessons. I appreciate how he doesn’t sugar coat things, because I think that can sometimes cause overconfidence in some areas or make you not want to better yourself, so he allows me to grow as a person and as a scientist.”
SEED student Dorian Roberts; will attend Eastern Michigan University in fall
Bea Putman ’26
“It’s rigorous, but I think it’s interesting. I’m at college to learn and I want to be proud of my SIP. I want to feel like I put a lot of work into it, and that I used my degree and the brain that I earned from my college degree to put forth this pinnacle of everything that I’ve learned. I wanted to make sure that it accurately relayed all the work that I’ve been doing throughout my years here.”
Bea Putman ’26
Cecilia Vollbrecht
Teige Bredin ’28 and Luke Barnum ’27 have gone from taking their first chemistry course, General Chemistry I, to working in Vollbrecht’s lab in less than a year. Alongside Vollbrecht, they wanted to develop an instrument that can analyze their materials and quickly test how successful they are at capturing pollutants from water or the air.
Some of the pair’s work might have seemed like engineering and physics as much as it did chemistry.
“There’s a bunch of critical thinking where they need to ask themselves, ‘How do we make this instrument work?’” Vollbrecht said. “It’s not just a recipe to follow. We have to figure out how to make these parts fit together, optimize parts, and troubleshoot unexpected problems. They’re learning how to think on their feet while putting together different aspects of their research. We’re not just using our chemistry skills, but physics and math. My students are learning a lot of coding, which I think is fun and a good skill for the future, too.”
Bredin began the summer by using an optical setup and spectrometer to separate light into individual wavelengths. Barnum optimized the mirrors by attempting to make them smaller and even more reflective, so the wavelengths could tell them more about the materials they analyze.
Teige Bredin ’28 (left) and Luke Barnum ’27 (right) worked with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Cecilia Vollbrecht in her lab this summer.
The partners admitted they won’t necessarily find a lot of the answers they want during their time at K. Their subject matter might require years of research, although their summer duties were more than worthwhile to them.
“I’m trying to learn not only about the materials, but the science behind them and our research culture to preview whether I would survive and enjoy a job in this kind of environment,” Barnum said.
And despite being only done with his first year, Bredin knows attending K was a smart decision for him.
“Kalamazoo College has definitely been the right place for me because I’m getting these kinds of opportunities,” he said. “I don’t think I would be meeting the same people and be exposed to the same kinds of things had I not gone here.”
Beyond the Research Lab
The summer culminated in the annual Summer Science Symposium, where students presented their research to peers, faculty and the public. It provided a moment of pride and reflection, along with a celebration of the countless hours spent in the lab to give the faculty a reason to feel good and the students to feel accomplished.
“I was just talking with students about K versus a big school,” Tresca said. “We have a lot of spots for students per capita. In the senior class alone, at least half of our majors are doing research for their SIPs this summer in chemistry or biochemistry. Comparatively, big schools have a very small percentage of their students in labs. That makes us special.”
“Students take ownership of their projects during summer in a way that we don’t see at the very beginning, because as they keep going, they start realizing that they have agency,” Arias-Rotondo said. “They start making their own mistakes, their observations and learning from those mistakes as they come up with alternatives, possible solutions and things they want to try. That’s when they really take ownership of their projects and when they really grow as scientists. They stop being a pair of hands, doing what we tell them to do, and they really become scientists.”
Corey Garrison ’26 was among the students presenting his research at the Summer Science Symposium.
Cecilia Vollbrecht, assistant professor of chemistry, is one of just 10 faculty members from institutions across the country to be chosen for a new fellowship that will help students in the chemistry and biochemistry department at Kalamazoo College attain new skills.
The fellowship, called Accelerating Curricular Transformation in the Computational Molecular Sciences (ACT-CMS), is managed by the Molecular Science Software Institute (MolSSI) through funding from the National Science Foundation. Through 2027, Vollbrecht will participate in an annual weeklong bootcamp at MolSSI, where she will receive curriculum development and assessment training to help her introduce computer programming and computation in her courses.
“I’m really glad to be selected for this fellowship along with other talented scientists,” Vollbrecht said. “Since arriving at Kalamazoo College, it has been my goal to make sure our students are getting the most current skills they need to succeed and that means constantly evaluating where our curriculum can improve. I think adding more computational knowledge, such as coding, into our chemistry and biochemistry curriculum will help our students leave K with essential skills for a broad range of scientific pursuits.”
Incorporating new skills will benefit physical chemistry courses such as Quantum Chemistry and Spectroscopy, a class taken primarily by juniors and seniors where they discuss the molecular reasoning for chemical energy, how quantum mechanics applies to chemistry, and how molecules interact with light to produce chemical reactions.
“I want to make sure our students have skills such as basic knowledge of computer coding and data-visualization techniques, which are important no matter what career they go into,” Vollbrecht said. “When students complete the modules that are added to the course, they will have a deeper understanding of the chemistry topics as well as the ability to explain basic coding techniques and write a bit of their own code.”
Students taking courses from Assistant Professor of Chemistry Cecilia Vollbrecht will build skills in computer programming and computation thanks to her new fellowship.
Vollbrecht said she has already started including some cyberinfrastructure skills in the Thermodynamics and Kinetics class she leads. But the goal is to enhance present learning in that class and others.
“I think these curricular adjustments will help all of our students,” she said. “Most fields our students enter today will involve working with computers to either collect, analyze or share data. The more background knowledge they have on the subject, the more prepared they will be to contribute to projects. I think this is a quality investment by NSF that will help continue training the next generation of scientists.”
Vollbrecht added that the weeklong workshop will be a great chance to connect with and learn from other people working toward the same curricular goals. It is a chance to share ideas and best practices, and to workshop how to best fit these new skills into K’s courses effectively.
“Although I have used programming extensively in my career, the workshop is a great chance to learn from other instructors on how to best teach these skills to our students,” she said. “As a fellows group, we are also working toward making an online repository where we can post our materials for other instructors to use. The goal is to help other instructors also have an easier starting point for introducing their students to these topics as well.”
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.
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.”
William Weber Chair of Social Science Amy Elman receives the 2025 Lux Esto Award from President Jorge G. Gonzalez during Founders Day events at Stetson Chapel on Friday, April 25.
Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo receives the Outstanding First-Year Advocate Award from President Gonzalez at Founders Day.
Dow Associate professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas-Perez receives the Outstanding Advisor Award from President Gonzalez at Founders Day
Amy Elman, the William Weber Chair of Social Science, is this year’s recipient of the Lux Esto Award of Excellence as announced today during the College’s Founders Day celebration, marking K’s 192nd year.
The award recognizes an employee who has served the institution for at least 26 years and has contributed significantly to the campus. The recipient—chosen by a committee with student, faculty and staff representatives—is an employee who exemplifies the spirit of K through selfless dedication and goodwill.
At K, Elman has taught a variety of courses within the political science, women’s studies and Jewish studies departments. During her tenure, she has also been a visiting professor at Haifa University in Israel, Harvard University, SUNY Potsdam, Middlebury College, Uppsala University in Sweden and New York University.
Elman has received two Fulbright grants, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a grant from the Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew University. She has written three books: The European Union, Antisemitism and the Politics of Denial (2014); Sexual Equality in an Integrated Europe (2007); and Sexual Subordination and State Intervention: Comparing Sweden and the United States (1996). She also edited Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge (1996). In the 1997–98 academic year, she was awarded K’s Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for outstanding scholarship.
In accordance with Founders Day traditions, two other employees received community awards. Dow Associate Professor of Computer Science Sandino Vargas–Pérez was given the Outstanding Advisor Award and Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo received the First-Year Advocate Award.
Before arriving at K, Vargas-Perez worked as an adjunct instructor at Western Michigan University, where he earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic.
Vargas-Perez has taught courses at K in data structures, algorithms, parallel computing, computing for environmental science, object-oriented programming, and programming in Java and web development. His research interests include high-performance computing, parallel and distributed algorithms, computational genomics, and data structures and compression.
Jazz quartet Liam McElroy (piano), Laura DeVilbiss (flute), Garrick Hohm (string bass) and Adam Cornier-Bridgeforth (drums) performed at the Founders Day celebration.
President’s Student Ambassadors Ava Williams ’26 and Madeline Hollander ’26 introduced President Gonzalez at the 192nd Founders Day celebration.
President Gonzalez recognized the students who served this year as President’s Student Ambassadors and shared the names of 13 more who will serve beginning this fall.
Nominators said Vargas–Pérez has consistently gone above and beyond his responsibilities as a professor to promote learning while finding opportunities for his advisees.
Arias-Rotondo has earned significant funding in support of her research and her commitment to engaging students in hands-on experiences in her lab. A $250,000 grant in 2023 from the National Science Foundation’s Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS) provided funding for student researchers, typically eight to 10 per term. In 2024, she received a $50,000 American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund grant, which will support her and her students’ upcoming research regarding petroleum byproducts. H.
Arias-Rotondo teaches Introductory Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Structure and Reactivity, and commonly takes students to ACS conferences. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Nominators said she has been a dependable, inspirational and fierce advocate for students.
Gonzalez also recognized the students who served as President’s Student Ambassadors in the 2024–25 academic year and introduced those who will serve the College beginning this fall in 2025–26. As student leaders, President’s Student Ambassadors serve as an extension of the president’s hospitality at events and gatherings, welcoming alumni and guests of the College with a spirit of inclusion. About 15 students serve as ambassadors each academic year. The students selected show strong communication skills; demonstrate leadership through academic life, student life or community service; and maintain a minimum grade-point average.
The 2024-25 ambassadors have been:
Jaylen Bowles-Swain ’26
Christopher Cayton ’25
Kyle Cooper ’25
Blake Filkins ’26
James Hauke ’26
Maya Hester ’25
Madeline Hollander ’25
Gavin Houtkooper ’25
Katie Kraemer ’25
Isabelle Mason ’27
Alex Nam ’25
Tyrus Parnell, Jr. ’25
Isabella Pellegrom ’25
Addison Peter ’25
Maxwell Rhames ’25
Emiliano Alvarado Rescala ’27
Amelie Sack ’27
Dean Turpin ’25
Ava Williams ’25
The 2025-26 ambassadors succeeding this year’s seniors will be:
Five Kalamazoo College faculty members have been awarded tenure and promotion to associate professor, recognizing their excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. This milestone also signifies the College’s confidence in the contributions these faculty will make throughout their careers. The Board of Trustees-approved tenure recipients are:
Anne Marie Butler, Art History and Women, Gender and Sexuality
Butler specializes in contemporary Tunisian art within contexts of global contemporary art, contemporary global surrealism studies, Southwest Asia North Africa studies, gender and sexuality studies, and queer theory. At K, she teaches courses such as Art and Gender, Queer Aesthetics, Performance Art and core WGS classes. She has supervised 13 Senior Integrated Projects (SIPs).
Outside the classroom, Butler has co-edited the book Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa (Intellect Press, 2024) and published four articles, as well as a book chapter. She is a recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and of a research grant from American Institute of Maghrib Studies. She is the current Junior Faculty Fellow at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, has served on the Sherbin Fellowship Post-Baccalaureate Research Award committee, and is co-convener of the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s WGS Collective. She is also a volunteer assistant K swimming and diving team coach, and volunteers at the YWCA and at Kalamazoo Animal Rescue.
Butler holds a Ph.D. in global gender and sexuality studies from the State University of New York-Buffalo, an M.A. in arts politics from New York University, and a B.A. in art history and French from Scripps College.
Anne Marie Butler
Marilyn Evans, Classics
Evans specializes in the archaeology of Roman urbanism, exploring the origins and early development of communities in central Italy. She has excavated sites across the Mediterranean, and for the past 15 years in the ancient Latin city of Gabii. At K, Evans teaches courses across the Classics curriculum, covering ancient language, literature, history and archaeology. She also has effectively integrated community engagement into her Neighborhoods in Ancient Cities course by working collaboratively with the Center for Civic Engagement and the Building Blocks community housing group.
Evans has supervised four SIP students, including two during summer research at archaeological digs in Gabii, Italy, outside of Rome. Her published work includes four peer-reviewed articles and two book chapters. She has served on K’s Educational Policies Committee, as regional vice president for the Classical Association of the Midwest and South, and on the editorial board of Rhea Classical Reviews.
Evans earned her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of California, Berkeley, her M.A. in Classical Languages from the University of Georgia and her B.A. in Classical Studies and Anthropology, from Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Marilyn Evans
Benjamin Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, English
Kingsley’s specialty is poetry and he also has published works of fiction and nonfiction. His teaching centers on the poetry sequence within the English department: Introduction to Creative Writing, Intermediate Poetry Workshop, and Advanced Poetry Workshop.
Kingsley is the author of three books which have won over a dozen national awards, including the Association for Asian American Studies Award for Outstanding Achievement, the Library of Virginia Literary Award, and the American Fiction Award. He has published poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction in more than 100 journals and/or anthologies, including Poetry, Poets.org, Tin House, Boston Review, The Georgia Review, New England Review, The Southern Review and Oxford American. His collections are Dēmos: An American Multitude (Milkweed Editions, 2021), Colonize Me (Saturnalia Books, 2019) and Not Your Mama’s Melting Pot (University of Nebraska Press, 2018).
At K, Kingsley has twice been named a Most Valuable Professor, once by basketball student-athletes and once in football. He has also twice been named an Alpha Lamda Delta Inspiring Professor in back-to-back years.
Kingsley earned an M.F.A. from the University of Miami and an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
Rochelle Rojas, History
Rojas specializes in the early modern Western world and the transatlantic history of the early Spanish empire while focusing on the lived experiences of a wide range of people. She has supervised 11 SIPs, written two peer-reviewed articles, and authored a book, Bad Christians and Hanging Toads: Witch Crafting in Northern Spain 1525-1675, which was released this month by Cornell University Press. She has been awarded an American Association of University Women Short-Term Research Grant and an American Historical Association Albert J. Beveridge Grant.
Rojas has served as a member of K’s Academic Standards Committee and the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She has been a member of search committees for the vice president of finance and administration; director of grants, fellowships and research; and faculty searches in biology and chemistry. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from the University of Florida, and a master’s degree along with a Ph.D. in history from Duke University.
Rochelle Rojas
Blakely Tresca, Chemistry
Tresca teaches organic chemistry at K while striving to bring research into the classroom. He has mentored more than 30 research students and supervised 14 SIPs with more than 50% of his research mentees attending graduate programs at institutions such as the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin and Washington University in St. Louis.
Tresca has had five published articles and recently received a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF funds will help his students develop a lab partnership with some of their counterparts at the University of Toronto while performing research with peptoid nanomaterials.
At K, Tresca has served on the Educational Policies Committee (EPC), where he participated in revising SIP guidelines and last year’s teacher’s assistant policy. Beyond EPC, he has been an advisor to K’s student chapter of the American Chemical Society (ACS) while working with the local ACS professional chapter. He’s also been the Michigan representative to the Midwest Association of Chemistry Teachers at Liberal Arts Colleges Board.
Tresca holds a bachelor’s degree from Trinity University along with a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Oregon.
In celebrating the power that comes with the sharing of scientific knowledge, the Chemistry Club at Kalamazoo College participated in two community events this fall where local students and families—children in particular—could engage with hands-on experiments and interactive displays.
Hundreds attended the events, which were packed with activities designed to spark curiosity and inspire future scientists. Students such as Isabella Pellegrom ’25, at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, and Justin Essing ’25, at the Air Zoo, were among the demonstrators representing K.
Pellegrom and her peers fascinated the general public by showing how children can protect themselves from UV radiation. Using UV-reactive beads made into bracelets, experimenters could see colors change from a neutral color into purple, blue or pink when UV light is shined onto them.
“It makes the kids really happy every time they see it,” Pellegrom said. “And then we have certain things that they can do to protect the beads from changing color, which could represent protecting themselves, their eyes or their skin from getting burned.”
The experiment used sunglasses, various types of clothing and sunscreen to help museum attendees recognize the best ways to protect themselves.
“It shocks a lot of people that sunscreen doesn’t completely protect the beads from changing color,” Pellegrom said. “We’ll start the demonstration by asking the kids whether they have ever gotten some sort of sunburn, and they sometimes say, ‘Oh! My dad got the worst sunburn in Florida last month’ or something like that. It’s funny because, as you’re telling the kids this, the parents many times say, ‘See, this is why I tell you to put on your sunscreen.’”
At the Air Zoo, Essing helped operate a booth that used the College’s virtual reality headsets to show Portage Public Schools students the structure of a COVID-19 protein so they could make connections between an illness they would feel and the science behind a virus’ structure. He said with multiple youths immersed within virtual reality at any given time, it was difficult to keep them from bumping into each other, but a common effort proved successful in engaging everyone.
“We had some people giving our spiel and explaining some of these tough concepts to kids,” Essing said. “Others were helping students put on the headsets. They all had to work as a team toward a common goal of educating and inspiring young students to pursue the sciences.”
Several members of Kalamazoo College’s Chemistry Club, including Isabella Pellegrom ’25 (bottom right), have participated in community science days over the past few years at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum including this one in 2023.
Kalamazoo College Chemistry Club members including Justin Essing ’25 (seated left) attended an Air Zoo event where they helped Portage Public Schools students view an enlarged model of a COVID-19 protein.
These are examples of how K chemistry students, and Chemistry Club members specifically, go beyond the classroom and labs to communicate what they learn in the community.
“I think it’s a great opportunity,” Pellegrom said. “And it’s one of the best parts about this club. It’s a fun experience to get together with people, take time out of your schedule, and talk about science or just be around other people who are interested in it.”
Essing said the community opportunities and the 66 students involved show the strength of the Chemistry Club and why it endures year after year.
“We all have personal relationships with each other, both through this Chemistry Club and taking classes together,” he said. “With the small campus size, everybody gets to know each other pretty well, personally and professionally. I feel that allows us to coordinate our goals together and figure out how to reach them in and out of the classroom.”
A National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will help a Kalamazoo College faculty member and his students develop a lab partnership with some of their counterparts at the University of Toronto while performing research with peptoid nanomaterials.
Blakely Tresca, assistant professor of chemistry, has been awarded nearly $250,000 under the NSF’s Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS). The LEAPS-MPS grant emphasizes helping pre-tenure faculty at institutions that don’t traditionally receive significant amounts of NSF-MPS funding, including predominantly undergraduate institutions, as well as achieving excellence through diversity.
Tresca and his students will create peptoid nanomaterials, which are synthetic molecules that show promise in detecting harmful substances in water or people, for example, or in creating coatings that can impart new properties onto other materials. Their work will dovetail with research at University of Toronto in the lab of Assistant Professor of Chemistry Helen Tran.
“I’ve been working with Dr. Tran on putting an alkyne functional group into peptoids, and then studying how the peptoids can self-assemble into materials,” Tresca said. “And once they self-assemble, we want to know how alkynes react in these materials.”
Tresca explained that his lab’s processes require several repetitive tasks including shaking and rinsing samples five or six times each with 10 to 18 individual steps requiring a total of 18 to 20 hours of work when done by hand. The grant covers the cost of a robot that makes the process faster, easier and safer.
“Dr. Tran’s lab has expertise in doing automated synthesis,” Tresca said. “They have a robot that’s the same as the one we have here now. They also have expertise in characterizing the materials, using instruments like an atomic force microscope or AFM. I’m excited because, if things turn out the way we plan, we will be able to work on some really cool applications to design new ways of sensing, either analytes or toxins.”
The grant also covers funding for Tresca’s students to work in the lab, travel to conferences and visit the University of Toronto over the next two years. He estimates that two K students will assist in his lab during the academic year and five will work during the summer.
Tresca’s grant is one of two NSF awards given to faculty members in K’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the past year. The other has allowed Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo to redesign the lab portion of inorganic chemistry (CHEM 330 at K). It also has helped her and her lab students make compounds that can absorb solar energy and turn it into electricity using manganese, a low-cost, low-toxicity alternative to the materials currently used in solar energy conversion, which tend to be rare, expensive and difficult to mine.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Blakely Tresca, a recent NSF grant recipient, works with students in his lab
Tresca poses with his lab students in summer 2024.
Tresca joins his lab after the summer poster presentations at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership in 2024.
Kalamazoo College is pleased to welcome the following faculty members to campus this fall:
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Kelsey Aldrich
Aldrich arrives at K from Duquesne University, where she earned a Ph.D. and served as a graduate teaching assistant in biochemistry. Her educational background also includes a Bachelor of Science in chemistry with American Chemical Society (ACS) certification from Grove City College, where she was an undergraduate teaching assistant in organic, analytical and general chemistry.
Aldrich will teach a Shared Passages Seminar course this fall titled Cultured: The History and Science of Fermented Foods. In winter spring terms, she will teach classes in general chemistry and biochemistry. Her professional affiliations include membership in the ACS and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Kelsey Aldrich
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Erika Carbonara
Carbonara recently earned her Ph.D. in English from Wayne State University. She additionally holds a master’s degree from Oakland University and a bachelor’s degree with university honors from Wayne State.
She specializes in early modern literature with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, and kink studies. In her previous teaching positions, she has taught a wide range of courses from introductory composition to literature classes focused on Renaissance literature, children’s literature, and women’s literature. This term she will lead a course on social justice from a literary perspective with a focus on issues, events, movements and historical moments while emphasizing areas of power difference such as race and ethnicity, disabilities, class, gender and sexuality.
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Erika Carbonara
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Rachel Chaiser
Chaiser’s educational background includes a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Colorado Boulder, and a bachelor’s degree with honors in mathematics from the University of Puget Sound.
In Boulder, she served as a part-time graduate instructor in linear algebra for non-math majors and calculus courses, a graduate teaching assistant in precalculus and an advanced undergraduate research mentor. At K this fall, she will teach calculus with lessons in algebra, precalculus and analytic geometry.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Rachel Chaiser
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Sharon Colvin
Colvin has teaching experience with the University of Pittsburgh School of Education as an instructor, leading students with research methods and applied research; and the University of Maryland First-Year Innovation and Research Experience (FIRE) as an assistant clinical professor. Before getting her PhD., she was a youth services librarian for 10 years. At K, Colvin will teach educational psychology in fall, which applies the principles of psychology to the practice of teaching.
Colvin holds a Ph.D. in learning sciences and policy from the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, Health and Human Development; a master’s degree in library science from the Simmons University Graduate School of Library and Information Science; a master’s degree in mind, brain and education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education; and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Wellesley College.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Sharon Colvin
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Caitlin Coplan
Coplan arrives at K from Northwestern University, where they recently earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. They also hold a bachelor’s degree with honors in physical and educational chemistry from the University of Utah.
Coplan has prior professional and teaching experience as an instructor as a part of the Arch program for incoming first-year students, and a teaching assistant for general chemistry and nanomaterials courses at Northwestern. They have also served as an interim undergraduate chemistry advisor, College of Science student ambassador, and teaching assistant in general chemistry at the University of Utah. At K, they will teach analytical chemistry this fall.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Caitlin Coplan
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Mahar Fatima
For the past seven years, Fatima has served the University of Michigan, first as a postdoctoral researcher and then as a research laboratory specialist. Her research interests include studies of the sensory neural circuits under physiological or pathological conditions, the molecular mechanisms required to interpret sensory information, and how relations between neural and non-neuronal systems contribute to chronic pain, chronic itch, and pulmonary disorders. This fall, Fatima will teach neurobiology at K, addressing the structure and function of the nervous system with topics including the cell biology of neurons, electrophysiology, sensory and motor systems, brain development, and nervous system dysfunction.
Fatima earned a Ph.D. from the National Brain Research Centre in India along with master’s and bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry and life sciences respectively from the University of Allahabad.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Mahar Fatima
Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion Shelby King
King holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) along with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Texas State University, San Marcos.
Her teaching areas include the history of religion in America, religion and popular culture, religion and American politics, theories and methods in religion, and theories of genders and sexualities. Her professional memberships include the American Academy of Religion, and the UCSB Center for Cold War Studies and International History.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion Shelby King
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Cemile Kurkoglu
Kurkoglu comes to K from Denison University, where she had been a visiting assistant professor, teaching undergraduate mathematics and statistics courses since 2021.
Kurkoglu holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University Bloomington, where she served as an associate instructor for algebra, calculus and finite mathematics courses and she assisted for graduate mathematics courses. She also has a master’s degree from Bilkent University and a bachelor’s degree from Hacettepe University. Her graduate-level coursework included abstract and commutative algebra, number and representation theory, and ordinary and partial differential equations, real and complex analysis, and topology.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Cemile Kurkoglu
Visiting Assistant Professor of History Josh Morris
Morris is arriving at K from Wayne State University, where he has been a visiting assistant professor at Grand Valley State University since 2021. Elsewhere, he has served St. Clair County Community College, the University of Toledo and Wayne State University as an adjunct faculty member; a graduate teaching assistant at Wayne State and Cal State University Pomona; and a lecturer for the Los Angeles Workers’ Center and the University of California, Irvine.
Morris holds a Ph.D. from Wayne State, a master’s degree from CSU Pomona, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, all in history. His professional memberships include the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Historical Materialism Society for Critical Research in Marxism, the Labor and Working-Class Historical Association and the Historians of American Communism.
Visiting Assistant Professor of History Joshua Morris
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology Koffi Nomedji
Nomedji holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Duke University, a master’s degree in economics from Oklahoma State University, and bachelor’s degrees in sociology and economics from the University of Lomé, Togo, West Africa. At Duke, Nomedji taught courses in introductory cultural anthropology, the digital revolution, the anthropology of money, and development and Africa.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology Koffi Nomedji
Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Nick Polanco
While recently earning a Ph.D. in computer science at Michigan State University, Polanco conducted research in automotive cybersecurity specific to autonomous vehicles. He also was a teaching assistant in artificial intelligence, computer organization and architecture, software engineering, computer systems, discrete structures, mobile applications and development, and database systems.
At K, Polanco will teach courses in introductory computing and programming basics for JavaScript and web development this fall.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Nick Polanco
Director of African Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Dominique Somda
Somda has arrived at K from the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where she was a research fellow. She also has past appointments as traveling faculty with the International Honors Program (IHP) at study abroad and world learning sites in the U.S., Spain, Jordan, India, Nepal, Senegal, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Chile; as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Reed College and the Department of Anthropology and Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; as a visiting scholar in anthropology at the London School of Economics; as a postdoctoral fellow at the Université Paris Nanterre in France; and as a teaching and research fellow at the University of Paris Nanterre.
Somda has a Ph.D. and two master’s degrees in ethnology and comparative sociology from the University of Paris Nanterre, and a master’s and bachelor’s in philosophy from the University Clermont Auvergne.
Somda will lead a course this fall at K titled On Being Human in Africa. The course will examine the experiences of Africans through racialized and gendered existences, their affective relations, their ways of relating to and caring for each other and the land; and explore what it means to think and write about Africa with representations and discourses including fiction, academic writing and social media.
Director of African Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Dominique Somda
Assistant Professor of Biology Clara Stuligross
Stuligross was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Riverside prior to K. She holds Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis, and a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Earlham College.
Stuligross studies the impacts of environmental stressors on native bee ecology and recently received a federal grant to study the effects of climate change on bees. She also has professional experience as a museum educator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, where she taught science outreach programs and developed hands-on climate change education lessons. At K this fall, she will teach Biology Explorations.
Assistant Professor of Biology Clara Stuligross
Visiting Instructor of Chinese Ruyuan Yang
Yang has a master’s degree in teaching Chinese to non-native speakers from the Beijing Language and Culture University, and a bachelor’s degree in teaching Chinese as a second language from Yunnan Normal University in Kunming, China.
Yang previously has taught college-level courses in beginning, intermediate and advanced Chinese at K; basic and intermediate Chinese, and Chinese dance and culture at Western Michigan University; and integrated Chinese and Chinese listening and speaking courses at Beijing Language and Culture University. Yang’s courses this fall include beginning and intermediate Chinese.
