Sasha Issenberg, a leading author and journalist on American politics, will deliver the 2016 William Weber Lecture in Government and Society. The lecture, “The Victory Lab 2016: A Report from the Campaign Trail,” will take place on Tuesday, September 27, at 8 p.m. in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room, and it is free and open to the public.
Issenberg is the author of three books, including The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. He covered the 2012 election as a columnist for Slate and the 2008 election as a national political reporter in the Washington bureau of The Boston Globe. His work has appeared in New York magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and George.
For the book The Victory Lab (dubbed by POLITICO as the “Moneyball for politics”) Issenberg went on the campaign trail and uncovered the hidden story of the analytical revolution upending the way political campaigns are run. Renegade thinkers are crashing the gates of a venerable American institution, shoving aside its so-called wise men and replacing them with a radical new data-driven order. In the 2016 Weber Lecture, Issenberg will discuss what he’s seeing in the current race and how it compares to past campaigns.
The William Weber Lecture in Government and Society was founded by Bill Weber, a 1939 graduate of Kalamazoo College. Past lecturers have included David Broder, Frances Moore Lappe, E.J. Dionne, Jeane Bethke Elshtain, William Greider, Ernesto Cortes Jr., John Esposito, Benjamin Ginsberg, Frances Fox Piven, Spencer Overton, Tamara Draut, Van Jones and Joan Mandelle.
K students (l-r) Morgan Mahdavi ’14, Chelsey Shannon ’14, Isabelle Ciaramitaro ’16, and Jordan Earnest ’14 with some of their SMART Girls.
Each Friday afternoon during the fall, winter, and spring quarters of the 2013-14 academic year, five Kalamazoo College female students have met with 16 Kalamazoo area preteen girls in a mentoring program focused on themes of identity, self-awareness, and self-worth.
Every Friday afternoon. For two hours. No exceptions.
“Consistency is most important in our mentor role,” said Jordan Applebaum Earnest ’14. “The girls know to expect us every Friday for the school year.”
The K women meet with the SMART Girls (ages 9-12) at the Boys and Girls Club to discuss themes of identity, self-awareness, and self-worth. Another team of K women also mentors a Teen SMART Girls program at the Club. Both groups of mentors meet regularly on their own to plan lessons for the girls and hold structured reflections about their own mentoring experiences.
“Over the course of the year, our lessons, activities, discussions, and writing exercises with the girls have placed a strong emphasis on healthy relationships, self-care, and emotional processing,” said Jordan. “The girls have come to recognize their own strengths and they have developed more confidence, determination, and positive energy.”
“We have, too,” said Jordan.
Jordan is a Civic Engagement Scholar through the “Mary Jane” Center and serves as director of the SMART Girls program. Hers is a funded position paid through a grant to the Center by former City of Kalamazoo Mayor Caroline Ham. The other K students are volunteers.
During the Friday May 2 downtown Kalamazoo Art Hop, K mentors and SMART Girls will host “Who We Are,” a photographic exhibit meant to demonstrate the inner strengths that each SMART Girl believes she possesses. Each SMART Girl served as art director for her own photo, choosing the props and poses that Georgina Graff ’16 captured with her camera.
“The photos represent who the SMART Girls want to grow up to be,” said Jordan. “They demonstrate qualities such as trustworthiness, intelligence, health, and creativity—all chosen by the girls themselves.”
Kalamazoo College SMART Girls mentors and mentees will host the Art Hop reception from 6-7:30 p.m. at Edison Place, 1350 Portage St., in the Washington Square/Edison neighborhood. The exhibit was curated with the help of Jessica Mancino from the Boys and Girls Club, and funded through a generous grant from Linda DeRose Primavera ’77.
Alison Geist, director of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, received the 2013 Spirit of Health Equity Award from Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services. The award recognizes her “ongoing commitment and dedication to health equity in the Kalamazoo community.” In addition to her work with the CCE (formerly the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning), Geist teaches a course in public health at K and co-administers the College′s Community and Global Health concentration. She received the award at the First Annual Summit on Health Equity in Kalamazoo. Congrats, Alison!
K students will log more than 35,000 hours of civic engagement during the 2012-13 academic year.
Kalamazoo College has been named a Presidential Award Finalist in the 2013 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The Honor Roll recognizes higher education institutions that reflect the values of exemplary community service and achieve meaningful outcomes in their communities.
K is one of only 14 institutions (and the only one from Michigan) receiving the Presidential Award Finalist honor out of nearly 700 nationwide that were considered. K has been recognized every year since the Honor Roll was launched in 2006, and was also named a Finalist in 2011. Five institutions were named Presidential Awardees this year, the highest honor.
“Selection as a Presidential Award Finalist is recognition from the highest levels of the federal government of K’s commitment to service-learning and civic engagement on our campus and beyond,” said Alison Geist, director of the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute of Service-Learning.
“This honors the commitment of K students and our community partners not only in Kalamazoo and throughout Southwest Michigan, but internationally, as well.”
According to Geist, about 74 percent of Kalamazoo College students will participate in civic engagement activities during their four years at the College. During the 2012-13 academic year alone, K students will contribute more than 35,000 hours to this effort. K offers about 30 service-learning courses that include community-based civic engagement activities, and students lead programs that take place every week throughout the year.
In the Greater Kalamazoo community, students work through approximately 40 different community partners including Kalamazoo Public Schools, Fair Food Matters, Goodwill Industries, Kalamazoo County Center for Healthy Equity, and Ministry with Community.
K students advocate for improved food access and health, and work in community gardens, serve as math tutors to elementary school children, employ theatre as empowerment with juvenile home residents, develop environmental justice programming with migrant workers for whom English is a second language, and many other roles to promote social justice.
“Our goal is to help K students gain hands-on, real world experiences that build their critical thinking, problem problem-solving, and communications skills, while fostering an interest in civic engagement and strengthening our community,” said Geist.
More and more K students are carrying this civic engagement interest to other countries, she added. About 85 percent of K students study abroad, mostly during their junior year, at more than 40 program sites on six continents. Many students now complete an Intercultural Research Project in their host country that includes a civic engagement component. Recent examples include a student who worked as a physiotherapy assistant at an aged care facility in Australia, another who taught English to students at a school for children of migrant workers in China, one who taught songs in Spanish to first-graders at a rural Mexican school, and one who raised funds to distribute portable solar-powered lanterns to elderly Kenyan residents.
Geist also commended the growing number of international students at Kalamazoo College who participate in civic engagement activities in Kalamazoo and Southwest Michigan.
The Corporation for National and Community Service oversees the President’s Honor Roll in collaboration with the U.S. Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development, Campus Compact, and the American Council on Education. Honorees are chosen based on a series of selection factors, including the scope and innovation of service projects, the extent to which service-learning is embedded in the curriculum, the school’s commitment to long-term campus-community partnerships, and measurable community outcomes as a result of the service. The entire 2013 Honor Roll list is available at www.nationalservice.gov/honorroll.
Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu) does more in four years so that students can do more in a lifetime. K offers rigorous academic explorations in the liberal arts and the flexibility to shape non-classroom experiences (study abroad, civic engagement, career internships, social justice leadership, and professional networking) into a résumé that gives students a leg-up for graduate school and employment. The K experience develops the ability to think and solve problems, and we measure those outcomes to continually improve.
